Like You'd Understand, Anyway

“That's it, then,” Korolyov said. Solovyova climbed back onto the bus, and I stepped up into the gantry lift. I could see her staring through the passenger window in the other direction. Then the lift doors closed and up I went.

When they opened there was blinding sun and horizon all around me. The tiny circular hatch of the Vostok and two technicians broke up the view. I tottered forward. Several kilometers away in the bright sun, some blue spruces surrounded a small white crypt with a gold cupola.

The technicians waited patiently. When I was ready, they hefted my shoulders and I swung my legs over the rim of the hatch and squeezed into the ejection seat. Then they hauled at my straps and connected the life support systems.

I checked my suit pressure and communications line. Through the latter they were piping in American jazz. Above me I could hear the hatch being manhandled into position and the screw-down bolts secured. A palm-sized mirror sewn into the sleeve of my suit allowed me to check its progress. On my right was the radio set, telegraph key and attitude control; on my left, the retro sequence switch panel.

The music stopped, and Korolyov said in my earpiece, “Fifteen minutes.” I sealed my gloves and pulled down my visor. The music didn't resume.

I sat. My orbital plane would differ from Bykovsky's by 30 degrees, so we'd approach for only a few minutes twice during each orbit. But during our encounter on the opposite side of the world, we could talk, unmonitored. He'd been in space for forty-five hours. I tried to compose my first words to him but imagined instead Solovyova on her sad trip back to the observation bunker to strip off her suit.

Korolyov announced a delay. I leaned my head back inside my helmet. He said it had to do with a problem with the telemetry. He estimated it at forty minutes, and asked if I wanted the music again. I told him no. I removed my gloves and pulled my notepad from my toiletries box and recorded the above.

17 June 1963 Night

The pen, attached by twine, drifts away when I stop to think, only to be reeled back time after time.

I have now been in space thirty-three hours. Thirty-three hours ago, following the delay, Korolyov announced launch key to go position; air purging; idle run; ignition. There was the helicopter whine of the pumps injecting fuel into the combustion chambers and the engines firing up. The rocket shook and caterwauled as the mechanisms adjusted to their inconceivable stresses, and when the gantry's hold-down arms disconnected, I felt a jolt and heard Korolyov report on the ascent. “How are you?” he asked. “How are you?” I asked him back. I was squashed into my seat, shaking like someone on an apple cart, and found it difficult to talk. There was a sharp drop in the g-load as the booster shut down, shoving me forward against my straps, then a bump as it dropped away, the noise resuming with the g-load. When the third stage shut down and fell away, I felt the weightlessness as a buoyancy in my muscles, as if nothing took any effort at all.

The vibrations stopped. The capsule was a marketplace of fans and pumps. It was rotating gently, and through the porthole came a shock of indigo, replaced just as quickly with an ardent black. Tereshkova, I thought. You're in outer space.

I saw the sun. Clouds. Islands and a coastline. The light blue of the horizon was violet at the edge of its curve. Beyond that were stars. When the sun appeared again, the illumination was so intense I had to turn away.

“Hello, Seagull,” Bykovsky called. I leaned forward against my straps and looked out the porthole, as though he were waving.

“Hello, Hawk,” I answered. Stars wheeled across my line of vision.

“Did you ask something?” Korolyov wanted to know. He'd heard my weeping. “No,” I told him.

Kamanin announced to us both that our greetings were being broadcast around the world. Someone right now was running to my parents' farm to tell them that their little Valentina had just appeared on the television.

We exchanged pleasantries. We told everyone how we were doing. Within minutes we were transferred to Petropavlovsk on Siberia's coast, and then soon after that we swept out over the Pacific and into the vast shadow of the half of Earth that was asleep. Transmissions from below flickered and buzzed and went dead. The fans and pumps were still whirring all around me.

“I've unsnapped,” Bykovsky finally said. “Try it. It's wonderful.”

“I'm here,” I told him. My capsule rotated through two full revolutions. We had only seventeen minutes of privacy on this orbit. “I'm here,” I repeated. My earpiece hissed again for a count of fifteen.

“Hello,” he finally said, and even in that one word I could hear the forbearance.

What had I expected? I wasn't sure. I still wasn't sure. We hurtled through our planet's shadow. “This is Seagull,” I told him, more plaintively than I wished to.