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metal, suddenly everything came to a halt, the glass balloon in front of me bulged and burst. I was standing at the bottom of the hall of the General Assembly. The amphitheater, spread out in funnel fashion, went swirling up in circular tiers of seats, immaculately white, dazzling; in the distance the tiny silhouettes of the delegations were sprinkles of emerald, gold and crimson along the spiraling ivory levels, strangely scintillating myriads it hurt to look upon. At first I was unable to distinguish eyes from medals, limbs from their artificial extensions, I only saw that they were moving rapidly, reaching across the snowy desks for sheaves of documents, black and shiny things like tiles of anthracite, while directly opposite me, at a distance of some fifty or sixty feet, flanked by walls of electronic machines, the Secretary-General sat atop a dais in the middle of a forest of microphones. Snatches of conversations floated in the air, conversations conducted in a thousand languages at once, and these stellar dialects ranged from the lowest basses to notes as shrill as the chirping of birds. With the feeling that the floor might open up beneath me any minute, I pulled my tuxedo straight. A sound rang out, reverberating endlessly, it was the Secretary-General setting in motion a machine that swung a mallet at a slab of solid gold; the vibrations made my ears throb. The Rhohch, towering above me, pointed to my place as the voice of the Secretary-General boomed from unseen loudspeakers. But before sitting down by the rectangular sign that bore the name of my native planet, I scanned the curving rows of seats, higher and higher, trying to find at least one kindred soul, at least one creature of humanoid appearance—in vain. Enormous shapes, lush, tuber-like, coils of aspic, currant jelly, fleshy stalks, pedunculations propped against the desks, faces the color of well-seasoned meat pies or gleaming like rice fritters, knots, pads, mandibles, pseudopodia holding the fates of stars both far and near, all passed before me as if in some slow-motion film, nor was there anything monstrous about them, I experienced no revulsion—contrary to the suppositions expressed so often back on Earth—as though I were not dealing here with cosmic horrors, but with beings that had emerged from beneath the chisel of some abstractionist sculptor, or perhaps a gastronomic visionary…
    “Item number eighty-two,” hissed the Rhohch in my ear and took his seat. I did the same. Picking up the headphones that lay on the desk, I listened in.
    “The appliances, which, pursuant to the treaty ratified by this Esteemed Assembly, were, in full accordance with the terms specified in that treaty, delivered by the Altair Commonwealth to the Sexpartite Alliance of Fomalhaut, have displayed, as was confirmed by the report of the ad hoc subcommittee of the UP, certain properties which cannot be accounted for by minor deviations from the technological prescription agreed upon by the esteemed parties involved. Granted, as the Altair Commonwealth correctly notes, the radiation sifters and planetary regulators it manufactured were indeed supposed to possess the ability to reproduce, guaranteeing thereby the creation of machine progeny, which was duly provided for in the contract drawn up between both the esteemed parties involved; nevertheless that potentiality should have taken the form, in compliance with the engineering code of ethics that binds all members of our Federation, of individual budding, and not resulted from the endowment of the abovementioned mechanisms with programs of opposing signs, which—unfortunately—did in fact take place. This programmed polarity led to the creation, within the main energy compounds of Fomalhaut, of prurient tensions and, as a consequence of these, scenes that were not only offensive to public morality but which entailed serious material losses for the plaintiff party as well. The delivered units, instead of attending