That vessel was found the next day, grounded on the shoals off
Hatteras. The sea was oily and calm. It lay like a gruesome shell,
as though some fire had swept all its interior. Yet not fire either,
for there were no embers, no ashes. Diseased, leprous, gruesomely
weird with parts of its interior intact and other parts obliterated.
And no living soul was upon it save one steward crouching in a lower
cabin laughing with madness which the shock of what he had seen
brought upon him.

On land, a railroad train in Virginia had been wrecked, struck
apparently by a greenish ray. And also in Virginia, during the early
evening in a village, an outdoor festival at which there were many
young girls was attacked by apparitions suddenly coming into
solidity. The report said that thirty or more young girls were
missing. The little town was in chaos.

And the chaos, that next day, spread everywhere. It was obvious now
that the enemy was advancing northward. In Washington, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, panics were beginning. New York City was seething with
excitement. People were leaving all the towns and cities of the
area. An exodus north and westward. In New York, every steamship,
airplane and railroad train was crowded with departing people. The
roads to Canada and to the west were thronged with outgoing
automobiles.

But it was only a small part of the millions who remained. And the
transportation systems were at once thrown into turmoil, with the
sudden frantic demands threatening to break them down. And then a
new menace came to New York. Incoming food supplies for its millions
crowded into that teeming area around Manhattan, were jeopardized.
The army of men engaged in all the myriad activities by which the
great city sustained itself were as terrified as anyone else. They
began deserting their posts. And local communication systems went
awry. The telephones, the lights, local transportation--all of them
began limping, threatening to break.

* * * * *

Tremendous, intricate human machine by whose constant activity so
many millions are enabled to live so close together! No one could
realize how vastly interwoven are a million activities which make
life in a great city comfortable and safe until something goes
wrong! And one wrong thing so swiftly affects another! As though in
a vastly intricate mechanism little cogs were breaking, and the
breaks spreading until presently the giant fly-wheels c