The boat took Denis, Serega, Tolya and Urla into the heart of the Golden Lakes Preserve. They set up camp on the sand beach and began resting in earnest: working on their tans, swimming in the lake, gathering mushrooms and berries, playing poker by the campfire, and of course fishing. His friends were chronic fishing enthusiasts and more than made up for Denis’ shortcomings.    Three days flew by too quickly.    By July 6th, Denis was beginning to appreciate early mornings. The woods and the lakes soothed his tired mind, chasing away the knowledge that soon, he’d have to return to the base.    He didn’t get to finish his vacation.    The ring of the cell phone broke the idyllic quiet of the early morning lake. His friends jumped and looked at him with accusation in their eyes. When they had first gotten here, each had turned off his phone and pager and shoved it dramatically to the bottom of his backpack. Denis, however, had not participated in this ritual. Switching off the cell phone and missing an emergency had earned people court-martial. He wasn’t about to risk it.    “Major,” said the officer on duty through a head cold, “we have Code Triple Zero. Return to the base immediately. You have a meeting with the General at twelve hundred hours.”    “There’s no way I can make that,” he said without much regret. “It’s at least six hours to the base from here.”    “Give me your coordinates. I’ll send a helicopter.”    “What happened?” said Denis, looking longingly at the peaceful woods around him. Any shred of hope to have a nice, quiet vacation for once evaporated.    “The General will debrief you when you arrive.”    Denis sighed. “I’m on Lake Sarovsky, about ten kilometers north of Old Svary.”    “The helicopter will be ready in fifteen minutes. It should be there by oh-eight hundred.”    The officer on duty hung up. Denis looked at his phone as if it was about to bite him and shoved it back into his pocket.    Denis Molodtsov served in the space department of the Russian Army, in the EO – Emergency Operations. At 28, he was one of the best pilots in the department, with more than four thousand flight hours. He’d been to the Moon three times, gone on a space walk four times, and had once saved the entire international space station from exploding. The Minister kept offering him the position of Director at the National Center of Space Rescue, but he liked his job – most of the time.    Though no movie star, he had a certain charm about him: medium height; medium build; a thick blond mane; a thin face with a hard chin; thin, willful mouth that was always ready to smile; a turned up nose, and alert grey eyes. Women often told him that he looked like Sergey Esenin, the young Russian poet who’d stolen Isadora Duncan’s heart. Denis quite liked this comparison.