Missile Gap

"Because it would weigh too much, Misha," the captain says right behind his left shoulder, causing him to jump and bang his head on the overhead locker.

When Misha stops swearing and Gagarin stops chuckling, the Party man carefully turns his stack of typescript face down on the desk then politely gestures the captain into his office. "What can I do for you, boss? And what do you mean, they're too heavy?"

Gagarin shrugs. "We looked into it. Sure, we could put a tape recorder and a transmitter into an ICBM and shoot it up to twenty thousand kilometers. Trouble is, it'd fall down again in an hour or so. The fastest we could squirt the message, it would cost about ten rubles a character — more to the point, even a lightweight rocket would weigh as much as our entire payload. Maybe in ten years." He sits down. "How are you doing with that report?"

Misha sighs. "How am I going to explain to Brezhnev that the Americans aren't the only mad bastards with hydrogen bombs out here? That we've found the new world and the new world is just like the old world, except it glows in the dark? And the only communists we've found so far are termites with guns?" For a moment he looks haggard. "It's been nice knowing you, Yuri."

"Come on! It can't be that bad—" Gagarin's normally sunny disposition is clouded.

"You try and figure out how to break the news to them." After identifying the first set of ruins, they'd sent one of their MiGs out, loaded with camera pods and fuel: a thousand kilometers inland it had seen the same ominous story of nuclear annihilation visited on an alien civilization: ruins of airports, railroads, cities, factories. A familiar topography in unfamiliar form.

This was New York — once, thousands of years before a giant stamped the bottom of Manhattan island into the sea bed — and that was once Washington DC. Sure there'd been extra skyscrapers, but they'd hardly needed the subsequent coastal cruise to be sure that what they were looking at was the same continent as the old capitalist enemy, thousands of years and millions of kilometers beyond a nuclear war. "We're running away like a dog that's seen the devil ride out, hoping that he doesn't see us and follow us home for a new winter hat."

Gagarin frowns. "Excuse me?" He points to the bottle of pear schnapps.

"You are my guest." Misha pours the First Cosmonaut a glass then tops up his own. "It opens certain ideological conflicts, Yuri. And nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news."

"Ideological — such as?"

"Ah." Misha takes a mouthful. "Well, we have so far avoided nuclear annihilation and invasion by the forces of reactionary terror during the Great Patriotic War, but only by the skin of our teeth. Now, doctrine has it that any alien species advanced enough to travel in space is almost certain to have discovered socialism, if not true communism, no? And that the enemies of socialism wish to destroy socialism, and take its resources for themselves. But what we've seen here is evidence of a different sort. This was America. It follows that somewhere nearby there is a continent that was home to another Soviet Union — two thousand years ago. But this America has been wiped out, and our elder Soviet brethren are not in evidence and they have not colonized this other-America — what can this mean?"

Gagarin's brow wrinkled. "They're dead too? I mean, that the alternate-Americans wiped them out in an act of colonialist imperialist aggression but did not survive their treachery," he adds hastily.

Misha's lips quirk in something approaching a grin: "Better work on getting your terminology right first time before you see Brezhnev, comrade," he says. "Yes, you are correct on the facts, but there are matters of interpretation to consider. No colonial exploitation has occurred. So either the perpetrators were also wiped out, or perhaps…well, it opens up several very dangerous avenues of thought. Because if New Soviet Man isn't home hereabouts, it implies that something happened to them, doesn't it? Where are all the true Communists? If it turns out that they ran into hostile aliens, then…well, theory says that aliens should be good brother socialists. Theory and ten rubles will buy you a bottle of vodka on this one. Something is badly wrong with our understanding of the direction of history."

"I suppose there's no question that there's something we don't know about," Gagarin adds in the ensuing silence, almost as an afterthought.

"Yes. And that's a fig-leaf of uncertainty we can hide behind, I hope." Misha puts his glass down and stretches his arms behind his head, fingers interlaced until his knuckles crackle. "Before we left, our agents reported signals picked up in America from — damn, I should not be telling you this without authorization. Pretend I said nothing." His frown returns.

"You sound as if you're having dismal thoughts," Gagarin prods.