For they, like the rest of humanity, seemed incapable now of clear and sustained thought upon any subject. Even Ferson and I, working day and night in the isolated upper Manhattan laboratories of the university, were able to see clearly what was happening about us. We were living, eating, sleeping at the laboratories by this time, for all means of transportation and all industrial activities were ceasing. Great masses of men roamed the streets of the city, some forming into gangs that made life terrible for the others, the rest engaged in indiscriminate looting. The great London riot and the abortive outbreak in lower New York had now taken place, and it was evident to all that the last shadow of law and order in the city was vanishing, for more and more the troops and police who maintained it were engaging in the rioting themselves. News came still a little, in incoherently written and erratically printed sheets, for a few days, and it was thus we learned of the huge Chicago riot and subsequent fire. It marked the beginning of the end. Within a few days more utter lawlessness reigned over New York, corpses lay in its streets and looters were everywhere. The university buildings, deserted now by all but ourselves, were not attacked except on a few occasions by the looting swarms, there being no food or other desirable things in them, and Ferson and I had rifles and pistols in our laboratory to repel the ragged and brutal gangs that might attack us. In those terrible days we were occupied heart and soul in the work of locating Grant and whatever mechanism it was by which he was casting this doom on humanity. It was Ferson's idea that the great damping wave, which Grant must be sending toward the sun to halt the play of its endless evolution vibrations, would affect certain recording instruments, if the correct frequency for their circuits could be found. Once that was found, by observing the amount by which the instruments were affected at different locations by the waves of the great damping vibration, we could calculate and chart that great wave's source with some degree of accuracy. It seemed to me a very slender chance, yet I knew as well as did Ferson that it was the one possible way. Grant, we knew, would have protected himself, as we had, by a small artificial projector of the vibrations.