Sunlight once again illuminates the interior of the space machine now orientating itself to the Sun. The curve of Earth is suffused with an orange glow. Its outer spectrum is again visible: light blue edge, darker blue, then violet and, at the end, black space.
In space, the Sun shines so brightly that Gagarin can’t even look in its direction. At times, he has to put filters over the portholes to dim its harsh illumination as it floods into the cabin with a blinding, almost molten, intensity. It seems to be hundreds of times brighter than it appears to people down on the planet. But in space sunlight has a preternatural brilliance.
Gagarin narrates what he’s experiencing, speaking into the tape recorder that is running throughout the flight. He says his perspective is like that of a jet pilot at very high altitude. Deep below him are mountains, rivers, forests, islands, coastlines and the broad oceans – and countries the size of jig-saw pieces. Large rivers are dark but gleaming faintly from such a distance, looking almost motionless. High clouds below him cast shadows which flicker on surfaces.
For the celestial aviator, the most astonishing sight has been the horizon’s band of colours, a thin, pale blue halo of light, passing into turquoise, then darkening into violet.
No person has ever crossed the planet at such speeds. But if Vostok 1 goes any slower than its 28,000 kilometres per hour, it’ll fall back to Earth.
“I’m continuing the flight, and I’m coming to the Americas,” he communicates.
After a further ten minutes, he arrives at the base of the South American continent. It has taken him one hour to fly from the Cosmodrome across Russia, over the North Pacific, down past the Equator and through the Straits of Magellan. By comparison, in 1927, Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis flew over 33 hours to reach Paris from New York. Human progress, Gagarin concludes, is greatly accelerating in power, as nature’s forces became better understood in order to gain more ascendancy over them.
Humanity is rising, he imagines.
Vostok 1 flies over the southern Atlantic Ocean. Radio Moscow then broadcasts news of the mission to the world. The information stuns everyone who hears it. Is this news a hoax?
Gagarin eats a meal and drinks some water, although he’s not especially hungry or thirsty. In the weightlessness, he can’t open his mouth very wide. The concentrated food itself, in tubes, has been prescribed by the Academy of Medical Sciences.
While enjoying refreshments, Gagarin thinks about his mother. Does she know yet where he is? Has Valya, his wife, managed to get a message to her at last?
These thoughts of his mother prompt a brief mood of nostalgia. He remembers how he’d played as a child in the orchards of the kolhoz, or collective farm, in the village of Klushino, where he was born on 9 March, 1934.
His mother had been a diary-maid, his father a carpenter and joiner. They were humble, hard-working folk in the Soviet collective farm system. Eventually, his father had been promoted to premises manager, responsible for maintenance of farm buildings and machinery. The Gagarins had lived in a small wooden cabin.
On warm summer evenings, the children had often slept outside on hay beds. At such times, he’d turned into a star-gazer. He’d sometimes wondered if there were any forms of life out there on any of the planets or even on large asteroids. His older brother, Valentin, had taught him names of some of the constellations. He and his older sister, Zoya, had often ended up babysitting their youngest brother, Boris. In those halcyon days, Yuri was known as a happy boy and a mischievous prankster.
Then in the summer of 1941, their time of childhood innocence had come to an abrupt end as several German divisions attacked the Soviet Union. In response, Stalin had drawn in the Germans deep into hinterland, hoping to trap them in the Russian winter. It had been a tactic which had eventually worked – but at terrible cost. Heavy battles were fought in Minsk, Yelnya and Smolensk. Sometimes, the villagers saw planes bearing the red star on their wings flying overhead, temporarily reassured that Russia still controlled the skies.
By October 1942, German artillery had begun firing on Klushino, bringing the front line to their doorstep. It was too late for the Gagarins to flee. Shells fell around them on a daily basis.
The Gagarins were cut off from the outside world, with no newspapers, radio broadcasts or post reaching them. After what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was only a few months of occupation, the villagers started to notice waves of wounded German soldiers appearing in the countryside. They began to believe the tide of war might have turned. When columns of German troop-carriers, tanks and artillery passed through the village, they knew the invaders were in retreat, finally beaten back.
Back in Klushino, food was scarce, fear was plentiful, life had been reduced to a scramble for survival. No one knew what was really happening at the front line or in the rest of the country. Then, a Soviet cargo plane flew over the countryside dropping masses of leaflets. It was news of a big defeat of Germany at Stalingrad. It was just a question of time before the invaders would leave Russia altogether.
At last, on 9 March, 1944, the Nazi occupational forces were driven out. Slowly, the Dark Force of war was overcome.
The women and youth of the kolkhoz took back control. They began the clearing up and painful rebuilding process. All around them, houses and farms were in ruin, livestock depleted, schools and other buildings destroyed or in disarray. But there was no denying the sense of freedom sweeping through the nation.
Shortly after the war, Yuri had joined a model aeroplane group, feeding his new fascination with aviation. At school, his favourite subjects became maths and physics. He had wanted to become somebody, to be part of the Soviet Union’s rise from the ashes of war.
Now, looking down from space, where he can view whole countries speeding away below him, his birth-place has become a mere pin-prick. He realises that Earth itself is only a small ship floating in a sea of space. Cities, countries and even continents seem to just blend below him into one whole, indivisible planet. Everything flattens out from such a great height. Even mountain ranges are like little scars on the land, rivers like mere cracks, cities like toys of the gods.
At that very moment, far below him, his father, Alexei Gagarin, is carrying out a job on the collective farm in their home village, when some farm workers ask him a lot of questions about his son.
“Why? What’s it to you?” Alexei asks,perplexed.
“Didn’t you hear? On the radio they said that Major Gagarin is flying in space.”
“No, my son is only a senior Lieutenant. It must be someone else.”
“No, it’s him. It’s Yuri, we’re sure of it.”
Mr Gagarin is dumbfounded. Puzzled, he gazes up into the sky.
He doesn’t know that his son has become a spaceman.
Up in orbit, out of sight, Yuri continues to reminisce and to think about the future for his family. He pictures his wife Valya, his best friend. The couple have always had a lot in common, able to share, with ease, both small and big things. When he’d met her, after his induction into the Soviet defence force at the Orenburg military base, he’d found they shared a love of books, an interest in theatre and a passion for ice skating. She’d worked at the city telegraph office. He was in seventh heaven when she later accepted his proposal of marriage.