“That’s what it says on the circuit diagram.”
She rummaged in a box and handed him a new one. It was marked with different colored stripes.
“Those aren’t 100,” he said.
“No, 150. You just have to... wait a minute...” She bent over the plans, squinting.
“Okay, you have to use 50 ohms instead of 100 for the parallel resistor.”
“You just worked that out in your head?”
“It’s simple,” said Yekaterina. “Look,” she pointed at the plans, “we have two parallel switches in rows that—”
“Forget it. If you don’t write it down as an equation I won’t understand. Just tell me what to solder.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Without your help I’d never finish the improved radiometer by this evening.”
“Ha! We’ve done it!” said Yekaterina. She jumped up and flung her arms around his neck.
Sasha remained rigid and looked down at his watch—it was half past eight. So that was why he was so hungry. He hadn’t put anything in his stomach since the kasha that morning at Valya’s. The fact that he hadn’t felt hungry earlier must be due to the dense rosin vapor that was wafting through the lab. He couldn’t even smell the soldering flux anymore.
“Thanks again,” said Yekaterina. “Now he can’t say ‘no.’”
Sasha wasn’t so sure. The probe was attached to the tip of the rocket underneath a cover. Carrying out alterations after the fact could be difficult.
“I don’t want to burst your bubble, but our instrument hasn’t even been tested, and we constructed it out of untempered components.”
In space, electronics are exposed to cosmic rays, so they would typically use specially manufactured components that were less sensitive. But they were also more expensive, and they had no way of getting their hands on them.
“The thing works,” she said. “I measured all the connections and the individual components have such large structural widths that a little bit of radiation won’t affect them.”
“We’ll see.”
“Do you want to try convincing Komikov this time? He didn’t really respond to my charms yesterday. I don’t know what it is between you two, but he seems to like you.”
“I... Maybe he sees a younger version of himself in me.” No, Komikov should tell Yekaterina himself who he’d spent his time with in Moscow.
“In you? Ha, ha, ha.”
Sasha gave his laughing companion a sour look.
“I mean, you’re totally different from him. Better! I wouldn’t want to be with Komikov.”
But she would with him? Another reason to be angry at his father. If it wasn’t for him, Sasha wouldn’t be related to Yekaterina. Hmm, but then he and Katya wouldn’t even exist. Oh well. At least then he wouldn’t have to torture himself about never being able to be with this woman.
“Come on, let’s go and have a nice evening,” said Yekaterina.
“I’m pretty hungry.”
“Me, too. If we were in Leningrad, we could just drop in at a stolovaya and have some borscht.”
His stomach growled loudly. “That would be nice. A hot soup with meat...”
“But the canteen closed ages ago,” said Yekaterina.
“Pity. Although, I’m not really sorry about missing out on the canteen food.”
“I think I know where we can still get something to eat.”
“In the colonel general’s fridge?”
“No, Sasha, at Valentina’s. She always has something at home and enjoys visitors.”
He didn’t feel like spending an evening with the dezhurnaya after such a tiring day. But he had no idea how else he was going to satisfy his hunger. Break into the canteen?
“Fine, let’s go,” he said.
“Borscht? Did you never help your mother in the kitchen?” the dezhurnaya asked.
“I wasn’t allowed,” Sasha replied. “The kitchen was her domain.”
“And then mothers wonder how they raise such lazy young men. That would never have been the case with me. You would have known that a good borscht takes at least four hours to make. And you’re starving, Katya says?”
“We are.”
“I could make a plov. I have rice and we’ll find some odds and ends to flavor it.”
“That would be wonderful,” said Yekaterina.
“You’re the best, Valentina,” said Sasha.
Half an hour later, the dezhurnaya pulled out three plates and dished up large servings of fried rice from a cast iron pot. The plov smelled delicious. They ate in silence. Afterwards, Valentina poured them a digestif. One hundred milliliters per person, of course.
After the second glass, she told them stories of her youth, which she spent at Lake Baikal. Shamans played an important role, as did strange herbs and otherworldly people. It was almost as though Valya was talking about a time before the founding of the U.S.S.R.—it all sounded like such a fairytale.
At some point Sasha stood up. Failing to steady himself on the edge of the table, he fell over.
“You need to go to bed,” said the dezhurnaya.
“Wait, I’ll get... jacket...”
“No, you can both sleep here.”
How did she manage to speak so clearly? And what did she mean? Someone pushed him down the hallway into the other room. It was freezing. Someone pulled off his pullover and pants and shoved him into bed in his underwear. The bed creaked once more. Then someone pulled a blanket that smelled like laundry soap over him, and the world around him faded.
March 24, 1984, Tyuratam
“Get up, sleepyhead!” cried Yekaterina, looking at him mischievously.
She was wearing full-length underclothes, and her long hair was damp. His gaze wandered to the ceiling. There were strings of dried mushrooms, braids of onions, garlic, and peppers, and various bunches of herbs hanging there. It smelled of both the forest and delicious food. It was just like that in his mother’s bedroom.
This wasn’t his bedroom. He shouldn’t be here, especially not with Yekaterina. Sasha lifted the covers and looked down at himself. Luckily he was dressed, if only in underwear. So probably nothing had happened. Or had it?
“Good morning, Katya,” he said.
“Rise and shine!”
The sun shone through the open shutters. It must already be late morning.
“Shit, we’ve missed Komikov’s run,” he said.
“I know. Valya didn’t wake me till eight. The vodka yesterday—the last glass must have been bad.”
“Did we... spend the night together?”
Katya raised an eyebrow. “We both slept in Valya’s bed, if that’s what you mean.”
What a relief. Alcohol did have its uses.
“But now you need to get ready, Alexander. We have to climb up a rocket today.”
You have to climb up a rocket. I won’t put one foot on that ladder. He peeled off the covers and sat up. Then he felt a draft at his back.
“You two look adorable in your long underwear,” said Valentina, who must have just come through the door. “In my day we used to sleep naked.”
Sasha imagined his colleague naked in bed. He promptly felt his face turn red.
“Here, Sasha, I washed your clothes this morning and dried them over the oven.”
Two pieces of clothing hit his back one after the other. Valya must have gone into his bungalow and gathered up his dirty washing. He should be annoyed, but he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with her. It was almost like she’d adopted him. Why didn’t she have any children?
Sasha got up and picked up first his undershirt and then the underpants. He was suddenly incredibly embarrassed. If Valya had washed his dirty clothes, she would definitely have noticed the stiff patches from his nightly ejaculations. Ever since that first happened in puberty, he’d always put his own underwear in the washing machine. His mother had acted like she didn’t know anything about it. Sasha, you’re a grown man now. It’s just as natural as women’s p
eriods. There’s no reason to blush, he told himself.
“So, ladies, I’d like to get dressed now,” he said in as deep a voice as possible. “In private.”
“So the man is embarrassed to dress in front of us, is he?” remarked Valentina, “Even though a socialist doesn’t have any secrets. All right, we’re going. Come on, Katinka.”
“Wait, you have a blob of kasha on your chin,” said Yekaterina.
He stood still and lifted his head because she was a bit taller than he was. She came closer. Very close—so close that her frosty breath reached his face. She was wearing dark eye makeup, her fur hat pulled down low around her face.
Yekaterina pulled off her gloves. When she touched his chin with her index finger, an electric shock went through him. She wiped off the kasha and then put her finger in her mouth to lick it clean. He looked down. The ground was sandy. The tips of his boots were worn.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Maybe you should look in the mirror before you go to work,” she said.
“I don’t think I’ve got a mirror in my bungalow.”
“Our new construction has exactly the same dimensions as the old instrument,” said Sasha. He ran his hand over the circuit board, wiped a drop of flux off it and then cleaned his finger on his pants.
“It uses about eight percent less energy, which reduces the load on the probe. And it’s twenty percent more accurate. But above all, it has an absolutely linear response, regardless of the measured temperature differences.”
He’d allowed himself to be persuaded to present yesterday’s project to the collective. Komikov paced up and down, with a neutral expression.
“And you can prove that?” asked Verkhodanov.
“The energy consumption, yes,” he replied. “The linear response could only be tested at room temperature and slightly above and below.”
“The instrument mounted on the satellite has been tested in all ranges.”
“I know, comrade. That’s how we were able to see that its linearity was questionable.”
“If we know the course of the linearity, then it should be possible to take that into account in the analysis, shouldn’t it?” asked the colonel general.
“Theoretically, yes,” said Sasha. “But that increases the error interval. If we transferred the secret script into an image, the P would blur into a B, an R or an 8. We know that the P we’ve revealed probably isn’t a P, but we can’t determine whether we have a B, an R, or an 8 in front of us. Imagine you had to read a book in which the letters were blurred. PAPER, RARER, BARER. You wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the three words.”
“But you could from the context,” said Verkhodanov.
“But we’d have to know the context first.”
“Well, the engineers in Akademgorodok who built the instrument have assured me the sensitivity was increased tenfold,” Komikov said, and stopped pacing. “Everything corresponds to the researchers’ specifications—your specifications. And now you come to me and say it was all for nothing, that we need something else?”
“We already have something else,” said Yekaterina.
“Comrade Andreyeva, you used the people’s resources, without permission, to rebuild an instrument we already have. That could be viewed as sabotage. But we’ll talk about it later.”
“We repaired the measuring instrument,” Yekaterina corrected him.
Sasha felt afraid for her. Katya should back down, and Komikov was heading in a dangerous direction. Sasha thought he probably had it in him to sacrifice his own daughter, like the hero Korchagin in ‘How the Steel Was Tempered.’ You could hardly become a colonel general otherwise.
“As I said, we’ll talk about that later. Do I understand correctly that you want to swap the measuring instrument up on the probe?”
“Correct,” said Sasha. “We had a look at the blueprint for the Molniya rocket. It’s possible, even retrospectively.”
“The rocket has already been fueled. If we follow the regulations, we’d first have to empty the tank before you could access the launch equipment. If something went wrong, you could be blown up.”
“We’re willing to take that risk,” said Yekaterina. “If it blows up, it blows up.”
“I can’t allow it. It’s not just about you. You’d be endangering the entire mission. Everyone in the spaceport would know you were climbing a fueled rocket. And if something went wrong, it would be on my head.”
Ah, the colonel general feared for his position. That made things difficult.
“And what if we did it in a way that no one noticed?”
Komikov turned to face Yekaterina. Soon he would hit her or throw her out on her ear. But no. He laughed loudly. Sasha relaxed. Katya’s idea was so crazy that the general didn’t even take it seriously.
“In that case, we never had this conversation,” said Komikov. “No one here knows anything about your plans.”
He was taking her idea seriously! He obviously knew Yekaterina well enough.
“But if you get caught doing whatever it is you’re planning to do, it’s on you, just so we’re clear. If I knew anything about it, I would strictly forbid it.”
Sasha took a deep breath. Katya wanted to climb up the rocket in secret and swap out the instruments? She couldn’t be serious—or was she? The colonel general appeared to believe her. What had he gotten himself into? Hopefully she wouldn’t ask him to help her.
Because he knew himself. If she asked, he wouldn’t be able to say no.
“You’re the best,” said Yekaterina.
She hugged him and pulled him in close. Then she gave him a kiss on the mouth. Sasha was in heaven.
But it wasn’t right. He pushed her away—she was his half-sister!
“You’re right. First work, then play.”
She’d misunderstood his gesture. How was he supposed to tell her? On the other hand, he was glad. He really wanted to be with her. But he couldn’t. Life was so complicated, and it wasn’t any less complicated if he ignored his love life. After all, they were planning to break into a spaceport, climb a rocket fueled for take-off, and manipulate the probe attached to it. That was the sort of thing you’d expect from imperialist agents.
Except that they had a couple of advantages. They didn’t have to break through the outer perimeter. They were allowed to be where they were now. But there was still the inner cordon. To get close to the rocket you had to have a special permit, which they didn’t have and would never get. They’d have to act under cover of darkness and could only hope no one caught them.
“Do you have the Relikt?” he asked.
Yekaterina bent down and lifted the measuring instrument with both hands. Its basket-like transport protection made it look like a big cake. It sat on a round base the same size as the instrument itself. They only needed to undo the fifteen screws that attached it, replace it with the one they’d built and connect a few cables. Fifteen minutes undisturbed should be enough.
It was just after midnight. The launch site was about six kilometers away, so they’d need a little over an hour. They deliberately set out at a time that meant the moon would have set by the time they arrived at the rocket.
Yekaterina tilted the Relikt instrument upright. “Ready?”
He nodded.
“Shall I carry it for you?” he asked.
“That’s kind of you, but we’ve only been walking for fifteen minutes. We were going to swap half-way.”
“Just asking.”
“It’s okay. Are you all right?”
“I’m scared.”
“Sasha, that’s good. I mean, that you can admit it. You’re an unusual man.”
That was one way of putting it. He was a coward, and that was a fact.
He should have dispensed with the long johns. The closer they came to the restricted area, the more he sweated. And it was minus 15 degrees. What was it going to be like when they climbed up the launch tower? It was about 35 meters—how many ladder rungs was that?<
br />
Yekaterina had offered yesterday to try it alone. He should have agreed. But how would she simultaneously hold the base onto the probe and screw in the screws? The Relikt instrument was at the stern of Prognoz 9b, facing downwards.
“Pssst.”
Yekaterina put on the night vision goggles that Valentina had acquired for them. Then she pointed in three directions, one after another. That must be where the patrols were. They each consisted of two men, but they weren’t equipped with night vision devices. And no one here was expecting intruders, because the outer perimeter was sufficient to prevent that. That meant these soldiers could go about their duties in a more relaxed fashion.
His colleague tapped him on the shoulder and then went in front, stooping, as they’d discussed. He followed in her footsteps, just in case there were mines inside the restricted area. But that was pretty unlikely. They reached the anti-tank barrier consisting of old railroad sleeper cars and razor wire. Yekaterina pointed at the ground and put down the measuring instrument. Then he took off his thick steppe jacket and draped it over the barrier. Yekaterina put her own jacket on top of it. He picked up the instrument again and they climbed cautiously over the barrier.
Once they reached the other side, he put down the Relikt instrument and fished for his jacket. It was caught. Yekaterina had more success with hers.
“We’ll swap before you freeze,” she whispered.
He wasn’t afraid of the cold. But what would happen if someone saw the jacket lying there? Yekaterina surveyed the area with the night vision goggles. Then she beckoned him.
The next obstacle was a fence. It was about two meters high. He’d manage that—if only it didn’t have signs on it bearing lightning symbols.
“Don’t worry,” whispered Yekaterina. “It’s dead.”
She gripped the wire with her bare hand. Sasha almost had a heart attack.
“Deterrent,” she whispered.
She took off her jacket again and placed it over the razor wire at the top of the fence. Sasha climbed over first.
The Death of the Universe: Rebirth: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 3) Page 6
