There were the two historical music halls of
this place, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, in which the municipal
players revolved perpetually through the cycle of Shakespeare's plays,
and four other great houses of refreshment and entertainment whose
pinnacles streamed up into the blue obscurity of the night. The south
side of the square was in dark contrast to the others; it was still
being rebuilt, and a lattice of steel bars surmounted by the frozen
gestures of monstrous cranes rose over the excavated sites of vanished
Victorian buildings.
This framework attracted Barnet's attention for a time to the exclusion
of other interests. It was absolutely still, it had a dead rigidity, a
stricken inaction, no one was at work upon it and all its machinery was
quiet; but the constructor's globes of vacuum light filled its every
interstice with a quivering green moonshine and showed alert but
motionless--soldier sentinels!
He asked a passing stroller, and was told that the men had struck that
day against the use of an atomic riveter that would have doubled the
individual efficiency and halved the number of steel workers.
'Shouldn't wonder if they didn't get chucking bombs,' said Barnet's
informant, hovered for a moment, and then went on his way to the
Alhambra music hall.
Pages:
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78