I was standing there in the driveway when Professor Trottelreiner, one of the Swiss futurologists, joined me. By then the police were doing what they should have done hours ago: wearing black helmets, shields and gas masks, armed with guns and clubs, they formed a cordon around the whole Hilton complex to keep back the mob, which was just beginning to pour from the park that separated us from the city's theater district. With great skill special police units set up grenade launchers and fired these into the crowd; the explosions were remarkably weak, though they raised thick clouds of whitish smoke. At first I thought that this was tear gas, but the people, instead of fleeing and choking in fury, clearly began to huddle around the pale vapors; their shouts quickly died away, and soon I could hear them singing-they were singing hymns. The reporters, rushing back and forth between the cordon and the hotel entrance with their cameras and tape recorders, were completely mystified by this, though it was obvious to me that the police were employing some new pacification chemical, in aerosol form. But then, from the Avenida del… I can't recall which… another group of people appeared, and these were somehow unaffected by the grenades, or so it seemed. Later I was told that this group had continued advancing in order to help the police, not to attack them. Yet who could draw such subtle distinctions in that general chaos? There were several more salvos of grenades, and that was followed by the characteristic roar and hiss of a water cannon, then finally the machine guns opened up and the air was filled with the whine of bullets.