1 Aug 1991
We have completed our circularizing burn and have successfully entered orbit of the Pluto/Charon system. Period is 153.298 hours, semimajor axis 19,951 km, 0.002 eccentricity.
After weeks in the void, our high perch above this tiny world feels surreal. Pluto is like nothing we could have imagined and yet everything we expected. It is a world of stark contrasts. Mountains of ice are clearly discernible from orbit, as are jumbled peaks of what appear to be dun-colored rock. The planet is enveloped in a hazy atmosphere that shines like an azure ring against the black. It almost looks inviting.
Our exceedingly long orbital period gives us an average velocity of only 210 meters per second, barely moving compared to the blistering speed with which we traveled here. To be in freefall again only adds to our sensation of floating above these frozen worlds. The slow pace greatly adds to our knowledge of this strange planet as our instruments have ample time to scrutinize the surface turning slowly beneath them.
The planet varies wildly in color depending on the region: stark white, charcoal gray, ruddy brown. There are very few craters, suggesting the surface is relatively young and refreshing itself through geologic activity. Or perhaps this region of space is particularly empty.
One basin in particular resembles Arctic sea ice, subdivided into odd polygonal sections. We have noted what appear to be geysers of methane ice from its primary moon Charon and are anxiously looking for the same phenomenon on Pluto. We have also counted four more secondary moons, all in higher orbits and geologically inactive.
Nitrogen ice is of course everywhere, but there are signs that this may also vary with location. We have transmitted a fresh packet of observational data for the geology team’s perusal. Gregoriy and Alexi have been poring over it for hours, contemplating the effects of rapidly heating densely packed gases that are within a few dozen degrees of absolute zero. How much energy will it take, over how long, to bring them up to triple point when they could change phases with no warning? If I am to attempt a landing, it would be good to know if the ground is about to explode beneath my rockets.
What plutonium balls these guys had. It hadn’t been enough to build a nuclear pulse ship, they figured why not land on Pluto just to plant the flag and stake a claim for Mother Russia? We’d beaten them to the Moon and apparently they were eager to make up for that.
Arkangel Commander’s Log
14 Aug 1991
After two weeks of closely studying Pluto’s surface through our optical telescope, I must I confess to having spent entirely too much time imagining what it will be like down there. Not that the exercise is without merit, mind you. A good pilot must always study the terrain and environment first.
After completing two orbital periods, we are now satisfied with our maps of the planet. Not wanting to unduly influence my comrades, I left each one alone to determine their own suggestions for the attempted landing zone. Fortunately, we each arrived at the same conclusions independently. There is a promising area at 26.00N 153.00E adjacent to a large basin of nitrogen ice which appears to have enough solid ground to afford a landing.
When not frittering away our time at the telescope, we have been diligently preparing the LK-M. The vehicle has held up well but the hard suit has demanded my full attention. I do not question its deep-sea provenance, but we cannot know how well it has been adapted to Pluto’s environment until the time comes.
Dress rehearsals have not revealed any surprises, other than the ball joints in each limb require a generous amount of lubrication in vacuum. I spent three hours inside the suit myself yesterday and am satisfied with its ability to maintain pressure and respond to my movements. Joint articulation improves considerably as the suit warms up, but that will take valuable time on the surface. We have devised an alternative procedure to leave the protective fabric enclosure attached to LK-M through descent and landing. It will be jettisoned on the surface prior to the EVA. Given the presence of atmosphere we agree it is best to keep the suit as well-protected as possible during descent and approach. The mass penalty will be negligible and it will keep us on schedule. Otherwise, the time and power drain necessary to warm it up threatens to be too limiting.
We eagerly await the mission director’s approval of our plans. Onward!
23
Mission Day 166
Arkangel Commander’s Log
16 Aug 1991
Surface Operations Report
Descent and approach to landing successful. Due to our exceedingly slow orbital velocity, LK-M’s aeroshell behaved perfectly. I was in fact able to use it to adjust my lift vector and steer the craft toward the targeted landing zone well beyond the point where we had expected to burn propellant. This was most fortunate as the haze layers camouflaged some unusual terrain features which only became visible when they were directly beneath me.
Pluto’s snowdrifts are a crazy quilt of varying features, most notably bladed spires of ice that in some cases rise hundreds of meters above the surface. Here I was concerned about fields of nitrogen icebergs or subsurface ice but having to maneuver clear of those white cliffs was an unwelcome surprise. At one point I was startled by turbulence from beneath, no doubt more nitrogen unleashed by the heat of my landing rockets.
This at least presented a better vantage point from which to see my landing zone. Stark white ice gave way to ruddy brown crust just beyond the frozen dunes, where I was able to find a suitable clearing.
LK-M now sits at 26.12.38N 152.58.08E, or so Gregoriy tells me from his perch in stationary orbit aboard our Soyuz transfer vehicle. I trust those numbers because they are not his! Alexi is acting as our mission manager aboard Arkangel and has checked the math using our almanac and the old slide rule I keep in the flight station. Only after he’d verified my sight reductions the hard way would he resort to a pocket calculator.
The lander came to rest six degrees off vertical; within tolerance but just enough tilt to be aggravating. Orientation is Z-negative, which means I practically fall into the hard suit’s access hatch face-first if I am not careful. Suit checkout is nominal and it is ready to go as soon as I am. And I am ready to go now, but have reluctantly deferred to my crewmates. They need rest and I want them at their most alert during my EVA.
17 Aug 1991
Sleep was fitful as it has become quite cold inside LK-M, more so than we predicted. Fuel cells are working at the desired output but it takes more insulation than this little lander provides to keep such enervating cold at bay. If we ever come back, a radioisotope generator might be wise. The residual heat alone would be nice right now.
The forward porthole has frosted over so there is no visibility. If there are to be any more observations of this world, then I must venture outside.
(Surface EVA Report transcript, as relayed to Arkangel via Cosmonaut G. Bagorov aboard Soyuz TMK-1, callsign “Dvina”)
0:01 Completed hard suit checkout and entered via aft access port, a much easier task in freefall than even in Pluto’s one-tenth g. The entry portal is quite small and there are no good footholds once inside. It became necessary to simply hang onto the hatchway and dive in feet-first. Any future crews will want to practice this more frequently while under thrust, particularly if their expeditions are to worlds with higher gravity.
0:13 Closed outer LK-M and inner suit hatchways and successfully completed pre-excursion checklists. Articulation joints functional but somewhat stiff; expected to improve with use. Pressurization holding at 14.2 psi, internal temperature 18° C. Battery draw spiked to 67 amps during power-on sequence in response to the extreme cold, now holding steady at 48 amps. Anticipate no more than three hours of surface activity at this rate.
0:37 Final suit checkout complete.
0:39 Detached from LK-M. Ready for descent.
0:42 I am at the base of the ladder, standing on footpad. The surface texture is rough gravel embedded in what I assume is nitrogen ice. The ground immediately around LK-M looks like shattered glass, the frozen nitrog
en’s reaction to suddenly having a heat source.
Suit skin temperature holding steady within fifty degrees of ambient, not enough to make the nitrogen change phase. It should be safe to step off.
0:43 Standing on the shoulders of our comrades, I make this great leap forward on behalf of the people of the Soviet Union!
I am now on the surface of Pluto.
Directly ahead, I can see stark white dunes of more nitrogen ice. Some blue-green highlights would indicate there is frozen methane out there as well. Jumbles of what resemble icebergs clutter the shore, while the ice cliffs that gave me trouble during approach appear in the distance like giant sails on a frozen ocean. There are occasional columns of mist rising from furrows in the ground; perhaps there is some subsurface convection sublimating the frozen gases. The sun is a distant lightbulb hung above the blue haze that clings to the horizon.
0:50 Contingency samples have been taken and are secure in my collection pouch.
It took some effort to open the auxiliary equipment bay on the descent stage as it was frozen over, but I was able to successfully assemble and plant our flag. The sight of it with our loyal little LK-M among Pluto’s surreal icescape may come to rival Alexi’s Saturn photographs. The Americans can have the Moon. When what we have done here becomes known, the world will know what “manifest destiny” truly means. And we will have a good laugh and a drink at their expense.
0:52 Beginning my traverse downslope to the “beach.” I step cautiously, as the ice shatters beneath me if not from weight then from the temperature differential. Clouds of ice crystals follow every step.
1:28 I walk along the edge of a sea of ice. From a distance it seemed rough, pebbly, clustered into great polygonal zones like ice floes. Up close, it is hard to describe. A blanket of more ice crystals, like snow, covers what appears to be an endless plain of something I have trouble identifying.
They are of course frozen, like everything else on this world, and rounded into rough spheres. I have heard of a similar phenomenon occurring in the coastal regions of Siberia, where ocean currents and winds combine to create fields of snowballs. That is the best I can describe it: snowballs, what must be millions of them, as far as I can see.
Other than for my presence here, there are no artificial impurities to blemish them. They are translucent white with iridescent colors that change depending on the angle of light, but generally remain in the blue and green ends of the spectrum. Under closer examination beneath my suit lamps, each appears to be layered around a distinctly darker core. Might these be the source of the organic molecules our spectroscopes detected?
2:13 Beginning second leg of traverse, I am leaving the frozen sea behind and heading back upslope. Disappointing, as the ground ahead appears less interesting.
2:57 Final leg of traverse and I will need to finish early. It took much more effort than anticipated to retrieve the core sample. Thorough as it was, the EVA training on Severny Island could not have duplicated the conditions here. Regardless, I must hurry back to the lander before my suit batteries are depleted. The cold is taking its toll; I am impressed that they have held out this long to be truthful.
Jack hadn’t given the political imagery much thought before. Now as they approached Pluto themselves, the thought of the Hammer and Sickle planted like a marker at the end of the solar system was chilling. They had actually done it.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He desperately wanted to just chuck all of this and get back to his real job, which Traci was doing for him on top of her pilot duties. And just letting Daisy manage more and more of the spacecraft was threatening to turn them into passengers.
It left him continually stunned at what the Russians had managed to do with what amounted to 1970s technology. That they didn’t fully trust pocket calculators yet, choosing a slide rule instead. That was some real engineering. He’d have to find that thing once they boarded. He had to admit, it was amazing what you could do with one once you figured it out. You had to be careful, though, with a logarithmic scale. Choose the wrong scale or get careless, and your numbers could be all over the place. Better off choosing random numbers and hoping.
Random. Random numbers.
Like the kind you could generate with a slide rule encoder . . .
He about fell out of his seat scrambling for the wall interface, then remembered his smartwatch. “Daisy!” he shouted, unnecessarily. “Look in your archives for any kind of calculating tools the Russians might have put onboard.”
Jack hadn’t been this obsessed with crafting a precise choice of words since his time in uniform, decoding and translating Russian radio traffic intercepted by drones above the Black Sea. Getting that wrong could have easily started big trouble depending on the attitude of whoever occupied the White House at the time. He’d quickly learned to shut that out, as whatever spin he might have thrown on his translations was irrelevant. Often the little details which he’d considered rather important—like mechanized infantry massing along their western frontier—were just as easily ignored by the National Command Authority.
Decode, translate, transmit, repeat. Don’t obsess over context or intent, that was for the spooks back in Washington. His reports were just one piece of a much larger puzzle being put together by the big shots in Fort Meade.
The other lesson he’d learned was that even though they might have the big picture, sometimes one guy on the ground with good eyes and trained ears could see an awful lot that remained opaque to the Pentagon’s brain trust. Multiple battalions become a regiment, regiments become a division, and the next thing you know there’s an entire army corps about two day’s drive from Kiev. Even that wasn’t the whole story: local sources talking about psyops teams infiltrating the population, provoking unrest and general mayhem which kind of dovetails with the raid on our logistics depot last night. Oh, and their Black Sea fleet has pretty much blockaded Odessa so all of our favorite bars have been overrun by surly Russians in Popeye suits. You guys plan on doing anything about it?
Of course not, the reply had been. Not that we owe you an answer, Sergeant, but since you’re being so insistent . . .
Thus had his career as a crypto-linguist ended. Get too good at your work and next thing you know, you’re shunted off into a staff job and the brass go on making decisions without your permission. How dare they?
For as long as it had taken the Pentagon to move back then, right now the turnaround time from Pluto to Earth felt like carrier pigeons in comparison. Four hours each way, with who knew how many hours in between while Owen’s mission team processed the information. Which meant if he had his message ready to go as soon as he went on watch, Houston might reply before his shift ended. He didn’t want it coming in the middle of Roy’s watch for a number of reasons, the first being that it would almost certainly result in an impatient knock on his door in the middle of the night—whatever passed for “night” out here.
Jack turned back through the logs. Once they could predictably match characters to likely logarithmic scales, the pattern became visible. And when it was visible, cracking Vaschenko’s cipher had been laughably easy.
The gnawing question had been why. They had been the only humans to visit Saturn. Vaschenko had been the first person to land on another world since Apollo, and it had been audacious. If they couldn’t be first to the Moon, they could for sure stake their claim to the frontier of the whole solar system. Why not trumpet that for the whole world?
The answer came within the one log entry that would have made heads explode all over the Kremlin:
21 August 1991
We have received order 1991.08.5a for an immediate direct return to Earth orbit. More information is required as this is in conflict with the current burn schedule for the Neptune and Uranus flybys. Besides not completing the planned grand tour of the outer planets, our return trajectory has been carefully calculated to take advantage of their gravity. While our spacecraft is more capable than any yet deployed, it is not unlimited. Half of
our propellant was consumed just to make orbit at Pluto. A direct return will require a new set of state vectors and careful recalculation of consumables. We cannot simply point our nose at Earth and begin igniting our nuclear slugs.
Related, we did not receive the proper authorization codes for this order. Please confirm that the order comes directly from the office of Chairman Gorbachev.
And that was that. From three billion miles away, Vaschenko was savvy enough to have sniffed out the mounting unrest in the Kremlin against Gorbachev. He’d started toying with encoding messages and had waited to stick it to them after they’d launched their coup attempt: Nyet, Comrades. No giant space battlewagon was coming to smite your enemies and stun the world.
Just like that, Vaschenko had neutered their greatest achievement. He’d taken it away as a propaganda tool, as a terror weapon, and an engineering triumph. No wonder they’d written him off as a mutineer. He’d made it so they had no choice but to keep it secret, and for that he’d also needed to keep his intentions secret. Better that everybody else live out their lives thinking it had been just one more Soviet space disaster that the West had never known about.
It had to be simple, but it had to be discoverable so the whole world didn’t come crashing down on his head when the Kremlin finally realized their hero cosmonauts had just flipped them the galactic finger. He must have figured the rest of the world didn’t need to know the Russians had a giant nuke thrower parked at the edge of the solar system; things were unstable enough.
The trick was to start at the right location, otherwise it’d all be gibberish. That was where Daisy came in, whipping through likely permutations that would’ve taken Jack the rest of his life to figure out by trial and error:
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