Faster than either cosmonaut expected, an answer crackled uplink. It was two words. Brittle and inexplicable. "Attempt salvage."
"Repeat," said Petrov.
"Attempt to capture this foreign object in your cargo doors. "
"What about our payload? The satellite may be damaged."
"We can always build another satellite. Attempt salvage."
Cosmonauts Alexei Petrov and Oleg Gleb exchanged sick glances, but there was no time to think. The spinning object was closer now, its pitted surface more clearly discernible.
Petrov threw the yoke to bring the Yuri Gagarin about while Gleb got on the intership radio and alerted the third crewman, Engineer Igor Ivanovitch, to don his spacesuit and prepare to retrieve an object from the cargo bay.
"Do you not mean 'deploy'?" asked Ivanovitch. "You have not deployed while I slept, have you?"
"Just get into the suit," Gleb barked as Petrov sent the shuttle soundlessly tipping so that its cargo doors faced the sun and the approaching object. Petrov threw the great lever that sent the massive cargo bay doors on the top of the shuttle yawning wide like a white beetle spreading its wings. And then he shut his eyes tightly. It was out of his hands now.
When several minutes passed without the sound of an impact, he knew that the object was not one of the feared Star Wars devices of the American National Space Administration. He knew all about those. Satellite killers were being developed at a furious pace by America's Hollywood President and named after a war-mongering Hollywood movie. At least that was how the party commentators described it on the Bremya TV news program. Because he was a privileged cosmonaut, Petrov managed to locate a bootlegged videotape of the Star Wars film. Even though it was a twelfth-generation print and as full of snow as a Moscovite's boots, Petrov thought it was more exciting than all of Russia's TV shows put together. If too violent.
When ten minutes passed, Petrov broke the silence. "We are still breathing," he told Cosmonaut Gleb.
"The ship is undamaged," Gleb agreed. Neither man mentioned the fact that their training had required donning spacesuits at this critical time. Both understood it would be better to die instantly from the explosively cold vacuum of space than to die slowly in the limited-oxygen environment of a suit, radioing their last observations for the benefit of the bloodless scientists at Cosmograd, nicknamed Star City by the Americans.
Petrov got on the intership link. "Comrade Ivanovitch, I am now closing the cargo bay doors. You will enter the cargo bay and report on what you find there."
"What should I expect to find there?" Ivanovitch asked in a sleepy but nervous voice.
"You will tell me, and not I you. Keep your suit radio link open."
"Da, Comrade Commander," said Ivanovitch. To himself he muttered the choice Russian phrase "To zhopu," meaning, "Up yours."
Petrov and Gleb listened pensively as the sounds of Ivanovitch's measured breathing came over the intership system.
"I am opening the first airlock," said Ivanovitch. Indicator lights on the control panel confirmed that the airlock door had opened.
"I am closing the first airlock door," said Ivanovitch. "I am in the airlock now."
"He is very brave," whispered Gleb.
"He is third in command," said Petrov. "If he fails, it will be your responsibility next."
"Now I am opening the second airlock door," said Ivanovitch. "I can now see into the cargo bay."
"What do you see?" demanded Petrov. "Describe it, please."
"I see the satellite, still in its net, ready for deployment."
"Look for something smaller, like a meteor."
"I am entering the cargo bay," said Ivanovitch. Suddenly the Yuri Gagarin shuddered. The yoke in Petrov's hand vibrated like a living thing. He gripped it with both hands, thinking wildly that they were doomed. The control panel went crazy. Lights blinked and flashed, and levers swung of their own accord. The Yuri Gagarin, its retros firing spasmodically, turned slow pirouettes in the void of orbital space.
"We are haunted!" screeched Gleb.
"Shut up!" snapped Petrov, who did not believe in ghosts. But memories of another grainy American videotape, one called Aliens, flashed into his mind, and he hastily plugged himself into a relief tube before he released his bladder all over the high-traction flooring.
When he was done, Commander Petrov tried to raise Ivanovitch.
"Ivanovitch! Ivanovitch! Are you safe?" There was no answer.
"He will answer," Gleb said frantically, knowing that if Ivanovitch did not, he himself would be ordered into the cargo bay next. "Give him time."
But five minutes of repeated entreaties for Ivanovitch to answer brought only static.
"You know your duty," Alexei Petrov told Oleg Gleb meaningfully.
"Da," said Gleb weakly. He shook Petrov's cold hand stiffly, as if in farewell, and slipped down the winding aluminum stair to the lower deck where the spacesuits were racked.
"I am opening the first airlock," Gleb's voice came back moments later. "I am now in the cargo bay. The lights are on."
"Do you see Ivanovitch?"
"No," said Gleb in a voice so low-pitched it might have come from a dead man.
"Look harder," said Petrov. "He must be there somewhere."
"I see only the satellite," Gleb answered, anguished. "Never mind," said Commander Alexei Petrov in a sick voice. "I know where Ivanovitch is."
"You do?"
"Da, he is outside the ship, floating not ten feet in front of my face."
"I do not remember you opening the cargo bay doors after Ivanovitch entered," Gleb pointed out.
"I did not. They must have opened during the malfunction."
"Then I may leave this place now?"
"No. Look for the object," said Petrov, repressing a shudder as silver-flecked pieces of Ivanovitch's pressure suit drifted away. No doubt the rest of the late Igor Ivanovitch was now spinning through empty space.
"I am looking for the object now," said Gleb. "It may have floated out with Ivanovitch."
"No!" said Gleb excitedly. "I see it! I see it!"
"Describe it!"
"It is exactly as it appeared when first sighted. A pitted clump of metal. One side is smooth, as if machined. It has attached itself to the cargo bay doors manual control board."
"Magnetic?"
"It must be so."
"Attempt to remove it."
"I am doing that now," Gleb said, exertion twisting his voice. "But it will not disengage."
"No magnet could be that powerful, could it?" demanded Petrov.
"Commander," Gleb said wonderingly, "it does not appear to be merely attached to the control board. It appears to have fused itself to the board."
"Fused?"
"The edges of the board where it touches this object have grown out into the object. This is most passing strange. "
"It is more than passing strange," said Commander Petrov.
"What do I do?"
"Let me think."
Commander Alexei Petrov stared out the windows into the star-sprinkled deeps of space. Faraway now, he recognized a luminous shape like a deformed silver starfish as the mangled remains of Cosmonaut Ivanovitch. He quickly flipped the switch that reestablished a voice downlink to Cosmograd. To his surprise, there was no uplink. He checked his telemetry indicators. The downlink was dead too. He was cut off from all communications with earth.
Alexei Petrov switched to the intership communicator. "We have lost ground communications," he informed his copilot in a voice more steady than he felt.
"This ... this thing must be the cause," Gleb called back. "It is affecting our electronics. It must have caused that earlier malfunction."
"Await me, Gleb. I am coming with tools. We must remove that leech of a thing from our electronics."
"Hurry," said Oleg Gleb.