Was all in position at Lop Nor? he was asked.
Yes, all was in position at Lop Nor.
Then launch procedures could commence immediately.
Liu and his staff listened to the launch procedures on the loudspeakers, and then to the blast-off, and themselves joined Shenyang in a small cheer as the missile departed Manchuria on its nine-minute journey.
After ten minutes — and then twelve, fifteen — confusion developed between Shenyang and Lop Nor. No missile had appeared.
The first explanation was that its final stage had failed to ignite.
A few minutes later, a correction. It had ignited, but after transiting Inner Mongolia the small flight-correcting rockets had evidently misfired for the missile had swung south. Its descent had been observed, however, and a true burn-out velocity logged at 24,000 kph.
The vehicle carried no payload but this velocity had produced a large crater. It had produced it in the region of Lanchow; which was outside General Liu’s area.
Cursing, he led the way to his aircraft. He knew nothing of the research station at Tcherny Vodi — a frozen world away, far, far to the north. But at Tcherny Vodi much was known of General Liu.
At Urumchi he learned that soon he would be back at Lop Nor. A re-test had been ordered — extremest urgency. It had been ordered for November.
28
By November with the weather hard and the roads good, Kolya Khodyan had won golden opinions from his comrades at the Tchersky Transport Company. This was due to his cheerfulness, his modesty and his generosity. His generosity was exceptional.
Already sickness and injury among the crews had moved his name high up the reserve list; and already he had twice declined lucrative long-distance hauls. Family men needed the money more, he said; he was a bachelor, just filling in for a friend. He didn’t mind pottering about the area.
By now he had pottered widely and knew every route in and out, short hops that had him frequently back in the despatch depot. At the depot too he was very popular — no moans, no arguments from Kolya. Anything to go, he took it, wherever, whatever. And always smiling, a lovely fellow. He’d even help with the loading — no way his job! — to give the fellows a break.
He was familiar now with every aspect of the depot, knew the stacks, the destinations, was never in the way. A really bright Chukchee, true gold.
He’d seen the four one-ton crates stencilled Tch. Vod., in Local Delivery: radius fifty kilometres. Tcherny Vodi! He hungrily haunted this bay, fearful somebody else would get it; and as the bay emptied, tried to precipitate the action.
‘No, Kolya, no. That’s not to go yet.’
‘What is it?’
‘Turbines. For a place up in the hills. They had some kind of blow-out a few months ago. There you don’t just deliver. They have to call through and say when. They have the stinking heads there.’
‘Ah, stinking heads.’ Stinking heads were high-ups, usually security services, usually Moscow, but here sometimes Irkutsk or Novosibirsk. ‘What do they want with stinking heads there?’ he asked in surprise.
‘God knows. We don’t ship them much. They fly in what they need, they have a strip. It’s just sometimes heavy gear — this has been here weeks, from Archangel, maybe they don’t need it yet.’
‘Is funny that. Stinking heads! I have friends in that place, I think — Evenks.’
‘Right. They have Evenks there, you’re right, Kolya.’
‘I like to see my friends there. I take this stuff, eh?’
‘Sure you will. Sure, Kolya. You’ll take the job — just when we get the call.’
And they got the call, and he took the job. He took the four crates on a Ural and helped load and strap them right way up. The Ural had a hoist and a hydraulic tailgate. He headed out of town and followed his map and picked up the creek. The creek was flagged at entry to show the weight it could take and he drove fifteen kilometres along it to be sure he had it to himself; though there wasn’t much doubt. Apart from the road gang who had checked it, nobody had used the creek this season. Then he got out and climbed in the back.
He undid the straps on the tarpaulin, picked out a crate and got to work with a screwdriver and a pot of paint. He scored out parts of the stencilling and overpainted fresh marks. Then he smudged the result with a grease rag until it was hard to tell which was the correct marking. It was now very cold. The exterior thermometer of the Ural showed forty below, but the air was dead still, no wind. The oily mess hardened immediately and he refastened the tarpaulin.
Twenty kilometres farther along the creek he saw the red flag and the turnoff he had to take out of it. The river bank was steep but a ramp had been lowered and strewn with grit. He saw the bundled-up figures waiting on top, and they waved him on as he crunched slowly up. There were two men, their breath standing in the air, quite jovial, ear flaps down, automatic weapons slung, beating themselves in the cold. They had come out of a wooden guard hut in a small levelled area. A military jeep stood next to the hut.
‘Found it okay?’
‘No problem.’
They were gazing at him curiously, not expecting a native; quite friendly, though.
‘You unload all this on your own?’
‘Sure. Only there’s a problem with the manifest.’
‘Bring it inside.’
It was snug inside, two oil stoves going; and it became snugger still when he produced his flask. He heard, what he knew already, that they had run down here an hour ago, to open up the post, flag his turnoff and lay the ramp. They would wait until the tracked vehicle came down to pick up the load, and then take up the ramp and return: the post wasn’t manned normally.
‘What’s the problem with the manifest?’
‘See, is some kind of cockup,’ he said. ‘The marks don’t tally — we couldn’t understand it there.’
He took them out and showed them the marks and they puzzled over them.
‘Well, the crates are all the same.’
‘Sure, we got a hundred crates like that. Is Archangel crates.’
‘Just dump them anyway, and they’ll sort it out.’.
‘Is fine with me. You sign for it, you got it. But you don’t sign, I can’t leave it. Maybe you sign and it’s wrong.’
The two men looked at each other.
‘Well, what’s to be done about it?’
‘I don’t know. Either I run it up there and they, check it or someone comes down and checks it here.’
They went back in the hut and made a call on a communications set. The call established that someone would come down and check it.
They finished off the flask while waiting for the tracked vehicle to come down. Two Evenks and an officer came down with it. The officer was irritable and he paced impatiently while the Evenks prised open the suspect crate. Then he mounted the Ural and perched on the cab top while consulting a piece of paper and peering down into the crate.
‘It’s all right. Of course it’s all right. Bloody nonsense! Seal it.’
Then he paced again while the crate was sealed and Kolya and the Evenks transferred the load. They chatted merrily while they did this — the Evenks, like the other Siberian natives, intrigued that he ‘had the tongue’.
‘How is it up there, brothers?’
‘Fine. Good conditions, good pay. A job.’
‘It’s as well you came down. I thought I was going to have to run up there with this.’
The Evenks laughed. ‘Not in a million years. They’d never let you.’
‘Oh, the stinking heads — I forgot. What goes on up there? What kind of problem with stinking heads?’