With a gift for visionary fiction that 'would make Robert A. Heinlein proud' (Entertainment Weekly), three-time Hugo Award-winning author Allen Steele now imagines an alternate history rooted in an actual historical possibility: What if the race to space had occurred in the early days of World War II? It's 1941, and Wernher von Braun is ordered by his fuhrer to abandon the V-2 rocket and turn German resources in a daring new direction: construction of a manned orbital spacecraft capable of attacking the United States. Work on the rocket--called Silvervogel--begins at Peenemunde. Though the plan is top secret, British intelligence discovers it and brings word to Franklin Roosevelt. The American president determines that there is only one logical response: the United States must build a spacecraft with the ability to intercept Silvervogel and destroy it. Robert Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuel rocket, agrees to head the classified project. So begins a race against time between two secret military programs and two brilliant scientists whose high-stakes competition will spiral into a deadly game of political intrigue and unforeseen catastrophes played to the death in the brutal skies above America.