: XXI century, outer space. Human life is considered the highest value, but the young intern of the spacecraft puts in the first place a feat. The death of two researchers changes his mind.
The story is composed of several short stories strung on a core plot - the journey of the young vacuum welder Yury Borodin on the Tahmasib from Earth to Saturn in the company of the crew of the ship and inspector Yurkovsky.
The famous captain of the Tahmasib spaceship Bykov and planetologist Yurkovsky go on a flight to inspect space objects. Yurkovsky’s sister, as always, watches them from the bar: his brother flies with Bykov, so she’s calm.
At the international transshipment center, a young vacuum welder, Yura Borodin, is looking for an opportunity to get on Saturn’s satellite. He lagged behind his group. In a cafe, he meets a man who leads an ideological discussion with the bartender, condemning the values of capitalism and upholding the correctness of communism. A man advises Yura to go to room 306 in the hotel in the evening. Perhaps they will help him get to the satellite.
In the issue, Jura sees Bykov and Yurkovsky. After listening to Yura, the stern Bykov writes him on the ship as an intern. Flight engineer Zhilin, who turned out to be a man from a cafe, will explain the young man his responsibilities.
Mars.At the observatory, young astronomers discuss the current situation: huge flying leeches began to attack people even in the afternoon, it is very difficult to shoot them.
The next day, a meeting is being held: discussing a raid plan for leeches. It is assumed that their shelter is located near the Old Base.
People gather on the ruins of the Base. One pathfinder shows a stem of a spike with a flower in a cement crack. It rarely blooms, every 5 Martian years. After each flowering, a ring remains. The rims are eight, which means the plant is 85 Earth years old. “This building was not built by people. This is not cement ... And leeches are not in vain attacking two-legged erect. " This means that the Base was not built by people: research on Mars has been conducted for only thirty years.
A radiogram arrives about the arrival on Mars of the inspector general of the International Space Communications Administration (ISS) Yurkovsky.
Yura likes Yurkovsky, the navigator Krutikov, who was entrusted with writing memoirs. Yury considers Bykova a boring person (he does not like boring most of all!): Everyone works, and he only reads magazines and newspapers. But Zhilin explains: the captain is responsible for organizing the flight, he has no free time until the flight. During a flight, he is needed when a disaster occurs.
After the raid, which managed to kill a lot of leeches, a tracker comes to the observatory at night and informs astronomers that all work will be stopped for two months. The ranger wears a watch on both hands: leeches attacked only on the right, on the left, the leech attacked only once on a left-hander, wearing a watch on his right hand.The ranger himself has never been attacked. Maybe leeches are afraid of ticks. So he tested his hypothesis.
Yurkovsky believes that they are obliged to influence Yura and teach him. At the station for the study of gravity, Jura meets young people who are completely absorbed in interesting work, despite many problems.
Tahmasib also visits the space mine, where precious stones are mined. The manager violates international legal standards: allows you to work overtime (although this is fraught with radiation paralysis), covers those who illegally have weapons. Those who keep order at the mine can do nothing about it. Yurkovsky appears at the mine and removes the manager from his post. He advises workers to choose a safer and more interesting job.
Returning to the Tahmasib, Yurkovsky is trying to persuade Bykov to let him go to Saturn - to study the rings, which are still a mystery to science. Bykov considers this dangerous, and the probability of discovering something is very small. To support the planetologist, Zhilin tells an unusual story.
As a teenager, he met a strange person calling himself a giant fluctuation. Things constantly happened to them, the probability of which was negligible. He saw the auroras in Alma-Ata, the Broken vision in the Caucasus and twenty times a green ray, or “ray of hunger”. In his presence, water was boiling in a vessel with flowers, and frost was falling in the room. Ball lightning repeatedly flew into his tent. Somehow he became a source of a strong magnetic field: metal objects fell on him. A meteorite even fell on him. And on the day of the conversation with Zhilin, the girl with whom the "fluctuation" walked, suddenly flew away.Frightened that he would bring trouble to the interlocutor, the strange man left.
Bykov advises Zhilin to insert this story into his memoirs, since Krutikov’s laurels haunt him.
In the evening, Zhilin watches the navigator reading for the fifth time “The Tale of Genji”. Try to seat Yura now for the novel of a genius Japanese woman! So far, Yura prefers irresponsible heroic adventures to the drama of the human soul. Zhilin himself does not let go of a strange feeling: as if he had left something important on Earth. There are youth, children. How many things he could teach them!
At the best space observatory with Yurina, one can find out that the director pits the guys together, preventing them from doing independent research projects. For arbitrariness, Yurkovsky removes the director from his post.
Yurkovsky asks the system director to transfer Yura to where Borodin's group is currently working. The crew of the Tahmasib meets the guys exploring the rings of Saturn.
Zhilin tells everyone a true scientific story. On the island of Honshu found a system of caves. In one, petrified traces of primitive people were discovered. Between the tracks of bare feet is the one and only trace from the boot. There is no doubt about the age of the trace. They put forward versions of where he could come from. The second trace from the boot in the cave remained on the ceiling.
Yurkovsky persuades Bykov to give him the navigator Krutikov to the cosmograph. They fly to the rings of Saturn.
Bykov keeps in touch with them. Despite the captain’s bans, Yurkovsky and Krutikov go too close to the ring. The ring is amazingly beautiful.Yurkovsky and Krutikov come closer and closer, the phrase is heard: "Here they are, the aliens." They have some kind of find. Then something happens. Bykov understands that friends are dead.
Now Yura realizes: no feat is worth life, it hurts to lose people when you know them.
Bykov and Zhilin arrive on Earth. Behind the column, the flight engineer sees a woman. Her flabby face was familiar to him. Zhilin thinks that the main thing is on Earth, and decides to stay here.
