The world floats beneath him in complete silence. As he maneuvers along the rail, he becomes oriented upward, so his head is now north. He can see the Baltic gliding under his chest, the Black Sea between his feet.
Yefgenii reaches a boom mounted on the outside of the BO. He’s transferred himself only a matter of metres from the hatch, but he feels hot and tired already. Every tiny movement in gripping the rail is complicated by an opposite and equal reaction that modifies his position and direction of movement. He struggles to ensure every motion produces the correct effect on his progress.
At last he secures himself to the boom. He activates the boom’s motor and the structure telescopes out toward the LK, carrying him with it.
The L-3 spacecraft Voskhodyeniye is a stack of modules, a Soyuz 7K-LOK attached to additional propulsion units and the lunar lander, the LK, all housed in a metal payload shroud that curves round the stack like the closed petals of a tulip. The LK is housed on the LOK’s nose, the engines sprout from its tail.
Now the stack is passing over Russia. Yefgenii glimpses the Urals floating up from the east, mountains rising in seconds rather than millions of years. He witnesses the illusion of the Earth turning from east to west as the spacecraft girdles the planet once every ninety minutes. The terminator bisects the Soviet Union and curves down into the Indian Ocean. He peers down upon bright blue waters that fade and blur eastward into night. It is night in India, in China, in Japan.
He reaches the hatch of the LK. He depressurizes the module from outside. He receives a green indicator light to proceed and a confirmation from Mission Control. He blows the hatch, unhooks the tether and clips it to the handrail, and then he enters the lunar lander. Outside night falls in an instant.
Inside the lander, the gauges, displays and power lights glow with current. Yefgenii closes the hatch, then repressurizes the cabin. He is breathing hard. His heart is racing. He fights to keep them under control, worried the flight physicians in Moscow will recommend a mission abort.
As the cabin pressure rises, his suit softens. Gevorkian’s voice says, “Voskhodyeniye, you are advised to rest. Five minutes.”
Yefgenii wants to argue but he knows he’s completed the daylight-critical transfer as planned. He has more time at his disposal. “Roger, Moscow.”
As the atmosphere thickens, sounds return. He hears the hum of current, the whir of fans. When rested, he removes his EVA helmet, his bubble helmet and his space gloves. His gloves and helmets unlock from the metal rings and hover in the lander till he stows them in the storage locker set aside for his Krechet-94 Moonsuit. Fans pump out hot air but it will be many minutes before the cabin warms to room temperature. Vapor balloons from his mouth and nose into perfect evanescent spheres. The chill refreshes him.
He carries out the checks on all the LK’s systems. He reports each phase to Mission Control. He does so with a tingle of nerves. One faulty piece of equipment and the flight will be scrubbed.
The flight plan allows for three revs while he works his way through the LK checklists. More than four hours later, in night broken only by the LK’s internal lighting, he puts his gloves and helmets back on and depressurizes the cabin. He exits the hatch into dawn. The terminator has tracked five hours west. The line that divides day and night on Earth arches across the Atlantic Ocean from Greenland to Antarctica.
Yefgenii returns to the BO. Once repressurization is complete, he removes the Orlan space suit, getting down to his gray two-piece flight suit. He drifts, with loose limbs. His muscles ache, his back is sore.
From the BO he shuts down the LK’s systems. One by one they go to sleep for the voyage to the Moon. Only the lander’s batteries hold a charge of their own.
He enjoys a short rest period, with the opportunity to take in food and fluid, while Mission Control evaluates the data he’s returned over the past sixteen hours. Sweat drenches his flight suit. Dark patches, fringed with salt, underhang his armpits; damp triangles cover his chest and back. Already the spacecraft reeks of human water in its various forms.
Gevorkian’s voice breaks the silence. “Voskhodyeniye, congratulations. All your systems are working perfectly. It’s been a hard day, but you’ve performed your duties admirably. You are clear to sleep.”
“Thank you.”
“Goodnight, Voskhodyeniye.”
“Goodnight, Moscow.” He says it to the TV camera, to the banks of faceless technicians watching in Mission Control, the only people on Earth who are witness to the embarkation of his voyage. In comparison, Apollo astronauts perform live telecasts viewed by millions, by billions — but perhaps something other than the standard operational secrecy of the Soviet system lurks behind the contrast.
When Soviet cosmonauts travel into space, a fear stows away that’s harder to shake loose than gravity: a recognition of the fragility of man and his works. Maybe the Americans have been blinded by the photo flashes of ticker-tape parades, but, for the Soviets, it’s so much easier to see, particularly since the passing of Gagarin, a man the size of a country who seemed as indestructible. The people he left behind understand that anything valuable can be stolen, anything vital can cease to exist, even those creations possessing the breadth of empires or the length of history.
And so, as Yefgenii Yeremin unfolds the metal frame of his mesh hammock and straps in to sleep, only the officials and technicians of the inner circle are permitted to share the hopes and fears of his perilous voyage; the world is not.
BLINDS COVER THE PORTHOLES of the BO. Through the night sharp daggers of sunlight have stabbed out from their edges. His sleep has been fitful. Too many worries have swooped and dived through his consciousness. The pitch of a fan changes and he wakes. He listens to it, straining in the darkness, till he convinces himself nothing’s wrong.
In the end he unstraps himself from the mesh hammock strung across a folding metal frame and floats free. He lifts the blinds an hour early on the start of his second day in space, though at this time his part of the sky remains in darkness. The black Earth turns beneath the portholes. The oceans are blank slabs of slate.
He takes on water from a plastic tube. His mouth feels dirty. He is stubbled and unwashed. He needs to urinate. He pops open his fly and rolls the convene of the waste management system over his penis. He turns the valve and feels a pull that disrupts the normal action of relaxing his urethral sphincter. It takes a few uncomfortable seconds before he passes water. It’s deep yellow from his dehydration. He closes the valve and unrolls the convene. A drop of golden liquid escapes. It forms a tiny sphere that drifts away into the cabin. He finds a wipe and folds it over the globule of urine. As he does so, yellow crystals drift past a porthole. His water has been jettisoned to space and turned in an instant to ice, a string of yellow beads. In train the crystals glide Earthward where, on contact with the atmosphere, travelling at orbital velocity, they’ll flash to vapor.
An increase in heart rate has alerted the flight physicians that he’s awake, but Mission Control has deferred communicating with the spacecraft to preserve an illusion of privacy. Now the flight clock reaches 24:00. “Good morning, Voskhodyeniye, come in,” says Ges, starting his shift as communicator.