...some scenes from

Heisenberg's U-Boat
by
Bill Baldwin

 

Scene 3: Home Again?

Kaptänleutnant Kurt Von Von Adler nervously stands in the control room beneath the conning tower while the U-91 heads for the surface in the Kodel Channel outside Kiel. He can't tell if he is home or not; nothing looks at all familiar....

" . . . Pump ballast to sea . . . fore planes hard a-rise; after planes up five . . . Boat rising . . . One hundred feet . . . Fifty feet . . . Hydrophone search . . . Clear . . . Ready to surface . . . Surface . . . Blow main ballast tanks . . . Surfaced . . . Equalize pressure . . . Blow to full buoyancy with diesel . . . Stand by main engines . . . ."

Climbing swiftly to the conning tower, the young Captain bites his lip, his worst suspicions confirmed

Frustrated that he has thirty-eight perfectly good torpedoes aboard and enough diesel fuel for an 8,700-mile sortie, but he has been forced to return to base because the lightning bolt burned out all his radios-beyond repair. Soon, however, the frustration turns to . . . disbelief . . . when he and Gröener discover they recognize nothing in the evening gloom; even the harbor's superb aids to navigation seem to have disappeared. Von Adler slows the submarine, maintaining just enough way on the boat to keep position against the outgoing tide. Then he begins to analyze their situation. Has Navigator Adleman made an error in navigation? Is the magnetic compass inoperative? No. Everything checks, including the mechanical gyroscopic compass. Von Adler takes a sighting with a sextant to close off all questions of location. Gröener seconds him. Both agree they are precisely where they think they are. But they recognize nothing.

Von Adler calls ex-harbor pilot, now senior Petty Officer Albert Grosswald, to the conning tower. Grosswald guides them to the base despite the failing light, but swears that the channels have changed dramatically-and nothing recognizable can be seen anywhere in the vicinity of the harbor. Von Adler experiences a moment of panic when he sees that the submarine base has been leveled--including the massive submarine pens, that are now no more than roofless. blackened walls that appear to have been constructed a hundred years in the past. No life can be seen anywhere around the vicinity of the once-bustling naval base, even though the towers of a darkened city rise in the background. And it doesn't look a thing like the Kiel from which he departed little more than a day ago! Von Adler shivers in the twilight dampness. Is this the result of the "haunted" vibrations? If he told anybody about what was going on, they'd think he was mad . . . like the sub's last three crews.

 

Scene 4 Apparition

Amelia Tann, leader to a tribe of thirty (or so) renegade "Wickeds," squats hidden among dense waterside vegetation on the south bank of the Kodel Channel. She and a squad of ten men and women are dressed in coarse, homespun clothes. They constantly scan the chill night air, for they fear detection from the sky--and know the awful death that might earn them. Tann is watching a sleek, angular form emerging from the water perhaps a half kilometer from where they stand. Its shape stirs her memory; she has seen pictures of such a thing in the old history books her people have hidden--an underseas boat, she remembers. Where on earth could it have come from? She watches it slow, then come to a stop no more than five hundred meters from where she stands. Concerned--and fascinated--Tann posts guards and a runner to keep track of the mysterious apparition. Then she and the rest of her squad make for their inland retreat to prepare a defense. These days, one can never be too careful. She shakes her head. She is proud to command these people, and willingly shoulders the responsibility for their well-being. But sometimes it seems as if she has spent her whole life giving--accommodating--while getting very little in return. Sometimes, she wishes she had a little more time to think about herself . . . and someone to provide her a little support instead of needing it. Someday, she thinks wistfully. But now, there is only survival.

 

Scene 5 A Strange Shape

Two hundred feet above the Kodel Channel, crimson-robed Sentry Foreman Raylax Pippitt, leads four subordinate sentries dressed in simple white robes on a first patrol of the evening, sniffing the air for the rising scent of humans and scanning the ground for illegal movement with their sensitive eyes. Pippitt is uncomfortable in the damp air; moreover he is already feeling the Weakness of Dark coming over him. He is badly overweight, and will only just be able to finish the patrol before he can no longer maintain altitude with his tired wings. For what? Nobody seems to take him--or security--seriously, anyway. It's been forty years at least since anyone thought that nightly patrols were even necessary. Old Faffner, the Superintendent of Sentry Operations is nothing but a purple-robed sham, collecting his pay at the plush Angelic headquarters in London and little else. At most other stockyards, sentries use these night patrols only for sport--but not in Stockyard 15. Pippitt has worked diligently during the three years he has headed up security operations there. But the job has not been easy by any means. It's at least thirty years since the Central Book of Security Commandments for this planet was updated, so he has little to back up disciplinary actions. He shivers as he watches the younger sentries flying effortlessly, their great wings thrusting them along as if they could stay aloft all night. At their age, he considers sourly, they probably can. Suddenly a narrow, angular shape on the far side of Kiel Bay catches his attention. It wasn't there the night before; he's certain of that. "Over there," he shouts, drawing a .409 chastizer from a holster at his hip. "We'll have a look at that."

 

Scent 6: Angels

Kurt Von Adler is standing beneath the conning-tower hatch when he hears gasps from the lookouts above, followed by frightened-sounding Roman-Catholic litanies. He rushes up the ladder to find both lookouts on their knees in prayerful attitudes. A kilometer or so distant. at an altitude of no more than a hundred feet, the figures of five flying--slightly glowing-- . . . well, Angels . . . glide in from seaward. One appears to overhear hear the lookouts' litanies, and before Von Adler can command silence, the creature turns toward the sub. His colleagues follow, losing altitude rapidly. At about one hundred yards out--and no more than fifty feet altitude--the Angels appear to make out Von Adler and the two lookouts. Von Adler dodges behind the steel spray screen when the Angels begin to yell angrily and aim pistol-like objects in his direction-from which lightning bolts zap and snap, striking and killing the two spellbound lookouts. Von Adler feels the top of his head singe at the same time he hears rapid-fire from the sub's twin 20-mm machine guns. Four of the Angels scream as bullets rip into their bodies, their glows fade, then they tumble one by one into the water, and are still. The lead angel, some distance from the others, flies rapidly away and escapes.

Congratulating the doughty--and fast-thinking--Fritz Kinst, Von Adler launches a rubber raft and manages to retrieve two of the dead Angels: wings, feathers, robes, and all. He orders a Petty Officer and two ratings to cover them in canvas and lay them out in the tiny Captain's cabin, deciding to deal with them later (if indeed, they can be dealt with at all). First, he must learn all he can about the fate of the submarine base--perhaps discover how far into the future he and the U-91 have traveled--if anything like that even matters. At least he'll see if anything remains that can help him in his present circumstances. He is determined to return the ship to the past in the best working order possible. His career--and the family name--depend on it. He takes an armed crew under Fritz Kinst and rows ashore.

 

Scene 7: Fright and Curiosity

Hovering silently as he replaces his chastizer in its holster, Raylax Pippitt tries to control his thundering heart while he looks down from two thousand feet at the sleek, mysterious boat in the harbor below; it seems impervious to his weapon's electrical discharge (although the humans aboard clearly are not). Is the boat made of metal, perhaps? Whatever its composition, the vessel is equipped with weapons capable of killing Flighted Ones. He'll not soon forget its red-hot projectiles whizzing past him at tremendous speed. Below, humans from its crew are rowing a small, odd-shaped boat to pick up two of the floating corpses, which they load into the larger boat. For a third time, he attempts to make telepathic contact with someone--anyone--at London Headquarters. The Duty Officer should be listening for him, but no, the lazy scoundrel is probably in private mode--as is the rest of the lazy headquarters operation.

Pippitt notifies his own duty officer at Stockyard-15 and is just about to return when he sees the little boat set out again, this time for shore. He counts seven humans aboard. This is significant; the area below with its strange ruins is a well-established lair for Wickeds. As he warily glides off toward the South--still trying unsuccessfully to contact anyone in London-- understands that serious trouble for The Operation is definitely afoot. Now, if he can just notify someone important before he must use the general alarm system and share his discovery with all the other security officers.

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Plot copyright (c) 2012 by Bill Baldwin; all rights reserved, worldwide.