The Sanusian chose rather to back carefully away from the spot. She
walked hurriedly up the street she had just left, and before going
another block came across two skeletons lying right in the middle of the
street. A little farther on, and she began to find skeletons on every
hand. Moreover--and this is especially significant--the buildings in
this locality showed a great many gaps and holes in their walls, such as
might have been made by shell-fire.
This made it easier to understand something else. Every few yards or so
the explorer found a large heap of rust in the gutter, or what had once
been the gutter. These heaps had little or no shape; yet the doctor
fancied he could detect certain resemblances to things he had seen
before, and shortly declared that they were the remains of motors.
"Can't say whether they were aircraft or autos, of course," he added,
"but those things were certainly machines." Later, Rolla paid more
attention to them, and the doctor positively identified them as former
motor-cars.
The sun had gone down. It was still quite light, of course; darkness
would not come for a couple of hours. Rolla munched on what food she
had, and pressed on through the ruins. She saw skeletons and rusted
engines everywhere, and once passed a rounded heap of rust which looked
like nothing so much as a large cannon shell.
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