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On Saturday, 18 May, 1968, Alexander Kassanzev, the famous Soviet writer, put the three sculptures which had impressed me so profoundly carefully back in the glass case opposite the window in his Moscow flat. They were old Japanese statues, cast in bronze, and they seemed to be dressed in space suits. The largest of the statues was nearly 2 ft high and had a diameter of about 5 ins. Tight-fitting bands ran from the shoulders, crossed the chest and joined up again between the thighs at the height of the buttocks. A broad belt with rivets on it was round the hips. The whole suit down to the knees was fitted with pocket-like protrusions. The helmet was tightly bound to the trunk with pads and bands. Comical-looking hollows appeared to be openings for built-in breathing or listening apparatus. I noticed two more openings on the lower half of the head. But the most fascinating thing about the figures was undoubtedly the large glasses with lenses set at an angle. I could not see any weapons, unless the short staff in the gloved left hand could be called a weapon. 'A mini-laser beam,’ the author of a science-fiction novel might say. Agog with curiosity, I asked Kassanzev where these figures came from and who had given them to him. He chuckled into his beard: 'A Japanese colleague gave them to me before the war, in the spring of 1939. The figures were found during excavations on the island of Hondo in Japan. They are dated to long before our era. The figures have striking, indeed unmistakable, space-traveller characteristics, but no one can say how or why Japanese artists dressed their figurines in such suits. But one thing seems to be clear. Neither "snow goggles" nor lenses of this kind were known in ancient Japan.’ 7 - Conversations In Moscow No one can say when snow-goggles like these were worn in Japan. Did the sculptor carve the image