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We

up from his place (without singing the Hymn!) and confusedly, in disorder, hastily finishing chewing, choking, grasping one another. . . . They were asking: “What? What happened? What? . . .” And the disorderly fragments of the Machine, which was once perfect and great, fell down in all directions—down the elevators, down the stairs. . . . Stamping of feet . . . Pieces of words like pieces of torn letters carried by the wind. . . .

The same outpour from the neighboring houses. A minute later the avenue seemed like a drop of water seen under a microscope: the infusoria locked up in the transparent, glass-like drop of water were tossing around, from side to side, up and down.

“Ah!” Someone’s triumphant voice. I saw the back of a neck, and a finger pointing to the sky. I remember very distinctly a yellowish-pinkish nail, and under the nail a crescent crawling out as if from under the horizon. The finger was like a compass; all eyes were raised to the sky.

There, running away from invisible pursuit, masses of cloud were rushing upon each other; colored by the clouds, the aeros of the Guardians were floating with their tube-like antennae. And farther to the west—something like . . . At first nobody could understand what it was, even I, who knew (unfortunately) more than the others. It was like a great hive of black aeros swarming somewhere at an extraordinary height—they looked like hardly noticeable, swiftly moving points . . . Nearer and nearer . . . Hoarse, guttural sounds began to reach the earth, and finally we saw birds just over our heads! They filled the sky with their sharp, black, descending triangles. The furious wind drove them down, and they began to land on the cupolas, on the roofs, poles, and balconies.

“Ah—ah!” and the triumphant back of the neck turned; again I saw that man with the protruding forehead, but it seemed that the name, so to speak, was all that was left of him: he seemed to have crawled out from under his forehead, and on his face, around the eyes and lips,

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