Shiborin and I knew that we would stay at Baikonur through the launch, returning to Star Town via Yevpatoriya with Bykovsky and Leonov and their flight engineers, who came for the launch with the bigshots.
On the morning of the thirteenth, a new Universal Rocket 500 was rolled out to its pad at Area 92. Shiborin and I were prepared to walk with it, into the hot, dusty wind, when Lev showed up wearing a makeshift burnoose and holding two others, which he handed to Shiborin and me. “When it gets like this, you’ve got to be a Bedouin,” he said.
Much amused, we arranged ourselves, marching out behind the giant rocket and the puffing train engines. As we got closer to the concrete launchpad and the towering support structure, Shiborin departed, and Lev and I were alone.
“Who would have believed this?” he said, looking up at the tower, at the Universal Rocket slowly being lifted to vertical. “Two years ago we were students!”
“ ‘The Party makes use of talent,’ ” I said, quoting some inane Komsomol slogan.
Lev laughed. Then, surprising me, he said, “You never ask about Marina.”
This was true. I had deliberately avoided the entire subject. I wasn’t ready to have a serious discussion. “Marina?” I said, as if it were the most natural question in the world, one friend to another on the streets of Moscow. “How is she?”
He laughed again. “She’s fine. She asks about you whenever we talk.” Then he frowned, and seemed to hesitate, which was unusual for him. “Come and see us. Come and see her.”
I realized I couldn’t avoid the subject any longer. “The burnoose was a good idea, Lev. Having me come to see you and Marina is a bad one. We’ll all be uncomfortable.”
“More uncomfortable than we are now? You and I used to live together. We work in the same business. We’ve been together every day for the past eight weeks!”
“You should have thought of that when you started seeing Marina behind my back.”
“I was wrong. She was wrong. Maybe you were wrong, too.” He was red-faced now, whether from embarrassment or anger, I couldn’t tell. Perhaps both. “It wasn’t as though I pursued her. She felt neglected.” He held up a hand to silence my protest: “Nevertheless, the fault is mine. I’m ashamed of myself. But I want us to be friends again.”
Even in my anger, I knew I was hardly blameless — not just for neglecting Marina, for lying to her, but in kissing her during our last meeting. “All right,” I said, worn down. “I will come and see both of you as soon as we get back.” And so I made a second promise I was unlikely to keep.
Lev kissed me. “We have to stick together, Yuri. Being questioned by State Security was frightening. Imagine what they will do if there’s another ‘accident.’ ”
“But there will be accidents. These are very complex machines.”
“You and I know that because we’re professionals. But State Security doesn’t, and nor do most of the politicians they serve. Besides…” He actually looked over his shoulder, as if expecting to see a black van lurking there on the launchpad. “There have been a number of mysterious accidents.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, systems that worked perfectly during final checkout — the same kind of work you and I have been doing the past few weeks — suddenly fail the day of launch, as if somebody walked in at the last minute and pulled a wire or jabbed a screwdriver into a tank. Some mindless bit of vandalism that would be enough to cause a short or a leak.”
“Nobody gets into the assembly buildings without clearance.”
He practically snorted. “In theory,” he said. “The same theory that makes all Soviet citizens equal. Yes, all the military and bureau people have passes, but people from the commissions walk through all the time. Who checks them?”
“Who needs to check them? They’re bigshots.”
“Any one of them could do the damage, just the same.”
“So could a disgruntled member of the checkout team.”
He was patting at his shirt for a cigarette. “Yes, yes, yes. If there’s another suspicious accident, the finger will point to one of us.” He found his cigarette.
“Don’t light up here.”
He ignored me. “Don’t worry. They don’t start fueling for hours yet.”
Shortly before ten o’clock that evening, as the upper stages of the Universal Rocket were being pumped full of liquid nitrogen and hydrazine — what Sergei Korolev had called the “devil’s venom”—a weld failed. Poisonous hydrazine spewed out of its tank like water from a hose. Fortunately the hydrazine did not come into contact with its oxidizer; they were hypergolic fuels, meaning they would have ignited all by themselves, causing a conflagration that would have undoubtedly destroyed the Universal Rocket and its L-1 payload, and possibly the Area 92 pad, too.
However, three members of the crew were overcome by fumes; in fact, their lungs liquefied on contact with the hydrazine.
Shiborin and I learned this horrible news at breakfast at the Hotel Cosmonaut. The next L-1 launch would be delayed, of course, since the Universal Rocket had to be returned to the assembly building. “Shit,” Shiborin said. “We could be stuck here all summer.”
Fortunately not. We ran into Lev Tselauri on the bus to Area 92, and he told us that there would be no testing for a month, possibly longer, while this latest accident was investigated. He did not add anything in front of Shiborin, but the look on his face was clear enough: investigated by State Security, he meant.
All that Shiborin and I could do that morning was collect our personal belongings and express condolences to the surviving members of the launch team.
Well, I did do one other thing. As soon as I heard about the latest disaster, I sought out Sergeant Oleg Pokrovsky and purchased his PB-8 Special Forces pistol for a fistful of rubles and the most expensive bottle of vodka I was able to buy at the Hotel Cosmonaut.
Maybe I overpaid, but I thought that I would need protection in the days to come.
The Tu-104 returning to Chkalov that afternoon was packed with people from the Korolev bureau, including my former bosses Filin and Triyanov, sitting together and looking exhausted. I would have said hello immediately, but was stuck several seats away, wedged into a window by a sleeping Shiborin — who had somehow failed to get himself assigned as copilot on this flight. I watched Filin and saw clearly the telltale signs of stress… glasses off, fingers to the bridge of his nose, then opening to rub his temples. He would, I judged, require immediate hospitalization upon returning to the Moscow District.
Triyanov was, in spite of tired eyes, more relaxed, frequently shrugging, offering nothing.
Somewhere over the Urals, Shiborin awoke and decided to visit the cockpit. Shortly thereafter Triyanov took a walk down the aisle and spotted me. “Senior Lieutenant Ribko!” he announced, cheerfully tossing me a casual salute. “How does the uniform fit?”
“Quite well.”
He dropped into Shiborin’s seat. “I hear you are in Bykovsky’s group.”
“Since early May.”
“It’s not the best place for a military engineer, you know. All the lunar crews will have civilians in that second seat. Your seat.”
“Is there a good place for a military engineer?”
Triyanov laughed. “From what I hear, maybe not.” He and I both knew that the Chelomei military projects were stalled, not likely to require crews for two years or more. “You’ve managed to keep your sense of humor. Given what your center has endured this year, that should qualify for a Hero of Socialist Labor at the very least.”