World Notes Space

The plot of the story was familiar to any science-fiction fan. The crew of a rocket ship returns to earth after a long space voyage only to find everything changed. It was exactly that way for Sergei Krikalev. When he blasted off in May 1991, he was one of the proudest of elites, a Soviet cosmonaut. Last week, when he came back after 313 days in orbit, he found a different world.

Krikalev landed on the snowy plains of Kazakhstan, an independent country. He was wearing the emblems of the U.S.S.R., but it no longer exists. His hometown is called St. Petersburg again, not Leningrad. Understandably, Krikalev's knees were a bit rubbery. He was given a whiff of smelling salts and a cup of soup.

He had followed events on the ground with interest, for politics kept him aloft. After the aborted coup in August, newly emergent Kazakhstan, where the launch facilities are located, demanded that a Kazakh cosmonaut be put into space. The mission directors complied last October but had to talk a less than thrilled Krikalev into staying in orbit an extra five months to help train the new crew.