“We also hope to end the neglect our military programs have suffered. Unfortunately, the 7K-VI program has been canceled.” This was no surprise to anyone. “I and the other members of the Air Force Military-Technical Council have strongly protested this decision, and it’s possible it will be reversed. But for now, those of you involved in the VI program will work on the Almaz station.
“This is an ambitious set of programs. I don’t think a rich country like America could operate four separate manned programs at the same time, and we are trying to… encourage the Ministries of Defense and General Machine-Building to bring us all together under one organization, preferably the Air Force.” For some reason, I found myself glancing at Gagarin, who was sitting to Kamanin’s right, just in time to catch him nodding with satisfaction.
“It won’t be easy. But it’s a fight we must win if we are to beat America to the Moon, and keep the Soviet Union first in the new realm of space.” There was genuine applause at this, and with a self-conscious smile, Kamanin waved and walked out. Belyayev, Gagarin, and Nikolayev followed him, leaving the rest of us to disperse as we wished.
I made my way to Saditsky, who was having his shoulder punched by Leonov, and offered my congratulations. “It sounds better than it is,” Saditsky said, once Leonov walked off. “Your old boss Artemov has decided that Feoktistov should command the next Soyuz flight, and even Triyanov is getting into the act.”
I was surprised. “I can see either one of them as flight engineers, but commanding? I thought the commander always had to be an Air Force officer.”
“You know that, I know that, the Central Committee knows that… but for some reason, Artemov doesn’t.” He looked at his watch. “Leonov wants me over in Building 44. Come along.”
Building 44 was one of the new structures constantly in the process of rising from the birch forests in which the training center was located. It was the size and shape of a warehouse, and could have passed for one, except for the barbed wire and armed guards around it. And this was inside the perimeter of Star Town and the training center!
Once inside with Saditsky, I saw the reason for the extra security: A mock lunar landscape had been laid out using real soil. The sky was black, thanks to curtains, and in the middle of it all sat a white, lopsided vehicle with four legs… the L-3 lunar lander.
“God, will you look at this thing,” Saditsky said. We stood there at the border of the lunar “surface,” like children at the edge of a sandbox. Leonov and several of the other cosmonauts newly assigned to lunar crews were clustered around the L-3 in their white lab coats. Someone — I couldn’t tell who — was in a pressure suit complete with helmet, trying to demonstrate a tricky egress out of the side hatch of the L-3, backing down the ladder. The whole process was made more realistic — and vastly more complicated — by rigging that connected the suited cosmonaut to an overhead crane, giving the tester a chance to see what it would be like to move in lunar gravity. The cosmonaut’s foot slipped off the ladder with each step, but luckily the tester never fell.
“It’s finally real,” I heard myself saying. That’s certainly what I felt.
“A real monstrosity,” Saditsky said. “There’s one pilot in the L-3, where the Americans will have two. Every move, like opening the hatch and climbing down the ladder, is a one-man job. That’s assuming you survive the landing. They’re saying that once you pitch over out of the descent burn, you’ll have thirty seconds to locate your landing site. That’s not very much time.”
I remembered some of the details from my time at the bureau and my classes: During the firing of the engines, which would lower the L-3 from lunar orbit to within a few hundred meters of the surface, the pilot would be on his back, looking up at the sky; rotating the vehicle so he could face down toward the surface wouldn’t help the problem, since the pilot would be flying over a sunless landscape until the very end. “So you don’t want to fly it?” I said to Saditsky.
“Don’t be an idiot. If engineers are crazy enough to build these things, I’m certainly crazy enough to fly them. I only have to find some way to be first!” He grinned and headed toward his comrades.
I wanted to linger there, to walk on this lunar surface. I could easily imagine myself coming down the ladder from the L-3—not on the first flight, obviously, but at some point, five or even ten years from now.
To do that, of course, I had to remain a cosmonaut. And to remain a cosmonaut, I had to learn some answers. Maybe it was my exposure to Saditsky and his take-the-hill attitude, perhaps it was my newly regained mobility, but at that moment I knew I had to start fighting back, to be something other than a tool.
I was scheduled to attend a Party meeting that afternoon. I had been so faithful in participating in the regular discussions, condemnations, and so on, that I felt sure I could skip this one without jeopardizing my status.
What was I worrying about? If I actually executed the vague plan then taking shape in my brain, my Party attendance record would not be an issue.
As if to prove to myself that I was independent, I stole a small rock from our fake lunar surface.
An hour later I was on the train to Moscow.
I had telephoned Katya’s office before leaving Star Town, to ask if I could visit that evening.
Her flat was on the northwest side just off the Leningrad Highway, roughly between the Institute for Medical-Biological Problems and the Zhukovsky Academy. The Institute for Space Research was located nearby, too, and so was Uncle Vladimir’s branch office of State Security. This neighborhood, in fact, was becoming as familiar to me as the one around the Bauman School.
Katya greeted me at her door with a warm hug and kiss, pressing a glass of red wine into my hand before I could even take off my coat or present her with the oranges I had bought at the Star Town commissary. “Sit while I finish cooking,” she said, going back to her kitchenette and juggling the oranges as she went.
So I sat, sipping the wine, which I didn’t particularly like.
Marina’s confession that she had been steered to me by Uncle Vladimir had made me wonder about Katya: Was she, too, performing some kind of surveillance on me? It seemed unlikely. If Uncle Vladimir had wanted to replace Marina in my life, he surely would not have introduced me to Katya at his cottage. Nor had Katya ever probed for information, quite the contrary: I had learned more from her than she ever learned from me. I really believed that we were two lost souls who happened to find each other at the right moment, both of us knowing that the relationship was short-lived, like a summer flower.
Yet, when she came out of the kitchen, announcing that dinner was ready, she looked lovely and desirable in a way entirely unlike Marina. She was tall and blonde and graceful, lighting a cigarette like a Western film star, arching an eyebrow at my inability to move. “Like what you see?” she said, in English. Then she laughed, and we sat down to dinner.
Eventually I was able to present her with my second gift: “Have you ever seen a stone from the Moon?”
“Only in pictures, and then from very, very far away.”
I took the gray rock out of my pocket. “It’s not authentic, of course, but it’s as close as you’ll get—”
“—Until the Americans land?” she said.
I had always been able to depend on Katya for a conversational challenge. “Kamanin and Gagarin did a big show today. They’re convinced we will beat them. In fact, training for the lunar crews started this very afternoon.”