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Then Alexander Kassanzev got into his decrepit old car and drove me through the splendid broad streets of Moscow to the Sternberg Institute of Moscow University, where he had arranged for me to meet Professor Josef Samuilovich Shklovsky, the Director of the Radio-astronomy Department. What an experience it was, this Institute at Universitets-prospekt 13! It hummed like a beehive, teemed like an ant colony. The students’ desks and tables stood higgledy-piggledy wherever mere was On the walls there were gigantic astronomical maps and in front of them students arguing. In one corner students struggled over a mathematical formula, in the opposite one others were busy with a complicated measuring apparatus. You felt instinctively that research was carried on here as teamwork. The door to Professor Shklovsky's workroom was ajar, The room itself had the strange mixed smell of books, files and dust peculiar to rooms—as I have often noticed—in which the old is preserved and the new critically tested. of a space traveller whom he had seen? room. Empty tin cans served as ashtrays. This is another very old Japanese statue. Both show markings which could be straps and fixing points for equipment. Professor Shklovsky rose from behind his massive desk, which was covered with printed papers and manuscripts, and greeted me with a suspicious laugh: 'So you're the Swiss!’