: Scientists are finding on a cold planet a man who is superior in capabilities to an earthling. With its help, researchers hope to establish contact with the hiding, real aborigines of the planet.
Chapter first. Emptiness and silence
The narration is conducted in the first person, the narrator is a member of the Ark expedition, twenty-year-old cyber technician Stas Popov.
Captain Jacob Vanderhausen, xenopsychologist Gennady Komov, who deals with the problems of alien psychology, the lodger Mike Glumova, the same age as Stasya, and Popov himself explored an uninhabited cold planet where there is nothing but the ocean, rocks and dwarf trees. Scientists wanted to settle pantian here - their planet is no longer suitable for life. Stas remained at the base, all the rest flew away to research. Around was the silence of a vast, completely empty world.
The main cyber behaved strangely, and Stas decided to check his "kids". Popov heard strange sounds. He thought he thought: “This is all silence. Silence and emptiness. " Suddenly he saw an empty construction site on the screen. He rushed out, all the cybers approached the ship. Stas was terribly afraid: he thought that someone had taken away the cyber.
Chapter Two Silence and voices
Popov decided that the cyber has some kind of defects. He took up their prevention. At this time, he heard a child crying desperately, and then a female voice: “Where are you, Shura ... It hurts ...” The woman wheezed and cried. I became terrified: there is nobody on the planet besides them! He put crystallophones on his ears to create a sound curtain so as not to hear more voices.
Coms, Vanderhouse, and Mike returned. They found a dead ship of the Pelican type. There are the remains of two dead men and women. Logbook erased. Mike is crushed. Vanderhouse and Komov informed the base of the find in very cautious phrases. This story didn’t leave Stas's mind: “... the voice of a dying woman in my delirium and a dead woman in a broken starship ... A terrible coincidence, to be sure.”
Chapter Three Voices and ghosts
In the morning, Komov “condescended” to a conversation with Stasem. “Gennady Komov in general, as a rule, has the appearance of a person not of this world. Forever, he looks out for something far distant horizons and thinks of something of his own, devilishly exalted. He goes down to the earth in those cases when someone or something ... becomes an obstacle to his research. Then he with an unshakable hand, often quite mercilessly, removes the obstacle and again soars to his Olympus. ” The “schizoid specialist” asked Popov if it was scary for him to be left here alone. Popov was struck by Komov's insight, but said nothing about his hallucinations.
That evening, Stas in his cabin saw a dark man who quickly disappeared.
Chapter Four. Ghosts and people
Stas felt deeply unhappy, he believed that everything for him, as a participant in the project, was over because of these visions. It will be replaced. Popov was about to tell Vanderhouse. But at breakfast, “visions” began at everyone: “By the wall ... stood my old ghost.”
Popov was greatly relieved to realize that all of his nightmares had ended since that moment: not only had he seen the ghost, then it was not a hallucination.
He and Mike rushed to catch up with him, but the little man, curled up in a ball, flew over the swamp. When they returned to the cabin, Komov asked Popov to lay out everything. Stas was not even surprised at such a statement of the question and spoke about the crying of children, the screams of a woman and his visions. “Komov, it turns out, also had a hard time.” He felt in his cabin the presence of an outsider, and he found signs around the ship - stones, twigs. Popov’s behavior and, finally, the appearance of this creature on the ship led Komov to the conclusion that the planet is inhabited, and possibly by intelligent creatures. The native is neurologically and physiologically very close to humans.
“It was, of course, very nice to know that ... it was our group that was lucky to discover another humanoid race.” However, the project "Ark" is over: the planet is busy, for the Pantian will have to look for another. In the course of the conversation with Komov, it turned out that the similarity of this aborigine with a man is also explained by the fact that the ship lets him inside. And Stas remembered that his cyber reacted to the humanoid as a person, so they climbed into the hold without Popov's command - apparently, they were given a signal.
As soon as Gennady declared the planet a zone of alleged contact, a radiogram came from the scientific luminary of Gorbovsky - he somehow found out about the contact with the native.
Stas peered at Mike. She told him about Komov’s ideas about vertical progress. The evolution of mankind took place in approximately the same way. A man left the caves and went along the plain, but above the plain there is a new space, the sky. And earthly man can become a galactic man - this is something more. Popov did not understand anything from this theory.
Vanderhouse went into their cabin. He found a historical rule: if you crashed on an unknown planet inhabited by sentient beings, "you must destroy all cosmographic maps and logbooks."
A radiogram came from the historical department with information: the discovered ship is the Pilgrim starship. Crew: Semenova Maria-Louise and Semenov Alexander Pavlovich. Later a passenger appeared - Semenov Pierre Alexandrovich. Komov shone: “So I thought! This is a man! ”
Chapter Five People and Inhumans
Komov went outside in order to establish contact. Mike, Stas, and Vanderhouse were observing and discussing what had happened. During the crash, the child was a year and one month old (as the historical department reported), how could he survive? If Aborigines raised him, then why? And where does the exact reproduction of the child’s crying and woman’s voice come from? After all, no technology on the planet has been discovered.
Finally, a “strangely folded figure” appeared on the screen. Mike enlarged the image: “It was a child, a boy of about twelve, an angular teenager, bony, long-legged, with sharp shoulders and elbows, but this was not limited to his resemblance to an ordinary boy. Already his face was not boyish - with human features, but completely motionless, ... frozen like a mask. Only his eyes were alive, large, dark, and he shot them to the right and left, as if through the slits in a mask. His ears were large, protruding, his right was noticeably larger than his left, and a dark uneven scar stretched out from under his left ear to his collarbone — a rough, improperly healed scar. The reddish hair fell off in disordered braids fell on the forehead and shoulders, sticking out in different directions ... A terrible, unpleasant face, and in addition - a dead, bluish-green hue, glossy, as if greased with some kind of grease. However, his whole body was also glossy. He was completely naked ... "
The ship constantly kept in touch with Komov, and suddenly they heard that the “client” was speaking in their voices, repeating the phrases that the researchers had previously exchanged among themselves. So, he imitated the voices of a child and a woman. He remembers everything at once! During the observation, Popov and Vanderhausen saw something incomprehensible over the mountains, reminiscent of a multi-colored mustache of a giant cockroach about six hundred meters high. What this is and what is used for - the crew could not understand.
Komov returned - "ruddy, red-nosed, benevolent." The kid (as Pierre introduced himself), who never spoke to people, learned human speech in four hours. The kid is convinced that he is the only inhabitant of the planet.
Chapter Six Inhumans and questions
Komov considered the presence of a woman in the first conversation with the Kid undesirable, and Mike, pale from rage, had to go to the post on duty. At the meeting, the Kid explained: people have come - it's bad, they will leave - it will be good. Therefore, he came to Komov and Popov in turn, but, having not achieved a result, he came to all four that morning. Seeing Komov in the cold yesterday, the Kid realized that he was waiting for him. When the Kid spoke about people, the red light of the indicator of emotions (negative) burned. But the Vanderhuse whiskers enthralled him: when the Kid asked about them, a green light was on (positive emotions). A guest asked Stas about cyber. During a story about different cars, the emerald lamp shone.
Mike saw eight giant antennae whiskers during his stay on the ship, which disappeared as soon as the Kid disappeared.
Mike believed that for Komov, the Kid is a blind tool for contact with Aborigines. He does not speak to him humanly. All communication for the sake of vertical progress.
The kid has returned. Instead of Stasia, Mike now went to the experiment. As soon as the Kid saw Mike, he said in an infant voice: "Mom-ma." The guest spoke about himself. He ponders, and the answer comes. There is an answer - pleasure, no answer - trouble. People are trouble, he says. He cannot be with them, although it is clear that he is reaching for them. After the conversation, the Kid, as usual, suddenly disappears.
Chapter Seven. Questions and doubts
Komov believes that the aborigines subjected the boy's body to the most fundamental changes: they expanded the active region of his brain, provided with new physiological mechanisms. Their purpose is still unknown. However, the Kid very easily made friends with people, although he claims that they interfere with him. Perhaps people do not interfere with him, but the natives. Komov suggested that the aborigines are some gigantic superorganisms, so the Kid perceives them as part of nature. To realize the discovery is possible only through the mediation of the Kid. Today, Komov will not make contact. Let the rest play with the boy as if it was their little prodigy brother. Mike and Stas put on portable television transmitters (hoops with the “third eye”) so that acoustic and visual information could be transmitted.
Mike was very gloomy. The kid was found in the hollow, Stas gently slapped him, the body of the Kid seemed to him as hot as an iron. All of his questions had to be answered by Stas. Popov talked about the "Ark" project, dreams, the earth name system. Then they ran with the Kid racing, playing ball. The kid said that he had never felt so good. But now it’s bad, it’s getting worse, he wants to be torn in half. The kid does not want to communicate with people anymore, it hurts him. And yet he promised to come again. Mike gave him the "third eye."
Chapter Eight. Doubts and decisions
Through the "eye" they watched the Baby - where he walks, what he does. “And then something happened. For a fraction of an instant, the image became completely clear ... Then a desperate cry came out, the image turned over and disappeared altogether. ” “Mike turned on an emergency flash lamp mounted in a hoop. And one could imagine what the inhabitants of the cave had to do when a little sun flashed for an instant in eternal darkness. ” Kom in a fury pushed Mike away from work. He sent a radiogram to Gorbovsky about the incident. Komin took the blame on Maikin.
Stas went to Mike. She admitted defiantly that she turned on the lamp on purpose to stop all this disgrace: “I’ll go to school and I will teach the guys to grab the hands of all these abstract ideas fanatics on time ..!” They had a fight.
While on duty, Stas was a call from Leonid Andreyevich Gorbovsky to Komov. Popov listened to their conversation without breathing. Gorbovsky suggested not continuing contact. Komov explained that the rejection of people in Malysh is from Aboriginal people, this is in his subconscious. "The consciousness of the Kid belongs to us." Gorbovsky insisted that this civilization is closed, and there will be no contact. In the near-planet space, they found an automatic satellite, "something like an armed sentinel." Presumably it was installed by the Wanderers. It contained two charges, the second was released in Semenov. “The wanderers considered this planet forbidden, I can’t come up with any other explanation,” Gorbovsky said. And for the representative of the third civilization, the Kid, earthlings bear full responsibility.
Having finished talking with Gorbovsky, Komov turned to Stas: “The kid will come ... loves to ask questions too much ... Does any of you really understand that the Kid is the only case, the case, in fact, impossible, and therefore the one and the last! ”
Conclusion
“He calls me whenever he wants to talk.” Now the Kid maintains a creative connection with his grandfather, Pavel Alexandrovich. He asks about Leo, a senior base engineer. "When Lyova is talking with the Kid, the near-planet air is filled with laughter and gambling, and I feel something like jealousy." The kid loves Leo very much. Sometimes he asks about Vanderhouse, once or twice remembered Komov and not once Mike. Once Stas started a conversation about her, but the Kid immediately got up and left. With Stasem, he keeps in touch constantly: "... let's talk again?"
