The Land of Crimson Clouds--Arkadiy and Boris Strugatskiy--Translation Chapter 3
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
This chapter had so much physics in it that I almost cried, and wrote a crazy footnote which I have left intact for your amusement. Please, enjoy.
3. ON THE THRESHOLD [AKA What Men Talk About at Sleepovers]
Bykov sighed and sat up on the sofa, tossing away the blanket. He simply couldn’t make himself fall asleep. Dauge’s office was dark-the only bright spot was the white sheet, which was slowly migrating towards the floor. Beyond the broad windows, a faint halo of lights glowed pink in the night over the capital.
He reached towards the nearby chair for his watch. It slipped out of his fingers and fell. Bykov slid off the sofa and started searching for it, running his hand over the rug and the smooth floorboards. He couldn’t feel the watch. Cursing softly, he stood up and began to adjust the sheet. This was the third time he’d done so since Dauge had wished him goodnight and left for his bedroom to write a few letters. Bykov lay down, but still couldn’t fall asleep. He tossed and turned, sighed, tried to get comfortable, counted to a hundred. But sleep wouldn’t come.
Too many new impressions, thought Bykov, sitting up again. Too many new impressions and new ideas. Dauge had explained too much already, but there was even more Bykov still didn’t know. A cigarette sure would be nice right now-but no, that was off limits! He had to quit. To quit smoking and stop drinking spirits. Just earlier Ioganich, having listened without enthusiasm as Bykov informed him that “in this very suitcase, my friend, is a bottle of the finest Armenian cognac with our names on it,” asked blandly, “fifteen years old?” “Twenty!” Bykov ceremoniously corrected. “Well, throw it out, then,” Dauge offered sweetly. “Toss it in the garbage chute or give it to someone else tomorrow. And keep in mind that there’ll be no smoking on the ship. That’s the rules. On Earth we can only have grape wine in small doses, and during the expedition, not a drop! Such are the rules, comrade interplanetor.”
“Freaking monastery . . .” Bykov muttered, curling up under the blanket. “I should sleep. Give it another try . . .”
He closed his eyes, and immediately he pictured the huge empty foyer where he had waited for Dauge after the meeting. Bogdan Spitsyn and chubby Krutikov had walked past him and paused by a newsstand. As far as he could tell, they were discussing some new book. Or rather, Spitsyn stayed mostly quiet, flashing his blinding smile, and Krutikov tattered on in a high tenor, continually throwing the most welcoming, good-natured glances in the newbie’s direction. Bykov sensed that he would soon be invited to join the conversation, but then Dauge and Yurkovskiy appeared. Dauge walked purposefully, biting his lip, and Yurkovskiy’s face was distorted by a spasm. He held a crumpled newspaper in his hand.
“Dangée is dead,” said Yurkovskiy, walking right up to the conversing pair.
Bykov watched the smile melt from dark-haired Spitsyn’s face.
“Ah, God damn . . .” he cursed.
Krutikov rushed forward, with trembling lips:
“Oh my Lord . . . Paul?!”
“On Jupiter!” Yurkovskiy said furiously. “Got stuck in the exosphere, lost his momentum, and then just up and stayed there.”
He held out the newspaper. Bykov saw a portrait in a black frame: a slim young man with mournful eyes.
“Jupiter . . . Godforsaken Jupe again!” Yurkovskiy clenched his fists. “Worse than Venus, worse than anything in existence! That’s where I ought to . . . that’s it . . .” he turned sharply and strode away across the springy, matte white floor.
Krutikov was sadly shaking his head, repeating, “Paul Dangée, Paul . . .”
“I didn’t get around to answering his letter . . .” Dauge said with difficulty, face pinched, as though looking into a bright light.
All went silent; only the thick cover of the book in Mikhail Krutikov’s hand crinkled . . .
. . . Bykov opened his eyes and rolled onto his back. That incident had cast a shadow on the whole evening. His conversation with Ioganich hadn’t turned out very well. These interplanetors are damn brave people, the engineer thought, and surprisingly persistent. Real heroes! So many have already laid down their lives on Venus! They set off for battle on bulky rockets with pulsed motors and limited fuel supplies. No one was forcing them-they were delayed, restricted, even forbidden from flying . . . if they came back.
And now the “Hius” was joining the fray.
The photon rocket “Hius” . . . like any nuclear engineer, Bykov was acquainted with the theoretical concept behind the photon drive and had followed with great interest all new information on the subject that appeared in the press. A photon drive turns fuel into quanta of electromagnetic radiation, and thereby creates the maximum possible thrust speed for a rocket engine, equal to the speed of light. Either thermonuclear processes (the partial conversion of fuel into radiation) or antimatter annihilation (the complete conversion of fuel into radiation) can serve as the energy source for a photon drive. The photon rocket’s superiority over atomic rockets with liquid fuel are huge and undeniable. First, the lower weight of the propellant; second, a larger payload; third, incredible maneuverability for such a rocket; fourth . . .
That was all well and good in theory. But Bykov was also aware that until recently, all attempts to put the photon drive idea to use in practice had failed. One of the main problems with the idea-the reflection of the radiation-simply would not be solved. To create photon thrust, the electromagnetic radiation needed an intensity equivalent to millions of kilocalories per centimeter of the reflective surface squared, and no material could withstand even short exposure to the resulting temperatures of hundreds of thousands of degrees. Unmanned test crafts burned to a crisp before spending even one percent of their fuel. And yet, the “Hius” was built!
“They’ve created a perfect mirror,” Dauge had said, “’the ultimate reflector.’ A substance that repels any radiative energy of any intensity, as well as all types of elementary particles with energy up to 100 or 150 million electronvolts. All but neutrinos, I think. A miraculous substance. An institute in Novosibirsk came up with the concept for it. Admittedly, they weren’t thinking about photon rockets. They were trying to create a perfect shield from the gamma radiation released by nuclear reactors. But Krayukhin immediately realized what was going on.” Here Dauge had laughed. “Krayukhin is a photon rocket maniac. He’s the one who gave us the aphorism-‘one photon rocket and the universe is ours’. Krayukhin was hooked on the ‘ultimate reflector’ immediately, set two-thirds of the lab to work on it, and boom-the ‘Hius’!”
The creation of the “ultimate reflector” was the first real achievement of a new, fantastic branch of science: mesoatomic chemistry, chemistry using artificial atoms whose electron shells had been replaced with mesons. [1] This was so fascinating to Bykov that briefly forgot about everything else-about poor Paul Dangée, about Venus, even about the expedition. Unfortunately, Dauge couldn’t tell Bykov much about the “ultimate reflector”. But he did tell about the “Hius”.
The “Hius” was a composite spacecraft: it had five ordinary atomic pulsed rocket engines which carried a parabolic mirror made of the “ultimate reflector”. Portions of tritium plasma were periodically injected into the focus of the mirror. The atomic rockets had a dual purpose: first, they allowed the “Hius” to take off and land on Earth. The photon rocket wouldn’t be useful for that-it would contaminate the atmosphere with the effect of dozens of hydrogen bombs at once. Second, the rockets’ reactors are fed by powerful electromagnets, whose fields control the flow of plasma and stimulate nuclear fusion.
How simple and clever: five rockets and a mirror. Incidentally, the ugly five-legged tortoise that Bykov had seen in Krayukhin’s office was in fact a model of the “Hius”. The craft was not exactly remarkable for its graceful contours . . .
The engineer sat again, slumped over, pressing his bare back against the cool wall.
“We’ll be flying on the photon rocket ‘Hius-2’. ‘Hius-1’ burned up during a test flight two years ago,” Dauge had told him hesitantly. “No one knows why. And there’s no one to argue with. The only person who could say anything about it would have been Ashot Petrosian-may he rest in peace! He dissolved into radioactive dust along with the mass of titanium alloy the first ‘Hius’ was made of. A quick, honest death . . .”
Probably, none of us are afraid of death, Bykov thought. We merely try to avoid it. Who said that first? He got off the sofa. He wouldn’t fall asleep now-that was clear. The ultimate reflector, Dangée, “Hius”, Petrosian . . . I’ll try my last resort.
He stepped out onto the balcony, automatically grabbing the pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket.
If you can’t sleep, it’s not a bad idea to cool off for a while. Bykov rested his arms on the railing. All was quiet. The enormous city was sleeping under the ghostly twilight of the midsummer night; far off, beyond the horizon glimmered a flickering reddish light, and to the north the pinnacle of the Palace of Soviets [2] stretched into the grey sky like a blinding white arrow.
It must be past two already, Bykov thought. Where the heck is my watch, though? . . . It’s so warm. A soft warm breeze . . . but “Hius” in Siberian dialect means a cold winter wind. The photon rocket project was developed by Siberian engineers, and they suggested that word as a code name. And then they passed it on to the spacecraft.
Strange, unfamiliar names. “Hius” in honor of the Siberian chill, “Uranium Golkonda”, in memory of an ancient city [3] where King Solomon supposedly stored his treasures at one point . . . And also the “Tahmasp Enigma”. After Tahmasp Mekhti, a famous Azerbaijani geologist and the first person to set foot on the Golkonda. Yermakov, Tahmasp and two other geologists had managed to land successfully on Venus in a specially equipped racing rocket. This was due to incredible luck and good fortune. Everyone thought so, even Yermakov himself.
They landed somewhere about twenty kilometers from the edge of the Golkonda. Tahmasp left Yermakov with the rocket, and he and his geologists headed outside to investigate. What happened afterward was unknown. Tahmasp returned to the rocket four days later, alone, half-dead from thirst, delirious and covered with sores from radiation sickness. He brought back samples of uranium, radium and transuranium ores (“Such rich ores, Alexei, amazing ores!”) and a container full of reddish-grey radioactive dust. He could barely retain consciousness. He showed Yermakov the container and started talking quickly and furiously in Azerbaijani. Yermakov didn’t understand Azerbaijani and begged him to speak Russian, because it was clear he was talking about something important. But all Tahmasp could say in Russian was “Beware the red ring! Don’t go near!” That was the last he spoke before his death. He died during takeoff, and Yermakov spent half a month in the rocket with his corpse.
“The red ring”-that was the Tahmasp Enigma, the enigma of the three geologists’ death, the enigma of the Golkonda. Or maybe there was no enigma at all. Maybe, as many believed, Tahmasp simply lost his mind due to radiation sickness or after watching his comrades’ death. The reddish-grey powder in the container turned out to be an organosilicon compound, which, as it happened, was already well known on Earth.
It was unclear why Tahmasp was dragging that container with him . . . and also how it was related to the “red ring”.
Dauge rushed through this explanation, wincing as though from heartburn. He didn’t believe in the “Tahmasp Enigma”. But he was happy to talk about the riches of the Golkonda for hours. If only we could fly there, walk there, crawl there . . .
Bykov leaned over sideways across the railing. The pack of cigarettes was ever so tempting, so he laid it next to him. A small helicopter fluttered softly by overhead. Bykov followed its signal lights, red and white. He remembered again his conversation with Dauge.
Tahmasp and his comrades went to the Golkonda on foot. But our expedition is taking a transporter. Dauge says that it’s a brilliant machine. Ioganich always says things are brilliant: the “Hius” is brilliant, the transporter is brilliant, Yurkovskiy is brilliant. But he was more restrained when talking about the commander. Apparently, Yermakov is Krayukhin’s foster son. He’s of the best cosmonauts in the world, but has his idiosyncrasies. Of course, he apparently had a very difficult life. Dauge said of him with unusual uncertainty:
“I don’t really know him . . . people say . . . they say he’s very brave, very knowledgeable, and very cruel . . . They say he never laughs . . .”
Yermakov’s wife was the first person to land on Venus’s moon. [4] After that, there was an accident. No one knew exactly what happened-some kind of conflict between members of the crew. Since then, women were no longer allowed on long interplanetary flights, and Yermakov dedicated himself entirely to the siege of Venus. It turned out he had tried four times to land on the surface of the planet, and all four times he failed. The fifth time he flew with Tahmasp Mekhti. And now, on the “Hius”, he was going to Venus a sixth time.
Bykov paced the balcony, hands folded behind his back. No, he couldn’t even cool off tonight! It was much too hot, muggy even. Bykov could feel himself growing more and more certain that the best and most radical sleep aid would be a cigarette. A slender, aromatic cigarette, enchanting, lulling, comforting . . . he picked up the pack.
The best way to overcome temptation is to give in! He snickered. But no, dammit-the rules! The cigarette pack shot down all the way from the eleventh floor. Bykov bent over the railing and stared into the dark abyss. Down below, a set of blinding lights ignited, scuttered across the asphalt and went out.
Littering now, thought Bykov. I just can’t get it together! I should sleep . . . He went back inside and felt his way to the sofa. Something crunched under his foot. And there’s my watch, he thought, struggling to find a reference point in the darkness.
He sighed deeply and lowered himself onto the spongy cushions of the indomitable sofa. No, no sleep for you tonight, comrade engineer, “desert specialist”! What’s up with that pretty-boy Yurkovskiy resenting me so much? Now the nickname’s stuck: desert specialist. And the way he looked when he talked about Paul Dangée! . . . No, that type doesn’t get insomnia before a flight. “We aren’t afraid of death, we merely try to avoid it.” Is that so, engineer? And what if, a year from now, someone in that same foyer tells his friends: “Comrades, have you heard? The ‘Hius’ crashed. Yermakov is dead, and Yurkovskiy, and also . . . you know, what’s-his-name . . . the desert specialist.” . . . Oh, nonsense, Alexei! This is insomnia and idleness talking. If only morning would come sooner-and the plane, and the Seventh Polygon, and the launch pad in the arctic, where the expedition will prepare for takeoff and wait for the Hius, which is now on a test flight. I have to get up at eight today, but I can’t sleep, God damn it! . . . Dauge must be asleep already . . .”
But then Bykov noticed that the door to Dauge’s bedroom was cracked open, and a faint ray of light fell on the adjacent wall. He got up, tiptoed to the door and peeked through the crack. Dauge sat, head in his hands, at a desk beside his unmade bed. The desk was almost bare; on the floor lay a huge camping backpack. On top of the backpack was a geological hammer with a glossy handle. Bykov cleared his throat.
“Come in,” said Dauge, without moving.
“Uhhhm . . .” Alexei drew out the sound, as he had no idea what to say. “You know, I forgot to ask you . . .”
Dauge turned around.
“Come on in, come on . . . sit down. Now, what did you want to ask?”
Bykov wracked his brains so hard his teeth scraped.
“Uhhhm . . . Well, you know . . .” suddenly a thought struck him. “Right. Why are we putting radio beacons on Venus if its atmosphere doesn’t let radio waves through?”
The deep shadow of a lampshade cut across Dauge’s face. Bykov sat down in a small, low armchair and triumphantly crossed one foot over the other. He felt very relieved now that he was in a lighted room, and his loyal friend Ioganich was beside him.
“Yes,” Dauge said thoughtfully. “That really is an extremely important question. Now I understand what’s been keeping you awake. I was thinking, what’s he doing traipsing around the room like that? Does he have a toothache or something? And all along it was those beacons . . .”
“Y-yeah,” Bykov replied uncertainly, putting his foot back down. The feeling of relief had run off someplace.
“I imagine you have some theories on the subject?” Dauge continued in a most serious tone. “Naturally, you must have come up with something during your . . . vigil? Something useful to us . . .”
“You see, Ioganich . . .” Bykov began pathetically, trying to make his expression as profound as possible and without the slightest clue as to how he would finish the sentence.
“Yes, yes, I understand you,” Dauge interrupted with a nod. “And you know? You’re completely-absolutely right! That’s exactly how it is. Venus’s atmosphere really does block radio waves, but, at a very specific wavelength, we believe we can break the radio blockade. That wavelength has been determined using both entirely theoretical calculations and observational data examining the local ion interactions on . . . on what, engineer?”
“Venus,” Bykov said darkly.
“Precisely! Venus! The planet’s atmosphere does sometimes release other wavelengths, but that’s a matter of chance, which we can’t rely on. So, our job is to determine the viable range and, having done so, set up our beacons on the surface of . . . the surface of what?”
“Venus!” Bykov spat.
“Brilliant!” Dauge said admiringly. “You didn’t spend the night awake for nothing! Although all previous attempts to set up a radio transmitter on the surface ended . . . how, engineer?”
“Enough,” Bykov stopped him, fidgeting in his chair.
“Hm . . . too bad. My friend, they ended badly. Most likely because the rovers holding the beacons crashed into cliffs. Or, at least, went out of order during landing some other way. Although, even if they hadn’t broken, what would we do with them? They would be no use to us. But now we have . . . what do we have?”
“We have no patience left,” Bykov muttered.
Dauge solemnly proclaimed:
“We have the ‘Hius’, and we have the beacons, and we know the exact wavelengths at which the signals of the aforementioned beacons will break through the atmosphere. That means we have everything, everything but patience, and patience is a simple matter. I think you can sleep soundly.”
Alexei sighed sadly and stood up.
“Insomnia,” he said.
Dauge nodded.
“It happens.”
Bykov walked across the room and stopped in front of a trio of holographic photos on the wall. The one on the left depicted a narrow antique street in some Baltic city, the right-a space ship, similar to a hugely magnified rifle bullet from the Great Fatherland War, its sharp end piercing the black sky. In the middle photograph Bykov saw a sad-looking young woman in a dark-blue dress buttoned to the neck.
“Who’s this, Ioganich? Your wife?”
“Y-yes . . . actually, no,” Dauge said uncomfortably. “That’s Maria Yurkovskaya, Vlad’s sister. We broke up . . .”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
The engineer bit his lip, returned to the armchair and sat. Dauge aimlessly paged through a book on the desk in front of him.
“She left, actually . . . that’s more accurate . . .”
Bykov stayed quiet, looking over his friend’s tanned face. In the bluish lamplight it seemed dark indeed.
“I can’t sleep either, Alexei,” Dauge said dejectedly. “I’m sad about Paul. And this time I don’t really feel like flying. I love the Earth. A lot! You probably think that all interplanetors are dedicated sky-dwellers. But you’re wrong. We all love Earth very much, and miss the blue sky. That’s our affliction, missing the blue sky. Think: you’re sitting somewhere on Phobos. The sky is endless and black. The stars pierce your eyes like diamond needles. The constellations are unfamiliar and feral. And everything around you is artificial: the air is artificial, the heat is artificial, even your weight is artificial . . .”
Bykov listened motionlessly.
“You don’t know about that. You can’t sleep just because you’re on the threshold-one foot here, the other there. While Yurkovskiy is sitting somewhere and writing poetry. Poetry about the blue sky, about misty lakes, about white clouds above a forest clearing. Bad poetry-on Earth every editor is up to their ears in that sort of poetry-and he knows that perfectly well. But he writes it anyway.”
Dauge shut the book and leaned back in his chair, cocking his head.
“And our round navigator, Krutikov, is racing through Moscow in his car, of course. With his wife. She’s at the wheel, and he’s sitting there and can’t take his eyes off her. And he’s feeling sad that the kids aren’t here. His children live with their grandmother in Novosibirsk. A little boy and a girl, great kids . . .” Suddenly Dauge laughed. “If anyone is sleeping right now, it’s Bogdan Spitsyn, our co-pilot. He’s most at home in a rocket. He says, ‘for me, Earth is like a train-I want to lie down and sleep so I can get off faster.’ Bogdan is a sky-dweller. There are some of those among us-addicted for life. Bogdan was born on Mars, in a research settlement on the Syrtis Major. He lived there until he was five, and then his mother got sick and had to be sent to Earth. And so, people say, they set itty-bitty Bogdan down on the grass to play. He walked around a bit, then stepped in a puddle and started screaming, ‘I wanna go hoooome! To Mars!’”
Bykov laughed gratefully, sensing that the mass of confused feelings weighing down his soul was melting and sliding away. Everything was so simple: he really was on the threshold, one foot here and the other there . . .
“Well, what’s our commander doing?” he asked.
Dauge drew back.
“I don’t know. I can’t even imagine . . . I don’t know.”
“He’s probably asleep too, like sky-dweller Bogdan . . .”
Dauge shook his head.
“I doubt it . . . is the sky clear tonight?”
“No, it’s overcast . . .”
“In that case, I really don’t know.” Dauge shook his head. “I could imagine Anatoliy Yermakov standing somewhere, staring at a bright star on the horizon, at Venus. His hands . . .” Dauge paused. “His hands clenched in fists, knuckles white . . .”
“Some imagination you have, Ioganich!”
“No, Alexei, I’m not imagining it. Venus is, all in all, a single episode for us. We’ve been on the Moon, we’ve been on Mars, and now we’re flying to study a new planet. We’re just doing our jobs. But Yermakov . . . Yermakov has a score to settle, an old, savage score. I can tell you why he’s flying: he wants to avenge and conquer. Mercilessly, once and for all. That’s how I see it . . . He’s dedicated his life and death to Venus.”
“You know him well?”
Dauge shrugged his shoulders.
“That doesn’t matter. I can feel this. And anyway,” he started counting on his fingers. “Nishijima, the Japanese pilot-his friend, Sokolovskiy-his closest friend, Xi Fen-Yu-his teacher, Ekaterina Romanovna-his wife . . . Venus devoured them all. Krayukhin is a second father to him, and Krayukhin’s last flight was to Venus. After that trip, the doctors forbid him from flying . . .”
Dauge stood up and started pacing the room.
“To tame and conquer,” he repeated. “Mercilessly, once and for all! For Yermakov, Venus is the obstinate, malicious embodiment of the all elemental forces that threaten humankind. I’m not sure the rest of us will ever get to experience the same feeling. And it’s probably for the better. To understand it, we would have to struggle like Yermakov has, and suffer like he has . . . To conquer once and for all . . .” Dauge repeated thoughtfully.
A sudden chill shook Alexei’s shoulders.
“That’s why I mentioned clenched fists,” Dauge finished, looking at him intently. “But since it’s overcast tonight, I really can’t imagine what he might be doing. Probably, you’re right, and he’s asleep.”
They stopped talking for a while. Bykov figured he’d never had a boss quite like that before.
“And how are things with you?” Dauge asked suddenly.
“What things?”
“With your teacher in Ashgabat.”
Bykov’s face fell.
“Not so great,” he said sadly. “We’re dating . . .”
“Is that so? Dating. And?”
“That’s all.”
“Have you proposed to her?”
“Yes.”
“And she refused?”
“No. She said she’d consider it.”
“And when was this?”
“Six months back.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and’? That was it.”
“So, what you’re saying is you’re a complete idiot, Alexei-pardon me, for goodness sake.”
Bykov sighed. Dauge smiled at him mockingly.
“Incredible!” He said. “A thirtysomething guy loves a beautiful woman and has been dating her for seven years already-”
“Five.”
“Alright then, five. After five years he tells her how he feels. Note that she waited patiently for five years, this poor unfortunate woman . . .”
“Grigoriy, stop it,” Bykov said, frowning.
“One minute! After she said she would consider it, either out of humility or as gentle revenge . . .”
“Cut it out!”
Dauge sighed and threw up his hands.
“It’s your own fault, Alexei! Your courtship style is downright insulting! What must she think about you? Jeez!”
Bykov listened despondently. Then he perked up and said,
“When we get back . . .”
Dauge chuckled:
“Oh, the brave conqueror! . . . sorry, desert specialist! ‘When we get back!’ I can’t even look at you anymore. Get to sleep!”
Bykov stood and took the book from the table. “La description planétographique du Phobos. [5] Paul Dangée,” he read. The title page bore a Russian inscription written in thick red pencil: “To my dear Dauge, from your loyal and grateful friend Paul Dangée”.
*
Bykov woke at dawn. The door to the bedroom was half-open. Dauge was standing in his underwear by the writing desk, dark and disheveled, staring at the portrait of the young woman-Maria Yurkovskaya. Then he took the portrait from the wall and stuffed it into his backpack.
Bykov quietly rolled over and fell asleep again.
[1] So, in case you don’t know, a meson is a subatomic particle that consists of a quark and an antiquark. Also, just for the record, muons are not mesons, as Wikipedia assures me, but are in fact leptons. I trust you know what to do with this information. Oh, and did you know quarks have flavors? But those flavors are up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charm. Come on, guys, charm? That is the worst Lay’s “Do Us A Flavor” idea ever. If you’re going to arbitrarily call your science concept a flavor, you ought to have the wherewithal to keep the theme going and call the equally arbitrary variations on it, like, barbecue, or green apple or something. (Listen, I picked the hardest biology class just so I could avoid physics in 12th grade, and this is literally rocket science.)
[2] This is not a real building. It was supposed to be built on the site of the old Church of Christ the Savior, and should have been the headquarters of the Soviet government, but the soil there couldn’t support its weight, so a pool was put there instead. In the post-soviet era, the old church has been rebuilt. The image at the start of this post is a photoshopped artist's interpretation of how Moscow would look had the Palace of Soviets been successfully built.
[3] The real Golkonda is a city in India, home to mines that produce diamonds of exceptional quality. We’re talking hundreds of carats. No word on whether King Solomon was ever there, because all the Google results aside from Wikipedia and Britannica are just fancy hotels there.
[4] So, Venus actually doesn’t have a moon, but that’s what it says.
[5] “A Planetographical Description of Phobos” in French.
Chapter 2
This chapter had so much physics in it that I almost cried, and wrote a crazy footnote which I have left intact for your amusement. Please, enjoy.
3. ON THE THRESHOLD [AKA What Men Talk About at Sleepovers]
Bykov sighed and sat up on the sofa, tossing away the blanket. He simply couldn’t make himself fall asleep. Dauge’s office was dark-the only bright spot was the white sheet, which was slowly migrating towards the floor. Beyond the broad windows, a faint halo of lights glowed pink in the night over the capital.
He reached towards the nearby chair for his watch. It slipped out of his fingers and fell. Bykov slid off the sofa and started searching for it, running his hand over the rug and the smooth floorboards. He couldn’t feel the watch. Cursing softly, he stood up and began to adjust the sheet. This was the third time he’d done so since Dauge had wished him goodnight and left for his bedroom to write a few letters. Bykov lay down, but still couldn’t fall asleep. He tossed and turned, sighed, tried to get comfortable, counted to a hundred. But sleep wouldn’t come.
Too many new impressions, thought Bykov, sitting up again. Too many new impressions and new ideas. Dauge had explained too much already, but there was even more Bykov still didn’t know. A cigarette sure would be nice right now-but no, that was off limits! He had to quit. To quit smoking and stop drinking spirits. Just earlier Ioganich, having listened without enthusiasm as Bykov informed him that “in this very suitcase, my friend, is a bottle of the finest Armenian cognac with our names on it,” asked blandly, “fifteen years old?” “Twenty!” Bykov ceremoniously corrected. “Well, throw it out, then,” Dauge offered sweetly. “Toss it in the garbage chute or give it to someone else tomorrow. And keep in mind that there’ll be no smoking on the ship. That’s the rules. On Earth we can only have grape wine in small doses, and during the expedition, not a drop! Such are the rules, comrade interplanetor.”
“Freaking monastery . . .” Bykov muttered, curling up under the blanket. “I should sleep. Give it another try . . .”
He closed his eyes, and immediately he pictured the huge empty foyer where he had waited for Dauge after the meeting. Bogdan Spitsyn and chubby Krutikov had walked past him and paused by a newsstand. As far as he could tell, they were discussing some new book. Or rather, Spitsyn stayed mostly quiet, flashing his blinding smile, and Krutikov tattered on in a high tenor, continually throwing the most welcoming, good-natured glances in the newbie’s direction. Bykov sensed that he would soon be invited to join the conversation, but then Dauge and Yurkovskiy appeared. Dauge walked purposefully, biting his lip, and Yurkovskiy’s face was distorted by a spasm. He held a crumpled newspaper in his hand.
“Dangée is dead,” said Yurkovskiy, walking right up to the conversing pair.
Bykov watched the smile melt from dark-haired Spitsyn’s face.
“Ah, God damn . . .” he cursed.
Krutikov rushed forward, with trembling lips:
“Oh my Lord . . . Paul?!”
“On Jupiter!” Yurkovskiy said furiously. “Got stuck in the exosphere, lost his momentum, and then just up and stayed there.”
He held out the newspaper. Bykov saw a portrait in a black frame: a slim young man with mournful eyes.
“Jupiter . . . Godforsaken Jupe again!” Yurkovskiy clenched his fists. “Worse than Venus, worse than anything in existence! That’s where I ought to . . . that’s it . . .” he turned sharply and strode away across the springy, matte white floor.
Krutikov was sadly shaking his head, repeating, “Paul Dangée, Paul . . .”
“I didn’t get around to answering his letter . . .” Dauge said with difficulty, face pinched, as though looking into a bright light.
All went silent; only the thick cover of the book in Mikhail Krutikov’s hand crinkled . . .
. . . Bykov opened his eyes and rolled onto his back. That incident had cast a shadow on the whole evening. His conversation with Ioganich hadn’t turned out very well. These interplanetors are damn brave people, the engineer thought, and surprisingly persistent. Real heroes! So many have already laid down their lives on Venus! They set off for battle on bulky rockets with pulsed motors and limited fuel supplies. No one was forcing them-they were delayed, restricted, even forbidden from flying . . . if they came back.
And now the “Hius” was joining the fray.
The photon rocket “Hius” . . . like any nuclear engineer, Bykov was acquainted with the theoretical concept behind the photon drive and had followed with great interest all new information on the subject that appeared in the press. A photon drive turns fuel into quanta of electromagnetic radiation, and thereby creates the maximum possible thrust speed for a rocket engine, equal to the speed of light. Either thermonuclear processes (the partial conversion of fuel into radiation) or antimatter annihilation (the complete conversion of fuel into radiation) can serve as the energy source for a photon drive. The photon rocket’s superiority over atomic rockets with liquid fuel are huge and undeniable. First, the lower weight of the propellant; second, a larger payload; third, incredible maneuverability for such a rocket; fourth . . .
That was all well and good in theory. But Bykov was also aware that until recently, all attempts to put the photon drive idea to use in practice had failed. One of the main problems with the idea-the reflection of the radiation-simply would not be solved. To create photon thrust, the electromagnetic radiation needed an intensity equivalent to millions of kilocalories per centimeter of the reflective surface squared, and no material could withstand even short exposure to the resulting temperatures of hundreds of thousands of degrees. Unmanned test crafts burned to a crisp before spending even one percent of their fuel. And yet, the “Hius” was built!
“They’ve created a perfect mirror,” Dauge had said, “’the ultimate reflector.’ A substance that repels any radiative energy of any intensity, as well as all types of elementary particles with energy up to 100 or 150 million electronvolts. All but neutrinos, I think. A miraculous substance. An institute in Novosibirsk came up with the concept for it. Admittedly, they weren’t thinking about photon rockets. They were trying to create a perfect shield from the gamma radiation released by nuclear reactors. But Krayukhin immediately realized what was going on.” Here Dauge had laughed. “Krayukhin is a photon rocket maniac. He’s the one who gave us the aphorism-‘one photon rocket and the universe is ours’. Krayukhin was hooked on the ‘ultimate reflector’ immediately, set two-thirds of the lab to work on it, and boom-the ‘Hius’!”
The creation of the “ultimate reflector” was the first real achievement of a new, fantastic branch of science: mesoatomic chemistry, chemistry using artificial atoms whose electron shells had been replaced with mesons. [1] This was so fascinating to Bykov that briefly forgot about everything else-about poor Paul Dangée, about Venus, even about the expedition. Unfortunately, Dauge couldn’t tell Bykov much about the “ultimate reflector”. But he did tell about the “Hius”.
The “Hius” was a composite spacecraft: it had five ordinary atomic pulsed rocket engines which carried a parabolic mirror made of the “ultimate reflector”. Portions of tritium plasma were periodically injected into the focus of the mirror. The atomic rockets had a dual purpose: first, they allowed the “Hius” to take off and land on Earth. The photon rocket wouldn’t be useful for that-it would contaminate the atmosphere with the effect of dozens of hydrogen bombs at once. Second, the rockets’ reactors are fed by powerful electromagnets, whose fields control the flow of plasma and stimulate nuclear fusion.
How simple and clever: five rockets and a mirror. Incidentally, the ugly five-legged tortoise that Bykov had seen in Krayukhin’s office was in fact a model of the “Hius”. The craft was not exactly remarkable for its graceful contours . . .
The engineer sat again, slumped over, pressing his bare back against the cool wall.
“We’ll be flying on the photon rocket ‘Hius-2’. ‘Hius-1’ burned up during a test flight two years ago,” Dauge had told him hesitantly. “No one knows why. And there’s no one to argue with. The only person who could say anything about it would have been Ashot Petrosian-may he rest in peace! He dissolved into radioactive dust along with the mass of titanium alloy the first ‘Hius’ was made of. A quick, honest death . . .”
Probably, none of us are afraid of death, Bykov thought. We merely try to avoid it. Who said that first? He got off the sofa. He wouldn’t fall asleep now-that was clear. The ultimate reflector, Dangée, “Hius”, Petrosian . . . I’ll try my last resort.
He stepped out onto the balcony, automatically grabbing the pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket.
If you can’t sleep, it’s not a bad idea to cool off for a while. Bykov rested his arms on the railing. All was quiet. The enormous city was sleeping under the ghostly twilight of the midsummer night; far off, beyond the horizon glimmered a flickering reddish light, and to the north the pinnacle of the Palace of Soviets [2] stretched into the grey sky like a blinding white arrow.
It must be past two already, Bykov thought. Where the heck is my watch, though? . . . It’s so warm. A soft warm breeze . . . but “Hius” in Siberian dialect means a cold winter wind. The photon rocket project was developed by Siberian engineers, and they suggested that word as a code name. And then they passed it on to the spacecraft.
Strange, unfamiliar names. “Hius” in honor of the Siberian chill, “Uranium Golkonda”, in memory of an ancient city [3] where King Solomon supposedly stored his treasures at one point . . . And also the “Tahmasp Enigma”. After Tahmasp Mekhti, a famous Azerbaijani geologist and the first person to set foot on the Golkonda. Yermakov, Tahmasp and two other geologists had managed to land successfully on Venus in a specially equipped racing rocket. This was due to incredible luck and good fortune. Everyone thought so, even Yermakov himself.
They landed somewhere about twenty kilometers from the edge of the Golkonda. Tahmasp left Yermakov with the rocket, and he and his geologists headed outside to investigate. What happened afterward was unknown. Tahmasp returned to the rocket four days later, alone, half-dead from thirst, delirious and covered with sores from radiation sickness. He brought back samples of uranium, radium and transuranium ores (“Such rich ores, Alexei, amazing ores!”) and a container full of reddish-grey radioactive dust. He could barely retain consciousness. He showed Yermakov the container and started talking quickly and furiously in Azerbaijani. Yermakov didn’t understand Azerbaijani and begged him to speak Russian, because it was clear he was talking about something important. But all Tahmasp could say in Russian was “Beware the red ring! Don’t go near!” That was the last he spoke before his death. He died during takeoff, and Yermakov spent half a month in the rocket with his corpse.
“The red ring”-that was the Tahmasp Enigma, the enigma of the three geologists’ death, the enigma of the Golkonda. Or maybe there was no enigma at all. Maybe, as many believed, Tahmasp simply lost his mind due to radiation sickness or after watching his comrades’ death. The reddish-grey powder in the container turned out to be an organosilicon compound, which, as it happened, was already well known on Earth.
It was unclear why Tahmasp was dragging that container with him . . . and also how it was related to the “red ring”.
Dauge rushed through this explanation, wincing as though from heartburn. He didn’t believe in the “Tahmasp Enigma”. But he was happy to talk about the riches of the Golkonda for hours. If only we could fly there, walk there, crawl there . . .
Bykov leaned over sideways across the railing. The pack of cigarettes was ever so tempting, so he laid it next to him. A small helicopter fluttered softly by overhead. Bykov followed its signal lights, red and white. He remembered again his conversation with Dauge.
Tahmasp and his comrades went to the Golkonda on foot. But our expedition is taking a transporter. Dauge says that it’s a brilliant machine. Ioganich always says things are brilliant: the “Hius” is brilliant, the transporter is brilliant, Yurkovskiy is brilliant. But he was more restrained when talking about the commander. Apparently, Yermakov is Krayukhin’s foster son. He’s of the best cosmonauts in the world, but has his idiosyncrasies. Of course, he apparently had a very difficult life. Dauge said of him with unusual uncertainty:
“I don’t really know him . . . people say . . . they say he’s very brave, very knowledgeable, and very cruel . . . They say he never laughs . . .”
Yermakov’s wife was the first person to land on Venus’s moon. [4] After that, there was an accident. No one knew exactly what happened-some kind of conflict between members of the crew. Since then, women were no longer allowed on long interplanetary flights, and Yermakov dedicated himself entirely to the siege of Venus. It turned out he had tried four times to land on the surface of the planet, and all four times he failed. The fifth time he flew with Tahmasp Mekhti. And now, on the “Hius”, he was going to Venus a sixth time.
Bykov paced the balcony, hands folded behind his back. No, he couldn’t even cool off tonight! It was much too hot, muggy even. Bykov could feel himself growing more and more certain that the best and most radical sleep aid would be a cigarette. A slender, aromatic cigarette, enchanting, lulling, comforting . . . he picked up the pack.
The best way to overcome temptation is to give in! He snickered. But no, dammit-the rules! The cigarette pack shot down all the way from the eleventh floor. Bykov bent over the railing and stared into the dark abyss. Down below, a set of blinding lights ignited, scuttered across the asphalt and went out.
Littering now, thought Bykov. I just can’t get it together! I should sleep . . . He went back inside and felt his way to the sofa. Something crunched under his foot. And there’s my watch, he thought, struggling to find a reference point in the darkness.
He sighed deeply and lowered himself onto the spongy cushions of the indomitable sofa. No, no sleep for you tonight, comrade engineer, “desert specialist”! What’s up with that pretty-boy Yurkovskiy resenting me so much? Now the nickname’s stuck: desert specialist. And the way he looked when he talked about Paul Dangée! . . . No, that type doesn’t get insomnia before a flight. “We aren’t afraid of death, we merely try to avoid it.” Is that so, engineer? And what if, a year from now, someone in that same foyer tells his friends: “Comrades, have you heard? The ‘Hius’ crashed. Yermakov is dead, and Yurkovskiy, and also . . . you know, what’s-his-name . . . the desert specialist.” . . . Oh, nonsense, Alexei! This is insomnia and idleness talking. If only morning would come sooner-and the plane, and the Seventh Polygon, and the launch pad in the arctic, where the expedition will prepare for takeoff and wait for the Hius, which is now on a test flight. I have to get up at eight today, but I can’t sleep, God damn it! . . . Dauge must be asleep already . . .”
But then Bykov noticed that the door to Dauge’s bedroom was cracked open, and a faint ray of light fell on the adjacent wall. He got up, tiptoed to the door and peeked through the crack. Dauge sat, head in his hands, at a desk beside his unmade bed. The desk was almost bare; on the floor lay a huge camping backpack. On top of the backpack was a geological hammer with a glossy handle. Bykov cleared his throat.
“Come in,” said Dauge, without moving.
“Uhhhm . . .” Alexei drew out the sound, as he had no idea what to say. “You know, I forgot to ask you . . .”
Dauge turned around.
“Come on in, come on . . . sit down. Now, what did you want to ask?”
Bykov wracked his brains so hard his teeth scraped.
“Uhhhm . . . Well, you know . . .” suddenly a thought struck him. “Right. Why are we putting radio beacons on Venus if its atmosphere doesn’t let radio waves through?”
The deep shadow of a lampshade cut across Dauge’s face. Bykov sat down in a small, low armchair and triumphantly crossed one foot over the other. He felt very relieved now that he was in a lighted room, and his loyal friend Ioganich was beside him.
“Yes,” Dauge said thoughtfully. “That really is an extremely important question. Now I understand what’s been keeping you awake. I was thinking, what’s he doing traipsing around the room like that? Does he have a toothache or something? And all along it was those beacons . . .”
“Y-yeah,” Bykov replied uncertainly, putting his foot back down. The feeling of relief had run off someplace.
“I imagine you have some theories on the subject?” Dauge continued in a most serious tone. “Naturally, you must have come up with something during your . . . vigil? Something useful to us . . .”
“You see, Ioganich . . .” Bykov began pathetically, trying to make his expression as profound as possible and without the slightest clue as to how he would finish the sentence.
“Yes, yes, I understand you,” Dauge interrupted with a nod. “And you know? You’re completely-absolutely right! That’s exactly how it is. Venus’s atmosphere really does block radio waves, but, at a very specific wavelength, we believe we can break the radio blockade. That wavelength has been determined using both entirely theoretical calculations and observational data examining the local ion interactions on . . . on what, engineer?”
“Venus,” Bykov said darkly.
“Precisely! Venus! The planet’s atmosphere does sometimes release other wavelengths, but that’s a matter of chance, which we can’t rely on. So, our job is to determine the viable range and, having done so, set up our beacons on the surface of . . . the surface of what?”
“Venus!” Bykov spat.
“Brilliant!” Dauge said admiringly. “You didn’t spend the night awake for nothing! Although all previous attempts to set up a radio transmitter on the surface ended . . . how, engineer?”
“Enough,” Bykov stopped him, fidgeting in his chair.
“Hm . . . too bad. My friend, they ended badly. Most likely because the rovers holding the beacons crashed into cliffs. Or, at least, went out of order during landing some other way. Although, even if they hadn’t broken, what would we do with them? They would be no use to us. But now we have . . . what do we have?”
“We have no patience left,” Bykov muttered.
Dauge solemnly proclaimed:
“We have the ‘Hius’, and we have the beacons, and we know the exact wavelengths at which the signals of the aforementioned beacons will break through the atmosphere. That means we have everything, everything but patience, and patience is a simple matter. I think you can sleep soundly.”
Alexei sighed sadly and stood up.
“Insomnia,” he said.
Dauge nodded.
“It happens.”
Bykov walked across the room and stopped in front of a trio of holographic photos on the wall. The one on the left depicted a narrow antique street in some Baltic city, the right-a space ship, similar to a hugely magnified rifle bullet from the Great Fatherland War, its sharp end piercing the black sky. In the middle photograph Bykov saw a sad-looking young woman in a dark-blue dress buttoned to the neck.
“Who’s this, Ioganich? Your wife?”
“Y-yes . . . actually, no,” Dauge said uncomfortably. “That’s Maria Yurkovskaya, Vlad’s sister. We broke up . . .”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
The engineer bit his lip, returned to the armchair and sat. Dauge aimlessly paged through a book on the desk in front of him.
“She left, actually . . . that’s more accurate . . .”
Bykov stayed quiet, looking over his friend’s tanned face. In the bluish lamplight it seemed dark indeed.
“I can’t sleep either, Alexei,” Dauge said dejectedly. “I’m sad about Paul. And this time I don’t really feel like flying. I love the Earth. A lot! You probably think that all interplanetors are dedicated sky-dwellers. But you’re wrong. We all love Earth very much, and miss the blue sky. That’s our affliction, missing the blue sky. Think: you’re sitting somewhere on Phobos. The sky is endless and black. The stars pierce your eyes like diamond needles. The constellations are unfamiliar and feral. And everything around you is artificial: the air is artificial, the heat is artificial, even your weight is artificial . . .”
Bykov listened motionlessly.
“You don’t know about that. You can’t sleep just because you’re on the threshold-one foot here, the other there. While Yurkovskiy is sitting somewhere and writing poetry. Poetry about the blue sky, about misty lakes, about white clouds above a forest clearing. Bad poetry-on Earth every editor is up to their ears in that sort of poetry-and he knows that perfectly well. But he writes it anyway.”
Dauge shut the book and leaned back in his chair, cocking his head.
“And our round navigator, Krutikov, is racing through Moscow in his car, of course. With his wife. She’s at the wheel, and he’s sitting there and can’t take his eyes off her. And he’s feeling sad that the kids aren’t here. His children live with their grandmother in Novosibirsk. A little boy and a girl, great kids . . .” Suddenly Dauge laughed. “If anyone is sleeping right now, it’s Bogdan Spitsyn, our co-pilot. He’s most at home in a rocket. He says, ‘for me, Earth is like a train-I want to lie down and sleep so I can get off faster.’ Bogdan is a sky-dweller. There are some of those among us-addicted for life. Bogdan was born on Mars, in a research settlement on the Syrtis Major. He lived there until he was five, and then his mother got sick and had to be sent to Earth. And so, people say, they set itty-bitty Bogdan down on the grass to play. He walked around a bit, then stepped in a puddle and started screaming, ‘I wanna go hoooome! To Mars!’”
Bykov laughed gratefully, sensing that the mass of confused feelings weighing down his soul was melting and sliding away. Everything was so simple: he really was on the threshold, one foot here and the other there . . .
“Well, what’s our commander doing?” he asked.
Dauge drew back.
“I don’t know. I can’t even imagine . . . I don’t know.”
“He’s probably asleep too, like sky-dweller Bogdan . . .”
Dauge shook his head.
“I doubt it . . . is the sky clear tonight?”
“No, it’s overcast . . .”
“In that case, I really don’t know.” Dauge shook his head. “I could imagine Anatoliy Yermakov standing somewhere, staring at a bright star on the horizon, at Venus. His hands . . .” Dauge paused. “His hands clenched in fists, knuckles white . . .”
“Some imagination you have, Ioganich!”
“No, Alexei, I’m not imagining it. Venus is, all in all, a single episode for us. We’ve been on the Moon, we’ve been on Mars, and now we’re flying to study a new planet. We’re just doing our jobs. But Yermakov . . . Yermakov has a score to settle, an old, savage score. I can tell you why he’s flying: he wants to avenge and conquer. Mercilessly, once and for all. That’s how I see it . . . He’s dedicated his life and death to Venus.”
“You know him well?”
Dauge shrugged his shoulders.
“That doesn’t matter. I can feel this. And anyway,” he started counting on his fingers. “Nishijima, the Japanese pilot-his friend, Sokolovskiy-his closest friend, Xi Fen-Yu-his teacher, Ekaterina Romanovna-his wife . . . Venus devoured them all. Krayukhin is a second father to him, and Krayukhin’s last flight was to Venus. After that trip, the doctors forbid him from flying . . .”
Dauge stood up and started pacing the room.
“To tame and conquer,” he repeated. “Mercilessly, once and for all! For Yermakov, Venus is the obstinate, malicious embodiment of the all elemental forces that threaten humankind. I’m not sure the rest of us will ever get to experience the same feeling. And it’s probably for the better. To understand it, we would have to struggle like Yermakov has, and suffer like he has . . . To conquer once and for all . . .” Dauge repeated thoughtfully.
A sudden chill shook Alexei’s shoulders.
“That’s why I mentioned clenched fists,” Dauge finished, looking at him intently. “But since it’s overcast tonight, I really can’t imagine what he might be doing. Probably, you’re right, and he’s asleep.”
They stopped talking for a while. Bykov figured he’d never had a boss quite like that before.
“And how are things with you?” Dauge asked suddenly.
“What things?”
“With your teacher in Ashgabat.”
Bykov’s face fell.
“Not so great,” he said sadly. “We’re dating . . .”
“Is that so? Dating. And?”
“That’s all.”
“Have you proposed to her?”
“Yes.”
“And she refused?”
“No. She said she’d consider it.”
“And when was this?”
“Six months back.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and’? That was it.”
“So, what you’re saying is you’re a complete idiot, Alexei-pardon me, for goodness sake.”
Bykov sighed. Dauge smiled at him mockingly.
“Incredible!” He said. “A thirtysomething guy loves a beautiful woman and has been dating her for seven years already-”
“Five.”
“Alright then, five. After five years he tells her how he feels. Note that she waited patiently for five years, this poor unfortunate woman . . .”
“Grigoriy, stop it,” Bykov said, frowning.
“One minute! After she said she would consider it, either out of humility or as gentle revenge . . .”
“Cut it out!”
Dauge sighed and threw up his hands.
“It’s your own fault, Alexei! Your courtship style is downright insulting! What must she think about you? Jeez!”
Bykov listened despondently. Then he perked up and said,
“When we get back . . .”
Dauge chuckled:
“Oh, the brave conqueror! . . . sorry, desert specialist! ‘When we get back!’ I can’t even look at you anymore. Get to sleep!”
Bykov stood and took the book from the table. “La description planétographique du Phobos. [5] Paul Dangée,” he read. The title page bore a Russian inscription written in thick red pencil: “To my dear Dauge, from your loyal and grateful friend Paul Dangée”.
*
Bykov woke at dawn. The door to the bedroom was half-open. Dauge was standing in his underwear by the writing desk, dark and disheveled, staring at the portrait of the young woman-Maria Yurkovskaya. Then he took the portrait from the wall and stuffed it into his backpack.
Bykov quietly rolled over and fell asleep again.
[1] So, in case you don’t know, a meson is a subatomic particle that consists of a quark and an antiquark. Also, just for the record, muons are not mesons, as Wikipedia assures me, but are in fact leptons. I trust you know what to do with this information. Oh, and did you know quarks have flavors? But those flavors are up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charm. Come on, guys, charm? That is the worst Lay’s “Do Us A Flavor” idea ever. If you’re going to arbitrarily call your science concept a flavor, you ought to have the wherewithal to keep the theme going and call the equally arbitrary variations on it, like, barbecue, or green apple or something. (Listen, I picked the hardest biology class just so I could avoid physics in 12th grade, and this is literally rocket science.)
[2] This is not a real building. It was supposed to be built on the site of the old Church of Christ the Savior, and should have been the headquarters of the Soviet government, but the soil there couldn’t support its weight, so a pool was put there instead. In the post-soviet era, the old church has been rebuilt. The image at the start of this post is a photoshopped artist's interpretation of how Moscow would look had the Palace of Soviets been successfully built.
[3] The real Golkonda is a city in India, home to mines that produce diamonds of exceptional quality. We’re talking hundreds of carats. No word on whether King Solomon was ever there, because all the Google results aside from Wikipedia and Britannica are just fancy hotels there.
[4] So, Venus actually doesn’t have a moon, but that’s what it says.
[5] “A Planetographical Description of Phobos” in French.