Christopher McKitterick - Paving the Road to Armageddon

Illustration by Vincent Di Fate

Dear Professor Goddard:

It has been too long since last we visited, mein alter Freund I must see you and speak of spacecraft. Note that I risk traveling to Annapolis for this meeting. Please come to foe’s Tavern on 6th St. If you do not arrive by 7 P.M., I will not bother you again.

Respectfully,

Robert H. Goddard turned the note over in his wrinkled hand, shocked but also—though he dared not admit it, even to himself—momentarily pleased at hearing from an old friend. He did not need more than a moment to determine the author: Wemher von Braun. Who else would use German words and speak of spacecraft? Not missiles or rockets. Spacecraft. Everyone spoke of rockets these days but no one of space. Who but Wemher?

When he raised his eyes to question the courier, Goddard saw only the young soldier’s retreating back as he skirted a small, unrepaired shell-crater in the sidewalk. After one nervous glance backward, the boy turned a comer and disappeared behind an old brick building. The sky was already being painted with yet another violently vivid sunset.

“Is something the matter, Mister Goddard?” the MP stationed on Goddard’s front porch asked.

“Nothing, no,” he answered, glancing up at invisible stars.

Wemher, he mused. What could that rascal be up to? Why would a man so central to the Europareich Wehrmacht dare cross the Atlantic just to see an old acquaintance? The cease-fire was only six weeks old and certain to shatter soon, already trembling on the Afrikanische Front beneath the treads of Panzers and the roar of Messerschmitts. Robert Goddard folded the note and placed it in his pants’ pocket.

“Esther,” he called into his apartments, fetching a hat and coat, “I’m going out. I’ll be back before bedtime.” He told the MP he wouldn’t need the man to follow, that he had a personal appointment.

Von Braun grinned as Goddard approached through the dim, smoky tavern. Gone was the younger man’s carefree smile, replaced by a tired stretching of the lips. Goddard was reminded of the tuberculosis he had suffered as a youngster, and the illness which had nearly killed him a year ago. If the US military hadn’t gone to such lengths to save their precious resource, Goddard wouldn’t have had to ponder over this curious meeting.

He was struck by all that had happened since they had last spoken, nearly seven years prior. Cold knuckles pushed against his lungs; it was difficult to breathe, all these memories crushing him at once. A mushroom cloud over London kept Goddard from feeling joyful to see von Braun. A man can forget some things for a while, he can ignore others forever, but when forced to see so many forgotten pains at once, even the strongest man loses his composure.

“I could turn you in to the authorities just by raising my voice and identifying you,” Goddard said, fists on hips. Von Braun’s smile softened, and he lifted a glass of beer toward the American.

“You could,” he said. “But you and I are of a like mind about the future of man.”

Goddard stared at him, then at an unzipped briefcase on the table. “What’s this all about?” he asked, seating himself opposite von Braun, reluctant to join friendly conversation. This negative of himself made his shoulders weary with the weight of war.

“Ah, right to the point as always. Well. It is time for the future, yet our nations go on smashing themselves in the eyes. When man is blind, he cannot see the future.”

“You’ve come to the United States to talk about the future?”

“Yes,” von Braun answered. “What is more important than that?”

“And you believe I am in a position to bring about the end of the war.”

“No…” von Braun said, trailing off spiritlessly. His eyes defocused.

Goddard began to wonder if this man had lost his mind. A decade of war can do that to a person, especially one seated at the controls of a nation’s missile program. Goddard was well aware of this feeling; he sometimes waxed wistful about his early days in rocketry: Aunt Effie’s farm; young, eager Esther; Guggenheim, Hughes, Lindbergh… Once, he had been a visionary. Once, schoolchildren wrote him with questions about interstellar flight and worldwide relocation when the Sun grew old and feeble. Now, he designed flying bombs. Von Braun ended their mutual reverie.

“Do you remember when I first heard you speak at Clark University?”

“Yes,” Goddard answered, welcoming the retreat into the past. “It was the spring of 1934. You refer to it often, though that wasn’t my best speech.”

“I had read ‘The Last Migration’ and was determined to meet its author,” von Braun continued, “so I collected as many Reichsmarks as I could scrounge and rode a freighter to America. Actually, I’d been planning to enter Clark as a student, but then I learned you were going on leave again…

“Robert, you and I have been degraded into the status of nationalist villains, you toward the Europareich and me toward what remains of the Allies. Do not try to deny it; we both read the propaganda. Merely villains, our visions of space exploration and Man’s great future conflagrated in the flames of Armageddon spread by our rockets.” Von Braun leaned forward, his lips trembling, then whispered harshly: “Our rockets should carry spacecraft, not atomic bombs.”

“And now you plan to build spacecraft, with my help,” Goddard answered, attempting to hide the condescension in his voice.

“Yes.”

Goddard felt his forehead wrinkle as his eyebrows rose. He did not expect so brief and direct an answer. He glanced around the tavern. They were the only ones dressed in civilian clothes, but none of the uniformed patrons paid them special attention.

“Yes,” von Braun continued, “a whole fleet of spacecraft.” Despite Goddard’s rational mind, something of the youthful optimist within perked an ear.

“Are you not tired of making war?” von Braun asked.

“Of course.”

“Would you not love to be part of a spacefaring race?”

Goddard hesitated. “Naturally.”

“Would you not love to prove to the world that two of its greatest enemies could join together on a mission into space—where we belong? Not making war.”

Goddard leaned against the back of his chair, its brittle wood creaking even beneath his slight mass. He could not help feeling exhilarated by talk of space and spacecraft, and spacemen. Me, a spaceman! He chuckled quietly.

“I’m an old man, Wemher,” he declared. “Your words are eloquent and true, but I do believe you have lost your mind.”

In response, von Braun’s barrel body quivered with silent laughter. Goddard’s humor faded before incomprehension.

“It does sound insane, doesn’t it?” von Braun observed. “But I am too sane. Look.” And he opened the briefcase.

Goddard’s heart sped as he handled sketches, blueprints, and full-color paintings. Rockets. No, spacecraft. They were smoothly curved, like the German V2 and V4 missiles that had devastated the British Isles and North Afrika and the Atlantic Fleet, not arrow-straight like Goddard’s own AFRB-1 and Skybolt. He flipped through the stack. Someone had spent an undue amount of time dreaming. A great number of someones, Goddard observed, taking note of the various signatures. One in particular stood out, a Russian’s.