March 24th, 1961 – In a dimly lit room, in the intensive care unit of SP Botkin Hospital, lies a soon-to-be state secret. Hours away from death, an IV drips into the sole of the man’s foot, unadorned by the standard-issue Soviet Air Force boots. Traumatologist, Vladimir Golyakhovsky, is on watch—he observes the stillness of the man with dread. The phone is in the other room. The words are rattling through his head—“Due to an absurd tragedy,” “Despite the best efforts of the staff of Botkin hospital, Lt. B—It is with terrible regret that I must inform you that…Valentin Vasilyevich—succumbed to his injuries…during the endurance…” “There was a fire.”

A tap on the door interrupts Golyakhovsky’s torrent of thoughts. He looks up at a young man, another trainee pilot. He squints, unable to make out his features without his spectacles. He is pale, sallow under the sterile luminescence, and his hair is wet under the black fur of his hat.

“Well?”

Golyakhovsky shrugs and gestures to the bed. Well, it is over.

He gets up and limply begins to walk out, when the pilot grabs his arm.

“Did you see it happen?” Up close, the doctor realizes he had seen the man before. Their monochrome faces stare out from the photographs—an amalgamation of severity and duty, to be doctored into happiness once the portrait becomes a stamp. “Did you see if it was an accident?”

At that, the doctor draws away, as if from an adder. He stumbles backwards into the table, the clink of the spoon against the rim of the teacup startling him.

“An accident…of course it was an accident! He…he was in the pressure chamber. He was alone.”

“I know—I was in another one.”

The doctor shakes his head. Of course he was there. They all were. He can still see the red marks where the biosensors had stuck to his skin beneath the collar of his coat. Ten days into the endurance test, 20 days before launch—he could have been one of them.

But in that hospital room, the two of them were finished. In one sense or another. Golyakhovsky feels sorry for the youth—not just the one on the hospital bed. The fact that the young pilot was here, having waited in a Moscowian March to be admitted to see his friend in his final hours…he should be in Baikonur.

The doctor pauses in that thought. Three of them. He was here too. And he had better make that phone call. “I ought to go,” he explains to the man, trying to walk past him. “I ought to call Kamanin and tell him.”

“I should like to hear what you say,” was the reply. Not that whatever Golyakvhosky says will matter—but what Kamanin answers certainly does. “Surely, he will keep it a secret. From the others.”

Of course he will, Golyakvhosky does not dare to say.

The man, however, continues, speaking loudly. Golyakhovsky gestures for him to keep his voice down.

“With the rest of them at Baikonur, and the Americans launching every other week—“

“—that’s classified—”

“—and here we are!” He pinches the bridge of his nose, looks down. “We can’t even keep a fucking dog alive.”

“You shouldn’t have said any of this. Think…think of your comrades. How hard they trained. How demoralizing it will be for them to hear this—I wasn’t there, but you know what I heard he told them?” he gestures to the burned man. “He said ‘it was my fault’. Now that takes a man to admit, doesn’t it? Your friend, he was as good as any of you. And as human as any of you.”

He wants to say more, but cannot find the words. It was as if they both felt the vacuum around them in that moment—a vacuum into which they spoke, not a single word of it transmittable, verifiable, proven.

The young pilot solemnly told the doctor that he would stand deathwatch for his friend. Golyakvhosky nods as he moves towards the phone again, but finds himself needing to clarify. Clarify for himself, who exactly is he dooming to obscurity.

“He was Bondarenko, correct?”

The pilot nods. “Bondarenko. From Kharkiv,” he stresses.

From Kharkiv, yes. Ukrainian SSR. With son and wife.

“And you are Gagarin?”

The cosmonaut trainee turns away. He shakes his head. “No. He’s at Baikonur. Consider what you tell Kamanin…it’s either him, Titov, or Nelyubov for liftoff.”