He has also said that he had always loved only two women – his mother, Ann Stone Mackliff and his wife Dorothy, and all the rest were an accident, a passing moment though he could not say anything bad about them, they all believed him.

He shook his head in the misted pressure helmet, slapped Whitehouse on the shoulder, clinging to the cadmium fabric overalls with his glove, and said that he always wanted to have such children like he had: naughty boys Arnie and George; and sympathized with the pilot that it would be hard for them to stay out of bad company, drugs and juvenile prisons without a father.

Whitehouse did not get the rest of the flight engineer’s shouts, but he just subtly abused the designers of emergency suits for the fabric’s lack of heat resistance.

When the silicone zipper clasps began to smolder and tear at the seams, von Conrad pulled the tube of service module cooling, and liquid helium poured onto his chest.

Everything was shrouded in icy fog, the temperature dropped to normal, but through the vibration rumble and burning boarding you could hear the cracking sound of the colonel’s suit.

Forty seconds later the braking shield opened and the first pair of parachutes opened up.

Then the second pair unfolded.

They have been saved, but the colonel received a severe thermal burn; up on one elbow, he made hoarse sounds, either trying to address his companions or God.

Mackliff could hardly suppress the urge to hide from this terrible, swollen, bluish face.

Whitehouse was standing nearby waving a piece of parachute fabric over the colonel. Meanwhile Dybal continued listening to conversations of the SAU pilots with their base:

– Damn it, they know that there was another container.

They're looking for us.

They have just passed the information on the search sector and probable coordinates 15-2 and 15-3 to the pilot…

– Too bad. Sooner or later they will find us here. And I'm afraid they are not going to offer us coffee. We have to leave. According to the numeration of squares, used in the SAU Air Forces we are near the foothills of the Andes, somewhere in Medell;n, unless memory deceives me… Maybe we are standing on one of its former avenues…

Our plan is to put the wounded on the sledges and head to the mountains. There we can hide, find food and water. Even the Great Desert is still powerless compared to the mountains, – having stopped talking, Whitehouse began to chop off the straps of a flattened parachute and tore a white cloth, which Mackliff had notched previously.

Dybal started selecting things needed for the trip from time to time looking at the horizon and the sky through binoculars.

***

Infernal heat slowly subsided.

The merciless sun rolled down further to the west, gradually turning from dazzling white to crimson. The sky like an endless ceiling, painted in smooth, pale blue paint was faintly covered with smoky clouds.

A faint breeze appeared.

It was still hot like the sand, but it was the Ocean breeze that had rolled over the mountain ranges, and dissolved in the desert. The Dunes that were hardly noticeable at first became higher, wider.

Like sickles they bent towards the mountains, whose rocky tops were covered with snow caps, clearly outlined by the horizon.

The astronauts were on the fringe. They have already thrown out most of their equipment; individual first aid kits, a box of dried bacon, transmitter battery, signal lights and rockets, blades, bags of dry fuel, with regret they buried the cadmium absorber in the sand, a unique device they have saved from  "Independence", Dybal even threw out his watch that became as heavy as chains.