by Tom Bullough
‘But this bit is even cleverer, little wriggler!’ He lifted her to his face, rubbed her nose with his own. ‘You see, we want to travel in our vehicle, don’t we? And what happens when our passengers move around? Well, every time they touch some part of the craft then they will move it, and if we’re not very, very careful then soon we will all be tumbling head over heels! So … What to do? Well, what about our polar and equatorial wheels? Think for a moment. The greater the angular velocity of a wheel, the harder it becomes for the movements of a humble human to affect either its axis or its plane of rotation. Right? So, let’s divide these two axles in half and attach four pistons, each one driving one of the wheels. That means that we have two pairs of wheels revolving in opposite directions but with exactly the same angular velocity! You see? Unless we alter the velocity of one or other wheel, our craft will retain the same orientation – but it will be impervious to any bumps and knocks!’
Konstantin collected his pencil and, cradling the baby in his left arm, he drew carefully a figure inside the spacecraft, attached to the wall by a long, weaving tether.
‘Here we are,’ he said, eagerly. ‘This is me. I am looking out of the window, checking our course. And down here …’ He drew a second figure towards the bottom of the sphere. ‘This is your mother. I know it looks like she is standing on her head, but in space there is no up and down so she is perfectly comfortable, don’t worry. So, having taken a sighting on Aldebaran, I am calling out the degrees and the direction that we need to revolve and she is altering the velocity of one of the wheels to correct our orientation. And over here …’ He drew a third figure, this one in a seated position. ‘This is your grandfather. It’s the evening so he is having his doze – except that in weightlessness there is no need for a chair. In weightlessness, you can sit wherever you like! Space itself is an excellent chair and a splendid bed! And down here …’ He added one more figure, standing against the hull of the spacecraft, staring towards them, arms outstretched. ‘This is you. I have made you a bit bigger than you are at the moment, because we’re talking about the future here, aren’t we? Here you are, kicking away for all you’re worth, but with our four special wheels our orientation remains completely unaffected! We will continue as straight as a comet!’
Konstantin turned his eyes towards the window where the glimmering spark of Aldebaran was following the Pleiades into the stark autumn sky. He looked down at his daughter, went to say more, but somewhere between Earth and the stars the little girl had fallen asleep.
March 1965
Orbiting the Earth with an apogee of 495 kilometres and a perigee of 173 kilometres, Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov and Pavel Ivanovich Belyayev began their preparations for the spacewalk. Leonov closed the visor of his helmet, unstrapped himself from his couch, lifted himself with the lightest touch and hung in the air to attach his backpack oxygen system. He lay against the wall to allow Belyayev to activate the airlock, which inflated from the hull outside the hatch. Even without the Vostok ejection seat and the reserve parachute, it was difficult for the cosmonauts to move inside the capsule, which had, in the first instance, been designed for a single passenger. With the instrument panel, the radio, the television camera, the exit system primary-control panel and the two-day supply of puréed food, there was scarcely even room for the two men’s couches.
Once Leonov was breathing pure oxygen, driving the nitrogen of the Earth-like atmosphere from his bloodstream, he unfastened the umbilical connecting his pressure suit to the spacecraft’s life-support system and waited for Belyayev to equalize the pressure in the airlock. As ever, the commander’s movements were calm, unhurried. His dark eyes were narrow beneath his heavy black eyebrows and the red insignia on his white domed helmet.
‘Ready!’ said Leonov, and gave himself a spin around his polar axis so that the couches and the instruments went parading around him.
Belyayev’s lips moved between the mandibles of his microphones.
‘Patience, my friend,’ said his deep, Vologda voice in Leonov’s headset.
At last, the commander gave the signal and Leonov turned transversely to face the hatch in the wall beside his couch, which he opened to reveal a rubber tube 2.5 metres long. The Volga airlock comprised forty inflatable aerobooms in three separate sections, any one of which could have failed without compromising the integrity of the structure. Along the lower side, there was a pair of handrails, which Leonov followed as he floated towards the outer hatch, the lights and the waiting cine-camera. He checked that the light filter on his helmet was in the correct position, consulted the pressure gauge beneath the buttoned flap on his right sleeve and attached the safety tether. He bent forwards in the narrow space to see Belyayev salute, and when the hatch was sealed he watched the gauge in the wall beside him as the pressure in the airlock equalized with the pressure in his spacesuit – 0.4 atmosphere – and finally reduced to a vacuum.
When the exterior hatch folded towards him, Leonov might have been facing the flame of an arc-welder. He lowered his eyes instinctively, collected the cine-cinema, grasped the handle.
‘I’m pushing off!’ he said.
‘Not so fast, you …’ said Belyayev. He repeated a series of numbers: Leonov’s pulse and rate of respiration, which were relayed through the EKG sensors and the ohmic transmitter strapped around his chest. ‘Very well, Lyosh. The vital signs are fine. You have the order to go. Good luck!’
At 0834 UTC on 18 March 1965, the first spacewalker emerged into open space. Blinking in the silver-white sunlight, he attached the cine-camera to the frame of the hatch, then pushed again and felt the spacecraft move away from him – lightly, like pushing a child on a swing. At first, floating backwards, he saw only the yellow shaft of the airlock, which protruded from the spherical capsule and the equipment module, a retro-engine at either end of their meridional axis. To his surprise, there was no sharp contrast between their light and shadow – all parts seemed to be illuminated equally, as if the ship were bathing in the Sun itself – and as he reached the end of his 5.35-metre tether and turned around his polar axis he saw the reason.
Leonov saw the Earth.
Far to his left, where the planet curved into the haze of the atmosphere, he saw the brilliant, cloud-patterned green of Europe. He saw the Straits of Gibraltar and the tawny expanse of the Sahara Desert. He saw the Black Sea, blue within its sunlit coastline, the tiny inlet of Novorossiysk Harbour and the little rift of the Dardanelles. Through fissures in the light-grey clouds, he saw the snow-shining heads of the Ural Mountains, their valleys, their ravines, even their streams. Turning slowly, he saw the Universe, the violet sky becoming velvet black, the fearless stars in the illimitable void.
Leonov opened his arms like wings.
‘Blondie!’ From the cosmic silence, there came the bright, distinctive voice of Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin. ‘How are you feeling?’
The cosmonaut gazed at the Kuban Steppe.
‘Yuri …’ he managed. ‘I can see so much!’
‘Do you feel equal to this challenge?’
‘I … I can see so far!’
Leonov watched the Earth sail past him at 28,000 km/h – 7.8 km/s – the fringes of Europe fall into the belts of red, blue and orange that ringed the horizon, the Siberian forest extend as far as he could see, riven by its rivers: the Ob, the Yenisei, the Lena. He tried to locate Kemerovo, the city where he had lived as a boy, but he was unable to identify any trace of humanity at all.
It was only when he reached for the switch on his thigh, to activate his chest-mounted camera, that Leonov realized he had a problem. In the absolute vacuum the spacesuit had ballooned, and it was all he could do to return his arms to his sides. With a tremendous effort, he bent his legs to reduce the suit’s internal volume, but still he was completely unable to lean forwards, and suddenly the spacecraft was approaching at such an alarming velocity that he could only just keep his helmet clear and soften the blow with his hands. At once, he found himself moving in the opposite d
irection, spinning about his transversal axis, his arms pinned open in their helpless impression of flight.
They were at the most northerly point of their orbit, leaving the forest for the glistening wealth of the Pacific Ocean, when Belyayev issued the instruction to return to the airlock. Bending his legs, Leonov managed to grasp the tether between his gloves and pull himself in the direction of the spacecraft. As if working a weight machine, he released the camera from its mounting and pushed it into the hatch, but he had barely turned to follow it feet first, according to the programme, when he found it floating back out again and he was forced to revolve to retrieve it. By now, the cosmonaut was growing tired. Despite the reflective oversuit, a relief valve to vent excess heat and moisture and a layer of constantly moving liquid coolant, he could feel the sweat the length of his body. In desperation, he caught the camera once more and returned it to the airlock, but however hard he tried to angle himself correctly he found it impossible to do the same.
Another minute passed before Leonov decided to reduce the pressure in his spacesuit. Groaning with the strain, he managed to bring his left arm the whole way across his body and reach the valve beneath the flap on his right sleeve. He haemorrhaged oxygen until the gauge read 0.3 atmosphere, but still he was unable to bring his legs together and again he released the valve, to the safety limit of 0.27.
‘Lyosha?’ called Belyayev. The orientation system was struggling to absorb his movements. ‘Lyosha, talk to me! What’s happening?’
The sweat was floating into Leonov’s helmet, clouding his visor until the ring of the hatch was almost invisible. His breath was a gale in his ears. He fought so violently that his gloves were forced away from his hands and his boots were forced off his feet. In theory, he knew, it was possible for the commander to decompress the spacecraft and enter the airlock himself to help him, but already his oxygen system had reached a critical level and, besides, the electronics were designed to operate in normal atmospheric pressures and temperatures, not in a vacuum, and he had serious doubts that they had sufficient nitrogen and oxygen on board even to recompress the cabin. He had no time for hesitation or consultation. With the hard, lifeless fingers of his left glove, he reached again for the valve on his arm and, with decompression sickness now almost a certainty, he reduced the pressure still further, past the safety limit, to 0.25 atmosphere.
Through the mist that drifted before his eyes, Leonov saw his wife, Svetlana, and their four-year-old daughter, Vika, together in their garden in Moscow. He saw the blue sky above him and the neatly mown grass beneath his feet. He squeezed his arms together and began to pull himself into the airlock head first, scrabbling at the hatch, the handles, the smooth rubber sides. At last, he felt his helmet clack against the metal hull of the capsule, but still he faced the near-impossible task of revolving his 1.9-metre length in the tube’s 1.2-metre diameter to close the exterior hatch. The cosmonaut was on the edge of heatstroke. He could see nothing, feel only dimly. His ears were full of the sloshing of his sweat, the machine-gun thunder of his heart. Doubling forwards, he jammed himself into the little space. He kicked against his useless boots, dragged himself centimetre by centimetre back the way he had come.
‘Thank God,’ breathed the commander, as Leonov floated back into the cabin.
It was another twenty-two hours, and sixteen orbits, before a tracking station in the Far East sent instructions to Voskhod 2 to re-enter the atmosphere. Strapped to their couches, Leonov and Belyayev waited for the jolt of the retro-rockets, which would slow the ship’s tumbling progress. In moments, through the porthole in the hatch, Leonov saw the Pacific Ocean give way to the magnificent vertebrae of the Andes, the lustrous green of the Brazilian rainforest, the horizon fiery with yet another sunset. He saw once more the delicate coastline and the gaping Atlantic, the giant coils of the currents and the sudden sparks of islands. For fifteen hours, neither of the two cosmonauts had stirred from his couch. On Leonov’s return to the cabin, the second hatch had failed to seal correctly and the environmental control system had compensated by flooding the atmosphere with oxygen. Even with the temperature reduced from 18°C to 15°C to reduce humidity, the slightest spark from the electronics or the glancing blow of a boot ring could have caused a conflagration.
As Voskhod 2 entered its sixteenth night, it was cold and dark and lonely.
‘Diamond!’ Gagarin used the call-sign. ‘Congratulations, boys! Where did you land?’
There was a moment before Belyayev replied.
‘The landing system has malfunctioned, Yuri Alexeyevich.’ His voice contained the slightest tremor. ‘We believe that the solar orientation sensor was damaged by the pyrotechnic gases when we jettisoned the airlock. We have lost stability. The pressure in the air tanks has fallen beneath twenty-five atmospheres. Oxygen levels are critical and we only have enough fuel to make one attempt at re-entry. We request emergency mode.’
As they waited for a response, the cosmonauts shared a desultory dinner: four 160-gramme tubes of meat purée and two 160-gramme tubes of chocolate sauce. They watched the darkly glowing Earth give way rhythmically to the multitude of lifeless stars.
‘Emergency mode has been authorized, Diamond,’ said another voice finally, as the Sun rose again above the rim of the planet. ‘You are instructed to perform a manual re-entry on either the eighteenth or the twenty-second orbit.’
In its original design, the single couch in the Vostok capsule had faced the Vzor optical orientation device in the porthole, but such were the difficulties of including an additional passenger that the technicians had turned the cabin’s interior through ninety degrees. It was apparent at once that even Leonov would be unable to reach the controls from his seat. Tentatively, the two men unstrapped themselves. They arranged themselves in a variety of positions before Leonov found himself squeezed into the narrow space underneath the couches, holding Belyayev by the waist so that he was able to focus on the periscope.
The Vzor was an ingenious invention: a central view surrounded by a ring of eight round ports, which would light up simultaneously when the craft was correctly aligned to the Sun. Trapped on his back, Leonov could see the instrument reflected faintly in the visor of the commander’s helmet – his dark eyes shrunk now almost into slits. He held him steady, breathed as evenly as possible. Belyayev was a pilot of ability and experience. In the twenty years since the war in the Pacific, he had flown every model of Soviet jet plane – although even a MiG-21 could barely achieve a twentieth of the velocity of Voskhod 2 and, besides, an aircraft was governed by the laws of aerodynamics, with a single, two-axis hand-control column, whereas a spacecraft was governed by celestial mechanics, requiring two three-axis controllers. The stakes could hardly have been greater. Too steep a re-entry angle and they would burn up in seconds, like a meteorite. Too shallow an angle and they would simply glance off the upper atmosphere, like a stone off the surface of a pond, and remain in space to suffocate or starve.
It took forty-six seconds for the cosmonauts to return to their couches and restore the craft’s centre of gravity, and for Belyayev to fire the braking engine. They felt the shock of the retro-rocket. They counted down the seconds until the instrument module separated from their re-entry module, felt its shudder, but still it was as if some force was holding them, slowing them down, and as Leonov turned to the porthole he saw, to his horror, that a bundle of wires continued to connect the two modules. As they fell into the thermosphere, they were spinning around one another with a growing velocity, like a centrifuge. For a time, he was conscious of the sunlight blinking, filling the cabin in instants. He saw the gauge reach 10 g-forces, the thermometer register external temperatures of 1000°C, but then his vision began to narrow, to grey, and he was able to see nothing but the molten metal that poured across the glass like luminous raindrops.
Around them rose a forest of conifers and birch trees. The capsule was trapped between a pair of enormous firs, black, steaming, settling steadily in the neck-deep snow until t
he landing hatch resembled the door of a cave. Above them, the parachute hung in the wind-torn treetops, red and flapping. Among the four-toed tracks of hare and fox in a nearby clearing, the antennae intended to relay their location lay broken, glinting in the thin afternoon sunlight.
Through eyes red with broken blood vessels, Leonov consulted the orientation gauges in the cabin, which had rolled through 180 degrees on landing so that he was forced to kneel between the switches and the instrument panel on the ceiling. They had, it seemed, missed their landing site by some 2,000 kilometres. They were approximately 180 kilometres north-east of the city of Perm, lost in the Siberian wilderness.
A Siberian himself, Leonov knew well the dangers of the forest in late winter. Following Belyayev into the freezing air, he removed his helmet and his rigid oversuit and began systematically to strip himself naked. He emptied the knee-deep sweat from his boots. He wrung out the thermal protection layers, the inner comfort layers and the Dederon undersuit. He unstrapped the waterproof circuitry that encircled the dense blond hair on his chest, discarded the probes and redressed as quickly as he could.
It was early that evening when the cosmonauts heard the clatter of an approaching helicopter. Abandoning their fire, they struggled across the snow to a clearing and stood, waving wildly, as a civilian aircraft emerged from the treetops – its downdraught indistinguishable from the gale. A face appeared at the door in the side, shouting inaudibly. A rope ladder fell towards them, thin and flailing, but even without the oversuits it was plain to both men that it would never support their weight. They watched the pilot try to squeeze his rotor blades between the trees. They watched a bottle of cognac come arching through the air and smash against a tree trunk. They watched two wolfskin coats and two pairs of heavy trousers become entangled in the branches.