Nobody could imagine our own government addressing us in Mangbetu! * * * * * We thought we were all dead men. We had all seen pictures of survivors of Hiroshima, with their skin burned off their bones. The Japs had not seen. They had been in the Guamian jungles and had not even heard of Hiroshima. I told them. They looked at one another in amazement. All this time we cowered in the heart of the explosion, and for the first time we could see the shape and extent of the dome which imprisoned us. It was outlined in smoke through which shot tongues of blue, green, and salmon pink. In the cloud which surrounded us we could see all the prisms play--and inter-flashing of lights of all colors that was unbelievably awesome. Yet we heard no sound. There was an eerie glow on the sand around us which must have come from the light, but if it had any ill effect on our bodies we have not yet become aware of it. We had kept our watches wound and synchronized, so we timed the duration of the blast. The cloud about us lasted for two hours. Then it began slowly to disintegrate. "Out to the walls, now," I said. "We'll move out from the center as skirmishers. Then, at my signal, when we're against the wall, we'll circle to the right until we have examined every inch we can reach or see." Far above the dome we saw the great snowy mushroom of the blast's residue, with lights playing through it. We looked out through the wall at the sand beyond--and there _was_ no sand. Only a landscape shaped as it had been when it had been sand; but now it was a smooth, rolling expanse of light green! The blast had been a vast primordial glazier, and the sand was not sand now, but green glass--right up to the outside of our still invisible dome! We marched out and looked through. We did the natural things, like putting our hands up beside faces that we pressed nose-flat against the invisible. The wall felt warm, but no warmer than it had felt before the blast. Our dome had withstood every possible destructive effect of the A-bomb blast! I stood there, staring out. I looked around, and the marines, sailors and Japanese were standing in the same manner--looking out and through like children looking through a zoo fence. We must all have realized it at the same time. I noticed, first, that there was suddenly a space between the outside of the wall and the sea of green glass. I noticed that it ran away to right and left, a border between the glass and our sand, which became a little wider even as I stared. Then I felt pressure against the toes of my field shoes. Then I was being pushed bodily back, and the sand border outside was a foot wide! I whirled this time, back against the wall, to stare at the others. They were all facing inboard, too. It was clear that all had noticed the widening border, that each knew the fact: our dome was closing in on us, all around.