The spurting cascades of the
ruptured sea-water mains had been captured and tamed, and huge temporary
pipes ran overhead along a flimsy looking fabric of girders. The sky was
laced with restored cables and wires that served the Council House, and a
mass of new fabric with cranes and other building machines going to and
fro upon it projected to the left of the white pile.
The moving ways that ran across this area had been restored, albeit for
once running under the open sky. These were the ways that Graham had seen
from the little balcony in the hour of his awakening, not nine days
since, and the hall of his Trance had been on the further side, where now
shapeless piles of smashed and shattered masonry were heaped together.
It was already high day and the sun was shining brightly. Out of their
tall caverns of blue electric light came the swift ways crowded with
multitudes of people, who poured off them and gathered ever denser over
the wreckage and confusion of the ruins. The air was full of their
shouting, and they were pressing and swaying towards the central
building. For the most part that shouting mass consisted of shapeless
swarms, but here and there Graham could see that a rude discipline
struggled to establish itself. And every voice clamoured for order in the
chaos. "To your wards! Every man to his ward!"
The cable carried them into a hall which Graham recognised as the
ante-chamber to the Hall of the Atlas, about the gallery of which he had
walked days ago with Howard to show himself to the Vanished Council, an
hour from his awakening.
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