Андрей Меньшутин - Последние тайны СССР – Проект Марс 88

Andrey seemed to have fully admired what he wanted and appeared from under the table, but it was not a pen or a ruler he had in his hand. Smiling, he put a small mobile hydroponic container on the table with a small bush of bright red roses! This is for you, lady, – said Andrey and moved the container closer to the dumbfounded Svetlana…

She carefully leaned over her favorite flowers and breathed in the long-forgotten scent… Thank you, Andryushka! But where did you get them, I mean the bulbs?

In the same place where I got the rest – on the launch site, said Andrey laughing.

Such roses don’t grow on “Angar”, it is difficult to find them even in Moscow!

It’s a matter of paperwork. I asked the pilots from the first squadron. Once their plane flew to Moldavia on a business trip, and they brought me these, – said Andrey, looking at the dumbfounded Sveta.

She looked at Andrey knavishly: only candles and wine were missing, otherwise it would make quite a romantic dinner!

I hid the wine so far that I still can’t find it, but I can offer you some vodka or brandy.

And you have these, too?! At my choice?! How did you manage to get the whole bar past the control men?

Everything is simple, said Andrey. – I used my position for personal and far-reaching purposes!

Your aims are written all over your forehead, gentleman, said Sveta, smiling and pursing her lips a little. And continued invitingly: so what are you going to do next, Mr. Smuggler?

Andrey replied, undressing Sveta with his eyes: it depends on how much you will drink, my dear lady…

And I won’t drink at all! – laughed Sveta. – Booya?

No, said Andrey and unzipped Sveta’s “space” T-shirt. While Sveta was taking off her light shorts, Andrey switched off the almost earthly gravity, and the beautiful naked woman’s body started to soar in the zero-gravity – just as beautiful and immense as the whole Universe around them.

So, dear people of Earth, if you did not love in space, you probably did not love at all…

-9-

It did not seem a holiday at all: on the contrary, it was a simple and ordinary thing, even a little unnoticed one, when they reached the orbit of Mars. MS 88 made a loop after a loop over the planet that attracted many people who looked at it through those primitive telescopes. They surely strove to set their eyes on it, someone visited it in his thoughts…

Alexey Tolstoy in “Aelita” helped the Martians to make a revolution…

Looking at the surface of the planet flying past below, one could not help looking for the characteristics of their native Earth, but there was nothing similar except for polar ice caps. The planet was dark red and black, silence which did not seem alive seemed to reign there. A great number of big and small craters gave involuntary associations with the Moon, with the only difference in color. Probably all the planets that have no atmosphere look so lifeless and oppressing…

They started to prepare for arrival a month ago, without any hurry. All the equipment was long ready for landing and placement on the surface of the planet. It was necessary to stay in orbit for a week to adapt the body to the gravity of the Red Planet.

Also, Marina had to prepare her chemical set to carry out primary express tests to analyze the composition of Mars atmosphere and soil. It was here in orbit that Marina got a stronger impression that someone absolutely strange and totally unknown looked at her from the side.

Once she shared her feelings with Sveta. The latter frowned a little and said: you know, I feel something similar. Sometimes it seems to me that we are being observed by the whole space around us, something huge, the Space as a whole… At a first glance, there is nothing strange about it: if you remember, the guys who were here before said something of this kind, and psychologists warned about it, Sveta recollected thoughtfully. And let’s say, for example, you are alone in a dark room and you turn off the lights. Someone immediately feels fear, and many have a feeling that there is somebody else in the room. Even though you know you have just been alone in it. It is light here, but the feeling is similar, but it’s much stronger, finished Sveta.

Let’s talk to the boys as they must have the same thoughts, said Marina.

Andrey appeared.

– Hello, beauties, why are you looking so mysterious?

– Hello, rowdy, said the girls in a choir, having unbent brow a little, looked at each other and burst out laughing. After the last Andrey’s ideas they said the same greeting involuntarily. They shared with him what they had been talking about before he came in.

Smiling, Andrey passed his eyes from Sveta’s light blue eyes to Marina’s brown eyes. Calm down, girls, I also have this big feeling, and sometimes it even appears as a voice in my head and tries to ask questions, something like – How are you?

And what about you? – asked Marina.

Once I asked: Will you have some vodka? – And he replied somewhat sadly: I’d like to drink a bit, but to my regret I can’t! And after this suggestion of mine he never appeared again! Finished Andrey, laughing.

Right, dear, you are your usual self, – Sveta put in, laughing as well.

Thank you, guys, now it feels better, we can calmly land, – said Marina laughing.

And what’s so hard about landing?! Zap and it’s done, it’s not the same as flying here for six months, – Andrey summarized.

-10-

The first step on Mars… you step and go… They also walked every day in the spaceship using magnetic paths. They are different there, and they are different here, but anyway – these are steps.

The planet, whose surface could be finally observed, looked dismal and sullen. The ground was strewn with millions of stones of different sizes and shapes, sunk in maroon dust which looked more like rust…

Somewhere one could see separate mountains that looked like ruins of pyramids or mounds, and on the other side they formed almost a single chain – a high plateau. Suddenly they got a feeling that they were absolutely lonely here, accompanied by overwhelming dreary desperation that seemed to have been there for millions of years.

This sad picture reminded of a planetary cemetery, where the graves disappeared a long time ago: emptiness, silence, dust, stones and nothing else…

There was also a feeling that a huge fire destroyed everything here, only something that could not burn was left.

They desperately felt like flying away from here at once. They were strange or odd here, nobody had been waiting for them there for a long time, or maybe somebody waited, but they could not fly then because they themselves were not on Earth at that time.

The base was built several kilometers from the place of landing, on the huge valley of Marinera, almost five thousand kilometers long. Though the mobile living module created something like the magnetic field of the Earth, a cave or a lava tunnel had to be found to protect the base from space radiation, solar wind and long and heavy dust storms.

Having spent almost a week on traveling along big and small canyons, Sergey found an ideal smooth and spacious cave in the winding lava tunnel which began in some unknown place.

It took ten runs and a column of two mars rovers with trailers to transport all the modules and equipment for the future Martian base. Mars rovers moved easily, leaving a veil of nasty dust after them. The dust was much finer than on Earth and reminded of reddish-grey flour of oriental spices, and it was nasty because of its size: it was found even in the places where it should not have been…

Force of gravity… well, this could hardly be called a force as it was three times less powerful than on Earth. But for this reason heavy containers with equipment and outfit were pulled into the cave with unusual easiness.

Heavy protective spacesuits became almost weightless, without them one could probably fly over Mars like birds above the Earth, if it weren’t for the rest of local “delights” which were deathful for humans.

Even though it was easier to work, they got much more tired than on Earth or on board the spaceship. Having returned from the last run from the base to MS 88, having been cleaned from dust as thoroughly as possible in the pre-airlock chamber, and finally having got rid of the spacesuit which tired one out during the day and breathed the almost real air, Andrey and Sergey used their last efforts to take a shower of damp reusable napkins, had a quick meal and went to bed.

Having dumped half of the cave with modules and containers, they started to work by turns. The technology of assembling was worked out back on Earth: the construction reminded of several huge tourist tents with a complicated frame, connected with small lock tunnels between themselves.

The material consisted of many layers with cellular structure and somehow reminded of light and flexible armor…

The MS-88 spaceship itself stood not far from the edge of the canyon, the magnetic field, combined with numerous technologies of Russian military rockets, made it practically invisible both from the Earth and from most orbital and space telescopes.

They could see their rocket through a unique color filter integrated into the helmet in the suit of each person – each “Martian”, but not farther than a couple of kilometers from it.

Among the dead and oppressive silence of the Red Planet, the spaceship on its surface sometimes seemed a sort of a monument.

When Andrey looked at it, he suddenly remembered the other monuments on the launch site:

Back on Earth, he often went to the object “Pero” (“Feather”) to accept elements of the outfit for MS-88. In those times, the roads in that part of the launch site were even better than in Moscow.

The object itself was quite an ordinary military airfield. Why was it called in such an interesting way? Because it could not accept all kinds of planes, especially heavy ones, so it was light like a feather, hence the name. It had just one runway… Why should it have two or more, like large civil ones?

On the whole, servicemen liked to give beautiful, sometimes mysterious names to different objects, weapons, separate blocks and devices.

One of the radars was called “Storm”, different types of radio stations were called after flowers or plants: “Acacia” or “Birch”, and there were hundreds or even thousands of these beautiful names…

The road was stretching along the same huge Archangelsk taiga. Near a small fork it went to the right, and then it was ideally straight right to the airfield.

Sometimes, in the green triangle between the roads with no asphalt on it, Andrey noticed soldiers digging something.

There was a lot of work, and a great deal of constructing or digging was done on the launch site itself.

Once he was overcome by curiosity and stopped. About 5 soldiers were digging in quite a deep square trench, several soldiers stood on the surface smoking. Everybody had blue shoulder straps and blue tabs with stylized propellers on them.

Andrey came out and greeted them not exactly according to the regulations: Hello, military men! Hey, pilots, and why are you digging when there is a large construction battalion? The pilots with spades tried to salute, but Andrey waved his hand, as if saying: we are not on the drill field…The sergeant without a spade– the diggers’ commander – said: Well, Major, there will be a monument here.

Andrey frowned: there were several monuments on the launch site, and the saddest one was erected to 48 soldiers and officers from the launch crew of a regular “Vostok-2M” who were burned alive or later died of burns. The rocket was one of the most reliable ones, but during preparation for launch there was an explosion and fire burst out: about 200 tons of rocket fuel components were burning; it was a real Hell on Earth. The launch crew was surely much larger than 48 persons. The people burning alive, asphyxiating from deadly vapors, oxygen, kerosene and other chemicals, helped each other; officers, sergeants and soldiers, standing in the safe distance, rushed to help their dying comrades, and somebody died while helping…

The rocket engineers performed their military duties, and not only them, until the end, at the cost of their lives. The monument to those perished was erected near the launch pad where it all happened and in a small park by the lake in cosmodrome’s main camp – Mirny.

Though the town was the closest one, they say that the relatives of those who perished were allowed to come and stay to live there, near their deceased sons, husbands and brothers.

And who is this monument to? The sergeant replied: it’s not to a person… There will be a MI-4 helicopter here, it will be installed by 30-year anniversary of the launch site. In the technical and operational unit of our regiment there are two of them, they were written off and now stand almost disassembled. One will be assembled and put here. And the construction battalion builds larger and more serious objects, and it’s less than a kilometer here to our unit…

The surging remembrances of the Earth and the endless greenery of Arkhangelsk taiga disappeared. There was the same reddish-grey, sad and silent Martian landscape around.

The base was almost ready – the living modules were tested many times in the working mode and were now set to function automatically, without participation of any crew members.

It was something like the earthly summer on Mars, and at daytime the temperature in the valley of Marinera reached almost + 2 °C. The samples of the most alluring stones and ground from the planet surface have been collected and packed in sealed containers with reliable biological protection.

In a few days they mounted a mobile drilling rig and in a week drilled several wells with the depth of up to thirty meters within a kilometer range from the rocket.

There is so much to do here for real geologists or miners…

They brought a part of samples into the living module in the cave and gave the others to Marina for preliminary research. The biggest part was loaded into a special unit, the most protected one on MS 88, designed for the samples of Mars which did not seem so mysterious any more.

They worked, or now we can probably say – they lived in a group of just four on a big and empty planet. Just one could not go fishing or picking mushrooms to the forest, and the girls wanted to sunbathe and swim in the sea, or at least in a tiny shallow river.

Once Andrey proposed to embellish the dreary landscape a little bit: Brothers Martians! And what if we draw a four-letter word on the ground with our mars rovers? So that it could be seen from the Earth or some orbital telescope?

Can you imagine that?! A set of several thousand photos arrives to NASA, they start analyzing and studying them, and suddenly they see: FUCK you NASA! The scientist would probably faint – at once or a little later.

Svetka laughed: Andrey, you are not only a space maniac, but also a space rowdy!

Having finished laughing, Sergey said: No! The one who will notice this ”FUCK” will probably be dismissed… He will go to the higher bosses to report, and they will think he is making fun of them! Like he wrote it himself and inserted in the photo!

That’s the way they worked, lived and had fun, alone on the big silent planet.

-11-

The program, envisaged by the project MS 88, was gradually drawing to a close. There was one thing left: a long return to the Earth.