Space

  She tended the family finances, especially the savings, and whenever her husband and her son brought her extra [271] money from unexpected sources, she hurried it down to the bank and handed it to Mr. Erskine in discharge of the Kolff mortgage. Once when she entered the gray-stone bank building Mr. Erskine invited her into this private office, where he told her, “I loaned money to ninety-one German families, almost no security. Not one has failed to pay me back on time, and you’re ahead of schedule.”

  This emboldened her to ask, “If I pay all back, yes? Mr. Kolff and I borrow again, yes?”

  “Of course! That’s what I’m here for, to lend money, and your credit is A-1.” Then he asked what she wanted the money for, but she was embarrassed to explain. “As a matter of fact,” he said while she fumbled, “you could extend your loan right now.”

  “What you mean, extend?”

  “Well, instead of waiting to pay off the small balance outstanding, you could borrow what you need now, and make the balance that much larger.”

  “You say I could have the new money now?”

  “Right now. But the directors would have to know for what purpose.”

  “I want to buy the woods.”

  “How many acres?”

  “Ten.”

  “Do you need them?”

  Mrs. Kolff considered this for such a long time that Mr. Erskine suspected she might not have understood, but she was thinking of how human beings hungered for land, and of how they never had enough land, and of how states and nations always lusted for more land, and how in the end men and women returned to the land, their dust to become part of the great inheritance, and she recalled what her father had often said: “If a man is safe with ten acres, he’s a lot more safe with ten times ten.”

  “I mind the woods,” she said. “I build the paths. I would like to be sure.”

  “Do they stand next to your house?”

  “They’re part of it, and I like to be sure.”

  “I’d like to see them,” and he drove her up the hill in his own car, and as soon as he saw the lovely park he realized the trap into which this woman had placed herself: by cleaning the ground and making the woods so attractive, she had increased its value to a point at which [272] she could not afford to buy; with her hard and voluntary work she had destroyed her own dreams.

  “I’m afraid you’d never be able to afford these ten acres, he said.

  “How much?”

  “I could ask, but they would be very costly,” and later when he told her how much the owners wanted in comparison to what she and Dieter had paid for their original plot, she was appalled.

  So she surrendered her dream of owning the park, but this did not deter her from tending it as before. Her major interest, however, became her son Magnus, only eight year old but such a strong trumpeter that he was asked to play in the school band and in the Huntsville orchestra as well. He was by no means a genius, but he was exceptionally good, with a knack for reading music at sight; it was as if he had some inner decoding device which enabled him instantaneously to translate lines and dots on a sheet of paper into clear notes on his trumpet, and his mother was delighted. Even the sound of his practicing pleased her, and she would often ask him to accompany her to the park when she did her work there, fancying that the birds listened approvingly as he played.

  Music was important to Magnus but it did not preempt all his interest, for he loved to play rowdy with the boys at school or participate in soccer with the German boys on Monte Sano. He was freckle-faced, rather heavy for his age, with thick blond hair cut straight across his forehead, and although he did reasonably well in school, he found most of his subjects depressing. What he preferred was music and sports, and he was becoming outstanding in each.

  He did not like to speak German even though he understood when it was spoken to him, and when his parents coaxed and bullied him to retain his mother tongue, he stubbornly refused: “Nobody at school speaks German.”

  “You will be happy one day that you know this language,” his father predicted.

  “I’ll learn it then,” he said with adult shrewdness.

  He was a good boy, and when others in school got into serious trouble, he watched from the sidelines, too prudent to be lured into situations which were bound to result in punishment: “If they catch you American kids, it’s all right. [273] Your father talks to you. If they catch me, my father beats me.” There was another deterrent voiced repeatedly by his mother: “Remember, Magnus, you’re not an American yet. They can send you back to Germany at any time ... if you’re bad.”

  Liesl was not sure of her facts. Some of the German wives had explained that Magnus and their children, having been born in America, were automatically citizens, but she was certain that she and Dieter were not, so she assumed that if the parents were expelled, the children would be, too, and she used this threat to keep her energetic son in line.

  But the day came in the fall of 1955 when the immigration commissioner and the local judge decided that it was in the interests of the United States for these Germans to be brought securely into American citizenship, so an impressive ceremony was staged, with Army officers in uniform and state dignitaries present to give speeches. As the solemn ritual began, the immigration man asked each of the applicants routine questions about the Constitution and the President, then certified them as having completed satisfactorily their course of prescribed study. The judge then asked everyone to stand, and in brief, emotional words, conferred citizenship upon these unusually valuable newcomers, and a woman in charge of the ceremony signaled that the town band should play. Stubby little Magnus Kolff, youngest member of the band, blared is trumpet sweetly to the strain Mine eyes have seen the glory and many eyes were moist.

  Dieter Kolff himself was not doing well during these days when his wife and son were so happy; it was not that he was delinquent but that his superiors, especially Dr. von Braun, could not get their priorities sorted. No one could be sure, week to week, what the mission at Redstone was, or what the Army was proposing to do next, or whether there would be any money on hand come the first of the month. It was chaos, really, and sometimes the more thoughtful Germans would whisper at night, “How did this nation ever defeat us?” And although they did not openly voice their next rhetorical question, they did ask it of themselves: How could this nation stand up to Russia?

  The situation was this. Under the guidance of a [274] Pentagon that did not understand rocketry or space-and which intuitively distrusted the field because it posed difficult new problems-and while the generals and admirals were composing glowing accounts of how they had won the last war with weapons they did understand, a deadly battle developed among the three major services, and whenever the specialists in one looked as if they might spurt ahead, authorities in the other two conspired to haul them back, which would not have been unproductive had the Pentagon provided a referee to adjudicate among the contestants, selecting the best of each set of proposals. But the man at the top was Charley Wilson, trained in building automobiles and tanks, and to him the whole prospect of expensive missiles which he would never comprehend was distasteful, so instead of receiving firm direction from the Pentagon, the engineers at Army’s Huntsville and NACA’s Langley got only confusion and at times downright ineptitude.

  The Air Force, in whose hands the whole mix should probably have been left, was putting its hopes in the Thor and the Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), which if it worked as planned, could be modified to serve almost any mission; some dreamers visualized seven or eight different kinds of Atlases, splendid American-devised machines which would throw objects clear to the Moon. But with incredibly bad luck, the Air Force ran into constant difficulties, and their first ten attempts to fly their rocket ended in disaster.

  The Navy backed its Vanguard, an unclassified rocket designed to place scientific satellites in orbit as the American contribution to the International Geophysical Year, when all the nations of the world would co
operate in vast new explorations of the upper atmosphere and space itself. The Navy solution was not a good one, but the top Navy officers were among the best politicians in the world, so their faltering experiments were protected.

  The Army, betting on Von Braun and his Germans at Huntsville, was offering the Jupiter, a magnificent-looking offspring of the Peenemünde A-4, fifty-eight feet tall, nearly nine feet in diameter, with enough rocket power to launch either an atomic warhead or a scientific payload to the Moon. But it was not immediately recognizable as superior to the Air Force and Navy solutions, so it had to [275] fight its way insecurely to a position of dominance.

  “It’s vital,” Kolff told his assistants, “that we make every item in this Jupiter foolproof. It has got to work, pray God, it has got to.”

  In the summer of 1955 Kolff’s team spent sixteen and seventeen hours a day perfecting each step in the intricate, monstrous system: miles of thin wire; hundreds of electrical connections; nine different kinds of metal; tons of gear. In the winter of 1956, when they test-fired the gigantic contraption, binding it to Earth with bands of steel, lest it soar aloft without its guidance mechanism, the whole rotten thing collapsed and the team had to go back to the laboratory and try to deduce what had gone wrong.

  Von Braun was distraught, for he knew that agents in Huntsville were reporting each disaster to Air Force and Navy, and for a while investigators from Washington hinted that the whole Army show might be closed down because of inefficiency and the team dissolved: “You could surely find jobs for your men in private industry. Reliable mechanics are always needed.”

  “They called you ‘a reliable mechanic,’ Von Braun said disgustedly when he reported the interview to Kolff. Then he laughed, boisterously, his massive head bobbing with sardonic disgust. “You, who have worked on the world’s greatest rockets. How old are you, Dieter?”

  “Forty-nine, almost fifty.”

  “Do you think of yourself as ‘a reliable mechanic’?”

  “I’m a rocket man. Waiting till we get a chance at the big one.”

  “I wish to God you were a reliable mechanic, so we could get that damned thing in the air.”

  “We’ve analyzed everything and still don’t know what went wrong.”

  “Can we hope the next one will go?”

  “We’ll make it go,” Dieter said, and he recalled the days of despair at Peenemünde. “Remember when Hitler invited eight leading generals to see the invention that was going to win the war? Phhhhht. I wanted to die.”

  “We nearly did, both of us.” Von Braun laughed again. “And if we fail next time, Dieter, we’ll die again. In a different way.”

  Now Kolff found difficulty in sleeping, for he perceived that a great deal more than Army prestige would be riding [276] on the next Jupiter: America’s posture vis-à-vis Russia, potential future flights to the Moon, and indeed, the entire space program of not only America but perhaps the entire world. There were a hundred men, Kolff estimated, who wanted to see this multifaceted program go forward; there were a hundred million, it seemed, who wanted it to fail.

  In September 1956 Kolff flew to Cape Canaveral it Florida, an Atlantic Ocean offshore island almost exactly like Wallops but seven hundred and fifty miles farther south, and there on the desolate dunes he supervised the positioning of the huge rocket. When he saw it secure in its gantry, pointed slightly out to sea, he tried to visualize the complex innards, any one of which could malfunction to cause a failure, and he shuddered.

  The waiting time was agony, and he could see perspiration forming on Von Braun’s face. Finally the signal came. The engines ignited and a monstrous blast engulfed the launch pad. Slowly the great machine lifted into the air and with tantalizing motion started to climb away from the gantry ... up ... up, not in a titanic upward explosion but still slowly, as if it were crawling. It continued, it engines bursting flame, and then its speed increased slowly, purposefully and always upward, until at last it attained a stupefying power that carried it high into the air, flames following, and out over the sea.

  Radar and telemetry signals showed that it climbed to the unbelievable height of 682 miles, which carried it 3,335 miles down range before it plunged into the dark Atlantic.

  “We’ve provided America with a majestic tool,” Von Braun exulted, and when he saw Kolff sitting limp upon a stool, all emotion drained, he went over and sat beside him. “We’ve taken our first step toward our Moon.”

  The sensational flight had one curious aspect which only the top experts appreciated: an object thrown into the air could go into orbit at a rather low altitude, say one hundred miles up, and this one had soared almost seven times that height without doing so. What was the matter? When Mrs. Pope asked on behalf of the committee, Von Braun explained: “Height has nothing to do with it, really. It can soar a thousand miles straight up and still fall right back to Earth. But if it gets out of the atmosphere and has enough speed, it will always go into orbit.”

  “How much speed must it attain,” she asked, knowing [277] that her senators would grill her on details.

  “Mathematically, it works out to 16,029 miles an hour. To cover variations in conditions and the effectiveness of our machines, we work with the figure 17,500 mph. I can assure you this, young lady. If it’s less than 16,029, it doesn’t matter how high it flies. Earth’s gravity will always pull it back into the atmosphere. But even if it goes only one hundred miles up and attains 17,500, it must go into orbit and remain in it.”

  Before Penny could comment, he broke into a chuckle. “Oberth used to tell us, ‘If you could drive an automobile at 17,500 mph, it would have to climb to orbit.’ ”

  Now Penny asked the vital question: “But when you had your machine a hundred miles up, why didn’t you goose it sideways and throw it into orbit?”

  “Ah, my dear! That extra speed, that’s what requires the extra energy.”

  “Can I tell the senators that you’ll be able to apply that extra energy?”

  “One of these days, yes.”

  When Dieter returned joyously to Huntsville, Liesl presented him with further good news: “At last the owner appreciates that I make his woods better and he’s willing to sell us two acres ... a decent price. Tonight I am very happy.” But before Dieter could congratulate her, she produced a letter whose contents made the land purchase debatable:

  Mr. and Mrs. Dieter Kolff,

  Your son Magnus is so exceptional in playing the trumpet that the management of the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan, would like to invite him to play in our Youth Orchestra for seven weeks this summer.

  The letter went on to explain that although this was a full scholarship, granted in recognition of Magnus’ unusual musical ability, there would be travel and incidental expenses which the Kolff family would be expected to meet. This would use up the money that Liesl had intended applying as down payment for her cherished woods.

  It was the kind of problem which enriched family life: [278] two options, either of which would justify an entire year of family labor. The Kolffs studied the matter at supper, with Liesl confessing that although she wanted the woods, she felt that Magnus’ education should come first, and the boy saying that whereas he did want to go to the music camp and play real symphonic music, he liked the woods just as much and wanted the family to own its share. Dieter, obviously, would have to make the decision.

  Before he could do so his attention was diverted by a frantic telephone call: “Kolff, get down here immediately! Four men we can’t identify are raising hell.”

  When he reached the base he found enormous agitation but no solid facts: “All the Germans are being deported. Nazis.” That, of course, was fallacious, but when he entered his office he found his secretary in tears and two strange men shuffling through his papers.

  “All in German?” one of the searchers asked.

  “Rocket work is mostly German,” Dieter said. And then he learned that the Pentagon had reached a portentous decision regarding the f
uture of Huntsville, and before it was divulged these operatives from Army Intelligence were checking to see what arcane work the Germans were up to. Kolff, because of his notorious interest in long-range rockets, was especially suspect.

  At 0900 the next morning everyone assembled to hear the directive prepared by Secretary of Defense Charley Wilson, as avowed an enemy of rockets and space exploration as the German generals who had given Von Braun so much trouble at Peenemünde. The instructions were entitled Roles and Missions Directive, and the engineers gasped when a brigadier general glumly summarized them:

  “Gentlemen, as of 0800 this morning the United States Army, and particularly the personnel at this base, is ordered to stop work now and permanently on any rocket or other piece of ordnance with a range greater than two hundred miles. Such work henceforth will be the responsibility of either the Air Force or the Navy.

  “This means that practically all projects currently under the supervision of Dr. Von Braun and his associates will be terminated. An effort will be made [279] to find work for all members of the staff, either here at Huntsville or in private firms elsewhere which may be interested in space technologies. These orders are in effect now.”

  When the meeting dissolved, shocked men stood in groups speculating on what might happen, and someone started the rumor that the Germans would be collected in a concentration camp at El Paso, but that was quickly squelched by the general, who told the men, “You’re legal American citizens, with as much right to stay here in Alabama as I have,” but when the men asked whether they could keep their jobs, he was evasive.