The street had come into being, risen around the tower--endured for a moment. And then, as though leprous, it began dismembering. A portion of it melting away; then another. But other buildings--other viaducts--other towers rose to fill up the gaps. And always larger structures. * * * * * The tower now seemed traveling faster. Alan could imagine the city--this one vast roof with the rivers flowing beneath it. Staten Island with the space of Turber's hospital, was doubtless under this same roof. And all the upper bay; and the New Jersey shore of the Hudson; and Brooklyn and all this end of Long Island. Incredible millions of people, living here in this enormous, monstrous beehive--living pallid; some of them perhaps, in the poverty-stricken sections, never having seen the moon save as its light might struggle through their translucent roof; not knowing the sunlight rays; never having seen the sea, with only gloomy rivers flowing through tunnels to represent it; wondering, perchance, what grass might be, and things that people richer and more traveled spoke of as trees. Pallid people of the monstrous city, slaves to their own machinery! Alan clung to the balcony rail, with Lea beside him. Her hand was on his arm as though to steady him. Occasionally she met his glance and smiled; or gestured to indicate the gray shifting wonders of the scene around them. Alan noticed now that in this constricted area where the tower was set, there seemed few changes. These vast structures, of a material the engineers of this age may fatuously have termed indestructible, were enduring over larger periods. They melted away occasionally and others took their places. But the form was about the same. As though now mankind here were resting. The peak of civilization here, and perhaps upon all the earth, was reached. Man resting upon the summit of his achievements. But in nature there is no rest! A thousand years, here upon civilization's summit. And then--a little step backward! Mankind, softened by ceasing to advance, turning decadent. A little backward step. As though this city here were a symbol of it, Alan could see the decline. A rift in the street--and it was not rebuilt. Another rift. A leprous slash--a hole that gave Alan a wide extent of vista to the east. Doubtless, upon an earth so unified by transportation as this age must have been, it was not only New York decaying--but also a decadence of all mankind over all the world. Alan saw it here. By what might have been the year 5000 A.D., the shadows of the vast city lay in ruins around the tower. Broken buildings, crumbling visibly as Alan stared at them. Fallen roof--the whole ramified and multiform structure everywhere lowering as nature pulled it down. It lay piled in shadowy mangled fragments.