He obviously heard something in my voice he didn’t like. His eyes narrowed, and I felt like a recruit about to be chewed out by a drill sergeant. “It’s my business to know who goes in and out of this place. And you, snot-nose, are not going in.”
I have a temper, but, thanks to my father’s physical corrections at an early age, have learned to control it. Barely. For an instant I considered simply walking up the stairs, making him yell for the militia, or telling him to pick up the phone and call, for example, Uncle Vladimir, who would utter the magic words “State Security.”
But it passed. I realized that it was late, that I had an early flight to Baikonur ahead of me in the morning. And, frankly, I was a little afraid of the way Marina might react to a surprise visit. “You’re doing a good job,” I told the guard. “Would you be kind enough to see that Marina gets this?” I handed him the wrapped scarf, and added a ruble. “Tell her it’s from Yuri.”
That softened him quite nicely. In fact, he insisted that I share a little “sip” of vodka with him. Which, knowing I faced a cold walk, I accepted.
On the way back to the metro stop, I ran into Lev Tselauri carrying two bags of produce in the same direction. “Lev!” I called.
His head jerked, as if he had heard a gunshot instead of my voice. “What are you doing down here?” he asked.
I told him. “And what are you doing over here?”
He held up his bags. “My turn to shop.”
I grabbed one of the bags and walked with him down the street, across the bridge, catching up quickly on the latest adventures of the Omsk Twins, and of the oversized young student from the Caucasus — a big eater, apparently — who had taken my place.
“Have you been in touch with Filin at all?” It had been too early for Lev to join our bureau last spring, or rather, too late, since his thesis was being supervised by an adviser who worked for Chelomei. But he was now at the point I had been, ready to sign up for permanent employment.
“No.” He actually looked ashamed of himself.
“He said the door was open for you.” No answer. “Things can’t be going very well with Chelomei.”
He sighed. “It’s all military work, and, yes, it’s not going very well.”
“You heard about the American astronauts?” He nodded. “It’s our opening, Lev. We have the chance to catch them, maybe pass them. I’m going to talk to Filin tomorrow. You need to write him a letter. Now’s the time!”
We had reached our old building. “You’re right. I can’t wait.” He smiled, finally. “You’re a good friend, Yuri. Lucky I ran into you tonight. Let’s storm the cosmos.”
I walked away, laughing, feeling better than I had in days, weeks. Ready to storm the cosmos.
20
The Recovery Team
My newfound elation and enthusiasm for my work — both official and unofficial — lasted through takeoff from Chkalov air base until we were almost halfway to Baikonur.
We were in a noisy old Antonov-12, the various propulsion and guidance specialists from other departments in the bureau, plus our handful of crew equipment specialists from Department 731 under Triyanov. Other planes had been taking off that morning, carrying Filin, Artemov, several of the bureau’s cosmonauts, and whole groups of military officers. If things went well, the flight of Soyuz spacecraft Number 3 would be the last unmanned test. In early April we would put crews aboard Numbers 4 and 5 and dock them together in space.
Somewhere in the skies between Samara and Orenburg, Triyanov landed on the bench next to me. “Scouting our landing zones?” he said. “Good.”
I hadn’t thought of that at all, of course; I’d merely been watching the snowy landscape slide past. It was a clear day, and, like all days spent flying to Baikonur, a shortened one. But I realized that Triyanov was right: Gagarin himself had parachuted out of his Vostok from this altitude and roughly this area.
I also realized that Triyanov had my arm in a death grip. “What did you say to Artemov?”
“I haven’t spoken to Artemov at all.” This was the truth. I had seen him, together with Filin, at the Chkalov base the previous Saturday. But I hadn’t said a word to him, nor had he directed any remarks to me.
“Well, he’s added your name to his shitlist.”
I felt sick, not only thinking about what this meant to my bureau career, but also what it meant to my work for Uncle Vladimir. “I don’t know why.”
Triyanov shrugged. Clearly this was not an issue for him. “Well, it happens. Maybe your reports on the EVA tests have been too critical.” That was certainly a possibility. Triyanov smiled slyly, and lowered his voice. “Maybe one of your colleagues denounced you.”
For a moment I couldn’t imagine why — I got along well with the various cosmonauts and test engineers, all of whom were senior to me. Then I remembered my “stroke of genius” regarding the last Soyuz failure.
Triyanov read my thoughts. “ ‘It’s the tall weed that gets cut down,’ ” he quoted. “Well, whoever or whatever, we’ve got to deal with this. You can’t work on the EVA anymore.”
“But I’m the only one who never gets sick.”
“I didn’t say the decision makes any sense, Yuri.” He frowned. “The trouble is, I don’t have anywhere to put you that will keep you out of Artemov’s sight, not with a launch coming up—”
Now I was getting angry. “Should I catch the next plane back to Moscow?”
“There won’t be a plane back to Moscow anytime soon. And you didn’t let me finish. I don’t want to disrupt the other teams before the launch, but there is one area that has no representative from our department, and really needs it: the recovery team.”
“I thought that was the responsibility of the Air Force.”
“Kamanin and the Air Force are supposed to do search and rescue, yes. And we have bureau people who fly out with them to secure the spacecraft and make it safe for shipping back to Kaliningrad. But we have no one to deal with our crew members and their needs. They will be surrounded by doctors and military people.”
I saw the logic in this. “Fine. But we won’t have a crew member on this launch.”
“Better yet. Go along with Kamanin’s people and see how they screw up, and maybe we can fix the problems before we actually fly, hmmm?” He handed me a pass. “Find General Kamanin or one of his people. They are airmen, not rocketeers.”
“I know the difference.”
Baikonur was clutched in winter’s death grip when we arrived. The wind blew so much snow around that I was sure we would have to abort our landing and divert to Tashkent, but we bumped down.
I’d never seen so many people around the hotel at Area 17, military and civilians, and civilians from a whole variety of bureaus, including Chelomei’s. They were to launch a Proton rocket with an unmanned L-1 two weeks after the Soyuz.
Naturally, the day after we arrived, the Soyuz launch was postponed several days, to February 7. The guidance team was still struggling with fixes to prevent another unplanned firing of the launch escape system.
The delay gave me a chance to begin attending daily briefings at Area 2 on the status of recovery forces, and to make myself known to General Kamanin and his team, one of whom was cosmonaut Ivan Saditsky, who greeted me like an old school classmate. “When are you going to fly Soyuz?” I asked him.
“Not until next year. No one would admit that Voskhod 3 was really canceled for months, so poor Kostin and I were stuck on that until November, while everyone else got to study Soyuz. Now we’re in the group, but not in any of the crews, while we catch up.”