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all right,” he says with false certainty. Taking after his dad already, trying to pretend he’s the solid family man. Her sidelong glance at him steals any residual confidence. Then it’s their turn.
    “Names, passports, country of origin?” The guy with the moustache is brusque and bored, irritated by the heat.
    Robert smiles at him. “Robert and Madeleine Holbright, from Canada?” He offers their passports.
    “Uh-huh.” The official gives the documents a very American going-over. “What schooling have you done? What was your last job?”
    “I’ve, uh, I was working part-time in a garage. On my way through college—I was final year at Toronto, studying structural engineering, but I haven’t sat the finals. Maddy—Maddy’s a qualified paramedic.”
    The officer fixes her with a stare. “Worked at it?”
    “What? Uh, no—I’m freshly qualified.” His abrupt questioning flusters her.
    “Huh.” He makes a cryptic notation against their names on a long list, a list that spills over the edge of his desk and trails toward the rough floor. “Next.” He hands the passports back, and a couple of cards, and points them along to the row of desks.
    Someone is already stepping up behind them when Maddy manages to read the tickets. Hers says TRAINEE NURSE. Robert is staring at his and saying, “No, this is wrong.”
    “What is it, Bob?” She looks over his shoulder as someone jostles him sideways. His card reads LABORER (UNSKILLED); but she doesn’t have time to read the rest.

CAPTAIN’S LOG
    Yuri Gagarin kicks his shoes off, loosens his tie, and leans back in his chair. “It’s hotter than fucking Cuba!” he complains.
    “You visited Cuba, didn’t you, boss?” His companion, still standing, pours a glass of iced tea and passes it to the young colonel-general before drawing one for himself.
    “Yeah, thanks, Misha.” The former first cosmonaut smiles tiredly. “Back before the invasion. Have a seat.”
    Misha Gorodin is the only man on the ship who doesn’t have to give a shit whether the captain offers him a seat, but he’s grateful all the same: a little respect goes a long way, and Gagarin’s sunny disposition and friendly attitude are a far cry from some of the fuckheads Misha’s been stuck with in the past. There’s a class of officer who thinks that because you’re a zampolit you’re somehow below them, but Yuri doesn’t do that: in some ways he’s the ideal New Soviet Man, progress personified. Which makes life a lot easier, because Yuri is one of the very few naval commanders who doesn’t have to give a shit what his political officer thinks, and life would be an awful lot stickier without that grease of respect to make the wheels go round. Mind you, Yuri is also commander of the only naval warship operated by the Cosmonaut Corps, which is a branch of the Strategic Rocket Forces, another howling exception to the usual military protocol. Somehow this posting seems to be breaking all the rules . . .
    “What was it like, boss?”
    “Hot as hell. Humid, like this. Beautiful women, but lots of dark-skinned comrades who didn’t bathe often enough—all very jolly, but you couldn’t help looking out to sea, over your shoulder. You know there was an American base there, even then? Guantan amo. They don’t have the base now, but they’ve got all the rubble.” For a moment Gagarin looks morose. “Bastards.”
    “The Americans.”
    “Yes. Shitting on a small defenseless island like that, just because they couldn’t get to us anymore. You remember when they had to hand out iodine tablets to all the kids? That wasn’t Leningrad or Gorky, the fallout plume: it was Havana. I don’t think they wanted to admit just how bad it was.”
    Misha sips his tea. “We had a lucky escape.” Morale be damned, it’s acceptable to admit at least that much in front of the CO, in private. Misha’s seen some of the KGB reports on the US nuclear capabilities back then, and his blood runs cold; while