The “Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov” was not a thing of beauty; but few spacecraft ever were. One day, perhaps, the human race would develop a new aesthetic; generations of artists might arise whose ideals were not based upon the natural forms of Earth moulded by wind and water. Space itself was a realm of often overpowering beauty; unfortunately, Man’s hardware did not yet live up to it.
Apart from the four huge propellant tanks, which would be dropped off as soon as the transfer orbit was achieved, Leonov was surprisingly small. From heat shield to drive units was less than fifty metres; it was hard to believe that so modest a vehicle, smaller than many commercial aircraft, could carry ten men and women halfway across the Solar System.
But zero gravity, which made walls and roof and floor interchangeable, rewrote all the rules of living. There was plenty of room aboard Leonov even when everyone was awake at the same time, as was certainly the case at the moment. Indeed, her normal complement was at least doubled by assorted newsmen, engineers making final adjustments, and anxious officials.
As soon as the shuttle had docked, Floyd tried to find the cabin he would share – a year hence, when he awoke – with Curnow and Chandra. When he did locate it, he discovered that it was packed so tightly with neatly labelled boxes of equipment and provisions that entry was almost impossible. He was wondering glumly how to get a foot in the door when one of the crew, launching himself skilfully from handhold to handhold, noticed Floyd’s dilemma and braked to a halt.
‘Dr Floyd – welcome aboard. I’m Max Brailovsky – assistant engineer.’
The young Russian spoke the slow, careful English of a student who had had more lessons with an electronic tutor than a human teacher. As they shook hands, Floyd matched the face and name to the set of crew biographies he had already studied: Maxim Andreievitch Brailovsky, age thirty-one, born Leningrad, specializing in structure; hobbies: fencing, skycycling, chess.
‘Glad to meet you,’ said Floyd. ‘But how do I get inside?’
‘Not to worry,’ said Max cheerfully. ‘All that will be gone when you wake up. It’s – what do you say? – expendables. We’ll eat your room empty by the time you need it. I promise.’ He patted his stomach.
‘Fine – but meanwhile where do I put my things?’ Floyd pointed to the three small cases, total mass fifty kilograms, which contained – he hoped – everything he needed for the next couple of billion kilometres. It had been no easy task, shepherding their weightless, but not inertialess, bulk through the ship’s corridors with only a few collisions.
Max took two of the bags, glided gently through the triangle formed by three intersecting girders, and dived into a small hatchway, apparently defying Newton’s First Law in the process. Floyd acquired a few extra bruises while following him; after a considerable time – Leonov seemed much bigger inside than out-they arrived at a door labelled CAPTAIN, in both Cyrillic and Roman. Although he could read Russian much better than he could speak it, Floyd appreciated the gesture; he had already noticed that all ship’s notices were bilingual.
At Max’s knock, a green light flashed on, and Floyd drifted inside as gracefully as he could. Though he had spoken to Captain Orlova many times, they had never before met. So he had two surprises.
It was impossible to judge a person’s real size over the viewphone; the camera somehow converted everyone to the same scale. Captain Orlova, standing – as well as one could stand in zero gravity – barely reached to Floyd’s shoulders. The viewphone had also completely failed to convey the penetrating quality of those dazzling blue eyes, much the most striking feature of a face that, at the moment, could not be fairly judged for beauty.
‘Hello, Tanya,’ said Floyd. ‘How nice to meet at last. But what a pity about your hair.’
They grasped both hands, like old friends.
‘And nice to have you aboard, Heywood!’ answered the captain. Her English, unlike Brailovsky’s, was quite fluent, though heavily accented. ‘Yes, I was sorry to lose it – but hair’s a nuisance on long missions, and I like to keep the local barbers away as long as possible. And my apologies about your cabin; as Max will have explained, we suddenly found we needed another ten cubic metres of storage space. Vasili and I won’t be spending much time here for the next few hours – please feel free to use our quarters.’
‘Thank you. What about Curnow and Chandra?’
‘I’ve made similar arrangements with the crew. It may seem as if we’re treating you like cargo -‘
‘Not wanted on voyage.’
‘Pardon?’
‘That’s a label they used to put on the baggage, in the old days of ocean travel.’
Tanya smiled. ‘It does look rather that way. But you’ll be wanted all right, at the end of the trip. We’re already planning your revival party.’
‘That sounds too religious. Make it – no, resurrection would be even worse! – waking-up party. But I can see how busy you are – let me dump my things and continue my grand tour.’
‘Max will show you around – take Dr Floyd to Vasili, will you? He’s down in the drive unit.’
As they drifted out of the captain’s quarters, Floyd gave mental good marks to the crew-selection committee. Tanya Orlova was impressive enough on paper; in the flesh she was almost intimidating, despite her charm. I wonder what she’s like, Floyd asked himself, when she loses her temper. Would it be fire or ice? On the whole, I’d prefer not to find out.
Floyd was rapidly acquiring his space legs; by the time they reached Vasili Orlov, he was manoeuvring almost as confidently as his guide. The chief scientist greeted Floyd as warmly as his wife had.
‘Welcome aboard, Heywood. How do you feel?’
‘Fine, apart from slowly starving to death.’
For a moment Orlov looked puzzled; then his face split into a broad smile,
‘Oh, I’d forgotten. Well, it won’t be for long. In ten months’ time, you can eat as much as you like.’
Hibernators went on a low-residue diet a week in advance; for the last twenty-four hours, they took nothing but liquid. Floyd was beginning to wonder how much of his increasing light-headedness was due to starvation, how much to Curnow’s champagne, and how much to zero gravity.
To concentrate his mind, he scanned the multicoloured mass of plumbing that surrounded them.
‘So this is the famous Sakharov Drive. It’s the first time I’ve seen a full-scale unit.’
‘It’s only the fourth one ever built.’
‘I hope it works.’
‘It had better. Otherwise, the Gorky City Council will be renaming Sakharov Square again.’
It was a sign of the times that a Russian could joke, however wryly, about his country’s treatment of its greatest scientist. Floyd was again reminded of Sakharov’s eloquent speech to the Academy, when he was belatedly made Hero of the Soviet Union. Prison and banishment, he had told his listeners, were splendid aids to creativity; not a few masterpieces had been born within the walls of cells, beyond the reach of the world’s distractions. For that matter, the greatest single achievement of the human intellect, the Principia itself, was a product of Newton’s self-imposed exile from plague-ridden London.
The comparison was not immodest; from those years in Gorky had come not only new insights into the structure of matter and the origin of the Universe, but the plasma-controlling concepts that had led to practical thermonuclear power. The drive itself, though the best-known and most publicized outcome of that work, was merely one byproduct of that astonishing intellectual outburst. The tragedy was that such advances had been triggered by injustice; one day, perhaps, humanity would find more civilized ways of managing its affairs.
By the time they had left the chamber, Floyd had learned more about the Sakharov Drive than he really wished to know, or expected to remember. He was well acquainted with its basic principles – the use of a pulsed thermonuclear reaction to heat and expel virtually any propellant material. The best results were obtained with pure hydrogen as a working fluid, but that was excessively bulky and difficult to store over long periods of time. Methane and ammonia were acceptable alternatives; even water could be used, though with considerably poorer efficiency.
Leonov would compromise; the enormous liquid hydrogen tanks that provided the initial impetus would be discarded when the ship had attained the necessary speed to carry it to Jupiter. At the destination, ammonia would be used for the braking and rendezvous manoeuvres, and the eventual return to Earth.
That was the theory, checked and rechecked in endless tests and computer simulations. But as the ill-fated Discovery had shown so well, all human plans were subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.