Everything is fine, Comrade Valentina Tereshkova.

When the Swedish radio amateur Reimar Stridh picked something up at 20.006 MHz on his radio, he knew where it was coming from, and he was pleased. And, when at twelve twenty-six he heard a woman’s voice saying “ya Chaika, ya Chaika,” he knew who was speaking. To anyone else in the world, that is, anyone who didn’t understand Russian or who didn’t have a radio, the sounds were meaningless, a mystery. They would have to wait to hear the good news some other way. Those who were on shift at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a Russian-operated spaceport in Kazakhstan, were relieved to know that the woman whose call sign was Chaika—the seagull—was safe and well for the time being. Did the comrades at the base who had quietly freaked out when the transmission wasn’t working at first ...