vels, lay pale grey
in the moonlight. Gardens and trees surrounded them. The streets were
wide roadways, lined with trees. Ornamental vegetation was everywhere;
even the flat-roofed house tops were set with gardens, little white
pebbled paths, fountains and pergolas.

A mile or so away, a river gleamed like a silver ribbon--the Hudson.
To the south were docks, low against the water, with rows of
blue-white spots of light. The whole city was close to the ground, but
occasionally, especially across the river, skeleton landing stages
rose a hundred feet into the air.

The scene, at this hour just before dawn, was somnolent and peaceful.
It was a strange New York, so different from the sleepless city of
Larry's time! There were a few moving lights in the streets, but not
many; they seemed to be lights carried by pedestrians. Off by the
docks, at the river surface, rows of colored lights were slowly
creeping northward: a sub-sea freighter arriving from Eurasia. And as
Larry watched, from the southern sky a line of light materialized into
an airliner which swept with a low humming throb over the city and
alighted upon a distant stage.

* * * * *

Larry's attention went again to the Hudson river. At the nearest point
to him there was a huge dam blocking it. North of the dam the river
surface was at least two hundred feet higher than to the south. It lay
above the dam like a placid canal, with low palisades its western bank
and a high dyke built up along the eastern city side. The water went
in spillways through the dam, forming again into the old natural river
below it and flowing with it to the south.

The dam was not over a mile or so from Larry's window; in his time it
might have been the western end of Christopher Street. The moonlight
shone on the massive metal of it: the water spilled through it in a
dozen shining cascades. There was a low black metal structure perched
halfway up the lower side of the dam, a few bluish lights showing
through its windows. Though Larry did not know it then, this was the
New York Power House. Great transformers were here, operated by
turbines in the dam. The main power came over cables from Niagara: was
transformed and altered here and sent into the air as radio-power for
all the New York District.[3]

[Footnote 3: In 2930, all aircraft engines were operated by
radio-power transmitted by senders in various districts. The New York
Power House controlled