"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.