Immediately after the death of Nordenholt, I took over the control of the Area and instituted the great reorganisation forced upon us by the new conditions. Almost our last reserves of coal were used up in the foundries where we built the new atomic engines; but we succeeded in manufacturing a number of machines sufficient for our purposes; and once these were complete, we had no further need of the old-fashioned fuel. The output of nitrogenous materials sprang up by leaps and bounds; and the danger of starvation was over. All our miners were sent into the neighbouring areas, where they were put to work in spreading synthetic nitrogenous manure upon the fields, after Hope’s colloids had been ploughed into the soil to retain water in the ground. At last came the harvest, poor in most places, yet sufficient for our needs. The game was won. It was after this that we began to send aeroplanes over the world in search of any other remnants of the human race which had survived. I was too much occupied with Area affairs to share in these voyages; but the airmen’s reports made clear enough the extent of the catastrophe which had befallen the planet. As I expected, the site of London was covered with a mere heap of charred and shattered ruins cumbering it to an extent that prevented us from even thinking of rebuilding the city in the new age. It was not worth while clearing away the debris, when other sites were open to us for our new centres of population. The same fate had befallen almost all the great cities, not only in Britain but also across the Continent. Above the ruins of Paris, the gaunt fabric of the Eiffel Tower still stood as a witness to men’s achievements in the past; but it was almost alone. Everything capable of destruction by fire had gone down in the frenzy of the last days of the old civilisation. I have already sketched the effects of the Famine upon the population of the globe. Our explorers found one or two colonies alive in America; and at a slightly later date we got in touch with the Japanese Area. Beyond this, the human race had perished from the face of the earth. The strangest of all the changes seen by the aerial explorers must have been in Central Africa and the Amazon Valley. There, where vegetable life had seemed undisputed sovereign of vast regions, only a blackened wilderness remained. Fires had raged over great spaces, leaving ashes behind them; but in general there was hardly a trace of the old-time forests and swamps. The Sahara stretched southward to the Equator; and the Kalahari Desert had extended up to the Great Lakes--so quickly had the soil of these regions degenerated into sand. In past ages, man had never tapped these vast store-houses of forest and veldt; and Fate decided that they should go down to destruction still unutilised.