his feet.
“Papa, will you take me with you into space?”
“No, I will not,” his father replied sternly.
– Why? Ruslan asked offendedly, frowning.
“Because you did not eat porridge.”
The boy’s eyes ran.
– Daddy, if I eat the whole pot, you take me right now? Will you?
– Of course.
Ruslan disappeared in an instant. And his mother, forgetting about anxiety, ran after the son – he is more important than all troubles.
“Wait, cosmonaut,” she said, catching up with him at the stove, where the delicate little hands of his son reached for the hot pot.
– Porridge is still hot – you will burn yourself.
Magomed put on his jacket, slipped a cap on his head, said goodby and closed the door behind him – the door of his fortress, where he must return alive and well. “Why then, to the wishes and toasts: “I wish you a soft landing.” Mama never wanted to let me out of the house, but always wanted me to come back. In fate, a person can not intervene, no one, but fate can. My comrade will come home and say “Your husband is no more. Your dad will not come, kid. “This path is akin to the way to Calvary as the heaviest without hope of victory? I talked with wives of dead comrades and I do not want anyone else to repeat it”.
Magomed was clutching the car keys. Now he will go to the airfield. “Stop. And what does Yuri want from me? Scheffer- “I’ll wait for you in a cafe, I need to chat – the topic serious. “About what?”
Autumn. The weather has changed. People are also: hiding in jackets, hats. I wonder what they wore when did not invent fabric – fur, probably. “Fur coat for wives. Grandmother, who every morning showed me off at the bench near the front yard, too, was frightened first frosts and, apparently, could not tear herself away from the pre-heat, so that until the spring I will not hear hers “Good day, son”
He went to the car, put the key in the ignition and thought: “What does Scheffer want to say?” Really, one of the detachment has died? I do not believe, although the sky is not predictable and I fell, I broke down, I survived, “Magomed remembered while taxiing out from the parking lot.“Pumpage” on the SU-7b – a beautiful French word, and in fact – “Bach-bang. Ba-ba-bah. “And according to the instructions Is a failure in the operation of a turbojet engine, It is carried out by claps in an air intake quality of counterflow of gases, exhaust smoke, sharp drop in thrust and strong vibration, destroying the engine. That’s so easy-air flies into the compressor, and from the turbine crashes, rotating it. In the combustion chamber a mixture of kerosene and oxygen is heated. A pilot with his own- thoughts, previously hovering somewhere in a restaurant “Prague” or “Moscow” (and in the “National” a little worse …) instantly plunges into reality, where the wife in the hostel-with two children waiting for him, and then suddenly: “brah-tararah” – surging engine.“Thoughts away – I was driving. What? Feathered? Then it’s easy – I turn off the engine and wait until the lop- the bird will be cut into minced meat and oxygen will be in mixture. I start the engine again” The plane jerked forward – the gases were lit and untwisted the turbine is even stronger. Then a deafening explosion. he Job- wing pulled the aircraft into a circle. In the next second the traction disappeared completely and the plane went there, whence it flew -to the ground.
The plane steeply went down and, not reaching out to the ground security strip, fell on the open field and several times rolled over. He saw then the wreckage of the plane -part of the twisted fuselage, where the cabin was located, lay far from the place where the plane crashed. It was difficult imagine how you could survive with numerous fractures of the thoracic spine and nose and not to remain disabled for life.
He at the hospital asked the doctor not to report it wife: “Let them say that I took a business trip.” But not it happened: his wife ran in a jiffy. He then for the first time thought about the fact that his love has two completely opposite sides: love of the family and love of the skay. Like the two wings of aircraft – if there is not one of them, then it will fall just as the plane fell.
After the accident, he fell into depression, finding no answers, why it happened, and was looking forward to the results of the state commission. A month later he was informed that the fault was engine wear, which also increases the risk of nipness of surging. Because of the overflow on the endings due to deterioration of the sealing layer compression ratio of the compressor. With a sharp increase in the ma excess capacity on the turbine exceeds the required and, For this reason, the growth of turnover is faster than the estimated turnover -There are no prerequisites for the occurrence of surging. And so It happened.
A month in the hospital, then grueling exercises for recovery of the body. Otherwise it could be written off.
Another flight accident. In 1977 in the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Ministry of Defense finally drew attention to the high aviation accidents in combat units in peacetime, dozens of class pilots lost their lifes. It was adopted a special “Decree on reducing accident rates” One of the events in the 5th army stuffy had a demonstrative bailout for pilots. In front of me is a catapult chair with a modified fitsirovannoy construction. The commander stands nearby and looks at me.
“Well, Magomed, will we do it?” He asks, to understand that this is not an order, but a request. “By the way,
do you know who was the first to experience a catapult in our country. – he looks at me, wanting to say something nice. I think that it should be someone of my acquaintances. I shake my head – “This is your fellow countryman…” I begin to guess who we will talk about Ametkhan Sultan. It is a legend of the Soviet aviation. Ametkhan Sultan. I feel pride.
“Very well, Comrade Colonel,” I say, “I’ll jump whatever happens”.
“Not at once, Magomed,” the commander replies. – First you need to examine and test the operation of all mechanisms.
The following days the chair was dismantled and collected several times, and the jump was postponed. As a result, because of the increasing stress and fuss, the technician, after another analysis of the device, forgot one small detail-he did not twist one nut.
“I fly up to a small height, so that the pilots on the ground could clearly see the whole process, I click on the button catapult, I hear the clapper click. At the same time instantly I realize that the automatic machine from the chair is not botal. The height is six hundred meters. Below, looking up at the sky, the pilots are waiting for an exemplary master ejection of the experienced pilot. Nothing happens. I feverishly start manually undocking the chair – it takes precious time with loss of height. As a result, before the eyes of the
glare my parachute opens at an altitude of twenty meters.The blow to the ground was so strong that my eyes flashed sparks. For a slight omission I paid dearly my health – compression fracture: eight to twelve departments of the spine. Lying in the hospital, I thought about the regiments and Ametkhan Sultan.”
To the aerodrome, he arrived on time, as promised to Scheffer half an hour before the flight to Baikonur. In the shirt undone on her breast. with a helmet in his hand, he went to a cafe and sat down at the table near the window, not noticing how the two from the far corner began to drill his
