The five minute pre-election recess established by custom. The custom-established pre-electional silence. But now it was not that pious, really prayer-like silence that it usually was. Now it was as in the ancient days when there were no Accumulating Towers, when the sky, still untamed in those days, would roar from time to time with its “storms.” It was like the “lull before the storm” of the ancient days. The air seemed to be made of transparent, vaporized cast-iron. One wanted to breathe with one’s mouth wide open. My hearing, intense to painfulness, registered from behind a mouse-like, gnawing, worried whisper. Without lifting my eyes I saw those two, I-330 and R-13 , side by side, shoulder to shoulder⁠—and on my knees my trembling, foreign, hateful, hairy hands.⁠ ⁠…

Everybody was holding a badge with a clock in his hands. One.⁠ ⁠… Two.⁠ ⁠… Three.⁠ ⁠… Five minutes. From the main platform a cast-iron, slow voice:

“Those in favor shall lift their hands.”