Collected Short Stories by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-05-05T13:13:04+00:00

TheskyabovetheShelbournewasthecolourof

white streamers of surgical cotton. He was convinced that Yefremov would try to break the strike with beta-carboline aerosols. The cotton plugs were just one symptom of the general level of strain and paranoia. Before the evacuation order had come from Baikonur, one of the technicians had taken to playing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture at shattering volume for hours on end. And Glushko had chased his wife, naked, bruised, and screaming, up and down the length of Kosmograd. Stoiko had accessed the KGB man's files and Bychkov's psychiatric records; meters of yellow printout curled through the corridors in flabby spirals, rippling in the current from the ventilators.

"Think what their testimony will be doing to us groundside," muttered Grishkin. "We won't even get a trial. Straight to the psikuska." The sinister nickname for the political hospitals seemed to galvanize the boy with dread. Korolev picked apathetically at a viscous pudding of chlorella.

Stoiko snatched a drifting scroll of printout and read aloud. "Paranoia with a tendency to overesteem ideas!

Revisionist fantasies hostile to the social system!" He crumpled the paper. "If we could seize the communications module, we could tie into an American Comsat and dump the whole thing in their laps. Perhaps that would show Moscow something about our hostility!"

Korolev dug a stranded fruit fly from his algae pudding. Its two pairs of wings and bifurcated thorax were mute testimony to Kosmograd's high radiation levels. The insects had escaped from some forgotten experiment; generations of them had infested the station for decades. "The Americans have no interest in us," Korolev said. "Moscow can no longer be embarrassed by such revelations."

"Except when the grain shipments are due," Grishkin said.

"America needs to sell as badly as we need to buy." Korolev grimly spooned more chlorella into his mouth, chewed mechanically, and swallowed. "The Americans couldn't reach us even if they desired to. Canaveral is in ruins."

"We're low on fuel," Stoiko said.

"We can take it from the remaining landers," Korolev said.

"Then how in hell would we get back down?" Grishkin's fists trembled. "Even in Siberia, there are trees, trees, the sky! To hell with it! Let it fall to pieces! Let it fall and burn!"

Korolev's pudding spattered across the bulkhead.

"Oh, Christ," Grishkin said, "I'm sorry, Colonel. I know you can't go back."

When he entered the museum, he found Pilot Tatjana suspended before that hateful painting of the Mars landing, her cheeks slick with tears.

"Do you know, Colonel, they have a bust of you at Baikonur? In bronze. I used to pass it on my way to lectures." Her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness.

"There are always busts. Academies need them." He smiled and took her hand.

"What was it like that day?" She still stared at the painting.

"I hardly remember. I've seen the tapes so often, now I remember them instead. My memories of Mars are any schoolchild's." He smiled for her again. "But it was not like this bad painting. In spite of everything, I'm still certain of that."

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