Outside the Peenemünde wind-tunnel, Pökler has come to stand at night, next to the great sphere, 40 feet high, listening to the laboring pumps as they evacuate the air from the white sphere, five minutes of growing void—then one terrific gasp: 20 seconds of supersonic flow . . . then the fall of the shutter, and the pumps starting up again . . . he has listened, and taken it to imply his own cycle of shuttered love, growing empty over the year for two weeks in August, engineered with the same care. He has smiled, and drunk toasts, and traded barracks humor with Major Weissmann, while all the
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