Ascent by Jed Mercurio (15 page)

He throttled up harder. Metal groaned in the nose as it reared up into Ges’s rudder. The lower hinge ruptured and a small section snapped off the trailing edge.

Ges glanced down into the sea. That’s where he’d be now, freezing to death, if his wingman wasn’t Yefgenii Yeremin. “I think I can see the airfield.” Ges was surprised Yefgenii hadn’t seen it first.

Yefgenii flamed out. The jets were silent. Now they were gliding with only the rush of air.

“I see it,” Yefgenii said. The strips were blurring into each other. His head throbbed. He thought he was going to vomit, but he could read the geometry now. He was on the glide path behind Ges.

The two MiGs touched down one after the other. Fire trucks were speeding toward them but the pilots were already opening their canopies. Ges stood on his seat, his face red and creased where his mask had been, but showing white teeth in a grin. Yefgenii couldn’t get out of his seat. He managed to unhook his oxygen mask and gasp fresh air. At once his head began to clear.

Ground crew helped him out of his straps. They were trying to congratulate him, to shake his hand, but his awareness of them was dim, he was in so much pain all he could say was, “Get me out,” which they did, helping him down the ladder like an invalid as Ges looked on in concern, but Ges got distracted by congratulations and handshakes. The next time he looked Yefgenii was stretched flat on the hard snow, his face contorted in suffering.

Ges dropped to one knee and clasped Yefgenii’s hand. His eyes glistened. “Thank you. My wife thanks you. Ivan the Terrible.”

Yefgenii smiled through the pain. No one had called him that in such a long time.

THE EYES WERE NO LONGER what they’d been. He told no one, not even the widow. He passed his medical examinations because his sight was no less sharp than any other pilot’s, but it was no longer superior. Age had stolen his hair and drawn lines on his face but worst of all it had taken his eyes.

Another winter decked Graham Bell in snow. The wind drove streams of it across the runways and pushed drifts against the sides of hangars and against the walls of the little redbrick house where Yefgenii had lived with the widow and their two children for eight years now. Yefgenii left the house in darkness and took the bus down to the flight lines that pointed like arrows out into the frozen sea; he flew in darkness and returned home in it.

The new year was 1964. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were planning in earnest spaceflights involving multiple crews that would attempt rendezvous, docking, and extravehicular activity, operations essential for a successful lunar landing.

This time one man travelled to Graham Bell. “My name is Doktor Arman Gevorkian. I come from OKB-1. We’re looking for pilots who are prepared to test some new military hardware. This matter is of the utmost secrecy.”

By now the commanding officer was called Pokryshev. Four had come and gone since Kostilev had completed his tour and progressed to a comfortable administrative post somewhere on the mainland. Pokryshev gave a respectful nod. “Of course, Doktor Gevorkian.”

“I’ve come in connection with one pilot in particular — Kapetan Yefgenii Yeremin. Would he agree to fly with me today?”

Pokryshev’s cheek muscles twitched. “Someone would have to ask him.”

“Is there a problem, polkovnik? I come on the highest authority.”

“Of course, Doktor Gevorkian. I meant no offense. Please forgive me.”

Yefgenii received orders to report to the flight clothing unit. An official from Moscow wanted to interview him.

When he arrived he thought from behind he recognized the man with Pokryshev. His pace quickened toward the diminutive figure looking ill at ease in a life jacket and immersion suit. The man turned and Yefgenii saw that his complexion was olive, his nose was beaky and his thick black eyebrows met in the middle. Yefgenii felt foolish. How could it have been Gnido? Gnido was long dead, so long dead.

Pokryshev made the introductions and then made an awkward departure. Gevorkian looked up at Yefgenii. He’d never seen a picture of him, had no idea what to expect. He hadn’t anticipated someone who looked so sad. That was Yefgenii now, still tall, but gaunt, the white-blond hair all but gone.

The two men stood in the open, in the grayness between an 8 a.m. dawn and 10 a.m. dusk. A freezing wind gusted off the pack ice, carrying showers of hard white flakes. Gevorkian said, “OKB-1 is looking for volunteers.”

MiGs were roaring off the runway a kilometre away; the wind was bringing the sound right to them.

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘we’re looking for volunteers.’ First-class fighter pilots under thirty-five years of age in excellent physical condition.”

“To do what?”

“We call them ‘cosmonauts.’”

Yefgenii smiled. Gevorkian was surprised to see him smile. He hadn’t expected it.

“Who told you I was here?”

“What?”

“Who told you about me?”

“Your victory over the U-2 was not without admirers, even in the highest places.”

Yefgenii studied Gevorkian. This was a chance, after all these years, and to question his potential deliverer’s motive would be foolish in the extreme.

Gevorkian read the look on Yefgenii’s face. “It was Comrade Ges.”

Yefgenii nodded. The flying flakes of ice bit into the side of his face.

“He told me about the U-2. Or, rather, he told our Chief Designer. You scored the victory and you saved his life.”

“Is that all he said?”

“He said you were the best pilot this country’s ever produced and they were keeping you in a glass case, with a sign that says
Break open only in time of national crisis.
”

Yefgenii laughed. “Ges is a cosmonaut now?”

“Yes, Kapetan, he is one of our leading trainees.”

“Trainee for what?”

“The Space Committee has finally issued a directive that we must endeavor to send a man to the Moon. We must beat the Americans.”

Another MiG accelerated down the runway. The scream of its jet crescendoed and then Yefgenii said, “Sounds like my kind of thing.”

Gevorkian saw how excited he looked. He hesitated. “Though, perhaps, with your application, we should be cautious…”

Yefgenii felt an ache of hunger. He couldn’t disguise it. He’d thought someone in authority had decided he’d served out his exile, at long last. That’s what he’d thought.

The wind shook the loose flaps of Yefgenii’s clothing. It drove into him, through him. Even after all these years he wasn’t used to it.

He said, “I was told you wanted to fly.”

“That’s right, Kapetan.”

“So let’s fly.”

They climbed to the south, over the bobbing ice floes of the Barents Sea, in a modified MiG trainer equipped with two seats and dual controls. The intercom loop was permanently open and the sounds of Gevorkian in the seat behind disconcerted Yefgenii. He could hear him breathing, he could hear every sniff and slurp.

“Do you believe you’ll be successful in sending a man to the Moon?”

“We intend to spread Communism to our closest celestial neighbor. All will go well for the first five years, then there’ll be a shortage of moondust.” Gevorkian laughed.

Yefgenii opened the throttle all the way and pitched back into the climbing attitude. The white ocean dropped behind them. The stubby white needle of the altimeter began to count up through the thousands. Sheets of cirrus plunged toward them and through and began to sink to earth. The air thinned, the sky darkened, and the world began to curve into a lens. They were topping 15,000 metres, nearing 16,000. A glistening cap of white curved over the top of the planet. The sky was bigger than countries and taller.

The climb shallowed. Even at full throttle the long narrow needle was barely adding on any more height. Yefgenii began a turn. The controls were sluggish. The aircraft was at its ceiling: too much bank and she’d stall and spin all the way down.

Over the ice cap floated a half moon. She was inchoate, she was a blur, a cataract. She seemed to lie just outside the glass of the canopy, hardly beyond their fingertips, but she was already slipping over the top of the world.

Yefgenii eased the aircraft’s nose down into a dive. “What’s OKB-1?”

The MiG gathered pace. Air roared over the canopy. Gevorkian had to shout. “The rocketry design bureau!” The wings shook till they broke through Mach 1, then they plunged straight down. The needle of the Mach meter continued to creep across the dial. Gevorkian knew they were approaching the MiG’s theoretical maximum speed. He clasped his hands hard across his lap. “I like to call my position ‘Head of Novel Thinking’!”

Yefgenii throttled back and coaxed the MiG’s nose out of the dive. “Why d’you call it that?”

“There’s something I discuss with the Chief Designer… I’d describe it as my grand enterprise. It involves the attainment of extreme altitude.”

“How high?”

“The stars.” Gevorkian waited. He could hear the sound of Yefgenii breathing in the seat in front but nothing else. “You’re not laughing, Kapetan? Normally they laugh.”

“No. I’m not laughing.”

Yefgenii levelled off. The pale ocean swung under the nose and then from beneath the fuselage emerged the distant harbor of Murmansk.

“Kapetan Yeremin, I urge you not to despair. The Chief Designer is an admirer of your achievements. He has the ear of those in authority, and they’re of a mind to listen.”

Yefgenii gazed out across the sea toward land. It was time to turn back for the runways of Franz Josef Land but he held the MiG in its aimless trajectory.

Gevorkian said, “All my life I’ve loved airplanes. I’ve loved everything about them. Your name was not unknown to me when mentioned by Comrade Ges. I heard the stories that came back from Korea. What can I say, Kapetan? Your exploits inspired me.” Gevorkian felt embarrassed so he continued without a pause. “A faceless apparatchik decided you should wither away in exile; I am not faceless. I can exhort the authorities to reconsider. In the space program, you would not be first in line. That would be a different kind of man, a spotless man, a flawless man — but one day in the future there might be a part for you to play, if you were prepared to wait…”

A submarine was surfacing on its return to Murmansk. It churned the waters into a long white wake. The Northern Fleet carried weapons that could destroy the world. The nuclear exchange would be measured in hours. Navies would rust. Air forces would vaporize. Cities would crumble. The ocean swallowed the submarine’s wake as it did the wake of every single vessel that passed. Man might obliterate himself from the earth, but the sea would still roll on for a million years or more.

Yefgenii gazed down into the water. Ice floes drifted like tombstones.

“I would wait,” he said.

LIFE WAS GOOD NOW, in comparison. Star City lay on the outskirts of Moscow. There they lived in a smart block of system-built flats with other cosmonaut families. Their home was warm, light and modern. They owned a television set. The widow didn’t have to queue for food or clothing; the shops were well stocked. Their larder bulged.

Ges and his wife lived across the hall. The women shopped together. The children attended the local school. They skipped off each morning hand in hand with Yuri Gagarin’s children, or Alexei Leonov’s.

At last his family had respite from the years of cold and exile, but for Cosmonaut Yefgenii Mikhailovich Yeremin the situation was less comfortable. Though he didn’t confess his insecurity, he’d joined an elite group, some of whom had already flown in space and many of whom had been in training for five years or more. His size was a handicap; by some criteria he exceeded the limits laid down for selection, and his eligibility to fly existing and future spacecraft would be evaluated mission by mission. Yet the Chief Designer himself had pressed for his selection, though it was processed in secret; the authorities gave way but had insisted his name could not appear in any official record, so he was obliged to enter under a pseudonym.

He was introduced to the nation’s leading pilots, the leading pilots of the culture. Here was Gagarin, here was Komarov, here was Leonov. Almost without exception the Americans chose seasoned test pilots as their astronauts, but in the main the cosmonauts were fighter pilots like him, men who’d made some kind of mark in military aviation; some believed they’d been selected on the strength of a single instance of daring or proficiency. One act could define a man in the eyes of his peers, in the eyes of his nation.

His fellow cosmonauts read the false name on his flight suit. They shook his hand and met his eyes. The use of the pseudonym was a charade — of course they knew who he was. Every man recognized his achievements as a combat pilot, but Korea wasn’t just part of the past. For all the lives lost, the war had achieved nothing for the great powers, so it was to be disregarded as a matter of policy. The first war of the nuclear age, the first of the jet age, the unique military confrontation between the new great powers that ruled the planet, had been forgotten in the space of little more than a decade, while Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin orbited the Earth with Project Gemini. They’d become the giants, not McConnell, not Jabara; they were giants as Ali was a giant, as Pelé, as Laver and Nicklaus were.