dragged me forward. My legs twisted and glided.... Terrible noise, cawing, stumps, yelling, branches, tree-trunks, wings, leaves, whistling....
The trees ran apart. A bright clearing. In the clearing, people, or perhaps to be more exact, beings. Now comes the most difficult part to describe for this was beyond any bounds of probability. It is clear to me now why I-330 was stubbornly silent about it before; I should not have believed it, should not have believed even her. It is even possible that tomorrow I shall not believe myself, shall not believe my own description in these pages.
In the clearing, around a naked, skull-like rock,—a noisy crowd of three or four hundred ... people. Well, let’s call them people. I find it difficult to coin new words. Just as on the stands you recognize in the general accumulation of faces only those which are familiar to you, so at first I recognized only our grayish-blue unifs. But one second later and I saw distinctly and clearly among the unifs dark, red, golden, black, brown and white humans—apparently they were humans. None of them had any clothes on, and their bodies were covered with short, glistening hair, like that which may be seen on the stuffed horse in the Prehistoric Museum. But their females had faces exactly, yes exactly, like the faces of our women: tender, rosy and not overgrown with hair. Also their breasts were free of
hair, firm breasts of wonderful geometrical form. As to the males, only a part of their faces were free from hair, like our ancestors’, and the organs of reproduction, similar to ours.
All this was so unbelievable, so unexpected, that I stood there quietly (I assert positively that I stood quietly), and looked around. Like a scale: overload one side sufficiently and then you may gently put on the other as much as you will; the arrow will not move.
Suddenly I felt alone. I-330 was no longer with me. I don’t know how nor where she disappeared. Around me were only those, with their hair glistening like silk in the sunlight. I caught someone’s warm, strong, dark shoulder.
“Listen, please, in the name of the Well-Doer, could you tell me where she went? A while, a minute ago she....”
Long-haired, austere eyebrows turned to me.
“Sh ... sh ... silence!” He made a sign with his head towards the centre where there stood the yellow, skull-like stone.
There above the heads of all I saw her. The sun beat straight into my eyes, and because of that she seemed coal-black, standing out on the blue cloth of the sky,—a coal-black silhouette on a blue background. A little higher the clouds were floating. And it seemed that not the clouds but the rock itself, and she herself upon that rock, and the crowd and the clearing,—all were silently floating like a ship, and the earth was