“Go away! Tell it to someone else!”

“Well, look for yourself! Here is the telescope.”

They had already disappeared. Endless green desert, and in that desert, dominating it completely and dominating me, and everybody⁠—the piercing vibrations of the gong; dinner time, one minute to twelve.

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! ”