On the corner the doors of the auditorium were ajar, a heavy column of about fifty people--. The word "people" is not the right one. These were heavy-wheeled automatons bound in iron and moved by an invisible mechanism. Not people but a sort of human-like tractor. Over their heads, floating in the air--a white banner with a golden sun embroidered on it, and the rays of the sun: "We are the first! We have already been operated upon! Follow us, all of you!" They slowly, unhesitatingly mowed through the crowd, and it was clear that if they had had in their way a wall, a tree, a house, they would have moved on with no more hesitation through wall, tree or house. In the middle of the avenue they fused and stretched out into a chain, arm in arm, their faces turned towards us. And we, a human clot, tense, the hair pricking our heads, we waited. Our necks were stretched out goose-fashion. Clouds. The wind whistled. Suddenly the wings of the chain from right and left bent quickly around us, and faster, faster, like a heavy engine descending a hill, they closed the ring and pulled us toward the yawning doors and inside.... Somebody's piercing cry: "They are driving us in! Run!" All ran. Close to the wall there still was an open living gate of human beings. Everybody dashed through it, heads forward. Their heads became sharp wedges, so with their ribs, shoulders, hips.... Like a stream of water compressed in a firehose they spurted out in the form of a fan,--and all around me stamping feet, raised arms, unifs.... The double-curved S- with his transparent wing-ears appeared for a moment close before my eyes; he disappeared as suddenly; I was alone among arms and legs appearing for a second and disappearing. I was running.... I dashed to the entrance of a house to stop for a breath, my back close to the door,--and immediately, like a splinter borne by the wind, a human being was thrown towards me. "All the while I ... I have been following you. I do not want ... do you see? I do not want ... I am ready to...." Small round hands on my sleeves, round dark blue eyes--it was O-90. She just slipped along my body like a unif which, its hanger broken, slips along the wall to fall upon the floor. Like a little bundle she crumpled below me on the cold door-step, and I stood over her, stroking her head, her face,--my hands were wet. I felt as if I were very big and she very small, a small part of myself. I felt something quite different from what I feel towards I-330. I think that the ancients must have had similar feelings towards their private children. Below, passing through her hands with which she was covering her face, a voice came to me: "Every night I ... I cannot! If they cure me.... Every night I sit in the darkness alone and think of _him_, and of what he will look like when I.... If cured I should have nothing to live with--do you understand me? You must ... you must...."