Very suddenly, the world about them changed. Geologically, it was the same. The same, eternal daylight sky was above them. Before them lay the same, mysterious ocean with its plethora of unknown life forms. The low hills, the jungles, the flowers, the colorful birds--almost all the same.
But the jungle had been cleared away for several miles, and in its place stood a modern city with tall, well-designed buildings, electric power facilities, and motorized traffic. On the sea lay a fleet of gray battleships and cruisers. In the sky were at least a hundred jet aircraft, of strangely futuristic design, black and delta-shaped. The latter were attacking the warships with bombs and rocket fire, and their ears were assailed by the staccato reports of guns answering from the ships--and from the land.
The city defenses were aimed also at the strange, black aircraft. Ack-ack was all over the sky. Bombs and planes screamed through the air, and the ground shook with the shock of explosions.
The castaways, including Weston's gang, stood on a great pier before the sprawling city--a pier which lay half demolished around them, smouldering from several recent hits. Nearby, out in the water, lay a commuter vessel, semi-capsized, its crew and uniformed personnel leaping overboard and attempting to swim back to shore.
Armed troops were all around the castaways, rushing to set up new defenses on the pier, to repair loading derricks and put out fires with portable equipment.
"Hey!" shouted one of the castaways. "It's just like back home!"
"Civilization!" shouted another. "That screwy Garden of Eden was all a bad dream! We're back--thank God!"
Henry reasoned it was not the scene of battle they were welcoming. It was rather the transition from an unknown situation to a comprehensible one that they hailed with such relief.
"What is it?" queried Martia, close beside him. "What's happening? Where are we?"
"We're _not_ back home," he said. "Still in the future--but an alternate one. Keep your eyes open and we'll know very soon."
This was a pointed remark, inasmuch as an officered detail of troops had turned its amazed attention on the heterogeneous group. Weston's gang, especially, looked like a bunch of anachronisms with their crude bows and arrows and their stupidly gaping mouths.