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corridor.
There were, indeed, women aboard the ship. They passed several men
and women wearing Luftwaffe blue or SS black. All were tall and fit
like the others McHenry had seen thus far. Even the women towered over him.
This master race was Hitler's dream come true.
And astonishingly, it included people of all races working as equals.
    They
smiled and nodded their heads in silent greeting as they passed in
the corridor. Everyone seemed respectful and friendly enough. He
was not prepared to meet these men and women as friends.
    They
reached an elevator and stepped in. “ Kontrolle,” the doctor ordered. It
took a long second for McHenry to understand that the command was
meant for the elevator, then the doors closed and he quickly
understood that elevators no longer needed attendants. He could feel
the pull of upward and then sideways motion. Their movements felt so
swift that they seemed to be moving a considerable distance. They
watched an indicator move along a diagram of the vessel.
    “How
big is this ship?” McHenry asked.
    “Over
nine kilometers in length. That includes the engines. The actual
living environment is less than half that. That is large enough that
it might have been visible from the Earth if it was not designed to
be hidden.”
    “Visible
from where...?” But there was no time to finish the question.
The doors opened and he immediately saw a black sky. The two men
climbed a short stairway up into the ship's large control room.
McHenry stopped momentarily and stood in awe. There didn't seem to
be a ceiling. They were in a dome surrounded by stars. And right
below them was the planet Earth.
    *

Chapter 6
“It has been
claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates
dictatorship. What we must understand is that the industries,
processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used
either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us.”
— Vice President Henry A. Wallace (April 9, 1944)
    McHenry
stared out across the dome. This was his familiar Earth seen from a
new and heretofore impossible vantage point. It couldn't be a real
window, he realized, although his depth perception gave the illusion
that it was. There were faint grid marks of latitude and longitude
on the planet. Another more-distant blue grid marked the background
of space itself. Numbers and symbols appeared in the foreground,
sometimes flashing or highlighted by colorful borders. They all
looked to McHenry like finely-detailed cartoon images overlapping a
real sky.
    The
ship's large control room had at least a dozen men and women, mostly
in blue Luftwaffe uniforms working at various stations. View screens
surrounded every station; some displays appeared momentarily in the
background of the dome and disappeared just as suddenly. The center
area held two large chairs facing forward. The stern-faced Oberführer Mtubo was standing beside one — one of
four SS officers present. The other chair was obviously meant for
the Kommandant . This was, surprisingly to McHenry, a woman.
    Luftwaffe-Oberst — Colonel, that is — Petra Volker looked very much like a
woman proud of the ship she commanded. “Greetings, Lieutenant
McHenry. Welcome to the Göring .” She held out her
large hand.
    “Thank
you,” McHenry replied. He was still unsure how to address
these people. He tried to consider himself a P.O.W. They shook
hands firmly.
    At
first glance, the fair-haired and clean-cut Kommandant seemed
to McHenry as being not being older than anyone else. She looked,
perhaps, not older than thirty, judging by the smoothness of her
features. But her stoic and confident manners somehow implied this
was a much older woman. Only then did it start to dawn on McHenry
that the Nazis had beaten mortality just as they had conquered
everything else.
    “I
didn't realize your ship was in outer space,” said McHenry.
    The Kommandant laughed heartily. “The doctor has been
babying you — eh Doctor? Do not blame him, Lieutenant.