The Gemini Divergence (74 page)

“Please come inside and we’ll get you fixed
up with a big American breakfast as we talk about your plans for
the coming months. I have also received your special request to
visit that little known location on the coast, and am glad to
inform you that an excursion for your inspection of that site has
been approved.”

“Excellent! I can hardly wait.”

~~~**^**~~~

From Gemini
to Apollo / Raid On St. Louis

28 February 1966

Schwerig was furious that the Americans were
able to sneak Von Braun out from under his nose. He had an
operative waiting for Von Braun at his Huntsville office building
parking lot that very day, waiting to liquidate him.

Worse yet, he had no knowledge of how the
Americans had removed him. Schwerig had no idea where on earth Von
Braun was now located.

As he sat in his office, silently thinking of
what to do, his thoughts went back to WWII.

He remembered the Americans and the British
bombing the very Messerschmitt factories that made the Third
Reich’s fighter planes as well as the Daimler Benz factories that
supplied the motors.

Then he remembered what Graf had told him
about the McDonnell trucks at Edwards’ North Base and it dawned on
him; he would bomb the location where the Americans were making
these pesky Blue Gemini capsules as well as the premier front line
fighters that continuously thwarted Raumsfahrtwaffe patrols in the
atmosphere and LEO.

*~*

It was a typical winter morning in St. Louis…
The ever present haze hung seemingly just over the building tops as
McDonnell corporation workers went about a normal morning in their
sprawling defense plant on the north west side of the Lambert Field
runway.

It was not unusual in St. Louis, for the
clouds to materialize in October and not dissipate until spring.
The only time the sun made appearances was on the days where the
temperature dipped below zero and the moisture would fall from the
air, covering the ground with a glistening frost. But most of the
time, while the temperature hovered a few degrees above or below
freezing, the haze would remain in the air.

Many pilots were given their instrument
flight training in St. Louis for just this reason. At times the
pilots could not see the runway until just seconds before they
landed.

That is why Schwerig had no reservations
about attacking during daylight hours. The clouds usually would
hang so low over the hangers that people on the ground may not see
the attacking spacecraft at all. It wouldn’t even be totally beyond
local recollection that there may be a lightning storm in February
in the eastern Missouri city.

As the assault squadron of Overseer craft
slipped into the atmosphere, the primary crew of the upcoming
Gemini 9 mission was inspecting their capsule which was currently
under construction in the main McDonnell hanger.

Without the knowledge of the visiting
astronauts and workers, Lambert tower picked up the unauthorized
flight of aircraft approaching from the west. They immediately
called the 131
^st
TFW stationed directly across the
runway from the McDonnell facilities.

The 131
^st
had already been
secretly tipped off by NORAD and was currently in the process of
scrambling some fighters before the intruders arrived, as well as
recalling a group of fighters that they already had in the air
flying maneuvers in a more rural part of the state.

As the McDonnell engineers listened intently
to the ideas and inputs of the visiting dignitaries; across the
runway the hastily started fighter planes were masked by the dull
whine of jet turbine engines already running throughout the
international airport.

The ground crew pulled the chocks from the
wheels of the fighters, as the planes were then waived out from the
hanger and began rolling around the side of the building towards
the main runway behind the intentionally subdued TFW hangers.

But before they could turn the corner, a bolt
of energy screamed from the low cloud cover and zapped the lead
plane into a heap of sparking and smoldering rubble.

Ground personnel ran for cover in every
direction that they could find as the second plane tried to steer
around the disabled aircraft, now in his way; but to no avail. A
second jolt of energy erupted from the billowing cotton like sky,
reducing the second fighter to another fizzling and sparking pile
of scrap.

A third saucer took out the
131
^st
’s tower before they could alert the main Lambert
tower as the rest of the intruder squadron turned to the north.

Now that the fighter squadron was rendered
impotent, they could go to work on the McDonnell buildings without
interference; at least for the time being.

Instead of pulling off roofs from hanger to
hanger as they had done at Edwards AFB, they knew which hanger
housed the production of both the capsules and the fighter
planes.

As with most American defense contractors,
McDonnell had crowded all of its production into one colossal
hanger; so the Overseers just blasted holes into the main McDonnell
hanger and began dropping incendiaries into the newly ripped
openings.

The blasts along with the ensuing fires
completely destroyed the lion’s share of the current
production.

Workers clamored to exit the building anyway
possible, with the wounded following behind, hobbling as fast as
they could.

The Overseers then detected the flight of
returning fighters approaching from the south west and decided that
they had inflicted enough damage and should depart before they
acquired casualties of their own.

As they retreated… far before the arrival of
a Hot Bird, the returning squadron of F4s roared over the burning
carnage in a tightly packed formation while surveying the damage
and looking out for straggler Overseers.

The thundering formation of fighters caused
all on the ground to stop their pondering as to what had just
happened, long enough to watch the aircraft zip through the wispy
clouds in a perfectly tight formation.

The entire incident and the astronauts deaths
were explained away as the Gemini 9 astronauts, being totally
unfamiliar with St. Louis weather, had been unable to navigate a
safe landing and inadvertently crashed into the McDonnell
production hanger with their T-38…

Even though, they were some of the most well
trained instrument landing pilots on earth.

~~~**^**~~~

From
Gemini to Apollo / Where There’s Smoke There’s A Coup

16 March 1966

NASA launched Gemini 8, carrying astronauts
Armstrong and Scott.

The mission goal was to successfully dock in
space with an Agena module that had been launched ahead of
time.

After successfully rendezvousing and docking
with the Agena module, they went about their other scientific
objectives.

Meanwhile, back at mission control, the
flight controller was passed a classified emergency message from
NORAD. It read that Gemini 8 was being approached by an
unidentified object in space.

NASA mission control radar operators soon
confirmed that there were indeed visitors.

The flight controller asked the crew of
Gemini 8 if everything was alright and the crew responded that
everything was fine.

A few moments later, engineers at mission
control started to see warning signals coming from the agena
module… Something was very wrong.

The Gemini 8 crew radioed back that there had
been some flashes and now they were spinning out of control. The
crew thought that the Agena module was causing the problems.

Mission control started to work on a solution
when they were suddenly surprised to hear that the Gemini 8 mission
commander had jettisoned the Agena module.

Shocked by the news, they asked for
confirmation.

Gemini 8 confirmed the jettison and then
reported that the out of control rolling was much worse now that
the module was away. In fact, the capsule was rotating so quickly
that the astronauts didn’t know how much longer that they could
remain conscious.

As mission control again began working on a
solution, they were again surprised to hear of an improvisation
made by the Gemini module commander. He had taken it upon himself
to fire the Re-entry Control System in an attempt to regain control
of the capsule.

Everyone involved looked at each other with
great disappointment because they knew that the second the RCS
system was initiated, the mission was over.

It was NASA policy that missions would not be
allowed to continue once the RCS was fired, even a single time.

The RCS system only had a finite number of
blasts, and once the capsule had to resort to using it, it was just
a matter of time before the capsule had no control system
whatsoever.

The mission was soon aborted and the capsule
was recovered south east of Japan with both astronauts in good
health.

*~*

Von Braun walked silently, the broken glass
crinkling beneath his boots, as the vapor from his breath filled
the air around him.

Colonel Hanson was following close behind,
surveying what was left of the sprawling New Swabian complex.

They walked into what was the Officer’s Mess,
where Schwerig would frequently dine and observe the hanger
activity through what was a large plate glass window. Now it was
gone and in shambles like everything else in the complex.

The Russian Navy’s shelling of the complex
many years before, had rendered utter devastation to the deserted
city.

They walked up to the precipice of the old
picture window and gazed out at the massive main hanger, which now
donned Soviet and American graffiti, painted along with the
original German signs.

Von Braun pondered out loud, “How on earth
did they hide all of this for close to a decade? They must have
been working here full steam when Doctor Volmer barged into my
office to express his theory that there may have been a group of
Nazis with space capability that escaped our detection… and I
remember being furious with him that he suggested that the Nazis
had deliberately surrendered me to the allies in order to trigger
an arms and space race… and all to totally mislead the rest of the
world while they came here and built this… their jumping off point
for their inevitable migration to space.”

“It’s mind boggling to think about sir.”

“And they used my damn space station plans!
They sold me down the river and took my designs… just months before
they stole those damn plans they threw me into jail for wasting the
Reich’s money on such foolish conceptualizations… then they used
those very plans for their desperate survival.”

“You don’t still wish you were with them… do
you?”

“Certainly not!” snapped Von Braun, “but
wouldn’t you be peeved if the same thing happened to you? It is
truly distasteful to be discarded as a fool by anyone, even your
enemies.”

“I know what its like to have a government
that constantly shoves you to the side while others get ahead…
Believe me. I have spent my entire career in every God forsaken
remote duty our country has ever had to offer… Still… You have to
give them credit for pulling all of this off.”

“Yes, I think that I have found a new respect
for Herr Schwerig’s engineering abilities… Think where the human
race would be without the war.”

Hanson laughed, “Very little of this
technical age would exist without that damn war… you know that.
There wouldn’t have been a necessity to invent any of it.
Therefore, nobody would have financed a single bit of the
research.”

Von Braun turned away from the hanger, “We
both know it… I just wish that the rest of the world would realize
it as well.”