Free The Black Gate by Michael R. Hicks Page B

have said is exactly true. And it is also true that what we are doing here will save the Reich. The Bolsheviks will never set foot in Berlin, and we will toss the Anglo-American swine back into the English Channel where they belong.” He leaned toward Peter. “But we can only save the Reich if we act quickly to bring this project to its long-delayed fruition.”  
    “Sir, if the question isn’t inappropriate,” Peter said as the stewards whisked away the soup bowls and began to lay down plates heaped with Rheinischer Sauerbraten , “what exactly is this project? I was told absolutely nothing about it when I was ordered to report here, and even after my brief time in the cavern, while I confess to being amazed, I still have no idea what the mechanisms there actually do.”
    Von Falkenstein smiled like a father about to brag about his most beloved son. Hoth, too, looked proud, but Peter noticed that some of the others around the table diverted their attention from the discussion to the food before them.  
    “If you recall the key point of my lecture in 1938,” von Falkenstein said, “I hypothesized that what the religious fools think of as Heaven and Hell are indeed real, just as real as our facility here or any other place on the face of the Earth or in the universe that surrounds us. They occupy locations in space-time just like everything else, although not quite in the same way. They are slightly out of phase with our own reality, hidden in an invisible mist, if you take my meaning.” He waved a hand in a dismissive gesture and scowled. “Had that idiot Einstein taken his theories just a little bit further, he would have seen what I have seen.”
    Peter nodded, his dinner momentarily forgotten as he listened.
    “And because of these peculiarities, we could never reach those places or others like them through space travel, in one of von Braun’s theoretical rocket ships, for example. Those are nothing but children’s toys.” He leaned forward again and lowered his voice as he stared into Peter’s eyes. “But we can reach them through a type of Einstein-Rosen bridge, a wormhole. Those two simpletons managed to deduce that much, but they fell far short of the true possibilities.”
    “The ring in the cavern,” Peter said slowly as a cloud of butterflies exploded in his stomach. “It’s a wormhole generator.”
    “Precisely!” Von Falkenstein sat back and gleamed at Peter as if he were a child who had correctly deduced the answer to a particularly difficult riddle. “Hoth here was able to create a device based on the principles of superconductivity that, when huge amounts of power are applied in just the right way, is able to create a portal in space time.”
    The bite of sauerbraten Peter had just swallowed coiled in his stomach like a snake as he considered the possibilities. “With such a portal,” he said slowly, “you — we — could send agents or troops anywhere we wished. We could assassinate the allied leaders and leading generals in their beds, put troops or bombs right in the middle of their command bunkers or the American Pentagon…” He felt the blood draining from his face and hoped the others around the table wouldn’t take notice. “Even now, with the Allies knocking on our very door, the Reich could win the war in a matter of months, perhaps even weeks, with no more than a handful of men.”
    Von Falkenstein’s beaming expression faltered.
    Hoth cleared his throat, his proud smile having evaporated into a frown. “Unfortunately, that is not how the gate functions,” he explained. “It is a portal through space-time, yes, but we have not yet been able to make it function as the Einstein-Rosen theories would have you believe. It is a doorway, but not one that we can open at any location we might choose.”  
    “I was initially puzzled, of course,” von Falkenstein said, “because the gate did not conform to the Einstein-Rosen theories. Anyone who steps through does not