Ernst went to a telephone in the hall and phoned SS Lieutenant Gnter Metz.
"Bring your men down," he said.
Schriever arrived with Miethe, nodded at him, then ordered the saucer to be wheeled out of the hall. While this was happening, Lieutenant Metz arrived with a demolition team and a squad of seasoned SS troops, all heavily armed. They spread themselves around the sunlit clearing outside as the retractable wheels of the steel platform were being withdrawn to let it become the saucer"s launching pad.
Schriever, when he saw the demolition team, flushed brightly with anger.
He climbed into the saucer and strapped himself in, then Miethe replaced the Perspex lid on the cupola and made sure it was locked. Then he climbed back down the ladder and pulled it away. Schriever started the saucer when Miethe had returned to the safety of the concrete bunker.
The saucer roared into life. Yellow flames spat at the platform. The flames shot back up and spread out obliquely to form a great fan of fire. The flying saucer roared and shuddered. It lifted off the platform, hovered just above it, making the steel turn red-hot, then it ascended a few more feet and swayed dangerously from side to side. It roared even louder, belching flame and smoke in a fury. Then, unable to go higher, Schriever tried to fly it horizontally, but the instant the jets on one side were raised, the machine started tilting. It hit the ground and rocked wildly like a dropped coin, then its engines cut out. There was a brief, shocking silence.
"Destroy it," Ernst said.
Miethe ran to the saucer, clambered up its tilted side, released the locks holding down the canopy, and helped Schriever out. Looking shocked and angry at once, Schriever slid down the body on his backside, dropped to the ground, rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand, then saw the SS demolition team advancing on his beloved creation.
"No!" he bawled. "d.a.m.n you, no!" He hurried across to Ernst, fists balled, eyes blazing, while Miethe and the other engineers fanned out behind him,
They were going to protect the saucer, to keep the demolition team at bay, but when Ernst unholstered his pistol and aimed it at Schriever, Lieutenant Metz"s squad of SS troops raised their submachine guns and took aim on the hapless engineers.
Schriever froze where he stood, about four feet away from Ernst, and the engineers behind him did exactly the same.
"Let the demolition team through," Lieutenant Metz said, "or suffer the consequences."
The engineers looked around them, at that circle of submachine guns, then parted to let the demolition team approach the saucer. Schriever glanced over his shoulder, saw them unwinding the plunger cables, then looked back at Ernst, his dark eyes appalled.
"My life"s work! We have to at least have the chance to correct what"s wrong with it. One more day... a few days at most... It"s too important to... No, you can"t do this!"
"Shut up," Ernst snapped. "You d.a.m.ned fool." Then he c.o.c.ked his raised pistol.
We want no witnesses of any kind, Wilson had said, unless they"re in the Antarctic...
That meant Schriever and Miethe and all the rest of these engineers. When the Schriever saucer, relatively useless, was blown up, they would all disappear as well.
Schriever"s eyes became wider. "You wouldn"t!"
"We would and we will. The whole business ends here."
He glanced over Schriever"s shoulder at the demolition team and saw the man in charge of the plunger preparing to lean on it.
"Goodbye, Schriever," Ernst said.
The flying saucer exploded. No, it didn"t something else did an eruption of silvery light, boiling smoke and geysering earth... right beside Schriever"s saucer.
Confused, Ernst hesitated. He saw Schriever ducking, squeezed the trigger, fired too late, and saw the Flugkapitn running away as the ground erupted around him.
The sh.e.l.ls were whistling in from the east: Soviet sh.e.l.ls, from the big guns. Then the soldier fell on the plunger was thrown forward, in fact, on a wave of erupting soil and Schriever"s saucer disappeared in a ball of fire that spat debris everywhere.
"d.a.m.n!" Ernst hissed as the engineers scattered and the SS guns started chattering. Then he sprinted straight into the chaos, trying to take aim at Schriever as he made his escape.
The SS troops were spreading out, firing wildly from the hip not at the engineers, who were running across the field past the smouldering debris of the saucer, but back in the direction of the East Hall, to which Schriever was running. They were not firing at him but at the other men pouring out, most of them wearing civilian clothes but returning the gunfire.
Schriever saw them as well, since he was running toward them, and he turned left and cut across the hangar doors and just about made it.
A Soviet sh.e.l.l saved him, exploding right behind him, between the men who were running out of the East Hall and the SS troops firing at them.
Ernst managed one shot but missed. He was blinded briefly by flying soil, cursed and rubbed his stinging eyes, then saw the men who were wearing civilian clothes still running at him and firing on the move.
Czechoslovak patriots! he thought. Coming out of the factory! The Russians must be in Prague!
Then he caught a glimpse of Schriever cutting back across the field, heading with the other engineers in the general direction of Prague. The ground was erupting between them, sh.e.l.ls exploding around the factory, but Ernst went after him anyway, because, given the Czechoslovak patriots, it was the only direction left to him.
The SS troops were holding their ground, spreading across the remains of the saucer, firing their submachine guns at the advancing resistance men while being cut down by bullets or blown apart in explosions.
A burning light erased all of it. An appalling roaring filled the world. Ernst was slapped by a wave of heat, the breath was sucked from his lungs, he was picked up and spun wildly in the air, and then gra.s.s and earth rushed at him. He plunged into a silent darkness, losing his senses.
Later, he heard a ringing sound... Eventually he opened his eyes to find himself on the ground, lying on the rim of a smouldering sh.e.l.l hole near a parked SS truck.