Thoughts like that made me ill. The next morning I felt even worse when I saw the newspapers reporting the “triumph” of our country’s last attack on the cosmos, proudly publishing a photo of Earth taken from deep space — a photo that had been salvaged from the crushed pieces of Zond 6.
47
Pyrotechnics
In the following week, winter descended on Star Town with short days and blowing snow, and morale sank so low it was as if the beloved Yuri Gagarin had died the day before, not back in March. I resumed my routine of exercise followed by classes. There was one postmortem meeting concerning Zond 6 that I attended, where I heard the same thing Shiborin had told me, but at much greater length.
However, I was finally able to keep my promise to Lev about visiting him and Marina.
The lunar cosmonauts and their support team — Shiborin and I — were scheduled to spent Saturday, November 30, visiting the rocket test site at Zagorsk, a town a hundred and fifty kilometers northeast of Moscow, directly out the Yaroslavl Highway from Kaliningrad, for our first sight of L-3 lunar-lander hardware in action.
Given the nature of the tests, I knew Lev, not to mention Filin himself, would be present, and so I telephoned Department 731 a day ahead to arrange a return to Kaliningrad with my former colleagues. This (I thought) simple request created a surprising amount of fuss, resulting in a call from Triyanov to Colonel Belyayev. The result was formal approval for me to switch buses in Zagorsk, and a merciless amount of teasing from Leonov, Popovich, Shiborin, and the others for most of the three-hour ride to the site.
Driving through Zagorsk proper, I noted an ancient, tumbledown monastery not far from the road. I had never considered myself particularly religious — not surprising, I suppose, given the official atheism of the Soviet State. But I had also grown up hearing the phrases “thank God” or “God be praised” uttered by even the most ardent Communists, including Uncle Vladimir. I suddenly wanted to see the monastery more than I wanted to see the lunar lander, a desire that was as impractical as it was politically dangerous.
Ten kilometers past the monastery we found a collection of relatively new housing much like Star Town, and on the outskirts of that, the test facility. From my studies and chat in the bus, I knew it had half a dozen stands built into hillsides, where rocket engines of any size could be bolted into place, then fired, their actual thrust measured against the specified amount (never quite the same in practice) and the type of vibration (sometimes enough to destroy the engine).
These tests required the stands to be relatively far apart — if one of the big engines blew up, you didn’t want it destroying the stand next door — and immense amounts of piping, tankage, and refrigeration, much like the launchpads at Baikonur.
Today we were going to observe a different kind of test, however. A model of the L-3 lander was hanging from a crane twenty meters up. You couldn’t call it a mockup, since it looked nothing like the actual spacecraft: It was merely a cone-shaped mass sitting on a platform containing four legs and the L-3 landing motor. Below this was a patch of bare earth that had been sculpted into a fake lunar landscape, like the one in the building at the Gagarin Center.
As could be expected, preparations for the test were running late when we arrived, leaving us with free time to stand around stomping our feet in the cold. I found Lev as he finished a conversation with one of the bureau’s film cameramen. “How long is this going to last?” I asked.
“Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.” He nodded toward the camera operator. “He’ll be running film at superhigh speeds, though, so in a couple of days we’ll be able to watch everything in slow motion.” He clapped his gloved hands together. “You’re coming home with me?”
“Yes.” I spared him a recitation of the bureaucratic crisis I had caused by making such an outrageous request.
A siren sounded, signaling us to take our places. I rejoined Shiborin and the other military cosmonauts, all of us in our olive-colored greatcoats.
There was no countdown, no obvious warning of any kind. Suddenly we heard a hissing that quickly turned into a high-pitched roar. Bluish flame shot out of the engine at the base of the L-3 mockup, which was then released from the crane.
Still tethered, but no longer supported, it hovered briefly, then dropped straight down to its “lunar” landing site. At the moment its feet touched, we heard and felt a thud. Four little gouts of flame shot up from smaller rockets mounted above each of the four legs. The lander sat there for several seconds, then emitted several smaller pops as coverings flew off the cone.
“Is it quite finished?” one of the cosmonauts behind me said, earning a laugh.
Closer to me, Shiborin muttered, “That would rattle your teeth right out of your head.”
I glanced at him. He was frowning and shaking his head. “Maybe they figure you’d prefer one big jolt to several.” The smaller rockets that fired upward were designed to keep the L-3 on the ground once it touched down. Our limited data from the Luna probes suggested that a fully loaded L-3, with its high center of gravity (in lunar terms) could easily bounce off the surface and possibly topple over, dooming its pilot.
“And maybe our lander is just too damn tall.”
The sound the coverings made as they flew off was familiar to me, though I couldn’t remember why. When the lander had been “safed” enough for us to approach it, I found Lev and asked him what they were. “Small pyrotechnics,” he said. “Little bombs that blow off covers for sensors and antennas. We had problems with our space pyros on Zond 6, so we decided to test some standard military charges. They seem to have done a good job.”
The drive back to Kaliningrad took twice as long as the drive out, because snow started to fall and traffic on the highway slowed. To make matters worse, the bureau bus quit at one point, and we all had to get out and push.
It was after seven when we reached Lev and Marina’s flat. The bus driver kindly offered to drop us near their building, after I tipped him five rubles.
Marina looked happier and more relaxed than the last time I had seen her, now six months in the past. She was doing her hair differently, and she wore a dark blue dress that hugged her slim hips like silk. I’m not sure it wasn’t made of silk.
She had a truly wonderful feast waiting, real beef with potatoes and carrots, a bottle of some French champagne, and for dessert, strawberries with sugar. I thought it would be impolite to ask where Marina had gotten a treasure like strawberries in November, but she offered it unbidden: “My most recent assignment was in Washington,” she said.
I wanted to ask about Washington, but Lev abruptly stood up and excused himself, grabbing his coat. “If you’re going out, may I have the rest of your dessert?” I said, joking.
“Help yourself,” he said. “I’ve got to run over to the bureau for an hour.”
Marina said nothing, so I made the protest on her behalf. “What can be so important that it can’t wait a few hours?”
“I’ve got a presentation to make tomorrow, and I left the notes on my desk.” And just like that, he put his coat on and left.
“I suppose he thought we’d stop there before coming here,” I said. We began clearing the dishes.
Marina tilted her head to one side, a gesture that meant yes and no. “It’s just an excuse,” she said. “He wants us to have some time alone.”
I was confused. As usual, my only response was a joke. “That’s a terrible idea! Suppose I can’t keep my hands off you.”