He was no longer in the hall. He was marching along a gallery overhanging
one of the great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city.
Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole concave of the
moving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping to
the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista,
shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as
they receded, until the globes of electric light receding in perspective
dropped down it seemed and hid the swarming bare heads. Tramp, tramp,
tramp, tramp.

The song roared up to Graham now, no longer upborne by music, but coarse
and noisy, and the beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp,
tramp, interwove with a thunderous irregularity of footsteps from the
undisciplined rabble that poured along the higher ways.

Abruptly he noted a contrast. The buildings on the opposite side of the
way seemed deserted, the cables and bridges that laced across the aisle
were empty and shadowy. It came into Graham's mind that these also should
have swarmed with people.

He felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very fast! He stopped again. The
guards before him marched on; those about him stopped as he did. He saw
anxiety and fear in their faces. The throbbing had something to do with
the lights. He too looked up.

At first it seemed to him a thing that affected the lights simply, an
isolated phenomenon, having no bearing on the things below. Each huge
globe of blinding whiteness was as it were clutched, compressed in a
systole that was followed by a transitory diastole, and again a systole
like a tightening grip, darkness, light, darkness, in rapid alternation.