The hostage rescue operation unfolds broadly, noisily, and chaotically. After an exchange of blows, the Ekhain cruisers are disabled, and the fighting moves inside the space station. Human casualties are miraculously reduced to a minimum with the appearance of a strange Ekhain youth who calls himself by the human name "Seva" and, apparently, is endowed with extraordinary abilities. However, he disappears as mysteriously as he appeared… The hostages return to Earth, and now nothing stands in the way of a full-scale search for Severin Morozov. Not for the Department of Defense Projects, nor for Konstantin Kratov, for whom it is personal… nor for Elena Klimova, whose maternal instinct is more dangerous than a supernova explosion.