An intelligent asteroid flies towards Earth with the intention of destroying all life on it. Conventional weapons are powerless, and the only chance of survival is to land troops on the surface of a strange enemy, who will plant a thermonuclear charge inside the asteroid. However, the non-human mind has completely human counterarguments. From the author: This is a very strange work for me. It arose from a very specific conversation in one group of comrades, to whom I rashly told that I could write a story with any boundary conditions. They caught me by the tongue and began to mock me - that is, to collectively invent conditions that the story should meet. The list was rather long, but all the conditions in the text were met. But the most interesting thing happened at the end of the mockery. Konstantin Skuratov stated that he voluntarily undertakes to write his text under the same set of conditions. We wrote for the same amount of time and the same volume. And here is his story: Illustration by Shamil Altamirov (