Jupiter glowed faintly in the marbled pink sky as Ari, Maja and Leon shuffled through the silent corridors of the 'Ares VII' station. The colony on Mars slept plunged into the morning silence, but the three teenagers could not get to sleep. The impetus was a message from the observation centre: comet Helios was approaching - one of the largest to pass by the Red Planet this century. But it wasn't just the cosmic spectacle that caused the thrill. Maja was the first to read an unusual radio signal when she reviewed data from her home telescope. The signal was persistent, repetitive and unlike any known phenomenon. Ari, a keen programmer, wrote a simple algorithm to analyse the waves. He picked up something even stranger - a piece of regular code, as if someone was transmitting something from the surface of a comet. Leon, who dreamed of being a pilot, suggested the audacious idea: - Since it flies close, we could send a drone there. Thus their plan was born. They secretly smuggled themselves into the garage, from where a small reconnaissance drone could be launched through the service pod. Ari held the tablet, Maja checked the sensors and Leon set the flight trajectory. During the countdown, their heartbeats quickened - not only by breaking a few Martian rules and regulations, but also by the realisation that they were doing something that no one else had attempted. The drone moved away from the station, and after a few minutes reached the tail of the comet. Through the viewfinder they saw strange structures - geometric patterns of ice and dust, formations that seemed too regular for a work of nature. Then the signal picked up. Maja began to receive increasingly clear pulses, and Ari read out more batches of code. At one point, the screen lit up, lines of characters appeared on it - a sort of message that seemed to be directed at them. Leon suddenly noticed movement among the ice forms. Something that resembled neither rock nor dead matter. Something that began to approach the drone's camera, flashed with a light of its own colour. For a moment, all three were paralysed by silence. Should they continue the transmission? Should they read the message, the meaning of which they did not even know yet? Suddenly, the signal struck with full force. The service capsule trembled, the systems began to respond with alarm. At the same moment, a new sequence of characters appeared on the screen - clearer, faster, almost like a message addressed directly to them.