For a second the little world around me became incoherent, dispersed. Someone’s brass badge fell to the floor. It mattered little. Soon it was under my heel. A voice: “And I tell you, it was a face!” A black square, the open door of the main saloon. White teeth pressed together, smiling.... And at that moment, when the clock began slowly, holding its breath between beats, to strike, and when the front rows began to move towards the dining saloon, the rectangle of the door was suddenly crossed by the two familiar, unnaturally long arms:
“STOP!”
Someone’s fingers sank piercing into my palm. It was I-330. She was beside me.
“Who is it, do you know him?”
“Is he not ... is he not?...”
He was already lifted upon somebody’s shoulders. Above a hundred other faces, his face like hundreds, like thousands of other faces yet unique among the rest....
“In the name of the Guardians! You, to whom I talk, they hear me, every one of them hears me,—I talk to you: we know! We don’t know your numbers yet but we know everything else. The Integral shall not be yours! The test flight will be carried out to the end and you yourselves, you will not dare to make another move! You with your own hands will help to go on with the test and afterward ... well, I have finished!”
Silence. The glass plates under my feet seemed soft, cotton-like. My feet too,—soft, cotton-like. Beside me—she with a dead-white smile, angry blue sparks. Through her teeth to me:
“Ah! It is your work! You did your ‘duty’! Well....” She tore her hand from mine; the walkyrie helmet with indignant wings was soon to be seen some distance in front of me. I was alone, torpid, silent. Like everyone else I followed into the dining saloon.
But it was not I, not I! I told nobody, save these white, mute pages.... I cried this to her within me, inaudibly, desperately, loudly. She was across the table, directly opposite me and not once did she even touch me with her gaze. Beside her, someone’s ripe, yellow, bald head. I heard (it was I-330’s voice):