The days are long gone when people themselves strove for the stars in order to populate other unknown worlds. Now they have to be expelled from the overpopulated Earth almost forcibly, by random selection, or “Lottery”. Potential colonists resist this with all their might, holding on to the Earth, going into the mud of the underground cities, becoming “rats.” Erik Makhov also became a “rat.” He also did not want to fly into the terrible and cold space, so that with a high degree of probability he would die either on the way or already in the colony from epidemics...