"Their last stronghold.

And the fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up the buildings all about them--to stop our attack.

You heard the smash?
It shattered half the brittle glass in the city." And while he spoke, Graham saw that beyond this area of ruins, overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of white building.

This mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction of its surroundings.

Black gaps marked the passages the disaster had torn apart; big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of their interiors showed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged walls hung festoons of divided cables and twisted ends of lines and metallic rods.
And amidst all the vast details moved little red specks, the red-clothed defenders of the Council.