Starman_ The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin - Jamie Doran [51]
Petropavlovsk received the telemetry from Vostok, and the signals were laboriously keyed into a secure code, then relayed over ground links to Moscow, where Yuri Mazzhorin, Academician Keldysh and a squad of computer operators unscrambled the codes and fed the data into their gigantic machines.
Petropavlovsk’s window of opportunity for radio contact was very brief. Less than thirty minutes after launching into Baikonur’s early morning, Vostok swept over the Pacific, into the vast shadow of earth’s sleeping half. Down below, the Americans were asleep. Their night-shrouded continents, North and South, sped beneath the ship, and Gagarin would have noted them only as geographers’ rumours on his little navigation globe. Now, in this darkest realm, he could see the stars. They were sharp and bright, and did not flicker. There were more stars than he had ever seen from the ground, even on the clearest winter nights.
As its tilted orbit carried Vostok into the southern hemisphere, it sped over Cape Horn and across the South Atlantic. The ground controllers instructed Gagarin to make his switch settings for the re-entry procedure. He checked the ‘Vzor’ to confirm that the systems had aligned the ship correctly, with the retro-rockets pointing against the direction of travel and aimed above the horizon at a certain precise angle. But Gagarin did not have many switches to alter. It was more a question of telling the controllers on earth what the ship around him was doing of its own accord. As far as any published account shows, he never once touched the controls, or punched the three secret numbers into his keypad.
At 10.25 Moscow Time, seventy-nine minutes into the flight, Vostok’s retro-rockets began their deceleration burn precisely on time, just as the craft was sweeping over West Africa, firing for exactly forty seconds, then shutting down correctly. This was the last duty required of the equipment and retropack module behind the ball. The four metal wrap-around straps that held the ball in place were snapped apart by small explosive charges. Gagarin felt the ball twist violently as it came away.
The first phase of the de-orbit burn went according to plan. And in a quiet moment, while the automatic systems ran through their paces, Gagarin began to realize the enormity of what he had done.
I wondered, ‘What will people on earth say when they hear about my flight?’ . . . I thought about my mother, and how when I was a child she used to kiss me between my shoulder blades before I went to sleep. Did she know where I was now? Had Valya told her about my flight?3
No, his family had not been prepared for the news, because of the secrecy that surrounded the whole mission. Gagarin had been allowed to inform Valya, but he misled her with a white lie, saying that he was going up on April 14, so that she would not worry on the real launch day.
Zoya was getting ready for her shift at the main hospital in Gzhatsk when the news exploded. ‘It was very difficult for us. We found it out from the radio. Yuri had told mother he was going on a business trip. When mother asked, “How far?” he said, “Very far”, so we didn’t know where he was going, or when.’ In fact, they had not intended to switch on the radio that morning. Zoya’s young son (another Yuri) was doing his homework and needed to concentrate. Anna was quietly cooking. As Zoya recalls, ‘Suddenly Valentin’s wife Maria came hurrying through the door, out of breath. “Yura!” she said. Mamma became very still. “Tell me, what is it – has he crashed?” And Maria said, “No, not yet.” Looking back, it was quite comical, although we were very worried. Maria finally explained, “He’s in space!” I lost my temper without thinking. “My God, he’s