Smith pulled the anticontamination hood over his head, adjusting the mask straps and sealing tabs. He took his first breath of rubber-tainted filtered air and drew on the suit's overgauntlets.
"Okay." His voice sounded muffled even in his own ears. "Dumb question of the day: how do I get inside?"
"The fuselage appears to be essentially intact," Valentina's voice crackled over the radio channel, "and the only way into the forward bomb bay is through the forward crew compartment. Unfortunately the conventional access doors are located in the nose wheel well and in the forward bomb bay itself, both of which are blocked. Your alternatives are through the port and starboard cockpit windows, which would be hard to wriggle through in that outfit, or the crew's access tunnel to the aft compartment. The latter is your best bet."
"How do I get into the aft compartment, then?"
"There is an access door in the tail just forward of the horizontal stabilizer on the starboard side. You'll have to work your way forward through the pressurized crew spaces from there."
"Right." Smith stood awkwardly and waddled toward the murky outline of the downed bomber.
The port-side wing of the TU-4 had been torn loose in the crash and folded back almost flush against the fuselage, but the starboard approaches to the bomber were clear. As he circled around the great aluminum slab of the horizontal stabilizers Smith found himself marveling a little. Even in an age of giant military transports and jumbo jet airliners, this thing was huge. And they were actually flying these monsters during the Second World War.
Smith approached the great cylindrical body and ran a hand over the ice-glazed metal.
"Okay, I'm here and I've found the entry door. There's a flush-mounted handle, but it looks like it's been popped out."
"The emergency release will have been pulled from the inside," Valentina replied. "It should open, but you might have to pry it a bit."
"Right." Smith had a small tool kit slung at his belt, and he drew a heavy long-hafted screwdriver from it. Fitting the tip of the blade into the frost-clogged slit around the door, he slammed the heel of his hand against the butt of the tool. After a couple of blows there was a sharp crack as the ice seal broke. A few more moments of levering, and the door swung outward, the wind catching at it, leaving a rectangular shadowed gap in the fuselage.
"You were right, Val. It's open. Going inside now."
Bending low, he ducked through the small door.
It was dark inside the fuselage, with only the trace of dull exterior light at his back. Smith removed a flashlight from his tool kit and snapped it on.
"Damn," he murmured. "I never expected this."
"What are you seeing, Jon?" Valentina demanded.
Smith panned the flashlight beam around the fuselage interior. No appreciable amount of snow had leaked inside, but ice crystals glittered everywhere, thinly encrusting the battleship gray frames and cable and duct clusters. "It's incredible. There's no sign of corrosion or degradation anywhere. This thing might have rolled out of the factory yesterday."
"Natural cold storage!" the historian exclaimed over the radio. "This is fabulous. Keep going!"
"Okay, there's a catwalk leading aft past a couple of large flat rectangular boxes to a circular dished hatch right in the tail of the airplane. The hatch is closed, and there is a round window set in its center. A couple of what look like ammunition feed tracks are set on either side of it. I guess that must be the tail gunner's station."
"Correct. Is there anything else noteworthy back there?"
"There's some kind of a mount or pedestal with a couple of unbolted cables hanging from it. It looks like some piece of equipment has been dismantled."
"That would be the generator set of the auxiliary power unit," the historian mused. "That's rather interesting. Now, just to your right there should be a bulkhead with another pressure hatch centered in it, leading forward."
"There is. It's closed."
"The B-29/TU-4 family was one of the first military aircraft designed specifically for high-altitude flight. A number of its compartments were pressurized to allow its crew to survive without the need for oxygen masks. You're going to have to work forward through a series of these pressure hatches."
"Got it." Smith shuffled over to the hatch and tried to peer through the thick glass of the port, only to find that it was frosted over. "What should be in this next compartment?"
"It should be the crew's in-flight rest quarters."