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PURE FICTION - PURE FICTION - PURE FICTION

COSMOBITCH   Piotr Muraveinik

The wish to amaze the world with a mixed (animal and human) crew in a Soyuz spacecraft, forced the devising of two simultaneous options: the first one consisted of sending a macaque; the sencond one, a dog. Experiments with animals had ranged from medium mammals to insects. Spanish flies of the Drosophilidae variety or "vinegar fly" were mostly appreciated, especially because their genetic codes were well known and allowed the following of the ageing process and the embrionary development of those friendly organisms easily. Of all the secondary effects caused by exposition to weightlessness, the ones that caused more concern were those whose traces did not manifest immediately but whose symptoms remained waiting, like a time bomb. Genetic matters opened more questions than any other.   There was no empirical data to find any orientation, only presumptions. Alarmed, doctors and biologists urged the Academy of Sciences to start a testing program in that direction. Could cosmonauts' descendants suffer from any type of anomaly? The absence of answers would give rise to a series of experiments such as the exceptional one carried out by Tereshkova and Nikolayev. Macaques, whose size was adequate for the capsule, were the animals that best ressembled men and, therefore, the most suitable. However, when thinking of a mixed mission with Istochnikov, the idea was simply rejected for a very simple reason: in the farms of Kaluga there were many dogs, but not macaques. Ivan had spent his childhood with all sorts of farm animals and that conferred him some qualifications the other candidates in Zvezdny Gorodok were lacking. He knew dogs in depth and how to treat them, as well as knowing how to interpret the messages of their bark or of the movement of their tails; he knew how to calm them down too. The truth then was that he did not know what to say to macaques. It was determined: Istochnikov would travel with a dog.   In the selection of the animal, like in any of a cosmonaut, not only political factors were considered but technical as well: Firstly, it had to be of a breed originary from Russia; a friendly and photogenic example able to engage young audiences in the whole world; and secondly, it had to be well prepared for the mission it was being assigned. In that case, it should be a prolific female dog in order to guarantee intensive breeding that would facilitate laboratory testing. And that is the way Kloka was found.

THE ENIGMA OF THE METEORITE   Salman Zagdeev

The original report about the meteorite that struck the re-entry module of the Soyuz 2 has been lost. The cause of this loss is unknown. This report consisted of twenty-three pages, including a complete mineralogical analysis carried out by the space geologist Dr. Boris Laurentiev and his colleagues at the Institute of Experimental Physics Research of the Union, a subsection of the Centre of Weights and Measurements. Laurentiev died in 1978 and no copy of his work has come to light. All that remains of the dossier are a few diagrams and photographs; these documents were often accompanied with notes, in Laurentiev's handwriting. The following details are what can be deduced from the remaining material: a siderite or siderolite meteor 20 x 20,5 x 9,5 cm, with an Earth weight of 3.425 gr., partly concave with a rough, stone surface and partly convex with iridescent, metallic channels forming twisted shapes. In its composition there is an abundance of iron and iron ore (83%), followed by nickel. Then comes a string of residual elements, in small or tiny proportions, such as selenium, titanium and uranium, in some instances rich in radioactive isotopes and alloys containing high-density nuclear crystals. The experts found the composition familiar, it coincided with one taken from the enormous meteorite that fell in 1908 in the area of Tunguska, in Siberia, the origin of which is still a mystery. The most fabulous aspect of this piece was the discovery -which alone would have been enough to justify all the secrecy surrounding the case- , in a niche inside the convex part, of a small area (approximately 12 cm2) where the rough surface texture changed. Examined under ultraviolet light a number of small incisions following a linear design could be perceived. Evidently, how these incisions were made, and whether or not they were the result of some natural geological phenomenon, was not known. At the time, the hypothesis that they might be an inscription of some sort, in other words, a kind of message, was also taken into consideration. When enlarged they looked like a fragment of Mesopotamian cuneiform writing. Investigating this possibility, various unsuccessful attempts were made to decipher the "text". There is no record of the names of those who carried out this task, members of the Army's Crytographical Services and experts in dead languages at Moscow University. If these marks were part of a code, none of the Soviet Union's experts were able to unravel it. Naturally, the highest discretion was expected of all the people working on the analysis. If any information leaked out, the foreign media would cover the story and cause a scare among the Russian public. But, mostly, what the authorities feared was that the meteorite act as the excuse for a scandal of wide-ranging consequences, aimed not just at the space programme but at the Soviet scientific system itself, which was the pride and joy of the regime. In the first instance, the most plausible explanation about the Soyuz 2 incident pointed towards an act of sabotage carried out by North Americans. If this was so, then the meteorite and its false "message" would be part of a series of false clues and decoys, designed to mislead Soviet scientists and impel them to announce world-wide the discovery of a "sideral communiqué". Later, if it proved untrue, it would be hugely embarrassing. So the theory that the meteorite was a letter sent from outer space by some kind of intelligence capable of doing so, was poetic, but not very convincing, as well as extremely dangerous. The Presidium of the Science Academy rejected this line of interpretation and banned research. However, the experts thought that if it was an elaborate hoax, then congratulations, it had been magnificently arranged. And behind their admiration, lurked the fear: how on earth had they done it? Because it was clear that it required materials and technology of a level that they had not even in their wildest dreams suspected the enemy of possessing. The most believable explanation, therefore, was the one that pointed to a secret agent: someone who had infiltrated his way into the research team, or a scientist traitor, author of the incisions. It is known that the KGB made some arrests. Nevertheless, there was another worrying factor. The fact that the meteorite had incrusted itself onto the wall of the ship, without destroying it, indicated a relatively low collision speed. Rather than the impact of a projectile, it was as though the meteorite had wanted to attach itself to the outside of the capsule to be transported. This enigma of space mechanics kept astrophysicists at the Academy busy, but in the end they had to admit that, leaving fantastic solutions to one side, the strict application of natural laws did not come up with any acceptable answers. Moreover, perhaps the marks were fortuitous: Kapriznaia priroda ("Nature is capricious"). If centuries of patient dripping of calcareous rock is capable of building those architectural marvels, stalactites and stalagmites, then a bunch of doodles is child's play. Apparently Ustinov bellowed like a wild beast when he heard about the failure of the investigatory commission. He was surrounded by incompetent scientists who had not yet understood that science must serve politics. What possessed them to bring him this nonsense about doubts and Martian theories? The only thing that interested him was proof to accuse the Americans with.

STUDY OF THE ASTEROID   Salman Zagdeev

In 1968, the astronomic subject of the year was the existence of other pulsars or neutron stars, but the discovery of the asteroid Kadok from the observatory at Kivinsk, the year before, still remained in everybody's minds. Its huge radio telescope, which the Academy of Sciences was so proud of, had detected that considerably irregular heavenly body in the main asteroid belt, orbiting an ellipse of such an eccentricity that managed to cut Ceres trajectory and approached Earth. Different to millions of other similar asteroids, its perturbations in orbit were not caused by Jupiter's proximity, a fact that created confusion amongst celestial mechanics researchers. When Keldysh and other space theoreticians suggested sending a probe to Kadok, they were following a scientific impulse which was as ambitious as predictable. It could not be yet certainly asserted whether those shapeless rocks, without apparently either any atmosphere or life, simple deserts adrift, were the remains of a planet that might have burst in a cosmic collision, or those of a star which did not even reach formation, or simple minuscule condensations of primary slag from the gallaxy. in any case, their study was going to facilitate much information about the primitive history of the solar system. Sometimes one of those bodies was erradicated from its place by the combined action of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and, like the famous cases of Kali and Gaspra, they had begun wondering about their fall towards the sun. The probe that had been sent from Soyuz 2 was equipped with a system of image transmission, a mineralographic clip, a fluid analysing sensor, a mass spectometer and a radio beacon, which would send signals for 6 years and would be allowed to follow the asteroids trajectory. Kadok was presenting a curious morphology, a maximum length of 87 km and a width of 63 km, with two clearly differentiated sides, as if the star had been cut in two. The geophysical features of one of the sides showed the usual scars caused by the meteorites, in the other, however, the landscape had suffered the shift of tectonic layers and erosion, as in the Earth's crust, and presented craters of presumed eruptions on its surface (which indicated, as well, the existence of an inner source of heat that might be produced by gravitation forces or by radioactivity). In its small field of gravitation, Kadok had trapped a diminutive moon called Hexar.

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