The castaways, including Weston's gang, stood on a great pier before the sprawling city—a pier which lay half demolished around them, smouldering from several recent hits. Nearby, out in the water, lay a commuter vessel, semi-capsized, its crew and uniformed personnel leaping overboard and attempting to swim back to shore.
Armed troops were all around the castaways, rushing to set up new defenses on the pier, to repair loading derricks and put out fires with portable equipment.
"Hey!" shouted one of the castaways. "It's just like back home!"
"Civilization!" shouted another. "That screwy Garden of Eden was all a bad dream! We're back—thank God!"
Henry reasoned it was not the scene of battle they were welcoming. It was rather the transition from an unknown situation to a comprehensible one that they hailed with such relief.
"What is it?" queried Martia, close beside him. "What's happening? Where are we?"
"We're not back home," he said. "Still in the future—but an alternate one. Keep your eyes open and we'll know very soon."
This was a pointed remark, inasmuch as an officered detail of troops had turned its amazed attention on the heterogeneous group. Weston's gang, especially, looked like a bunch of anachronisms with their crude bows and arrows and their stupidly gaping mouths.
"Look!" cried Doctor Bauml, pointing over the heads of the approaching soldiers. "On that distant hill!"
When everybody looked, they saw, unmistakably, a towering space ship, its slender nose pointing skyward. Men swarmed over it like ants, removing scaffolding. Some of the attacking planes were concentrating on this point and were being met with the most determined counter-fire observable in any part of the city.