Vlad and I shared our own sleeping car. I forgave him for having involved me in this mess. We became friends again. This would be real man’s work, we told each other. Tramping through savage taiga with bears, wolves, and Siberian tigers! Hunting strange, possibly dangerous relics—relics that might change the very course of cosmic history! No more of this poring over blueprints and formulae like clerks! Neither of us had fought in the Great Patriotic War—I’d been too young, and Vlad had been in some camp or something. Other guys were always bragging about how they’d stormed this or shelled that or eaten shoe leather in Stalingrad—well, we’d soon be making them feel pretty small!