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Party, and Gjergj’s mysterious briefcase. She woke up again several more times, and always those images seemed linked together by threads invisible in the darkness of the room. But soon the first gleams of an autumn dawn began to creep in through the window.

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    THE SKY WAS UNIMAGINABLY EMPTY that late October eight, A few hundred planes landing at or taking off from airports, some millions of birds, three forlorn meteorites falling unnoticed into the immensity of the ocean, a few spy satellites orbiting at a respectful distance from one another — all these put together were as nothing compared with the infinite space of the sky. It was void and desolate. No doubt if ail the birds had been rolled into one they’d have weighed more than the planes and taken up more room, but even if every plane, meteorite and satellite were added to those birds, the result still wouldn’t have filled even a tiny corner of the firmament. It was to all intents and purposes empty. No comet’s tail, seen by men as an omen of misfortune, blazed across it this autumn night. And even if it had, the history of the sky, rich as it was not -only with the lives of birds, planes, satellites and comets but also with the thunder and lightning of all the ages, would still have been a poor one compared with the history of the earth.
    Against such immense vacuity the signals sent out by a certain spy satellite seemed desolate indeed. It was relaying in their most recent order, as drawn up for some official ceremony, the names of the members of the Politbureau of the Chinese Communist Party: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Wang Hoegwen, Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Zhang Chunqiao, Wei Guoqing, Liu Bocheng, Jiang Qing, Xu Shiyou, Hua Guofeng, Ji Dengkui, Gu Mu, Wang Dongxieg, Chan Yonggui, Chen Xilian, Li Xiannian, Li Desheeg, Yao Wenyuan, Wu Guixian, Su Zheehua, Ni Zhifu, Saifudin and Song Qingling. In comparison with the size of the sky through which they were travelling, these names, despite their attempts to ape the names of gods, were just a wretched handful of dust, and those on the complete list of senior officials which wafted with them through space were no better. Nevertheless, hundreds of people in scores of ultra-secret offices studied the list as carefully as the world used to scan fiery comets, double stars and other celestial signs, trying to penetrate their mystery. As the experts pored over the handful of ideograms which had just dropped out of the chilly darkness, they compared them with the previous list, seeking portents concerning the future of a large part of the human race, if not the whole of it. Meanwhile the Earth and all the bodies gravitating around it rolled on regardless. Two or three meteorites plunged, as if trying to escape pursuit, into a remote stretch of sea, leaving no trace behind. In different parts of the sky, hundreds of lightning flashes discharged their electricity. Birds dropped down exhausted. And through it all sped a letter addressed by a small country to a large one.
    The letter was in the briefcase belonging to Gjergj Dibra, a diplomatic envoy travelling on the night plane from Paris to Peking. For some time now he had been flying over the Arabian desert. If it had been so dark that you couldn’t see anything, Gjergj would have found the resulting sense of isolation quite bearable. But it was a clear night, and the moon revealed not only the empty sky stretching out beneath the plane but also the equally arid expanse of barren sands below.
    Every so often Gjergj would turn away from the window, resisting the lure of all that emptiness, but after a few moments he couldn’t help turning back again. Thousands of feet below, the moon seemed to be wandering over the surface of the desert like a lifeless eye — a coldly mocking eye holding the image of the sky prisoner, just as the retina of a dead man is said to retain the image of his murderer. And indeed, thought Gjergj, the sky had killed