“What were you and Karl talking about today when you walked away from us? Did he mention the job?” I asked Jürgen later that night, once we were in bed. He had been unusually quiet through dinner. When Georg made silly faces and Mayim and I gave him the laughs he so clearly expected, Jürgen barely managed a smile.

But we’d been married long enough for me to know that Jürgen needed the cover of darkness to open up about his worries. And the minute my head hit the pillow, my curiosity got the better of me.

“Do you remember a few weeks before the election, when the space society held our last launch?” Jürgen asked.

“I do.”

“Karl brought an audience without warning us. It turns out the men were senior officials in the Nazi party.”

That startled me. I sat up and flicked on my bedside lamp, then turned to frown down at him. Jürgen also sat up and retrieved his glasses from the table on his side of the bed. We stared at one another.

“Did you know who they were at the time?”

“No, I didn’t—but I was humiliated, and frankly, irritated with Karl for bringing anyone at all. Besides, it didn’t seem to matter much at the time.” Jürgen drew in a deep breath. “Only it turns out the Nazis want to establish their own rocket program. Karl told me today that the position he’s been hinting at would be with a new division within Army Ordnance.”

“A job? In rockets?” I was so startled by this, I couldn’t hide my shock.

“You’ve never taken my work seriously,” Jürgen said abruptly. He was right—I had not. But for good reason.

“Your rockets explode without warning at least half the time! Including this exact launch we’re discussing, if I remember correctly. Isn’t that what happened?” He didn’t reply, so I pushed again. “It floated—”

“It flew, Sofie. Rockets don’t float. They are propelled with force—”

“—for fifteen seconds. Then it exploded. Didn’t you say that a chunk of debris hit one of the other space society members and burned a hole in his coat?” At this, Jürgen fell silent. I sighed impatiently. “I’m allowed to be a little skeptical. You’re talking about flying to the moon with something that can’t get more than a few feet off the ground.”

“Do you really think I’d have invested these years into rocketry if it wasn’t a viable technology? At present, our prototypes aren’t reliable, but inevitably they will be perfected. Every failed launch is an experiment we can learn from.”

“Have they offered jobs to everyone in the rocket group?”