In this chapter, the narrator laments the failure of the Union fighters to defeat the enemy. He laments that the giant strontium capsule, which was supposed to smash through the enemy's defenses, has instead failed to do so. He compares the capsule to a "voyna," a "military tripod" that can't stop the anti-electromagnetic exhaust of a jet engine. The voyna, he says, can destroy everything in its path. The narrator is afraid that the battle is nearing its end, and wonders if something is wrong with the capsule. The berserker is one of the "five most diabolical weapons" created by mankind, according to the narrator. It is a gas that "zombifies corpses" and was developed by the U.S. Army in 1969.