The Gemini Divergence (12 page)

“Well that is wonderful news,” Hein said.
“Well I have to be going, sorry I had to be the bearer of bad news,
but I felt duty bound to tell you.”

“Don’t feel guilty Herr Hein, thank you for
telling me,” Volmer replied.

They shook hands and Hein turned and left.
Volmer thought it a little odd how Hein reacted to the news of the
drawings, but brushed it off and went back to his work.

As he worked on for a few minutes to an hour,
Volmer suddenly came to an epiphany. He remembered back to the time
he was working on the Schriewer project when some of the scientists
boasted that the vehicle could eventually travel into space.

If they were actually up there in space, then
their radio transmissions would indeed be being heard everywhere on
the planet.

But the war was over, how could they be up
there?

Then it hit him, of course, the purge, that
was the reason. They didn’t want anyone to know about the
programs.

They didn’t want anyone to know they could
get into space.

It would be the perfect escape plan. No one
on earth would ever find them, if they were not on the earth.

If most people on earth could not yet
conceive of space travel, except in wild fantasy, then no one would
ever suspect that is were they ran to.

Volmer started nervously gnawing on his
pencil as he looked around at the other workers at their desks and
thought.

Who do I tell? What will they think of me?
They will laugh. No one will believe it.

But it has to be. It makes perfect sense. It
explains everything.

He stood up and went directly back to Von
Braun’s office.

When he arrived there, he walked right past
the secretary as she beckoned out to him in protest as he
passed.

He opened the door to see an astonished Von
Braun on the phone.

Von Braun without putting the phone down
declared, “Herr Volmer, what is the meaning of this?”

Herr Volmer, white as a ghost entered Von
Braun’s Office and closed the door behind himself.

~~~**^**~~~

The Cold War
/ Verify In The Sky

The wind whipped the weather balloon that was
tethered to a small crane arm that was itself mounted to the back
of a large Army truck.

The crew that just inflated it was readying a
payload for the balloon to carry into the air.

On his knees, tying the scientific
instruments package to the tethered balloon was 20 year old Army
Air Force Airman Gus Danuser.

After he was finished, he walked over to
Otmar and said, “It’s all ready to go Mr. Volmer. Just tell us when
your ready and we’ll launch this thing.”

“Thank you young Airman,” said Volmer, then
he turned and walked to an Army staff car waiting several yards
away.

When he arrived, he opened the front
passenger door and climbed inside.

The driver had stepped out to watch the
balloon after he was asked to step out by the occupants of the rear
seat.

Volmer situated himself in his seat and then
turned around to see the other occupants which were General Lemay
and Doctor Von Braun.

Otmar said, “The Airman has told me that they
are ready to launch. All I have to do is signal him when you are
ready.”

“Do you really think that this child’s toy is
going to be able to tell us if those damned voices are actually
coming from space?” asked Lemay.

Von Braun spoke up, “General Sir, I am sure
that if Herr Volmer says that it will work, it will indeed work. He
has a very high success rate on the White Sands projects.

Lemay frowned in disbelief as he exhaled his
cigar smoke out of the window and then asked, “How is this going to
work again?”

Volmer explained, “From the vantage point of
the high altitude that the balloon will be traveling at, the radio
receiver on board will compare the radio signals to those received
on the ground. Then we will be able to triangulate not only
horizontally, in x and y coordinates, but vertically in z as well.
Thus, we will be able to locate the source, and be able to tell if
it is actually in space or not.”

Lemay then asked, “Well it looks larger than
just a radio receiver, what else is hanging onto that oversized
Chinese lantern?”

Volmer responded, “Indeed it does have other
devices Herr General. I have also included an air particulate
sampler to examine the fallout flow of particles from the Trinity
test range within White Sands. I figure it is cheaper and easier to
kill two birds with one stone since I have been working on so many
projects since being assigned here… wherever here is.”

The General took the cigar out of his mouth
and flicked the ashes outside of the car as he said, “Well I have
been informed that if you boys do a good job here at White Sands,
then the President has decided to allow you all to become citizens…
provided that you all remain in service to our government. If you
accept, they are planning on sending you all to Redstone Arsenal in
the mountains of Alabama which I hear may be reminiscent of your
old home in Germany.”

Von Braun and Volmer reacted simultaneously,
“That would be wunderbar.”

“But that is only if you complete your work
here and develop a rocket to deliver our nuclear weapons, and
finish figuring out ways to find out who else is making them, as
well as figure out what the hell is going on with these wretched
damned voices from the sky.” Lemay demanded as he looked up.

Von Braun then said, “General, we will be
able to accomplish all of those things within the year, next year
at the latest.”

“Well that is good to hear,” said Lemay.
“I’ll be sure to pass that on. Now can I see if this
flying-automated-hound-dog-toy works?”

“Certainly, General Lemay Sir,” responded
Volmer as he gave a thumbs-up from the car window to the young
Airman Danuser.

Gus than turned and pulled a lever that made
a large snap, while then allowing the balloon to wiggle loose, and
then slowly ascend skyward.

It snapped up the instrument payload off the
desert floor with a sudden jerk, then, barely cleared the truck
cab.

They all sat quietly as the balloon rose
silently into the air.

Then, stillness…

Gus was mesmerized how the balloon rose into
the sky, so much more gracefully than the monstrously over horse
powered metal behemoth aircraft that he was used to working on.

The wind… General Lemay’s finger tapping on
the car door’s window sill, and the sound of the Airmen packing
back up were the only sounds to be heard.

~~~**^**~~~

The Cold War
/ The RAF Sighting

16 January 1947

What a beauty to fly. Some say it was the
best handling plane the Allies had, but others called it a widow
maker; being one of the few wooden planes of the Second World
War.

The de Havilland Mosquito was the pride of
the RAFs medium bombers, night fighters and reconnaissance planes,
as it proudly wore many hats.

The Germans highly respected it and patterned
many of their twin engine Schnell Bombers after it.

It was 10:30 p.m. and an RAF captain was
flying his post war Mosquito just north of the English Channel
between Holland and Norwich England on a routine patrol of the
navigable waters around England.

Suddenly the Navigator/Radio Operator alerted
the captain, “Sir I have a bogill at 2 o’clock on a bearing to
cross our path.”

The captain asked, “On a course for the
English Coast?”

“Yes sir… headed directly for Norwich.”

“Could you give me an intercept bearing?”

“Yes sir, intercept solution would be north
thirty degrees east climb to 22,000 ft.”

“Adjusting,” announced the pilot as he
steered the plane onto its new heading.

The navigator pulled out his whiz wheel and
started doing some calculations. He shook his head and repeated the
process. He looked up at the radar screen and said, “Captain, I
normally do this in my head but I didn’t believe it, so I did it on
paper twice and it comes out the same every time.”

“Just say it,” ordered the captain. “What is
it?”

“The unknown aircraft is closing at a
thousand knots.”

“That’s impossible, nobody has anything that
can go that fast.”

“I agree sir,” pleaded the navigator, “That
is why I did the calculations again and again, but forget that, if
we are going to intercept this thing we need to do a course
correction to north four degrees west.”

“Adjusting,” responded the captain.

The navigator went on, “Visibility is fifteen
miles and we should close in three minutes so if they have their
lights on we should see it…”

But before the navigator finished his
sentence the pilot was already nervously uttering, “Mother Mary,
help us please.”

The navigator looked up to see a light as
bright as a torch that was on a course that would cross their path,
but soon after they closed on it, the object changed course to
elude them.

“Object evading,” reported the navigator.
“Pursuit bearing is north forty three degrees east.”

“Copy on pursuit bearing… correcting.”
answered the pilot.

At that moment the object dove at an angle
far too steep for the mosquito to follow, so the pilot swung around
to keep a visual on the object.

“I have never seen anything turn into a dive
so quickly,” exclaimed the pilot. “If I’d have done that, this
plane would have snapped like a twig and you and I would have
passed out from the G’s.”

After the pilot noticed that the object had
leveled off he decided to take another dive at it. When he did, the
object accelerated straight up.

The pilot and the navigator watched as the
object grew smaller and smaller, then disappeared into the stars in
just a matter of seconds.

After they returned and reported what they
had witnessed, The British Fighter Command doubled their night
patrols and increased their night radar staffing.

The wave of 47 had begun.

~~~**^**~~~

The Cold
War / The Arnold Sighting

24 Jun1947

Kenneth Arnold
sees
a squadron of unknown aircraft
flying in
formation over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State as he was
piloting his own plane.

He described them as boomerang shaped and
flying through the air at incredible speeds like saucers skipping
across water.

It was from this
description that the press coined the eternal catch phrase “flying
saucer
”.

*~*

It had been raining all night at McChord
Field in Tacoma, but Gus along with other technicians of their
newly formed secret ‘Field Activities Group’, had been working
right out in the rain when necessary, to convert a decommissioned
but still flight worthy B-29 into a flying scientific measurement
platform.