Kosmograd swung out of Earth’s shadow into raw sunlight. The walls of Korolev’s Salyut popped and creaked like a nest of glass bottles. A Salyut’s view- ports, Korolev thought absently, fingering the broken veins at his temple, were always the first things to go. Young Grishkin seemed to have the same thought. He drew a tube of caulk from an ankle pocket and began to inspect the seal around the viewport. He was the Plumber’s assistant and closest friend. “We must now vote,” Korolev said wearily. Eleven of Kosmograd’s twenty-four civilian crew members had agreed to attend the meeting, twelve if he counted himself. That left thirteen who were either unwilling to risk involvement or else actively hostile to the idea of a strike. Yefremov and the six-man gun crew brought the total number of those not present to twenty. “We’ve discussed our demands. All those in favor of the list as it stands ” He raised his good hand. `three others raised theirs. Grishkin, busy at the viewport stuck out his foot. Korolev sighed. “There are few enough as it is. We’d best have unanimity. Let us hear your objec- tions.” “The term military custody,” said a biological technician named Korovkin, “might be construed as im- plying that the military, and not the criminal Yefremov, is responsible for the situation.” The man looked acutely uncomfortable. “We are in sympathy otherwise but will not sign. We are Party members.” He seemed about to add something but fell silent. “My mother,” his wife said quietly, “was Jewish.” Korolev nodded, but he said nothing. “This is all criminal foolishness,” said Glushko, the botanist. Neither he nor his wife had voted. “Madness. Kosmograd is finished, we all know it, and the sooner home the better. What has this place ever been but a prison?” Free fall disagreed with the man’s metabolism; in the absence of gravity, blood tended to congest in his face and neck, making him resemble one of his experimental pumpkins. “You are a botanist, Vasili,” his wife said stiffly, “while I, you will recall, am a Soyuz pilot. Your career is not at stake.” “I will not support this idiocy!” Glushko gave the bulkhead a savage kick that propelled him from the room. His wife followed, complaining bitterly in the grating undertone crew members learned to employ for private arguments. “Five are willing to sign,” Korolev said, “out of a civilian crew of twenty-four.” “Six,” said Tatiana, the other Soyuz pilot, her dark hair drawn back and held with a braided band of green nylon webbing. “You forget the Plumber.” “The sun balloons!” cried Grishkin, pointing toward the earth. “Look!” Kosmograd was above the coast of California now, clean shorelines, intensely green fields, vast decaying cities whose names rang with a strange magic. High above a fleece of stratocumulus floated five solar bal- loons, mirrored geodesic spheres tethered by power lines; they had been a cheaper substitute for a grandiose American plan to build solar-powered satellites. The things worked, Korolev supposed, because for the last decade he’d watched them multiply. “And they say that people live in those things?” Systems Officer Stoiko had joined Grishkin at the view- port. Korolev remembered the pathetic flurry of strange American energy schemes in the wake of the Treaty of Vienna. With the Soviet Union firmly in control of the world’s oil flow, the Americans had seemed willing to try anything. Then the Kansas meltdown had perman- ently soured them on reactors. For more than three decades they’d been gradually sliding into isolationism and industrial decline. Space, he thought ruefully, they should have gone into space. He’d never understood the strange paralysis of will that had seemed to grip their brilliant early efforts. Or perhaps it was simply a failure of imagination, of vision. You see, Americans, he said silently, you really should have tried to join us here in our glorious future, here in Kosmograd. “Who would want to live in something like that?” Stoiko asked, punching Grishkin’s shoulder and laugh- ing with the quiet energy of desperation.
“You’re joking,” said Yefremov. “Surely we’re all in enough trouble as it is.” “We’re not joking, Political Officer Yefremov, and these are our demands.” The five dissidents had crowded into the Salyut the man shared with Valentina, backing him against the aft screen. The screen was deco- rated with a meticulously airbrushed photograph of the premier, who was waving from the back of a tractor. Valentina, Korolev knew, would be in the museum now with Romanenko, making the straps. creak. The colonel wondered how Romanenko so regularly managed to avoid his duty shifts in the gun room. Yefremov shrugged. He glanced down the list of demands. “The Plumber must remain in custody. I have direct orders. As for the rest of this document ” `-`You are guilty of unauthorized use of psychiatric drugs!” Grishkin shouted. “That was entirely a private matter,” said Yefre- may calmly. “A criminal act,” said Tatiana. “Pilot Tatjana, we both know that Grishkin here is the station’s most active samisdata pirate! We are all criminals, don’t you see? That’s the beauty of our system, isn’t it?” His sudden, twisted smile was shock- ingly cynical. “Kosmograd is not the Potemkin, and you are not revolutionaries. And you demand to com- municate with Marshal Gubarev? He is in custody at Baikonur. And you demand to communicate with the minister of technology? The minister is leading the purge.” With a decisive gesture he ripped the printout to pieces, scraps of yellow flimsy scattering in free fall like slow-motion butterflies.