The stories of glass above the pine tops suddenly came to an end. Ahead rose a gigantic block of gray granite. Kondratev stood up. On top of the block, with an arm stretched out over the city, straining ever forward, stood Lenin, just as he had stood, and must still be standing now, in the square in front of Finland Station in Leningrad. Lenin held his arm out over this city and over this world, this shining and wonderful world that he had seen two centuries before. Kondratev stood and watched the enormous monument retreat into the bluish haze over the glass roofs.
The pines grew lower and denser. For a moment a broad clearing opened up alongside the road. A group of people in coveralls were fiddling with some complicated mechanism. The road slipped under a narrow semicircular bow bridge and ran past a sign with an arrow which said, MATROSOVO—15 KM, YELLOW FACTORY—6 KM, and something else which Kondratev did not have time to read. He looked around and saw that there were few people left on the ribbons of road. The ribbons running the opposite way were almost empty. Matrosovo must be a housing development. But what about Yellow Factory? Through the pine trunks flashed a long veranda with tables. People at the tables sat eating and drinking. Kondratev felt hungry, but after hesitating, he decided to hold off for a bit. On the way back, he thought. He was very happy to feel strong, healthy hunger, and to know that he could satisfy it at any moment.
The pines thinned out, and from somewhere a broad superhighway turned up, sparkling in the rays of the evening sun. Along the superhighway whizzed a series of monstrous vehicles-on two, three, even eight undercarriages, or without an undercarriage altogether—bluntnosed, with enormous, boxcar-sized trailers covered with bright-colored plastic. The vehicles were moving toward him, toward the city. Evidently somewhere nearby the superhighway dived underground and disappeared into multileveled tunnels. Looking closely, Kondratev noticed that the vehicles did not have cabs—there was no place for a driver. The machines moved in an unbroken stream, buzzing modestly, maintaining a distance of two or three yards between each other. Through the spaces between, Kondratev saw several of the same sort of vehicle going the other way. Then thickets once again densely lined the road, and the superhighway disappeared from view.
“Yesterday a truck jumped off the road,” someone said behind Kondratev’s back.
“That’s because they took off the power monitor. They’re digging new levels.”
“I don’t like these rhinos.”
“Never mind—soon we’ll finish the conveyer, and then we can close the whole highway.”
“It’s about time.”
Another veranda with tables appeared ahead.
“Leshka! Leshka!” people at one of the tables shouted, and waved.
A fellow and a young woman in front of Kondratev waved back, transferred to the slow belt, and jumped onto the grass opposite the veranda. A few other people jumped off here too. Kondratev was about to do the same, but he noticed a post with the sign, YELLOW FACTORY—1 KM, and he stayed on.
He jumped off at a turn. Between the tree trunks a narrow trampled path leading up the side of a large hill could be seen. At the top of the hill the outlines of small structures stood out distinctly against the background of sunset. Kondratev moved unhurriedly along the path, feeling the springy ground under his feet with pleasure. It must get muddy when it rains, he thought. On the way he bent down and picked a large white flower from the grass. Small ants ran over the flower’s petals. Kondratev threw the flower away and walked more quickly. A few minutes later he came out onto the top of the hill and stopped at the edge of a gigantic basin that seemed to stretch to the very horizon.
The contrast between the peaceful soft greenery under the dark-blue evening sky and what opened before him in the basin was so striking that Kondratev took a step backward. At the bottom of the basin seethed hell. Real hell, with ominous blue-white flashes, swirling orange smoke, and bubbling viscous liquid, red hot. There something slowly swelled and puffed up, like a purulent boil, then burst, splashing and spilling shreds of orange flame; it clouded over with varicolored smoke, threw off steam, flame, and a hail of sparks, and once again slowly swelled and puffed up. In the vortices of raging matter many-forked lightnings flashed; monstrous indistinct forms appeared and disappeared within a second; whirlwinds twisted; blue and pink ghosts danced. For a long time Kondratev watched this extraordinary spectacle, spellbound. Then he came a little more to his senses and began to notice something else.
Hell was noiseless and bounded with strict geometry. The mighty dance of flame and smoke produced not one sound; not one tongue of flame, not one puff of smoke went beyond a certain limit, and, looking closely, Kondratev discovered that the whole vast expanse of hell stretching to the far horizon was enclosed by a barely noticeable transparent covering, the edges of which merged into the concrete—if it was concrete—that paved the bottom of the basin. Then Kondratev saw that the covering had two and even, it seemed, three layers, because from time to time flat reflections flashed in the air under the covering, probably images of sparks on the outer surface of an inner layer. The basin was deep; its round, even walls, lined with smooth gray material, plunged into the depths for hundreds of meters. The “roof” of the invisible covering soared over the bottom of the basin to a height of no less than fifty. Evidently this was the Yellow Factory of which the signs warned. Kondratev sat down on the grass, lay his arms on his knees, and began to look through the covering.
The sun set, and multicolored reflections began to leap along the gray slopes of the basin. Kondratev very soon noticed that chaos did not reign unchecked in the raging, hellish kitchen. Certain regular, distinct shadows appeared now and then in the smoke and flame, sometimes unmoving, sometimes rushing headlong. It was very difficult to get a proper look at them, but once the smoke suddenly cleared for several instants, and Kondratev got a fairly clear view of a complicated machine like a daddy longlegs. The machine jumped in place, as if trying to extricate its legs from some viscous fiery mass, or else it kneaded that flaming mass with its long sparkling articulations. Then something flashed under it, and again it was covered by clouds of orange smoke.
Over Kondratev’s head a small helicopter sputtered by. Kondratev raised his head and watched it. The helicopter flew over the covering, then suddenly turned sharply to the side and crashed down like a stone. Kondratev gave a cry, but the helicopter was already sitting on the “roof” of the covering. It seemed simply to be hanging motionless above the tongues of flame. A minute black figure got out of the helicopter, bent over, resting its hands on its knees, and looked down into hell.
“Tell them I’ll be back tomorrow morning!” shouted someone behind Kondratev’s back.
The navigator turned around. Nearby, buried in luxuriant lilac bushes, stood two neat one-story houses with large lit-up windows. The windows were half hidden in the bushes, and the lilac branches, swaying in the wind, stood out against a background of bright blue rectangles in delicate openwork silhouettes. He could hear someone’s steps. Then the steps stopped for a second, and the same voice shouted, “And ask your mother to tell Ahmed.”