Fili Assembly Plant, USSR, 1965
The final days leading up to the N1 launch were a frenzy of activity. The engineering team, under intense pressure from the KGB, worked around the clock to integrate the flawed American-supplied dampener designs. They complained constantly about the lack of testing data and the rushed timeline, but Colonel Volkov silenced them with threats and ideological lectures.
Sergei watched the monstrosity take shape, a multi-stage suicide machine. He tried one last desperate move. He approached Turchinsky, the lead engineer.
"The published Swiss paper has the correct variables," Sergei whispered in the busy assembly plant, hoping the industrial noise would cover his voice. "We can adjust the final assembly."
Turchinsky wiped grease from his brow, his eyes weary but defiant. "Volkov has guards on the assembly line, Sergei Pavlovich. The parts are sealed. We use the 'intelligence' parts or we face the firing squad. My team and I have made our peace with the failure. Our hands are clean. Yours, Doctor Kirov, are not."
Sergei walked away, a pariah. He had to witness the launch from the bunker control room, a front-row seat to the catastrophe he helped orchestrate.
Houston, Texas, USA, 1965
Jim Donovan and Captain Sterling were running out of time. They knew the launch was imminent. Jim used his pull as a decorated astronaut to get face time with a senior U.S. Senator on the Space Committee.
"They're using the flawed data we fed them, Senator," Jim argued, showing him the Swiss journal article and the internal Air Force intelligence reports. "We need to use the backchannels from the Cuban Missile Crisis—the ones the President used—to warn Khrushchev they are using bad data."
The Senator looked at Jim, his face hard. "Major, the goal of the Cold War is to win. If the Soviet rocket blows up, it proves our technological superiority and weakens the Soviet regime. This is national security."
"People will die, Senator!"
"A regrettable necessity in a war, Major," the Senator said, standing up. "I cannot help you. In fact, I suggest you return to your post and forget this conversation ever happened."
Jim left the office. The American government was content to let the Soviets fail. The rivalry was everything.
"We have one option left," Jim told Sterling back in the diner. "We have to use the press. We need to find a journalist we can trust to publish everything."
They decided on Davies, the same journalist who covered trade disputes in Helsinki, whose name Sterling had found on the periphery of an old intelligence file as a potential neutral contact. They made the call, laying out the entire conspiracy: the CIA plot, the N1 flaw, the imminent launch.
Star City, USSR, November 15th, 1965
It was launch day. The world watched, glued to radio broadcasts and limited television footage. Sergei sat in the concrete bunker, watching the massive N1 on the screen, his stomach in knots.
In Moscow, Volkov was preparing for a hero's welcome.
In Washington D.C., Jim and Sterling watched a television in the Senator's parking garage, hoping the story had broken.
It had. A small headline on the AP wire was starting to circulate globally: "Allegations of US-Soviet Space Sabotage Swirl on Launch Day."
The launch sequence began.
T-minus 60 seconds.
Sergei watched the pressure gauges climb. Everything looked nominal. The flawed data was holding.
T-minus 10 seconds.
The engines roared to life, shaking the earth. Fire and fury erupted from the base of the N1.
T-minus 0. Liftoff.
The massive rocket strained against gravity. It rose slowly, majestically, a beacon of Soviet ambition.
T-plus 40 seconds.
The gauges in the bunker suddenly spiked. Acoustic vibrations. The Pogo oscillation was beginning. The flawed dampeners weren't stopping it; they were enhancing it.
T-plus 65 seconds. The rocket was just reaching maximum aerodynamic pressure.
On the screen, a small flicker of fire appeared near the engine clustering. Then another. The N1 shuddered violently. The structural integrity failed in a spectacular, blinding flash of light and debris. The rocket didn't just explode; it disintegrated in midair, raining fire down on the Kazakh steppe.
The bunker went silent. Volkov, watching from Moscow, pounded his fist on a table, swearing violently.
The cosmonauts were dead. The N1 program was set back years. The U.S. had won this round of the rivalry.
Jim watched the explosion on the TV screen, the relief of the warning being published quickly overwritten by the horror of the explosion. They were too late.
The novel ends here, on the ashes of the N1, a stark reminder of the human cost of the American-Russian rivalry during the Cold War.
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