A film about the feat of the Soviet pilot Aleksandr Mamkin, who took part in the operation "Asterisk". In Nazi-occupied Polotsk, children from an orphanage are starving. The Germans decide to make them blood donors for the wounded soldiers, but the director manages to convince them that the kids should be taken to the village for a while in order to fatten them up a little. The partisans learn about the children who have appeared in the village and decide to organize an operation to save them. With great difficulty, they manage to transport the children to them. They need to be urgently evacuated to the mainland, but the detachment is surrounded: the only way out is to take them out by plane. Operation "Asterisk" begins to save the children.