“The engine is humming annoyingly, the propeller is whistling heartbreakingly, the skin is vibrating, something is crackling, as if rivets are about to start flying out... The helicopter has clearly survived its first youth, and quite a long time ago. As, indeed, are almost all the mechanisms in the country of the next business trip. I am sitting in the flight engineer’s seat, staring at the black, dense back of the pilot’s head, with horizontal stripes cut in the local fashion. His neck is also powerful and black, and his strong arms rocking the steering wheel are black. Not from coal dust embedded in the mine face and not from dirt, but from nature. With his monolithic broad-shouldered figure and equanimity, he resembles a statue cast from volcanic lava. For two hours the pilot did not utter a single word and barely moved. Only occasionally, turning his head slightly, did he shift his gaze from the GPS navigator screen to the map, then peered out the window for a long time and returned to the map again. It seemed that the window was more informative for him than the satellite orientation...”