“He reminds me of Nadya,” said the Chief Designer.
Mishin and Bushuyev exchanged a look.
“He’s certainly as capable physically,” said one of them.
“Though his personality,” said the other, “is considerably warmer.”
“Did you never meet Nadya’s twin?” The Chief Designer whispered this.
Mishin and Bushuyev went rigid. They had known the other Nadya better than anyone, and it was taboo to mention the twins outside of the private depths of the Chief Designer’s office.
“She was like that,” said the Chief Designer. “If sadder.”
He gazed at one of the unoccupied treadmills.
“Giorgi is ready,” said the Chief Designer.
Mishin and Bushuyev visibly relaxed.
“Yes,” said one of them.
“But our ship is not.” Pain flared in the scar on the Chief Designer’s head. He ground his artificial molars together until it subsided. “We need a launch in six months, before the General Designer can ground-test Proton.”
Mishin and Bushuyev tensed again.
“But, Chief Designer,” said one of them, “we don’t even have half a rocket assembled.”
The other, “Not to mention the issues with the ablative heat…”
The Chief Designer snapped, “Don’t tell me what we can’t do.”
Giorgi looked over. He faced forward again and ran faster.
“Let’s not argue in front of the children,” said the Chief Designer. “Giorgi may be ready, but we’re not ready for him. Ignore the heat shield. Just get me a rocket assembled in six months.”
Mishin and Bushuyev leaned in. “We don’t have a twin to pilot it.”
“Not for Giorgi, but we have a whole roomful of twins we have yet to use.”
Giorgi whipped a towel from the treadmill’s railing and dabbed at his brow, though there was not enough sweat there to see from across the room.
THE KENNEL ERUPTED in a chorus of yips when the Chief Designer entered. A few of the dogs were running free while the rest poked their noses out of the grated doors at the front of their cages, four-by-four squares stacked along the back wall. The earthy scent of dozens of dogs crowded the air. The attendant, sitting at a low metal desk, a book spread open in front of her, looked up slowly. She leapt to her feet when she recognized the Chief Designer.
Years ago, he had visited every day, but when people replaced dogs as the first cosmonauts, his attention had been necessarily diverted. Now he saw the dogs only rarely, when his guilt seemed too much to bear, the pain of his scar throbbing, and he knew that the dogs would show him affection undiminished by time. The three uncaged dogs circled him, jumping up and putting their forepaws against his thighs. Laika, Strelka, and Kasha, the daughter of the original Kasha, who was brought to Star City with the Leonid twins—how many years ago was that—by Tsiolkovski, back when Tsiolkovski still visited.
“Chief Designer,” said the attendant.
He could not remember her name. He was not even sure that she had been the attendant the last time he’d visited the kennel. Nadya and Leonid spent much of their time caring for the dogs, every free moment it seemed, and one of them was usually here. But they would be away for weeks.
Bending down, fighting against the ache in his bad knee, he pulled the three dogs into a squirmy embrace. They licked at his neck and face, panting sour breath. He released them and laughed. He scratched each behind the ears in turn. Kasha ran to the corner and returned with a length of rope, knotted on each end. She dropped it in front of the Chief Designer. He picked it up and slung it back to the corner. The three dogs darted after it, wrestling over the prize. Kasha emerged from the scrum victorious and trotted back to the Chief Designer, Laika and Strelka jostling for position behind her.
Falling back into a seated position, the Chief Designer allowed Kasha to climb up onto his lap. She dropped the rope and twisted her head to gnaw on the knots with her molars. Her fur was pure white and thick all over, hiding her thin frame in an illusion of bulk. The Chief Designer could have lifted her with one hand.
Most of the dogs had twins in the cages, not blood relatives but animals that looked enough like one another that they could pass for identical in black and white photographs. Kasha did not, though. She had never trained to go into space. That had been the intent when Tsiolkovski brought her mother. The original Kasha was the first, in fact. But no twin could be found for her, except maybe this Kasha, her daughter. Mishin and Bushuyev, who nabbed dozens of strays and not a couple unattended family pets, could find nowhere in Moscow another dog so perfectly white, none with a tail that curled up over her back like a sickle.
In the early days, this Kasha, still a puppy, had free roam of Star City, a couple times turning up in clean rooms to the angry shrieks of engineers. She even flew with the Chief Designer to the first launch. He remembered Nadya, the one who should have died, sitting on the floor in the corner of the control bunker, wedged up against two walls at once, her bandaged left leg extended straight out in front of her. She hung her head and sloped her shoulders—the only time the Chief Designer ever saw her with poor posture—like she was crying, but the stony façade of her face never broke. Kasha, who had been sniffing around the control console, saw her there, sat, and cocked her head. It was just as unusual for Kasha to be still as it was for Nadya to slouch. Kasha took tentative steps toward the corner. She nosed Nadya’s knee, licking the bandage exactly twice, and then stepped back as if considering the taste. Her tail wagged, a great fan of fur, and then she laid down, resting her head on Nadya’s thigh.
The Chief Designer almost cried then, and had nearly missed liftoff as he composed himself. He almost cried again now, remembering it.
Laika and Strelka curled up on either side of him, and he ran a hand down each of their backs. Kasha continued to gnaw at and slobber on the knots. The Chief Designer looked at the cages, at the little black noses that poked out of the grates like buttons, but he tried not to look too hard. He did not want to see the twins of these dogs at his sides, the ones who would be, like five humans before them, sentenced to die alone, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest living thing. He did not want to see them for the same reason he had difficulty looking the human cosmonauts in the eye. To do so made him feel like an executioner, stopping by the cell of the condemned.
“I’m not a heartless man,” he said to Kasha.
The dog lifted her head from the rope and considered him.
“I did what had to be done.” The scar on his head throbbed.
The attendant asked, “What was that, Chief Designer?”
The Chief Designer lifted Kasha off his lap, stood, rising on creaky joints to his full height, and brushed away some, though not all, of the white fur that clung to his pants.
“Prepare Laika, Strelka, and their backups for training,” said the Chief Designer.
“Training?”
“I believe that’s your function here.”
“Forgive me, Chief Designer. I didn’t realize there was a mission planned for the dogs.”
“You’re the first to know.” The Chief Designer felt the coldness in his own voice and forced himself to soften it. “Mishin or Bushuyev should have the old training regimen, if it’s no longer contained in your own files.”
“Yes, Chief Designer. Thank you.”
All the dogs barked goodbyes as the Chief Designer left the kennel, all except Kasha, sweet, sweet Kasha, who regarded him with the concern of a mother, an expression both worried and proud. “She’s just a dog,” he spoke to himself, but he knew it was only half of an argument and not a belief.