The second volume of Andrei Chertkov’s sensational literary project “The Worlds of the Strugatskys: The Time of the Disciples, XXI Century” is dedicated to hitherto unknown events from the lives of some of the heroes of the Strugatsky brothers. What did Anton-Rumata do on Earth, returning to the calm, sunny World of Noon from the flaming, flooded blood of Arkanar? And what compelling reasons forced him to go again to this troubled medieval city on a distant planet? What was the further fate of the archaeologist Boris Lozovsky after he made a space flight on board the automatic Alien ship in the story “From the Outside”? What were the unfortunate midges really doing? under the leadership of the philosopher Zurzmansor and under the supervision of Doctor Yul Golem in the rainy little world of “Ugly Swans”? Why did the famous star pilot Leonid Gorbovsky, on his way to the Distant Rainbow with a load of ulmotrons for the local null-physicists, turn to the resort planet Pandora? What was he thinking about, sitting on the edge of a cliff above the mysterious and unpredictable Forest, in the wilds of which his student Athos-Sidorov disappeared without a trace? And how did Gorbovsky manage to survive the monstrous disaster on the Rainbow? Finally, the main mystery of this book is who really is Rudolf Sikorski, aka the Wanderer, aka the Excellent? What did he do before he arrived incognito on Saraksh and became the hero of the novel “The Inhabited Island”? We think that the answer to this question will surprise even such meticulous researchers of the Universe of the Strugatsky brothers as the Ludens group, not to mention ordinary science fiction lovers!