The panics
caused by the gathering apparitions of the previous days were nearly
over now. The city was under martial law, most of it deserted by
civilians, save for the dead who still lay strewn on the streets.

Lower and mid-Manhattan were an empty shell of deserted structures,
and silent, littered streets, which at night were dark, and through
which criminals prowled, braving the unknown terror to fatten upon
this opportunity.

Soldiers and police patrolled as best they could all of Manhattan,
trying to clear the streets of the crushed and trampled bodies;
seeking in the deserted buildings those who might still be there,
trapped or ill, or hurt so that they could not escape; protecting
property from the criminals who en masse had broken jail and were
lurking here.

Warships lay in the harbor and the rivers. The forts on Staten
Island and at Sandy Hook were ready with their artillery to attack
anything tangible. Airplanes sped back and forth overhead. Troops
were marching from outlying points--lines of them coming in over all
the bridges.

By midnight of May 19th and 20th there were groups of ghosts visible
everywhere about the city. They lurked in the buildings, permeating
the solid walls, stalking through them, or down through the
foundations; they wandered upon invisible slopes of their own world,
climbing up to gather in groups and hanging in mid-air over the city
rooftops. In the Hudson River off Grant's Tomb two or three hundred
of the apparitions were seemingly encamped at a level below the
river's surface. And others were in the air over the waters of the
upper bay.

* * * * *

Toward midnight, from the open ocean beyond Sandy Hook spectral
vehicles came winging for the city. Rapidly decreasing what had at
first seemed a swift flight, they floated like ghostly dirigibles
over the bay, heading for Manhattan. The forts fired upon them;
airplanes darted at them, through them. But the wraiths came on
unheeding. And then, gathering over Manhattan at about Washington
Square, they faded and vanished.

Within thirty minutes, though the vehicles never reappeared, it was
seen that the spectral invaders were now tremendously augmented in
numbers. A line of shapes marched diagonally beneath the city
streets. Patrolling soldiers in the now deserted subways saw them
marching past. The group in the air over the harbor was augmented.
In Harlem they were very near the street levels, a m