In a small seaside town lived two friends—the feisty Fedka Boiko and the thoughtful, quiet Vovka. One day, the boys called a doctor to visit a sick person and began to visit him. That is how an extraordinary person entered their lives — polar pilot Pavel Ivanovich Fedoseenko, who turned out to be a shortwave radio amateur. From him, the boys learned about distant Antarctica for the first time — and vowed to become polar explorers. In the Antarctic village of Mirny, polar explorers Vladimir Sazonov and Fyodor Boyko meet—old friends who haven't seen each other in many years, who reminisce about their childhood in a southern coastal town and the romance of long-distance radio communications on short radio waves.