Dr. Vaisberg's story describes the professional career of a senior IKI scientist, and also illuminates the collaborations and rivalries in IKI and the role played by some key persons in Russian space research. Topics include his family and growing up in Siberia during WW II; his student days at Moscow University under Iosif Shklovsky; early work on radiation belt instruments with Valerian Krassovsky; instruments flown on Kosmos and Prognoz; story of Sputnik 1 and 3; first visit to the U.S.; work with Kosmonauts and building instruments they used; observation of electric fields in space; work on Mars missions, 1969-71; experiment on 1971 Mars probe and 1976 Venus probes; "Vega" dust experiment; his unauthorized plasma experiment on "Vega" mission to Comet Halley; co-workers: Giorgi Zastenker and Lev Zelyoni, Levon Avanov, Valery Smirnov, Andrey Fyodorov, Vladimir Krasnosilskikh; how glasnost began, 1988-90; departure of Sagdeev and the budget crunch at IKI.