mysterious Alice, who gives him shelter and some mysterious clues about a singer and a song about the lake Tibigan. In the morning he meets the "downer" and learns how he secured his release through a ruse - he reported Sneer's Key as found on the street. Sneer goes to the central police station and retrieves his Key, but the experience makes him uncomfortable, and he starts to look at his world in a different way. He visits his parents and an old friend, a doctor, revealing to the reader the history of this world and some further facts about it. He also tries to listen to the song Alice told him about and discovers that theoretical freedom of press is in fact a fiction as some songs etc. can be prohibited. Meanwhile, Sneer is hired by a government official (a 'zero') to monitor the scientific lab dealing with Keys - The Key Institute. Working undercover as a doorman, Sneer discovers to his amazement that the Key Institute that should know everything about the Keys, having designed them, is in fact studying them as if they were an alien object. Meanwhile, his "lifter" friend Karl Pron tests a new counterfeited Key, which gives the owner an unlimited number of yellow points. This Key was ordered by the group of '0's – who in fact work in the lab on which Sneer is now spying upon. When Sneer obtains the super Key, he is taken to the meeting with top officials of the local government, where he learns that the social system of 'Argoland' is, in fact, an experiment imposed upon the humanity by the Aliens. The 'over-zeroes' form a ruling class, which suppresses dissent fearful of the Aliens but permits all kinds of irregularities which they see as preserving the human nature of people. The end is largely mystical, but it suggests that, with the help of Alice, Sneer succeeds in saving humanity, though it is not clear exactly how he achieves that. Interpretation As with much utopian and dystopian fiction in the former Soviet bloc countries, where open criticism of the government was dangerous and subject to censorship, this book was interpreted by many as in fact a criticism of the system disguised as an SF novel to evade censorship (the "aliens", who are military superpower and are simultaneously enforcing a social system invented by them and thought by