Before winter came, the frostbite began to recede. The doctor was ordered to visit him, and, as he conducted his examination, he asked if he’d intended to kill himself. “I got drunk celebrating the triumph of Comrade Gagarin,” Yefgenii said. “I fell and couldn’t get up.” The doctor asked him if he’d lain in the snow because he’d wanted to die and Yefgenii said, “I was so drunk I didn’t appreciate the danger, I just fell asleep, like a drunken idiot.”
“You’ve been here a long time, Kapetan. Did you lose hope?”
Yefgenii shook his head, a firm movement, a fixed look. “The toughest flying conditions in the VVS, the Americans so close you can smell their fat. I belong here.”
The doctor nodded and made a note.
Yefgenii Yeremin was pronounced fit to fly. He’d continue to serve out his days. In the authorities’ eyes his collapse in the snow proved he considered his own life as expendable as they did, and perhaps one day this would be useful to know.
Alan Shepard was America’s first man in space, and Gus Grissom the second. In 1962 John Glenn became their first astronaut to orbit the Earth. Wally Schirra followed.
The Soviet Union answered by keeping men in orbit longer. The next stage was already in development: to launch a two-man crew, then to operate outside the capsule. Now that both nations had proven to themselves that their rockets worked and their men could operate in space, they were ready to commit the necessary resources. Perhaps it would even divert attention from obliterating each other. Each nation’s goal was simple: the enemy must not be allowed to fly his flag over the surface of the Moon. The Space Race had a finishing line.
Ivan the Terrible patroled the Arctic seas, invisible, unknown. He waited, always he waited, for American wings to rise across the white ridge at the top of the world. His own wings turned, the endless patrol went on.
IN THE FIRST WEEK OF APRIL, the Sun rose at midnight and set in early evening. By the end of the month, it had stopped setting at all. It was their eighth spring on Graham Bell. Gulls and kittiwakes circled the volcanic outcrops. Once again the ice cap had begun its long recession but only the southern isles were released, never this one.
Yefgenii let himself out of the little redbrick house. He eased the door shut so as not to wake the widow and the children. A few other men were emerging from their houses, leaving their wives and children asleep. The bus paused at the stop; he mounted the step and nodded an acknowledgment to the driver. Two more men entered the bus, talking to each other, laughing; they nodded at Yefgenii but sat elsewhere.
Today was May Day, the festival of the worker and of spring: May Day 1963. The whole country was starting two days of celebration. Only essential personnel were required to work. Yefgenii was one of the unlucky ones.
After met brief, Yefgenii put on his kit. His hands ached with weariness as he endured the routine of zipping into his immersion suit and g-suit. Then he slumped in a chair in the crew room. For the rest of the country there were plans for parties and parades — his children had been making banners all week — but he’d read, he’d sleep, he’d update his logbook.
Hours evaporated in the crew room. There was only one crew on duty, and they didn’t fly till afternoon. The zveno leader, Kapetan Ges, gave the men a twenty-minute warning. He passed out cigarettes and the men strolled clear of the fuel bowsers, chatting among themselves and with the ground crew.
Yefgenii found a space nearby to bend and stretch. He worked his fingers hard into the hollows of his back, to keep it supple. Ges watched him. This was Ivan the Terrible. He’d noted already he was an outstanding flier, quick and precise in formation, a smooth stick in maneuvering, wheels banging the numbers at every touchdown. Ges stubbed out his cigarette and ordered the other pilots to stretch too.
They flew in a four-ship that skimmed out over the Barents Sea. Ges took them down so low their wings lifted froth off the flat slate-gray waters.
A call came from Nagurskoye. “White Formation, you are ordered to steer 350, climb flight level 50.”
Ges responded, “Copy, Nova. 350, 50, White 1.” His voice was calm and crisp. In person Ges was clean-cut and handsome and had the knack of being liked by his superiors while still getting along with his peers. He’d volunteered for patrol on a national holiday.
They turned and entered a climb. Yefgenii’s eyes were trained upward, already searching for contrails. They crossed George Island, the glaciated south slipping under their noses, then the tundra of the northern tip. The vast polar ice field was opening out ahead of them, and slabs of cloud hung in scatters from horizon to horizon. The MiGs were tilted up, each with two missiles and a pair of drop tanks slung beneath them, laying twisted columns of contrail behind. At 5,000 metres Ges ordered them to level out. He reported to Nagurskoye and they were ordered to continue north.
Ges asked, “Nova, White 1. What’s going on?”
“Continue north, White 1. Information will follow.”
Something was happening. Yefgenii’s pulse quickened. He said, “We need to know what we’re looking for.”
A pause hung. The air rushed, their jets roared.
Ges answered, “I concur.” He dialed the Nagurskoye frequency and transmitted, “Nova from White Leader, I respectfully request further information for air recognition purposes.”
There was silence. The MiGs pressed north. The volcanic islands were far behind them now, a mottling of dark patches on the pack ice behind their tails.
At last Nagurskoye cut in. The air defense radar was tracking an unidentified contact at 20,000 metres or higher, heading north from the Plesetsk region at about 600 kilometres per hour. It was too high and too fast for interceptors and antiaircraft artillery. There were fighters in the air from every station in the Volga-Ural Command, but only the MiGs from Graham Bell stood any chance of making contact. They were to rendezvous with an M-4 tanker that was already airborne 100 kilometres to the north, and to await further instructions.
Yefgenii’s heart beat. He understood what must be up there. He knew the prize.
The ice cap curved toward the Pole. In the distance Yefgenii saw the top of the world with ridges of white cloud above and above them just the emptiness of the clear sky into which they pressed, with frost in crystal patterns glistening on their canopies. Waves of turbulence shook their ships.
Yefgenii was first to spot the tanker. His back was numb — the flesh stone-cold, the muscles rigid.
It was many minutes before Ges and the others could see it. They heard radar control advise that, on their present course and speed and on the contact’s extrapolated course and speed, the contact would be crossing through their overhead in about forty-five minutes. That’s how long they had to take on fuel and climb to ceiling.
Yefgenii peered ahead at the tanker. The converted M-4 glinted silver in the sun. Vortices corkscrewed off the tips of its huge swept-back wings.
Ges gave the order to line up for refuelling. Turbulence buffeted the MiGs. A couple of times it shook the pilots in their straps. Ges, in the lead, advanced into the tanker’s wake. An umbilical dropped out of the rear and began to snake toward the MiG’s nose. The end of the umbilical enlarged into a receptor. Ges bounced in the airstream, trying to line up the MiG’s refuelling probe with the bobbing waggling receptor. He drove into the umbilical and the probe locked into its receptor. He shifted a lever to open his tanks and fuel flowed into them from the M-4. Ges disengaged with a full tank and the next MiG took his place. The pilot accelerated past the receptor and had to throttle back. He lost height and had to let the tanker move ahead again so he could climb back into position. He tried to line up the probe on the receptor but he was veering from side to side. The receptor struck his nose and canopy and he throttled back out of range again.