Far away down the boulevard, on whose apex we stood, we saw a marching
retinue of men and women surrounding a platform borne on the shoulders
of men. The platform held the upright figures of the Council amongst
whom, distinguished by a blue chalcal tunic bound about him by yellow
cords, was the noble being I had seen in the Council chamber on the
night of my arrival in Scandor.
"How marvellous it all seemed. The sense of unreality, of dreamland
again overpowered me, a wild horror like some mad possession seized me.
I shook convulsively, and covered my face in my hands, stricken through
and through with a nameless repining misery of doubt, of apprehension,
of dismay. It was the last struggle of readjustment between my memories
of earth, my identity as a man on the earth, and this new life I had
entered. Alca caught me affectionately and placed the acrid bean I had
tasted in the City of Light in my mouth. The black suffocation passed,
and as I slowly returned to realization and serenity I opened my eyes
upon the city, now dead and silent, but blazing with all its lights,
awaiting desolation, dressed in its sumptuous glory like some princely
captive on whom the doom of immolation, before an unappeasable deity,
had suddenly fallen. It was night fall.
"Suddenly a flash, a short piercing note, a loud report, and the sky
above us seemed crowded with glowing missiles. The impact from the first
arrivals of the cometary body upon the outer envelopes of the Martian
atmosphere had begun.
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