: A Komsomol member who dreams of becoming a captain is sent to work as a counselor in a pioneer camp. At first, the girl does not like her work, but then she understands how important it is to bring up a worthy shift.
Natka Shegalova dreams of becoming a captain of a ship or a pilot, but she is sent to the Artek pioneer camp as a pioneer leader. The girl does not like this work, it seems to her that she is not in her place. On the way to the camp, she meets with her uncle, Colonel Shegalov, a hero of the civil war. The Colonel reassures Natka, saying that she needs to learn, pull herself up, not be shy, and everything will turn out right.
On the train, she meets a man who rides with his six-year-old son Alka. The boy holds last year’s magazine with a photo of the Komsomol member Maritsa Margulis. The woman escaped from hard labor, was captured and killed in a Chisinau prison.
Children from all over the country arrive at the camp. Friendship is made between Vladik and Tolka. Vladik is proud of his communist sister, who is serving her sentence in a Polish prison, and the boys dream of making her escape from there. Inspecting the area near the camp, they discover the ruins of an old fortress. In it, young adventurers find a hole that they decide to explore in the future.
Meanwhile, an accident occurs at the Artek water supply. To eliminate it, engineer Ganin arrives, who turned out to be Natkin’s fellow traveler by train. His son Alka is temporarily placed in her room. Dynamite is needed to speed up the work, and Ganin, having found his old friend from the Central Executive Committee of Gitaevich in the nearest sanatorium, connects him to the case - asks to send a request to Moscow.
Taking advantage of the fact that the entire camp is preparing for the great pioneer fire, Vladik and Tolka decide to explore the hole. Not finding anything interesting there, they leave the fortress and see how a stranger enters there without noticing the boys. They are also met by Ganina, who asks to hand over the note to the head of the camp.
Alka is very attached to Natka, but is silent on her question about her mother. One day, Alka tells Natka a tale, which she then retells to the Oktyabrs.
The Tale of Malchish-Kibalchish
The war died out throughout the country, the Red Army drove away the damned bourgeois. Once upon a time there lived Malchish, nicknamed Kibalchish with his father and older brother. Father and brother work, and Malchish helps them, then plays with other boys.
But one day trouble came. Again the damned bourgeoisie attacked. Father took a rifle and went to war. Soon the elder brother left too. But the damned bourgeois come. Then the Boy gathered his friends of the little boys, and the boys came to the aid of the Red Army. Only one Malchish-Plohish went to serve the bourgeoisie. He did not say anything to anyone, he went along with everyone, but at the same time he was thinking how to help the bourgeois.
At this time, the Chief Bourgeois asks his bourgeois why they did not achieve victory. The bourgeois answer that the victory was near, they defeated the fathers and older brothers, but Malchish-Kibalchish came to their aid with friends, and the bourgeois could not cope with them. The Chief Bourgeois was angry and shouted in a formidable voice so that they would not return to him without victory. But meanwhile, Plohish chopped wood, pulled hay and lit all the boxes with ammunition and shells. The bourgeoisie rejoiced and gave him a barrel of jam and a basket of cookies for it.
Because of smoke and fire, the bourgeois came flying and chained Malchish-Kibalchish into heavy chains and began to pry out Military Secret from him. Why did the Forty Kings and Forty Kings fight the Red Army, and did the Red Army defeat them? But Malchish laughed in their face and said that the Red Army had a mighty secret, and the bourgeoisie would never win. The boy will not reveal secrets to them, and he himself, damned, cannot guess a century. And Malchish smiled so that the bourgeois became scared, they felt the earth tremble under them. The Chief Bourgeois was surprised: what kind of country is it that such kids know the Military Secret and keep their word so tightly?
And Malchish-Kibalchish died. And the Chief Bourgeois fled in fear, loudly cursing this country. Malchish-Kibalchish was buried on a hillock and a large red flag was placed on his grave.
***
On the site where the restoration work is carried out, theft occurs. In addition to money and weapons, documents and lists for engineering work disappeared. In addition, shovels have recently disappeared, and workers have dug the ground in places not needed.Ganin notices a suspicious drunken man on the plot.
The camp is in full swing preparing for the great fire. Among the chiefs who arrived from the CEC sanatorium, Natka meets Gitaevich, whom her uncle had once introduced to her. Having greeted him, Natka introduced Gitaevich Alka. Since engineer Ganin himself has not yet arrived, Alka runs away to look for him. Taking advantage of the absence of the boy, Natka learns that Alka’s mother was the brave Komsomol member Maritsa Margulis.
Ganin, meanwhile, is working on the site. He does not like Shalimov, one of the foremen, Ganin suspects him of fraud. Returning to the camp, the engineer hears a shot.
Vladik and Tolka are also late for the fire. Finally they come - Only all in bruises and with a dislocation of the arm, and Vlad flatly refuses to say what happened. Natka is ashamed of the boys in front of the entire camp.
Having stepped in for a fellow camp, Vladik enters into a fight with an unfamiliar boy. He washes the bloodied shirt in the presence of Alki at sea. Having met a boy in wet clothes, Natka thinks that Vladik bathed without permission. This is strictly forbidden and threatens him with punishment. Alka tells the truth to his father, and Ganin stands up for Vladik in front of the head of the camp.
Ganin is urgently summoned to Moscow. It’s a pity for Natka to part with Alka, who becomes attached to the girl and tells her and her dad a military secret: he still saw his mother once a whole week when she escaped from prison.
In the camp dash, where Ganin meets Vladik, the engineer finds the senior foreman Diaghilev with a request to sign the documents.Vladik tells Ganin that Diaghilev is hiding weapons in the fortress. He and Tolka found him and accidentally shot him. Ganin heard this shot when he was returning to the camp, and the boys rushed to run and fell. Diaghilev is being arrested.
Ganin and Alka go to the camp. While Alka runs after cigarettes forgotten by her father in the clearing, the engineer is stopped by Diaghilev’s brother, who turns out to be a drunkard who is constantly undergoing restoration work. Avenging his brother, he throws stones at Ganin. One stone falls into the approaching Alcu and the boy falls dead. The whole camp comes to bury the boy on a cliff above the sea.
Ganin and Natka are returning to Moscow. At the station they are met by Colonel Shegalov. From there, Ganin, on assignment, travels to the Far East, leaving Natka a souvenir photograph of Alka and Maritsa Margulis. Natka now realizes that she is in her place, educating a decent replacement for people like Ganin.
