Free Transreal Cyberpunk by Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling

psychics had given up, and no one else seemed interested. Somehow we’d been lost in the files. We had been covered up so thoroughly that we no longer existed. We were the ghosts’ ghosts, and the secrets’ secrets, the best-hidden people in the world. We seemed to have popped loose from time and space, sleeping later and later each day, until finally we lost a day completely and could never keep track again.
    We were down to our last pack of Kents when we had an unexpected visit.
    It was a Red Army general with two brass-hat flunkies. We spotted him coming down the aisle from the auditorium’s big double doors, and we hustled on our best shirts. The general was a harried-looking, bald guy in his fifties. He turned on our speakers and looked down at his clipboard. “Comrades Zipkin and Globov!”
    “Let me handle this, Vlad,” I hissed quickly. I leaned into my mike. “Yes, Comrade General?”
    “My name’s Nedelin. I’m in charge of the launch.”
    “What launch?” Vlad blurted.
    “The Mars probe, of course.” Nedelin frowned. “According to this, you were involved in the engine’s design and construction?”
    “Oh yes,” I said. “Thoroughly.”
    Nedelin turned a page. “A special project with the Chief Designer.” He spoke with respect. “I’m no scientist, and I know you have important work in there. But could you spare time from your labors to lend us a hand? We could use your expertise.”
    Vlad began to babble. “Oh, let us watch the launch! You can shoot us later, if you want! But let us see it, for God’s sake—”
    Luckily I had clamped my hand over Vlad’s mike. I spoke quickly. “We’re at your service, General. Never mind Professor Zipkin, he’s a bit distraught.”
    One of the flunkies wheeled open our bank vault door. His nose wrinkled at the sudden reek of months of our airtight stench, but he said nothing. Vlad and I accompanied Nedelin through the building. I could barely hold back from skipping and leaping, and Vlad’s knees trembled so badly I was afraid he would faint.
    “I wouldn’t have disturbed your secret project,” the general informed us, “but Comrade Khrushchev delivers a speech at the United Nations tomorrow. He plans to announce that the Soviet Union has launched a probe to Mars. This launch must succeed today at all costs.” We walked through steel double-doors into the Tyuratam sunshine. Dust and grass had never smelled so good.
    We climbed into Nedelin’s open-top field car. “You understand the stakes involved,” Nedelin said, sweating despite the crisp October breeze. “There is a new American president, this Cuban situation ... our success is crucial!”
    We drove off rapidly across the bleak concrete expanse of the rocket-field. Nedelin shouted at us from the front seat. “Intelligence says the Americans are redoubling their space efforts. We must do something unprecedented, something to crush their morale! Something years ahead of its time! The first spacecraft sent to another planet!”
    Wind poured through our long hair, our patchy beards. “A new American president,” Vlad muttered. “Big deal.” As I soaked my lungs with fresh air I realized how much Vlad and I stank. We looked and smelled like derelicts. Nedelin was obviously desperate.
    We pulled up outside the sloped, fire-scorched wall of a concrete launch bunker. The Mars rocket towered on its pad, surrounded by four twenty-story hinged gantries. Wisps of cloud poured down from the rocket’s liquid oxygen ports. Dozens of technicians in white coats and hard-hats clambered on the skeletal gentry-ladders, or shouted through bullhorns around the rocket’s huge base.
    “Well, comrades?” Nedelin said. “As you can see, we have our best people at it. The countdown went smoothly. We called for ignition. And nothing. Nothing at all!” He pulled off his brimmed cap and wiped his balding scalp. “We have a very narrow launch window! Within a matter of hours we will have lost our best