Yes, the style is quite different and it is more philosophical, – summarized Sveta.
You know, it’s sad… The beginning of 20th century was the golden age of poetry as an art, but now it’s gone… There is poetry and there are poets, but there is no art, and I am afraid there will not be, he said thoughtfully.
All right, Andrey, we have held a social event, even though between us, now let’s go and do something for the society, – said Sveta.
-5-
At the beginning of 70s USSR officially rejected a manned flight to Mars, concentrating on interplanetary automatic stations.…
There were surely many variants of a manned flight to Mars, but they were developed in a more optional way, as a long-term perspective.
The coordinator analyzed both national and western projects, taking something from them and adding something new.
So he decided to do without unnecessary fuss of preparation for the flight, the flight itself and the rest.
The plan was quite simple: secretly prepare an expedition to Mars, fly there, take as many samples as possible and return.
And then, having analyzed the information and the samples, announce unintentionally: we have recently returned from Mars and received very interesting results which we will soon reveal…
It seemed like a simple and ordinary affair, it was day-to-day work in terms of USSR – well, the Russians flew to Mars and came back… It’s almost the same for us as for some people, especially in the West, to go to a restaurant or the nearest Disneyland.
The effect would surely be stunning. Even though Andropov was not very enthusiastic about the space, he imagined the possible effect and so agreed to this expensive expedition.
But the expedition turned out to cost much cheaper than the preliminary estimates.
The living modules were based on those nearly prepared for the Mir station, the only difference was a larger size, and the majority of equipment and devices was practically the same.
The rocket was the almost standard Molnia-M, with a new double body and just two stages instead of three to four used as usual.
A part of materials and technologies was taken from the well-known rocket СС 18 which terrified the Americans… They even invented such a name for it that I’d better refrain from saying it out loud.
Both bodies were composite ones, containing different materials, and the structure of the bodies was no less complicated than the whole of MS 88 taken together…
Almost half of the outer body of the spaceship consisted of different layers, each of which protected the crew from something special, and that’s why it was created. All these layers had been used somewhere or were just being elaborated and finished.
That’s why all the institutes that worked on the materials for MS 88 had associations with tanks, planes and submarines.
-6-
The farther was MS 88 going into space, the more often Andrey remembered the launch site. It was the last thing he saw on Earth, so he recollected it best of all; moreover, he worked and lived there for almost a year and a half…
More and more often he got the impression that the Launch site was alive. It had its own peculiar atmosphere. However, all the numerous objects, military units and launch sites were surrounded by the taiga, and when you drove several kilometers from them, and sometimes even one or two hundred meters, you found yourself absolutely on your own. Just taiga and silence surrounded you…
But you felt there was somebody else around you, and there were a lot of them – tens of thousands of servicemen and civil employees working on the launch site, and among the endless number of silent trees around you there was a feeling of an invisible presence of people united by one goal.
On many roads that connected almost 2 000 objects scattered all over the launch site, there was round-the-clock movement of cars and buses of all types and sizes, construction and military equipment… A car going past you made you feel that you are not alone, but when it drove away, loneliness surrounded you from all sides again.
The atmosphere of the launch site was absolutely unique and incommunicable. It can probably happen only on our numerous earthly cosmodromes. Each rocket and its multiple parts, components, devices, systems, materials were the results of work of hundreds of design offices and scientific and research institutes, thousands of enterprises and hundreds of thousands of people scattered all over the huge country.
And all that was delivered, brought and concentrated on the launch site. The launch site gave a final touch to all that, checked and tried it many times in accordance with numerous technologies and rules, until the final and probably the most important stage came – rocket launch, for which the Launch site was created.
But the launch site – it’s not only hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete, steel, integration buildings, launch grounds and a long list of parts that make it up: these are just instruments. The main thing is people working there, so the launch site is really alive…
Considering the schedule of launches which was the most intense on Earth, the working environment in the many-thousand team of the launch site was quite tense… It probably reflected on the northern nature surrounding it, and it produced the atmosphere which was nothing like any other cosmodrome on Earth.
While they are flying, the launch site could have launched a good hundred of rockets with satellites and research craft to the Moon, Venus or Mars. Some rockets are still in the integration house, some are already on launch grounds, some are being delivered, and some are being assembled on plants. But sooner or later they will meet in the place from which they started – on the launch site.
The word “cosmodrome” was not very widely used then, rocket engineers had their own terms and designations, and other military units had theirs. But most of them called it all simply a launch site.
Probably some part of him, Andrey, as well as the whole crew, remained there, and they took some part of the atmosphere with them…
It was a place where you could meet representatives of practically any kind and service arms available in the USSR Armed Forces. It was probably just sailors and paratroopers that Andrey did not meet there… but probably they were there but just he did not encounter them? And access was given not everywhere on the launch site, but only to those related to direct duties.
And very often, based on the specific character of a regular program or project, officers wore shoulder straps and collar patches of the service arms they were not connected with in any way. Only a few people knew what exactly they were doing at the launch site, and curiosity was not welcomed there.
It was Andrey’s colleagues, KGB officers, who “loved” and probably just had to change their uniforms. These were the representatives of the Special Department of the launch site. There were a lot of units, so the staff was just as diverse in quantity: there were small units of communications men that contained several dozens of people and separate battalions, regiments and brigades which contained thousands of soldiers and officers.
Practically nobody wore the uniform of a KGB officer: if you are posted to rocket engineers, wear the same uniform, any uniform except for the real one.
Somehow Andrey liked visiting the airfield most of all. It was located a little aside from most other military units of the launch site and lived its own independent life, and a part of it was surely subjected to the launch site as a whole.
The checkpoint was located just near the wing, the staff office of the barracks, the club and the dining hall were lost among birch trees… There were surely a lot of evergreens in the taiga, a lot of mixed vegetation, and birch thickets were not that frequent. Maybe that was the reason why the wing seemed so homely and comfortable and people were attracted here?
The pilots were not the most secret part of the launch site, that’s why there was no fence around the unit. The pilots themselves lived in the cosmodrome’s main camp. The wing and its barracks accommodated soldiers from two assigned separate support battalions, as well as the soldiers included directly in the separate wing.
There was quite a comfortable club with a large audience hall and quite a big screen where movies were shown at weekends. In the other part of the club there was a good gym where soldiers from the regiment and battalions sometimes played volleyball.
The acquaintance with the life of taiga pilots happened all of a sudden. There was still some time before another board was to be met, so Andrey left the ordinary military offroader near the checkpoint and went out to walk among the birches. The road bifurcated to barracks and staff office of the regiment. On a small drill field there was a row of a dozen soldiers or officers – a usual work formation or instructions before the shift.
The soldiers of the air regiment were dressed probably best of all at the launch site. One could rarely see them in ordinary uniforms. In summer they wore summer technical clothes: a dark blue cap, a light and comfortable jacket with pockets and slacks of the same color, and the main thing – they wore light and comfortable low shoes on elastic and comfortable soles, almost like trainers, instead of tarpaulin boots with foot wraps as indispensable attributes.
In autumn they had to put on boots, cold-proof bib overalls, a demi-season jacket with a cold-proof hood that could be worn in a pocket on the back. All these clothes were almost black.
In winter, when the temperature often fell to minus 30–4 °C°, they wore felt boots and thick, warm and long overalls that reached the neck. As for outdoor clothing, they wore a very thick jacket of very warm material with a tied lining of good well-dressed sheepskin. There was also a huge collar of beaver lamb which rose above the head with a hat on it, which could be fastened if necessary.
Above all that you could also put on a thick and warm hood with dog fur, and when it was especially cold, there was a knitted helmet with holes for the eyes. Moreover, all that was put on over two sets of underwear – cold (summer) and warm (winter), and then there were semi-woolen peg-top trousers with a service coat, and then the rest.
This is not like knight’s armor, but quite heavy; however, you will not be afraid of cold or wind. There were also thick and warm mittens of the same natural sheepskin with leather inserts on the palm; they were long and had lapels of different kinds – white, blue, even orange. Soldiers liked to put them in the pockets of the jacket or overalls, so that these bright lapels could be seen against the background of the rest – the jet blue uniform.
All changes of seasons and uniforms of the soldiers from the air regiment assigned to the launch site stuck in the memory by themselves.
It was summer, and soldiers were wearing the lightest summer technical uniform. A little aside, a senior lieutenant was walking; he seemed to be here by change and to bear no relation to what was going on. In his hands he was turning a long chain with keys and in the form of a pendant, with about five cartridges to the modernized Kalashnikov gun, but all of these were shining as if chrome-plated.
Andrey felt that it was his colleague by the department, came up and shook his hand. Pilots had somewhat strange pendants… The colleague laughed and said that these were the amusements of local demo bees: they found cartridges somewhere and polished them with sand paper in their free time. The trick was that the cartridges in arms rooms were strictly accounted, and it was hard to imagine where they took these.
They started talking, Igor turned out to be a landsman, and they got on more familiar terms.
Pilots and technicians finish their working shift soon, and they are going to play volleyball. Shall we join them? – Igor suggested.
Let’s try, said Andrey. And where’s the ground? – It’s near the airfield, we can cut through the forest. Soldiers trod paths to every quarters, Igor answered.
There were at least ten paths from the asphalted part of the air regiment’s camp to all cardinal points. There was taiga everywhere, and you could get lost in ten meters from separate buildings of the camp. However, one could see the high control tower of the airfield.
Igor selected the path leading to the left, and soon they crossed an asphalt road that ran almost parallel the airfield: one could see massive АN-12 cargo aircraft from it.
The path divided into three again, but one could already see the ground with a row of houses on wheels (shelters), a hangar with almost unneeded, cumbersome plane parts that were probably written off, and a smoke room in the form of a large covered octagonal pergola. The volleyball ground was located not far from it.
Everything was painted green, just the white volleyball net stood out. A technician sometimes went out of the shelters that merged with the forest, and it could seem from afar that some wood spirits appear from nowhere…
By the end of the working day soldiers from different groups appeared one by one, carrying testing equipment and instruments. The whole plane – all its components and systems – were divided among three to four groups, each of them had its own shelter on wheels which served as a storeroom for parts and a small workshop for small and quick repairs.
The attitude to instruments in the aviation is special, a forgotten screwdriver or pliers could get anywhere during the take-off and height gain: into the elements of elevators or ailerons control system, into the gear leg; vibration or rolling motion could make any forgotten screwdriver to move somewhere, and it could result in a plane crash.
So when technicians and mechanics were leaving the shelter to provide servicing to planes, they checked the availability of the whole set of instruments, after they worked with the planes – checked again, and then again when returning to the shelter.
If there was a shortage, almost the whole squadron started to look for the missing instruments. No plane could take off until the screwdriver was found. There surely were such cases, but they were quite rare and the instruments were quickly found. At best, the guilty one got off with a few extra duties.
But once a young soldier forgot all the instruments at once on the plane, the whole iron case. It was found in less than five minutes, but the whole squadron where it happened flipped! Nobody remembered anything like that – forgetting all at once…
Moreover all the instruments were branded: they contained eight or ten digits, the first two stood for the last two digits of the unit number, two more – the service group number, then the number of instrument on the list and something else. If these were, for example, pliers or nippers, the brand was put on both parts.
This topic was the theme of numerous jokes. Each AN-12, besides a lot of different equipment, contained an ordinary broom with a long handle, used to remove snow from the plane where it was difficult to reach or to sweep inside the plane, and there was also a whisk broom. But the ordinary broom was used more often.
Once several technicians were sitting in a spacious smoking room after dinner. A chief of regiment staff – the half colonel – came in. His position did not imply flying, it was more of a bureaucratic character, for there were a lot of papers, plans and reports in the regiment. The chief was always bemused about something, and this time, too, he was thinking about something connected with his service, smoking a Belomor cigarette…
And then one of the technicians decided to joke and asked half colonel if they should brand the brooms. The chief said in surprise: Haven’t you branded them yet? The jaws of all the technicians in the smoking room dropped. The technician who tried to joke said: and where should we brand it – on the handle? The half colonel replied: yes, on the handle and on each twig separately…
On the whole, officers and warrant officers in the air regiment were mainly young, aged from 20 to 35. There was less than a tenth of those aged forty and over. So when they had a little free time, they played the fool as they could.
They did so especially in winter: they liked to dump somebody in the snowdrift or just play snowballs. They removed a small entrance ladder to the shelter of the neighboring service group and quickly put up a hill of snow. A technician who went out of the shelter did not suspect anything, made a step and… felt a bit of a paratrooper during his very first jump.
Having shaken off the snow and sworn, he shouted – we are being attacked! The other members of his group flew out of the shelter to be attacked by those who had removed the ladder! It was funny just like in childhood – a pig pile of officers, warrant officers and soldiers…
When the squadron engineer, a mustached and stern major, the oldest of all those lying in the snow, came out of his separate shelter upon hearing the noise, he shouted: Stop playing the fool in the snow!
Also, pilots and technicians had a special approach to dividing into teams: those married played against the bachelors, and the bachelors beat the married more often somehow. Sometimes the mustached played against the shaven, and very rarely the pilots played against the service staff that worked on the land.
The games were not very frequent: there was one day off – Sunday, and not everybody had a day off on the same day.
A plane, the more so – a pilot, should fly. The whole regiment flew almost every other day. The first and fourth squadrons on one day, the second and third on the next one. There were day and night flights, training and operational flights. A part of the regiment was on constant business trips upon the tasks given at the launch site: they flew all over the country, sometimes the plane returned in two or three days, sometimes in two weeks.
Sometimes the flying line was half empty, and then the regiment gathered again, but almost never completely. The days of operational flights were always the most strenuous ones. Technicians and mechanics prepared almost twenty planes for the flight, pilots had pre-flight trainings, studied the plan of flights.
All the maintenance groups worked on different planes, each in accordance with its profile, sometimes almost all of them gathered on one which had to fly first, and then dozens of technicians and mechanics swarmed in all parts of the plane at once. After preparing this one they started working on others.
Pre-flight preparation, preliminary preparation, preparation for a second flight and post-flight one, and also regular maintenance work on different elements and the whole plane… there were many of them. Finally the planes were ready, the crews started checking and launching the engines.
There are four of them on AN-12, each almost 4 00 °CV… The airfield is covered by deep rumble, and the planes go to the steering paths one by one, then to the take-off runway and disappear above the taiga. The airfield gets empty, and technicians can have a little rest.
Now the first plane returns and drives to its line, the technicians go there again to prepare it for the second flight. One more returns, now everybody goes to this one, and all the planes that fly on this day or night follow the same procedure. Having accomplished the flying task, the plane returns to its line for good. The technicians carry out the post-flight preparation, the plane is fuelled to the full and stays there to rest.
It happens to every plane that flies on that day. Finally everybody is back on the line, all the planes are checked and fuelled, and the airfield grows quiet. The tired pilots and land maintenance workers return home or to the barracks. The airfield is closed and passed for guard to the field squadron.
The procedure is the same every other day. During flights sometimes there were small pauses, one or two hours long: planes landed on the airfield to make room for another rocket in the sky.
The best season is summer: the clothes are light, and you don’t have to uncover the plane before the flight and cover it back again afterwards.
-7-
Lost in his everyday affairs of MS 88 crew commander, Sergey felt strange easiness and better performance of brain, mind or probably all senses. It was as if there were two commanders in him: one dealt with the multitude of space affairs, and the other one relived his life on Earth.
In his thoughts he constantly had flashbacks of childhood, studies, smiles of the girls he knew, first flights in the air club, service in the Air Force, but they were getting shorter and shorter and started to feel quite different.
It was as if looking at the life of a person totally strange to himself, that is, quite different. It does look like a split personality, but this diagnosis would not be correct, thought Sergey.
Remembrances of childhood came most often… Was it then that he got his first desire to fly? It is most probably connected with an incommunicable feeling of freedom you had during the longest school holidays – in summer.
Almost every summer he went to the countryside, except for two trips to the seaside and two or three shifts in a pioneer camp. But he enjoyed most of all spending his holidays in the countryside with his numerous grandmothers. In ten years of studying at school in the city, he spent at least two years on holidays in the countryside.
He had only one grandmother, but she had at least ten cousins, and if more distant relatives are taken into account, then a good half of the locals was related to him as well… But it was not the most important thing.
The house doors were almost never locked – the “lock” was usually a wooden spinner nailed to the door frame. If it lay parallel to the ground, the door was locked, if perpendicular, it was open. Sometimes the door was locked with the help of a padlock, but it only happened if the owners went to town for a long time to visit their children.
In summer, the population increased probably twice. Numerous grandsons, granddaughters and great-grandchildren came to visit their grandparents practically from all parts of the huge country. Only on the small street with 30 houses where Sergey lived most often, changing the houses of his grandmothers by turns, at least ten summer residents appeared – several girls from Moscow and boys from Leningrad, Siberia and the Far East…
You had to get acquainted and make friends with everybody. But it only happened for the first time, and then they just grew up together, meeting almost every year in the same village.
His grandmother’s house was situated right at the foot of a small mountain located near the street; Sergey liked to climb it and look at the spaces of this part of Central Russian Upland from above. Just below he saw his street, then fields and vegetable gardens going down from it, and orchards near the stream.
When he looked at all that, he sometimes had the desire to stretch out his arms and fly, but he surely couldn’t. He just could run very quickly down the mountain with his arms stretched to the sides, trying to jump as high as possible while running. The slope was not very steep, and sometimes he could fly for just a few meters…
Now they flew millions of kilometers together. But he did not feel that childish feeling of joy or happiness from a second-long several-meter flight.
It was left there, very far on the spaces of Central Russian Upland.
Chalk mountains, steppes and forests, valleys and small plateaus, ravines and streams: 3 months of summer holidays passed almost imperceptibly to explore all these.
The village he usually went to was situated in Bobrovsky district of Voronezh Region. Nearby there was a river Bityug – a tributary of the Don. The village comprised several dozen streets, and some were located several kilometers from the central part.
The river flowed in a huge valley bordered from two sides by huge plateaus covered with forest. Most often he visited one of the grandmothers whose house stood practically at the foot of a small 50-60-meter mountain, with several higher mountains near it, and all that merged into a vast plateau of about 200–300 meters high, with a wheat field on it stretching to the horizon.
There were not many houses – about thirty, and they lined an ordinary country road. There were a lot of corn and potato fields around going down to a big stream. Closer to the stream, the fields turned into orchards with apple trees, pear trees and plum trees – it’s difficult to remember everything that grew there…
On the other side of the street, which was the farthest from the village, along the second half of houses, closer to the beginning of mountains, there were cherry gardens. Each one of ten houses had its own Cherry Garden, and unlike the one described by Chekhov, nothing threatened them.
The cherry trees were small – it was easy to brace them with the fingers of two palms. The trunks were dark grey, almost black, with shining yellow delicious gum, more like amber, flowing down. Sergey and his friends liked to eat this gum from the tree, but sometimes they also bit some bark and then had to spit it out.
The ripening cherries were dark red, and then became almost black unless picked on time. In twenty minutes one could easily pick a full three-liter can. By this time the grandmothers rolled the dough with rolling pins and cut it into circles for the future vareniki…
Usually about one hundred vareniki were made – not the small ones like they do in town, but sized like a small cake. 6–8 cherries were put into the circle of dough, it was poured with granulated sugar, and the edges were rolled in a beautiful winding seam. The dough was thin, and the round-sided cherries bulged from the varenik, making it almost triangular.
That’s it – put them in boiling water and they are cooked after they flow up. Vareniki increased by three to four times in size, the swollen and boiled cherries looked like blue grapes bulging from the semi-transparent dough… The mixed sugar and cherry juice yielded very delicious hot sweet-and-sour syrup, and you felt like swallowing the cherries themselves with stones in them, which often happened.
Vareniki with cherries are very tasty…
Yes, they really are…
What is it? – Sergey thought. – There is an echo in my head, or I’m going mad?
There is no threat of that, said the strange voice again.
Who is talking to me, then, is there a space bogie on the rocket?
The voice grew silent and then answered a bit sadly: I am the one who has been here all the time…
Dear me! – thought Sergey. – Are you God?
The silence answered: I am something closer to Peter…
This is the one who has the keys to paradise? – asked Sergey.
There are no keys… and even no paradise. More exactly, it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, – he heard an answer in his head.
Can you be more specific? For instance, we are flying to Mars – will we find life there or at least did it exist there? – Sergey continued the telepathy session.
Actually, you are not flying just to Mars… And there surely was life there, even similar to yours in some respect, but there is nothing left of it, sounded in Sergey’s head.
But what happened to it?
Almost the same that happened to almost all others, including your form, though not completely, but it looks like they degraded.
I see… the prospect is not very bright, thought Sergey.
But nobody promised that everything would be so wonderful and carefree, said the sad voice again. – All right, I have to go. We’ll talk later.
So long, said Sergey aloud… But there was only silence around.
-8-
Sveta flew into the service compartment in enticing and suspiciously small shorts. Her T-shirt reminded of cyclists’ uniform, though a little less tight, but anyway – it emphasized very well her tempting slender waist, high breast and beautiful sportive shoulders.
Andrey was sitting in the working zone of the service compartment and admired the beauty called Sveta which appeared suddenly or not very suddenly, with the corner of his eye.
The working zone of the service compartment included a small and comfortable hollow in the form of a table with the prototype of present-day computers and two armchairs almost like in a plane, and could be separated almost completely from the rest of the compartment with a light semi-transparent and shielded partition.
The shield was necessary to create the gravity like on Earth in the compartment, with a practical difference of about 25 percent. To create more similar and customary conditions, the installation greatly increased in size, and it was a luxury that could not be afforded there.
But it was quite enough to work quietly at the computer for an hour or two and give your body a rest from the zero-gravity it was fed up with.
A larger and more powerful installation that created artificial gravity worked for the living module – the bedroom. There it created the gravity which was practically the same as on Earth for the resting part of the crew to sleep. The crew not only slept but also restored the body from the consequences of a long exposure to zero-gravity.
The beauty flew quite near, almost a meter from Andrey, and he first admired the long and slender legs that went down to the armchair, thinking that there are wonderful aspects of zero-gravity, and here there are two of them nearby!
The legs smoothly turned into shorts – the shorts into a waist outlined by a tight T-shirt – the gaze stopped on the breast… the beauty almost sank into the armchair and tried to settle comfortably in it. The process was not quick and Sveta started to get bored with it.
She asked jokingly: Is the seat free? May I joint you?
You are always welcome! – replied Andrey and switched on a part of earthly gravity.
At last, said Sveta, settling in the armchair almost like on Earth. For complete similarity she crossed her legs and, looking into Andrey’s eyes, slowly put her hands behind her head and leaned on the back of the armchair. Andrey inadvertently stared at her breast again.
Andrey tried to look somewhere else and saw the shorts. If he looked up, it would be like rolling his eyes… so he looked at the shorts involuntarily. They suited Sveta best of all, emphasizing her slim waist turning into hips, then something these shorts were put on, and this magnificence finished with almost ideally slender and strikingly beautiful legs…
Sveta was looking at Andrey smiling, still with her hands behind her head.
The latter suddenly disappeared under the table. She looked at her figure unknowingly– everything seemed to be in order, even beyond that… and suddenly realized! What a jerk!
When high school girls started to wear remade or shortened uniform, boys started to constantly drop pens, rulers and erasers during classes, bending right to the floor to pick them and looking at the legs of their female classmates at the same time.