Filin paused then, to catch his breath before spewing further, I thought. But the silence stretched, so I offered a comment: “We’ll use his Proton, won’t we? For our own lunar spacecraft?” Once again, I had blundered, mentioning the secret Proton.
But Filin was so intent on his tirade that he didn’t notice my lapse. “We may use his Proton, assuming he can get the damned thing to fly properly.” He described two successful launches of the big booster the previous spring, but though both had delivered large payloads to orbit, the violence of the ride had made them useless, and would have seriously injured a cosmonaut crew. “That’s another thing: Chelomei will give the generals any damn thing they ask for, whether they need it or not. The Proton was designed to carry a fifty-megaton nuclear warhead. Who needs a big cigar to blow a deeper hole in the ground?”
He flopped down behind his desk again, stacking and restacking papers. “Chelomei is supposed to use his Proton to send a cosmonaut around the Moon in his own little spacecraft,” he said, much more quietly now. “The Central Committee gave him that job when Khrushchev was still in power. Just before he died, Korolev got them to think about giving it back to us. He showed them how ridiculous it was to use Chelomei’s spacecraft, which had no proven propulsion, guidance, recovery, or environmental systems, when we here at our bureau have done all these things over and over again.
“It’s still up in the air, though. It all depends on my new Luna.” I could see the point: It would validate the Korolev team’s guidance, propulsion, and deep space communications, for starters. “The bonus is, if it works, we also beat the Americans. Their Surveyor won’t be ready for months yet.”
Nadiya the birdwoman was in the doorway. “They’re here for you,” she said, her face a mask of annoyance at me, at Filin, and for all I know, at her lot in life.
Filin actually started at this rebuke. Then, as if catching himself, he smiled. “A minute.” Nadiya glared at me before withdrawing, at which point Filin burst into laughter. “For the tiniest moment, I thought she meant the black van was finally here for me!” The black vans, of course, were favored by State Security in rounding up enemies of the people not so very many years before. “I was sure something had happened to the spacecraft!”
He was clearly manic, a man under extreme pressure. As if I needed any further proof, when I excused myself, he suddenly seized me and kissed me like a son. “Yuri, you have stood by me. Keep up the good work, and God willing, you will take the next trip at my side.”
Wondering what Filin meant, I got out of there.
The office was practically deserted when I returned. Some of my colleagues had gone off to the cosmodrome with Filin, while others were no doubt at lunch.
Triyanov saw me sneaking back in and asked where I’d been. Filin’s office, I told him.
“How was he?” Triyanov seemed genuinely concerned.
I tried to describe Filin’s mood swings without going into the substance of our conversation. Triyanov heard me out, then nodded. “I’m not surprised. There is tremendous pressure on him to make this flight. None of us have Korolev around to frighten the ministry or go to Ustinov.”
“I thought the ministry and Ustinov were the same.”
Triyanov showed me his steel teeth, shaking his head like a grandfather tolerating a child’s question. “In a socialist paradise, Yuri, every worker has the same goal. Since we have not yet achieved that paradise, emotions and alliances affect every decision.
“Ustinov has been the master of the arms industry for twenty-five years. Korolev, Korolev’s bureau, and Artemov have been loyal supporters, producing many triumphs for him. So he protects us and listens to our complaints.
“But Ustinov is not God. He was never part of Khrushchev’s clan, so there were always checks on his power. His rival is a general named Grechko, whose creature the Hammer is.”
“And the Hammer supports Chelomei. Who hired Khrushchev’s son.”
Triyanov nodded. “Exactly. Now, when Khrushchev was kicked out, his whole clan suffered. Ustinov has an excellent relationship with Brezhnev and Kosygin, the new leaders, so we have been insulated against punishment for our failures.
“But the war goes on. The Hammer wants to put his deputy, General Tyulin, in charge of the bureau. Tyulin is a part of Ustinov’s clan… but the Hammer trusts him much more than he will ever trust Artemov or Filin. It’s also a great way to get Tyulin out of his office.”
“Would that be so bad? Having a deputy minister come in and take over?”
“Not at all. Tyulin is an old rocketeer; he worked for GIRD when he was a college student, before the Army got hold of him. He’s very wise in the ways of the world. You’ll meet him.
“But whatever his virtues, he has not grown up here. So all the pretenders to Korolev’s throne will join forces against him.”
It was bad enough trying to deal with the hard work of engineering, with facts and figures. How could I possibly be expected to keep straight all these personalities, these clans? “It sounds medieval,” I said.
Triyanov laughed and shook my hand. “Nothing less!” Then his tone changed. “Speaking of matters medieval, there is a meeting of the bureau’s Party members tomorrow evening in the main auditorium.” Triyanov obviously knew that I was, like any ambitious student at Bauman, a member of the Party’s youth organization, the Komsomol. I had joined as a Young Pioneer at the age of twelve, much as an American male would join the Boy Scouts. I had managed to progress through the ranks without distinguishing myself. No one had ever asked me to become secretary of a Pioneer or Komsomol group, for example.
And though I would laugh at other people’s jibes — such as those I’d heard from Triyanov on our test flight — and might even make a cautious one myself, I was not anti-Party by any means; and I put in more than my share of time on Saturday potato-picking and other Party work. Even as I realized that my country, my government, my Party had committed errors, I believed they rose out of pure motives, to create a better world. I did not approve of the West, with its money-grubbing and imperialist wars, such as the one in Vietnam.
Yet, in my last year at Bauman I had grown wary of the petty jealousy that infected Party activities, having seen promising students denounced anonymously, so I had not been especially active. Which was to be expected and, in fact, was tolerated in last-year students. Besides, I was an engineer; engineers were allowed certain eccentricities, as long as their work was directed toward the betterment of the worker’s paradise. And there was no profession more glorious than aviation engineering.
I thanked Triyanov for the notice. “Will I see you there?”
He laughed so hard he got red in the face. “I never joined the Party. Otherwise I’d be wearing two stars and sitting in some office over at Chkalov. I went to meetings, of course, when I was younger than you, primarily to meet girls. But their fathers and mothers and relatives kept disappearing, and it made me think there were dangers involved in being a Bolshevik. Then the war came along, and nobody cared whether you had a Party card or not. They wanted to know if you could kill Germans.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. The situation didn’t require sympathy. But, as a good Party member — or potential member, since I was still only in the Komsomol — I could hardly be enthusiastic.
Triyanov noted my discomfort, standing and taking me by the arm. “You go, Yuri. Keep in mind, however, that five percent of the population of our Soviet Socialist Republic are Party members. But one hundred percent of our cosmonauts.”