put on my head.
They led me then out of the building and into the street.

"I gazed astoundedly along that street. It had a raised walk at either
side, on which many hundreds of people moved to and fro, all dressed in
as strange a fashion. Many, like Rastin and Thicourt, seemed of gentle
blood, yet, in spite of this, they did not wear a sword or even a
dagger. There were no knights or squires, or priests or peasants. All
seemed dressed much the same.

"Small lads ran to and fro selling what seemed sheets of very thin white
parchment, many times folded and covered with lettering. Rastin said
that these had written in them all things that had happened through all
the world, even but hours before. I said that to write even one of these
sheets would take a clerk many days, but they said that the writing was
done in some way very quickly by machines.

"In the broad stone street between the two raised walks were rushing
back and forth the strange vehicles I had seen from the window. There
was no animal pulling or pushing any one of them, yet they never halted
their swift rush, and carried many people at unthinkable speed.
Sometimes those who walked stepped before the rushing vehicles, and then
from them came terrible warning snarls or moans that made the walkers
draw back.

"One of the vehicles stood at the walk's edge before us, and we entered
it and sat side by side on a soft leather seat. Thicourt sat behind a
wheel on a post, with levers beside him. He touched these and a humming
sound came from somewhere in the vehicle and then it too began to rush
forward. Faster and faster along the street it went, yet neither of them
seemed afraid.

"Many thousands of these vehicles were moving swiftly through the
streets about us. We passed on, between great buildings and along wider
streets, my eyes and ears numbed by what I saw about me. Then the
buildings grew smaller, after we had gone for miles through them, and
we were passing through the city's outskirts. I could not believe,
hardly, that it was Paris in which I was.

"We came to a great flat and open field outside the city and there
Thicourt stopped and we got out of the vehicle. There were big buildings
at the field's end, and I saw other vehicles rolling out of them across
the field, ones different from any I had yet seen, with flat winglike
projections on either side. They rolled out over the field very fast and
then I cried out as I saw them rising from the ground