Beetle in the Anthill

Originally, the novella was written as a description of the adventures of Maxim Kammerer and the golovan Shchekhn on the planet Nadezhda, but later the storyline was changed, and Maxim was replaced by Lev Abalkin.

The year is 2178. About twenty years have passed since the events described in Prisoners of Power, Maxim is forty-five, he works for COMCON-2, and his immediate superior is Rudolf "Wanderer" Sikorski. Kammerer is given an assignment: to find progressor Lev Abalkin, who is on Earth but did not register upon arrival...

Once, on an unnamed planet in the EN 9173 system, a team of Pathfinders found a certain sarcophagus embedded more than 3 meters deep in rock. It was established that it consumes energy and was built 40,000 years ago. The so-called "sarcophagus" is in fact an embryonic safe. The safe contains thirteen fertilized egg cells of the species Homo sapiens, all apparently viable, though in a latent state. An emergency meeting of the "Sarcophagus Commission" was convened, attended by such luminaries as Leonid Gorbovsky, August-Johann Bader, Kirill Alexandrov, Mahiro Shinoda, as well as the energetic sixty-two-year-old Rudolf Sikorski.

At the meeting, the question discussed was what to do with the find. There were three options: "Close the sarcophagus and leave everything as it is. Attempt to initiate the development of the egg cells and see what comes of it. To avoid future complications, destroy the find."

The chairman of the commission, Gennady Komov, receives a message from the Pathfinders that all 13 egg cells have undergone their first division. From that moment on, the question of destroying the incubator was no longer raised; the only important point became the question of organizing the destinies of the future 13 citizens of planet Earth.

Lev Abalkin was one of those citizens...

In essence, this is a novella about the fate of a man who defends his right to freedom and humanity.