This time the “U” group—the elite and lucky special unit of the security service—faces problems of cosmic scale. Laima Skalbе, Yevgeny Korneev, and Ivan Medved must find out the cause of the mysterious death of Nicholas Leiter, a major American space specialist and a secret NASA employee… A chain of strange circumstances leads the group to a cottage settlement near the Bad Lake, about which many rumors circulate. And before long, the entire local elite is drawn into the whirlwind of rapidly developing events—pop star Sasha, the astrologer and seer Kukuba, the famous traveler Stepan Grakov, fashionable bard Oleg Babushkin, handsome actor Yegor Ostryakov and his wife Venus. Passions rage everywhere, and at the center of it all is the smart, fearless, and never-bored lady of spades Laima…