e
densely overcast until at last it blotted out the light of day and left
nothing but a dull red glare 'extraordinarily depressing to the spirit.'
In this dull glare, great numbers of people were still living, clinging
to their houses and in many cases subsisting in a state of partial
famine upon the produce in their gardens and the stores in the shops of
the provision dealers.

Coming in still closer, the investigator would have reached the police
cordon, which was trying to check the desperate enterprise of those who
would return to their homes or rescue their more valuable possessions
within the 'zone of imminent danger.'

That zone was rather arbitrarily defined. If our spectator could have
got permission to enter it, he would have entered also a zone of uproar,
a zone of perpetual thunderings, lit by a strange purplish-red
light, and quivering and swaying with the incessant explosion of the
radio-active substance. Whole blocks of buildings were alight and
burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged flames looking pale and ghastly
and attenuated in comparison with the full-bodied crimson glare beyond.
The shells of other edifices already burnt rose, pierced by rows of
window sockets against the red-lit mist.

Every step farther would have been as dangerous as a descent within the
crater of an active volcano. These spinning, boiling bomb centres would
shift or break unexpectedly into new regions, great fragments of earth
or drain or masonry suddenly caught by a jet of disruptive force might
come flying by the explorer's head, or the ground yawn a fiery grave
beneath his feet. Few who adventured into these areas of destruction
and survived attempted any repetition of their experiences. There are
stories of puffs of luminous, radio-active vapour drifting sometimes
scores of miles from the bomb centre and killing and scorching all they
overtook. And the first conflagrations from the Paris centre spread
westward half-way to the sea.

Moreover, the air in this infernal inner circle of red-lit ruins had a
peculiar dryness and a blistering quality, so that it set up a soreness
of the skin and lungs that was very difficult to heal....

Such was the last state of Paris, and such on a larger scale was the
condition of affairs in Chicago, and the same fate had overtaken Berlin,
Moscow, Tokio, the eastern half of London, Toulon, Kiel, and two hundred
and eighteen other centres of population or armament. Each was a flaming
cent