An invisible wall appears around a God-forsaken little town. The government intends, as they say, to wipe the town off the face of the earth for safety’s sake… Clifford Simak was especially drawn to the theme of humanity’s contact with another intelligence. Moreover—not only with alien intelligence, but also with intelligence born in parallel worlds, and even in our own. For him, this theme was like a complex but endlessly interesting construction set, in which, depending on the author’s mood and thoughts, you can change the parts and their properties. And then, around this invented structure, create a book in which it is extremely fascinating to explore the resulting situation.