was wrenched
and jarred as if by an earthquake and the most thunderous detonations I
had ever heard burst over me in a prolonged series.

Let me emphasize that none of this had the quality of a dream; it was
clear-cut, as vivid as anything I had ever experienced; my mind worked
with an unusual precision and clarity, and not even a fleeting doubt
came to me of the reality of my observations. "This is some sort of
bombing attack," I remember reflecting, "some assault of super-monsters
of the skies, perfected by a super science." And I did not have to be
told the fact; I knew, as by an all-illuminating inner knowledge, that I
had voyaged into the future.

Even as this realization came to me, I made another flight--and one that
was in space more than in time. It did not surprise me, but I took it as
the most natural thing in the world when I seemed to rise and go
floating away through the air. It was still sunset-time, but I could see
clearly enough as I went drifting at a height of several hundred yards
above a vast desolated space near the junction of two rivers. Perhaps,
however, "desolated" is not the word I should use; I should say, rather,
"shattered, pulverized, obliterated," for a scene of more utter and
hopeless ruin I have never seen nor imagined. Over an area of many
square miles, there was nothing but heaps and mounds of broken stone,
charred and crumbling brick, fire-scarred timbers, and huge contorted
masses of rusting steel like the decaying bones of superhuman monsters.
From the great height and extent of the piles of debris, and from the
occasional sight of the splintered cornice of a roof or of some battered
window-frame or door, I knew that this had once been a city, one of the
world's greatest; but no other recognizable feature remained amid the
gray masses of ruins, and the very streets and avenues had been erased.
But here and there a tremendous crater, three hundred feet across and a
hundred to a hundred and fifty feet deep, indicated the source of the
destruction.

As if to reinforce the dread idea that had taken possession of my
brain, one of the comet-like red prodigies went streaking across the sky
even as I gazed down at the dead city; and I knew--as clearly as if I
had seen the whole spectacle with my own eyes--that the missile had
sprung from a source hundreds or thousands of miles away, possibly
across the ocean; and that, laden with scores of tons of explosives, it
had been hurled with une