Missile Gap

"Hot as hell. Humid, like this. Beautiful women but lots of dark-skinned comrades who didn't bathe often enough — all very jolly, but you couldn't help looking out to sea, over your shoulder. You know there was an American base there, even then? Guantanamo. They don't have the base now, but they've got all the rubble." For a moment Gagarin looks morose. "Bastards."

"The Americans."

"Yes. Shitting on a small defenseless island like that, just because they couldn't get to us any more. You remember when they had to hand out iodine tablets to all the kids? That wasn't Leningrad or Gorky, the fallout plume: it was Havana. I don't think they wanted to admit just how bad it was."

Misha sips his tea. "We had a lucky escape." Morale be damned, it's acceptable to admit at least that much in front of the CO, in private. Misha's seen some of the KGB reports on the US nuclear capabilities back then, and his blood runs cold; while Nikita had been wildly bluffing about the Rodina's nuclear defenses, the Americans had been hiding the true scale of their own arsenal. From themselves as much as the rest of the world.

"Yes. Things were going to the devil back then, no question: if we hadn't woken up over here, who knows what would have happened? They out-gunned us back then. I don't think they realized." Gagarin's dark expression lifts: he glances out of the open porthole — the only one in a private cabin that opens — and smiles. "This isn't Cuba, though." The headland rising above the bay tells him that much: no tropical island on earth supported such weird vegetation. Or such ruins.

"Indeed not. But, what about the ruins?" asks Misha, putting his tea glass down on the map table.

"Yes." Gagarin leans forward: "I was meaning to talk to you about that. Exploration is certainly in line with our orders, but we are a trifle short of trained archaeologists, aren't we? Let's see: we're four hundred and seventy thousand kilometers from home, six major climactic zones, five continents — it'll be a long time before we get any settlers out here, won't it?" He pauses delicately. "Even if the rumors about reform of the penal system are true."

"It is certainly a dilemma," Misha agrees amiably, deliberately ignoring the skipper's last comment. "But we can take some time over it. There's nobody out here, at least not within range of yesterday's reconnaissance flight. I'll vouch for Lieutenant Chekhov's soundness: he has a solid attitude, that one."

"I don't see how we can leave without examining the ruins, but we've got limited resources and in any case I don't want to do anything that might get the Academy to slap our wrists. No digging for treasure until the egg-heads get here." Gagarin hums tunelessly for a moment, then slaps his hand on his thigh: "I think we'll shoot some film for the comrade general secretary's birthday party. First we'll secure a perimeter around the beach, give those damned spetsnaz a chance to earn all the vodka they've been drinking. Then you and I, we can take Primary Science Party Two into the nearest ruins with lights and cameras. Make a visual record, leave the double-domes back in Moscow to figure out what we're looking at and whether it's worth coming back later with a bunch of archaeologists. What do you say, Misha?"

"I say that's entirely logical, comrade general," says the political officer, nodding to himself.

"That's so ordered, then. We'll play it safe, though. Just because we haven't seen any active settlement patterns, doesn't mean there're no aborigines lurking in the forest."

"Like that last bunch of lizards." Misha frowns. "Little purple bastards!"

"We'll make good communists out of them eventually," Yuri insists. "A toast! To making good communists out of little purple lizard-bastards with blowpipes who shoot political officers in the arse!"

Gagarin grins wickedly and Gorodin knows when he's being wound up on purpose and summons a twinkle to his eye as he raises his glass: "And to poisons that don't work on human beings."

Chapter Seven: Discography

Warning:

The following briefing film is classified COLLECTION RUBY. If you do not possess both COLLECTION and RUBY clearances, leave the auditorium and report to the screening security officer immediately. Disclosure to unauthorized personnel is a federal offense punishable by a fine of up to ten thousand dollars and/or imprisonment for up to twenty years. You have thirty seconds to clear the auditorium and report to the screening security officer.

Voice-over:

Ocean — the final frontier. For twelve years, since the momentous day when we discovered that we had been removed to this planar world, we have been confronted by the immensity of an ocean that goes on as far as we can see. Confronted also by the prospect of the spread of Communism to uncharted new continents, we have committed ourselves to a strategy of exploration and containment.

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