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.