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look kindly on us progressive peoples.”
    “But the Tunguska meteor fell in 1908!” I said.
    “Interesting,” Popov mused. “Historical-determinist cosmic-oids could have calculated through Marxist science that Russia would be first to achieve communism. They might well have left us some message or legacy.”
    “But Comrade Colonel ...”
    Popov rustled open a desk drawer. “Have you read this book?” It was Kazantsev’s space romance. “It’s all the rage at the space center these days. I got my copy from your friend Nina Bogulyubova.”
    “Well ...” I said.
    “Then why do you presume to debate me without even reading the facts?” Popov folded his arms. “We find it significant that the Tunguska event took place on June 30, 1908. Today is June 15, 1958. If heroic measures are taken, you may reach the Tunguska valley on the very day of the 50th anniversary!”
    That Tartar cow Bogulyubova had gotten to the Higher Circles first. Actually, it didn’t surprise me that our KGB would support Vlad’s scheme. They controlled our security, but our complex engineering and technical developments much exceeded their mental grasp. Space aliens, however, were a concept anyone could understand.
    Any skepticism on their part was crushed by the Chief Designer’s personal support for the scheme. The chief had been getting a lot of play in Khrushchev’s speeches lately, and was known as a miracle worker. If he said it was possible, that was good enough for Security.
    I was helpless. An expedition was organized in frantic haste.
    Naturally it was vital to have KGB along. Me, of course, since I was guarding Vlad. And Nina Bogulyubova, as she was Vlad’s superior. But then the KGB of the other departments grew jealous of Metallurgy and Information Mechanics. They suspected that we were pulling a fast one. Suppose an artifact really were discovered? It would make all our other work obsolete overnight. Would it not be best that each department have a KGB observer present? Soon we found no end of applicants for the expedition.
    We were lavishly equipped. We had ten railway cars. Four held our Red Army escort and their tracked all-terrain vehicles. We also had three sleepers, a galley car, and two flatcars piled high with rations, tents, excavators, Geiger counters, radios, and surveying instruments. Vlad brought a bulky calculating device, Captain Nina supplied her own mysterious crates, and I had a box of metallurgical analysis equipment, in case we found a piece of the UFO.
    We were towed through Moscow under tight security, then our cars were shackled to the green-and-yellow Trans-Siberian Express.
    Soon the expedition was chugging across the endless, featureless steppes of central Asia. I grew so bored that I was forced to read Kazantsev’s book.
    On June 30, 1908, a huge, mysterious fireball had smashed into the Tunguska River valley of the central Siberian uplands. This place was impossibly remote. Kazantsev suggested that the crash point had been chosen deliberately to avoid injuring Earthlings.
    It was not until 1927 that the first expedition reached the crash site, revealing terrific devastation, but— no sign whatsoever of a meteorite ! They found no impact crater, either; only the swampy Tunguska valley, surrounded by an elliptical blast pattern: sixty kilometers of dead, smashed trees.
    Kazantsev pointed out that the facts suggested a nuclear airburst. Perhaps it was a deliberate detonation by aliens, to demonstrate atomic power to Earthlings. Or it might have been the accidental explosion of a nuclear starship drive. In an accidental crash, a socially advanced alien pilot would naturally guide his stricken craft to one of the planet’s “poles of uninhabitedness.” And eyewitness reports made it clear that the Tunguska body had definitely changed course in flight!
    Once I had read this excellent work, my natural optimism surfaced again. Perhaps we would find something grand in Tunguska after all, something