“Yes, it is I. Why so late?”

“Perhaps not too late yet. I want to ask you⁠ ⁠… I want you to be with me tomorrow⁠—dear!”

“Dear” I said in a very low voice. And for some reason a thing I saw this morning at the docks flashed through my mind: just for fun someone put a watch under the hundred-ton sledgehammer.⁠ ⁠… A swing, a breath of wind in the face and the silent hundred-ton, knife-like weight on the breakable watch.⁠ ⁠…

A silence. I thought I heard someone’s whisper in I-330 ’s room. Then her voice:

“No, I cannot. Of course you understand that I myself.⁠ ⁠… No, I cannot. ‘Why?’ You shall see tomorrow.”

Night.