29
Senior Engineer-Lieutenant Ribko
Even the flight back to Moscow grew complicated and troublesome: Weather closed Chkalov air base, which was our primary destination, since it was next door to Star Town. Nor could we go to Vnukovo, the big airport that, had things gone better, would have been the site of a May Day greeting for cosmonauts Komarov, Bykovsky, Yeliseyev, and Khrunov.
We wound up at Sheremetyevo, a smaller airport northwest of Moscow, where we waited almost two hours for transportation. While we sat there, we were joined by the other Soyuz crew members, who had flown first from Baikonur to Orsk, then followed us to the Moscow area.
The convoy of official cars brought Komarov’s widow in addition to several cosmonauts from the center. I had seen and felt enough sadness for one day, so I got myself away from them.
Among those greeting us was my father. “Don’t you have any luggage?” he said.
“It’s still in Tyuratam.” The only personal item I carried, other than my passport and my clothing, was the letter from Katya.
As we walked to the car, we could hear wailing behind us. Even some of the waiting drivers were wiping away tears. “Christ,” my father said, “this is terrible. People haven’t cried like this since Stalin died.”
I had been so immersed in the sorry business at hand I had completely forgotten about the larger world. Obviously Komarov’s death had been announced to the public, which included the Americans. Were they jumping up and down now, realizing that once again the Moon race was even?
Or was it even? The very ambitious and complex goals planned for Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 2 had been met by the Americans a year or more ahead of us. They had conducted rendezvous half a dozen times while we had yet to accomplish it once. Their tracking and recovery systems were superb. Their Saturn rockets were now equal or superior to our Proton, and their even more powerful Saturn V-5 was inching closer to a test.
Perhaps it was my fatigue, but that night, as my father’s driver took us back to Kaliningrad, I felt that the race was over, that our programs were second- or even third-rate — fine for scoring risky “spectaculars,” not so good for a complex challenge like landing a man on the Moon, and returning him safely to Earth.
Imagine my feelings, then, when my father turned to me and said, “Vershinin signed the order yesterday, before he knew about Komarov.”
“What order?” I’m sure I sounded irritated.
“The order enrolling you in the cosmonaut team.”
The order—? So I had made it after all. Kamanin had known it before we left Baikonur. How did I respond? I laughed out loud. “That is perfect timing.”
My father frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Our space program just crashed, Papa. Could there be a worse time to become a cosmonaut?”
“Airplanes crash all the time.”
“Airplanes fly by the hundreds. Not once every two years.”
“They’ll be flying again by November seventh.” This was another big anniversary, of the 1917 Revolution. “That’s what they’re saying at headquarters.”
“They can say whatever they want. There aren’t going to be any Russian cosmonauts in space for a year, maybe two.”
Now he was getting irritated. “You’re tired. Get some sleep and maybe in the morning you can appreciate the chance you’ve got.”
“I do appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done.” I was sincere, though it took me a moment to realize it. “When am I supposed to report?” I didn’t want to show up at Star Town in my uniform the day of Komarov’s funeral. I would also need a couple of weeks to get free of the bureau. My God, I had to break this news to Triyanov, to Filin.
And to Uncle Vladimir.
“Monday, May eighth. It’s all in the papers.”
I nodded. Actually, I had it easy: I already lived in the neighborhood. Some of my new colleagues would be coming from remote air bases, uprooting families.
We pulled up to my building. “Yuri, you’ll do fine in the service. Even if you don’t fly in space, they’ll have work to do. Space engineering, which is what you said you wanted.”
“I know.”
“You’re better off in the military than with Artemov. I didn’t like what I saw out at Baikonur, and I wasn’t the only one. I don’t care who his protector is, bad things are going to happen to that man, and you don’t want to get caught in the wash. Get out of that bureau and stay as far away from it as you can.”
This was a tone of voice I had rarely heard from my father. It reminded me, in fact, of Uncle Vladimir’s, when talking about the “basement.” I didn’t want to see anyone arrested and shot, but at the moment I had little sympathy for Artemov, or for Lev, or for the many people in the bureau between those two.
I said good-bye, then went up to my flat.
I didn’t sleep well that night. On the plane from Orsk to Moscow, I had heard enough details about Komarov’s heroism to thoroughly imagine his last moments. How he had performed a manual orientation of Soyuz as it approached the end of the seventeenth orbit, lining up the spacecraft by sighting on the day/night terminator, then restarting the autopilot to steer the vehicle through the darkness. He had had to resume manual control for a brief, frantic moment when Soyuz 1 emerged into sunlight again, to make sure it was still oriented properly, then let the autopilot command the engine firing. All this while knowing he had at best three more hours of power, that an orientation failure would mean death in the atmosphere, and even the delay of another orbit would force him to try to land in Europe or, more likely, in the Atlantic Ocean.
Komarov was well-trained for each of these events, but had never rehearsed them all in this sequence, and in such demanding circumstances.
Yet, he had done the job brilliantly, performing the guidance checks, observing the retro firing, the jettisoning of the equipment module followed by the orbital module, and plunging into the atmosphere — where the last Soyuz had suffered a heat-shield failure, frying its insides.
He emerged from the radio blackout caused by reentry and reported the burn times to Yevpatoriya. The only other communication from him was a mention of the parachute problem. Then nothing, as Soyuz 1 plummeted to the prairie at three hundred kilometers an hour.
Hearing all this, is it any wonder I dreamed I was falling, falling, falling?
At a few moments past eight the next morning, after this fitful sleep, I stood in Triyanov’s office as he examined the documents from the Ministry of Defense. “I don’t believe this!” He was so angry his face flushed and the muscles stood out in his neck. “Have we treated you that badly, Ribko?”
“No, sir,” I said, lying only slightly. Triyanov had been fair and supportive. Artemov was another matter. “I felt I could better serve my country—” I started to say.
“Don’t give me that shit,” he said. “Don’t even try to justify it! You’re going over to the enemy.” He seemed to boil over. “You won’t like serving under Kuznetsov: He’s from the old school.” Kuznetsov was the commander of the cosmonaut training center under Kamanin. I had not heard many good things about him. “You’re going to regret this.”
I couldn’t let that statement go unchallenged. “How can you say that? You spent thirty years in the Air Force.”