So I went down to the key lady’s desk and begged the grandmother on station that Sunday night to let me use the telephone, calling Uncle Vladimir at the only home number I knew, that of his dacha. To my amazement, he answered with a single word: “Yes.”
I identified myself, and immediately noticed a change in his manner. He became jolly Uncle Vladimir talking to his nephew, not some mysterious force in the organs of State Security. “Yuri! Nice of you to call. What’s going on? Is your father back yet?” And more of that kind of thing.
I took this as a signal to avoid any overt mention of my work for him. “I didn’t know whether you’d heard or not, but I’m going to be at a medical institute for the next week undergoing some tests.”
He hadn’t heard — or so he let me think. “You’re not ill, are you?”
“No. It’s just part of my work.”
We did more family chitchat, and I hung up. His last words to me were, “Call me when you get out.”
There were five other bureau engineers who showed up at the IMBP on Khoroshev Lane in northwest Moscow, on the southern edge of the Central Airfield, the following Monday. Among them was Yastrebov, who had worked on the Cosmos 110 support team with me. I ran into him at the Begoyva metro station and walked with him to the hole-in-the-wall entrance to IMBP, which had more barbed wire and grim-faced guards than Baikonur itself. (I learned years later that the institute was bordered on three sides by the headquarters of the military intelligence directorate.)
Both of us carried small bags containing toiletries and a change of clothes. We had been told to prepare for five days of examinations, though we were also warned that tests could be extended into the following week.
Inside the compound we were directed to a side building that looked much like a pre-Revolution family residence. The house had actually been a kindergarten building until the creation of the IMBP. On the first floor was a classroom of sorts, where we were greeted by a Dr. Vasilyev, a man in his thirties, with dark, slick-backed hair and glasses, who told us that we were not patients at the IMBP, but “test subjects,” since the data collected from our examinations would be used in medical research papers. “There is a small bonus for this work, which will be paid to you at the end of your tests.”
“If I like it here, can I come back again?” Yastrebov said, jokingly.
Even Vasilyev smiled. “First see how you like it.”
There were forms to fill out — not only medical histories, but releases, security pledges, and soon. After a couple hours of that, we were shown our rooms on the second floor, where we got rid of our clothes, trading them for track suits. For the next week, everyone we saw either wore white lab coats or these track suits. Then we were split up to various rooms for the expected tests: heart rate, blood pressure, eyesight, urine samples. We were also measured, not just our height and weight, but in several other parameters, such as the distance from shoulders to hips; we had to be able to fit into the acceleration couches of a Soyuz, and into pressure suits.
After a lunch of porridge, which left us wanting more to eat, there were X rays and chest-thumpings and reflex tests — tedious, yes, but nothing unusual. During a break I happened to meet Yastrebov in the hallway. “This is nothing,” I said.
“You idiot. They haven’t even started on us. All this does is help them to identify your remains.”
That chilled me. Obviously Yastrebov, who worked with men who had already gone through the IMBP, knew more than I did. But what could they really do? There was no room in the little kindergarten house for large torture equipment — not unless they had their own Lubiyankastyle basement.
Sure enough, my next test was the vestibular apparatus — imagine a dentist’s chair equipped with a complete set of chest straps and restraints. I was belted into this thing, which then began to rotate to my left for a minute, all the while having to answer moronic questions from the examiner. (“What is twelve times eleven?”) Fine. But then the chair suddenly reversed direction for another minute, with more questions to be answered. So far, so good. When it stopped, I was unstrapped and ordered to bend down and touch the floor, then straighten up.
I almost passed out. As I felt the room swirl and my stomach turn over, I noticed the examiner writing down my reactions.
Before the end of the day, I was locked into a soundproof room and told to describe what sounds I heard, if any.
One of the bureau candidates was dismissed that first day. I remember seeing him pack up, a wistful look on his face. His dream of spaceflight was over.
Over the next few days we survivors would be stretched on a tilt table for over an hour, with the angle of tilt being changed according to some diabolical pattern, and our reactions to various angles duly noted. We would be encased in a kind of barrel from the waist down with the air pressure being bled out of the barrel. (Another one of us passed out after this test, and went home that evening.) We put on masks to measure our exhalations, then pumped away on a special bicycle. After every test, we would repeat the blood-pressure and heart-rate checks. The goal, we realized, wasn’t just to test us to destruction, but to evaluate our organism’s response to all these stresses.
There were also several sessions with psychologists of one kind or another, being quizzed about everything from what we saw in ink blots to what we thought of each other and the doctors examining us. One psychologist was deliberately insulting, hoping to judge our quickness to anger.
On Thursday the four of us were bused out to the cosmonaut training center for a ride on the centrifuge. After my experience with the bureau’s “weightless” airplane, I was worried less about this test than any of the others, though I confess I had a bad moment once I was locked into the very tiny cupola and waiting to be swung on the end of the arm, the unfortunately named “dead-man switch” that would stop the test clutched in my hand. But it all started slowly, with the G loads building gradually, as they would on a Voskhod or Soyuz launch, peaking at five Gs, when the first stage would be low on fuel while the twenty engines were still blasting away. Then there was a drop-off, simulating the burnout of the first stage and its separation, followed by an immediate multi-G jolt as the supposed second-stage engine blasted to life.
It was the longest six minutes I spent in a week of many stretched, unpleasant minutes. I unbuckled myself and climbed out of the cupola with new sympathies for Blackie and Breezy. At least I had known what was happening to me.
The centrifuge test disqualified a third member of our shrinking team. The tests on Friday took us to one of the big, gray buildings in the IMBP compound, where we walked past a chamber under construction; it was intended to take three different “test subjects” on a simulated space mission lasting one year.
That afternoon the three “survivors” were gathered back in the classroom, as Dr. Vasilyev presented two of us — including me — with documents stating that we had passed the first stage of the medical commission.
Yastrebov hadn’t flunked, but he was going to have to repeat some tests in the next week. He didn’t look happy about it.
I rode home to Bauman with the evening crowds, feeling light and relaxed, as if I’d crawled out of a pool after a long swim.
On Monday I walked into Triyanov’s office and proudly presented him with my IMBP documents. He barely looked at them as he announced, “Voskhod 3 has been canceled. Artemov is the new head of the bureau.”