'Yes,' Wilson replied.

'You had a profitable trip?' Schriever asked, looking dashing in his Flugkapitn's uniform, his forced smile slightly illuminating his lean, darkly handsome features.

'Very profitable,' Wilson said.

Schriever took the chair at the other side of Wilson's desk and offered his fullest attention.

'What did you find?' he asked breathlessly. 'Anything exciting or useful to us?'

Wilson had travelled far, talked to many, and learned a great deal. In factories hidden in the densely forested areas of the Schwarzwald he had been shown an experiment with a liquid gas that would, when blown with considerable force over an aircraft, catch fire from the exhaust and cause the aircraft to explode. In the R-Laboratory in Volkenrode he had been involved in heated discussions about electrostatic fields and gyroscopic controls and also discovered that by mixing a certain percentage of myrol with air, internal combustion engines would immediately begin to detonate irregularly or, depending on the mixture, stop completely. In the Henschel aircraft company he had examined a television component that would enable pilots to control bombs and rocket bombs after they had been launched, as well as a micro-television camera that would be installed in the nose of an anti-aircraft rocket and guide it precisely to its target. In the Luftwaffe experimental centre at Oberammergau, in Bavaria, he had been given a demonstration of an apparatus capable of short-circuiting the ignition system of another aircraft engine from a great distance by producing an intense electrical field... and he had also learned about the development of radio-controlled interceptor weapons and planes, electromagnetic, electroacoustical, and photoelectric fuses, and even more advanced warheads that were sensitive to the natural electrostatic fields that surround aircraft in flight. In the experimental centre at Gottingen, he had been privileged to observe the test flight of a light-winged aircraft that had a slot running along the entire length of its wing span and an extra propellor in the fuselage to suck in the boundary layer and increase the lift of the original airfoil by eight times. And finally, most important, at Berlin-Britz he had been shown a Kreiselgerat, the prototype of a new mechanism that had so far managed to reduce the oscillations of a violently shaking body to under one-tenth of a degree, thus paving the way for the conquest of the boundary layer.

He did not tell Schriever any of this.

Nor did he tell him that upon seeing the results of the oscillation tests in Gottengen, which had proved beyond doubt that the boundary layer could be conquered, he had suggested to Professors Ackeret and Betz that they concentrate on a revolutionary new structural design that would be devoid of all obstructing protuberances, such as wings and rudders, devoid even of the normal air intakes, and powered by a more advanced turbine engine. In other words, a more advanced version of the Horten brothers' tailless aircraft, or 'flying wing,' that would offer the least possible air resistance, suck in the dead air of the boundary layer, and then use that same air, expelling it at great force, to increase its momentum.

The eminent professors had agreed to do just this... though Wilson didn't tell Schriever that.

'Naturally,' he said instead, 'the first thing I did was examine the Horten II, D-11-167, prior to its test flight in Rangsdorf, which turned out to be highly unsatisfactory. This so-called tailless aircraft possesses great static-longitudinal stability and complete safety in relation to the spin, but its control surfaces are so heavy that measurements of manoeuvring stability couldn't be carried out. The unsatisfactory arrangement of its undercarriage necessitates too long a takeoff, the relation between its longitudinal, lateral, and directional controls is unsatisfactory, its turning flight and manoeuvrability are both fraught with difficulty, and side-slipping can't be carried out. With regard, then, to what we're doing here, the Horten brothers are valueless.'

Wilson threw the drawings and technical summaries of the Horten brothers' flying wing across the desk as if they were dirt. Schriever picked them up as if he agreed... but then, as Wilson noted, let them rest on his lap and placed his hands protectively on top of them, no doubt to be hopefully used later in his saucer designs.

'Anything else?' he asked.

Wilson nodded and tried to feign excitement. 'Yes,' he said. 'Some exciting innovations. The kind that could make your flying saucer even more powerful.'

'What?' Schriever asked. 'What?'

Knowing that Himmler's sole interest in a flying saucer was its potential as a weapon of war, Wilson told his devoted disciple, Rudolph Schriever, about such oddities as the proposed Windkanone a cannon that shot gas instead of sh.e.l.ls and the Wirbelringkanone, or whirlwind annular vortex cannon, which was designed to shoot and then ignite a gas ring that would spin rapidly on its own axis and form a fierce ball of fire. Whether such weapons would work in practice was an issue of great doubt, but because Schriever wanted only news of weapons that would sound magical to his beloved Reichfhrer, he lapped up what Wilson was telling him and snapped the relevant research papers from Wilson's hand as if wanting to eat them. Then, when Wilson offered him no more, he stood up to leave.

'One moment, Flugkapitn,' Wilson said.

'Yes?' Schriever responded impatiently, now wanting to leave. 'What is it now?'

'I feel I should warn you,' Wilson said as Schriever turned back to face him, 'that certain people are plotting against you.'

As most men in the Third Reich were already frightened of being plotted against or being reported for some d.a.m.ning misdemeanour, Schriever looked suitably shaken and sat down again.

'Plotting against me?' he said. 'Who would do that?'

'Belluzzo,' Wilson said without hesitation.

Schriever looked stunned. 'Belluzzo?' he repeated. 'But he's my most trusted colleague, Herr Wilson!' he blurted out, thus inadvertently confirming what Wilson had suspected.

Wilson sighed, as if saddened. 'I'm afraid your trust has been misplaced,' he said, leaning his elbows on his desk, resting his chin in his hands, and staring with concerned intensity at the clearly shocked Schriever. 'I have it on good authority one of Himmler's aides, in fact that Dr Belluzzo has been trying surrept.i.tiously to steal credit for the great contributions you've so far made to Projekt Saucer and has even, in some of the reports, credited certain innovations to himself. He's doing this, I know, because he's so clearly jealous of your authority over the project, but I'm afraid he's being taken seriously by those around Himmler, which means that if he isn't stopped soon, those lies will soon reach Himmler himself and you'll have to defend yourself.'

Now flushed and fearful, Schriever gazed through the gla.s.s wall at the flying saucer in the middle of the vast hangar, stared disbelieving at Dr Belluzzo, who was plump and gray-haired and wearing an oilsmeared white smock, then returned his stricken gaze to the front.

'What will I do?' Schriever asked, sounding frightened.

'You have to stop him,' Wilson said dryly.

'And how do I do that?'

'Get rid of him, Flugkapitn.'

'And how do I do that?' Schriever asked.

Because Schriever didn't know that Wilson was sixty-six years old, because Wilson looked about fifteen years younger, Wilson didn't believe he was in any way endangering himself when he said, 'Belluzzo is nearly seventy and beginning to show it, so why not put in an official report about his physical and mental condition, describing him as senile and progressively distracted and therefore an increasing threat to Projekt Saucer? Recommend that he be removed from the project and treated for his own good.'

'Treated?'

Wilson shrugged and sat back in his chair. 'Let's be honest,' he said. 'If you put in such a report, Belluzzo will be cla.s.sified as mentally ill and incarcerated in a concentration camp as an undesirable. If there was another course of action I would certainly recommend it, but there isn't, and given the circ.u.mstances...'

He deliberately didn't finish his sentence, but merely raised and lowered his hands as if the matter was in the lap of the G.o.ds. Schriever, released from moral responsibility, nodded his grat.i.tude and stood up.