New York City. Times Square.
The news ticker wasn't moving. It was frozen on a single headline.
RED MOON: SOVIET STAR CIRCLES EARTH.
Thousands of people stood in the rain, looking up. They weren't looking at the ticker. They were looking at the night sky, searching for a moving dot.
A radio shop on 42nd Street had a loudspeaker set up. It was tuned to 20.005 MHz.
Beep... Beep... Beep...
The sound was alien. Mechanical. Relentless.
It cut through the noise of the traffic. It cut through the jazz music from the clubs.
A man in a fedora took off his hat. He looked terrified.
"They're watching us," he whispered to no one. "The Bolsheviks are right above our heads."
Next to him, a stockbroker dropped his briefcase. It hit the wet pavement with a heavy thud.
"Sell," the broker muttered, his eyes wide. "Sell everything."
The Kremlin. The Celebration.
Vodka flowed like water. Real vodka, not the potato swill the miners drank.
Wernher von Braun was dancing on a table. He was drunk on success and Russian spirits.
"To the stars!" the German boy shouted, raising a bottle. "To gravity!"
Jake stood by the window. He held a glass, but he wasn't drinking.
He watched the lights of Moscow. They were still dim, powered by the remaining coal reserves. But above the clouds, his satellite was spinning at 18,000 miles per hour.
"You don't look like a winner, Koba," Menzhinsky said.
The spy chief was leaning against a velvet curtain. He was the only one not smiling.
"We won the race," Jake said. "We beat the Americans by thirty years."
"We won a race," Menzhinsky corrected. "But we might lose the war."
He handed Jake a telegram.
"From the Trade Ministry."
Jake took it.
London Gold Exchange: Closed. New York Stock Exchange: Suspended. Global credit markets: Frozen.
Jake frowned. "This is good. The capitalists are collapsing."
"Too fast," Menzhinsky said. "We have five million tons of grain sitting in Odessa. Waiting for British buyers."
"So?"
"So the British have no money," Menzhinsky said. "Their banks failed an hour after the satellite launched. The panic caused a run on the pound."
Jake stared at the telegram.
He understood global economics. He knew everything was connected.
If the West collapsed completely, they couldn't buy Soviet exports. If they couldn't buy exports, the Soviet Union couldn't buy the machine tools, the rubber, the copper needed for the next rocket.
He had crashed the car he was trying to hijack.
"We move to a barter system," Jake said. "Oil for steel. Grain for rubber."
"It takes months to set up," Menzhinsky countered. "We have weeks. The workers in the Donbas haven't been paid. If the food doesn't arrive..."
"They will riot," Jake finished.
He looked at the dancing German scientist.
"I spent the national budget on a firework," Jake whispered.
"A very loud firework," Menzhinsky agreed. "But you can't eat a beep."
Washington D.C.
Herbert Hoover sat in the Oval Office. He wasn't the President yet—Coolidge was still finishing his term—but he was running the crisis response.
He looked ten years older than he had yesterday.
"The panic is total," Hoover said. "People are hoarding gold. They think the Russians have a death ray."
General Douglas MacArthur stood before the desk. He was smoking a corncob pipe.
"Do they?" MacArthur asked.
"Our scientists say no," Hoover said. "They say it's just a radio transmitter. But the public doesn't believe scientists. They believe their fear."
He slammed a file shut.
"We need to mobilize, General. Not just the army. The economy."
"Martial law?" MacArthur asked, his eyes gleaming.
"Nationalization," Hoover said. "We are taking over the steel mills. The railroads. If the free market won't build us a rocket, the government will."
He walked to the window.
"Stalin wants a command economy? Fine. We'll show him what American industry can do when we take the brakes off."
"It will look like socialism," MacArthur warned.
"It will look like survival," Hoover snapped.
The Kremlin Apartment.
The radio in the corner was playing Tchaikovsky. Nadya kept it loud to drown out the silence.
Yuri was asleep in his crib.
Jake walked in. He smelled of smoke and exhaustion.
"You heard it?" Jake asked.
"The whole world heard it," Nadya said. She was darning a sock. Her movements were sharp, angry.
"It is a triumph, Nadya. Mankind has left the cradle."
"And left the rest of us behind," she said.
She put down the sock.
"My sister called from Leningrad. She says the bread ration was cut again today. To 200 grams."
"Transport issues," Jake lied.
"Lies," Nadya said. "You sold the grain to buy aluminum for your toy."
Jake sat down heavily on the bed.
"It's not a toy. It's a statement. It tells Hitler to stay in his box."
"Hitler isn't looking up, Koba," Nadya said. "He is looking at Poland. And our people are looking at their empty plates."
She stood up and walked to the crib. She stroked Yuri's back.
"You are playing chess with giants," she whispered. "But you are using pawns made of flesh."
Jake looked at her back.
She was the only one who told him the truth. Menzhinsky told him the strategic truth. Nadya told him the human truth.
Both truths were ugly.
"I need to fix the economy," Jake said to her back. "I need a miracle."
"You used up your miracles," Nadya said. "Now you have to pay the bill."
The next morning. The Map Room.
Jake stared at the economic reports. Red ink everywhere.
The Soviet Union was bankrupt. He had the most advanced technology in history, and he couldn't afford to keep the lights on.
"We need a partner," Jake said. "Someone with money who isn't afraid of the West."
"There is no one," Molotov said. "China is in chaos. Japan hates us."
"Italy?" Jake asked.
"Mussolini is broke," Menzhinsky said. "He spent it all on uniforms."
The phone rang. The secure line.
"Berlin calling," the operator said.
Jake picked it up.
"Stalin."
"Congratulations," Hitler's voice was smooth. "A magnificent achievement. German engineering, I assume?"
"Soviet vision," Jake corrected.
"Of course," Hitler chuckled. "But vision is expensive, ja?"
Jake tightened his grip on the phone. Hitler knew. The wolf could smell the blood in the water.
"What do you want, Adolf?"
"I want the blueprints," Hitler said. "For the multi-stage rocket. And the guidance chips."
"Never."
"Then I close the border," Hitler said. "No more machine tools. No more ball bearings. And I stop paying for the grain I already received."
It was blackmail. Without German payments, the Soviet economy would flatline within a week.
Jake looked at Menzhinsky. The spy chief shook his head slightly. Don't do it.
But Jake looked at the report on bread riots in Leningrad.
"If I give you the rocket," Jake said slowly, "you will put a bomb on it."
"Eventually," Hitler admitted. "But for now, I just want to fly. Like you."
Jake closed his eyes.
He had accelerated the Space Race. Now he was about to give the Nazis ICBM technology in 1929.
It was madness. It was suicide.
But the alternative was the collapse of his own regime. If the USSR fell, Hitler would take it all anyway.
"I will send the plans," Jake whispered.
"Excellent," Hitler said. "And Stalin?"
"Yes?"
"Don't worry about the Americans," Hitler said. "They are too busy eating themselves. We own the future."
The line went dead.
Jake hung up. He felt dirty.
"You gave him the sword," Menzhinsky said quietly.
"I rented it to him," Jake said. "To buy us bread."
He stood up. He kicked his chair over.
"I need a new card," Jake shouted. "I need something he can't copy. Something he can't steal."
"What is left?" Menzhinsky asked. "You gave him the rocket. You gave him the tank."
Jake looked at the computer. At the glowing screen of the laptop, wired into the primitive Soviet grid.
"Biology," Jake said.
He remembered the penicillin. He remembered the genetic engineering files he had skimmed in the archives.
"Get Kapitsa," Jake ordered. "And get the best surgeons in Moscow."
"Why?"
"Hitler wants to build a master race with myths," Jake said. "I'm going to build one with science."
"You want to engineer... people?" Menzhinsky asked, horrified.
"I want to make soldiers who don't need sleep," Jake said. "I want pilots who can pull 9 Gs without blacking out. I want to upgrade the human hardware."
He looked at his hands.
"If we can't outproduce them, we have to out-evolve them."
Menzhinsky opened his notebook. His hand wavered for the first time.
The Moral Event Horizon.
"Cross it," Jake said. "There is no going back."