At last his family had respite from the years of cold and exile, but for Cosmonaut Yefgenii Mikhailovich Yeremin the situation was less comfortable. Though he didn’t confess his insecurity, he’d joined an elite group, some of whom had already flown in space and many of whom had been in training for five years or more. His size was a handicap; by some criteria he exceeded the limits laid down for selection, and his eligibility to fly existing and future spacecraft would be evaluated mission by mission. Yet the Chief Designer himself had pressed for his selection, though it was processed in secret; the authorities gave way but had insisted his name could not appear in any official record, so he was obliged to enter under a pseudonym.
He was introduced to the nation’s leading pilots, the leading pilots of the culture. Here was Gagarin, here was Komarov, here was Leonov. Almost without exception the Americans chose seasoned test pilots as their astronauts, but in the main the cosmonauts were fighter pilots like him, men who’d made some kind of mark in military aviation; some believed they’d been selected on the strength of a single instance of daring or proficiency. One act could define a man in the eyes of his peers, in the eyes of his nation.
His fellow cosmonauts read the false name on his flight suit. They shook his hand and met his eyes. The use of the pseudonym was a charade — of course they knew who he was. Every man recognized his achievements as a combat pilot, but Korea wasn’t just part of the past. For all the lives lost, the war had achieved nothing for the great powers, so it was to be disregarded as a matter of policy. The first war of the nuclear age, the first of the jet age, the unique military confrontation between the new great powers that ruled the planet, had been forgotten in the space of little more than a decade, while Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin orbited the Earth with Project Gemini. They’d become the giants, not McConnell, not Jabara; they were giants as Ali was a giant, as Pelé, as Laver and Nicklaus were.
Yefgenii underwent intensive preparations at the Cosmonaut Training Center. The physical challenges were tougher than those given to fighter pilots. Now he was a man in his thirties. The stresses hurt him. They stretched his stamina. He needed to adapt to new techniques and learn the engineering of vehicles different from any form of aircraft he’d ever flown.
He adapted. He was a quiet man who listened to instructions. He studied each operation in detail. He analyzed how he could make a technique more efficient or more precise for himself. The technicians noted his improvements. In the simulators, his decisions were quick and accurate. He was always calm, always austere and remote, but this was the hardest work of his life, the steepest hill yet. He dared not show a splinter of strain.
The cramped seats and capsules were designed within payload weight limits. Every gram was crucial. He was nearly a foot taller than Gagarin and his height caused him endless pain, in his knees, in his shoulders and worst of all in his back, but his weight was the greater trouble, because it might exclude him from a mission. He began to refuse the widow’s meals, with the excuse that he had to work or that some training exercises were best carried out on an empty stomach. He was becoming like a jockey, light for his height, lean and hard, always hungry.
He made parachute jumps. The pain shot from the base of his spine down his legs but, minutes later, despite a residual ache, he took on the next piece of suffering. He couldn’t tell anyone, couldn’t ever show, or that would be the end of him.
While the widow put the children to bed, he studied technical manuals. After what supper he might or might not have eaten, he would return to them; hours later, she’d declare she was going to bed, but he’d carry on, into the night, reading fine print till his vision blurred, his stomach aching with hunger.
It reminded him of the orphanage, of the mathematics that had launched his trajectory. That drive he’d found in himself, what he was capable of, this was something he had to find again. The sky above was black, but not with the oppressive clouds of a city in ruins; this was the blank open canvas on which a man could blaze like a comet.
Gevorkian informed Yefgenii they were throwing a New Year’s party at OKB-1. Only a handful of cosmonauts were invited, but he was to be one of them, at the personal request of the Chief Designer.
Hundreds of people filled a vast hall decorated with balloons. Outside, fireworks banged and blazed in the night. Ges led him to the buffet table. Champagne bottles stood in rows behind a glinting array of flutes. Ges chatted with fellow trainees while Yefgenii drank straight away to settle his nerves.
He observed the Chief Designer near the band, laughing with Gagarin and Leonov. Then a woman in a ball gown asked him to dance. The Chief Designer obliged and they spun off across the dance floor. The women were elegant and admiring. For the cosmonaut corps, there were always such women.
Komarov joined Gagarin and Leonov. He was a grave older man, a senior test pilot, the command pilot of Voskhod 1, which had carried the first three-man crew. These men had missions behind them. They were a breed apart from those who’d trained for space but had never flown. They glowed. They were themselves celestial objects.
Gevorkian approached Yefgenii, poured himself a glass of champagne. He studied the nervousness in Yefgenii’s expression. “I’m just a genius,” Gevorkian said. “You’re a legend.”
Gevorkian led Yefgenii across the divide to Gagarin. Gagarin greeted them with a broad handsome grin, this celestial man as great as his nation. He was the most powerful living symbol of Soviet achievement, the most famous pilot in history. His name would live longer than countries.
They toasted the New Year. Gagarin ate canapés. Like the small men, he never worried about his weight; physical exercise would keep him trim. Yefgenii watched the tasty morsels of food passing Gagarin’s lips. He declined them, suffering hunger pangs.
The Chief Designer returned. Now a cosmonaut, Yefgenii was permitted to know his name. “S.P….” said Gevorkian.
Sergei Pavlovich Korolev disregarded Yefgenii’s pseudonym. “Kapetan Yeremin,” he said. “How are you finding our enterprise so far?”
“It’s my honour to participate, thank you, Sergei Pavlovich.”
“Now you’ve joined us, I have the team to beat the Americans.” He threw an arm round Yefgenii’s shoulders. Yefgenii was taken by surprise. He felt awkward at the physical closeness. He worried the Chief Designer was drunk.
Korolev continued, “I’ve dedicated my intellectual life to achieving firsts. The first satellite, the first probe to the Moon, the first man in space, the first woman, the first three-man crew, the first EVA. You beat the Americans all those times in Korea, Ivan the Terrible. You beat their U-2. Now you’ll help us beat them to the Moon.”
He beckoned Gagarin, Leonov and Komarov. His gestures were flamboyant. He was a leader, and more, he was a magician. The three cosmonauts joined in. Korolev hugged them as he’d hugged Yefgenii, kissed their foreheads. Yefgenii saw he wasn’t drunk. He was brimming with life and ambition. “Come the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution,” he said, “two of you will be orbiting the Moon.”
Korolev raised his glass again, and so did the cosmonauts. The magical Chief Designer had swept away Yefgenii’s doubts about the future and his own role in it. Yefgenii grinned and threw his glass in the air, as much a part of the enterprise as any other man.
A few weeks later Korolev was dead. He’d gone into hospital for routine surgery and they’d found a tumor; he bled; his heart and lungs gave out on the operating table; then it was Komarov, piloting the first Soyuz, who became the first man to die during spaceflight when the parachutes failed after reentry; and a year later it was Gagarin, killed on a training flight when another aircraft near-collided with his MiG-15. If any man’s life had been synecdochic of his nation’s, it was his; Yuri Gagarin was the Russian DiMaggio. Even he could be taken, even he, the immortal.