– Well you do not even try. You are so lazy you will not even wait for your death.

– There is finally a teacher for me! This is insanity. It’s madness to be engaged in this work.

– Of course this is crazy. They are total morons. It is clear as a noonday. They managed to bump into us in void space. I would understand if this happened at zero orbit, because it is crammed with satellites, transports, spotters and other junk waiting for liquidation. – Mackliff coughed and fell silent. You could hear him grinding something and breathing heavily.

Whitehouse took a deep breath.

His stomach was aching with hunger. Cocoa from the thermos has been drunk an hour ago and he did not want to crawl clinging to the rail, get through the narrow doors of the airlock system to change the thermos, check its tightness, and climb back. He had no strength for that.

– Hey, Mackliff, what about the connection?

– Maybe I will be able to fix it…or maybe not, – the flight engineer was obviously nervous.

Whitehouse glanced at the altimeter that was showing 301 mile in perigee, and crawled to his bracket, gently scouring the safety cable.

In order to distract his mind from the gloomy thoughts and a hungry rumbling in his stomach, he switched the intercom headset to a broadcasting wave.

A familiar tongue-twister struck his ears:

– You are listening to CNC, the official radio broadcasting company of the Yokohama pact countries.

Takashi Midzuki is on the microphone.

Transmitting the latest news…

Today at three o'clock (Tokyo time), in Brussels the long-awaited conference on rectification of the consequences between troops of the Islamic States Coalition and the Euro-Asian Union had begun.

The representatives of the military command of the North American community and the Pacific Union will take part in the conference because their troops were also involved in the conflict last year. The conference is held behind closed doors, but it is known from reliable sources that the main issues will be the exchange of prisoners of war and the withdrawal of the forces from the line of demarcation Bombay-Balkhash-Baku-Ankara.

According to our observers, a compromise can hardly be reached, as the main condition of the BIT leader, General Yasser Mohammad Vazir, is the immediate lift of the ban on the export of oil products from the countries of BIG, and the abolition of all trade sanctions… Listen to what is said in the…

A green lamp lit above the right eye of Whitehouse; Mackliff demanded him to switch to internal communication. After the tell-tale voice of the speaker, flight engineer’s speech seemed sluggish:

– Gosh, Ronny! What were you doing? Stop dreaming. Listen, I fixed the transmitter, but I have a feeling that we are being jammed. Do you hear me? Hey!

– I can hear you, but if you do not stop shouting in the headphones my membranes are going to burst. Nonsense! Who would possibly jam someone here? The Germans may be fixing something and that must be the cause of this interference.

-No, it’s not that, the background noise is too stable for ordinary interference.

-You are always imagining things; – Whitehouse slowly turned around and in three hundred yards from the Shuttle saw a matt cylinder with a thin light pen. And he braced his feet on the basis of his camera as if he was capturing an enemy on the wrestling mat of the Amateur club.

– Looks like it is giving in… I have to increase my efforts. What if I try and give a push with my space suit engine? I wish a miracle would happen, for once!

Whitehouse pushed the power lever up and started the back pack.