And yet the original one still remained, and the problem it represented grew more and more acute as their scheduled departure-times approached. They desperately needed a good practical reason to give their respective governments for not returning to Earth—and quite providentially at the very last moment (though it seemed anything but providential at the time) they discovered that they had one. Or rather, Sonya did. On the morning of the day she was scheduled to undergo the rigors of acceleration, she regarded Gordon shyly across the little breakfast table he had built. "I—I am going to have a baby," she said.
The news, when it arrived in Moscow, had something of the impact of a hydrogen bomb, and when it leaked through a hitherto unsuspected crevice in the Kremlin, there was a sort of chain-reaction throughout the entire Soviet Union. It was at this point in his political career that the Soviet premier discovered a universal truth: people the world over, whether they be communistic or capitalistic, have a very large soft spot in their hearts when it comes to babies.
That spring, Venus outshone herself, and hung in the evening sky over Moscow somewhat in the manner of the star over Bethlehem. The premier had a haunted look on his face when he appeared before the Council of Ministers. He was not alone. The Ministers had haunted looks on their faces too. What did you do when you had to cope with a forthcoming space baby who would be half capitalist and half communist and who was already adored by the whole world? The premier did not know. But there was one thing he did know: in the last analysis, any party is the people, and while you can con the people into believing that black bread is white bread and that caraway seeds are caviar, you cannot con them into believing that a child conceived on the Planet of Love by a Russian girl and an American boy is anything other than a harbinger of peace.
So in the long run, what the premier did was the only thing he could have done. He arranged a summit meeting with the president of the United States and the prime minister of Great Britain, and for the first time in history, the East and the West really got together. The threat of war could not, of course, be totally eliminated at such short notice; but a number of aggravations that could precipitate a war could be eliminated—and were. This accomplished, the three leaders drew up plans for a super three-man spaceship to be built posthaste by the best engineers the three nations could supply, and unanimously agreed that the pilot would be English, the obstetrician, Russian, and the nurse, American.
It has been said that after the meeting the Soviet premier and the president of the United States got together and began thinking up names. This is extremely doubtful. Anyway, if they did, they were wasting their time, for Sonya Mikhailovna and Gordon Andrews had already taken care of the matter. The name they chose is well-known today—except, perhaps, by those for whom this history has been recorded. Which brings us back to the aforementioned news bulletin. In common with most news bulletins, it has about as much poetry in it as an old shoe, but its message shines forth with a radiance that excels even the radiance cast by the star over Moscow.
Geneva, Switzerland, September 11, 1996—The young Russo-American ambassador-at-large, Pëtr Gordonovitch Andrews, announced this morning that his peace plan has been accepted by all major and minor powers, and that the war that has threatened mankind for the past half century can no longer occur.