The Chief Designer waited for it. He had seen it so often that he did not even hold his breath in hope anymore. But the color endured, creamy instead of virgin white, and the pace of the flames steadied on the surface of the shield. He looked at the clock, counting upward, struggling to make out the numbers through the visor. When he read them, he did not believe. He pulled the mask off to make sure he was reading correctly. He mouthed along with the rising seconds as they ticked off the clock.
It worked. The General Designer’s heat shield worked. The Chief Designer forgot he had the mask in his hands and dropped it. The sound of the metal on the concrete floor could barely be heard above the engine. He gripped the shoulder of the technician seated nearest him. The technician started, as if the touch were an explosion at the test site.
“It works,” said the Chief Designer.
The technician shook her head, unable to hear him.
He leaned close to her ear and shouted, “It works!”
The technician nodded once, as if this had been the expected result, as if it had not been preceded by a decade of failures. But this technician was young. For all the Chief Designer knew, it was the first test she had been a part of. They cycled new people onto the heat shield project on a monthly basis, so none of them would have the chance to learn the secret that the heat shield had never actually functioned. But now it did. Now they could launch Giorgi and bring him home…
Giorgi. No, not Giorgi. It was Nadya’s turn again. That was good, was it not? She would have the chance she should have had years ago. The Chief Designer had always secreted the guilty thought that this Nadya, the one trained in spaceflight, would have somehow succeeded where her sister failed. He knew it was not true. He felt ashamed every time he thought it. But now she could prove the point. She could triumph where all else had been lost.
The thought struck him then, surprising in that it had never occurred to him before: No one had ever asked Nadya or any of the cosmonauts what they thought of the whole grand endeavor. The Chief Designer had dreamed so hard of space since he read Tsiolkovski’s stories as a young man that he could not believe someone might not share the dream. But the twins were conscripts, not volunteers. Their dreams had never been taken into consideration.
The engine cut off. There, where the flames had been, the mock-up of Voskhod remained.
Star City, Russia—1964
Leonid’s voice faded up from nothing in the speaker, already in the middle of a sentence as he came into range. Lately, it had been like this. Before, he seemed to know exactly when Star City’s antenna would snare his signal and waited to speak until then. Now he was always halfway through a thought. Mars wondered if Leonid talked for whole orbits now, or if his timing had been thrown off so much that he just started talking a few seconds too soon. There was no way to tell. Leonid’s conversations never seemed to have a proper beginning or end.
Leonid paused in talking, and Mars realized he had not been paying attention. Mars tried to recall what he had heard, but his mind was blank. He rubbed his face and was surprised to find a beard there, as if it had appeared full-grown just then. Leonid must have a similar beard, he thought. Razors were not among the supplies stashed in Vostok’s few compartments.
“Did you know that clouds look the same on top as they do on bottom?” asked Leonid.
“I’ve seen the pictures the Americans took,” said Mars.
“But the clouds never rain up. Sometimes as I pass over dark patches, beneath which I know the rain falls in torrents, I can’t understand why the same is not true on the other side. I expect to hear the rain splatter against the hull of my little ship. A ship should be in water, yes?”
“I’m not sure yours would float.”
“I can’t remember what water looks like. Even the water I had here—I have long since drunk all of it—didn’t look like water. I squeezed some out of the plastic container, but it wouldn’t fall. It just globbed up in front of me. Like a marble. We didn’t have marbles as children. I didn’t even know what they were until Giorgi explained them to me.”
“Giorgi is… Giorgi died.” Mars had refused to attend the funeral, even when the Chief Designer insisted.
“I know. I’ve been up here forever. Everyone I know is dead.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to, then?”
“You’re up here with me.”
“Where the weather is always nice.”
“I miss the rain.”
“As do I.”
“You should go outside.”
“And you probably should not.”
“I’m no longer sure of that.”
BY THE TIME the Chief Designer made it to Star City—forty kilometers that took two hours through the endless construction on Route 103, lined with massive wheeled machines of indeterminate purposes that never seemed to move from their places on the side of the road—the effects of so much travel were catching up with him. The last few kilometers he caught only in glimpses, when his eyes startled open from the bumps on the unfinished blacktop.
Like at RKK Energia, the Chief Designer had the reserved parking space closest to the front door of Star City’s main building. Here, the lot was paved and painted with lines, in far better shape than the road that led to it. The car made a spurting noise as the driver shut off the engine. The Chief Designer exited the car and walked to the door.
Inside he was met immediately by Mishin and Bushuyev. They had a knack for always being around when he needed them. Did they wait by the door the whole time he was away? Did one of them watch out a window for the approach of his car? Was there an underling somewhere tasked with keeping tabs on the Chief Designer at all times? Some sort of intercom system that could warn Mishin and Bushuyev of his approach? Did they, in the moment just before he opened the door, skid to a halt at the end of the dead sprint that brought them there?
“Let’s see the dogs,” said the Chief Designer.
“There’s a problem,” said Mishin or Bushuyev.
“What is it?”
“Actually, there are two problems,” said one of them.
“Several, maybe,” said the other.
“Out with it,” said the Chief Designer.
“We’re not sure which to tell you first.”
“If you don’t tell me something soon, the only problem you will have is looking for new jobs.”
“The heat shield.”
“What about it?”
“We just received the test results.”
The Chief Designer did not know how the data had arrived before him. He would have to discuss the route with his driver. Obviously, there was a faster way to get from the factory to Star City.
“I was there,” said the Chief Designer. “The results were optimal.”
“Yes, yes. The General Designer’s heat shield performed brilliantly.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The materials. We have the asbestos. We’d been experimenting with that ourselves. But the phenolic resin. The factory didn’t produce enough before they shut down operations.”
“The factory closed?”
“It was converted to process dairy.”
“Thank god we’ll all have enough cheese. How much resin were you able to get?”
“We can make one shield, but only if we perform no more tests. A new factory is scheduled to open within the year, but it would be the first state project to ever be completed on time if it did.”