Red Moon by Michael Cassutt

Author:Michael Cassutt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2001-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

I don’t remember much about the preparations for the launch of the vehicles that would officially become Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 2. The weather turned bad after a week, bringing cold, almost wintry rain that doused the launch center, the town of Tyuratam, and everyone’s spirits. Defense Minister Ustinov flew in for the meeting of the State Commission, and threw everyone into a tizzy by questioning plans for the Soyuz docking. He thought the commander of the active craft—Komarov—should rely more on the automatic docking systems, which had never actually been tested in orbit.

It was impossible to change the procedures this late in the training, of course, but that didn’t stop Artemov and his deputies from putting Komarov and Gagarin through a series of pointless exercises.

On April 19, a group of Air Force generals flew into Tyuratam, among them my father. He left me a note at the desk telling me that he had arrived, that he would be with Marshal Rudenko and General Kamanin and the other chiefs, but he hoped we would see each other.

There was also a letter from Katya, mailed from Moscow. It was just a few lines, saying how much she had enjoyed spending time with me, and most importantly, giving me her address and phone number. That simple letter, following the revelation of Marina’s treachery, lifted my spirits so much that I looked forward to going back to Moscow, something which, for several days, seemed unappealing, now that I knew of the approaching Lev and Marina wedding, not to mention the birth of their child!

On the evening of the twenty-first, my father asked me to join him and the other generals at a dinner in old-town Tyuratam. “It’ll be a great opportunity for you,” he said when I balked. “Buy a few rounds and make sure you thank everyone, because these are the guys who signed your appointment to active duty.”

It was a horrible evening, since I knew no one but my father. Out of boredom—or was it despair over Marina?—I got drunker than I have in years.

What makes the evening stand out in memory was the sight, at two A.M., as we all staggered out of our cars back at the hotel, of cosmonauts Khrunov and Komarov playing tennis! (The eight cosmonauts, along with their trainers and General Kamanin, were staying at another—the only other—hotel near ours. There were too many of them to spend the night in Korolev’s old cottage out at the launch site.) “What the hell are these guys doing out at this hour?” some two-star general grumbled.

“They’re sleep-shifted, General. The launches will take place before dawn, which means they have to wake up around midnight. So they’ve been going to bed and waking up earlier and earlier each night, to change their internal clocks.” That, at least, is what I tried to say . . . God only knows what the general heard.

But he nodded in approval, and gave me a bear hug. “It’s good to have one of

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