Starting A New Story

Pavel eyed the sky nervously, noting the onionously-grey low clouds. "I thought you said it never rained at Baskunchak," he commented to no-one in particular.

From further back in the big khaki tent Boris, the engineer, grunted. "It better not."
Pavel remained staring out of the tent front. The tent was designed as a temporary repair facility for military vehicles in the field and was easily large enough to house the 5 men who were currently standing in it. As Pavel stared he could hear the wind pick up in intensity, causing the sides of the tent to rumple. He turned back towards Boris, of whom only the lower torso and legs could be seen. The rest was hidden by the Pioneer's bonnet, from which the engineer protruded.

"Is it ready?" he asked.
Boris withdrew from the engine bay and painfully straightened his back. "As it will ever be," he told the young mechanic, "Is the Captain ready?"

At 27 Erik Vissianarovitch was one of the youngest people ever to drive for the Land Speed Record, not only in Russia but the world. But this was not enough for Erik. It was not enough to be the youngest, he told himself, I must also be the fastest. At a time when most young men were recruited for the military Erik had (through his father's influence) escaped the seat in a fighter jet that his school teachers and cadet officers had earmarked for him. Instead he had found himself (through a combination of luck and determination) as test-driver for ZIL, the vast automotive combine that controlled fully one-half of all automobile production in the USSR.

ZIL made cars for the people, and for the apparatiks. And ZIL had a dream: to be the fastest. It was a dream shared by the Soviet Government, who saw the British in their Bluebirds and the Americans in their Goldenrods and knew that in the Land Speed Record, as in all else, the USSR could not be found lacking.

And so it was that Erik Vissianarovitch found himself in a tent on the vast salt lake of Baskunchak, with a streamlined teardrop of a car, and an engine so secret that even he had no idea how it worked.