The story of the Lost Cosmonauts
*bi-bi-bip-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-bi-bi-bip*
Giovanni’s eyes snap open at the sound.
Immediately, he flips a switch to begin recording and frantically plugs in his headphones.
“Achille,” he hisses to his brother, still asleep on the small couch in the bunker they call home, “Achille, wake up! It’s a transmission!”
Achille rushes over and scans the paper taped to the wall. “But there’s no launch scheduled today,” he says, confused.
*bi-bi-bip-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-bi-bi-bip*
They both jump at the sound this time.
“It’s coming through on the Soviet frequency,” says Giovanni as he scans their instruments.
“What is it? What’s the beeping mean?”
“It’s Morse Code cazzo, can’t you tell?”
Achille shakes his head. Giovanni was always the smarter of the two. It was he who had first had the idea to rig up a recording station when the Soviets released the radio frequency used for the Sputnik 1 launch. He had scavenged electronics to build bigger and better satellite dishes. He had discovered this little bunker that now served as their base.
*bi-bi-bip-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-bi-bi-bip*
“What’s it mean, Gio?” he asks again.
“It means ‘SOS’. But I’m not hearing any voices, so their equipment must be shot to hell.” Giovanni jumps out of his chair, and scans the read-outs, “Help me with the Doppler data - maybe we can figure out where they are.”
*bi-bi-bip-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-bi-bi-bip*
They both scribble down numbers as fast as they can, their pens scratching as they power through formula after formula. Again, this was Giovanni’s doing: if you isolated the Doppler effect in the signals, you could get the craft’s speed and altitude.
Achille crumples his paper up in a ball and angrily throws it at the wall.
“Cazzo, I got it wrong again.”
Giovanni looks up eerily. “What did you get?”
“Nothing. Almost no relative speed.”
*bi-bi-bip-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-bi-bi-bip*.
It’s softer this time, the beeping. Almost as if it’s coming from farther away. Giovanni’s eyes suddenly seem sad. Cold.
“I got the same result Achille.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense. Is the shuttle standing still?”
“No, it couldn’t be. There’s only one explanation.” His voice is different. Usually it sings, but now it’s flat and dark. Again, the beeping rings, softer than before.
*bi-bi-bip-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-bi-bi-bip*
“What is it?”
“It means it’s moving away from us. Achille, it’s moving away from Earth.”
They stare at the console, trying not to think of the lone cosmonauts stuck above the earth in a coffin of steel.
*bi-bi-bip-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-bi-bi-bip*
It’s so soft you can barely hear it now. So soft that it’s almost soothing. A faint goodbye. An epitaph.
SOS.
They stand there, still as statues, eyes on the machine.
Hours pass.
It doesn’t beep again.
Four months later, on the 12th of April 1961, Yuri Gagarin officially becomes the first man to make it to space… and back.
But was he really the first, or just the first to make it back?
Is there a craft out there, drifting away in the void, a frozen finger still pressed on an emergency button?
This is the theory of the secret martyrs of the Soviet Space Race.
Comments
Post a Comment