Colonel Yagd Kokum Yohoud.

Yagd Colonel!

I bring to your notice that at 16-13 A-time the 211 patrol boat of patrol division, in sphere– sector V13N40, has detected a rescue boat from the transport ship "Loerda-44", with part of the crew on board.

Those who were alive have been sent to the "Tetvut Noor" raider hospital, the dead were buried according to the Fleet Charter.

The place of destruction of "Loerda-44" vehicle has significant gravitational perturbations of laminar character.

Natote!

33 Marr 4725.

From the beginnings of Natotevaal.

Commander of the patrol boat ‘Ropin-33’

211 PSD,

Lieutenant Okt Arber.

8.

Whitehouse did not know how much time he spent lying on a hard straw mat, he could not remember.

He lay there, staring at the intersection of crooked roof rafters: cracked, of dark wood, with constantly steaming smoke near the fire.

But he remembered well those horrible moments when his mouth was filled with mixtures of some bitter herbs, powdered muck, with a smell of rotten eggs, pieces of bark, plant stems, and even objects in a form of buttons. And he could not even move his arm.

He just lay there and cursed that ceiling of guava leaves, the acrid smoke, thin dry hands that smelled of the sun and treated him with nauseous drugs, took out pots of his plentiful shit, where the potions went right after he took them…

But one day he got up.

At once.

One morning he just jumped to his feet, like in ancient times, in the Boy Scout camp at the sound of a wake-up.

He was healthy.

He was ready to run a marathon, climb without hooks and anchors on the steep cliff, bent nails, dive without a scuba in underground lakes.

He stood there, smiling from ear to ear, looking around.

In a mud hut with narrow unglazed windows and low entrance, curtained with a motley cloth, he noticed the presence of another person – an old woman: gray-haired, wrinkled, but agile and quick in her movements with a weathered bony face.

For a while she studied the smiling giant, whose head reached the roof beams, with quiet, intelligent eyes, and then took from the shabby shelves, the only furniture in the room – a light gray suit with traces of coarse darning, hiking boots of the twenty-ninth size and threw it at the feet of Whitehouse.

– Who are you? Where am I? – The astronaut hesitantly stepped forward, but the old woman shook her head and pointed to the exit. Whitehouse picked up his things and climbed out, covering up the loins with his hand.

The first thing he saw was the navigator Alexander Dybal all covered with exotic trinkets, in short shorts made of overalls and a stunning straw hat. A thick cigar in his mouth, he was squinting from the smoke and lively chatting in Spanish with a boy of seven years, who like Whitehouse had totally no clothes on.

A cliff with several shades of rock caves hang over to their right; dense swaying jungle tangled with vines stretched ahead to the left, and behind a dozen huts, was a steep slope, that turned into a rocky plateau, which abruptly ended behind the stone pillars.

These basalt stelae resembled petrified giants, deformed by time.

The desert stretched behind them.

Dybal turned and the cigar nearly fell out from his mouth:

-Ronald damn it are you crawling about on your own?

They clapped their hands, and having walked around a rusty skeleton of a Ford truck, sat on a crumpled barrel of gasoline.

Dybal joyfully patted Whitehouse on the strong shoulder:

– Ronny, I'm so glad to see you safe and sound.

-So am I, Al.

-Can you imagine how lucky we are! So damn lucky! May all of us be that fortunate in the future – The navigator hit three times with his knuckle on the crown of his sombrero, spat over his left shoulder and grinned at the Indian boy, who was puzzled by these gestures: