"You're both greenhorns as far as I'm concerned,” I said. “And I won't forget to give the orders, don't worry. By the way, do you know how to drive a boot?"

"He knows,” Kirill said. “He's a good driver."

"All right then,” I said. “Then we're off, Godspeed. Lower your visors. Low speed ahead along the pylons, altitude three yards. Halt at the twenty-seventh pylon."

Kirill raised the boot to three yards and went ahead in low gear. I turned around without being noticed and spit over my left shoulder. I saw that the rescue squad had climbed into their helicopter, the firemen were standing at attention out of respect, the lieutenant at the door of the passage was saluting us, the jerk, and above all of them fluttered the huge, faded banner: “Welcome, Visitors.” Tender looked like he was about to wave to them, but I gave him such a jab in the ribs that he immediately dropped all ideas of such ceremonious bye-byes. I'll show you how to say good-bye. You'll be saying good-bye yet!

We were off.

The institute was on our right and the Plague Quarter on our left. We were traveling from pylon to pylon right down the middle of the street. It had been ages since the last time someone had walked or driven down this street. The asphalt was all cracked, and grass had grown in the cracks. But that was still our human grass. On the sidewalk on our left there was black bramble growing, and you could tell the boundaries of the Zone: the black growth ended at the curb as if it had been mown. Yeah, those visitors were well-behaved. They messed up a lot of things but at least they set themselves clear limits. Even the burning fluff never came to our side of the Zone—and you would think that a stiff wind would do it.

The houses in the Plague Quarter were chipped and dead. However, the windows weren't broken. Only they were so dirty that they looked blind.