Chapter XXIX: A Woman's Scream

“The black Cloud of Death!”

We stood there at the casement of the palace, gazing with a growing terror at the visible evidence of the tragedy which threatened. A black cloud off there in the distance, spreading out, rolling inexorably toward us. And then came the wind, and with it a breath of the black monster--a choking, horrible suggestion of the death rolling already over the city.

We must have been fascinated at the casement for some considerable time. Elza’s thought messages had ceased. Abruptly I came to myself.

“The Black Cloud of Death!” I turned to Georg and Maida. “Alarm the city! Arouse them all! Alarm--”

Maida’s face was white: she flung off Georg’s arm which had been protectingly around her. “The siren--”

Terrible moments, those that followed. Confusion; panic; death!

The public siren in the tower by the lagoon entrance shrilled its warning. The danger lights blazed out. The city came to life. Lights sprang up everywhere. People--with the daze of sleep still upon them--appeared at the casements; on the roof-tops; on the canal steps they appeared, fumbling with their boats. Panic!

A pandemonium. Aircraft, such as could so hastily be mustered, swept overhead. A glare of lights everywhere. The shrill voice of the siren stilled, to make audible the broadcast warnings--stentorian tones screaming: “The Black Cloud of Death! Escape from the city! Escape to Industriana!”

Warning, advice, command! But over it all, the breath of the black cloud now lay heavy. The lights were dimmed by it. Everywhere--to every deepest recess of the city--to every inner room where to escape it many had fled--its deadly choking breath was penetrating.

Within the palace was turmoil. We had an air-vehicle on a landing-stage nearby; but Georg and Maida would not leave at once. Rulers of the Central State, as a Director might stick to his crumbling Tower, they stayed now in the Great City. Encouraging the people. Maida’s voice, futilely attempting to broadcast over the uproar. Georg commanding the official air-vessels to load with refugees; himself struggling to direct the jam of boats toward the embarking stages.

We were in the instrument room of the palace. The air was pale-blue, though I had closed every casement. Ourselves, choking already; then gasping; and with no time or thought to procure a mask. The chemical room, from whence we might have secured apparatus to purify our air, had been abandoned before we thought to seek it out. I dashed into it, my breath held. Its casements were open; its air thick-blue with the fumes; its staff long since fled. I ran back to Georg and Maida, gasping, my lungs on fire, my head roaring.

“No use! Abandoned!”

The department of weather control where--had we been forewarned--we might have found means to divert the wind by another of our own creation--was deserted by its staff at the first alarm.

“No use! Georg--Maida--let us go!”

The mirrors all about us in the instrument room were going dark; the horrible scenes of death throughout the city which they pictured were vanishing. The public lights were going out; the broadcast voices were ceasing.

The city now was out of control. But still the lagoon outside was packed with boats--overloaded boats ... Screams of terror, choked into silence ... boats with frenzied occupants leaping into the water to find a quicker, happier death ... a woman with a babe in her arms on a housetop across the lagoon--the infant already dead; the crazed mother flinging it down into the water, herself following with a long, gasping scream...

At last Georg pulled at me--no longer could we speak--pulled at me, and with Maida between us, we fled. The air outside was worse. In the dimness, our landing stage seemed belans away. The flagged area between us and the stage--a space of square-cut metal flagging, bordering the lagoon--was littered with bodies. Dead--or dying. People even now staggering from landed boats--staggering blindly, stumbling over bodies, falling and lying always where they had fallen.