by Ben Bova
Like a gang of Mafia hit men taking me for a ride, Jamie thought. The Russians smiled at one another a lot, grinning as they talked among themselves and hiking their eyebrows significantly. Something was up. And they were not going to tell the American geologist about it until they were damned good and ready.
They were solidly built men, all four of them. Short and thickset. Like Jamie himself, although the Russians were much lighter in complexion than Jamie’s half-Navaho skin.
“Is this official business?” he had asked them when they pounded on his hotel door at the crack of dawn.
“No business,” Zavgorodny had replied while the other three grinned broadly. “Pleasure. Fun.”
Fun for them, maybe, Jamie grumbled to himself as the car hummed along the concrete of the empty highway. The river curved off to their left. The wind carried the smell of sun-baked dust. The old town of Tyuratam and Leninsk, the new city built for the space engineers and cosmonauts, was miles behind them now.
“Why are we going to the airport?” Jamie asked.
The one on his right side laughed aloud. “For fun. You will see.”
“Yes,” said the one on his left. “For much fun.”
Jamie had been a Mars trainee for little more than six months. This was his first trip to Russia, although his schedule had already whisked him to Australia, Alaska, French Guiana, and Spain. There had been endless physical examinations, tests of his reflexes, his strength, his eyesight, his judgment. They had probed his teeth and pronounced them in excellent shape, then sliced his appendix out of him.
And now a quartet of cosmonauts he’d never met before was taking him in the early morning hours of a quiet Sunday for a drive to Outer Nowhere, Kazakhstan.
For much fun.
There had been precious little fun in the training for Mars. A lot of competition among the scientists, since only sixteen would eventually make the flight: sixteen out of more than two hundred trainees. Jamie realized that the competition must be equally fierce among the cosmonauts and astronauts.
“Have you all had your appendixes removed?” he asked.
The grins faded. The cosmonaut beside him answered, “No. Is not necessary. We do not go to Mars.”
“You’re not going?”
“We are instructors,” Zavgorodny said over his shoulder. “We have already been turned down for the flight mission.”
Jamie wanted to ask why, but thought better of it. This was not a pleasant topic of conversation.
“Your appendix?” the man on his left asked. He ran a finger across his throat.
Jamie nodded. “They took the stitches out yesterday.” He realized it had actually been Friday in Bethesda and now it was Sunday, but it felt like yesterday.
“You are an American Indian?”
“Half Navaho.”
“The other half?”
“Anglo,” said Jamie. He saw the word meant nothing to the Russians. “White. English.”
The man sitting up front beside Zavgorodny turned to face him. “When they took out your appendix—you had a medicine man with painted face to rattle gourds over you?”
All four of the Russians burst into uproarious laughter. The car swerved on the empty highway, Zavgorodny laughed so hard.
Jamie made himself grin back at them. “No. I had anesthesia, just as you would.”
The Russians chattered among themselves. Jamie got a vision of jokes about Indians, maybe about a red man wanting to go to the red planet. There was no nastiness in it, he felt. Just four beer-drinking fliers having some fun with a new acquaintance.
Wish I understood Russian, he said to himself. Wish I knew what these four clowns are up to. Much fun.
Then he remembered that none of these men could even hope to get to Mars anymore. They had been relegated to the role of instructors. I’ve still got a chance to make the mission. Do they hold that against me? Just what in the hell are they planning to do?
Zavgorodny swung the car off the main highway and down a two-lane dirt road that paralleled a tall wire fence. Jamie could see, far in the distance, hangars and planes parked haphazardly. So we really are going to an airport, he realized.
They drove through an unguarded gate and out to a far corner of the sprawling airport where a single small hangar stood all by itself, like an outcast or an afterthought. A high-wing, twin-engine plane sat on squat tricycle landing gear on the concrete apron in front of the hangar. To Jamie it looked like a Russian version of a twin Otter, a plane he had flown in during his week’s stint in Alaska’s frigid Brooks Range.
“You like to fly?” Zavgorodny asked as they piled out of the car.
Jamie stretched his arms and back, glad to be no longer squeezed into the car’s back seat. It was not even nine o’clock yet, but the sunshine felt hot and good as it baked into his shoulders.
“I enjoy flying,” he said. “I don’t have a pilot’s license, though. I’m not qualified…”
Zavgorodny laughed. “Good thing! We are four pilots. That is three too many.”
The four cosmonauts were already wearing one-piece flight suits of faded, well-worn tan. Jamie had pulled on a white short-sleeved knit shirt and a pair of denims when they had roused him from his hotel bed. He followed the others into the sudden cool darkness of the hangar. It smelled of machine oil and gasoline. Two of the cosmonauts went clattering up a flight of metal stairs to an office perched on the catwalk above.
Zavgorodny beckoned Jamie to a long table where a row of parachute packs sat big and lumpy, with straps spread out like the limp arms of octopi.
“We must all wear parachutes,” Zavgorodny said. “Regulations.”
“To fly in that?” Jamie jabbed a thumb toward the plane.
“Yes. Military plane. Regulations. Must wear chutes.”
“Where are we flying to?” Jamie asked.
Zavgorodny picked up one of the cumbersome chute packs and handed it to Jamie like a laborer passing a sack of cement.
“A surprise,” the Russian said. “You will see.”
“Much fun,” said the other cosmonaut. He was already buckling the groin straps of his chute.
Much fun for who? Jamie asked silently. But he worked his arms through the shoulder straps of the chute and leaned over to pull the groin straps tight.
The other two came back down the metal steps, boots echoing in the nearly empty hangar. Jamie followed the quartet of cosmonauts out into the baking sunshine toward the piano. A wide metal hatch had been cut into its side. There were no stairs. When he hiked his foot up to the rim of the hatch, Jamie’s side twinged with pain. He grabbed the sides of the hatch and pulled himself inside the plane. Without help. Without wincing.
It was like an oven inside. Two rows of bucket seats, bare, unpadded. The two men who had been sitting in the back of the car with Jamie pushed past him and went to the cockpit. The pilot’s and co-pilot’s chairs were thick with padding; they looked comfortable.
Zavgorodny gestured Jamie to the seat directly behind the pilot. He sat himself in the opposite seat and pulled the safety harness across his shoulders and thighs. Jamie did the same, making certain the straps were tight. The parachute pack served as a sort of cushion, but it felt awkward to Jamie: like underwear that had gotten twisted.
The engines coughed, sputtered, then blasted into life. The plane shook like a palsied old man. As the propellers whirred to invisible blurs, Jamie heard all sorts of rattling noises, as if the plane was going to fall apart at any moment. Something creaked, something else moaned horribly. The plane lurched forward.
The two pilots had clamped earphones over their heads, but if they were in radio contact with the control tower, Jamie could not hear a word they spoke over the noise of the engines and the wind blowing through the cabin. The fourth cosmonaut was sitting behind Jamie. No one had shut the hatch. Jamie twisted around in his seat and realized that there was no door for the hatch; they were going to fly with it wide open.
The wind roared through as the
plane hurtled down the runway, skidding slightly first one way and then the other.
Awfully long run for a plane this small, Jamie thought. He glanced across at Zavgorodny. The Russian grinned at him.
And then they were off the ground. Jamie saw the airport dwindling away out his window, the planes and buildings shrinking into toys. The land spread out, brown and dead-dry beneath the cloudless pale sky. The engines settled into a rumbling growl and the wind howled so loudly that Jamie had to lean across the aisle and shout into Zavgorodny’s ear:
“So where are we going?”
Zavgorodny shouted back, “To find Muzhestvo.”
“Moo… what?”
“Muzhestvo!” the cosmonaut yelled louder.
“Where is it? How far away?”
The Russian laughed. “You will see.”
They climbed steadily for what seemed like an hour. Can’t be much more than ten thousand feet, Jamie said to himself. It was difficult to judge vertical distances, but they would have to go on oxygen if they flew much beyond ten thousand feet, he knew. It was getting cold. Jamie wished he had brought a windbreaker. They should have told me to, he thought. They should have warned me.
The co-pilot looked back over his shoulder, staring directly at Jamie. He grinned, then put a hand over his mouth and hollered, “Hoo-hoo-hoo!” His version of an Indian war whoop. Jamie kept his face expressionless.
Suddenly the plane dipped and skidded leftward. Jamie was slammed against the curving skin of the fuselage and almost banged his head against the window. He stared out at the brown landscape beneath him, wrinkled with hills and a single sparkling lake far below, as the plane seemed to hang on its left wingtip and slowly, slowly revolve.
Then it dove and pulled upward, squeezing Jamie down into his seat. The plane climbed awkwardly, waddling in the air, then flipped over onto its back. Jamie felt all weight leaving him; he was hanging by his seat harness but he weighed practically nothing. It dived again and weight returned, heavy, crushing, as the plane hurtled toward those bare brown hills, engines screaming, wind whistling through the shaking, rattling cabin.
And then it leveled off, engines purring, everything as normal as a commuter flight.
Zavgorodny was staring at Jamie. The co-pilot glanced back over his shoulder. And Jamie understood. They were ragging him. He was the new kid on the block and they were seeing if they could scare him. Their own little version of the Vomit Comet, Jamie said to himself. See if they can make me turn green, or get me to puke. Much fun.
Every tribe has its initiation rites, he realized. He had never been properly initiated as a Navaho; his parents were too Anglicized to allow it. But these guys are going to make up for that.
Jamie made himself grin at Zavgorodny. “That was fun,” he yelled, hoping that the other three could hear him over the engines and the wind. “I didn’t know you could loop an old crate like this.”
Zavgorodny bobbed his head up and down. “Not recommended. Maybe the wings come off.”
Jamie shrugged inside the seat harness. “What’s next?”
“Muzhestvo.”
They flew peacefully for another quarter-hour or so, no aerobatics, no conversation. Then Jamie realized they had made one wide circling turn and were starting another. He looked out the window. The ground below was flat and empty, as desolate as Mars except for a single road running straight across the brown barren wasteland.
Zavgorodny unbuckled his safety harness and stood up. He had to crouch slightly because of the low overhead as he stepped out into the aisle and back toward the big wide-open hatch.
Jamie turned and saw that the other cosmonaut was on his feet, too, and standing at the hatch.
Christ, one lurch of this crate and he’ll go ass over teakettle out the door!
Zavgorodny stood beside the other man with one hand firmly gripping a slim metal rod that ran the length of the cabin’s ceiling. They seemed to be chatting, heads close together, nodding as if they were at their favorite bar holding a casual conversation. With ten thousand feet of empty air just a step away.
Zavgorodny beckoned to Jamie, gestured him to come up and join them. Jamie felt a cold knot in his stomach. I don’t want to go over there. I don’t want to.
But he found himself unbuckling the seat harness and walking unsteadily toward the two near the open hatch. The plane bucked slightly, and Jamie grabbed that overhead rod with both fists.
“Parachute range.” Zavgorodny pointed out the hatch. “We make practice jumps here.”
“Today? Now?”
“Yes.”
The other cosmonaut had pulled a plastic helmet onto his head. He slid the tinted glass visor down over his eyes, yelled something in Russian, and jumped out of the plane.
Jamie gripped the overhead rod even tighter.
“Look!” Zavgorodny yelled at him, pointing. “Watch!”
Cautiously Jamie peered through the gaping hatch. The cosmonaut was falling like a stone, arms and legs outstretched, dwindling into a tiny tan dot against the deeper brown land so far below.
“Is much fun,” Zavgorodny hollered into Jamie’s ear.
Jamie shivered, not merely from the icy wind slicing through his lightweight shirt.
Zavgorodny pushed a helmet into his hands. Jamie stared at it. The plastic was scratched and pitted, its red and white colors almost worn off completely.
“I’ve never jumped,” he said.
“We know.”
“But I…” He wanted to say that he had just had the stitches removed from his side, that he knew you could break both your legs parachute-jumping, that there was absolutely no way they were going to get him to step out of this airplane.
Yet he put the helmet on and strapped it tight under his chin.
“Is easy,” Zavgorodny said. “You have done gymnastics. It is on your file. Just land with knees bent and roll over. Easy.”
Jamie was shaking. The helmet felt as if it weighed three hundred pounds. His left hand was wrapped around that overhead rod in a death grip. His right was fumbling along the parachute harness straps, searching blindly for the D-ring that would release the chute.
Zavgorodny looked quite serious now. The plane was banking slightly, tilting them toward the open, yawning hole in the plane’s side. Jamie planted his feet on the metal flooring as solidly as he could, glad that he had worn a sturdy pair of boots.
The Russian took his right hand and placed it on the D-ring. The metal felt cold as death to Jamie.
“Not to worry,” Zavgorodny shouted, his voice muffled by Jamie’s helmet. “I attach static line to overhead. It opens chute automatically. No problem.”
“Yeah.” Jamie’s voice was shaky. His insides were boiling. He could feel sweat trickling down his ribs even though he felt shivering cold.
“You step out. You count to twenty. Understand? If chute has not opened by then, you pull ring. Understand?”
Jamie nodded.
“I will follow behind you. If you die I will bury you.” His grin returned. Jamie felt like puking.
Zavgorodny gave him a long probing look. “You want to go back and sit down?”
Every atom in Jamie’s being wanted to answer a fervent “Yes!” But he shook his head and took a hesitant, frightened step toward the open hatch.
The Russian reached up and slid the visor over Jamie’s eyes. “Count to twenty. Slowly. I will see you on ground in two minutes. Maybe three.”
Jamie swallowed hard and let Zavgorodny position him squarely at the lip of the hatch. The ground looked iron-hard and very, very far below. They were in shadow, the overhead wing was shading them, the propeller too far forward to be any danger. Jamie took that all in with a single wild glance.
A tap on his shoulder. Jamie hesitated a heartbeat, then pushed off with both feet.
Nothing. No motion. No sound except the thrum of wind rushing past. Jamie suddenly felt that he was in a dream, just hanging in emptiness, floating really, waiting to wake up safe and somehow
disappointed in bed. The plane had disappeared somewhere behind and above him. The ground was miles below, revolving slowly, not getting noticeably closer.
He was spinning, turning lazily as he floated in mid-air. It was almost pleasant. Fun, nearly. Just hanging in nothingness, separated from the entire world, alone, totally alone and free.
It was as if he had no body, no physical existence at all. Nothing but pure spirit, clean and light as the air itself. He remembered the old legends his grandfather had told him about Navaho heroes who had traveled across the bridge of the rainbow. Must be like this, he thought, high above the world, floating, floating. Like Coyote, when he hitched a ride on a comet.
He realized with a heart-stopping lurch that he had forgotten to count. And his hand had come off the D-ring. He fumbled awkwardly, seeing now that the hard baked dry ground was rushing up to smash him, pulverize him, kill him dead, dead, dead.
A gigantic hand grabbed him and nearly snapped his head off. He twisted in mid-air as new sounds erupted all around him. Like the snapping of a sail, his parachute unfolded and spread above him, leaving Jamie hanging in the straps floating gently down toward the barren ground.
His heart was hammering in his ears, yet he felt disappointed. Like a kid who had gone through the terrors of his first roller-coaster ride and now was sad that it had ended. Far down below he could see the tiny figure of a man gathering up a dirty-white parachute.
I did it! Jamie thought. I made the jump. He wanted to give out a real Indian victory whoop.
But the sober side of his mind warned, You’ve still got to land without breaking your ankles. Or popping that damned incision.
The ground was really rushing up at him now. Relax. Bend your knees. Let your legs absorb the shock.
He hit hard, rolled over twice, and then felt the hot wind tugging at his billowing chute. Suddenly Zavgorodny was at his side pulling on the cords, and the other cosmonaut was wrapping his arms around the chute itself like a man trying to get a ton of wrapping paper back inside a box.
Jamie got to his feet shakily. They helped him wriggle out of the chute harness. The plane circled lazily overhead.