“What makes them so optimistic?”
“I think it was Artemov’s stumble. It’s as if they’ve been gathering their forces for a big attack, like Zhukov.” By this time we were clearing the table. “Gagarin has been active behind the scenes. He’s a military man supporting the military, so they listen to him. And he’s a national hero, so the politicians and big bosses pay attention to him, too.”
“He’s come a long way for a little man from Gzhatsk.” Katya named the tiny village west of Moscow where Gagarin had grown up.
“He got a lot taller the day they shot him into orbit.”
I had delivered my message, putting Katya to the test. Then I made love to her, like that famous secret agent, James Bond.
36
The Outlying Regions Of Near-Earth Space
On March 2, 1968, the sixth L-1 spacecraft, still unmanned, roared into Earth orbit from Baikonur atop another Universal Rocket. Problems in the L-1 guidance system still hadn’t been completely corrected and we wanted the simplest trajectory possible, so the goal of the mission was not a flight around the Moon, but to a point over 330,000 kilometers out in space. For that reason, the L-1 was announced as the fourth in the series of Zond interplanetary space probes, this one designed to explore “the outlying regions of near-Earth space.”
The big managers of the ministry and State Commission hoped that a safe return and splashdown of Zond 4 would mark another space first, something our country had not accomplished since Luna 9 two years ago.
For two days the mission went beautifully. The troublesome Block D upper stage fired as scheduled early on March 3, sending the spacecraft soaring out into empty space. At the same time, a group of lunar cosmonauts led by Gagarin himself were down at the flight-control center in Yevpatoriya, duplicating the maneuvers in a simulated flight of their own.
Unfortunately, early on March 4, 1968, the same guidance system that had plagued earlier flights, including poor Komarov’s, failed to orient Zond 4 for a correction burn, which had to be canceled. Another attempt a day later also failed, but on March 6, as Zond 4 reached its apogee and began its slow fall back to Earth, the burn put Zond 4 on the desired trajectory for a safe reentry into the atmosphere.
As planned, on March 9, Zond 4 fell closer and closer to earth, diving into the atmosphere to an altitude of less than forty-six kilometers. Had cosmonauts been aboard Zond 4, they would have experienced twenty Gs at this time, dangerously high, but still survivable.
Scorched and slowed by the dive, the spacecraft then regained altitude, climbing back to 145 kilometers to begin its final, slower, more controllable descent.
At that point a series of small mistakes paid big penalties. Our knowledge of the upper atmosphere was incomplete; so was our knowledge of the flying characteristics of an L-1 vehicle in this regime. By the time flight controllers realized that Zond 4 was going to land six thousand kilometers short of its target zone, half a world away from the territory of the USSR, it was too late to make any adjustments. Once Tyulin and Artemov and the other members of the commission learned that Zond 4 was descending by parachute into the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa, they commanded it to self-destruct so as to prevent agents of the Main Enemy from recovering it. The flight of Zond 4 ended thirteen kilometers above the Atlantic Ocean with an explosion.
Publicly, the world was merely told that contact had been lost with “interplanetary space probe Zond 4.” At the center, where we all took turns dropping into Belyayev’s office for updates, we realized we had taken one baby step closer to a round-the-Moon flight.
The weather in the Moscow area all through February and into March was terrible, not surprising, but it prevented me from catching up to my Fourth Enrollment colleagues on parachute jumps. I needed ten to qualify; by mid March, I still had four to go.
Catching up was all the more difficult, because we student-cosmonauts had largely completed classroom training, where I excelled, and even much of the operational training, where I lagged, and were beginning to take on flight-support roles. For example, during the next pair of Soyuz missions, still scheduled for the middle of April (though lack of docking simulators was slowing the training), three of my engineer colleagues would be assigned to control and tracking stations around the USSR. Two others in the group had been told they were to be sent to the Astrakhan region in September to qualify as test pilots for the Spiral spaceplane program, while another pair were going to work on a successor to the canceled 7K-VI program called Zvezda, this one built by Artemov himself — as if his organization didn’t have enough to do!
The rest, including Shiborin and me, remained unassigned, which made us both extremely nervous. “You have to eat shit to taste the golden apples,” he said, far too often. “Not that being a test pilot is eating shit.”
I succeeded in keeping Marina out of my thoughts, and continued to see Katya. The lack of any overt move against Gagarin or other senior cosmonauts convinced me she had not run to Uncle Vladimir.
My father returned from his inspection tour in Czechoslovakia, and came to see me at Star Town early on the gray morning of Wednesday, March 27, 1968.
“We’re going to be at war this summer,” he announced the moment I made the mistake of asking him how his trip had gone. “That country is going to pieces. The leadership is making the same mistakes the Hungarians made. And the same thing will happen.”
I was fourteen when the “brotherly” tanks of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact had been “invited” into Hungary to “restore order.” The thought that we could be planning the same sort of bloodbath in Czechoslovakia was a depressing reminder of how little things had really changed. Our leaders wore nicer suits now, but deep down they were still Bolshevik thugs.
“How have you been feeling, Papa?” I said, hoping to change the subject from global power politics.
“Never better,” he said, with such strength that I almost believed him. He rotated his arm for me. “No more pain and stiffness here. I could probably pass a physical and go back to the cockpit.”
I smiled. I had not heard him say that in years, not since my mother died. “Do you have business at Monino today?” The Red Banner Air Force Academy at Monino was two train stops further out from Star Town.
“Chkalov,” he said. I gave him a cup of tea, and noticed that in spite of his claims of robust health, his hand shook.
“Straightening out our flight support?” Nobody at Star Town seemed to be happy with Seregin’s 70th Squadron. Pilot cosmonauts complained about the arbitrary scheduling and availability of aircraft while nonpilots like me seemed to be completely frozen out. I had heard that the technical staff of the center was unable to use transport craft when needed.
The problem wasn’t necessarily the fault of Colonel Seregin and his team. The 70th had been created upon orders from Marshal Vershinin with no warning and no study of the impact on operations at Chkalov, which was still home to a busy branch of the military’s flight-test center. It also served as a private airport for Party officials.
My father grunted. “We can’t tell which is more screwed up right now, the squadron or the test center. It’s time both operations got cleaned up.” He didn’t need to add, when we start fighting in Czechoslovakia.