We dropped nearly down to the roof level. The roof-structure was gone now over a segment of fully a mile. The beam, with Alan oscillating it, bathed the whole shattered area in white light. Indescribable scene of ruin! A vast honeycomb of metal city, shaken into ruins as though by some persistent earthquake; girders of metal piled in a tangled mass like jackstraws. Stone and mortar; plaster; wood--all the innumerable shattered substances strewn in a wreck inconceivable. Fires were starting in a dozen places; lurid glare of red-yellow flames; black smoke rolling up. And sounds inconceivable--a torrent of crashes--explosions--and, I think, an undertone built with the myriad screams of the dead and dying. As we descended almost to the level of the hole where a huge slice of the roof was dangling, our light struck into an open area of the city. There was less wreckage here; we could see down to the ground level. It was not very far down--a rise of ground was here; a hill--and it seemed an open parklike space of metal pavement surrounded by high metallic barriers. They crumbled, these barriers, within a moment as the white beam caught them. There had been a low roof over the park, but it was fallen. The aero stood exposed, but still unharmed. It rested motionless on the pavement. Our beam touched it. Horror surged at me. I gasped: "Alan--" He swung the beam away. What he said I do not know. But he had seen it--as I saw it; the white light always showed everything with intense clear detail; the figure of Nanette standing in the aero doorway! We could even see her now, dim but distinguishable--standing there--wavering from the shock of the light as it had so briefly struck her. "Alan--don't!" An anguished cry that sounded like my voice; and our commander's voice: "On the vehicle, Tremont! God, don't let it get away!" The walls around the park were falling. There was a mingled glare of our beam and the yellow light of the burning ruins near by. It showed a man's figure appearing in the aero doorway; he jerked Nanette backward into the interior. He stood for a moment in the doorway; Bluntnose, the Indian! He flung up his arm like a signal. And other figures showed, running forward. Turber; and Josefa. Trapped somewhere in the city and just now arriving at the waiting Time-vehicle. Turber, with his knowledge of the city labyrinth just now able to get here. His figure, and the woman who clung to him, avoided our circle of light; Alan in his confused horror had swung it farther away. Instant impressions. A second or two while we sat cold and stricken. Our commander's voice: "Tremont! Good God, man! Is that Turber?"