Precinct Officer Reshetkin stared at Innokenty in amazement.

  "What 'seed', Innokenty? Have you been sniffing exhaust fumes?" he barked. "Explain right now why you’ve staged 'The 300 Spartans' here!"

  ?The blacksmith, breathing heavily, wiped his grease-stained face with the edge of his apron and looked at the officer with a hazy yet inspired gaze.

  "Well, we... how should I put it, Gennady Ivlampovich..." he began, stammering and waving his hand toward the zenith. "We sent Vaska the Bottle over there... past the... well, you know... past the forest, basically. But not just past the forest, but to where nothing can be seen anymore. Past the... well, tell him, Karl Karlovich, what’s it called?"

  ?Karl Karlovich, sitting nearby on the grass and carefully pressing a dirty plantain leaf to his broken nose, raised his index finger with professorial dignity and wheezed:

  "Past the Event Horizon, Gennady! We have crossed the threshold of no return!"

  ?"Ah, so it was you, Kerzaki folk, who blew it up?!" the officer’s enraged voice suddenly rang out. "Was it you who launched the Bottle into the cornfields? Unbelievable... Your 'cosmonaut' is sitting in the district center now, in a cell, unrecognizable—his face is blacker than tar! Done with your flying, academics?!"

  ?Reshetkin looked around the stadium in confusion, shaking his head heavily as he tried to fit what he saw into the boundaries of the law, and wheezed weightily to the crowd:

  "Get the Chairman here! Now!"

  ?Veniamin Petrovich began to push through the human mess like a beaten dog. After taking a few steps, he sharply, as if by accident, threw aside a heavy birch handle and clutched his torn-off jacket sleeve.

  "I'm here, Gennady Ivlampovich..." he squeezed out shyly.

  ?"You’re here too?!" the officer was outraged.

  "Me? I was only breaking them up..." the Chairman muttered, averting his eyes.

  "Yes, yes, we were breaking them up!" confirmed the engineer, who was standing nearby on all fours, coughing from the metallic stench and adjusting a scrap of his tie.

  ?Reshetkin turned his gaze to the accountant splayed in the dust. He was showing the world a huge blue lump and broken glasses, his eyes helplessly crossed from the concussion, frozen in a silent question to the universe.

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  "Well, well... the office staff distinguished themselves too!" the officer boiled over. "Call the paramedic! Let him help the wounded heroes of space."

  ?"Why call him?" Innokenty spoke up. "He’s right there, in the crater. Laid down nicely by the railway sleeper, resting."

  Approaching the edge of the crater, Reshetkin saw the medical worker lying upside down at the bottom. His white coat was torn at the back, helplessly exposing 'official medicine' to the face of cosmic chaos.

  ?At that moment, a figure emerged from a cloud of dust. Leaning on a staff broken in half, Father Aristarchus from the Nikulino church literally crawled after the officer. His priest's hat was treacherously crumpled by a massive object, and his sacred censer, wrapped three times around his neck by one of the frenzied villagers, was mercilessly choking him.

  ?However, the thirst for the holy relic was stronger. The priest suddenly straightened up and howled hoarsely:

  "Gennady... I beg you! Give this heritage to the Church! Give up the artifact, truly I tell you—I swear I will plate all the domes with real gold! They will shine for the whole region!"

  ?The stunned officer looked for a few seconds from the paramedic in the pit to the priest, then exploded in a furious shout:

  "You’re all going to be digging this pond with your bare hands! I’ll show you light speed and golden domes! I’ll organize an eternal community service day! And you, Innokenty, march to the UAZ—you're going for a confrontation with your 'hyper-cosmonaut'. The two of you will spend three months forging stolen manhole covers, and you’ll be charged with terrorism too!"

  ?The crowd of "Old Kerzaki" fell silent, seized by mortal terror.

  "Didn't make it, then, Vaska the Bottle..." the blacksmith sighed. "I told him: we should have taken the ash from the sausage smokehouse. It’s soaked in fat, energetic... but in the forge, what? Just slag... Not enough thrust."

  ?"Shut up!" Reshetkin cut him off. "In the car!"

  ?Three months passed. Vasily Butylkin and the blacksmith Innokenty could barely move their legs as they returned along the broken road to their home village. Behind them were grueling labor and treatment for the concussions received at the epicenter of the "launch." All this time, they had been sweating at the forge in the city, making new manhole covers to replace the ones the local "craftsmen" had managed to sell for scrap.

  ?Vasily, passing the notorious fuselage of the old plane, thought with bitterness that he had rushed to the stars too soon. And at that moment, when his spirit had almost faded, an abandoned, dilapidated drilling rig from Norwegian surveyors appeared before his eyes.

  He stopped dead in his tracks, and a brilliant thought lit up his face. His eyes lit up again with a fanatical fire.

  ?"Innokenty!" he called out to his gloomy comrade. "I've realized... it’s too early for us to break through space. We need to find out what’s under our feet first! We need to reach the center of the Earth's depths! If we attach a huge drill to the 'Zaporozhets' motor, we’ll screw ourselves into the very core of the planet and find out all the secrets of knowledge!"

  ?"Oh, forget it, Bottle..." Innokenty replied dejectedly. "You’re going to get me in real trouble! We still have to dig up Grandma Zina's garden. You damn alchemist!"