16: REENTRY

The retro-rocket burn was brief, a push in the back. But it was enough to knock them out of orbit.

So it was done, the decision made, and whatever remained of Kolya’s life—minutes or years—was irrevocably shaped as a consequence.

After launch, reentry was the most dangerous part of a space mission, for the great energies expended to inject them into orbit now had to be dissipated in friction against the air. The only in-flight casualties of Kolya’s country’s space program had occurred at reentry, and he remembered those poor cosmonauts in his heart now, as he remembered the crew of the lost space shuttle Columbia. But there was nothing to do but wait. The Soyuz was designed to bring itself home without support from the ground, or instructions from its crew. Kolya, who had been trained as a pilot, longed to be less a passenger, to be more in control of events—to have a joystick in front of him, to do something to bring the ship home.

He glanced out of his window. The tangled jungles of South America, laced by cloud, passed for the last time beneath the prow of the spaceship. He wondered if anybody would ever see such a sight again—and how soon it would be before even the existence of such a place as this remote continent was forgotten. But as the Soyuz passed over the Americas toward the Atlantic he saw a storm, a creamy-white spiral, that sat like an immense spider across the Gulf of Mexico. Minor storms spun off across the Caribbean islands, Florida, Texas and Mexico. These children of the monster in the Gulf were themselves devastatingly powerful, and had scratched deep gouges into the forest that covered central America. Worse, the central mother storm system was itself edging north, and surely little would be spared from Houston to New Orleans. This was the second superstorm system they had seen in the last few days—the remnants of the first were still coursing across the eastern United States and the western Atlantic. But there was nothing the cosmonauts could do for anybody on the ground, not even warn them.

Right on time there was a series of bangs from above and below. The craft shuddered, feeling subtly lighter. Explosive bolts had detonated, jettisoning the descent compartment from the other two sections of the Soyuz: the rocket engines and their garbage would now burn up like meteors, to baffle whoever was down there on the ground.

They endured the next few minutes in a silence broken only by the ticking of their instruments, the humming of the air supply. But the small noises of the various gadgets were almost cozy, like being in a home workshop, Kolya thought. He knew he was going to miss this environment.

As they fell across the sky, the resistance of the thickening air began to bite. Kolya watched the deceleration build up on the meter before him: 0.1 g, 0.2 g. Soon he began to feel it. Pushed back into his couch, his straps felt loose, and he tightened them. But the rise in pressure wasn’t steady; the upper atmosphere was lumpy, and the compartment shuddered as it fell, like an airliner passing through turbulence. Kolya was aware, as he had been during no previous descent, of the smallness and fragility of the capsule within which he was falling to the ground.

Through his window now he could see only the blackness of space. But a deep color seeped into that blackness: first brown, like old, dried blood, but quickly lighter, climbing the spectrum through red, orange, yellow. As the air thickened the deceleration became savage, rising rapidly through a single gravity and climbing to two, three, four g’s. The light outside, of atoms of air smashed to bits by their passage, climbed to white now, and a pearly glow shone through the windows, casting a pale, beautiful illumination over their suited laps. It was like being inside a fluorescent lightbulb, he thought. But the windows blackened as the outside of the capsule was scorched by the ionized air, and the angelic light was obscured.

And still the buffeting continued. The capsule shuddered, throwing them from side to side and against each other, despite the straps. It was a much more severe ride even than the launch had been, and after three months in space Kolya wasn’t well equipped to cope with it. He found it hard even to breathe, and he knew that he could not have lifted a finger, no matter how urgent the task.

At last the ride smoothed out. There was another sharp bang from outside the wall, startling him. A window shield had blown off, taking the soot with it, to reveal a slab of startlingly clear blue sky. Not the sky of Earth: the sky of a new world, the sky of Mir.

The first parachute deployed, a drogue that snatched at the air. The descent compartment swung violently, through two, three, four swings, and then the main chute yanked at the capsule, making it rock again. Kolya could just make out the wide orange canopy of the main chute above him. It was hard to believe it was only ten minutes or so since they had jettisoned the other parts of the Soyuz, perhaps five since first entering the atmosphere. He could feel gravity’s invisible fingers pulling at his internal organs: even his head was heavy, as if made of concrete, too heavy for his neck. But he felt only a huge relief; the most dangerous part of the descent was already over.

As touchdown approached compressed gas hissed. Kolya found his seat rising up as its base was pressurized to serve as a shock absorber, pushing him up against the instrument console and increasing his discomfort further.

“Christ,” Sable growled, similarly squashed up, “I will be so damn glad to get out of this tractor cabin.”

“It has served you well,” was Musa’s level reply. “Only a few minutes more.”

But Kolya relished those minutes, uncomfortable as he was: the last minutes in which the ship’s automated systems cushioned him, perhaps the last minutes of his old life.

“Proximity light,” called Musa.

Kolya braced. There was a brief roar as rockets fired, just a couple of meters from the ground. And then there was a slam as they hit the ground—and bounced up again. After a breathless second the cabin came down again, scraped loudly, and leapt into the air once more with a shudder. Kolya knew what that meant: the Soyuz was being dragged over the ground by its parachute.

“Shit!” Sable shouted. “There must be a wind—”

“If we tip over,” Musa said, his voice made uneven by the jarring, “we could have trouble extricating ourselves.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before!” Sable yelled.

Another slam, a scraping ride, a bounce. Though the padding of his suit protected his body, Kolya found his head rattling inside his helmet, his forehead slamming against the faceplate. There was nothing they could do but endure the ride, and pray that the capsule didn’t tip.

But then, with a final bounce and scrape, the capsule was still—and it was upright. They sat there, scarcely breathing. Musa quickly punched a button to release the parachute.

Kolya was unbearably hot; he could feel sweat puddled under his back inside the suit. He reached out—his arm felt enormously heavy—and searched for Musa’s gloved hand. For a moment they held each other, reassuring themselves of their continued existence.

“We are all right,” panted Musa. “We are down.”

“Yes,” said Sable, her voice a gasp. “But down where?”

Even now there was some routine, as they worked to close down the spacecraft’s remaining systems. Kolya turned off the ventilator, and took off his helmet and gloves. A valve to allow in air from outside had opened some minutes before the landing, and Kolya tasted air that was noticeably free of the dust that had plagued the Soyuz.

Musa grinned at him. “I can smell polin.”

“Yes.” It was a sweet, smoky aroma. Polin, a kind of wormwood, grew all over the steppe. The familiar scent seemed to invigorate Kolya. “Perhaps this Mir of yours won’t be so strange after all!”

Musa grunted. “There’s only one way to find out.” He punched another button. Latches clicked. The hatch above their heads sprung open, and Kolya saw a circle of cloud-choked gray sky. More fresh air pushed into the cabin.

Musa released his straps and pushed at his couch. “This is the part I have been dreading.” He had to be the first to move because of his central position. Slowly, moving like a very old man, he struggled to his feet. Normally a team of rescuers and medics would be on hand to help him out of the cabin, like lifting a china doll from its packaging; today there was nobody to help. Kolya and Sable both leaned over, pushing at his rump and legs, but Kolya felt weak as a kitten himself. Musa said, “This damn suit is so stiff, it fights against me.”

At last he was upright, and he pushed his head outside the capsule. Kolya saw him squint in the light, and his thick thatch of hair was blown by the wind. Then his eyes widened. He got his hands on the hull—it was still hot from the reentry, and he had to be cautious—then, with what seemed a superhuman effort to Kolya, he lifted himself up until he was sitting on the lip of the hatch.

“Me next,” Sable said. She was visibly weakened, but compared to Musa she seemed agile and eager. She swarmed up out of her couch, and allowed Musa to help pull her up until she was sitting beside him. “My, my,” she said.

Kolya, left alone in the capsule, could see nothing but their dangling legs. “What’s happening? What’s out there?”

Musa said to Sable, “Help me.” He lifted his legs out of the hatch, turned ponderously on his belly, and held up his hands to her. Then he slid down the curving side of the Soyuz and out of Kolya’s sight.

Sable peered down at Kolya, grinning. “Come see the show.”

When Kolya forced himself to his feet, he felt as if all the blood was draining from his brain. He stood still until the feeling of fainting had dissipated a little. Then he reached up to the hatch, and let Sable help him haul himself up until he was sitting at the top of the hull.

Kolya was maybe two meters up from the ground. The descent compartment was a dome of metal sitting on the grass. From this elevation he saw the eternal steppe, flat and semi-infinite, stretching away under a great lid of cloud. It had been marked by their landing: a series of crude gouges and craters led up to the final position of the craft, and further away the discarded main chute lay on the ground, billowing forlornly, a startling orange against the yellow-green ground.

Directly ahead of him there was a kind of village. It was just a huddle of grubby, dome-shaped tents. People stood, men, women and children, all bundled up in furs. They were staring at him, open-mouthed. Beyond, horses grazed, loosely tethered, unperturbed.

A man walked out of the tent village. He had a broad face, deep-set black eyes that seemed very close together, and he wore a heavy full-length coat and a conical cap, both made of fur. He was holding a heavy sword of beaten iron.

“A Mongol warrior,” Sable whispered.

Kolya glanced at her. “You expected this, didn’t you?”

“I thought there was a good chance, based on what we saw from orbit . . .”

The breeze shifted, and a stench of cooked meat, unwashed flesh, and horse sweat hit Kolya. It was as if a veil had been torn away from his face, and suddenly he was confronted with the reality: this really was the past, or a fragment of it, and he was stranded in it.

Musa was managing to stand, with one hand on the hull of the spacecraft for support. “We have fallen from space,” he said to the man, smiling. “Isn’t that a marvelous thing? Please . . .” He held out his empty hands. “Can you help us?”

The warrior reacted so quickly Kolya could barely follow the move. That sword flashed through the air, blurring like a helicopter blade. Musa’s head flipped into the air, cut off as easily as the head of a steppe daisy, and it rolled like a football in the dirt. Musa’s body still stood, the arms still outstretched. But blood gushed in a sudden fountain from the stump of his neck, running down the scuffed orange of his spacesuit. Then the body fell, rigid.

Kolya stared down at Musa’s severed head, scarcely able to believe what had happened.

The warrior raised his sword again. But with his free hand he beckoned the others to climb down to the ground.

“Welcome to Mir,” Sable muttered. Kolya, horrified, thought he heard a note of triumph in her voice.