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stopping, changing course and speed—in other words, at us. It kept creeping across the stove... And then it stopped... manoeuvring—which entirely excludes the suggestion that the The fiery sphere that appeared in a clear, cloudless sky objects seen were comets or meteorites. Meteorites and comets approached the earth with a growing rumble. It grew as you do not fly like that! watched, blazed and became so full of powerful fiery light that it Thousands of observers could not have mistaken what they was impossible to look at it. At some elusive instant, the terrible saw, as the sky was cloudless that morning. People living within rumbling turned into an incessant roar and the sphere stopped a radius of over 800 km from the place where the cosmic intruder — moving, hanging above the ground, like the Sun hangs above the fell observed the unusual flight of enormous fiery bodies giving horizon just before sunset. It is hard to establish the length of off sparks and leaving rainbow trails behind them. The most time it stopped, but the fiery sphere stayed motionless long important point, though, is that they did not all see one and the enough for its immobility to impress itself upon an astounded same object, but different "terminator spheres" that varied in human mind. appearance and behaviour. I was afraid to look out of the window, but on the stove I could After the "terminators" were created and disgorged through the _see that it had stopped. Then suddenly it gave such a burst of Installation's shafts, they began moving to some control point— speed, flashed across the stove and was gone. The thundering the place of their last reconnaissance before the destruction of the noise was awful. The earth shook. I was knocked to the floor and meteorite. At a certain stage in their flight, the spheres stopped to the glass from the little window was scattered about as if someone adjust their position in respect to the falling meteorite and then, had pushed it in... I wasn't down on the floor for long. I jumped tearing off at enormous speed and with a ter- up, thinking, "Where's Grandpa? Don't say rible roaring, rushed to meet it. he's been knocked off!" He was lying on his Below is an extract from the account of a stomach on the very edge of the stove and ihe Nizhniy Tunguska, 300 meat of the Analysing the What is if" He was wet and white, white Shimovs bok Eohoand spekeforiaet | CONSEQUENCES OE ENe | ar uner my Jet, or perhaps lean .... remember that time well 1 was eleven explosions that have were trembling. Ti was dreadful! mes then | got up auite early... Iwas clear and taken place above the op Nobody could understand where it had sil stands, ona hill. Twas hammering the | Siberian taiga in the past | troment before. And so strong that the shad - scythe. 100 years, you get a ows disappeared instantly. And the light, There I was hitting the scythe, but the A clashing with light, stripped the world of its sound seemed to come from elsewhere. I sense of gratitude and familiar, pleasant shapes. Everything, from froze and as I listened, a real din started. awe towards the the smallest blade of grass to the cedar tree, The sky was clear as can be, nota . suddenly seemed different from how it cloud in sight. There were no planes intellectual power of had always been. Colours vanished; so or helicopters back then, of course. It those who thousands of did the usual three-dimensionality of was only later we became familiar with y . the world, warmth, tenderness. Our years ago, built a complex to defend our them. But there was this din. It wasn't world had gone... like a thunderstorm. And it kept build - Judging by the details of this beautiful blue planet and all her inhabitants. ing up, rumbling louder... account, the narrator was very close to Suddenly a second sun rolled into a place where a "terminator sphere" had the sky. "Ours", that's to say, was been generated; in other words, in the beating down on the back of my head, immediate proximity of one of the and this one was in my eyes. I couldn't pillars of energy (fiery whirlwinds) look; everything went black. I shot delivering the "terminator" to the into the house and that new sun shone surface. in through this window here and moved The account recorded by Sbytnev across the stove like this... includes this important element: The house stood, like the majority of Russian houses on the Someone saw a fiery pillar as well going down from that fire - northern rivers, with its windows looking east and south. One lit - ball, and for an instant there appeared a sort of huge tree with a tle window faced northwest and this "sun" was shining through it, round, fiery crown. Someone noticed that this raging bundle of colouring the white wall of the big Russian stove crimson. This light spat out, as it were, one more ball that tore earthwards. glow moved from right to left, towards the east. And there was Others, though, insisted there had been no second ball, but that ordinary sunlight coming through the other windows and onto the blaze, that sun, itself hurled itself down slantwise. other wall of the stove. Many saw it and there were many different versions. But every - I looked at the sun blazing down on the stove through that one was agreed that the movement of that mysterious fiery body window and my jaw dropped. I had never seen anything like it. stopped and it hung motionless for a time above the ground. And And the noise kept on rumbling. There was no relief. My there was a roaring... And then there was something like an grandfather sat on the stove and began chanting a prayer out explosion—the ground shaking and a rapid movement away, loud. He chanted and told me, "Stiopa, let's pray! All of you taking off, and the same rumbling, but now dying down, and the pray! It's happened... It's come..." [The shamans had warned _fading of the raging fire—less and less, until you could barely people about the end of the world.] make it out in the vast white expanse of sky. Then it was gone and What praying? I wanted to run somewhere and there was the thunder dropped, lessened and disappeared altogether... It nowhere. The noise was all around. And a fiery ball was coming was there—and flew away... [author's emphasis in bold italics] 56 = NEXUS Analysing the www.nexusmagazine.com DECEMBER 2004 — JANUARY 2005