Pokryshev made the introductions and then made an awkward departure. Gevorkian looked up at Yefgenii. He’d never seen a picture of him, had no idea what to expect. He hadn’t anticipated someone who looked so sad. That was Yefgenii now, still tall, but gaunt, the white-blond hair all but gone.
The two men stood in the open, in the grayness between an 8 a.m. dawn and 10 a.m. dusk. A freezing wind gusted off the pack ice, carrying showers of hard white flakes. Gevorkian said, “OKB-1 is looking for volunteers.”
MiGs were roaring off the runway a kilometre away; the wind was bringing the sound right to them.
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘we’re looking for volunteers.’ First-class fighter pilots under thirty-five years of age in excellent physical condition.”
“To do what?”
“We call them ‘cosmonauts.’”
Yefgenii smiled. Gevorkian was surprised to see him smile. He hadn’t expected it.
“Who told you I was here?”
“What?”
“Who told you about me?”
“Your victory over the U-2 was not without admirers, even in the highest places.”
Yefgenii studied Gevorkian. This was a chance, after all these years, and to question his potential deliverer’s motive would be foolish in the extreme.
Gevorkian read the look on Yefgenii’s face. “It was Comrade Ges.”
Yefgenii nodded. The flying flakes of ice bit into the side of his face.
“He told me about the U-2. Or, rather, he told our Chief Designer. You scored the victory and you saved his life.”
“Is that all he said?”
“He said you were the best pilot this country’s ever produced and they were keeping you in a glass case, with a sign that says Break open only in time of national crisis.”
Yefgenii laughed. “Ges is a cosmonaut now?”
“Yes, Kapetan, he is one of our leading trainees.”
“Trainee for what?”
“The Space Committee has finally issued a directive that we must endeavor to send a man to the Moon. We must beat the Americans.”
Another MiG accelerated down the runway. The scream of its jet crescendoed and then Yefgenii said, “Sounds like my kind of thing.”
Gevorkian saw how excited he looked. He hesitated. “Though, perhaps, with your application, we should be cautious…”
Yefgenii felt an ache of hunger. He couldn’t disguise it. He’d thought someone in authority had decided he’d served out his exile, at long last. That’s what he’d thought.
The wind shook the loose flaps of Yefgenii’s clothing. It drove into him, through him. Even after all these years he wasn’t used to it.
He said, “I was told you wanted to fly.”
“That’s right, Kapetan.”
“So let’s fly.”
They climbed to the south, over the bobbing ice floes of the Barents Sea, in a modified MiG trainer equipped with two seats and dual controls. The intercom loop was permanently open and the sounds of Gevorkian in the seat behind disconcerted Yefgenii. He could hear him breathing, he could hear every sniff and slurp.
“Do you believe you’ll be successful in sending a man to the Moon?”
“We intend to spread Communism to our closest celestial neighbor. All will go well for the first five years, then there’ll be a shortage of moondust.” Gevorkian laughed.
Yefgenii opened the throttle all the way and pitched back into the climbing attitude. The white ocean dropped behind them. The stubby white needle of the altimeter began to count up through the thousands. Sheets of cirrus plunged toward them and through and began to sink to earth. The air thinned, the sky darkened, and the world began to curve into a lens. They were topping 15,000 metres, nearing 16,000. A glistening cap of white curved over the top of the planet. The sky was bigger than countries and taller.
The climb shallowed. Even at full throttle the long narrow needle was barely adding on any more height. Yefgenii began a turn. The controls were sluggish. The aircraft was at its ceiling: too much bank and she’d stall and spin all the way down.
Over the ice cap floated a half moon. She was inchoate, she was a blur, a cataract. She seemed to lie just outside the glass of the canopy, hardly beyond their fingertips, but she was already slipping over the top of the world.
Yefgenii eased the aircraft’s nose down into a dive. “What’s OKB-1?”
The MiG gathered pace. Air roared over the canopy. Gevorkian had to shout. “The rocketry design bureau!” The wings shook till they broke through Mach 1, then they plunged straight down. The needle of the Mach meter continued to creep across the dial. Gevorkian knew they were approaching the MiG’s theoretical maximum speed. He clasped his hands hard across his lap. “I like to call my position ‘Head of Novel Thinking’!”
Yefgenii throttled back and coaxed the MiG’s nose out of the dive. “Why d’you call it that?”
“There’s something I discuss with the Chief Designer… I’d describe it as my grand enterprise. It involves the attainment of extreme altitude.”
“How high?”
“The stars.” Gevorkian waited. He could hear the sound of Yefgenii breathing in the seat in front but nothing else. “You’re not laughing, Kapetan? Normally they laugh.”
“No. I’m not laughing.”
Yefgenii levelled off. The pale ocean swung under the nose and then from beneath the fuselage emerged the distant harbor of Murmansk.
“Kapetan Yeremin, I urge you not to despair. The Chief Designer is an admirer of your achievements. He has the ear of those in authority, and they’re of a mind to listen.”
Yefgenii gazed out across the sea toward land. It was time to turn back for the runways of Franz Josef Land but he held the MiG in its aimless trajectory.
Gevorkian said, “All my life I’ve loved airplanes. I’ve loved everything about them. Your name was not unknown to me when mentioned by Comrade Ges. I heard the stories that came back from Korea. What can I say, Kapetan? Your exploits inspired me.” Gevorkian felt embarrassed so he continued without a pause. “A faceless apparatchik decided you should wither away in exile; I am not faceless. I can exhort the authorities to reconsider. In the space program, you would not be first in line. That would be a different kind of man, a spotless man, a flawless man — but one day in the future there might be a part for you to play, if you were prepared to wait…”
A submarine was surfacing on its return to Murmansk. It churned the waters into a long white wake. The Northern Fleet carried weapons that could destroy the world. The nuclear exchange would be measured in hours. Navies would rust. Air forces would vaporize. Cities would crumble. The ocean swallowed the submarine’s wake as it did the wake of every single vessel that passed. Man might obliterate himself from the earth, but the sea would still roll on for a million years or more.
Yefgenii gazed down into the water. Ice floes drifted like tombstones.
“I would wait,” he said.
Star City and Baikonur
1966–1969
LIFE WAS GOOD NOW, in comparison. Star City lay on the outskirts of Moscow. There they lived in a smart block of system-built flats with other cosmonaut families. Their home was warm, light and modern. They owned a television set. The widow didn’t have to queue for food or clothing; the shops were well stocked. Their larder bulged.
Ges and his wife lived across the hall. The women shopped together. The children attended the local school. They skipped off each morning hand in hand with Yuri Gagarin’s children, or Alexei Leonov’s.