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snake  coiled itself  into  a  twelve-yard screw,  its  tail  sweeping up  a
tornado, and began  to crush  Manya. She did not make  another sound. Feight
could  hear her bones  crunching. High above  the  ground  rose Manya's head
pressed lovingly against the snake's cheek. Blood gushed out of her mouth, a
broken arm  dangled  in  the air and more blood spurted  out  from under the
fingernails. Then the snake  opened its  mouth,  put  its gaping  jaws  over
Manya's  head and  slid  onto  the rest of  her like a glove slipping onto a
finger. The snake's breath was so hot that Feight could feel it on his face,
and the tail all but swept him off the path into the acrid dust. It was then
that Feight  went grey. First the left, then the right half of his jet-black
head  turned  to silver. Nauseated  to death, he  eventually managed to drag
himself away from the  path, then turned and ran, seeing nothing and nobody,
with a wild shriek that echoed for miles around.


CHAPTER IX. A Writhing Mass

     Shukin, the GPU agent at Dugino Station, was  a very brave man. He said
thoughtfully to his companion, the ginger-headed Polaitis:
     "Well, let's go. Eh? Get  the  motorbike." Then he paused for  a moment
and added, turning  to the man who was sitting on the bench: "Put  the flute
down."
     But instead of putting down the flute, the trembling grey-haired man on
the  bench in the Dugino GPU office, began weeping and moaning.  Shukin  and
Polaitis realised they would have to pull the flute away. His fingers seemed
to  be  stuck to  it.  Shukin, who  possessed  enormous,  almost circus-like
strength, prised the fingers away one by one. Then they put the flute on the
table.
     It was early on the sunny morning of the day after Manya's death.
     "You  come  too," Shukin said  to  Alexander Semyonovich,  "and show us
where everything is." But Feight  shrank back from him in horror, putting up

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