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the ladder. The lorry drove towards the gap in the high concrete wall, leaving the launch area clear. Two minutes to launch.
    The fuselage was captured in a sheath of glistening ice crystals as the minus-two-hundred-degree-centigrade liquid oxygen sucked moisture from the humid air. A thin plume of vapour shot from a vent half-way up the rocket’s side to signal that the oxidiser tank had reached full pressure. The red flare indicating an imminent launch arched up from the control bunker. At minus twenty seconds the merest wisp of vapour appeared beneath the rocket, and a collective sigh of relief went up from the technicians in the bunker. Bethwig heard Dornberger explaining to Goering that the vapour had been vented through the fuel feed system to make certain that everything was operating properly and that no valves were stuck.
    At minus ten seconds sparks showered from the nozzle as the pyrotechnic igniter went off. A gout of reddish-black flame belched from the rocket’s base, steadied, faded to yellow, and a sound like a giant blowtorch gone mad swept the island. The flame turned an incandescent white impossible to watch without protective glasses, and clouds of smoke and dust sprang up to obscure the rocket. For a moment, only its nose was visible, and then, like some prehistoric monster rearing slowly above a primeval fog, the A-5 appeared. Bethwig could see it turn slowly on its axis as its fins cleared the smoke. It tilted slightly and was gone, a fast-dwindling dot of flame directly overhead.
    Silence held the launch site for a moment, then cheers and shouts erupted. Bethwig turned to see the officers gathered about Goering pointing upwards, shading their eyes against the sun, all talking at once. His instrument panel was registering perfectly, and the whir of the cinecamera focused on the gauges surprised him. In the excitement he had not recalled having turned it on. The temperature gauge was holding steady at 2902° centigrade, five degrees below his prediction. Satisfied, he turned his glance upward and, after a moment of practised search, found the white dot now moving slightly to the east.
    ‘Thirty-five seconds,’ blared the loudspeaker.
    Even through his powerful Zeiss binoculars Bethwig could not resolve the pencil-shaped A-5 completely. This was far better than they had hoped, and he glanced quickly at his instruments again. No change.
    ‘Forty-five seconds,’ and a moment later, ‘Brennschluss, end of combustion.’ The white dot disappeared.
    ‘Rocket motor burning time was forty-six seconds,’ the loudspeaker intoned, ‘and altitude at burnout was eight point one kilometres.’
    Through the glasses Bethwig watched as the rocket continued to climb under the momentum imparted by the engine until the shape elongated and he knew it had reached its peak altitude. At any second von Braun would press the button that would send a radio signal to deploy the parachute. The rocket was tumbling now, and sunlight flashed from the alternating squares of red and yellow painted on the fuselage. Abruptly the tumbling stopped. He could make out a hazy stream behind and the main parachute deployed in a perfectly-shaped canopy.
    The missile hung quiescent in the shrouds, and the air was so still, Bethwig could follow its descent until foreshortened trees appeared in his binoculars and the rocket splashed into the Baltic. There was a puff of yellow smoke as the explosive charge cut away the parachute, and the A-5 bobbed, stern up, like a child’s bath toy The patrol launch described a sharp turn and raced across the harbour.
    For a moment Bethwig remained standing on the lip of the bunker, glasses pressed against his eyes, wanting to impress the picture on his mind: the colourful rocket, paint bright against the intense blue sea, gleaming wakes, the tiny Storch aircraft swooping low over the tilted gnomon surrounded by the creamy parachute. There had been dozens of launchings, and hundreds were yet to come, but