First Cosmic Velocity

by Zach Powers

  White light flashed ahead of him. The white faded and where the Proton rocket had been there was now only an orange blossom of flame, churning out smoke and radiating waves of heat like a rippling halo. The Chief Designer felt the boom in the air before it crashed into his ears. He covered them with his hands until the sound died enough to tolerate. The ground shook, just a tremble at first, growing into a violent rocking that almost knocked him from his feet. A wave of dust rushed at him, up his nose and into his eyes. The dust cast a meter-high haze over the whole landscape.

  Tiny figures, silhouetted by the light, fled in the Chief Designer’s direction, but few got far before falling. An acrid stench reached him. Vapors of the rocket fuel. Toxic. He pulled out his handkerchief and held it over his nose and mouth. Was he far enough away? Surely the fumes would disperse. A flock of birds rose up in front of the fireball like shrapnel from a secondary explosion.

  The General Designer came from behind him and ran past, still cinching his belt. One half of his shirt remained untucked. The Chief Designer called out to him, told him to wait, but he could not hear his own voice, did not know if he even made a sound. Was his throat damaged by the fumes, or had the sound of the explosion deafened him?

  He sprinted after the General Designer, who ran with the gracelessness of one who had never run before, not even at play as a child. The Chief Designer gripped the General Designer by the shoulder, which sent him spinning, almost to the ground.

  “Stop!” screamed the Chief Designer.

  The General Designer turned and made to run again. The Chief Designer placed one large hand on each of the General Designer’s shoulders and squeezed.

  “It’s too late,” said the Chief Designer.

  The two men turned to the launchpad. The flames had lessened, no longer churning but still burning bright. The top of the Proton emerged out of the blaze. Without warning, it fell straight down, as if the column underneath had been snatched clean away.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE CHIEF DESIGNER had thought the steppe dry before, but now in the area scorched by the explosion it was as if the very idea of water had evaporated. Dry brown dirt had been replaced with dryer gray ash. The ground crunched beneath his feet. Whole chunks of soot clung to his shoes.

  He learned to avoid the larger piles of ash, many of which had once been human. Sometimes he could even make out the shape of a body splayed across the ground. Other piles had bones poking out. All told, some two hundred people were still unaccounted for, but they would never be identified. No amount of patience could reassemble flakes of ash to resemble the people they had come from. The grimace of one skull looked like any other. Nedelin had been identified by the fused clump of brass that had once been his medals. His uniform and flesh had burned completely away.

  Somehow, the tower at the pad still stood. It was charred black almost to the top, crowned by bare metal, shining silver in the afternoon sun. The remnants of the Proton lay in a heap at the base of the tower, long cylindrical sections crossed like spent logs on a hearth. A rocket was not much more than a tube, when it came down to it.

  Ignatius jogged across the ash toward the Chief Designer. Her motion seemed too casual, too carefree. The somber scene required slowness. After the rush to save the few survivors, everything had decelerated. The Chief Designer was reminded of people strolling along the banks of a river. It was a specific memory of a specific river, wet mud emanating a murky scent, but he could not recall the time or the place. The people he had seen walking there were strangers.

  Ignatius slowed as she approached the Chief Designer and then stopped beside him. She covered her mouth with a fist and released a cough from deep in her lungs.

  “This dust,” she said. The ash covering her jacket made the leather look several shades lighter.

  “Try not to think of where it comes from,” said the Chief Designer.

  “Now there’s an unpleasant thought. Thank you for that.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Not happy to see me? I’ll be brief. The General Designer is by the fueling station—at least what remains of it. Now might be an excellent time to repeat your request to him.”

  “Now might be an excellent time to leave him alone.”

  “The world has not stopped, Chief Designer. Not even for this. The Americans will keep launching rockets, and now you’re our only chance to beat them to the moon. To Mars.”

  “Surely even the Americans will pause for this.”

  “They’ll never know this happened.”

  “You can’t hide the deaths of hundreds.”

  “I already have. Tomorrow morning, Pravda will report that Nedelin died in a plane crash. The families of the deceased will be told the same. And anyone who knows otherwise will be convinced that if they tell the truth, they might meet a similar fate.”

  Without realizing it, the Chief Designer had let Ignatius guide him in the direction of the fuel station. The walls of the building were tumbled over in the direction of the blast, pipes and tubes sprouting from charred concrete like the decapitated stems of flowers. The General Designer was there amid the rubble, stooping over and then standing back to his full height, a head taller than everyone around him. The Chief Designer stopped walking.

  He asked, “Is there a chance that you arranged this so that the General Designer would assist me?”

  “You always think the worst of me,” said Ignatius, “though I suppose it would be a lie to claim that this is something I would be incapable of.”

  “Often you seem less human than these piles of ash.”

  “Let the two of us never discuss our relative humanity.”

  The Chief Designer’s lips turned up in a reluctant smile.

  “I suppose,” he said, “that would make the General Designer the most righteous among us.”

  “One can be intolerable and righteous both.”

  “I’ll speak to him. Thank you, Ignatius.”

  “Oh god, please don’t form the habit of thanking me.”

  “Only this once.”

  Ignatius spun on the point of her toe and headed off in a direction that seemed to have no potential destination, just open steppe all the way to the horizon. Somehow the dust did not kick up with her steps.

  As the Chief Designer approached the fuel station, the General Designer noticed him, spoke something to the nearest technician, and met the Chief Designer halfway.

  “I suppose this is where you lecture me,” said the General Designer. “This is where you remind me that you warned me about the dangers of hypergolic fuels. Do you know how we’re assembling the list of names? The names of the dead? We’re taking roll. Anyone who we don’t find is added to the list. It’s a list of the absent. These people are simply no more. A few, yes, we could identify. There were several tangled in the wire fence to the east. Some who made it beyond that were unburned. The fumes got them. To think that you got away only to breathe poison. That was their fate. How long do you think they felt lucky? Did they see their friends swallowed up and think, Thank god, not me! And what about me? I had to shit, Chief Designer. If I hadn’t drunk that vodka, if I hadn’t inherited a weak stomach from my father, I would have been there, too. I wouldn’t have to answer your questions or any of the questions yet to come. Can you at least give me this day? Let me come to understand my own regrets before you gloat. I killed a hundred people. Two hundred. Right now, I can’t deal with your triumph.”

  “At any cost,” said the Chief Designer.

  “What?”

  “That’s what Tsiolkovski taught us: Succeed at any cost. I understand your current feelings better than you may realize, and about this, I will never gloat. I want to reach Mars first, but if I don’t, then someone else must. Right now, you’re the only other option. You’ll recover from this and you’ll push me and we’ll push each other.”
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  The General Designer put his hand on his face and pressed his eyes as if he was trying to hold back tears. When he opened his eyes again, they were dry.

  He said, “You came here for my heat shield, correct? Not today, not for many days, but I’ll have the information sent to you when I’m able.”

  “Accidents are unavoidable in our industry. That’s what I’ll tell Khrushchev.”

  The General Designer tried to say something, his mouth moving like he was chewing on the words.

  “Don’t thank me,” said the Chief Designer. “I still think you’re an ass.”

  “And I you,” said the General Designer, and then he said the Chief Designer’s name, his real name, the name no one except his wife and son and Ignatius was supposed to know.

  The Chief Designer took a deep breath and tried not to think about what he was inhaling.

  Bohdan, Ukraine—1950

  When the creek dried up, the villagers began to ration water from the well. Some hope arrived when a few green shoots rose in the field, but the sprouts quickly turned brown, shriveling back into the earth. A baby died. Not uncommon in the village, but this baby died with no fever, no rash, no symptoms at all. It cried one whole night and then stopped crying. The villagers wrapped the baby in sackcloth and buried it without a coffin. The grave was barely half a meter deep. There was no worry of the little body being dug up by an animal. No one had seen an animal in the forest for months.

  The Leonids sat in a circle with the other children, not five meters from where the baby was buried at the base of the old tree in the center of the village. Mykola had brought a ball with him, made of real rubber. It was now cracking and stained with dirt, but when he first got it years ago, the rubber was sleek and shiny. The children rolled the ball to each other. Not a game, really. No one had the energy to get up and kick the ball or throw it. They just shoved it across the short diameter of the circle until another child thought to shove it back.

  The next time the ball came to Mykola, he snatched it up and stood. He walked away without saying anything. The other children got up one at a time and headed in the direction of their homes. It was dinnertime, Leonid guessed. Once, at this time every evening, a chorus of parents calling to their children could be heard through the whole valley. Now it remained silent, and everyone went home only out of habit.

  The Leonids were the last to stand, along with Oksana, a girl a couple years older who lived at the end of the village nearest Grandmother’s cottage. Oksana had ears a little too big for her face, but nobody mocked her for it. She rarely smiled and was not exactly nice. Leonid remembered, though, how she came to Grandmother’s the day after the soldiers arrived with news of Father’s death. Oksana had brought fresh bread and then stayed to clean the cottage. Leonid rarely talked to her, maybe because after that he always thought of her as an adult, not another one of the children.

  They walked together now, assuming the arrangement of a group, though all three were in their own spheres of thought. As they neared Mykola’s cottage, he came back out the front door with his shoes in his hands. He beat them together, knocking clumps of dry dirt to the ground and creating a gray cloud in the air around him. He took both boots in one hand and waved the other in front of his face, coughing. Sitting on the step, he slid the shoes back on.

  Oksana stopped, and the older Leonid almost collided with her. The younger Leonid, looking over at Mykola, did not see his brother stop and clipped him with his shoulder.

  “Watch it,” said the older Leonid.

  “Why’d you stop?” asked the younger.

  “What’s that smell?” asked Oksana.

  The Leonids looked at her and then looked around, as if the smell was something they could see. But then Leonid smelled it, too, a wet scent, barely more than steam. Even when he smelled it, he could not place it, something familiar but forgotten.

  “Meat,” said the younger Leonid. “Someone’s boiling meat.”

  “No one’s had meat in months,” said the older Leonid.

  “He’s right,” said Oksana. “It’s definitely meat.”

  The older Leonid sniffed again, still unconvinced, but then his stomach decided for him, rumbling loud enough that Oksana and his brother turned to look.

  “It’s coming from Mykola’s home,” he said.

  Mykola was still lacing his left shoe, seemingly unaware of the three children staring at him.

  The older Leonid took one step toward him. “Where did your family get meat?”

  Mykola stood without tying his shoe. He stayed on the step and pushed the door shut behind him.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  Leonid took another step toward him. Mykola hopped off the front step and crept away from the cottage.

  “Don’t deny it. We all smelled meat.”

  “No one has any meat.”

  “Except you. Why is that?”

  The boys now stood face-to-face. Mykola tried to take a step back, but Leonid stepped with him.

  “Grandmother boiled tree bark yesterday. That’s what we ate for dinner. Water flavored with wood. And here you are with meat while the rest of us are dying.”

  At the word dying Mykola looked up, his eyes stretched wide.

  “No one’s going to die,” he said.

  “Are you dumb?” asked Leonid.

  “Don’t call me dumb.”

  Leonid shoved him, and Mykola staggered back.

  “I’m not dumb,” said Mykola.

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Fuck your mother.”

  Leonid lunged forward, wrapping his arms around Mykola at the waist and tackling him to the ground. Leonid pinned Mykola down with a forearm across the throat, and punched into Mykola’s ribs with his free hand. The punches felt weak to Leonid, his strength sapped by hunger, but Mykola cried out at each blow.

  “Where did you get meat?” screamed Leonid.

  Then he was lifted off the ground and away from Mykola, Oksana and his brother gripping him under each armpit. How thin he must have been to be carried so easily. Mykola pushed himself up into a sitting position.

  “You ass,” said Leonid. “Where did you get the meat?”

  Mykola cried, though the tears barely came. Everyone was too dried out to waste water on tears.

  “It’s the cat,” said Mykola. “Mother is cooking the cat.”

  Oksana crouched by Mykola, dusted him off, and then helped him to his feet.

  She said, “That cat barely had any muscle.”

  “Mother says it’s better than nothing.”

  “It is,” said Oksana. “It’s better than not eating. Go back inside and have your meal.”

  Mykola’s tears came then, real and wet. He held his ribs where Leonid had punched him. As he walked back to his cottage he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and straightened his posture. He banged the heels of each shoe on the front step and went inside.

  “Who would eat a cat?” asked the older Leonid.

  Oksana started walking away. “Anybody who’s lucky enough to have one.”

  * * *

  • • •

  OKSANA DIED the next week. She contracted a fever, followed by diarrhea and vomiting. What little food could be spared for her she could not keep down. After the fever set in, she moved into one of the abandoned huts, and spent her final days alone so that she would not risk spreading the illness. Even before she took ill, she had been giving most of her food to her sister. When the villagers prepared her for burial, they discovered that under her dress her limbs were thin to the bone, her ribs as prominent as features on a face.

  The Leonids stood next to Mykola at the funeral. They greeted each other with nods. There was not much to the ceremony, just a few words spoken by Oksana’s mother’s friend. No one had known the girl well, it seemed. After t
he frail body had been lowered into a shallow grave, as several villagers used shovels to push the dirt back into the hole—they did not seem to have the energy to actually shovel—everyone else filed by Oksana’s family and offered condolences. Leonid remembered all the funerals he was forced to attend during the war, and how everyone had a story to share about the deceased, how a long line formed before the grieving family. But now, no one said anything more than a couple words, and some simply tousled Oksana’s sister’s hair and patted her mother on the shoulder. No words at all.

  Mykola ended up ahead of the Leonids in the line, and they all stood in front of Oksana’s family at the same time. Mykola looked at her sister and her mother and then looked away, vaguely in the direction of the grave. The older Leonid pressed his lips into what he hoped was an understanding smile. The younger Leonid took the hand of Oksana’s sister. He knelt before her, but lifted his head to speak to her mother.

  “One time the three of us were in a fight, and Oksana broke it up. If she had not done that, we might not be friends today.” He spoke as if the event were from the long ago past, as if he had been one of the fighters.

  Oksana’s mother, who had become silent during the burial, cried anew. Mykola and the Leonids moved on and other villagers took their places. Before they parted ways, Mykola and the older Leonid shook hands. The older Leonid said, “I was so hungry,” and Mykola nodded.

  Grandmother remained near the grave, keeping herself busy talking to the other villagers while always keeping an eye on Oksana’s family. The Leonids walked home without her.

  As they walked, the older Leonid thought about what his brother had said. At the time, he interpreted it to be a comforting lie. But now, now he knew the friendship was a prediction.