This chapter gave me hell, because it has poetry in it. You don't sign up to translate a sci-fi novel expecting poetry. But that's why the Strugatskiy Brothers are miles ahead of pretty much all other Soviet sci-fi authors--I'm reading "Andromeda Nebula" by Ivan Yefremov right now, and it's good, but there's certainly no poetry. It's a little too much Soviet utopia, not enough interesting characters and intellectual challenge. Anyway, if you're still reading my translations, please enjoy this chapter!

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

5. TRIAL BY FIRE [AKA How much of this will be on the final?]

After seeing off Krayukhin and the geologists—they left in a car called for them from the settlement—Bykov scratched his head thoughtfully and went back to the garage. The “Kid” stood two steps from the gates. Streaks of rain glistened on its tapered sides.

“A test!” Bykov said out loud. “Well, fine. A test is a test.”

He took the crumpled, oil-spattered instruction manual out of his pocket, flipped through it, sighed and crawled through the hatch. Like anyone else, Alexei Petrovich Bykov wasn’t a fan of exams, whatever form they might take. It seemed very unfair to him when an insignificant detail, something entirely useless that you would never pay attention to due to its complete irrelevance in practical work, was stressed just as much as the most important, truly necessary information. When he himself was teaching, he adopted a completely different strategy. “No matter how sharp you think you are,” he would say, “You’ll never memorize everything in these piles of books and tables. Because they have the vital information, and the important information, and the minor stuff, as well as some things you just don’t need: things that managed to become obsolete just after being discovered, or have lost their meaning at the given time, or still have meaning, but not for you and me. And naturally, I’m not going to demand that you learn everything in these books and tables. But, comrades, if any of you ignore the most crucial points I present—well, just don’t blame me.”

Bykov’s authority as the leading specialist on transport mechanisms protected his system from the interference of even the most pedantic supervisors. But then, that was far away, in the Gobi; what was it like here? And in this case, it was Bykov who was going to be examined. Of course, Krayukhin didn’t give the impression of a dogmatic formalist, but who could say where his tiny eyes, hidden behind those huge dark glasses, were looking? So Bykov paged and paged through the worn-out manual, especially the part that discussed all manner of possible accidents and repair in field conditions. Then he took off his jacket, pulled on a jumpsuit and dug into the engine.

He returned to the hotel late, tired, but satisfied and almost relaxed. There was no one left in the cafeteria. After eating dinner (heartily, without unnecessary haste), Bykov set off to find Dauge. On the second floor, in the hall where all the interplanetors had their rooms, he paused. One of the doors was half-open, and through it he heard Yurkovskiy’s ringing voice reciting a poem by Bagritskiy:

. . . And how the wind cries,

How it whistles by,

How it whips the foam

‘Neath the resonant hull

Until the nails ring

Until the mast sings,

“A fair endeavor, a good endeavor!” . . .

Bykov glanced into the room. Yurkovskiy was reclining on the couch in pajamas and stylish slippers, arms folded behind his head, facing the window. Krutikov was hunched over nearby, sucking on a short, empty pipe. Bogdan was rocking in a chair beside the table, smiling at a secret thought known only to him. Neither Dauge, nor Krayukhin, nor Yermakov was in the room.

. . . So beat in my veins,

To the end of the line,

My vagabond youth,

O, fury of mine!

With the blood of mankind

To paint constellations,

To burst like a gunshot

And challenge the heavens . . .

It was a wonderful poem. What’s more, the jerk was reciting them surprisingly well. There was something anxious and provocative in his deep voice, full of restrained power and excitement, and Bykov thought unconsciously that this fearless beauty of a man must be very similar to the author of the poem he was reciting. He was just as restless and passionate, just as ready to give up his life for great and unusual purposes. Krutikov must have been thinking the same. He suddenly pulled the pipe from his mouth and looked attentively at Yurkovskiy, as though trying to make sure of something. Only Spitysn kept on rocking and smiling with half-closed eyes.

And to sing, out of breath

In the fearsome expanse,

“Ah, the Black Sea, the magnificent sea!”[1]

Yurkovskiy fell silent. Bykov stepped away from the door and went on. Dauge’s room turned out to be empty. On the bed lay a spacesuit—probably the one Dauge had chosen for his friend. The reddish glow of the evening sky reflected off the polished surface of the spherical helmet. Bykov was heading for the door to leave when a photograph on the table caught his attention. It was a familiar picture—a gorgeous woman with a sad expression, in a blue dress buttoned up to the neck.

Maria Yurkovskaya, Bykov recalled. He sighed.

The edge of a sheet of paper covered with writing peeked out from behind the photo; next to it lay an open, empty envelope. “ . . . explain myself once and for all. I’m sick of your—” Bykov blinked, startled, and hurried away from the table.

Poor Ioganich! So that’s what your love has come to . . . Even you, cheerful and kind, with a joke and a laugh in the most difficult moments . . . You can’t forget about her even now, just a few days before flying into the unknown.

“Right now—and that’s the most revolting part!” Yurkovskiy’s voice suddenly thundered from the next room. “Sending a letter like this now . . . and don’t you tell me to calm down, B-Brother of Mercy, ladybird! You know she’s trash!”

“Don’t you dare! (At first Bykov couldn’t tell whose shrill cry that was.) Don’t you dare talk about her that way! This is none of your business anyway!”

“Oh, but it is! And not because she’s my sister. This is everyone’s business—Krayukhin’s business, and every member of our crew’s, even your red-faced desert-dweller’s. Where we’re going, each of our lives will depend on all the others. We must be absolutely confident in each other. But now I’m starting to wonder: in this condition, do you have enough fortitude, enough will to live? Will you let us down, Grigoriy Dauge?”

“Easy, Vlad!”

“Easy won’t cut it . . . Have you really not figured her out, that charming sister of mine? She’s not even a human—she’s a doll! That’s right, a doll! Take away her pretty painted face and what will she have left?[2] Are there not enough other women? Faithful, loving, intelligent women . . . what are you chasing her for?”

Bykov tiptoed to his room and closed the door tightly. He doubted Dauge would want to work with the spacesuit today, and Bykov himself didn’t feel up for it either, honestly. He had a lot to think about. He undressed, lay down and closed his eyes. The best thing, probably, would be trying to sleep. He got up to lower the blinds, and at that instant Dauge came in. He looked just like he always did—a bit mussed, with his tie on crooked. Bykov sat down and stared at him.

“Going to bed already?” Dauge asked. “And the spacesuit? Why are you looking at me like that, Alexei? Something wrong?”

He raised his hand to his face, then looked down to check his shirt.

“No no, nothing like that . . . I’m just a little . . .,” Bykov forced out with difficulty. “I thought it was already too late . . .”

“It’s never too late. Get up and dressed. You’ll need to get accustomed to the spacesuit today. Otherwise, I’m afraid we won’t have time tomorrow. What took you so long anyway?”

“I was fiddling around with the ‘Kid’. I’m scared, Ioganich . . . scared I’ll fail this test.”

“What test?”

“What do you mean, what test? What Krayukhin was talking about today. Remember, when we were coming back from . . .”

“Oh, right! Well, I don’t think you’ll fail, Alexei. I know you’re a good driver.”

“A driver . . . but when they start giving me scenarios . . .”

Dauge looked at him in surprise:

“What scenarios? Alexei, even without scenarios you’ll sweat so much that we’ll have to wring you out afterwards.”

“Wait, what?”

“It’s actually not that complicated. It’ll be a test run. Tomorrow you’ll drive through an highly rugged territory, fortified with artificial obstacles, as athletes say.”

“Alone?”

“Someone will be with you, I don’t know who . . . are you ready? Let’s go.”

In Dauge’s room, Bykov noticed that neither the photograph, nor the letter was on the table anymore. Ioganich picked up the suit from the bed and laid it out on the floor.

“Sit down, Alexei, and listen. This old sack here is called a “KSS-6”, that is, Krayukhin-system suit, model six. It’s made of a very durable and flexible material with a long, complicated chemical formula. In any case, scientific vernacular calls it silicette. Basically, it’s a silico-organic polymer compound with fantastically long threadlike molecules. It’s incredibly tear-resistant. Besides that, it’s highly fire-resistant, as well as, naturally, gas- and water-proof.”

“Makes sense,” said Bykov. He was crouching down, crumpling and smoothing the stretchy sleeve of the suit in his hand.

“As you might expect, this suit is not sewn or even glued together. It’s molded in one go; just the way it is right now, with precast openings and pockets for instruments, provisions and so on. It’s made of a double layer of silicette, and what’s more, the orientation of the molecules of the first layer is perpendicular to the orientation of the second one’s molecules. Get it?”

“Got it. For greater durability and impenetrability.”

“Exactly. Now let’s move on to the helmet. As you can see, it’s attached to the collar, but it’s easy to fold back. Like this.”

Bykov looked inside the helmet. Just as he thought, the shining, almost mirrored sphere turned out to be entirely transparent if you looked at it from the inside.

“What the hell is this?”

“Spectrolite, a special type of plastic,” said Dauge. “Not a bad invention, right? It gives you a full radial field of vision.” He sat down next to Bykov on the floor and tapped the helmet with his finger. “Naturally, other transparent materials would also be suitable, but spectrolite has a few invaluable advantages. First, it polarizes light in a special way, which means that in darkness or twilight you can look through it at any strong light source and everything will be visible. The light won’t blind you either. Next, it only lets through rays of the visible spectrum. Ultraviolet and infrared rays are either absorbed or reflected entirely by the material. So are x-rays and gamma rays. Third . . . overall, this is a great achievement by Krayukhin.”

“And what’s this? Ah . . . a membrane . . .”

“That’s the headphone mount. It’s an extremely sensitive radio transmission membrane, mounted on an arch for stability . . . just in case you wind up upside-down somehow. The microphone, transmitter and semiconductor battery are in there too.”

“Got it.”

“The whole costume is soundproof. There’s a tool here to listen to sounds from the outside. You can regulate it to suit the thickness of the surrounding atmosphere. Right now it’s adjusted to our normal atmospheric pressure.”

“Got it.”

“Fantastic! The theoretical part of our lesson appears to be over. Now go ahead and put it on, Alexei . . . Hold on, not like that. Put your legs through the neck first. And now fasten the helmet.”

He forced Bykov to take the spacesuit off and put it on again, fasten and unfasten the helmet, and do all kinds of gymnastics in the suit. Finally, when Bykov was soaked with sweat and ready to use some very heartfelt language, Dauge took pity on him at last.

“Alright, that’s enough from you. Take it off. There’s one more thing to take note of, Alexei. Here, on the belt, are pockets for thermoses with hot chocolate, broth, and more refreshing drinks. There will be straws in them that reach all the way to the helmet. The oxygen supply and CO2 absorbers are fastened to the back. Here they are. Look at the thermo-regulator: if it gets cold, you can turn on the heating. You see this red button? The white button is the cooling system. Here’s the dosimeter. Yes, and also . . . the suit comes with one more brilliant device: an oxygen filter. If at least five percent of even the most poisonous atmosphere consists of oxygen, the filter will let that oxygen into the helmet. No other gases can get through the filter . . .”

Bykov crawled out of the costume and looked it over carefully once more.

“And radiation? Does it protect from radiation?”

“Of course. Nothing beats silicette at that.”

“Like the ‘ultimate reflector’ of the photon reactor?

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and sat down next to Dauge. Dauge said:

“The ‘ultimate reflector’ is hard and brittle. It would never work as material for a jumpsuit. Silicette is much more reliable. For example, this morning we—Krayukhin, Vlad and I—sat for a full hour in these suits in the ‘sarcophagus’.”[3]

“Are you serious?”

“I am. A temperature of about 200C, alpha particles, gamma rays and all that. And the material holds up brilliantly. It’s a bit warm, of course . . .”

Bykov slapped his knees in surprise. Then someone knocked at the door.

Krayukhin came in. Bykov offered him a chair.

“No, I’ll stand,” said Krayukhin. “It’s time for bed, so to speak. How are you doing with the spacesuit, comrade Bykov? Gotten used to it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He certainly has,” Dauge confirmed.

“He ought to train in it, of course, but there’s no time, no time at all . . .”

Krayukhin reached for the doorknob, but let it go again.

“I forgot the most important thing. Tomorrow, comrade Bykov, you will go to the garage in the morning and return here in the ‘Kid’.”

“Yes sir,” Bykov said hoarsely.

“We’ll go to the Polygon. And you’ll show me what that machine is capable of.”

“Yes sir.”

“’Night . . .”

Krayukhin left. Bykov sighed and started to follow him. At the door he took Ioganich’s hand and said quietly:

“I . . . so . . . I heard that you got a letter. Not a nice letter.”

Dauge didn’t respond.

“What I mean is . . . basically, if you need me . . .”

“Alright . . .” Ioganich grimaced and pushed Alexei Petrovich toward the exit. “Coming from all sides . . . comforters, damn you all!”

“Just don’t be mad . . .”

“Of course not, it’s fine. Go on.”

“Goodnight.”

*

“You’re still a-dreaming, friend my dearest?” Dauge crooned the next morning, pulling the blanket off of Bykov. “It’s time, my beauty, so arise!”

“Stop it!” Bykov grumbled and rolled over toward the wall, smacking his lips sleepily and curling his knees up to his chin.

“Last night, remember, winds were wailing . . . and now it’s seven in the morning and there’s a car waiting for you.”[4]

“N—what? Aw, shit!”

Dauge barely jumped back in time. Bykov leapt toward the chair where his clothes were laid out.

“Hold on, Alexei, what about your exercises?”

“They can wait! How’s the weather?”

Dauge lifted the blinds.

“Stupendous! Not a cloud in sight. You’re a lucky guy, Alexei. But you’ll get it from Yermakov!”

“For what?” asked Bykov, pulling on his shirt.

“Because you’re leaving without doing your exercises.”

“Well, I’ll take it then. Anyway, I’m off.”

“Breakfast?”

“Later, later . . .”

“At least have some bread and milk, you madman! Yermakov will cancel your test.”

“Oh, damn . . .”

In the cafeteria, Bykov quickly gulped down a glass of milk, shoved some crackers[5] into his pockets and ran for the exit.

“Have a good trip!” Dauge, hands in pockets, watched the car driving away from the deck, yawned, and went back inside.

To Bykov’s surprise, the appearance of the huge “Kid” on the streets of the settlement didn’t seem to interest its denizens very much. Passers-by looked the transporter over fairly indifferently, at most stopping occasionally to get a better look at it. Clearly enough, new inventions weren’t a rarity here. Bykov parked the “Kid” in front of the hotel and went to report to Krayukhin. In the hall he ran into Yermakov.

“You’ve arrived? Very good . . .” The commander’s intent gray eyes carefully examined the engineer from head to foot. “What isn’t good is that you violated your regimen.”

“I . . .”

“With the best of intentions, I understand. But in an hour or two you will have to undergo very intense pressure, and today’s violation could cost you dearly. And not only you.”

He paused, then added:

“If it weren’t for your remarkably good health, I would insist on delaying the test run.”

“It won’t happen again,” Bykov muttered.

“I hope so. Each interplanetor’s personal regimen is calculated by the best doctors in the country, and anyone with relevant experience can offer dozens of examples of the unfortunate consequences that can sometimes result from even the smallest violation of one’s regimen. If you were a pilot, this would be the last day of your participation in the expedition. But luckily, you aren’t a pilot. Take ten tonin pills. And come with me, they’re waiting for us.”

The whole crew of the “Hius” had gathered on the top floor, in Krayukhin’s office. Two people Bykov didn’t know were present as well—the chairman of the Municipal Executive Council and the secretary of the Municipal Party Committee. It was clear from the deference they showed to Krayukhin that the authority of the SIPRC assistant chairman in this town was great indeed.

“We have no time to lose, comrades,” Krayukhin began the instant Bykov finished greeting everyone and sat down in the corner. “Alexei Petrovich, today you are playing the leading role. Allow me to, so to speak, hit the lights. Go on . . .”

Bykov approached the desk and stood next to Krayukhin. The secretary and chairman smiled at him amicably, and Dauge winked. A large-scale map lay on the desk.

“We will carry out our test run in this quadrant . . .” Krayukhin’s finger drew a circle on the northeast corner of the map. “How far from here is that location?”

Bykov bent over:

“About five-hundred kilometers.”

“Correct. And how long will the ‘Kid’ . . .”

“Thirty or forty minutes . . .”

“Excellent. At the moment, the chosen territory contains a multitude of diverse artificial structures, which are . . . hm . . . not marked on the map. Your task is to deliver all of us to this hill, from which we will observe the run, then cross this territory precisely from south to north and return to the hill once more along this stream. Is the task clear?”

“Very clear.”

“One warning: you may encounter all kinds of surprises on your way. I’m personally responsible for one of them . . . have our people arrived there yet?” He turned to the chairman of the Municipal Executive Council.

The chairman nodded.

“Overall, this is a serious test. Comrade Yermakov will be accompanying you. Be cautious. Brave and cautious! Without unnecessary recklessness, so to speak.”

“Yes sir.”

“That’s all from me. Any questions?”

“None at all.”

“And where is your spacesuit?”

“I’ll get it now, Nikolai Zakharovich.”

“Get it as fast as you can and go outside. In the meantime, we’ll get seated.”

In a quarter of an hour, the “Kid” clambered over the ridge of the northern hills, and Bykov saw the spaceship launch site for the first time. It was mostly the same uniform tundra, flat as a tabletop, with occasional brushy hills. But here reddish, round and star-shaped bald spots, where not a blade of grass grew, gaped here and there on the flat plain. Bykov aimed the “Kid” at one of these spots. For a few seconds, the soft clomping beneath the caterpillars gave way to a hollow, clattering roar, like a steel barrel rolling along a cobblestone road.

“A spaceship landed here,” Dauge explained from the seat behind Alexei’s back.

“And what’s this?”

A set of rusty tracks stretched out to the left, next to the gleaming remains of some barbed wire and a rickety pillar bearing a triangular, white metal sign with neat symbols: “1 R”. Beyond the barbed wire, Bykov caught a glimpse of something like a vast pit full of brownish, lumpy material.

“This is where they launched the ‘Hydra’ five years ago,” Dauge said. “See, the launch site has been surrounded by fencing, because the soil there was baked into radioactive slag. ‘1 R’ means ‘one roentgen.’”

“Now that I know,” Bykov muttered.

The “Kid” sprinted across the tundra, winding around glacial erratics and rushing headlong through shallow, swampy lakes. When the odometer showed thirty kilometers, Yermakov asked the driver to switch places with him. Bykov went to the cabin. All the hatches were open wide. The chairman of the Municipal Executive Council was debating something with Krutikov; the Municipal Party Secretary was listening to their argument without visible interest. Krayukhin was dozing, pressed against the soft, spongy upholstery. Yurkovskiy and Spitsyn were sitting on the outside, legs hanging through open hatches. Bykov glanced into the engine room, listened to it, looked it over, then sat back down next to Yermakov.

The roar of the engine strengthened suddenly. The “Kid”, at slightly reduced speed, was climbing a steep slope.

“Here we are,” said Krayukhin.

The machine roared one more time, turned sharply and stopped. Everyone got out. Bykov was last. They were standing on top of a high mound overgrown with prickly grey grass. When he looked down, Alexei was greeted by a strange sight. The plains ended here. Further to the north, all the way to the horizon, lay a wild conglomeration of rocky boulders and massive layers of earth turned on end. Broad craters surrounded by fractured ridges, a serrated, almost vertical reddish wall running perpendicular to all the chaos, uneven piles of granite fragments, and then more craters, walls, rockslides . . .

“Well then,” Krayukhin’s voice sounded behind him, “I believe this area will be, so to speak, worthy of your art, Alexei Petrovich, and the inimitable qualities of our ‘Kid’. How do you find it?”

“Excellent!” Bykov stared straight into the black glass covering Krayukhin’s eyes. “Suits me. Permission to start?”

“Yermakov is the commander here. Please answer to him.”

You won’t scare me with that, thought Bykov, and turned to Yermakov, who was standing on the caterpillar of the “Kid”, holding a pair of binoculars.

“Permission to start, Anatoliy Borisovich?”

Yermakov nodded and leapt nimbly to the ground.

“Put on your suit,” he said, and, lowering his voice, added: “but don’t worry, no rush . . .”

Bykov shrugged his shoulders and clambered into the vehicle. Dauge was about to follow him, but stopped and backed off slowly. Yurkovskiy stood off to the side, whistling as he looked back and forth between the course and the transporter. Krayukhin crouched over his map, now laid out on the ground, with the “fathers of the city”. Mikhail Antonovich and Spitsyn were messing with a small radio transmitter.

“Turn on your microphone and lower your helmet,” said Yermakov, sitting down next to Bykov.

They helped strap each other to the seats with wide safety belts, and Bykov looked questioningly at the commander’s silvery helmet, bent over the instruments.

“Let’s go,” quietly sounded over his radio.

Alexei placed his hands on the controls, and the “Kid” rolled down the hill, first slowly, then faster and faster. At the bottom it reared back, flopped over the first ridge and dove into a crater. The test had begun.

Bykov had no time to make comparisons, but the phrase “like a frog in a soccer ball” popped up in the back of his head, and he unconsciously repeated it under his breath. Glimpses of the blue sky, char-black earth, and mossy tops of granite boulders flashed through the square opening of the hatch. The “Kid” was thrown from side to side and the caterpillars groaned, slipping on the rocks, but the motor hummed cheerily and evenly, without a break. You won’t scare me with this, Bykov thought stubbornly. The transporter broke into a deep ditch with a roar. For a moment something brown motionlessly covered the open hatch, glistening dimly, and then a waterfall gushed into their laps.

“Onward!” Bykov cried joyously.

At the other end of the ditch, the “Kid” stopped. A few meters ahead stood the near-vertical wall of reddish clay. Fifteen or twenty meters tall, Bykov thought. Let’s give it a try. With the corner of his eye he saw that Yermakov was holding on to his seat. Like a frog in a soccer ball . . .

*

From the top of the hill, the transporter looked like a little grey beetle crawling across a plowed field. Now the little grey beetle climbed onto the wall. Somehow it managed to crawl a few meters. Then it shuddered, fell off, and flipped onto its back in clouds of red dust.

“Oh jeez,” the Municipal Party Secretary murmured. “Why not go around?”

Dauge spat nervously.

“He can’t go around,” said Krayukhin calmly. “It’s against the rules. Attention!”

Something was going on down there, beneath the red wall. The beetle was twitching. Shining jointed legs burst from its body, bent slowly, and turned it right-side up again. One second, another . . . now, balancing on three steel rods at the foot of the cliff and carefully feeling for a foothold with the fourth, the “Kid” made its way to the top of the wall, dug in with its caterpillar tracks, and moved on, retracting its supporting levers along the way.

“Amazing! Incredible work!” Yurkovskiy breathed excitedly. “A real master!”

“But maybe we should bring another pilot along instead?” remarked Krayukhin, raising his binoculars.

*

Bykov was overjoyed. Everything was going as well as possible. The “Kid” cleared obstacle after obstacle. Stones shattered beneath the caterpillars, wet muck splashed up from deep, round pits, and overturned boulders fell with cannonlike booms. A few times, Yermakov, who was keeping track of their route with a map and compass, gave directions; without him Bykov would certainly have gone off-course, although he did his best to steer the vehicle along a perfectly straight line.

“How far have we gone, Anatoliy Borisovich?”

“We have about one-and-a-half kilometers left . . .”

At that moment, silently and completely without warning, pillars of bright red fire reared up ahead of them. Bykov jolted back and stopped the vehicle.

“This is it, Krayukhin’s surprise,” he muttered.

The flame spread quickly. It seemed like the rocks themselves were burning. Black streams of smoke, mixed with tongues of fire, lapped along the ground, then blazed high into the sky. The hot, dry wind raised clouds of dust.

“Concentrated gasoline!” said Bykov in alarm. “Napalm![6] Well-planned . . .”

Yermakov was quiet. Bykov smirked, lowered the spectrolite shields over the windows, and touched the keys. The “Kid” dove into the firestorm at full speed.

*

When the murky scarlet veil washed over the horizon, the Municipal Party Secretary cleared his throat and the chairman of the Municipal Executive Council stepped closer to the radio transmitter, but Krayukhin said imperturbably:

“I ordered them to light a few dozen barrels of gasoline down there. Some seven-hundred or nine-hundred degrees over a few minutes. It’s nothing. The “Kid” should withstand it without issue. But will his nerves . . .”

The “Kid” withstood it, and so did Bykov’s nerves. In a cloud of greasy soot, the transporter slid into the stream that marked the end of the route and stopped. Waves hurriedly lapped against the blackened sides of the machine, letting off a purple aura of steam. A faint hiss could be heard. The carpace was slowly cooling down. Yermakov was hanging helplessly in his safety belts; Bykov shook his shoulder, but he was already conscious.

“You passed . . .” Yermakov murmured weakly. “You passed wonderfully,” he repeated. “I’m happy for you . . . and myself.”

Bykov grunted sheepishly.

They were quiet for the whole route back along the stream. It was only when they turned onto the hill, on top of which several figures were waving their hands in greeting, that the engineer said:

“There’s one thing I don’t get, Anatoliy Borisovich. What are these ruins doing out here in the tundra?”

For a while, Yermakov didn’t answer, undoing his safety belts. Then he murmured hesitantly:

“A rocket exploded over this territory . . . a photon rocket. That’s all.”

“I thought there must have been an explosion here . . .”

That was all that Bykov, still dazed and shaken, could say.

After a late lunch (with a glass of cognac to celebrate the successful completion of the test run),[7] Krayukhin got everyone’s attention and announced:

“Yermakov and Bykov will be transferred to a rest regimen for a week. No work at all. Adventure novels, walking, and sleep. The rest of you should prepare to meet the ‘Hius’. We’ve received word that the ship has taken off from the ‘Tsiolkovskiy’[8] and will arrive here in five or six days.”

[1] Poem by Eduard Bagritsky, written in 1927. It is a long piece in verse, called “Contrabandists”, about thieves shipping contraband products on the Black Sea. The author expresses his desire to join these contrabandists, or perhaps to join the policemen pursuing them. It actually is a really fun poem, but I haven’t found a full translation of it. The original Russian can be read here: https://rupoem.ru/bagrickij/po-rybam-po.aspx





[2] Originally he called her a cuckoo bird, but I’m not even sure what that means, so I took the path of least resistance. This guy really hates his sister. That’s the point.





[3] Where spent nuclear fuel is kept. That building Bykov almost walked into like an idiot.





[4] This is from Pushkin—a poem called “Winter Morning.” I kind of tried to translate it myself, with help from this translation, which is good except for when it says “broaden your eyes”, as though the word “open”, which is literally in the original, is just not good enough or something. https://russianlegacy.com/russian_culture/poetry/pushkin/winter_morning.htm





[5] Fun with localization: in the US we don’t roast little bits of bread until they get hard, dust them with various flavors and eat them as snacks, which is a shame. What Bykov actually shoves into his pockets is some of those delicious little bread bits. But I made them crackers, because there wasn’t really a suitable translation. It’s not the same thing as toast, unless you cook your toast slowly for hours, for some reason.





[6] That’s what it says, Napalm. You know, the Soviets did a lot of things, but one thing they definitely didn’t do was give a single, solitary fuck about the environment. Not here, and not in real life.





[7] What happened to interplanetors not drinking? This keeps happening for all three books in this trilogy: they’re like, “nooo, we don’t drink” and in the next scene they’re like, “NOW LET’S DRINK.” Y’all’s morals are as stable as an American politician’s.





[8] The name of Russia’s famous self-taught inventor and father of rocketry, Constantine Tsiolkovskiy. Here, the name has been given to a space-base of sorts.

