"Charles Stross - Missile Gap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Communism, comrade premier! Look what they did for us! (That was Shchlovskii, by the way.) And yes, I
look and I see six cities that nobody can live in, spaceships that refuse to stick to the sky, and a landscape
that Sakharov and that bunch of double-domes are at a loss to explain. There are fucking miracles and
wonders and portents in the sky, like a galaxy we were supposed to be part of that is now a million years too
old and shows extensive signs of construction. There’s no room for miracles and wonders in our rational
world, and it’s giving the comrade general secretary, Yuri, the comrade general secretary, stomach ulcers;
did you know that?”
The colonel sits up straight, anticipating the punch line: it’s a well-known fact throughout the USSR that when
Brezhnev says ‘frog,’ the premier croaks. And here he is in the premier’s office, watching that very man,
Aleksey Kosygin, chairman of the Council of Ministers, third most powerful man in the Soviet Union, taking a
deep breath.
“Yuri Alexeyevich, I have brought you here today because I want you to help set Leonid Illich’s stomach at
rest. You’re an aviator and a hero of the Soviet Union, and more importantly you’re smart enough to do the job
and young enough to see it through, not like the old farts cluttering up Stavka. (It’s going to take most of a
lifetime to sort out, you mark my words.) You’re also, you will pardon the bluntness, about as much use as a
fifth wheel in your current posting right now: we have to face facts, and the sad reality is that none of
Korolev’s birds will ever fly again, not even with the atomic bomb pusher-thing they’ve been working on.”
Kosygin sighs and shuffles upright in his chair. “There is simply no point in maintaining the Cosmonaut
Training Centre. A decree has been drafted and will be approved next week: the manned rocket program is
going to be wound up and the cosmonaut corps reassigned to other duties.”
The colonel flinches. “Is that absolutely necessary, comrade chairman?”
Kosygin drains his wine glass, decides to ignore the implied criticism. “We don’t have the resources to
waste. But, Yuri Alexeyevich, all that training is not lost.” He grins wolfishly. “I have new worlds for you to
explore, and a new ship for you to do it in.”
“A new ship.” The colonel nods then does a double take, punch-drunk. “A ship?”
“Well, it isn’t a fucking horse,” says Kosygin. He slides a big glossy photograph across his blotter towards
the colonel. “Times have moved on.” The colonel blinks in confusion as he tries to make sense of the thing at
the centre of the photograph. The premier watches his face, secretly amused: confusion is everybody’s first
reaction to the thing in the photograph.
“I’m not sure I understand, sir–”
“It’s quite simple: you trained to explore new worlds. You can’t, not using the rockets. The rockets won’t ever
make orbit. I’ve had astronomers having nervous breakdowns trying to explain why, but the all agree on the
key point: rockets won’t do it for us here. Something wrong with the gravity, they say it even crushes falling
starlight.” The chairman taps a fat finger on the photograph. “But you can do it using this. We invented it and
the bloody Americans didn’t. It’s called an ekranoplan, and you rocket boys are going to stop being grounded
cosmonauts and learn how to fly it. What do you think, colonel Gagarin?”
The colonel whistles tunelessly through his teeth: he’s finally worked out the scale. It looks like a flying boat
with clipped wings, jet engines clustered by the sides of its cockpit–but no flying boat ever carried a runway
with a brace of MiG-21s on its back. “It’s bigger than a cruiser! Is it nuclear powered?”
“Of course.” The chairman’s grin slips. “It cost as much as those moon rockets of Sergei’s, colonel-general.
Try not to drop it.”
Gagarin glances up, surprise and awe visible on his face. “Sir, I’m honored, but–”
“Don’t be.” The chairman cuts him off. “The promotion was coming your way anyway. The posting that comes
with it will earn you as much honor as that first orbit. A second chance at space, if you like. But you can’t
fail: the cost is unthinkable. It’s not your skin that will pay the toll, it’s our entire rationalist civilization.”
Kosygin leans forward intently.
“Somewhere out there are beings so advanced that they skinned the earth like a grape and plated it onto this
disk–or worse, copied us all right down to the atomic level and duplicated us like one of those American
Xerox machines. It’s not just us, though. You are aware of the other continents in the oceans. We think some
of them may be inhabited, too–nothing else makes sense. Your task is to take the Sergei Korolev, the first