He returned within five minutes. ‘It cannot be done,’ he said, tears now in his eyes. ‘The damage is worse than we thought. In addition to one retro out of action, another is malfunctioning. We have lost the ability to manoeuvre the capsule. There is nothing we can do to bring Alexandrof back. He is flying towards certain death.’
It was an appalling moment. Nightmare and reality became one. In the background I could hear Alexandrof’s voice relaying information over the radio. On the wall was a huge electronic map on which we tracked his orbit. He had travelled more than halfway round the world by now. As far as he knew, everything was going well. Yet here, in our control centre, we were in possession of information that would transform his triumph into a death sentence. At the appropriate moment, we would press all the switches to fire his engines in preparation for re-entry. Instead of beginning his descent, his capsule would start to spin uncontrollably. He would know immediately what was happening. He would attempt to take manual control of the craft, punching in the code that allowed him to fly the capsule himself. He would go through all the emergency procedures we had rehearsed. But nothing would stop the spinning. His efforts would be futile. We would hear his questioning voice, asking for advice. We would be forced to tell him there was nothing we could do. He would be beyond rescue, his capsule would have become a steel coffin from which there was no escape as it went spinning off into space, every moment flying farther and farther away until his radio was out of range, knowing all the time that his oxygen was running out.
We discussed Voroshilov’s calculations. He was a meticulous and careful man, of great humanity, and I had no doubt that his analysis was correct. In the short time available, I confirmed to my own satisfaction that what he was telling me was true. I checked the telemetry reports. I saw for myself that the rocket had lost its essential ability to navigate. It was now no more than a missile with a human cargo hurtling through space. There was nothing Alexandrof could achieve by any attempt to override the automatic control system manually. He was lost.
‘Ten minutes to re-entry,’ the flight controller announced.
‘We must tell him,’ I said. ‘We must warn him what is about to happen.’
‘Is that wise?’ Voroshilov asked.
‘It may not be wise, but what choice do we have? He must know his situation.’
I was given the microphone. The control centre had fallen silent. All eyes were on me. I was about to tell a man who, over the months, had discussed every aspect of my design with me and who trusted my engineering ability that he was about to die because of a mechanical failure I could do nothing about.
I cannot remember my exact words now. I told him that we had a serious problem. One of his navigational rockets was lost, the other wasn’t working. That meant only one thing. We could not change the direction he was flying in, and nor could he.
There was a long silence, then he said: ‘Are you telling me I am unable to return to earth?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there nothing that can be done?’
‘We have investigated every possibility. We can find no solution to the problem.’
‘If that is your judgement, Comrade Director, then I must believe you.’ Silence again. ‘How long have I got?’
I looked at Voroshilov. ‘Eight minutes until we start the re-entry procedure,’ he said.
‘How much oxygen?’
‘Another two hours.’
Silence.
‘Please fetch my wife and sons. Bring them to the control centre. I wish to say goodbye to them.’
‘Very well.’ Voroshilov was weeping openly now. Three minutes later Alexandrof’s wife, Marina, and her two sons, both under five, were brought into the control centre. Voroshilov had explained why Alexandrof wanted to speak to her. Marina was pale and shaking, somehow managing to hold back her tears. I suspected she was too shocked to cry.
We listened as Alexandrof told her that because of damage to the rocket sustained in one of the separation procedures, his craft had lost the ability to navigate. He would be unable to reposition the capsule for the re-entry procedure. That meant he could not return to earth. In the few minutes he had left, he needed to tell her how to bring up their sons, what she should tell them about their father, his life and his death. As far as money was concerned, he was sure she would be given a state pension, so she would have no worries on that score. He asked her to remember him tenderly, to think back on their love and the years they had spent together, the happiness she had brought him. Then, after a decent interval, he begged her to marry again.
She broke down at that point. ‘No,’ she screamed. ‘Never. Never. I love you, Antonin. You are my husband. You will be my husband for ever.’
The two little boys were crying now, not understanding what was happening but upset by their mother’s distress. She was kneeling against one of the long desks, her head in her arms, crying uncontrollably, repeating her husband’s name as if by intoning the name of the man she loved she could save his life and spirit him back to earth. I noticed that Voroshilov had thoughtfully turned off the microphone she had been holding so that Alexandrof could hear nothing of her distress.
‘I would like to speak to Director Radin,’ Alexandrof requested.
‘I am here,’ I said.
‘This is not an eventuality we discussed at one of our meetings,’ he said calmly. I did not know how to reply. ‘I have switched the craft to manual control,’ he continued. ‘Please give me the instructions at the correct moment. I will fire the rockets. It is always possible that something will happen.’
Voroshilov, his arm around Alexandrof’s wife, looked at me anxiously. I shook my head. ‘If you wish to do that, you have my authority to do so.’
‘Thank you for the time we spent together, Director. I enjoyed our conversations. I am sorry we will not have the opportunity to discuss this flight in the detail I had looked forward to.’
Then, as the moment to begin the countdown for the re-entry procedure approached, he fell silent. The only sound was the crackling of the radio connection, the voice counting down in the background and the sobbing of his wife.
‘I am going to fire the retro-rockets,’ he announced, as if everything was working as planned. I admired the man’s coolness. I waited, suspended, to see if all our calculations were wrong and in feet Alexandrof was able to control his capsule. If I had known how to pray or believed that there was any point, I would have done so. At that moment I would have willingly sacrificed my own life to save Alexandrof.
‘I’m spinning,’ he shouted suddenly. ‘The craft is out of control. Goodbye, Marina, Josef, Yevgeny. Goodbye.’
For a long moment his self-control held. Then I heard the most heart-rending sound of my life. Alexandrof was crying. The sound of his tears was coming across the ether to us as every second he spun fester and farther away from the earth.
‘Marina, Marina, Marina,’ he shouted between sobs.
‘He’s venting his oxygen tanks,’ someone said.
Unable to bear the concept of a slow death by asphyxiation, he was killing himself deliberately now. Then there was a curse, a scream, confused noises. The radio connection with the craft went dead. We were left in silence, the only sounds the sobbing of Alexandrof’s wife and the whimpering of her children. Alexandrof had killed himself.
*
Now do you understand that Gagarin was not the first man to go into space? Yes, he was the first man who went into space and returned. How strange fate is. If a small mechanical process had worked as it was intended to, Antonin Alexandrof would be alive today. He would be fêted all over the world as Gagarin is, and his name would be in the history books. Instead, you will find no record of Alexandrof as a member of that first group of cosmonauts; you will not find him in any of the photographs taken at Zvyozdny Gorodok; you will discover no mention of any Alexandrof in any training reports or in the minutes of the meeting at which the first man to go into space was selected – the debate is
limited to a discussion of the merits of Gargarin and Titov. Nor in any of the files at Baikonur will you find any record of the launch of that rocket with Alexandrof on board. It is our practice to give no name to rocket launches that fail. As far as history is concerned, Cosmonaut Alexandrof does not exist.
Yes, you will find his air-force record, that is still there if you know where to look, but you will be surprised to learn that Flight Lieutenant Alexandrof died in a flying accident when his MIG 19 crashed out of control during a training flight. If you find his gravestone in a cemetery far from Moscow, you will never discover the true date of his death. The date of his accident is one month before he started his training as a cosmonaut. We have falsified the evidence of his life, but in death we are courageous enough to provide him with the honour he is due. Only on a headstone in the silence of an obscure cemetery, where no one will see it, is some small recognition of the truth of Antonin Alexandrof’s life allowed to be known. You will read the words: Hero of the Soviet Union. It is an honour justly earned by a good man.
*
That is my story of Antonin Alexandrof, cosmonaut and Hero of the Soviet Union, a brave man who died well before his time. Why did it happen? Was it chance, misfortune, bad luck? Or was some more malicious force at work? I asked for the test records of the release mechanism. I had checked these myself before taking the decision that we were ready to launch. The documents showed unequivocally that the system worked. We built a mock-up of the capsule and repeatedly tested the explosive bolts that were intended to force apart the capsule from the final section of the rocket that would hurl it out of the atmosphere. Again and again we tried to re-create the circumstances that had led to Alexandrof’s death. On each occasion, the explosive devices worked as they were intended to. The cable connectors separated as they were meant to. I was mystified. What could have gone wrong?
I asked Voroshilov for the original designs. At first he appeared reluctant to give them to me. When finally he produced them, I saw what had happened. There was a flaw in the design. Although I could find no record of it, I suspected that the explosive charge had never worked properly during its testing phase. Despite that, it had been cleared for the launch, in the hope that it would work. The system I tested after the disaster was not the same as the one that had been on Alexandrof’s craft. It was the second version, in which the problem had been solved. The records had been falsified to show that version one had tested successfully.
What was I to do? A man I respected had died unnecessarily and I was responsible for his death. Had we been honest with ourselves and accepted that the component design was faulty, we would have delayed the flight until the problem was solved, Alexandrof would have survived and the flight would have been a triumph. But we had done none of these things. Someone on our team had suppressed knowledge of the mechanical problems. He had falsified the report on the trials of the detonator that separated the capsule from the rest of the craft. Why? Out of fear of the consequences that an important component in the design of the craft could not be made to work on time? Out of terror that to reveal a design fault would have intolerable personal repercussions for the technician who blew the whistle because it might have led to unacceptable delays? Why?
Is it better to lie than to speak the truth, Andrei? Better to deny than to admit responsibility? Better to conceal than to expose? What kind of people have we become when we reverse the order by which the world works? What kind of political belief upholds the turning inside out of the sense of personal responsibility that is at the heart of all morality? The unnecessary, avoidable loss of Alexandrof taught me how far this process of self-deception has sunk into our hearts and minds. We are deceived, every minute of every day because we can no longer recognise what is true and what is not.
If this is true of our space programme, where else should the finger point? What about our much-vaunted Weapons systems? Do our tanks really work? Can our machine-guns fire? Our cruisers float? Our submarines swim noiselessly under the oceans of the world? Will our aircraft fly? Will our missiles reach their targets? Or are we fooling ourselves with illusions about our military superiority? Are we promoting dreams about ourselves that cannot be maintained in reality?
I fear for all of us, Andrei, because we are all deceived. We have come to believe our own myths, to honour false gods. The people of our country have been misled all their lives. We are victims, not of a conspiracy, but of a terrible arrogance and a brutal cynicism, the attributes of a power that has utterly corrupted those who rule us. Take away the patriotic flag-waving, the endless parades of marching men and machines of war; the boastful statistics of our soldiers under arms, how many bombers and fighters we have, how many tanks, artillery, missiles; ignore the belligerent speeches from our politicians that demonstrate the inevitable superiority of anything Soviet; destroy the conspiracy of silence that binds us all, and what do you find? Emptiness. Nothingness. A void. A moral vacuum. The genius of the Russian people is being betrayed once more, as it has been so often in the past. Our revolution has changed nothing. We are slaves still, as we always have been. Perhaps slavery is our destiny: I hope not. All I know is that I will not live to see our nation’s emancipation.
*
There was a time when I feared that if I spoke candidly, I might be betrayed. Now I am dying and such cares no longer worry me. I am beyond pain and punishment. I have determined to trust you, and I will do so.
There must be others who believe as I do, Andrei, people who see the truth but who, for their own reasons, are afraid to speak or act. In these weeks of my illness many people have come to me and confessed their doubts, their anxieties, their fears for the future, knowing that I will take their secrets to the grave. These men and women are the future of our country. Seek them out, Andrei. I would ask you to be one of them yourself but I have never thought that courage was one of your qualities.
I ask this not for myself but for those who will come after me. One man alone cannot save a nation. But one man can set in motion a movement that in time may attract others, and together you may salvage something of value out of the riches both human and material that we have so cruelly squandered in the last forty years.
This country is dying, Andrei. It takes a dying man to recognise the truth. That is my legacy to you. Open your eyes to what is happening around you. Help to save us from those who govern us. Find your own route to redemption. Above all, act. Act before it is too late.
Goodbye, my friend. Goodbye.
IVAN’S SEARCH FOR HIS FATHER
As Ivan walks away from the devastated village, there is the sound of an explosion. He is suddenly consumed by fire. Flames curl around his body. The images on the screen disappear, and the sheet is a blank rectangle of light once more. The projector is smoking. The broken reel of film clatters helplessly against the metal spool. There are expressions of anger and dismay. Children stand up to see what is happening. The projectionist bends over his machine, doing his best to douse the fire while others inspect the damage by the light of hastily lit lanterns.
‘How bad is it?’
The projectionist shakes his head. ‘We’ll have to show the rest tomorrow.’
‘It’s nearly at the end of the first reel,’ someone says. ‘We didn’t miss much.’
There are groans and cries as the illusion is lost. Secretly Andrei is pleased. Now he can dream of what Ivan will do next, amid a feeling of delicious anticipation, waiting for this time tomorrow.
On the morning after the breakdown, a number of the fathers gathered in one of the family apartments to inspect the projector. Andrei hung around on the off chance that they might show some of the second reel to test their repairs. He listened patiently to the theories for the breakdown – a faulty fuse, a surge in power, poor connections on the cable – a lot of head-shaking and advice but no agreement on the cause. The projector was stripped down and reassembled. He dozed at one point, to be awakened by cheers when the machine was working again. Someone had spli
ced the broken film together, and he was able to watch the last few moments on the reel projected onto the white wall of the common sitting room.
The day dragged by. He went down to the crowded beach, swam with his mother, walked to the end of the concrete groyne and dangled his feet over the edge. His mother gave him some sandwiches and fruit for lunch and urged him to play with the other boys his age. He hated football, he told her. Surely she knew he was no good at it. Anton appeared soon after with his friend Igor Orenko, and did his best to persuade Andrei by kicking him to get up off the red towel he shared with his mother as they lay on the sand.
‘He’s got a headache,’ his mother declared, defending Andrei with lies. For once Anton believed her and left his younger brother alone.
‘You’re thinking about Ivan,’ his mother said later, as they made ready to leave the beach.
‘Yes,’ Andrei said. ‘What else is there to think about?’
‘I’ve seen the film before,’ she said, giving him a hug.
‘I don’t want to know,’ Andrei pleaded.
‘It’s all right, I won’t spoil it for you.’
As they climbed the steps towards the huge building, Andrei took his mother’s hand.
They didn’t see the film that night nor the next day because it rained, a light, incessant veil of warm rain that made the dry countryside green. Andrei spent much of his time by himself lying on his bed. He avoided the other boys, especially Anton. In his mind he relived Ivan’s adventures as if they were his own. What would he do if his mother, father and brother were suddenly killed? Where would he go? How would he survive? His impatience to learn where Ivan’s journey would take him forced him to beg his mother to tell him what happened. She laughed at his curiosity, saying he must wait and see.
Two nights later Ivan’s adventures began again.
*
Ivan wakes, desperate with hunger. It is more than a day since he’s last eaten and he is almost too weak to move. The pall of smoke that only a few hours before had turned day into night has gone. Only the acrid stink of burned houses remains now, smouldering fabric, charred corpses. The smell brings back terrifying memories of the horror of what had happened only a few hours before, and he feels tears welling in his eyes.
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