Later the day of the launch, our whole team packed up and got back on the plane. But we did not return to Moscow. Our first stop was the Crimea, the city of Yevpatoriya, where the military had built a satellite tracking-and-control center that our bureau was beginning to use for manned flights. (A dozen kilometers away, there was a deep-space tracking site; we were forced to cluster them in the Crimea because it was one of the southernmost parts of Soviet territory.)

By the time we arrived, after dark, we knew that Cosmos 110 had been placed in its initial orbit and that the upper stage had fired again to raise that orbit’s high point to nine hundred kilometers. This would cause Breezy and Blackie to pass through the Van Allen radiation belts on each trip around the world, as part of another questionable scientific experiment. (Was it really a mystery, twenty years after Hiroshima, that radiation was likely to be harmful?)

The dogs were in a sleep period—induced by sedatives delivered to them by one of the many intravenous tubes I had helped install and test—timed to coincide with the eight hours out of every twenty-four in which we had no ability to track and control our manned spacecraft. In those days there were sixteen sites spread across the middle of the USSR, from Latvia in the west to Yelizovo on the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula. All of the stations were farther north than desired, but that could be said of Baikonur and the rest of the USSR. We also had a pair of specially designed tracking ships on station in the Atlantic Ocean. Even so, we could only communicate with our spacecraft two-thirds of each day.

Veterans of the trip from cosmodrome to tracking station had thought to buy food for themselves before leaving. As a first-timer, I was unaware of the total lack of facilities at Yevpatoriya, which was much smaller than Leninsk. We were to bunk in a military barracks near the airfield, and though I saw a couple of kiosks, they weren’t open. And while we had escaped the snows of Moscow and Baikonur, it was still cold and rainy, not a night to be out.

Fortunately, one of my colleagues saw my empty hands and took pity on me, offering me half a loaf of bread and a pickle.

It was still raining in the morning, and the Crimea, my former sunny homeland, looked pretty dismal in the gray, cold light. I was able to get a proper breakfast at the officers’ canteen next to the barracks, and went off to the tracking station on the bus.

The Yevpatoriya tracking site—Command and Control Center Number 16, according to the documents—was dominated by a huge dish, with another one being built right beside it. A long building about three stories tall held the primary control room, and it was here that I found myself stationed for an entire shift.

Along with a group of medical people, I was put in the last of four rows of tables. Many of the other tables had control panels on them; one or two even had television screens of some sort that displayed data from Cosmos 110. My “display” consisted of three thick notebooks. Presumably I was to leaf through them if so ordered.

Things were going well so far with Cosmos 110, at least as far as life-support systems went, so I had nothing to do but watch the various specialists, most of them military officers in their green uniforms, joking with each other and occasionally remarking on the progress of the spacecraft as its position was displayed on a giant display much like a movie screen. It was very crude. The big dog that represented Cosmos 110 moved jerkily as the human operator manually placed it, much as you moved slides on an overhead projector. The data, which had to be radioed from other tracking sites, was often minutes out of date. I remember thinking that it was a miracle we had been able to put an object on the surface of the Moon with this technology.

During a dead zone in the flight, I was excused to get a drink of water, and saw cosmonaut Saditsky, who greeted me like an old friend. He was not wearing his uniform, and, in fact, looked tan, as if he had spent a week on vacation, which turned out to be true, in a way. “They sent us here from Moscow last week,” he said, “and we had a few sunny days before the rain started.” Apparently a Voskhod simulator of sorts had been set up in one of the other rooms in the building to allow Saditsky and his copilot, Kostin, to rehearse their mission time lines. “You get some idea of just how alone you are up there when you do that.”

“So it’s been valuable.”

Now he shrugged. “Two days of it were valuable. They wanted to keep us here to do some work with the dogs. We have a hand controller that will allow us to turn their spacecraft up, down, and around.” I didn’t see a problem with that, so Saditsky slapped me on the back. “The damn high-rate antenna on the spacecraft didn’t deploy. We can get medical readings from the dogs and send commands to the ship, but only if they’re very basic, the equivalent of a few words.” Low-rate commands were transmitted like Morse code. These were insufficient for steering the vehicle.

“That’s too bad.”

“At least I got some sun,” he said, heading off.

“Good luck with the flight,” I called after him.

“Don’t hold your breath,” was all he said.

This was the second time I had heard Saditsky make a negative comment about Voskhod 3. I was still trying to figure out why—fear?—when I returned to the control room in time to take part in my first crisis.

When Cosmos 110 had come into radio contact again, the telemetry showed that the temperature inside the spacecraft was rising. It wasn’t dangerous yet, but it had crept up and up over the past hour.

I had been excused by Yastrebov, the bureau’s shift flight leader, but when I walked back in, you’d have thought I had allowed an assassin to take a shot at Brezhnev. “Have a nice walk?” Artemov snapped at me. He was surrounded by other bureau bigshots as well as a uniform or two. I could smell the liquor on his breath. “Why is the spacecraft overheating?”

“I don’t know,” I said, reaching for the documents on my desk.

I saw Yastrebov close his eyes, like a cow waiting for the butcher’s blow, as Artemov exploded. “Don’t know? Then what the fuck are you doing in my control room?”

My father had a temper and I had been on the receiving end of some tirades in my life, but nothing quite like this. My face burned with shame, but I kept calm. I think I sensed that the others were embarrassed—certainly Filin, who could be seen over Artemov’s shoulder, raised his eyes to heaven. “Maybe it’s a stuck thermostat,” I said.

“Maybe the dogs have built a campfire!”

I tried to keep calm, turning to Yastrebov. “No one has reported an anomaly in the life-support electrical system. . . .”

“Correct.” Had it been a thermostat, there would have been some sign that power wasn’t being used properly.

“Then it can’t be one of these systems.”

“You’re sure of that?” Artemov was rocking back and forth on his feet, as if girding himself to launch an assault on me.

Filin spoke up then. “There could a dozen reasons, Boris. The communications problem could be affecting thruster firings.”

As Artemov weighed this, one of the other officials tugged on his arm, leading him off. The mass of officials moved with those two, like a cellular organism searching for material to be absorbed.

I was shaking as I sat down. My heart was pounding so hard I could practically hear it as I continued looking through the documents.

Filin returned then, patting me on the shoulder. “He’s drunk,” he said quietly. “He saw you come in late, and went for you. It could have been anyone. God knows there are enough things going wrong.” All I could do was swallow. “Why don’t you take a couple of days off—go down to Simferopol,” he said, taking out a pad and a crayon. “I’ll write you a pass to the hotel there.”

A hotel in Simferopol sounded attractive. Then I remembered that my father was “recovering” just over the mountains.

“Thank you very much,” I said, “but could you write me a pass for Foros?”