They appealed to him as a group of carefully tailored Abstractions bombinating mellifluously in a void.

V. roll, drum, rumble, rattle, clatter, patter, clack; bombinate†. hum, trill, shake; chime, peal, toll; tick, beat. drum in the ear, din in the ear.

Like his co-workers he had been somewhat stampeded by Dorn's imitative faculties, faculties which enabled the former journalist to bombinate twice as loud in a void three times as great as any of his colleagues.