It was void and desolate. No doubt if ail the birds had been rolled into one they’d have weighed more than the planes and taken up more room, but even if every plane, meteorite and satellite were added to those birds, the result still wouldn’t have filled even a tiny corner of the firmament. It was to all intents and purposes empty. No comet’s tail, seen by men as an omen of misfortune, blazed across it this autumn night. And even if it had, the history of the sky, rich as it was not -only with the lives of birds, planes, satellites and comets but also with the thunder and lightning of all the ages, would still have been a poor one compared with the history of the earth. Against such immense vacuity the signals sent out by a certain spy satellite seemed desolate indeed. It was relaying in their most recent order, as drawn up for some official ceremony, the names of the members of the Politbureau of the Chinese Communist Party: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Wang Hoegwen, Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Zhang Chunqiao, Wei Guoqing, Liu Bocheng, Jiang Qing, Xu Shiyou, Hua Guofeng, Ji Dengkui, Gu Mu, Wang Dongxieg, Chan Yonggui, Chen Xilian, Li Xiannian, Li Desheeg, Yao Wenyuan, Wu Guixian, Su Zheehua, Ni Zhifu, Saifudin and Song Qingling.
