First Cosmic Velocity

by Zach Powers

  “Thank you all,” he said. He lifted his head just enough to look at everyone sitting around him, then let it fall back into the grass. “I have two weeks in the Chamber of Silence starting tomorrow. You’ve allowed me a final afternoon in the sun.”

  Leonid and Nadya groaned at the same time. The Chamber of Silence, the anechoic chamber, that little box of suffering. Leonid had only had to enter once, and only for a week. The twins who trained to fly into space, though, like Nadya, would spend as long as a month inside. Walls two meters thick. Artificial light. Sensors stuck all over the body. Just a chair and a bed and a desk and whatever equipment the engineers decided to include. And then the meals, shoved through a slit at the bottom of the door with one of the wooden poles that now supported their volleyball net. That was the only noise that ever came in from outside. The scrape of the tray along the two meters of the entryway. Mars, the one who died, would crouch by the door at mealtimes and press his ear into the slit when it opened. Otherwise, not a sound.

  “Two weeks?” said Leonid. “What a hell.”

  “We’ve all done worse,” said Giorgi.

  He did not know that the Leonid in front of him had never spent more than seven days in the chamber. The other Leonid was the one who had lasted over a month. Leonid was not allowed to speak to his brother when he emerged from the chamber, but he had seen him from the observation room. He felt that they no longer looked the same. He felt sure that the ruse would be uncovered the moment he was presented as his brother in public.

  Giorgi sprang into a seated position then hopped to his feet.

  “Who’s ready for another game?”

  Mishin and Bushuyev grumbled.

  “The food hasn’t even made it to my belly yet,” said Leonid.

  “There’s only so much sunlight,” said Giorgi, “and it won’t wait for you to digest.”

  He grabbed the ball and took it to the net, bouncing it around as he waited for everyone else to join him.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE TELEVISION MONITOR fish-eyed the interior view of the anechoic chamber, stretching it out toward the corners. Only objects centered perfectly in the camera showed true perspective. As Giorgi moved around the room, his proportions changed. When he reached for something offscreen, his arm seemed to grow as it neared the edge. When he stood, his head elongated into a tube, lips round, nose beaked, eyes like a dopey cat.

  Leonid checked in on him a few times a day. This was not required. Technicians manned the observation room all day and night, making notes about Giorgi’s heart rate and respiration even as he slept. And it was not as if Leonid could talk to Giorgi. Communication was forbidden. In the morning, one of the technicians would assign Giorgi a set of arbitrary tasks, written on a half sheet of paper, slid through the slit under the door with Giorgi’s breakfast.

  Today, breakfast consisted of butterbrots with ham and two fried eggs. While Giorgi ate in the chamber, the technicians ate the same thing in the observation room.

  The main monitor showed the whole room, distorted corner to distorted corner, but there were two other monitors, as well. One focused on the bed and one on the desk, which now served as Giorgi’s breakfast table. Giorgi took a kettle and set it on the small electric hotplate on the side of the desk. The microphone in the chamber picked up the sizzle as condensation dripped onto the burner. Breakfast included coffee, but one cup was never enough for Giorgi. He drank three or four every morning, though he never touched a drop after that.

  Following breakfast, Giorgi slid the tray back through the slit with the wooden rod, which he had returned to the chamber after taking down his makeshift volleyball net. The entryway was sealed at the other end by a second door, and the sound of the metal clanking could be heard through the speakers and from the door itself. Pressurized air hissed out of the chamber as a technician retrieved the tray. She hastily resealed the hatch.

  The one space in the room not covered by a camera was the toilet and sink. Giorgi went there, and one technician waited with his hand over the switch to turn off the speakers. If Giorgi took a shit, then the speaker would be turned off until he reappeared on the main camera. If he did anything else—piss, bathe, wash his face, clean his teeth, shave—then the speakers would be left on. Giorgi started singing, some old folk tune, one that the technicians seemed to recognize, but Leonid did not know it. The songs of his own childhood were in a different language.

  Water splashed in the sink. Sometimes Giorgi’s singing lost its words, turned garbled, or degraded into a hum. The technician turned the volume on the speakers up so loud that the sound hurt Leonid’s ears. There, between notes, a small scraping sound. The technician turned the volume back down to a reasonable level. “Shaving,” he said, miming the dragging of a razor across his own face. The other technician wrote something on a notepad.

  Giorgi reentered the camera’s view. He stopped, looked up and directly into the lens, and rubbed his fresh-shaven cheeks. He pressed harder, distorting the shape of his mouth. He flapped his lips open and closed like a fish. The technicians chuckled. Giorgi was the only cosmonaut who made an effort to relieve the dullness of their task. Leonid thought that perhaps the only thing worse than being in the chamber itself would be watching it on television for hours on end.

  Giorgi released his face, clapped once, and then dropped directly into a set of push-ups. Leonid left the observation room. Once Giorgi started working out, it could be hours before anything else happened at all.

  * * *

  • • •

  LEONID ALMOST RAN into the Chief Designer in the hallway.

  “How is he?” asked the Chief Designer, looking over Leonid’s shoulder at the door to the observation room.

  “You’re back?” asked Leonid.

  “You can see me, can’t you?”

  There was something different about the Chief Designer. Leonid was reminded of whenever a twin took over for their deceased sibling. Everyone could sense the difference, but of course people changed after being in outer space. Where had the Chief Designer been that could have altered him so?

  “Giorgi’s fine,” said Leonid.

  “Good, good. It’s almost time, you know.”

  The Chief Designer was grinning. Leonid did not know that the Chief Designer knew how to grin.

  “Time for what?” asked Leonid.

  “For our next launch, of course.”

  Leonid checked up and down the hall. It was empty.

  “But we haven’t found the other dogs,” he whispered.

  “Of course, of course. We’ll launch the dogs first. But it’s also time for our next human cosmonaut. Giorgi is more than ready.”

  “There’s just Giorgi, though, no twin.” Leonid still whispered.

  “Don’t worry yourself, Leonid. Everything’s been worked out.”

  With that he turned and sauntered down the hall. If Leonid had to describe the Chief Designer then, he would have said jolly, a word he was sure had never been used to describe anyone in the whole of Star City’s history.

  The Kremlin, Moscow, Russia—1964

  Every time the Chief Designer visited the Kremlin, he was led through a different tangle of hallways but always ended up in the same room. At least he thought it was the same room. There was a chance that the whole structure comprised similar rooms all furnished with the same long table, the same wood-paneled wainscoting, the same square clock to the right of the door and the same portrait of Marx to the left. Thinking back to other government buildings he had visited, the Chief Designer was unsure that he had not encountered the same arrangement in entirely different cities.

  He followed one of Khrushchev’s aides down a narrow hallway, lined on one side with high windows and on the other with an ornate colonnade, each post carved with curlicues and flutes and flowers. One tulip pattern, repeated in each column, reminded the Chief
Designer of the launchpad for the R-7, the section of column above the flower like the smoke trail of a rocket disappeared through the ceiling.

  The aide opened a door at the end of the hallway and then opened a door immediately to the right, through which the Chief Designer found the familiar room. He looked up to confirm it, but he did not need to. He knew the portrait of Marx was there even before he saw it. Khrushchev sat at the far end of the table. There was no one else in the room.

  “Tell me, comrade,” said Khrushchev before the Chief Designer had taken a seat, “how go preparations?”

  “Everything’s on schedule, Mr. Khrushchev.” The Chief Designer sat.

  “For the Revolution, then?”

  “We’ll have a most impressive celebration.”

  Khrushchev bent over the table, his pale skin pinched around his eyes. His hair, what was left of it, wispy and white, longed for a comb. Khrushchev’s cheeks, usually plump with mirth, seemed instead puffy with fatigue.

  “It’s a shame about Nedelin,” he said.

  “He was a great man.”

  “Did he ever share with you his stories of the war?”

  “Yes, a few.”

  “Tell me, do you think men were braver then? Did the bravest all die in the war, and we’re what’s left?”

  “I believe,” said the Chief Designer, speaking slowly, “that those times brought out the bravery in all men. Our people had no choice but to be brave.”

  “What’s the source of our courage today, then?”

  “Certainly our cosmonauts.”

  “Yes, yes! That’s my point.” Khrushchev straightened his back, gesturing as he spoke, thrusting his finger above him with each phrase. “You know I’m excited for Byelka to fly, but I’m concerned. They tell me that the Americans are ready to launch their next project. Gemini, it’s called. While we send two dogs, they’ll send two people, Castor and Pollux, if you will.”

  The Chief Designer smiled at Khrushchev. It was an insincere expression, he knew, one he only used with the Premier. Mishin and Bushuyev sometimes called the Chief Designer Torgovets for his ability to push the space program ahead as often with charisma as with science.

  “I have a proposition that might get you more excited for the mission.”

  “Do you, now?” Khrushchev furrowed his brow, but underneath his eyes widened.

  “We will rendezvous two ships in outer space. We’ll launch the dogs in Vostok, and then launch a cosmonaut in Voskhod, bringing the new ship into close orbit with the first. They will fly in tandem. Imagine the photograph. The first picture taken of a spaceship while in orbit!”

  “This can be done?”

  “It will be!”

  Khrushchev sprang to his feet. “Chief Designer, you always prove me wrong when I doubt you. One day maybe I’ll learn.”

  “It’s your job to be diligent.”

  “Who will be the cosmonaut?”

  “We have several in training. All excellent candidates.”

  “I can’t wait to meet whoever it is.” He sat back down. “This will be safe for Byelshenka?”

  “If he’s a brave dog, then I believe there’s nothing to fear.”

  “Nedelin was a brave man.”

  “Then let’s honor his memory with bravery of our own.”

  Khrushchev rapped his knuckles on the table three times, and a door immediately opened on the opposite side of the room from the door where the Chief Designer had entered. A woman came in bearing an exquisite silver tray. Planted on top of the tray were two crystal glasses and a tall bottle full of brown liquid. A paper label on the bottle said something in English. The woman poured the liquid to the brim of each glass and handed one first to Khrushchev and then to the Chief Designer.

  “It’s called bourbon,” said Khrushchev. “Kennedy used to send me a case of the stuff now and again. Johnson sends nothing.”

  The Chief Designer raised his glass. “To departed friends. May we honor them with our actions.”

  “To departed friends,” echoed Khrushchev.

  Two glassfuls later, the Chief Designer left the Kremlin by a different hallway, though he could not tell it apart from the first.

  Star City, Russia—1964

  Nadya sipped tea from a cup with a picture of her face on it. Such tea sets had been popular the year after her launch. As Ignatius put it, every home in the Soviet bloc had received one as a gift for the New Year in 1960. While visiting planetariums and looking for dogs, Leonid had seen the sets in every secondhand store he came across, the cheap porcelain chipped and faded, Nadya’s face reduced to that of a ghost. The tea set at Star City was apparently made of better stuff, the picture still as crisp as ever. Nadya hummed a simple melody between sips.

  Leonid sat opposite Nadya at one of the low tables in the lounge, and beside him sat Ignatius, who revolved a teacup in her fingers, orbiting Nadya’s face in and out of view. She was never one to sip, preferring instead to chug down whatever liquid she was served. She pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and tapped the bottom until one poked up. She grabbed it with her teeth directly from the pack.

  “You’re not supposed to smoke in the building,” said Nadya. “It damages the equipment.”

  “Even the Chief Designer smokes in the building.”

  “I’ve never seen him.”

  “That’s because the Chief Designer never smokes around you. When you leave a room, he has no compunction about lighting up, even around the most delicate equipment.”

  Ignatius reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out a match that she had somehow struck before it even emerged. The tip of the cigarette fizzed. She took in a deep drag and puffed out a gray cloud that covered the whole corner of the room.

  “I don’t like the smell,” said Nadya.

  “Nor do I,” said Ignatius. She puffed again. “Have you seen this, Leonid?”

  She held up the cigarette box, smoothing out the creases with her thumb. Leonid had seen the brand, Cosmos, before. The boxes came in any number of bright colors with space-themed illustrations. Fantastical renderings of Vostok, portraits of Nadya like those on the teacups, other cosmonauts, Sputnik, rockets. He had lost count of all the different designs. This one, though, he had not seen before, a new portrait. It looked familiar but off, and he knew it was his brother, or himself, despite the fact that the nose was skewed and his smile never stretched so wide.

  “I don’t even smoke,” he said.

  “There are also playing cards and matchboxes. Oh, and I was sent portraits of Kasha and Byelka for approval. Kasha strikes a noble pose! I should have brought it to show you.”

  “A noble pose might be all that’s left of her,” said Nadya.

  “Please, Nadya. I didn’t mean to bring the conversation down. We have months yet.”

  “One dog for another. I don’t care for the exchange whenever it happens.”

  Ignatius pointed with the smoldering end of her cigarette. “Remember that. It’s always an exchange, always one thing for another thing, and if you do it right, then the other thing is of a slightly lesser value than what you get.”

  “Lesser value?” Nadya held the teacup up in front of her.

  Ignatius’s carefree expression, the one she always bore, soured. “When you have two objects of equal value but only need one, what do you do? Choosing in such a situation is a game of chance. And you were all chosen the day you left your homes. Tsiolkovski had a plan, and none of the rest of us ever had the wherewithal to challenge it. The Chief Designer made it worse, for certain, but the whole mess was put in motion while he was nothing more than a junior engineer. His grand ambitions aside, this is a burden he couldn’t have borne had Tsiolkovski not paved the road for him in advance.”

  “I always thought . . .” Leonid was interrupted by a commotion in the hallway. A cluster of techni
cians sprinted past the open door, talking to each other all at once, a ruckus like one of Giorgi’s parties. Then came stragglers, running hard and silent except for panted breaths, white lab coats fanning out behind them. More people wore lab coats at Star City than Leonid thought could possibly need to.

  Nadya set down her teacup, and Ignatius ground out her cigarette on a corner of the table, smearing the ash into the wood.

  “What happened?” asked Ignatius.

  “The chamber,” said Nadya. “They’re headed in the direction of the chamber.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE the observation room was filled to bursting with technicians, white coats rubbing up against white coats. They surged as a single mass at the door, but there were too many of them to get anywhere. Ignatius shouted for them to move, and when no one did she and Nadya began to pull them out of the way, and not gently. Several of the technicians tried to fight back until they saw that it was Nadya who moved them. One stubborn man refused, not budging until Ignatius pinned his arm painfully behind his back and led him aside like a prisoner. Leonid watched from a step behind.

  Just inside the door to the observation room, Mishin and Bushuyev stood there like bouncers, pushing away anyone who neared the threshold. Nadya and Ignatius made it to the door, Leonid a step after, even as the ranks of technicians closed up behind them. Leonid kept getting shoved in the back. Flailed elbows found a way to his ribs.

  Mishin and Bushuyev saw Nadya, and their set frowns loosened.

  “Thank god,” said one of them. “Where’s the Chief Designer?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Nadya.

  Mishin and Bushuyev exchanged a look.

  “Come in,” said the other one of them, “but be warned. It’s an ugly sight.”

  As soon as Nadya, Ignatius, and Leonid entered the room, Mishin and Bushuyev resumed their posts in the doorway. Beyond them, the technicians had calmed, only a few left struggling to earn a view inside.