Chapter I

“Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another.” 

Plato, ‘The Republic,’ 342 B.C.

West Coast of Mexico – April, 1945

Flugkapitan Aloisia Henke adjusted the double thrust levers up to their metal stop.  The craft was now at the top rated speed.  She would know.  She designed it, and she also designated what everyone thought was the top rated speed.  At twenty-seven years of age she had degrees in physics, engineering, chemistry, and aeronautics.  She backed the levers off a tad before the craft crossed a threshold some “genius” on the surface might take note of.

Aloisia looked at the black and white photo she’d stuck in the edge seam of the control panel.  She kissed a finger and touched it to the picture for luck, as she always did when she pushed the envelope, as she was about to do now.

The photo was of a pretty, slender, woman in her early thirties, black outfit, light hair, holding a loose bouquet of daffodils.  She was smiling to a crowd in her hometown, but she wasn’t waving.  She was saluting them as any good Nazi would, arm outstretched, hand flat, fingers together.  “Heil Hitler!”

Hanna Reitsch was Aloisia’s role model, of sorts, her hero, though she disagreed with her current politics.  They were both slender, although Aloisia was shorter than Hanna by several inches.  She had close cropped, flaxen hair, to Hannah’s strawberry blonde.  She looked at the photo, noticing the metals adorning the front of Hanna’s black tunic.  Iron Cross First Class, the only one awarded to a woman, so far.  Luftwaffe Combined Pilot’s Observation Badge, a beautiful brooch of gold with a diamond encrusted eagle grasping the swastika placed at the center - an accomplished woman, this Nazi.

Hannah was now with the Leonidas Squadron under command of the Schutzstaffel, the mighty SS.  She had helped them develop the top secret Fieseler Fi 103R, code named ‘Reichenberg’.  A manned version of the V-1 flying bomb, it was now in use against Soviet bridges crossing the river Oder.  It was still a flying bomb.  Aloisia shook her head slightly as she thought of the pilots, “Suicidal idiots, and the lunatics that control them.”

Aloisia pulled a small screwdriver from a zippered pocket on her pressure suit and went to work on the two screws attaching the metal plate at the end of the throttle.  The ten centimeter plate came free, revealing four more stops to the thrusters.

She had designed it as ‘forward thinking’, for when upgrades were made.  That was her explanation.  In reality, she had lied.  She had seen the errors.  She had solved the problems.  She had been put in charge of the redesign work.  She knew this craft.  She created this craft.  It was part of her.

She had followed in Hannah’s footsteps, and watched as she volunteered for the Reichenberg project at the behest of the great and powerful SS.  “Suicide bombs.  Pffff!”

Alosisia had been pointed out as one of the brightest, if not the brightest young, up and coming scientist at university.  This came as no surprise to her as she had been holding back her abilities so as to not draw too much attention.  Having failed to cloak herself in anonymity, she found herself assigned by the Third Reich to her own, ridiculous, top secret project at a tunnel complex in the mountains.  The scientists there seemed to be having problems making a flying disc fly.  No great mystery here, she’d thought.  It won’t.  Not in this day and age.  Maybe, by the end of the ‘Thousand Year Reich,’ but not today, and not for this evil. The technology doesn’t exist to do what they want it to do, and they were finding that out.  It was never going to be an airborne craft, not airborne.

It took her less than a month to change their mind set by changing their science, and their goal.  Several months were spent bringing together the raw materials of beryllium, aluminum, titanium, niobium, and scandium, and yet more to perfect the explosive welding of the stacked titanium sheets to the beryllium reinforcing wires laminated between them.  This bonded alloy created the thin, tough, lightweight skin of her new craft.  Total, it took less than a year to incorporate her redesign, and replace the heavy engines in favor of her newer, quieter, faster technology.

Her engine design derived power from liquid nitrogen, magnetism, and a virtually endless supply of saline.  The perpetual power would provide thrust through an impeller drive.  Inertia would be overcome by the cavitation provided by the spinning outer ring of the craft, the supercavitating ring which would envelop the craft in a bubble, pushing ahead of the craft and dampening any inertia that dared to slow it – any. 

And, it worked.  It all worked!

She guided the craft north along the ridge line, putting a bit more distance from it as she went.  Grasping the throttle, she moved it steadily up into new, theoretical, territory.  She had told her watchdogs to expect a three-hundred kilometers per hour operational speed.  That was faster than any craft of its kind in the world, which was true since there weren’t any.

She watched the speedometer climb past three hundred, three-fifty, and four hundred per hour.  It was getting harder to see clearly through the canopy, due to the supercavitation effect, and there was a slight vibration.  The vibration settled into a low hum as speed reached five hundred kilometers per hour.  By one thousand the canopy was awash in cotton white, the vibration disappeared, and the throttle hit metal at the last notch.  She slid it into the notch, locking it in place.

Aloisia sat back, taking a deep breath.  The trip would be long, only in distance.  But, she was riding a theoretical craft, rocketing at speeds never attempted.  The relatively short time would be nail biting, stressful.  She put her palms on her closed eyes and tried to relax.  She thought about what she’d just been through and started to weep.

********************

They had been in transit to South America, evacuating the project before Allied forces overran all of the Fatherland, and divided up the spoils.  The SS was salvaging whatever technology they thought would either rebuild the Reich, or to provide a bargaining chip in the vent of capture.  The thought of her technology being used a some bargaining chip just pissed her off, and she was already beyond angry.

They were going to leave her, leave her, and take her work.  Then, some piss ant rocket scientist figured it might be best if she came as an ‘advisor.’  She chewed on these events during the trans-oceanic voyage to Argentina.  There was no way this was going to turn out well for her and no plan she could execute to change the course of events that were unfolding, not on a ship.

Then it went from bad to worse.

She found out they weren’t stopping in Argentina.  There had been radio reports of the fall of Berlin, the death of the Fuhrer, and the total defeat of the glorious Third Reich.  There were numerous bulletins advising all allied ships and countries to keep watch for cargo ships and submarines escaping to South America with war criminals, and the looted treasures of Europe.  The items of gold, silver, and art; not objets d’art, oh heavens no!  These would be priceless pieces from museums and private collections.

Not mentioned in these missives and bulletins, of course, were the intensely sought classified projects like the one she was escaping with.

Her watchdogs had opted to go straight to the secret base.  She had thought Buenos Aires was the secret base, until they broke out the parkas, mukluks, and glare goggles.

Then the Allied submarine caught up with them, as they passed Cabo de Hornos - Cape Horn.  The torpedo, from same submarine, caught up with them while they were passing through the strait between Isla Hermite and Isla Wollaston, as they tried desperately to lose the seasoned submarine crew in the large group of islands.

She convinced the Oberfuhrer Stifle, of the Waffen SS, commander of this mission, to let her prep the disc and make ready their escape to the secret base.  It was fortuitous they had to strap the disc to the weather deck as it was too wide to fit down through the cargo hatch.

Aloisia gave the Oberfuhrer a sharp salute, executed an about face, and left the bridge for the weather deck, wondering how long it would take for the moron to remember it was a single seat prototype.  She felt a few wet drops on her face as she went through the hatch and headed for the tarp covered cargo.  It was starting to rain.

She cut the ropes stretching the tarp over the disc and pulled it off to one side.  Removing all the tie-down straps holding the disc to the deck took only seconds longer.  She was finished prepping the craft when the explosion ripped most of the side out of the cargo vessel’s hull.  The submarine had probably meant to cripple the engine room.  They had no idea of the ten tanks of liquid nitrogen stored below decks.  The ship went down fast, in about ten minutes.

It took Aloisia that amount of time to put on her pressure suit, enter the cockpit and dog the bubble canopy so it was airtight.

She stuffed her short red hair into the black leather helmet and secured her oxygen mask.  She never had the opportunity to test her re-breather design.  It would have made the heavy oxygen tanks so much unnecessary ballast.  C’est la vie!

Pulling the picture of her idol from her blouse pocket, she found a tight gap along the control panel’s edge seam and wedged a corner of the photo tightly into it.  Sitting made it difficult to adjust the three layers of flaps on the front of the pressure suit, and even harder to zip it up.  She had to stretch out until her head pressed against the canopy.  That done, she sat back to wait for the ship to finish sinking and the water to claim the craft.

She caught movement out the canopy in front of her and made out the figure of Oberfuhrer Stifle in his black Waffen SS uniform, and knee high jackboots, through the rain on the canopy.  He seemed to have lost his hat, with its obscene death’s head skull constantly leering above the polished bill, and his blonde hair was plastered to his high forehead by the rain that was building to a downpour.

He stood four meters from the leading edge of the disc, legs spread apart, document case in one hand, his other arm stretched out to its full length as he sighted his eye down it to the Luger he held.  It was aimed at her head.

She could see his SS haughtiness had vanished and been replaced by fear that was losing the emotional battle to anger.  He would shoot her rather than be left behind.  If he did that, he killed them both.  The bubble canopy would not pressurize, and if the bullet, by some miracle, glanced off, she wasn’t certain what stress the impact would impart on the acrylic alloy she’d developed for the clear canopy.

She slowly moved her right hand to a lever next to the armrest.  She wrapped her hand around the grip, putting her fingers on the red trigger.  With her thumb she depressed the red button on the top.

Oberfuhrer Stifle saw the panel dropped down ten centimeters from the bottom of the craft.  He dropped the document case and shifted his aim.  The flat face of the panel was angled back to reduce drag while the craft was in motion. The panel was the faceplate to a small rectangular box that was almost as deep as the diameter of the inner hub and did secondary duty as a stabilizer when not in use.  His mind wanted to linger on the two small holes, side by side on the small rectangular faceplate, but he fought the urge.

His anger was replaced by a smile as he remembered they had to remove the two .50 caliber machine guns due to the redesign.  He brought the gun back to Aloisia’s pretty face.

He yelled at her so she could hear, “You removed them, remember?  They wouldn’t work in the new configuration, under water!”  He reached into his breast pocket for a signal whistle, ready to alert the watching officers he had ordered to join him on the weather deck to assist preventing the saucer from ever falling into allied hands if he could not make good his escape with it. 

A slight hum had been building from inside the ship.  The sound had been masked outside by the rain, and a stiff breeze that was going to build to a storm in short order.  Stifle motioned with the Luger for her to open the canopy.

She saw the whistle appear in his other hand but paid it no mind.  She muttered to no one, “My ideas, my designs, and my technology.  I don’t think I ever introduced you to my magnetic accelerator.”  She depressed the trigger.

Stifle heard the loud blowpipe noise, and felt himself involuntarily jump at the sound, or so he thought.  The two, half kilo, needle-like, tungsten-steel projectiles were moving at about two kilometers per second when they left the openings.  They penetrated the steel plate of the cargo ships bow gunwale and continued for another couple of kilometers before they fell from the sky into the sea.  Stifle never saw them.

He smiled again and brought the Luger back up.  “You see?  Nothing!”

His body went numb and the Luger fell from his hand, clattering on the deck.  Blood began draining from over Stifle’s lips.  He looked down and put both index fingers into the two holes he found on either side of his dress blouse.  His fingers stayed buried in the holes as he fell forward, his mind never fully realizing he had died with his eyes focused on the brass signal whistle still clutched in his other hand.  The whistle would have been useless in any event.  The “watching” SS officers had bolted when the nitrogen tanks blew.  He had no backup, and now it didn’t matter.

Aloisia muttered again, “Thank you so very much Louis Octave Fauchon-Villeplee and the invaluable information shared concerning your ‘Electric Apparatus for Propelling Projectiles.’  I can improve on any design, given enough money.”

The rain on the deck around Stifle grew darker as his blood drained out, and Aloisia realized she was still sitting forward in the seat.  She leaned back, grabbing the restraining harness with both hands and brought it over her head to attach the belt between her legs.

The craft was beginning to list to starboard and slip aft as the cargo ship filled and sank lower in the water.  A minute later she saw the water rapidly creep forward up the deck, and rise up toward the cockpit.  She braced herself for any movement of the craft as the water engulfed it.

The water was moving over the canopy as she leaned forward to flip a toggle and adjust a knob to just below center point.  Looking to left and right she saw the slight Carioles effect on the water’s surface as it was sucked into two small circular holes which had appeared on top of the craft’s titanium hull, either side of the canopy.  She watched a meter on the board until it indicated the craft reached a point just below negative buoyancy.  She leaned forward again and flipped the toggle back to its original position.  Now the craft would not float, nor would it sink like a rock.

When the craft left the deck, it did so with surprisingly little turbulence, but she could feel the mass of the sinking cargo ship momentarily pulling at the smaller craft as it sank below her.  The body of Stifle, still caught in the pull of the giant vessel, went spinning downward, past the canopy, like a slow motion Dervish.

She waited patiently, checking the systems while the noise and motion eventually abated.  She had learned patience after ten years under the thumb of the Nazi scourge, the ‘master race.’  She had even suffered through a brutal rape at the hands of the Gestapo, pretending to enjoy it, in order to cement her position with the upper echelon scientific community, to have her name forwarded to Himmler.  The promised position eventually came her way, along with the promised funds.  It was worth the momentary humiliation the pig had visited upon her, and momentary was as long as he could keep his penis erect; as dysfunctional as the fuehrer. 

She smiled as she thought, “A master race to be remembered, historically, for breeding a Reich of blonde, genocidal, premature ejaculators.  Sieg Heil!”  She brought her hand up in a limp attempt of the well-known salute. 

The craft barely moved in the water.  She checked depth and adjusted the buoyancy to level off at minus fifteen meters.  The water here was very clear and she caught movement of a large, dark, object moving below, to her right.  The object’s heading would take it about thirty meters beneath her.  She strained to see.  It was long, and she could almost feel the propellers chewing through the water.  This would be the submarine that torpedoed the cargo ship.

She would have to wait.  They must know the ship was alone when they sank it, so they would not be using sonar to search for targets.  She saw the sub come to a stop on the other side of her.  There was the momentary frenzy of bubbles as they vacated their ballast.  The submarine slowly rose to the surface.  They would be searching for survivors.  Yes, she would wait.

On the surface they would be preoccupied with the task at hand.  She could slip away with a minimum of noise.  Even if their hydrophone was listening, her acoustic signature would baffle them.  By the time they consider using sonar to confirm a target, her craft would be at speed and, auf Wiedersehen, meine Freunde!

Aloisia watched the large sub as it broke the surface above her.  

She watched the waves ripple away from the hull, then leaned forward again and lifted a hinged red switch cover with the numeral “one” labeled in white on top, flipping the switch beneath it.  Now she would have to wait the few minutes it took for the electromagnet to reach full power, for the Helium 4 to circulate, and the impeller to build enough power for self-sustaining current; just a few short minutes to validate all of her theories.

The low hum built on itself, as before, this time more noticeable due to the quiet beneath the waves.  She watched the energy indicator.  The needle on the meter was slowly dropping as battery power was drained away.  Fifty percent, forty-five, forty, anytime now, she thought.  Twenty-five, twenty, the needle pegged back to one-hundred as the hum built a smidge higher and evened off in tone. 

Aloisia clapped her hands together and laughed.  “Wunderbar!  Ich ben ein Wunder Frau, da?  Da!  Wonder Woman defeats the “master race” at their own game,”  and she began to laugh as she lifted the red cover labeled ‘2’ and flipped the switch beneath.  The outer ring of her craft began to slowly rotate, building in speed.  She watched in fascination as the ring began to generate the supercavitating effect, an aura that soon encompassed the craft and was strongest at the leading edge of the disc.

There was a deafening ping.  The submarine announced it had initiated a sonar ping.  No doubt her position had been acquired.  The submarine was diving above her.  Now, would they shoot first or ponder on what she was?  It didn’t really matter.  It was time to leave.

She placed her feet on the two controllers below, and grabbed the stick between her knees firmly in one hand, reaching out with the other to push the throttle levers slowly forward.  The impellers hungrily sucked the thick water through the intakes and blasted it out the back ports in a jet.

The craft moved swiftly forward.  In seconds she was up to fifty knots.  Seconds more and the craft accelerated to 100 knots.  Aloisia smiled thinking of the allied jaws dropping aboard the submarine.  She barely heard the second ping of their sonar.  “Ping away!  Bye, bye!”  She made a slight wave over her shoulder then moved the throttles a bit further to put the craft out of the subs limited sonar capabilities.

********************

Several hours passed.  Speed was just a bit less than 500 knots and the charged system was holding at one-hundred percent.  Moving at this speed and being blind is a big downside of the cavitation effect which caused microbubbles on the outer skin of the craft and made it look like she was rocketing through milk.  The big plus was the cavitation’s almost total elimination of any drag caused by the surrounding water. 

Aloisia unfolded the nautical chart on her knee to the next section.  If these charts weren’t accurate, she’d be the first to know.  The thought of slamming into an underwater ridge at this speed made her anxious.  She focused on the chart, figuring time and speed.  She would have to stop for another bearing soon.

She had already surfaced twice, once off Santiago, Chile, and again off Lima, Peru.  Each time she stayed at least one hundred kilometers from shore.  Each time she had to shut everything down in order to determine her position and get a compass heading.  She could dampen the electromagnetic field effects on all equipment except the compass.  Night made it easier as she could use the sextant and leave the power on so she didn’t have to shut it all down and repeat the startup process.  Having never tested the system for any length of time, she’d hated the thought she’d turn it off and never get it started again, so many kilometers out to sea.  She made a note to herself on the chart as a reminder, ‘Research positioning equipment’.  She smiled, “Surely it can’t be that hard.”  She added to her reminder, ‘and electromagnetic field dampener.’

She would have to surface again off the coast of Ecuador.  Her air bottles could be recharged on the move with her snorkel system, but she had to slow down just below the surface.  The snorkel only extended three meters, and once beyond the cavitation effect, the force of the tube cutting through the ocean would snap it off if she didn’t slow to a crawl.  But, she looked forward to the pit stops for the fresh air and a brief escape from the claustrophobic confines of the small cockpit.  The seas had been relatively calm so she was able to lift the bubble canopy each time, which allowed her the luxury of standing on her seat so she could stretch.

Ecuador came and went.  This leg would be the longest yet.  Next stop Baja California.  She figured best to stop there and ensure she didn’t accidentally go blasting into the gulf by mistake.  There are too many big islands to miss while traveling blind at speed.

The trip had been uneventful, boring for the most part.  After scribbling numerous notes on ideas to streamline the systems or surmount issues concerning the oxygenation equipment to provide a self-contained, continual air supply, she also wrote a short note to her mentor, her adopted uncle.  Worst case scenario, maybe he would still get the letter if her corpse ever washed up.  She put the note in an envelope, scribbled his name on the front, and stuffed it inside her pressure suit, between the suit and the inner shirt.

Then she unfolded the map to the next section, made a few calculations and figured her position as riding the edge of the continental shelf, just above the slope, coming up just to the east of Manzanillo Bay.  In a couple of hours she would be off the southern tip of Baja, then on to freedom, and a new life.  But, she would never make Baja, or freedom, or the new life. 

Manzanillo is where it all went horribly wrong.

She heard a low, deep rumble through the white noise of the impellers.  The noise seemed to come from below and to the right, port side.  The rumble got louder and the crafted started to experience slight turbulence, just prior to slamming her to portside in her restraint straps.  From the feel of it, her motion was to starboard and up, while completing a full 180 degree roll.  Could this be some upwelling of the ocean current?  Perhaps it was an earthquake on the seafloor?  The buffeting got worse.

She checked gauges.  It wasn’t the craft, every system was reading normal.  She grabbed the stick as it pressure wave hit the craft and tried to stabilize it, which only helped a bit.  She could feel herself press back into her seat ever so slightly as the craft seemed to surge forward.  This had to be a tailwind, or tail-current, to be more precise.  She was noting additional power on one of the gauges.  The cavitation ring and impellers deplete power to a point, yet they both seem to be working less and accomplishing more.  She was definitely being pushed.  The speed indicator was pegged.  She tried to bring the leading edge down and was about to attempt lowering the speed, for safety’s sake.

As she reached for the throttle, the craft bottomed out hard, compressing her spine as the craft bounced off a shallow ridge at her high speed, but the craft didn’t slow.  Rather, it shot up at a forty-five degree angle, throwing her back into her seat.  She felt a burning in her damaged spine which made her scream.  Aloisia thought to herself, “My God, I am so injured.”  Tears were draining down her cheeks from the searing pain.

The submarine landslide she wasn’t aware of was triggered by an earthquake.  It occurred just south east of Manzanillo Bay, somewhere in the depths that fell away from the continental shelf off Playa de Campos.  The pressure wave shot the small craft up the submarine trench like a rubber ducky in a sewer pipe during a monsoon.  As earthquakes go this was a baby, it only registered a 2.5 in intensity.  The massive submarine landslide caused all the commotion.  The landslide wasn’t large enough to cause a noticeable tsunami, but the localized effect on the little undersea craft was catastrophic.

Aloisia tried again to reach for the throttle and just managed to get her fingers around it when the micro-bubbles causing the milky sheen which constantly obliterated her vision, instantly disappeared.  The white was replaced by dark billowing storm clouds, and flashes of lightening.  The sea was now replaced by heavy rain now pelting the clear bubble with the droning sound like thousands of tiny pebbles.  She watched as the rain sheeted back across the clear, thick acrylic.

The small silver colored craft had rocketed out of the rough ocean like a modern SLBM and rose several hundred feet into the air before the leading edge began to drop.  The craft made a slow arc back toward the water.

She froze in wonder as reality invaded her senses.  She was airborne.  It was due to a ricochet off the ridge, but airborne none the less.  She had never thought about using a catapult to get airborne.  The engineer in her stepped in passed the pain.  The craft was stable; checking gauges - the cavitation ring was still optimal, power still optimal.  The leading edge began to drop.  Why? 

The impellers, which could jet thick water, should be jetting massive amounts of thin air.  “Schiss!” she thought, “Gravity!”  The impellers were still at max and sucking at the now thin medium like there was no tomorrow.  God only knew how fast she was going.  She had little strength to work the control stick in so much pain.  Her hand fell to the thrusters and she knocked them down several notches. 

The disc sliced through the air like a knife, cutting through the fifty knot winds of the tropical cyclone with little effort.  Aloisia began to feel buffeting from below and the craft began to slow as it dropped.    She tried to raise the edge, her injured back screaming at the effort.  The craft slowly started to level, but the water was getting closer.  Up, up, up!  The craft wasn’t going to level off fast enough.  She saw the distant beach and watched as it got rapidly closer.  Impact was unavoidable, and there was no way to slow down.  She flipped the power switches off and fell back in her seat.

Just before the craft hit, she muttered to herself, “Read my letter, Uncle.  I love you!”

The cavitation ring was still negating inertia that might slow the craft down, but the impellers were no longer providing forward thrust.  The effect of the cavitation ring was almost gone.  She closed her eyes and reviewed her newest equation, the equation that would change the world forever, her stairway to the stars. 

She relaxed and readies herself to let go of consciousness.

  

Aloisia passed out from the excruciating pain that shot through her injured back, as the disc hit the water multiple times like a flat stone skipping across a pond. 

She never saw the final bounce up, and never felt the jarring blow of the eighty knot gust that caught the leading edge and starting the disc on a gentle roll toward port.

The craft slammed into the large dune doing a bit less than one-thousand kilometers per hour.  Considering she had backed off the thrusters and the craft had slowed from skipping on the water and such, no one would really know the speed which the small craft had attained in those final minutes of full powered flight.  The virtually indestructible titanium-beryllium hull was undamaged, assisted by cavitation ring’s effect on the soft sand.  The bubble canopy succumbed to the pressure applied against it by one small rock, that it hit just right, and shattered.

The force of the impact drove Aloisia’s body forward in the harness, and her hand shot out and came to rest on the photo of her idol.  The powerless cavitation ring spun in the sand until the friction was able to grind it to a halt.

  

Aloisia, late of the Waffen SS, golden child of Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, sleeper agent of the President Roosevelt’s ‘Allied Powers’ which would later be called the United Nations, never regained consciousness.  She suffocated in pain free slumber as the sand poured in the shattered bubble, filling the cockpit and covering her head.

Over the next couple of days the winds and high waves from the storm erased all signs of the scar from the craft hitting the dune, and covered the balance of the craft not already buried from the impact.

A few local fishermen and those gathering sea turtles and eggs, were the only visitors to this stretch of beach.  The area was undeveloped, except for shanties of the small village of Campos, only a kilometer distant.

Over the next fifty years the sand continued to build up on the dune.  A few villagers would sit atop the dune and watch the waves, have a picnic, or surf fish, never aware of what lie hidden beneath.  Seeds, blown onto the dune by the wind, propagated into plants, bushes and trees, while surrounding properties blossomed into an industrialized zone, and Campos grew into a small town.

Eventually, the property directly in front of the beach, including the high dune, was bought and slowly developed into a coconut ranch, by an unsuspecting young navy man.