No one in the West knew it at the time — and very few in my country, even within the space community — that the vaunted “multiman” Voskhod was nothing more than a Vostok shell with the safety equipment (pressure suit, ejection seat) removed to make room for three men without spacesuits.
Voskhod also lacked any means of escape in case of booster failure during the first minutes of flight — much like your Space Shuttle to this day.
Worst of all, the system that allowed Voskhod to thump down on land was a second retro-rocket attached to the lines of the main recovery chute. A sensor on the Voskhod itself triggered this reserve rocket when the shell was just a few feet off the ground, slowing it to a gentle landing.
“The boosters worked well in both cases,” Feoktistov said, looking like a man wanting to avoid an argument.
“Lucky for you. Of course, Belyayev and Leonov wound up spending a night with the wolves because of another little malfunction.” Artemov spread his hands. “The evidence is staring us in the face. We have a pointless program that is only likely to kill someone. I say we drop it.”
There was a moment of silence. Finally Filin said, “Remind me, Boris, not to have you speak at my memorial service.” There was laughter, except from Artemov, who stared at the table and shook his head. Filin continued smoothly, “We are a collective right now. We’ve heard from both sides. Is there a move to make this radical change? Hands?” Artemov’s shot up. His was the only one at the head table. “Well, it seems we should all continue working as before. Including those of you working on the third Voskhod. Thank you.”
Some of those in the meeting still wanted to talk, but Artemov was already leaving the stage. Before he disappeared, Triyanov had me on my feet. “Well,” he said, “that was a good example of what it’s going to be like around here.”
“Chaos?”
“Korolev’s meetings were like that, too. People shouting at each other, calling each other idiots. Of course then the chief would make a decision, and that would be the end of it. Artemov doesn’t have that power. As for Filin, we’ll just have to see…”
I was still fairly reeling from the experience. “Did Filin and Korolev get along?”
“Who knows? They fought like dogs. When the chief went into the hospital, they hadn’t spoken for three weeks.”
Triyanov seemed lost in thought for a moment. I waited as long as I thought polite, then said, “Where should I start work?”
He turned toward me, his old self after that momentary lapse. “I need an assistant for a test I’m conducting tomorrow. Ever been weightless?”
“Never.”
Triyanov smiled. “Perfect. Be in the department tomorrow at six A.M. We’ll drive to the airfield from there.”
Seeing someone he knew, he excused himself, leaving me to think about what Uncle Vladimir had said, that I would find suspects wherever I looked.
I realized that the least likely — and therefore most likely — suspect had been in front of me from the very beginning.
Filin himself.
5
The Test Flight
Chkalov air base, named for a test pilot as famous in Russia as your Chuck Yeager is in the U.S., lay no more than twenty kilometers to the east of the bureau, yet the trip took an hour and a half. This on top of my train ride and hike through darkness to the bureau itself. I met up with a cheerful, tireless Triyanov and several of my new coworkers, then boarded a bus that rattled off to the highway. We passed through cottages, then into a mixture of open fields, white with snow, and birch trees.
Triyanov told me that this bus carried workers from the bureau to the cosmonaut training center at Star Town every day, though we got off before that.
By eight I sat in the ready room dressed in a track suit, going over my notes on the Voskhod life-support systems. Triyanov had made me read a stack of documentation before leaving the night before. Naturally the documents were too sacred to be permitted off the bureau grounds, so I had had to take notes… I even made sketches. Here were the oxygen bottles, here was the nitrogen tank. Here was water. These were the switches that controlled the system. These were the dials telling you how much of anything was left.
It might as well have been written in Chinese.
“All set?” Triyanov said, startling me. He, too, wore a track suit, in addition to a leather flight jacket and a stocking cap.
“Will it do any good if I say no?”
Triyanov laughed. “Not a bit, but I like your spirit.” He looked at the notes. “Don’t worry about that shit. It’s all been flown before. Maybe I’ll let you try it out yourself.”
“With all the vast amount of training I’ve had?”
“Look, you’ve got about as much training as one of the crewmen is going to have. He’s some scientist that Korolev wanted to fly, Keldysh’s nephew. He’s not a pilot, either.” (You know, of course, that the scientist was not literally nephew to Keldysh, the head of the Academy of Sciences, but a protégé.) “Besides,” Triyanov added, “we find out most about a system when it’s used for the first time by an absolute novice. If anything can go wrong, it will. Triyanov’s law.”
I picked up my jacket and, lamb to a slaughter, followed Triyanov out to the plane.
Even at eight in the morning I couldn’t tell if the sun was up. The leaden, cloudy sky was gray rather than black, so I was willing to believe a rumor to that effect. I just wished it would go ahead and snow… preferably before I had to board the aircraft.
I had ridden in a Tupolev-104 three times in my life. The twin-engine jet was the standard liner of the Air Fleet. But this one had been modified — or, looking at it another way, ruined. Most of the seats had been removed from the passenger compartment. Those that remained were more military in style — made of uncomfortable-looking metal — and crammed forward.
The rest of the compartment was taken up by a mess of cables, consoles, and a shiny metal ball about two meters across.
As Triyanov helped me up the ladder, I blurted, “What the hell is that?”
“That is the Voskhod spacecraft,” Triyanov said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen one before.”
“Sorry.” In my months as Filin’s assistant, I had only seen a schematic of the Luna landing probe, which looked much like a basketball, but nothing of Vostok, Voskhod, or Soyuz.
“What did you expect it to look like?”
“I don’t know. A cone, maybe. Like the American ships.”
“Soyuz and Sever are our cone-shaped vehicles. We are just getting ready to fly Soyuz unmanned.”
“We’ve got four different kinds of manned spaceships?”
“Actually, there are about six… if you believe all the rumors from other bureaus.” Triyanov patted the rusted metal surface of the Voskhod. “This ball was in space a few years ago, can you believe that? One of the unmanned flights before Gagarin. No place in a museum, however. Right back to work.”
“Efficient use of Party resources. I think that was one of the slogans from the last congress.”
“Well, we want to be in line with the correct thinking.” I got the clear impression Triyanov cared little for Party slogans. “Voskhod is actually the same shape as Gagarin’s Vostok. Only that earlier version was built for one pilot. This carries two or three seats—”
“—With no escape system. That much I do know.”
“Don’t say that too loudly,” Triyanov said, jerking his head toward the forward compartment. “Some people around here are sensitive about that.”
I saw why when the door to the cockpit opened, and out came a familiar-looking young pilot, puffing on a cigarette.