These days, his friend’s father was a liberal Democrat. Jerry’d never had the nerve to ask what his politics were like under the Third Reich. He didn’t suppose he would if he ever met this Manfred, either. The world had changed. Jerry hoped like hell it had, anyway. Some of the guys on the Glomar Explorer now might not care just how ex an ex-Nazi was.

Then Steve said, “Whatever Manfred did in the German Navy, he doesn’t go around wishing his side won.”

“Okay. Good, even.” Jerry cocked his head to one side and sent the older man a quizzical stare. “You’re reading my mind, you know.”

“It’s a question that does crop up. The Nazis did so many horrible things, people almost automatically wonder about anybody who was an adult in Germany before 1945.”

“I guess so,” Jerry said. “They did so many horrible things, we squashed fascism flat and we’ll never have to worry about it again. So there’s that.”

“Good point.” Steve nodded. “There is that.”

IV

The Hughes Glomar Explorer got where she was going: an invisible spot on the North Pacific very close to where today turned into tomorrow or yesterday, depending on which way you were heading. She got there and she stayed there and nowhere else. Her engines, electrically powered side thrusters at her bow and stern, and some fancy navigational aids no one wanted to go into detail about with Jerry held her exactly in place, or close enough for sending down pipe and, with luck, raising a sunken spaceship.

They got there, they positioned themselves, and they proceeded to do nothing for the next several days. The Glomar Explorer had an elaborate system to keep the pipe-laying derrick steady even when the ship rolled and pitched. It featured enormous hydraulic cylinders and what somebody said were the biggest bearings ever manufactured.

And the system worked as advertised … in moderate seas. When the waves grew too large, even the best of mankind’s ingenuity was fighting out of its weight. Everyone got antsy waiting for the waters to calm down.

“If they calm down,” Jerry said to Steve. “Storms from the north and the south get a running start at us here.”

“True,” Steve replied. “It would have been a lot more convenient if the starship had landed in the middle of Times Square, wouldn’t it?”

Jerry shut up. You played the cards you got dealt, not the laydown grand slam you wished you had.

They had a narrow window in which to do what they needed to do. What would happen if wind, waves, and weather didn’t cooperate? Would they keep at it even if things got risky? Or would they give up and try again next year?