Triyanov started to introduce us, but the pilot surprised me by smiling and holding up his hand. “I know Yuri. Nikolai Ribko’s son. We met at the Kremlin Hospital.” Now I recognized him: Ivan Saditsky, the young major who was traveling with Gagarin the day Korolev died.
Saditsky snuffed out his cigarette and crawled inside the Voskhod mockup. “Is he flying the mission?” I asked Triyanov.
“He’s been the leading candidate for the past few weeks, but Kamanin keeps changing his mind.” Kamanin was another general, this one in charge of manned spaceflight and the military cosmonaut team.
Saditsky immediately began complaining loudly about a set of switches on the control panel being out of reach. Triyanov gently explained that the mockup was not configured as a flight simulator, but merely to test life-support systems.
“How do I know you’ve got them in the right place when everything else is cockeyed?” Saditsky snapped, pulling himself through the circular hatch. “I’ve trained on a different system for six months. Sitting inside that piece of crap will set me back.”
Triyanov glanced sideways at me. “What do you want me to do?”
Saditsky smiled at me. “Are you the bureau’s test engineer, Yuri?”
I glanced at Triyanov, who answered, “He certainly is!”
Saditsky slapped me on the back. “Then you can test your bureau’s system!”
“Where are you going?” Triyanov asked, as Saditsky headed for the hatchway.
“Back to the center,” he snapped. “I’ll be looking for your report.”
And he was gone. “What a prick,” one of the other bureau engineers muttered, but only when Saditsky was safely out of range.
“Speaking of pricks,” Triyanov said, pointing at me, “we’ll need yours.”
“Excuse me?”
“The test, Yuri. It’s part of the life-support system. How does man piss in weightlessness?”
“I thought they’d have mastered that by now.”
“The Vostok cosmonauts couldn’t get out of their spacesuits, so they just peed into a hose, like pilots. Even Tereshkova… they rigged some kind of catheter for her.
“Feoktistov and his two pals on the first Voskhod were the only ones to fly without suits, so far. We had them wearing hoses and bottles, too, which was tolerable only for a day. The next flight is two weeks long. Who wants to be putting on and taking off a condom the whole time?”
“None of us, I’m sure.”
“Step inside. Shoes off.” Triyanov moved aside as I bent down to unlace my sneakers. Then I grabbed the access bar mounted above the circular hatch, as I had seen Saditsky do, and slid in, feetfirst.
There was only one seat, on the far wall of the sphere, and it was mounted at right angles to the hatch. On the “floor,” which was a collection of tubes, wires, and netting, someone had thoughtfully placed several wooden blocks — steps. I used those to reach the seat, careful not to bump anything.
There was light from the hatch, and a single lamp just above my head. Otherwise the sphere was dark. I was reclined, almost on my back. The seat was covered with a blue cushion and felt surprisingly comfortable. In front of me was an instrument panel like that of a small airplane. At my right hand was a pistol-grip controller. I found I could reach the panel and the controller without even extending my arms.
“Cozy, isn’t it?” Triyanov said.
“I could take a nap.”
“That’s about the only thing these guys will be able to do for two weeks.”
“I think I could stand it for maybe a day.”
“Well, they say that in weightlessness it all seems so much bigger.”
“All right,” I said, “two days.” Triyanov laughed, then I continued: “Now, what about this pissing tube?”
“That’s the genius of these guys at the medical institute. They want to do away with the tube completely. For one thing, it would save space inside the cabin. The tube also means that a lot of the precious body fluid is lost. It evaporates, it never gets where it’s supposed to go.”
“So what?”
Triyanov was taking extreme delight in this. “Some of them have the idea that if we can save that piss, we can purify and filter it, and turn it back into drinking water.” He must have seen the look on my face. “Don’t worry, we’re not testing the recycling system. Though you’ve drunk worse if you’ve ever turned on the tap in downtown Moscow.…” Triyanov jerked a thumb toward a receptacle in the cabin wall below my feet. “There.”
“There?” The instrument looked more like a saddle than a toilet seat. Instead of being flat, the rear and forward areas were raised.
“You apply yourself to the ‘fountain,’ close it down.” Triyanov showed that the front section pivoted open and shut. “Then do your Party business.”
“Sitting on the wall?”
“It won’t make any difference in weightlessness.”
“We’re not weightless.”
“We will be soon.”
I climbed out of the spacecraft as the last test crewman came aboard, tugging the airplane hatch closed. I could feel rather than hear the jets starting up.
“We can simulate weightlessness by first diving the whole plane, then pulling up into a climb. As we go over the top of the arc, we float. Just like cosmonauts.”
“For how long?”
“About forty seconds.” He winked. “Long enough.” He handed me a plastic bottle. “Drink up!”
Fifteen minutes after takeoff, we had reached an altitude of ten thousand meters, orbiting above the clouds east of Moscow and headed toward Noginsk, when Triyanov told me to get inside the spacecraft. Other crewmen loaded film into cameras aimed through the porthole.
“All you have to do is unstrap, float over, sit down, and launch.”
“It might take me a couple of tries.”
“Don’t worry about that. We’re supposed to fly twenty arcs.” I edged into the seat. Triyanov reached inside and helped me close the restraints, then slid out to find his own seat.
The aircraft seemed to topple forward, and I felt myself flung toward the ceiling of the Voskhod as we dove toward the ground. Once my father took me to an amusement park in the Crimea. The big attraction there was a roller coaster, and I badgered him until he allowed me a ride. He also insisted on coming along. I found the ride terrifying and wonderful. The merited test pilot of the Soviet Union threw up. Strapped into this little cabin, being shoved toward its ceiling, I felt like my father had felt, queasy and disoriented.
Pulling out of the dive was a bit better — for me, as I sank into the comfortable blue cushion. For a few seconds I felt a bit like a cosmonaut during launch. The others in the compartment, who were having the blood in their bodies pushed toward their feet, were turning various shades of white and green.
Then the plane began to climb, so sharply that I now felt as though I were standing on my head. Only the straps saved me from tumbling in a reverse somersault.
The angle of climb changed slightly… and the loose ends of my straps began to float. I had meant to get a head start on the test by slipping off my pants. Too late. I unbuckled, wondering how many seconds I had lost, and immediately turned the wrong way. I braced myself against the cabin roof and pushed backward.
“That’s the way!” Triyanov was floating outside the hatch. “Farther back… and lower.”
“How much time left?” I felt as though I’d been floating for five minutes already.
“Don’t worry about that. Get in the saddle.”
I finally managed to brace myself to where I could begin to think about my duties. I was sweating like a boxer now.
A claxon sounded.
“Okay, try it next time,” Triyanov said, swimming back to his seat. “Leave your pants off.”