ral wraiths of ten
thousand of the enemy were staring. The observers in the planes
stared and gasped. What fantasy! What new weird sight was this,
stranger than all that had preceded it!

CHAPTER XII

_On the Tower Balcony_

Upon the little observatory balcony at the top of the Empire State
some twelve hundred feet above the stricken city, Don and I were
with Tako as he erected the giant projector. In the midst of the
silent shadowy outline of the stricken city falling around us, we
had carried the projector up the mountain slope. The spectre of the
Empire State Building was presently around us; we were in a hallway
of one of the upper stories. Slowly, we materialized with our
burden. I recall, as the dark empty corridor of the office building
came to solidity around me, with what surprise I heard for the first
time the muffled reverberations from the crumbling city....

We climbed the dark and empty stairs, upward into the mooring mast.
Don and I toiled with the box, under the weapons of our two guards.

It was only a few minutes while Tako assembled and mounted the
weapon. It stood a trifle higher than the parapet top. It rolled
freely upon a little carriage mounted with wheels. Don and I peered
at it. We hovered close to Tako with only one thought in our minds,
Jane's murmured words--if we could learn something about this
projector....

* * * * *

Then the horror dulled us. We obeyed orders mechanically, as though
all of it were a terrible dream, with only a vague undercurrent of
reiterated thought: some chance must come--some fated little chance
coming our way.

I recall, during those last terrible minutes when Tako flung the
projector beam to send all his distant enemies hurtling into
annihilation, that I stood in a daze by the parapet. Don had ceased
to look. Tako was rolling the projector from one point to another
around the circular balcony. Sometimes he was out of sight on the
other side, with the observatory room in the mast hiding him.

We had been ordered not to move. The two guards stood with hand
weapons turned on so that the faint green beams slanted downward by
their feet, instantly ready, either for Don or me.

And I clung to the balcony rail, staring down at the broken city. It
lay strewn and flattened as though, not ten minutes, but ten
thousand years of time had crumbled it into ruins.

Then shots from the distant warships began screaming at us. W