CHAPTER XXII
JOH FREDERSEN stood in the dome-room of the New Tower of Babel, waiting for Slim. He was to bring him news of his son.
A ghostly darkness lay upon the New Tower of Babel. The light had gone completely out, gone out as though it had been killed—at the moment when the gigantic wheel of the Heart-machine of Metropolis came free from its structure with a roar as from the throats of a thousand wounded beasts, and, still whirling around, was hurled straight up at the ceiling, to strike it with a shattering crash, to bound back, booming the while like a gong as large as the heavens and to crash down upon the splintered ruins of the erstwhile masterpiece of steel, to remain lying there.
Joh Fredersen stood long on the same spot, not daring to move. It seemed to him that an eternity
