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Название: Shift Workers Will Fly to Mars

Автор(-ы): Ferik MUR

Chapter 1. Dreams of Mars

I am convinced that the first crew selected for a flight to Mars will consist of shift workers from the Russian North.

In terms of landscape and temperature, Yamal and Taimyr are already surprisingly close to Martian conditions. Of course, we should also mention Antarctica and the polar explorers who stay on the ice for a full year at a time. Those are special people.

They are like shock troops dropped from ordinary life in every city across Russia straight into extreme conditions the moment the helicopter doors open. Not everyone can do the same thing day after day for 30, 45, or even 60 days in spartan conditions. And yet every man has his own function. If I don’t do it, someone else will.

I saw my first shift worker — a real “snowman” — back in 1982 at Tyumen airport. He was lying on newspapers spread across the floor, just like all the others of his breed. The airport had been closed for the third day running because of a blizzard. I had flown in from Ufa after sitting there for forty-eight hours myself.

The shift workers were well oiled and sleeping like bears. One of them opened one eye and asked his mate:

“Mikola, what’s the date today?”

“Twelfth.”

“So we’ve been here ten days since we flew in from Urengoy?”

“Yeah… almost time to head back out to the shift.”

“Got any money left?”

“Ran out yesterday.”

Those were the “dinosaurs” from Ukraine. They wore dog-fur unties, fur hats, and old flight jackets zipped up to the throat. You don’t see dinosaurs like that anymore. Nowadays everyone flies in dressed to the nines, smelling of decent cologne. The only thing that remains from that era is the moment a shift worker opens his mouth — and you instantly know: it’s him.

Any oil or gas field, big or small, has a standard set of professions, just like on a submarine. It’s a crew exactly like the crew of a spacecraft. Two months flying to Mars, working as a team, then returning to Earth.

After everything I’ve seen in the North, I believe this is completely realistic.

Chapter 2. Shift Workers and Bears

Those who have never been to the North will find many things there strange and wondrous. The North has always drawn me with its vast beauty. When you’re sitting in a helicopter, you realize that 500 kilometers in Siberia is not a distance at all. Taiga and bears — and in it, He is the true Master. A totem and symbol of Russia.

I have been to places where shift workers are not the main ones in the taiga, but the bears that roam around a small oil field. Only their well-established way of life keeps them isolated from humans.

Walking into the canteen, I see a frustrated cook loading burnt buns into sacks. You can’t throw them in the trash — it’s a sin. But the bears will be happy.

On a GT-T all-terrain vehicle, we take the “gift” to the spot where they cross the forest road every day. We pour it out and wait for the guest. A couple of days later, we check the tracks — the feast was a success.

Then for a whole month you see a bear sitting on his backside, waiting for another sack of buns to fall from the sky. That’s just how his psychology works.

At remote drilling outposts where black gold is extracted, the crews are small. They live in harmony. Drug addicts and bad people don’t last long, so the team is built up over years — friendly and hard-working. That’s why there’s a banya, fishing, and small joys like hunting and little cabins. It’s a prevention against aggression and alcoholism.

In autumn, everyone looks forward to the trip to Panya — there’s a backwater on the Ob River that is a fisherman’s paradise. Pike weighing 20–35 kilos, like crocodiles, are there.

The expedition starts with a quota from the crew, and only the lucky ones go. We reached the steep bank. Everyone headed down, but Ilyasych lingered by the GT-T and squatted under a bush. At that moment, a bear was sitting in those same bushes, frozen by the sheer audacity of it all.

A hairless, human-like creature — not the Master of the taiga — was marking territory. When Ilyasych went down to the bank, the bear came out, squatted, and marked the spot with his own pile. It was bigger.

We only discovered it after the fishing trip.

On the bank stood a small cabin where salt, flour, and canned goods were stored. Every year began with the same scene: barrels of salted fish were kept in the house. When the snow melted, the fish was taken out and thrown into a pit not far from the cabin. The bear, coming out of his den, would come to eat the rotten fish. This went on for several years in a row. Everyone was happy.

There was just one problem: if you didn’t salt the fish properly, in spring the bear would tear the cabin apart. You should never feed the Master. He doesn’t like it.

Chapter 3. The Brigadier

Oil demands well repairs, and for that there is routine maintenance and major overhaul. PRS and KRS crews. They fly in by helicopter. The equipment is usually already standing at the wellhead, and the work begins at once.

One evening in the canteen the crew came in smiling and announced that they had acquired an external brigadier. Everyone’s curiosity was instantly piqued.

The bear would come and sit down on the berm of the well pad. He would sit there and not interfere with the crew’s work. And so it went, day after day.

Little by little, of course, they began to feed him — bread, condensed milk, stew. The bear was already old; long strands of grey hair hung down from his forehead. In general, he did not violate safety regulations and did not rush at people. They even put a hard hat down for him. No one approached him too closely. The work went on.

I, too, grew curious — after all, He came like clockwork, according to schedule. But I was unlucky; I never saw him. The guys, however, stealing glances at this external brigadier, worked for almost a whole week in excellent spirits. Even the actual brigadier seemed amused by the whole affair.

Perhaps, having lived to such a respectable age, the old bear had never before seen these human-shaped shift workers.

Gradually everything returned to its usual course. The bear left.

Several months passed. The crew flew in again and set up on another well in the same area. The bear did not appear. Yet the whole brigade waited for their Bear Brigadier for all fifteen days. But he never came.

And that is how legends are born — about the Brigadier, the true Master of the Taiga, who walks nearby and checks whether the crew observes safety rules or not.

Man and Bear in the taiga are always side by side.

Even when I walked through the forest with my Laika dogs and a rifle, I would notice Him walking parallel to me — silently, like a forest special forces operative. Where the blueberries or bilberries grew, you could always see that He had already had breakfast: a torn-up anthill, tracks showing that He had passed this way ahead of me — “I was here.”

The most astonishing thing is when a moose cow with her calves walks calmly along the concrete road right through the centre of the shift camp, not afraid of people, while at the edge of the forest stands the Bear who has been following her for days. And she simply cuts her trail by walking among humans. From the moment a moose calf is born, it is a race with death. This is the food chain. Only the strongest survive.

Breaking open the rifle and removing the cartridges in spring, when the males are in rut, you begin to blow into it like a hunting horn — and you hear a bull moose answering your challenge from several kilometres away.

The taiga lives, has lived, and will live — as long as man does not take everything that lives in it.

For the local Khanty and Mansi people, it is a hypermarket from which they take only what they need today, carefully maintaining the balance.

But we who come from the cities — we are the barbarians.

And so the question arises personally for you: who are you? The taiga tests everyone, and if necessary, it punishes.

The Old Believers never killed those who stole, murdered, or broke the Laws of the Taiga. The punishment was one and the same: the man was stripped naked, a four-and-a-half-metre birch pole was cut, his arms were spread wide and tied behind his back to the pole. Then, after crossing him, they let him go in peace. If he reached people, it meant God had forgiven him. When the midges and mosquitoes eat you alive around the clock and you have to move sideways, it is almost impossible. The man perished.

Without observing the Laws of the Taiga, one cannot survive.

Oil fields are the invisible border between the Taiga and Human Civilization. Everyone follows the unwritten rules. Man always advances into the Taiga. And it retreats.

I stopped hunting. The only reason I still carried a rifle behind my back was for protection against bears. Because I had come to understand that I no longer wanted to be a barbarian. This beauty must not be touched. One can only admire it and breathe in the scent of the forest.

Even now, thousands of kilometres away, He still comes to me in my dreams.

Chapter 4. A Second Birthday

We live our lives and sometimes never think that a second Birthday might suddenly appear out of nowhere.

It happened in the nineties. I was working at a large oil field in the Tomsk region, where, amid endless swamps, stood an experimental shift camp for twenty thousand people — lost in the middle of bogs and taiga. There was a road and an airport that accepted the AN-26, a cargo-passenger paratrooper plane, flying the route Tomsk–Pionerny–Strezhevoy–Pionerny–Tomsk. A kind of flying tram.

Three times a day you could fly to Strezhevoy on business.

We were sitting in the plane, waiting for takeoff. I sat on the right, by the window. Outside I could see the wing and the engine. It coughed once, then began to spin up. Slowly we taxied onto the runway, picked up speed. Everyone was buckled in. The plane lifted its nose.

Suddenly I noticed the right engine had died. The aircraft started drifting to the right. Then a small jet booster on the right kicked in. A moment later the left engine stopped too.

A technician burst into the cabin from the cockpit and shouted, “Everyone fasten your seatbelts!” At that very second, a woman sitting in front jumped up and screamed at the top of her lungs:

“We’re all fucked!”

The plane reared up like a pear, slowly turned in the air, and began to descend silently toward the concrete runway. It touched down, rolled along a third of the strip, and came to a stop.

Silence.

The shock was broken only by the sound of the rear ramp opening.

We all sat there motionless.

The aircraft commander stepped into the cabin. In a stern voice he asked:

“Who said ‘We’re all fucked’?”

The woman stood up and answered, “I did.”

“Never say that we’re all fucked,” the commander said calmly.

Trying to light a cigarette and missing his mouth a couple of times, he walked through the cabin with perfect composure, stepped out onto the concrete, and disappeared.

Only then did we all rush outside. Only then did the full weight of what had just happened hit us — followed by wild, overwhelming joy. Everything was behind us.

He turned to us and said:

“Now you don’t have to be afraid of flying anymore. This kind of aviation incident happens once in a million cases.”

We tried to lift him up and carry him on our shoulders. That guy had saved our lives.

In those few critical minutes he had made a clear decision: either crash into the treetops or pull a “pear” right on takeoff. If we had hit the trees, the cockpit dome would have been smashed, the pilots would have died instantly, the tail and wings full of fuel would have been torn off, and the fuselage with the passengers would have slid forward. There was a chance of survival — but only for the passengers. He chose the second option, and it was the right one.

Ever since that day, whenever I fly, I know deep down that nothing will happen to me. I believe him.

That is how I received a second Birthday.

I don’t celebrate it, but I know it exists.

And I owe it to the steady hands of that professional pilot who gripped the control yoke of that old workhorse of the North — the AN-26.

Thank you, Captain.

Chapter 5. Shift Worker by Law

This unspoken title is given to the most authoritative shift worker in the crew. His opinion is always taken into account and often becomes decisive in everyday matters and all kinds of disputes.

Before my eyes stands such a man — strong by nature, who had worked on shifts for thirty years. He had never worked a normal five-day week in his life. He was a representative of the older generation.

I first met him during boarding for a helicopter flight leaving the oil field. The helicopter was supposed to take twenty-one people, but thirty-five were trying to cram in. And then I saw the scene: a big, healthy guy ploughed straight into the crowd. In his hands he held two huge bags, and on his back — an enormous rucksack. He deftly swung first to the left, then to the right, then sharply backwards. Three men flew off in different directions, and he calmly stepped into the helicopter.

A real professional.

As he later said: “Work as many shifts as I have, and you’ll do the same.”

Later I got to know him better. His name was Oleg Nikolaevich, originally from Lake Baikal. Nature had not short-changed him in health — only two fingers on each hand had been cut off by steel cables. He worked as a pipe-layer operator.

Once I saw him arguing with a young guy. The lad was getting cheeky, and Oleg Nikolaevich, like a true professor, almost poked the hooligan’s eyes out with the stumps of his severed fingers. That was when the title “Shift Worker by Law” stuck to him for good.

The whole crew rests on people like him.

When I saw him in minus twenty-four degrees Celsius dismantling a hub, removing the track, and rebuilding the bearings, I scolded him: “You’ll freeze your fingers off!” He just waved me away. What can you do — the Old Guard always does things their own way.

He loved order and demanded it from others. Try arguing with him — his fists were like two sledgehammers.

In his youth, of course, he had raised some hell. He was never much of a drinker. For him alcohol was not really a beverage, but more like a food product. If his health was equal to three men, then the dose had to be tripled as well. But from a young age he had not been taught harmful habits. Those who grew up on Baikal, swimming in its icy water since childhood, were simply born as bogatyrs.

And when that pipe-layer was in his hands, it became at once a crane, an axe, and a tractor that could pull any load. You didn’t need to tell him what to do — he knew everything. He would just sit in the cab, give commands, and everyone would run to carry them out. It was a pleasure to watch.

When we met, he was already sixty and officially retired. He worked a little, without overexerting himself.

His main entertainment, when the frost dropped below minus forty, was billiards. Endless tournaments would begin. Everyone had his own cue and chalk, and there was a strict queue. The loser was out. And there, too, Oleg Nikolaevich was always among the first.

Try playing for thirty years — of course the balls will fly into the pockets as if enchanted.

The last time I saw him was at Nizhnevartovsk Airport. He was no longer working shifts; he was seeing someone off. We greeted each other, stood in silence for a while. A strong man. It was simply pleasant to stand next to such a bogatyr. Already grey-haired, but the strength was still with him. Baikal strength.

The Russian land is rich in natural power.

Live long, dear Shift Worker by Law.

Chapter 6. The Tu-134 Flies North

Many things happened over those years, but what stuck most vividly in my memory was my first year on the oil rig shift and, especially, the flight to the shift in August 1990. In the USSR, a sense of anticipation was gradually building. Of course, no one expected things to unfold the way they did, but an air of unpredictability hung everywhere. Up in the North, everything was running as usual: the pump jacks were drawing oil, and people were working.

After my legal fifteen days of rest, the problem arose of how to fly from Ufa to Nizhnevartovsk. There were no tickets. Luckily, a classmate of mine worked as a pilot on an An-2, so I decided to trouble him—maybe he could help. He didn’t refuse, made some inquiries, and delivered his verdict: a charter flight was leaving for Nizhnevartovsk that night, but there were no tickets available. Still, I might get lucky. The commander would come to the medical station from the hotel for a pre-flight check-up. That’s where we held our negotiations. In my hands I carried a diplomat briefcase containing four bottles of vodka. We agreed on two extra fares’ worth. They dressed me in a flight uniform, complete with a cap, and escorted me through the checkpoint straight to the plane. There, the second pilot took me in, led me to the toilet, and asked me to sit quietly. The security service was inspecting the aircraft before boarding. Time passed, and the boarding of the shift workers went quickly; the cabin filled up. A technician came for me and led me into the cockpit of the Tu-134.

The commander said there were no seats left and only one option remained: I would have to fly in the second pilot’s seat, while he went to sleep with the stewardesses. I was, of course, surprised. But where else was I going to go?

The commander requested clearance from the dispatcher to taxi to the runway. A tug hooked onto the nose wheel and pulled the plane toward the takeoff strip. They began flipping switches, and both the first and second pilots confirmed that they saw each toggle being activated in the proper sequence. I sat in the flight engineer’s seat behind them. The engines were already running. We swapped places with the second pilot.

I settled into the seat, put on the headphones, and fastened the belts. The commander was on the left, the flight engineer sat slightly behind and to the side, and the navigator was in the small dome-like space between the seats, a bit lower and forward.

The commander taxied onto the runway and requested permission from the dispatcher to take the active position. We rolled to the end of the runway, turned around, and slowly checked the engines while picking up speed. The flight engineer confirmed: “Speed one hundred eighty kilometers per hour—everything normal.” The commander turned to me and said over the intercom, “Help out.” I grabbed the control yoke and pulled it toward myself. The nose began to lift. I was lying back as if at a gynecologist’s appointment, legs spread. The plane started to rise smoothly into the air. Gradually it entered a left-turning spiral climb. The lights of the city fell away as the aircraft gained altitude to 9,200 meters, slowly leveled out, and the commander switched to autopilot. Then he said calmly, “Let’s go have some coffee.”

The stewardesses poured the coffee, and we drank it with pleasure, though I felt somewhat uneasy. There was no one else in the cockpit. For some reason I had always thought both pilots stayed strictly at the controls throughout the entire flight. We returned to our seats. I asked by what rules civilian aircraft flew in the sky. He replied that they followed civil corridors between major cities, with restrictions on altitude and width. Military planes flew at almost any altitude and tried not to cross the civil corridors. We were now flying from Ufa to Sverdlovsk—twenty-four minutes—and there we would make a turn toward Tyumen, then on to Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk. Below, through the clouds, the lights of cities and small settlements were visible. Time passed, and the moment of landing approached.

At forty kilometers from the airport stood marker masts, then at thirty, twenty, ten, and five kilometers. They created a corridor along which the ground dispatcher guided the commander’s descent. The impulses emitted by the aircraft’s equipment coordinated this process—it was the navigator’s job. We passed over the airport fence; the illuminated T-shaped concrete runway came into view. The plane touched the ground softly, slowed down with reverse thrust, and gradually came to a stop. The commander slowly taxied toward the airport building. He removed his headphones and asked, “How was the flight?”

A storm of emotions swept over me. I understood that never again in my life, for any amount of money, would such a thing happen. From the bottom of my heart I thanked the pilot and his crew. “Fantasy,” you might say. But this was not a dream—it was real. And my last name is not Munchausen. The fresh air and the automatic movements toward the bus released me from the rush of impressions and emotions. I came to my senses sitting in a chair in the airport lounge and began to digest everything that had happened. The task of reaching Nizhnevartovsk had been accomplished.

Probably this could only have happened at that time. The country felt it was slowly heading toward some resolution. No one understood what would come. But everyone was waiting. Everyone was expecting something, yet no one could foresee that the country would collapse. The North had grown fat with financial wealth and lived, like Moscow, separately from the provinces. So at the first stage it was even interesting. Under Yeltsin, one could not shake the feeling that a drunk commander was sitting at the controls of the plane.