In a few moments, the skyscrapers of San Francisco, looking white and spectral, were swallowed up in the gray-brown pall that enshrouded the Golden Gate. Hal's last picture of them was of mere tower tops that seemed to hang like a magic city in the clouds. A forerunner this, of the mirages he was to encounter later on, when magic cities would seem to rise before his tired eyes, then crumble away among the clouds.