First Cosmic Velocity

by Zach Powers

  “The worst was his hatred of the Jews. He blamed them for every ill that befell him, as if they were the disorganized armies of his subordinates or the ones issuing secret orders to the Poles. During his reign, tens of thousands of Jews were slaughtered. Women, men, children, the elderly. Entire villages disappeared in the wake of Cossack forces, the landscape dotted with charred buildings and mass graves, if the Cossacks even took the time to bury the dead. In some places, there were later found piles of bones, marked with the teeth of the animals that had gnawed away the flesh. And the ways the Jews were slaughtered. Dismemberment, burning, torture, even crucifixion. Any terrible death that man has ever imagined was employed against them. The lucky ones were simply stabbed. In this, Khmelnytsky was as bad as Stalin or Hitler.”

  “I didn’t know that about him. The Soviet accounts are sterilized, of course.”

  “I stopped revering him after I read that book. And Tsiolkovski, while he may be addled by old age, I think it merely reveals the spite that was always in his heart. A hero is a fragile thing. In the case of the cosmonauts, it took two each for every hero you created. That’s what I learned while I was away. I don’t forgive you, Chief Designer. That’s not required, though, as long as I know what I know now. There’s evil in the world, but its face isn’t yours, Chief Designer. No, it’s not yours at all.”

  His face. The Chief Designer felt the scar there, an endless ache. Once, the pain had reminded him of the wound. Now, it reminded him of everything since. More than his title, more than his name, he identified himself by the ache.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN THEY HAD cleaned out Giorgi’s room in the dorm, they found one whole cabinet stocked full of liquor. Domestic vodka on the lower shelves, the upper filled with imported whiskies and a few beverages no one could identify. Their labels were not printed in any of the languages the staff at Star City knew. The bottles were all unopened, waiting for a celebratory occasion for the corks to be popped. Instead, the Chief Designer had drained several bottles over the course of two weeks, always a glass or two before bed. Without the aid of drink, he lay there, mind racing through potential problems.

  These were not new problems. He had a name for each. The chance that the ablative heat shield would burn too quickly or too slowly, igniting the whole capsule and exploding it in the upper atmosphere, scattering shards of metal and Nadya’s singed bones across hundreds of kilometers of Russian countryside, he shortened to The Heat Shield Problem. The fact that no one had ever attempted to dock two ships in space, that the docking mechanism had only been tested on the ground, that no launch yet had inserted Vostok into the exact planned orbit, that they called the cosmonauts pilots when they were really just passengers but now Nadya needed to be an actual pilot, that failure would mean an investigation, revealing a decade of deceit, and everyone who was involved, and quite likely many who were not, would be tried and executed for treason—the Chief Designer referred to that as The Docking Problem. There was the usual list of problems the Chief Designer dealt with for every launch, as well. He could not forget those.

  Right now, though, the Chief Designer was occupied by The Hangover Problem, and to a greater degree The Dog Problem. Byelka, Khrushchev’s little rodent of a dog, had been delivered, in a private limousine, to Star City the day before. The technicians had been trying to fit the dog with a vest all morning. This was supposed to be a comfort to the dogs, as well as allowing for the placement of sensors, but apparently to Byelka the vest was the gravest travesty in the history of the universe. When they finally got it on him, he began a period of yowling and sprinting in circles that did not end until hours later. It was so intense, and the dog’s biting so vicious, that no one could get close enough to him to remove the vest that was causing the fit in the first place. Eventually, the dog wore itself out, and it collapsed in a corner, motionless. The Chief Designer worried that they had killed the dog before it even made it to the launchpad.

  When the dog began again to show signs of life, the Chief Designer ordered it sedated. The veterinarian balked at first, but Byelka yipped anew, a sound so shrill and piercing as to drive straight through the ear canal to the brain. The veterinarian found a vein in the dog’s spindly leg and administered a dose even the Chief Designer could recognize as excessive.

  “Load the little bastard,” said the Chief Designer, and two technicians put Byelka in a small cage and carried him away.

  In the next room, Nadya was being fitted with her pressure suit, baggy and bright orange, topped with a helmet as wide as her torso. A cluster of tubes sprouted from the suit below her right breast, leading to what looked like a metal briefcase she held in her left hand. If anyone asked, the cosmonauts were instructed to say that the case contained life support equipment. Not an outright lie, but the case’s primary function was to store waste should a cosmonaut need to relieve herself while in the capsule. Mishin and Bushuyev buzzed around Nadya, adjusting the suit’s seals and checking zippers.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Ridiculous,” said the Chief Designer.

  The top of the helmet formed a perfect white orb, a planet completely covered in clouds. He tapped his fingers lightly on the crown.

  “This won’t do,” said the Chief Designer. “Someone will mistake her for an American pilot when she exits the capsule. They’ll think we’ve shot down another U-2.” He ran his finger along the white space just above the visor. “Paint something here. CCCP.”

  “Who will we get to paint it?” asked Mishin or Bushuyev.

  A moment of silence followed, and the Chief Designer knew they all shared the same thought.

  “Whoever. No need to be perfect.”

  “Just good enough,” said Nadya.

  There it was, thought the Chief Designer. Nadya had created a motto for the whole Soviet space program: Just good enough. At first, it seemed to be a criticism, but what could be more Soviet? Getting by with the essentials, eschewing all else. He realized he had so far failed to live up to that motto, accepting not quite good enough as good enough. It was time to set things right. Nadya could do that. She would.

  “Finish up here and we’ll head out,” said the Chief Designer. “The plane leaves in four hours.”

  In fact, the plane left whenever he wanted it to. He felt, though, that setting this deadline might be the last time he had real control over the launch.

  Baikonur Cosmodrome—1964

  Nadya was the twin who was supposed to die. But here she was, seated inside the capsule. Voskhod, not Vostok. Not really so different, essentially the same capsule with more components crammed inside. Designed for two or three cosmonauts but there was only one left to carry. This new capsule had a video camera directed at Nadya from just below her chin, her face, framed by the white helmet of the pressure suit, filling the whole screen. The Chief Designer touched the screen with his fingers. It was not the same. For the first time, a crewed Soviet rocket would launch without Nadya in the control room.

  The Chief Designer walked around the console to the periscope. This R-7 looked like a mistake, rising higher above the launchpad than the rockets used to launch Vostok. A cigarette gripped in four metal fingers. Steam rose from the base of the rocket and swirled up and away.

  It seemed that the smoke from the launch of Kasha and Byelka had barely cleared before they had begun setting up Nadya’s rocket. The first launch had gone smoothly, the old routine of launching Vostok like an exercise in relaxation. They had sedated Byelka before loading him into the capsule, through the awkward docking ring around the hatch. As soon as the first rumble came from the R-7’s engines, though, the dog was alert and yipping, the noise so persistent that eventually they had to turn off the speakers in the control room. The roar of liftoff seemed quiet in comparison.

  Now the dogs were in orbit, telemetry nominal. The only sound from the dogs was a repeated retching from Byelka
. They had not fed him, so the Chief Designer was confident that he had not soiled the capsule too badly. Kasha sometimes let out a bark, as if only to remind everyone that she was still there. The monitors strapped to Kasha, in some cases surgically implanted, returned results from her no different than if she were napping back at Star City.

  The Chief Designer returned to the control console and moved Mishin, or was it Bushuyev, away from the radio. There were actually three radios set up, one for each capsule in orbit, including Leonid’s, though this last was not turned on. Too many people in the room, lower-level engineers, had no idea at all that another capsule still circled the Earth. The Chief Designer pressed the button on the first radio’s microphone and sent his voice to the dogs, now completing their sixth orbit.

  “Good girl, Kasha,” he said.

  The reply came in the form of another retch from Byelka. Kasha growled, just a short sound to express her discontent.

  “I’m sorry for your traveling companion, Kasha. You’ll have better company soon enough.”

  A bottle of vodka passed between Mishin and Bushuyev and then to the Chief Designer. He gulped back a mouthful. He felt the burn in the empty sockets of his gums, in his veins, up and along the jagged scar on his head. He thought of himself as a rocket being fueled, that when he pressed the button, it would not be Nadya but himself, the human spaceship, lifting through the white wisps of clouds, over the Kazakh steppe’s singular unscenic-ness.

  The Chief Designer took the bottle of vodka to Leonid. Leonid had been standing in the darkened corner since before the first launch, not speaking once, refusing with dismissive waves every offer to take a look through the periscope.

  Leonid took the bottle and drank from it, first one swallow and then another and then another. Throwing his head back, he trickled the last drops straight into his throat.

  “So much for the vodka,” said the Chief Designer.

  Mishin and Bushuyev laughed, and one of them pulled a fresh bottle from under the console. “Ignatius left extras.”

  They popped the cork, and the fresh bottle began its rounds. Ignatius had been there as the final preparations were made, but she left before the first launch. She even said goodbye. The Chief Designer could not recall her ever announcing her departure before. He wondered if it meant something. He would be relieved to never see her again. But without knowing if she would return, he would never be able to relax to that idea. What was worse, her actual presence or her looming one?

  Leonid slouched. They had trained him to always stand tall. When he was a boy, it seemed like half of everything they said to him was some version of Straighten up. The Chief Designer wondered if this was the type of man Leonid would be if Tsiolkovski had never found him. The Chief Designer leaned on the wall next to Leonid in the darkened corner.

  “When you were gone, it felt like we’d lost another cosmonaut in space,” said the Chief Designer. “I know you don’t want my thanks, but you have it. For returning and for having been here in the first place.”

  Leonid gazed up at the gray ceiling, eyes focused on a point beyond it. “Do you know what I realized? While you may have given a choice to our siblings, you never gave a choice to us, those who stayed behind. You just assumed we were all right with it. I don’t mind so much being a part of this, as long as I have the option not to be. Even now, I don’t know if the choice was actually mine, but if Nadya and Kasha both fly and return, I guess that’s good enough for me. That’s as close as I’ll get to accomplishment. I didn’t choose to return. I chose to stay with them, wherever they went.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Leonid,” said the Chief Designer.

  “Of course not,” said Leonid. “I’m a Soviet hero.” He ran his fingers across the bottom of the medals on his chest—a new set to replace those he had abandoned in Kharkiv—as if sounding chimes.

  Nadya’s voice sparked from the radio, not words but humming, and not her usual atonal tune. This song was different but familiar. Leonid found himself humming along. So was the Chief Designer. And Mishin and Bushuyev. The song was one of Giorgi’s, one he had always sung to the plucked accompaniment of the balalaika. Leonid and the Chief Designer smiled first at the radio and then at each other.

  “Sometimes,” said the Chief Designer, “I feel that she’s the hero of my very own life. I felt that way before her first launch, and again now. I’m just watching from the side.”

  “Now who’s the one underestimating?”

  The Chief Designer walked to the radio and Leonid followed.

  “Hello, Nadya,” said the Chief Designer. “Just a little longer.”

  “Let’s go already,” said Nadya.

  “You’ve waited years,” said Leonid. “Another minute won’t kill you.”

  Leonid cringed at his choice of phrase.

  The Chief Designer placed his hand on Leonid’s shoulder and squeezed.

  “It’s time,” he said. And then into the microphone, “It’s time.”

  The final countdown passed in silence. The Chief Designer pushed a button, conspicuously red, and the rocket ignited. The petals of the launchpad folded away as the flames leapt up to consume them. The rocket reached the sky and kept climbing.

  Epilogue

  After the launch, all the technicians filed out. Only the Chief Designer, Leonid, Mars, and Mishin and Bushuyev remained. Someone had shut off the sickly fluorescent lights overhead. Leonid’s face was lit only by the glow of the buttons on the console.

  “Leonid, can you hear me?” he asked.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s your brother.”

  “Oh, good. I was concerned that I wouldn’t get to speak with you again.”

  “Nadya is up there with you. And Kasha, too.”

  “Ah! I thought I saw them.”

  “That’s unlikely. There’s more space than you imagine.”

  “What’s there to imagine? I’ve seen it all. I have nothing to do but look out this window. Can you tell the Chief Designer to add a larger window on his next spacecraft?”

  “I’m here,” said the Chief Designer. “I’ll add more and larger windows.”

  “Good, good.”

  There was a long moment of only static.

  “Will they come back?” asked Leonid from the capsule.

  “Who?” asked his brother.

  “Nadya and Kasha.”

  “We’ll bring them home,” said the Chief Designer.

  “Thank god,” said Leonid.

  “Did you see him?” asked the other Leonid. “Is god up there, after all?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing as heaven. All around me is literally nothing. But you know, I like the idea of that. I like that what I have now is the only important thing. Even if it’s not much.”

  “Thank you,” said Leonid, the one on the ground. “You’ve always been a good brother to me.”

  “I’m very thirsty. Of the things I don’t have here, water is what I miss the most. I’m very, very thirsty.”

  A loud click came through the speaker.

  “What was that?” asked the Chief Designer.

  “It’s time,” said Leonid, his voice distorted. He was not talking directly into the microphone. “I’m going outside to stretch.”

  “You can’t,” said Leonid. “You’ll die.”

  “Do you still believe I’m really alive? It’s time to go. I’m opening the door.”

  The hiss of rushing air, a whine of feedback, the stark silence of space. At first like falling, and then you float.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deepest gratitude goes to the real cosmonauts, engineers, scientists, staff, and dogs of the Soviet space program, who inspire me to strive for big, impossible things.

  Thanks to my agent, Annie Bomke. The people at Putnam have been outstanding to work wit
h, especially my editor Sara Minnich, Patricja Okuniewska, and all the editors, designers, marketers, publicists, and administrators who’ve been part of the book-making process.

  Christopher Berinato, Gino Orlandi, and Joseph Schwartzburt read the first draft of this book and gave me the feedback I needed to complete it.

  Love and thanks to Catherine Killingsworth, Gino (again), and Kakashi the dog for letting me use Kakashi’s description for my little space dog, Kasha.

  Thanks to the staff at Gallery Espresso in Savannah, Georgia, where most of this book was written. Thanks to Joni and Chris at The Book Lady Bookstore for being champions of local writers. Love to the whole Savannah coterie: Brian Dean, Sarah Lasseter, Erika Jo Brown, B.J. Love, Alexis Orgera, Ariel Felton, Jenny Dunn, Alison Niebanck, Billie Stirewalt, Brennen Arkins, Beverly Willett, Traci Lombardo, Blake “Allfather” Patrick, Danon Jade McConnell, Chike Cole, Adam Davies, Morgan Harrison, Chad Faries, Maria Dixon, Jason Kendall, Patricia Lockwood, Josh Peacock, Sarah Bates Murray, Christy Hahn, Jessi-Lyn Curry, Insley Smullen, Harrison Scott Key, Shea Caruso, and too many more to name. Thanks to Justin Gary and old friends from my long-ago Atlanta days.

  To my rad writer pals for making writing not just an activity but a community: Thomas Calder, John R. Saylor, Aaron Devine, Karen Russell, Nate Brown, Philip Dean Walker, John Copenhaver, Robert Kerbeck, Bridget Hoida, Bryan Hurt, Lindsay Chudzik, Jonathan Church, Emma Komlos-Hrobsky, Rob Spillman, Sam Ashworth, Gale Marie Thompson, and everyone at BOA Editions. Zach Doss, we miss you.

  Thanks to The Writer’s Center, my literary home in the D.C. area, and to my colleagues Margaret Meleney, Laura Spencer, Grace Mott, Laureen Schipsi, Brandon Johnson, Tessa Wild, and Amy Freeman.