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none, he knew, would ever be as important, or as perfect, as this.
     
    Colonel General Hermann Goering had departed as darkness crept in over the Baltic. The evening brought cooling breezes that were gratefully received, and Dornberger ordered supper served on the roof of the canteen, overlooking the tiny harbour.
    Bethwig had noticed the man earlier, standing a bit apart from the officials and officers fawning about Goering. He was of medium height, balding, and he wore a simple but expensive summer suit. His eyes missed nothing, Bethwig thought. He arrived shortly after Goering’s plane had landed, and Dornberger hurriedly introduced him as Albert Speer, mentioning something about a post as Hitler’s personal architect. How did one go about becoming a personal architect? he wondered. Yet Dornberger had seated Speer on his left, a position that would have been given to Goering had he remained.
    Bethwig and von Braun were seated further along the table, but several times during the meal Speer leaned forward to ask them questions. Each time, others engaged in conversations of their own stopped to listen.
    ‘Colonel Dornberger tells me,’ Speer said to Bethwig as the waiters removed the last course, ‘that today’s test flight of the A-Five rocket vindicated one of your developments.’
    Bethwig coughed to hide his embarrassment and stole a glance at Tuchman. The old man was watching Speer and Dornberger in tight-lipped silence.
    ‘Come now, young man, no modesty please,’ Speer prompted.
    ‘Well, yes, the test flight did bear out a few of my thoughts.’
    ‘I would like to hear about them.’
    Bethwig appealed silently to Dornberger, who chose to misinterpret the glance. ‘You may speak freely, Franz. Herr Speer has the highest clearances.’
    ‘Was it the graphite vanes?’ Speer asked.
    ‘Ah ... no, sir. We knew they would work.’ Bethwig was surprised that Speer knew that much.
    Speer laughed at his expression. ‘You were correct, Colonel. Herr Doktor Bethwig is a modest young man. He reduces the cost of the vanes from one hundred fifty to one point five marks and claims to have known it would work all along.’
    Dornberger grinned at Bethwig who was now flaming red. Von Braun chuckled, nudging him with an elbow as Tuchman stalked away from the table without an apology. Under prompting by Domberger and von Braun, Bethwig explained the film cooling system, and Speer listened closely, asking occasional questions.
    The military officers and civilian officials invited to watch the launching filtered to the far end of the table as the talk became increasingly technical, and the scientific staff gathered about the head. Bethwig thought it strange that Speer, who for all his interest seemed a lightweight in scientific matters, should prefer to indulge in what must have been a boring discussion of velocities, specific impulses, radio telemetry techniques, and a myriad other engineering concerns.
    When he finished, Speer turned to Dornberger. ‘I understand, Colonel, that another purpose of today’s launching was to test a guidance system?’
    Dornberger nodded and folded his napkin. ‘Our A-Three rocket was cursed with the problem of maintaining directional stability. The rocket would turn on its axis during powered flight, thus making it impossible to keep a proper course. At first we thought this a result of wind acting upon the fins, but wind-tunnel tests disproved that. It was due rather to fluctuations in the exhaust stream. To correct the problem, Wernher developed a gyroscope system that controls the movement of the vanes in the exhaust stream. Now, when the rocket begins to veer, the gyroscopically controlled vanes bring it right back by bending the exhaust in the opposite direction.’
    ‘I see. Exactly how does the system work?’ Speer asked. Dornberger began to sketch on a napkin. ‘It is really quite similar to a child’s top spinning inside a metal cage. Like a top, it always remains upright, no