CHAPTER XXIX

_A Woman's Scream_

"The black Cloud of Death!"

We stood there at the casement of the palace, gazing with a growing

terror at the visible evidence of the tragedy which threatened. A black

cloud off there in the distance, spreading out, rolling inexorably

toward us. And then came the wind, and with it a breath of the black

monster--a choking, horrible suggestion of the death rolling already

over the city.

We must have been fascinated at the casement for some considerable time.

Elza's thought messages had ceased. Abruptly I came to myself.

"The Black Cloud of Death!" I turned to Georg and Maida. "Alarm the

city! Arouse them all! Alarm--"

Maida's face was white: she flung off Georg's arm which had been

protectingly around her. "The siren--"

Terrible moments, those that followed. Confusion; panic; death!

The public siren in the tower by the lagoon entrance shrilled its

warning. The danger lights blazed out. The city came to life. Lights

sprang up everywhere. People--with the daze of sleep still upon

them--appeared at the casements; on the roof-tops; on the canal steps

they appeared, fumbling with their boats. Panic!

A pandemonium. Aircraft, such as could so hastily be mustered, swept

overhead. A glare of lights everywhere. The shrill voice of the siren

stilled, to make audible the broadcast warnings--stentorian tones

screaming: "The Black Cloud of Death! Escape from the city! Escape to

Industriana!"

Warning, advice, command! But over it all, the breath of the black cloud

now lay heavy. The lights were dimmed by it. Everywhere--to every

deepest recess of the city--to every inner room where to escape it many

had fled--its deadly choking breath was penetrating.

Within the palace was turmoil. We had an air-vehicle on a landing-stage

nearby; but Georg and Maida would not leave at once. Rulers of the

Central State, as a Director might stick to his crumbling Tower, they

stayed now in the Great City. Encouraging the people. Maida's voice,

futilely attempting to broadcast over the uproar. Georg commanding the

official air-vessels to load with refugees; himself struggling to direct

the jam of boats toward the embarking stages.

We were in the instrument room of the palace. The air was pale-blue,

though I had closed every casement. Ourselves, choking already; then

gasping; and with no time or thought to procure a mask. The chemical

room, from whence we might have secured apparatus to purify our air, had

been abandoned before we thought to seek it out. I dashed into it, my

breath held. Its casements were open; its air thick-blue with the fumes;

its staff long since fled. I ran back to Georg and Maida, gasping, my

lungs on fire, my head roaring.

"No use! Abandoned!"

The department of weather control where--had we been forewarned--we

might have found means to divert the wind by another of our own

creation--was deserted by its staff at the first alarm.

"No use! Georg--Maida--let us go!"

The mirrors all about us in the instrument room were going dark; the

horrible scenes of death throughout the city which they pictured were

vanishing. The public lights were going out; the broadcast voices were

ceasing.

The city now was out of control. But still the lagoon outside was

packed with boats--overloaded boats.... Screams of terror, choked into

silence ... boats with frenzied occupants leaping into the water to find

a quicker, happier death ... a woman with a babe in her arms on a

housetop across the lagoon--the infant already dead; the crazed mother

flinging it down into the water, herself following with a long, gasping

scream...

At last Georg pulled at me--no longer could we speak--pulled at me, and

with Maida between us, we fled. The air outside was worse. In the

dimness, our landing stage seemed _belans_ away. The flagged area

between us and the stage--a space of square-cut metal flagging,

bordering the lagoon--was littered with bodies. Dead--or dying. People

even now staggering from landed boats--staggering blindly, stumbling

over bodies, falling and lying always where they had fallen.

With our own senses fading, we groped our way forward. Soon we were

separated. I saw Maida fall and Georg pick her up, but I was powerless

to reach them.

The landing stage seemed so far away. The dead and dying beneath my feet

obstructed me as I staggered over them. A woman, reeling toward me,

flung her arms about my neck with an iron grip of despair. I stared into

her face, purple almost with its congested blood, her mouth gaping, her

blood-shot eyes bulging; and even with the terror distorting them, I saw

beneath it their look of despairing appeal...

Her arms clinging to me desperately; but with a curse I flung her to the

ground and reeled onward.

Without knowing it, I had come to the brink of the water's edge. The

flagging seemed to drop away. I fell. Dimly I heard the splash as I

struck the water; and felt a grateful cooling sense as it closed over

me.

I am a strong, instinctive swimmer. I did not breathe, and when I rose

to the surface, the single swift breath I took was purer than any I had

had for half an hour past. My head cleared a little; swimming

instinctively, and with cautious breaths, I found that I was able to go

on.

I know now that by some vagary of chance--of fate if you will--I had

struck a surface area where breathable air still remained. I swam,

striving to plan, to think where I might be swimming. Yet it was all a

phantasmagoria, with only the strength of my muscles and the instinct to

preserve my life remaining to direct me. Swimming endlessly ... swimming

... taking a half-gasp of breath ... swimming ... trying to think ... or

dreaming ... was it all a dream?...

When I came to myself I was lying upon a bank of ferns in the outskirts

of the city. It was still night; the black cloud of death had passed on;

the air was pure. Like a man for days bereft of water, I lay and drank

in the air, pure at last, as the Almighty distils it for us.

Bodies were lying around me on the bank. A dark, silent house stood

nearby; and a deserted boat. All darkness and silence--the brooding

silence of death. I was still dazed. Maida--Georg; they seemed like

people in a dream long faded. Industriana! They were going to the

_Rhaal_ City of Industriana. _I_ had been trying to get there. I must

get there now--join them. I climbed to my feet; the edge of a forest was

nearby and with wavering steps I started toward it.

Looking back on it now I realize that I was even then half crazed. In a

daze I must have stumbled through the forest for hours. Unreasoning,

with only that one idea--to get to Industriana; and in the background of

my consciousness the vague belief that Elza would be there to greet me.

Into the depths of the untrammeled forest with unguided steps I

wandered.

At last I found myself wondering if the dawn were coming; the tri-night

hour was long since passed; the auroral lights as I could sometimes see

them through the tangle of vegetation overhead, were low in the sky.

Insects--and sometimes larger beings--leaped and slithered unseen before

my advance. But I did not heed them. Eyes may have peered at me as I

stumbled through the blackness of the undergrowth; but if they did, I

did not notice them.

And then at last I was brought abruptly to full rationality and

consciousness. Stumbling through a tangle of low growth--a black thicket

which tore at my garments and scratched my flesh--I was transfixed by a

woman's scream. It came through the darkness from near at hand. A

crashing of the underbrush, and a woman's scream of terror. It stopped

my breath, turned me cold.

Elza!