s above the smelter.

In another place, at the bottom of a canyon roared a surging torrent of
river. A harnessed river; plunging into turbines; emerging to tumble
over a cascade, its every drop caught by turning buckets spilled again
at the bottom. Water pursuing its surging course downward, its power
used again and again. The canyon dry at one place near the lower edge of
the city, the water all electrified, resolved into piped hydrogen and
oxygen. Like a tremendous clock ticking, the water, momentarily dammed
back, was released in a torrent to the electrolysis vats. The hissing
gases, under tremendous pressure, raised up the heavy-weighted tops of
two expanding tanks. Another tick of this giant clock--the gases
released, were merged again to water. The tops of the tanks lowered,
each in turn, one coming down as the other went up--hundreds of tons of
weight--their slow downward pull geared to scores of whirling
wheels--the power shifted to dynamos scattered throughout the city.

It was the twilight of nightfall when we arrived over Industriana. A
thousand funnels and chimneys belched their flame and smoke--the flame
tinting the sky with a lurid yellow-green glare, the smoke hanging like
a dim blue gauze through which everything seemed unreal, infernal.

From the city rose a roar--the myriad sounds of industry mingled by the
magic of distance. And as we got closer, the roar resolved into its
component parts; the grinding of gears; clicking of belts and chains;
whirring of dynamos and motors; shrill electrical screams; the
clattering of falling ore; clanking of swiftly moving merchandise, bound
in metal, magnetized to monorail cars shifting it to warehouses on the
nearby hills. And over it all flashed the brilliant signal lights of the
merchandise traffic directors whose stentorian electrical voices
broadcasting commands sounded above the city's noises.

An inferno of activity. A seeming confusion; yet the aspect of confusion
was a fallacy, for beneath it lay a precision--an orderly precision as
calm and exact as the mind of the Director of a Signal Tower counting
off the split seconds of his beams.

An orderly precision--the brain of one man guiding and dominating
everything; at his desk alone for long hours throughout the days and
nights. A quiet, grey-haired gentleman; unhurried, unharassed, seemingly
almost inactive; always seated at his empty desk smoking endless
arrant-cylinders. The dominating business brain o