The composition of the fourth stellar expedition has been approved and it is sent into space along an already familiar route. There are no surprises, but an event occurs in the orbit of Proxima b that completely changes the fate of the crew. From the author: This story is a prequel to the series “Touching the Void”: The text of the book was translated from the original language using an artificial intelligence program. For the most part, the translation of the text is of very high quality, but in some cases, due to the imperfection of the technology, there may be incorrect phrase translations in the text, as well as single words and expressions may not be translated.