'To the devil with understanding! Write down what you see, every detail, understand? Take notes!'
Von Moreau leaned to his right and half turned to look back into the radio compartment. 'Stryker!' he shouted to his radioman. 'Can you make shortwave contact with Hamburg? Try it at once!'
He turned back to Gottler. 'Well? What else?'
'I cannot believe this, Captain, but even at this distance I can see that the vessel has accelerated. It is definitely moving faster, and—Captain! There are several shapes descending from the vessel! Can you see them, sir? They are shining like lights in the sun and . . . I have never seen anything like them. Look, Captain! Their shape! Like . . . like crescents. Look how fast they move! And . . . this is incredible, sir! No engines, no propellers!'
Von Moreau grabbed for the binoculars. 'Take over,' he snapped to Gottler.
'Hold course, hold altitude.
Stryker! What about that contact with Hamburg?'
Radioman Albert Stryker hurried forward to the cockpit. 'Sir, something is blocking all transmissions from and to this aircraft. I can get only static. It is deliberate interference.'
'Did you try the alternate systems?'
'Sir, I have tried every frequency we have. Nothing is getting through.'
Stryker was looking through the windscreen now; he had caught sight of three gleaming crescentshaped objects curving down from high altitude directly toward them. His mouth gaped.
'What . . . what are those—'
'Back to your radios, Stryker,' von Moreau ordered. 'Keep trying, anything, everything, but get through.'
'Yes, sir. I'll do everything I can.' Stryker rushed back to his radio equipment.
'I have never seen anything like this before,' von Moreau said to his copilot.
'It is amazing. A monstrous torpedo shape, now these crescents that race through the sky—they must be doing four or five hundred miles per hour.' He shook his head.
'Something propels them. But what? And where are they from? Who are they?
What do they want?'
Questions burst from him without answers.
Stryker ran headlong back into the cockpit. 'Captain, sir! Those things out there . . .' He pointed with a shaking hand to a gleaming crescent shape that hurtled past them with tremendous speed, curving around effortlessly, magically. The other two machines had taken up position, each off a wingtip of the Romar flying boat.
'They are in contact with us, Captain.'
Von Moreau stared at Stryker. 'What language, man?'
'Ours, Captain. German.'
'What do they say, Stryker!'
Stryker swallowed before speaking. 'Sir, they order us to land immediately on the sea below, or be destroyed.'
Von Moreau ran the insanity of the moment through his mind. The huge shape above. Obviously a flying mother ship of some kind, an airborne aircraft carrier.
Impossible in shape and size and performance, but there it was, nevertheless. And now these even more incredible crescents, gleaming, impossibly swift and with no visible means of propulsion. So far advanced over their powerful Romar that they might as well have been in a rowboat. He had no doubt that the threat of destruction was real.
'Tell them we will comply,' von Moreau said. Gottler stared at him disbelievingly.
'I cannot do that, sir,' Stryker said. 'Their orders were for us to begin our descent immediately. They also said there was no way for me to return the communication.'
Von Moreau had no doubts. Instinct born of flying combat experience, years of controlling great airliners, what he was seeing of such incredible performance: All came together in unquestioned intuition. His right hand began easing back on the throttles to reduce power, the nose lowered, and they were on their way to a landing at sea in the middle of the Mediterranean.
They could not call anyone on their radios, but von Moreau knew they were being tracked on charts in Hamburg and in Berlin, and when they did not make landfall over Catania in Sicily, which lay directly beneath their projected flight path, the alert would be sounded. 'Stryker, keep sending out an emergency signal with our position.
Send on every frequency we have. I know; the radios are jammed somehow.
But something may happen. Changing altitude may make a difference. Whatever; do your best.'
'Yes, sir.'
Von Moreau concentrated on their descent, preparing for the landing. Gottler peered ahead. 'There is a low cloud layer moving in from the west, sir,' he reported.
'There may be fog very soon on the surface.'
'I hope so,' von Moreau said sourly. 'I do not like any of this. I feel like a rat in a trap.'
'Yes, sir.'
Now they were on the water, holding the nose of the flying boat pointed into an increasing wind that pushed the clouds toward them and sent the first wisps of fog swirling about the flying boat. But there was just enough light and visibility for them to see the monstrous vessel that had been far above them also descending, moving directly toward them.
'You know, Franz, when we get out of this madness— if we get out of it—and we tell people what we are
