On the surface, not much was happening in the Station. Sartorius had programmed the experiment for automatic repetition at set intervals. I did not even know whether anybody was checking the apparatus for correct function. In fact, the calm was not as complete as it seemed, but not because of any human activity.

I was afraid that Sartorius had no real intention of abandoning the construction of the disruptor. And how would Snow react when he found out that I had kept information from him and exaggerated the dangers we might run in the attempt to annihilate neutrino structures? Yet neither of the two said anything further about the project, and I kept wondering why they were so silent. I vaguely suspected them of keeping something from me — perhaps they had been working in secret — and every day I inspected the room which housed the disruptor, a windowless cell situated directly underneath the main laboratory. I never found anybody in the room, and the layer of dust over the armatures and cables of the apparatus proved that it had not been touched for weeks.

As a matter of fact, I did not meet anybody anywhere, and could not get through to Snow any more: nobody answered when I tried to call the radio-cabin. Somebody had to be controlling the Station’s movements, but who? I had no idea, and oddly enough I considered the question was out of my province. The absence of response from the ocean left me equally indifferent, so much so that after two or three days I had stopped being either hopeful or apprehensive, and had completely written off the experiment and its possible results.

For days on end, I remained sitting in the library or in my cabin, accompanied by the silent shadow of Rheya. I was aware that there was an unease between us, and that my state of mindless suspension could not go on forever. Obviously it was up to me to break the stalemate, but I resisted the very idea of any kind of change: I was incapable of making the most trivial decision. Everything inside the Station, and my relationship with Rheya in particular, felt fragile and insubstantial, as if the slightest alteration could shatter the perilous equilibrium and bring down ruin. I could not tell where this feeling originated, and the strangest thing of all is that Rheya too had a similar experience. When I look back on those moments today, I have a strong conviction that this atmosphere of uncertainty and suspense, and my presentiment of impending disaster, was provoked by an invisible presence which had taken possession of the Station. I believe too that I can claim that this presence manifested itself just as powerfully in dreams. I have never had visions of that kind before or since, so I decided to note them down and to transcribe them approximately, in so far as my vocabulary permits, given that I can convey only fragmentary glimpses almost entirely denuded of an incommunicable horror.

A blurred region, in the heart of vastness, far from earth and heaven, with no ground underfoot, no vault of sky overhead, nothing. I am the prisoner of an alien matter and my body is clothed in a dead, formless substance — or rather I have no body, I am that alien matter. Nebulous pale pink globules surround me, suspended in a medium more opaque than air, for objects only become clear at very close range, although when they do approach they are abnormally distinct, and their presence comes home to me with a preternatural vividness. The conviction of its substantial, tangible reality is now so overwhelming that later, when I wake up, I have the impression that I have just left a state of true perception, and everything I see after opening my eyes seems hazy and unreal.

That is how the dream begins. All around me, something is awaiting my consent, my inner acquiescence, and I know, or rather the knowledge exists, that I must not give way to an unknown temptation, for the more the silence seems to promise, the more terrible the outcome will be. Yet I essentially know no such thing, because I would be afraid if I knew, and I never feel the slightest fear.

I wait. Out of the enveloping pink mist, an invisible object emerges, and touches me. Inert, locked in the alien matter that encloses me, I can neither retreat nor turn away, and still I am being touched, my prison is being probed, and I feel this contact like a hand, and the hand recreates me. Until now, I thought I saw, but had no eyes: now I have eyes! Under the caress of the hesitant fingers, my lips and cheeks emerge from the void, and as the caress goes further I have a face, breath stirs in my chest — I exist. And recreated, I in my turn create: a face appears before me that I have never seen until now, at once mysterious and known. I strain to meet its gaze, but I cannot impose any direction on my own, and we discover one another mutually, beyond any effort of will, in an absorbed silence. I have become alive again, and I feel as if there is no limitation on my powers. This creature — a woman? — stays near me, and we are motionless. The beat of our hearts combines, and all at once, out of the surrounding void where nothing exists or can exist, steals a presence of indefinable, unimaginable cruelty. The caress that created us and which wrapped us in a golden cloak becomes the crawling of innumerable fingers. Our white, naked bodies dissolve into a swarm of black creeping things, and I am — we are — a mass of glutinous coiling worms, endless, and in that infinity, no, I am infinite, and I howl soundlessly, begging for death and for an end. But simultaneously I am dispersed in all directions, and my grief expands in a suffering more acute than any waking state, a pervasive, scattered pain piercing the distant blacks and reds, hard as rock and ever-increasing, a mountain of grief visible in the dazzling light of another world.

That dream was one of the simplest. I cannot describe the others, for lack of a language to convey their dread. In those dreams, I was unaware of the existence of Rheya, nor was there any echo of past or recent events.

There were also visionless dreams, where in an unmoving, clotted silence I felt myself being slowly and minutely explored, although no instrument or hand touched me. Yet I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained. Total annihilation was succeeded by such terror that its memory alone makes my heart beat faster today.

So the days passed, each one like the next. I was indifferent to everything, fearing only the night and unable to find a means of escape from the dreams. Rheya never slept. I lay beside her, fighting against sleep, and the tenderness with which I clung to her was only a pretext, a way of avoiding the moment when I would be compelled to close my eyes. I had not mentioned these nightmares to her, but she must have guessed, for her attitude involuntarily betrayed a sense of deep humiliation.

As I say, I had not seen Snow or Sartorius for some time, yet Snow gave occasional signs of life. He would leave a note at my door, or call me on the videophone, asking whether I had noticed any new event or change, or anything at all which could be interpreted as a response to the repeated X-ray bombardments. I told him No, and asked him the same question, but there in the little screen Snow only shook his head.

On the fifteenth day after the conclusion of the experiment, I woke up earlier than usual, exhausted by the previous night’s dreams. All my limbs were numbed, as if emerging from the effects of a powerful narcotic. The first rays of the red sun shone through the window, a blanket of red flame ripped over the surface of the ocean, and I realized that the vast expanse which had not been disturbed by the slightest movement in the past four days was beginning to stir. The dark ocean was abruptly covered by a thin veil of mist which seemed at the same time to have a very palpable consistency. Here and there the mist shook, and tremors spread out to the horizon in all directions. Now the ocean disappeared altogether beneath thick, corrugated membranes with pink swellings and pearly depressions, and these strange waves suspended above the ocean swirled suddenly and coalesced into great balls of blue-green foam. A tempest of wind hurled them upwards to the height of the Station, and wherever I looked, immense membranous wings were soaring in the red sky. Some of these wings of foam, which blotted out the sun, were pitch-black, and others shone with highlights of purple as they were exposed obliquely to the sunlight. Still the phenomenon continued, as if the ocean were mutating, or shedding an old scaly skin. Now and again the dark surface of the ocean could be glimpsed through a gap that the foam filled in an instant. Wings of foam planed all around me, only a few yards from the window, and one swooped to rub against the window pane like a silken scarf. As the ocean went on giving birth to these fantastic birds, the first flights were already dissipating high above, decomposing at their zenith into transparent filaments.