‘Good evening, comrade,’ a disembodied voice said as Medev finally pushed open the cafeteria door at almost two in the morning. It belonged to Galina, one of the cafeteria staff, who had lived and worked in the Narkomfin Building almost as long as Medev had. She was a widow, and happy to take the graveyard shifts so the other workers could spend their evenings and nights with their families. Medev liked Galina. She had a good sense of humour, and was an excellent cook.

‘Busy day?’ Galina asked, appearing through the side door to the kitchen.

‘Very,’ Medev replied, taking a seat at one of the empty tables in the small section of the cafeteria that still had its lights on.

‘And productive,’ she said, her voice rising to mimic the Party messages that were broadcast on radios across the country every day about the value of hard work.

Of course,’ Medev said, smiling.

The last two days had, as far as Medev was concerned, been anything but productive. He’d spent them locked in an unmoving argument with Sergei Korolev. Many people only knew Korolev by his grandiose and somewhat made-up title of chief designer of rocket-space systems. Medev, unfortunately, was now far more intimately acquainted with the man and his overblown aspirations.

Kennedy wanted to take America to the moon, but Korolev wanted to take Russia to Mars. It had been his secret ambition for years, and he’d somehow persuaded Khrushchev that it should be a public one. He’d drawn up plans for orbital launching platforms and electric rocket engines, and was preparing to build an advanced life support system at the Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. The closed-loop system, codenamed BIOS-3, could theoretically sustain human life indefinitely with recycled air and water, food cultivators, and xenon lamps designed to mimic sunlight—all key concerns for getting people all the way to the red planet and back again. But, unlike NASA and its endless budgets, Korolev had to fight for funding and not even having Khrushchev’s ear could get him everything he needed. It would take more money than he had to make BIOS-3 a reality, so he had travelled, cap grudgingly in hand, all the way from Siberia.

‘BIOS-3 is crucial to establishing Soviet dominance of the cosmos,’ Korolev had declared in their first meeting.

‘That is very good,’ Medev replied. ‘But what will it give our comrades here on Earth?’

Korolev didn’t like being questioned. Medev didn’t care. He had to deal with people like Korolev on an almost weekly basis—people who, he suspected, were more interested in personal glory than advancing the Soviet cause.

‘Hope,’ Korolev said after a long pause.

‘Communism doesn’t need hope,’ Medev replied. ‘It needs protecting.’