He seemed to be in a great hurry. At any rate, he accelerated the engine into a velvety roar; then he switched on some evil-sounding device and, ignoring all safety rules, started to pass the column of trucks, narrowly missing the cars speeding toward him.
They passed the column of trucks. Nearly flying onto the shoulder, they swerved around a red vehicle with a lone driver; leaped past a wooden cart with enormous wobbly wheels drawn by an ancient tailless beast; forced a group of pedestrians wearing canvas capes into a ditch; sailed beneath a canopy of wet trees planted in even rows along both sides of the road—and Fank kept accelerating. Realizing that the car had not been designed for such speeds—it was much too unstable—Maxim felt uneasy.
Soon the road was lined with buildings. The car had burst into the city, and Fank had to reduce his speed sharply.
The streets were disproportionately narrow and jammed with vehicles. Hemmed in on all sides by vehicles of every conceivable description, Fank’s car hardly moved. A van ahead of them, its rear covered with flashy signs and gaudy images of people and animals, almost blocked out the sky. On their left crawled two identical cars, crowded with gesticulating men and women. Beautiful women, colorful, unlike Fishface. Further to the left rolled some sort of gyromat packed with passengers. On the right was a stationary strip of asphalt closed to transport. People dressed in strange violet and black clothing bumped, passed, and dodge done another as they shouldered their way through the crowds.
There were many pale, drawn faces, very similar to Fishface’s. Almost everyone was ugly, painfully thin, too pale, awkward, and angular. Yet they appeared to be content: they laughed often and seemed relaxed, their eyes sparkled, and animated voices filled the air. “Perhaps,” thought Maxim, “this is a well-organized society after all.” The houses seemed cheerful— lights were shining in almost all the windows, which meant there was no shortage of electric power. Many-colored lights above rooftops blinked gaily. Streets were washed clean. Almost everyone was neatly dressed. But although this world appeared prosperous on the surface, something was wrong: there were too many haggard faces.
Suddenly there was an abrupt change of mood. Excited cries rang through the air. A man climbed onto a glass kiosk and began to shout, waving a free hand as he hung on with the other. Singing broke out on the sidewalk. Pedestrians halted in their tracks, tossed their hats in the air, and sang and shouted themselves hoarse, lifting their drawn faces to enormous colored signs flashing across the street.
“Massaraksh!” hissed Fank, and the car swerved sharply. Maxim looked at him. Fank’s face was deathly white and contorted. He pulled his hands back from the wheel with difficulty and stared at his watch.
“Massaraksh!” he groaned. He uttered several other words, but Maxim caught only “I don’t understand.”
Fank glanced over his shoulder, and his face grew even more contorted. Mac looked back, too, but saw nothing unusual. Only a bright yellow box-shaped automobile.
By now the shouting and shrieking on the street had reached fever pitch, but Maxim had no time to think about it. Fank had lost consciousness and the car was still moving. The van in front of them slammed on its brakes, and a massive gaudy wall came at Maxim head-on. Then, a dull thud, a sickening crunch, and the hood of their car sprang up.
“Fank!” shouted Maxim. “Fank! Must not!”
Fank lay there moaning, his body slumped over the wheel, Brakes squealed, traffic stopped, and sirens howled. Maxim shook Fank by the shoulder and then opened the window, shouting, “Hurry! Hurt!”
The singing, yelling mob converged on the car. Maxim was to-tally bewildered. Either these people were outraged by the accident, or they were insanely overjoyed about something, or they were threatening someone. It would be pointless to shout for help; he couldn’t even hear himself. So he returned to Fank. Now Fank’s head was thrown back against the seat; and with all his strength he was kneading his temples and cheeks. Saliva oozed from the corners of his mouth. Realizing that Fank was in terrible pain, Maxim grasped him firmly by the elbows and braced himself quickly, preparing to transfer the pain to his own body. He wasn’t sure it would work with a non-Earthling, and he searched in vain for a point where he could establish nerve contact. To make matters worse, Fank pulled his hands from his temples and with all his remaining strength tried to push Maxim away, mumbling desperately and tearfully. Maxim understood only “Go, go!” He was sure that Fank was out of his mind.
The door next to Fank opened wide. Two faces beneath black berets forced their way into the car. Rows of metal buttons glittered, Maxim’s door was opened, and strong hands gripped his shoulders, side, and neck. They pulled him away from Fank and dragged him from the car. He did not resist. As he was pushed into the noisy mob, he saw two men in berets dragging the writhing Fank to the yellow car, while three others in berets cleared a path through the arm-waving crowd. Then, with a roar, the crowd closed in on the wrecked car; the car lurched clumsily, rose in the air, and turned onto its side. The crowd descended on it, still shouting and singing. Everyone had been seized by a frantic ecstasy.
Maxim was driven back to the wall of a building and pressed against a wet shop window. Craning his neck, he spotted the yellow car. It set off with a brassy wailing noise. Forcing its way through the mob, it disappeared from sight.
4.
By late evening Maxim had had it with the city. He was ravenous. He had been on his feet all day, seen a great deal but under-stood almost nothing. He did pick up several new words by eavesdropping on conversations and could now identify some of the letters on signs and posters, but that was it. The accident with Fank had disturbed him, yet he was relieved to be on his own again. Independence was very important to him; it was something he had lacked during his confinement in Hippo’s fifth-floor termite’s nest with its miserable ventilation. Reviewing the entire situation, he decided not to return to Hippo for the time being but to lose himself for a while. Sure, courtesy to your hosts was important, but the chance to gather information was something to be considered as well. Yes, it was damned important to establish communication with these people, but a better opportunity to gather information on his own would probably never turn up again. So communication would have to wait.
The city amazed him. It bugged the earth. All movement took place either along the ground or beneath it. The vast areas between buildings and the sky above them were filled only with smoke, rain, and fog. The city was gray, smoky, and drab. There was a sameness everywhere. Not in its buildings—some were rather beautiful—nor in the monotonous swarming of crowds on its streets; not in its eternal dampness, nor in the striking lifelessness of its solid mass of stone and asphalt—its sameness resided in something all-embracing, something very basic. It resembled the gigantic mechanism of a clock in which every part is different, yet everything moves, rotates, meshes, and unmeshes in a single, endless rhythm; where a change in rhythm means only one thing—faulty mechanism, breakdown, stoppage. A strange world, so unlike anything he had ever seen! It was probably a very complex society governed by many laws. But there was one that Maxim had already discovered for himself: conform, do as everyone else does in the same way as everyone else. And this was precisely what he was doing. Melting into the crowd, he entered gigantic stores under dirty glass roofs; together with the crowds he left them, descended into the earth, squeezed into jammed electric trains, and sped off somewhere amid incredible thundering; then, swept along by the crowd, he ascended to the surface again to streets identical to the ones he had just left.