"Destruction and death!" Connell's voice seemed echoing still about us there in the silence when he had ceased, seemed beating like great drum-notes of doom in our ears. Macklin—Hilliard—they sat beside me in the dark cell as silent as myself. And in that moment we heard again, from outside and far beneath, the great throbbing roar of the life of all the mighty air-city about us, the humming rush of cruisers to and fro above it and the dull mingled voices of its great crowds, coming dimly up to our silent little cell high in the mighty electrostatic tower. Then suddenly I had risen to my feet.
"Destruction and death—but there must be some way in which we can prevent it!" I cried.
"What way is there?" Connell's tone was low, hopeless. "We only know what looms above our nation, know that these preparations are coming to their end, that these air-cities plan to rush upon our own. We cannot halt the preparations that are going on in every air-city of the two great enemy Federations."
"But if we could warn our own!" I said. "If we could get what you have learned back to the American Federation—could install in all our own air-cities similar new tube-propellers—then our cities could at least meet the attack of the enemy cities with equal speed and power."
"But how to get back?" asked Connell. "How to escape from here? It could be done, if we could escape, for the new tube-propellers could be put in our own air-cities swiftly enough, yet to escape is impossible. I have been here days, weeks, Brant, with the one thought of escape uppermost, but the thing is hopeless."
I strode to the square little window, looked forth from it. It was quite open and unbarred, and large enough too to allow one to pass through it, yet as I projected my head from it and gazed up and downward in the darkness I saw that there was no need of bars across it. For the little window was set directly in the sheer, towering side of the mighty power-tower's pinnacle. Far up above our level soared that tremendous tapering tower, so far that the tip seemed among the stars above, while far below, a thousand feet at least, lay the smooth metal of the great plaza. And though there were other windows below and above us, each was separated a full ten feet or more from the other, and, as we knew, to merely escape from our cell into another level of the great tower would avail us nothing, since to gain the plaza outside we would need to pass through the tower's lower levels thronged always with armed guards. It seemed, indeed, that as Connell had said there was no hope of escape for us, the door being solid, thick metal, and as I turned back toward the other three something of Connell's own hopelessness had taken root within my heart.
And that hopelessness grew within me in the hours that followed. For when day came and illumined with brilliant light all the giant air-city that stretched far around us it seemed only to emphasize the utter helplessness of our position. Far beneath on the great plaza lay many cruisers, and could we win to one of them we might well make a break at top speed across the Atlantic, since so simple in design and so unvarying in their exhaustless power-supply are modern air-cruisers that one man alone at their bridge-room controls could operate them. Yet to win down to those cruisers, down to the great plaza's surface—that seemed impossible. And so as that day waned, and night swept over the great floating mass of the towers of Berlin, to be followed by day again, my despair was waxing ever stronger, deeper.
For during those days we could see plainly from our window the great preparations going on still in the air-city about us. Already throngs of workers had cleared away the twisted and fused wreckage that had been made by the attack of our ships, and new masses of supplies were pouring into Berlin in shipload after shipload from all the air-cities of the European Federation, to replace those we had destroyed in their great arsenals. The air seemed filled, indeed, with great freight-carriers and official cruisers arriving and departing. And beneath all this great surface activity and preparation, we knew, down in the great tube-propeller compartments of the air-city's mighty base, other and greater preparations were going on, other and different tube-propellers were replacing the city's tubes, and swiftly the time was approaching when all the city would be able to rush meteor-like through the air.
It was that knowledge that made our despair most deep. For though there was now a lull, apparently, in the great war's course, the European and Asiatic forces preparing for their final giant blow, and the Americans gathering their own forces apprehensively to resist the next attack, we knew that it was but the lull before the final terrible storm that was to settle the fate of earth's three mighty nations. And we knew, too, that it was the fate of our own American Federation that would be sealed in that gigantic attack, unless Connell could make his way soon to our land with his great secret. And that he could not do so, that he could not even escape from the little cell in which we were prisoned, was all so clear to us that almost I wished that death had come to me in the cruiser's crash to spare me the torture of mind that I and all of us were now undergoing.
It was a torture accentuated, I think, by the complete emptiness and eventlessness of those hours and days. Save for what we could see from our high window upon the city around us, we were as cut off from the world as though upon the moon. Twice each day, at dawn and at dusk, our door was opened by the guards that brought our food, that food being as in our own air-cities the paste-like synthetic compounds of artificial proteins and fats and carbohydrates which had decades before replaced the old natural foods. But though our door was thus flung open twice each day, there was no hope of escape for us in that fact. For the two guards who brought our food in to us carried their heat-pistols always in one hand, and always, night and day, there watched in the corridor outside a full score of similarly armed guards by whom one could not hope to pass living toward the cage-lifts. It seemed indeed, as Connell had said, that weeks of frenzied meditation could never disclose any plausible plan of escape, and so I lapsed with him into a state of half-lassitude that had been induced by our utter despair.
And so days passed. Not even the prospect of our own deaths which I knew to be looming before us, was sufficient to rouse me from that lassitude, not even the fact that at the end of that fortnight, as I had guessed, the great attack of the air-cities was to be launched upon the American Federation, and that it was for that reason that our captors had given us that time.
Connell, Macklin, myself—we three had faced in our time perils and risks enough, but so overwhelming was the doom that hung over us and over our nation now that it stunned us, held us in stupefied despair. But one of us there was that was not so stunned, and that was Hilliard, my young second officer. His eager, restive nature, chafing at our imprisonment and at the thing that was looming for our land, resisted stubbornly the deep hopelessness that had settled upon the rest of us, and hour after hour he spent in pacing about the little cell, or in striving to devise some means for escaping from it. And at last, upon the fourth day of our imprisonment there in the tower, he turned suddenly toward us with an eager cry upon his lips.
A Daring Venture
"I have it!" he exclaimed. "A way that two of us can win free with—and maybe all! A chance out of millions, with death at the end of it, maybe, but a chance to get Connell and his secret back!"
"But how?" I questioned. "How can two of us, even, get clear of this cell?"
"The guards!" he exclaimed excitedly. "The two guards that bring our food each dawn and dusk—if we can overpower them—"
"It's useless, Hilliard," I said. "Even if we did overpower them we could not pass the score of other guards in the corridor outside, or the scores of others on its lower floors."
"But listen," he appealed, and then, as he went on to detail to us the plan that he had devised, I felt some slight measure of hope rising within me, saw that dawning hope reflected in the faces of Connell and Macklin.
"Itisa chance!" he exclaimed. "And if we can do it, if I can get back to our own land, it means a chance still for the American Federation! For the European and Asiatic Federations won't be starting their attack for another ten days or more, their preparations not finished till then, and in that time by bending every effort toward it our own engineers could put the new tube-propellers in all our American air-cities! Could make those cities able to meet the enemy cities, attack when it comes!"
So, with that foremost in mind, we swiftly decided that upon that very evening, when our guards brought our food at dusk, we would put the plan into operation, would stake everything upon it. For even if but two of us could escape by it, if Connell could be one of those two, and could get back across the Atlantic with his tremendous secret, it meant a fighting-chance for our Federation. And with that in mind the rest of us were willing to take all chances, to dare all risks. Risky enough the thing would be, we knew, all depending upon what occurred in one moment of rushing action, and numberless were the features of it that might go entirely wrong and ruin us. But we steeled ourselves with the thought of what would become of our Federation if we failed. And so ready and tense with resolution we waited for the coming of dusk.
To me, through the remaining hours of that day, it seemed that never had the sun sunk westward so slowly. From our window we could see all the activities that went on in the great air-city about us, could see far across all this great mass of towers and streets and thronging crowds which hung here miles in the air above the earth, and could see those activities lessening somewhat as the long shadows of sunset fell across narrow streets and smooth plazas. In the great plaza beneath, at the foot of that electrostatic tower in which we were imprisoned, there rested always a number of great cruisers of the European fleet, reporting to the First Air Chief there in the tower's base, and now with the approach of night other cruisers from the swarming masses above the city were slanting down to rest upon the plaza. And these cruisers we watched with intent gaze as the sunset's light declined.
Outside in the corridor we could hear the occasional movement of feet as the score of guards there moved about now and then, but heard not the approaching feet of the two that brought our food. What if they were not to come upon this evening? Or what if more than two, or less than two, were to come? Either contingency would be equally ruinous to our plan, and with the passing of each moment we sat in an increasing agony of expectation, Connell's eyes burning, Macklin as imperturbable as ever, Hilliard eager and tense. Then at last, when the shadows of dusk were falling across the great city of the air outside, were deepening in our little cell, we heard voices outside, the greetings of our guards in the corridor, and then a moment later the solid metal door of our cell had clicked open. Then into the cell stepped our two usual guards with our food, their heat-pistols ready as always in their right hands.
The eyes of one warily upon us, the other took both of the metal containers of synthetic food and reached to place them, as usual, upon the lower bunk-rack, at the room's right hand side. Macklin was lying upon that bunk-rack having stretched himself out as though sleeping. The rest of us were lounging at the cell's other side, the second guard's heat-pistol watchfully upon us while the first reached toward the bunk-rack to place the metal food-containers beside the supposedly-sleeping Macklin's head. But as he placed them there, as he began to turn away from it, Macklin's hands shot suddenly behind his head as he lay there and grasped the arm of the first guard in a single movement, jerking him toward the bunk-rack! Like lightning the second guard turned with his pistol toward that sudden movement and as he did so, forgetful for the instant of the rest of us, we three had leaped upon him! And then as Hilliard and I bore the second guard to the floor, wrenching the pistol from him, Macklin and Connell had jammed the first one against the cell's corner, with hand upon his mouth, and had him equally powerless!
The whole swift scene of action had taken but a flashing moment to carry out, and so lightning-like had been our movements, so careful above all had we been to gag with our hands the two guards as we grasped them, that no single sound save for a few low-choking gasps had come from them. And then, while with hands over their mouths and with all the strength of our muscles Hilliard and I held the two guards, Macklin and Connell were swiftly stripping their tight-jacketed green uniforms from them.
A moment more, and Connell and Macklin were swiftly doffing their own black uniforms of the American Federation and donning the green ones. Now came a restless movement of feet in the corridor without, and with the speed of utter necessity we took the two discarded black uniforms and forced them upon the two guards, holding them still voiceless and powerless. Then, that done, the two guards were as like in their black uniforms as Hilliard and myself; with Connell and Macklin, the latter having been chosen because of the similarity of his appearance to one of the guards, wearing now the guards' green uniforms. And now the very climax of our endeavor was come, that moment upon which depended all, for now, suddenly removing our hands from the lips of the two guards we held, we added our own sudden cries to theirs, and at the same moment Connell and Macklin, in their green uniforms, were engaging in a mock struggle with us and with our guards, whose din seemed terrific there in the quiet upper levels of the great tower!
Instantly as those cries arose there was a rush of feet outside and the score of guards there poured down the corridor and through the cell's door, to see four of us in black uniforms struggling apparently with two green-uniformed guards, who were in reality Connell and Macklin. It was the moment upon which all rested, and in that moment the score of guards acted as Hilliard had foreseen, gazing not in that wild moment of frenzied action at faces but at uniforms, seeing only in that first moment in the dusky cell four black-garbed men struggling with two green-garbed ones they had seen enter it but moments before. And, seeing this, they rushed upon us four black-uniformed ones, Hilliard and myself and the guards whom in the guise of aiding in the struggle we had held, and began to beat us back against the cell's end, totally forgetting in that moment the two green-uniformed men they were succoring! And in that moment, as they pressed us back, Connell and Macklin were stealing swiftly out of the cell, and down the corridor toward the hall of the cage-lifts!
For but a moment more did we struggle with our outnumbering opponents there, and then as they gripped and held the four of us helpless and jerked our heads up wild cries came from them as they saw the faces of us, saw that two of us were their own guards! Then the next moment, needing no other explanation of what had happened, they turned with their own black-garbed fellows, rushed out of the cell, slamming shut its door behind them, down the corridor and toward the cage-lifts after Connell and Macklin! We heard those cries re-echoed swiftly over all the mighty building, heard rushing feet and repeated calls on the levels of the great tower above and beneath us. And then, as we flung ourselves to our window, gazed downward, we saw in the next moment two green-garbed tiny figures issuing from the giant electrostatic tower's base far beneath us, running across the great plaza toward the nearest of the cruisers. They were Connell and Macklin!
I cried out with Hilliard hoarse words of encouragement, forgetful that none could hear from our terrific height, saw Connell and Macklin rushing up the slender gangplank in the cruiser's side and through its open door, saw that door slam shut behind them, just as from the base of the tower there poured out after them a flood of pursuing green-garbed figures. Those pursuers were raising their heat-pistols, and a hail of shining heat-cartridges were flying through the air toward the cruiser in the next moment, but as they shot toward it there came faintly up to us the droning of the ship's great motors and then with all the power of those motors in its vertical lifting tube-propellers it was rising upward, was lifting smoothly and swiftly upward toward us! And at the same moment the green-uniformed crowd of guards beneath were rushing across the plaza toward the other resting cruisers, were rushing within them to soar up after Connell and Macklin!
Up toward us shot the lifting cruiser of our two friends, though, up toward our little window, for such had been our plan by which two, escaping, might rescue the remaining two. But as it shot upward I looked down, saw beneath the scores of cruisers on the plaza rising now after it, heard through all the great tower and for far around it a great roar of rising shouts as the escape was discovered, saw the giant gleaming muzzles of the great batteries of heat-guns around the plaza turning swiftly upward on their pivots toward the rising cruiser of Connell and Macklin! And so the next moment as that cruiser shot up toward us, as I made out Macklin plain in its transparent-windowed bridge-room, driving it up toward us, I flung an arm outward from the tower to him, shouting in frenzied appeal.
"Back, Macklin!" I cried, with Hilliard crying too beside me. "No time to get us—back home with Connell, for God's sake!"
He saw my frenzied gesture westward, caught the meaning of my wild warning shout as the guns beneath swung toward him and the cruisers below rushed up, and I saw him hang there for a fraction of a moment irresolute, hesitating. Then the next moment, just as there came a swift-spreading thunder of detonations from the great heat-guns around the plaza he had whirled the wheel over and sent the great cruiser rushing away from the tower, sent it rushing westward through the dusk above the great air-city's gathered lights. In the next instant there shot through the air where it had been the shining heat-shells from beneath! And then as Macklin's cruiser rushed comet-like onward through the dusk the great heat-guns beneath were turning again toward it.
I cried out hoarsely as they thundered again, but with a whirl sidewise Macklin and Connell had evaded the rushing shells and were hurtling on. Now over all the great air-city, over all the mighty mass of Berlin was spreading a roar of alarm, and now the cruisers that had rushed up in pursuit were rocketing westward after that single fleeing one, the batteries beneath us holding their fire lest they strike their own pursuing ships. With our hearts pounding Hilliard and I saw that single little cruiser leap on, saw it shooting through the dusk until its gleaming shape was now far away from the great air-city, racing westward! Swiftly, though, the numberless pursuing cruisers were converging upon it, and then, as we strained our eyes to see the flying gleaming craft, there came a greater thundering of guns as all the suddenly-alarmed batteries at the air-city's westward edge loosed their shells upon the fleeing cruiser! That cruiser seemed to halt for a moment unaccountably, there was a great blinding flare that could be made only by heat-shells striking, and then the cruiser, the cruiser that held Macklin and Connell and all the American Federation's fate, was reeling blindly downward and out of sight, whirling lifelessly downward toward the earth far below!
The Great Movement Starts
Stunned and stupefied, Hilliard and I gazed out in that moment from our window, out through the dusk above the air-city to where the cruiser of our two friends had plunged to death. I think now that for those first few moments neither of us was able completely to comprehend what had happened, to comprehend what malign fate it was that had sent our friends down to death there as they seemed making their escape. Staring forth blankly, we saw the cruisers that had been pursuing them, that had been overtaking them, turning back now toward the air-city, heard a cheer rolling across that city as the crowds in its streets witnessed the destruction of the fleeing craft, the flare of the shells that had destroyed it. That great roaring cheer from beneath penetrated at last into my brain with realization of what had happened.
"Macklin—Connell—" I whispered. "Macklin and Connell—gone—and the last chance to warn our Federation gone—"
Hilliard's eyes were bright with unshed tears. "Our last chance," he said.
Looking back, I think now that it was not the passing of our one chance for freedom, nor the passing even of our one chance to carry Connell's great secret homeward, that weighed upon us most in the following time. It was the swift passing of our two friends, of Macklin especially, who for long had formed with Hilliard and myself the trio that commanded my cruiser, that stabbed us most in those first following hours and days. Prisoned there as before, but two of us now where there had been four, we waited now in a certain heedlessness for the doom that we knew awaited us and our Federation. The wild break for freedom that two of us had made and that had ended in those two's destruction, had apparently not changed the plans of the European First Air Chief in regard to us, and we knew that at the end of the designated fortnight, less than ten days hence now, we must either reveal all our knowledge of the American forces, which we could not do, or suffer death.
We knew, too, that even as Connell had guessed, it was at the end of that fortnight, ten days hence, that the European and Asiatic Federations planned to launch their final gigantic attack of air-cities, since it was evident that they wished to gain their information from us only to use it immediately in their attack. For now below, in the city's base-compartments, the great new tube-propellers that were to whirl it through the air at such terrific speed were being completed, we knew, as in all the two hundred air-cities of the European and Asiatic Federations. The long months of experimentation over, it needed but weeks or days to rush those new tube-propellers into place. And had Connell escaped with his secret it might well have been, I thought, that even in the ten days left the new-type tubes could have been swiftly manufactured by thousands and placed in all our own American air-cities.
If Connell had escaped! But Connell had not escaped, Connell had plunged to death with Macklin, amid the flaring heat-shells. Prisoned there in our little cell, Hilliard and I despite that ever-approaching doom almost paid no attention whatever to all outside and about us, brooding there in silence hour upon hour as night followed day and day night. We had not, even, the slightest further thoughts of escape, although such thoughts would have been hopeless, for now our door was never opened save by the full score of armed guards outside. So, losing all thought and all hope of freedom, we sat on in our little prison high in the mighty tower, dead to all the unceasing rush of preparations and gathering of cruisers in the city about us.
But at last, upon the eighth day after the break of Connell and Macklin, and the second day before our approaching doom, there came an event which roused us suddenly from that renewed apathy into which we had fallen. For days we had noticed that the crowds in the streets were proving fewer and fewer, the only people now remaining being groups of green-uniformed officials unceasingly moving in and out of the headquarters there. There was finally made clear to us the reason of their activities. For, as we gazed forth from our window on the afternoon of that day, we seemed to sense a certain air of anticipation in the people that remained. They swarmed forth into the great air-city's streets; we heard in a moment more a strange great hissing from far below us, all around the city's base and edge; and then were aware that with that hissing sound and with a great tremor of power that beat through all its colossal metal mass, the great air-city was moving! Was moving not slowly and majestically as air-cities commonly move, but was leaping forward through the air with sudden tremendous speed. We knew now that most of the city's population had been removed to the ground and the movement toward the west had started.
Now came excited roars from the crowds beneath, as the giant mass that was Berlin leapt forward, and now as Hilliard and I leaned from our window with an excitement almost as great we caught our breaths. For we could see now, from the cloud-masses that lay beneath in the distance, that the great air-city was cleaving the air at a speed that was rapidly mounting to over a hundred miles an hour. Terrific winds were whirling all about our power-tower, as it shot through the atmosphere, and those same winds sweeping with titanic force through the city's streets and about its towers forced the crowds in those streets swiftly within the shelter of the structures. And still at ever-mounting speed, the hissing of power and the tremendous roar of winds increasing still, the mighty air-city was whirling on, its soaring towers of metal swaying back beneath the awful winds of their progress, whipping through high cloud-banks and out into clear air again, giving us flashing glimpses from our own wind-swept window of the ground far outward and beneath flashing back at immense speed as we shot onward, as all the colossal city sped on, at a velocity that I knew by then must be over a hundred and fifty miles an hour!
A colossal city, speeding through earth's atmosphere! Awed, despite ourselves, Hilliard and I clung at our window there as with all else in the city we sped on. A colossal city five full miles in its diameter, with all its works and streets and giant batteries of heat-guns, and rushing above earth at a velocity seeming almost unattainable! And even as we watched, we felt the great city slanting upward with the same terrific speed, climbing swiftly upward until the air about us was all but freezing and then diving down toward earth once more on a long, gliding swoop! Then it had turned in mid-air, was flashing back over its course, was going through maneuver after maneuver until at last the great hissing from its base ceased, and it hung at its former height above the earth once more, the crowds in its towers surging forth now to renew their excited shouts.
Last Preparations
Hilliard and I gazed for a long moment at each other. "The tube-propellers they were putting in—finished—," he said slowly, "And Berlin ready now for the great attack—"
"And all the other European Federation cities," I said, "and all those of the Asiatic Federation—all must be nearly completed now, their new tube-propellers installed also. And in two more days——"
In two more days! It was the thought that beat hammer-like in my brain and in Hilliard's in those hours that followed, those hours that were now closing down, one by one, upon the doom of ourselves and of all our nation. Two more days! Two more days at the end of which would have ended the fortnight of our imprisonment, when would come for us the death that had loomed larger and larger during each of those passing days. Two more days at the end of which the great air-cities of the European and Asiatic Federations would rush like whirlwinds over the oceans toward our own slow-moving and helpless cities, to beat them down with all the thunder of their giant batteries. Two more days!—and at the end of them for us and for all the great air-cities and all the millions of the American Federation, doom!
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that in the following hours, Hilliard and I felt close about us the intense despair that ever since the ill-fated attempt of Connell and Macklin had surrounded us. Through all that night following the first demonstration of the immense speed of the air-city, we sat awake, listening to the great shouts of triumph and exultation that came dimly up to us from the crowds that remained in the streets far beneath. The European Federation, we knew, already felt the glow of imminent victory that this new speed of their great air-cities would give them, and were exultant at the chance to annihilate completely the hated American Federation. And, to accomplish that, the very last great preparations were going on now in every part of the air-city.
Great loads of shining heat-shells were being transferred from the stores that had been brought to Berlin, to the giant batteries of heat-guns around the city's edge and its central plaza around the electrostatic tower. The cruisers of the European battle-fleet, still some two thousand in number, were resting on all the landing plazas, and were being cared for and inspected by hordes of green-uniformed attendants. All other air-craft were lowered into the great city's base-hangars to be out of the way during the oncoming combat. By a stroke of genius on the part of Berlin's commander, the power of the great air-forts had been added to that of the city itself, by simply placing the air-forts here and there on unused landing plazas, where they formed in effect great armored gun-turrets on the city's surface. And, finally, the mighty city's speed and power to maneuver had been tested rigorously. With all its peoples inside its metal towers, it was shot at terrific speed low and high above the earth; turning and dipping and rising at that awful velocity like a flashing airplane rather than a gigantic city of the magnitude it really had.
Through all the hours of that night, and the next day (the thirteenth of our imprisonment) those great preparations, that unceasing rush of excited activity, continued. Night came, and still the last preparations were to be made; magazines were being filled, and green-uniformed figures were swarming in countless numbers in the streets; going about their maneuvers; battle-cruisers were moving ceaselessly across the sky. During the hours of that night, as Hilliard and I sat silent there, high above all the tremendous turmoil of the streets and plazas below, we sometimes raised our eyes to watch also the calm, slow march of the great constellations across the sky above; glittering groups of stars that seemed to look down with cool and contemptuous eyes upon all this mad flurry of human excitement and human endeavor. Dozing a little now and then, we sat there until at last dawn sent its rosy light across the world. It was the last dawn, I knew, that Hilliard or I would look upon.
Now, it seemed, all the preparations in the giant air-city about us were completed. The crowds that had moved in its streets during the day and night before remained, but silent now with the thrill of approaching combat. Tense and silent the city remained, as the sun crept up toward the zenith through the morning hours of that fateful day. And, high in our tower-cell, Hilliard and I found ourselves gripped by the same tense feeling of anticipation. From our window as we watched the city, we made out the west, a dark spot rushing through the air toward Berlin, a spot that was growing steadily larger in size, that was broadening out into a large dark disk; and then as it came swiftly closer we saw with astonishment that it was a city, a giant air-city almost as large as Berlin itself!
The Gathering of the Cities
We heard a stir of excitement in the streets below as that mighty air-city came closer to us; then saw it slowing down until at last it had come smoothly to rest out to the south of Berlin, hanging there in mid-air a half-dozen miles away. It was London! Even as I had recognized it, Hilliard had done so also. London! The great air-city that held all southern England for the European Federation, could be clearly recognized, not only by its size but by the somewhat different architectural design of its metal towers and plazas. We could make out clearly now the surface of the other city, its huge batteries of heat-guns, and its great towers surmounted by a central pinnacle. And now, as we scanned the horizon away to the north, we could see another dark disk, another mighty air-city, rushing swiftly toward us!
"They're gathering!" Hilliard's voice was agonized. "Gathering—all the air-cities of the European Federation! It's the beginning of the end."
"Gathering for their great attack," I said.
"God, if Connell and Macklin could have escaped!" Hilliard's cry burst from his tortured soul. "If our own air-cities had only the speed and the power to resist this attack!"
"Steady, Hilliard," I told him, my hand on his shoulder. "It's the end, I think—the end for our Federation as well as ourselves—but we must face it."
Now the air-city from the north was rushing closer, was hanging northward of Berlin, and we saw that it was Stockholm. And, even as it came to rest out there beside us, two other air-cities were rushing up from the south; looming larger swiftly and identifying themselves, when they too shot up to hang near our central city, as Geneva and Rome. And then from the west were coming others, Paris and Brussels and Amsterdam; while down from the cold east were speeding Moscow and Helsingfors and Leningrad. City after city was rushing from all quarters of the compass, from every part of the European Federation, until they filled the sky. Through the hours of that afternoon we watched their numbers grow until they numbered over a hundred. They had come from every part of the earth, over which the European Federation held sway. From the bleak eastern steppes, from the jagged peaks and green valleys of the Pyrenees, from the great ice-locked fiords of the north and from the blue plains of southern Africa, they were rushing at colossal speed to gather here in a great circle about their capital city—Berlin! Great air-cities, each of which flashed through the air at the same tremendous speed, each of which bore upon it great batteries of those giant heat-guns that nothing else in the air could sustain, each of which held upon it a soaring electrostatic tower and thousands of other clustered pinnacles. As in Berlin, the crowding, seething millions of its peoples had been left on the ground quarters prepared for them. The gathering of the cities! At last, with the coming of sunset, all but the last few of the Federation's mighty air-cities had gathered around Berlin!
By then, gazing out from our window high in the electrostatic tower, Hilliard and I seemed to be looking across a single gigantic city that stretched in mid-air as far as the eye could reach, so closely were the scores of great hovering air-cities hanging together! It was as though we were looking forth across an endless plain of clustered towers of metal, from which rose here and there the higher pinnacle of a city's power-source; a titanic plain of towers and streets of metal, crowded with millions of the European Federation's soldiery. And, as the blood-red sunset flamed eastward upon all this huge assemblage, now waiting only for the last of their number, something seemed to snap in my brain, and all the stoicism which I had summoned to meet our fate and our nation's fate abruptly vanished.
"Wecan'tstay here while doom rushes upon our nation!" I cried madly. "Since they start out tonight—since our time is up and we die ourselves tonight—we'll go to death fighting for our freedom!"
But, now, it was Hilliard who endeavored to calm me. "It's useless, Brant," he said. "A few hours more; then all will be rushing west while the Asiatic Federation is moving east upon our air-cities. And at any moment now, before that attack starts, they will be coming here for us."
"But they'll not take us to a death like that!" I exclaimed, a cold, long-repressed fury surging up within me. "If we're to die we'll do it, striking a blow at our enemies!"
Like a caged tiger I paced the little cell's interior, growing shadowy and dusky now; the sun had disappeared. From the corridor outside came the voices of the guards, and at any moment I expected the door to swing open and admit those who would take us to a last examination at which our silence would bring immediate death. Already, far out over the great mass of scores upon scores of giant air-cities that filled the air about us, a great, complicated pattern of brilliant lights was gleaming through the deepened twilight; and now, from south and east and west, the last of the great European Federation's air-cities were assembling about that tremendous gathered mass of cities. Then, as I turned from the metal door which I had been examining in blind and futile rage, my eyes fell upon our bunk-racks and the strong but slender strips of metal that held them out from the metal wall, against which they were set diagonally. And, as I looked at them an idea, a last flame of hope, burned into my brain, and I turned swiftly to Hilliard.
"Those strips of metal!" I exclaimed, pointing toward them. "Those bunk-supports—it's a chance to escape! A chance that means death, Hilliard, I think—but death is upon us now in any case—"
Swiftly, almost incoherently, I explained to him the idea that had suggested itself to me. I heard his breath catch as he comprehended its appalling nature. Then I saw his eyes gleam as he realized that, inasmuch as almost certain death awaited us, death in escaping could not deter us, for we were already doomed. So, we grasped one of the metal strips and tried with all our force to tear its lower end loose from the metal wall. That lower end, set directly in the wall, seemed integral with its metal; and, as we pulled upon the metal strip, gasping with our great effort, muscles tired, we still kept on. We had to work quietly lest some sound betray us to the guards without. It seemed that we could never tear it loose. Straightening from the violent exertion, with dizzy heads, muscles aching, we paused for a moment, then reached to grasp the strip again, braced ourselves against the wall and exerted all our force upon it. It held for a terrible moment, then seemed to give, to bend—and then, with a little grating sound, we had pulled the strip loose from the wall into which it had been set.
A Single Chance
Intently for a moment we listened without moving; but there came no sound of alarm from without, nothing but the occasional voices of the guards. And now we grasped another of the metal bunk-supports, and wrenched its metal strip loose from the wall with another tremendous effort. We had in our hands two metal strips, each of some three feet in length. These we now bent swiftly into two L's or right angles of equal sides, using all our combined strength on each to bend the strong metal. Then, swiftly loosening the long, strong leather belts that criss-crossed over our black air-jackets, we formed of them swiftly two leather ropes ten feet in length. Each of these we attached to one of our metal L's, making each fast to one of the jagged, broken ends of one of the bent strips. Then, panting from our swift efforts, we stood erect, and moved toward our little window.
Night lay over the world now, and from our window we saw the cities illumined by their lights stretching out to the horizon. On the landing plazas of the air-city beneath us rested the great European Federation battle-fleet. In the plaza directly beneath us, that which surrounded the base of our great electrostatic tower, there rested but a few score of cruisers, those of the commanders who were now at the headquarters inside the great tower's base. The plaza was practically deserted; for it was the evening meal. For a moment I stood there at the window, gazing out over that tremendous mass of giant air-cities. Then, summoning all my courage, I flung my right leg over the window's base, through its opening.
Sitting astride that opening, while Hilliard watched anxiously behind me, I placed the metal angle I carried upon the flat metal sill of the window, one end of its angle catching on the sill while the other end, to which my leather rope was fastened, pointed straight downward toward the great plaza a thousand feet beneath. Then, holding to that leather rope, I slid out of the window's opening; and hung by my hands from the slender rope with only empty air between me and the plaza far below. Tensely I swung there in that moment, but the metal angle caught in the sill held my weight. And so, sliding down the leather rope fastened to it, I felt my feet strike in a moment against the sill of the window below. Another moment and I stood upon that sill, crouching within that window's opening.
The window in which I crouched opened into one of the great upper corridors of the electrostatic tower; but I knew that to venture back into the building, swarming now with guards, was to meet death, nor did I plan to do so. Giving my leather rope a twitch, I worked loose the angle resting on the sill above; and, when that dropped toward me, I placed it on the sill on which I stood, and the next moment was sliding down to the window below. And now above me Hilliard, using his own metal angle and leather rope in the same way, was following me, was sliding from window to window after me, down the smooth side of the mighty pinnacle to the street far below. Down—down—like two strange insects we crept downward from window to window. None in the streets below glimpsed the two tiny shapes crawling down the mighty tower's side; for the darkness had deepened now, and in the plaza directly beneath us there were none of the crowds that swirled elsewhere.
Our greatest danger, indeed, was that we would be seen by someone inside the tower as we swung down from window to window; and twice I was forced to hang for a few seconds from my leather rope above a window inside which I could hear voices. Yet still down and down we swung, praying that the regular line of windows in the static-tower's side, extended unbroken clear to its base; for otherwise we were lost. Down and down we went, moving more hastily now despite the awful hazards of our progress; so hastily that once Hilliard's hook or angle slipped halfway out from the sill upon which it hung, and all but precipitated him down to death before he could slide into the window beneath him.
But now we were within the last dozen levels of the plaza's surface, and were down with all the eagerness of renewed hope. For in the plaza there beneath us there lay still the unguarded cruisers, their officers and crews gathered in the great tower down which we were creeping. Another level—another—and down we swung through the dusk, in such a descent as surely man never had made before. The plaza was close beneath, the window of our cell now far above. From far around that plaza, from Berlin and from all the air-cities about, we heard the great hum of final preparations being made. I knew they were ready now to sally forth upon their gigantic attack. But we were within the last few levels of the plaza, now, swinging down with mad haste from window to window toward its smooth surface. And then it was, when we were within a few yards of that surface, that I heard a dim cry from far above.
"Down now with all your strength, Hilliard!" I cried to my friend above me. "They've come to our cell after us—are giving the alarm!"
"The nearest cruiser there below!" he exclaimed thickly as he swung madly down after me. "We'll make it yet!"
But now the cry of our guards high above was being taken up and repeated by other voices in the great electrostatic tower. That cry was coming down through it from level to level, even as we swung from the last window to the level plaza. And, as we staggered across it, toward the open door of the nearest cruiser, there came a series of popping detonations from above and the next moment little flares of terrific heat were bursting all about us as the guards shot their heat cartridges down toward us! From their great height and through the dusk their aim was poor, and in a moment more we were at the cruiser's open door. But now the alarm was spreading over all the tower behind us, and at the same moment that we flung ourselves in through the cruiser's open door, slamming it behind us, we heard a wild clamor of voices from the power-tower's base!
The next instant, though, we were bursting up into the cruiser's bridge-room and for a moment of agony I fumbled at its controls, set differently from those of our American cruisers. Then the motor-stud had clicked beneath my fingers and, as the great electric motors beneath droned suddenly loud with the current rushing through them, I sent all their power into the cruiser's tube-propellers. Up it went rushing, up and away at terrific speed and at a steep slant, even as a mass of green-uniformed figures burst from the electrostatic tower into the plaza! Out and over that plaza at terrific speed we shot, out and upward at such awful mounting velocity that, before the great batteries of heat-guns around us could turn, before the alarm from the power-tower had time to spread, we were whirling up and through the dusk over all the massed towers and gleaming lights of the great air-city Berlin!
Out and over—and now as we soared upward into the rarefied levels of the air like a shooting-star, our cruiser was driving outward over the cities, stabbing westward through the air, literally chasing the sun that had disappeared hours before. From Berlin behind us there rose a hundred cruisers, soaring in swift and deadly pursuit! But so swift had been our rush, so tardy had been the alarm of our escape, that before the great batteries of Berlin could blast us from the air we were beyond them; and before the other massed air-cities over which we were rushing could receive that alarm we had split the air westward above them, and had rushed out from over the last of their titanic floating masses and into the night!
"We're clear of the cities!" I yelled to Hilliard over the thunderous droning of our motors and the roar of winds about us. "If we can shake off these pursuing cruisers we'll win back across the Atlantic yet!"
"But their whole battle-fleet is rising now!" cried Hilliard, gazing back. "And now all their air-cities are beginning to move westward too—all their hundred air-cities are moving west to the attack!"
Across the Atlantic
Despite the wild peril of our rushing ship, I felt for a moment all the blood congealing around my heart as Hilliard yelled those words, and I looked backward for one last glimpse. For there, behind us, behind the hundred ships that were pursuing us, the whole two thousand cruisers of the European battle-fleet had risen and were coming westward also. They were not pursuing us so much as they were speeding westward according to their plan, moving after us in a great crescent formation! And, behind them, we could see now all the hundred gigantic air-cities of the European Federation, massed there in a colossal circular formation about their central city of Berlin; moving westward also behind the crescent of their fleet, they were flashing with terrible majesty through the air in their circular-massed formation; at a speed that mounted swiftly to two hundred miles an hour!
The great attack had begun!
Only a moment I gazed back upon that colossal spectacle never seen by man before, and knew that in that moment, far on the world's other side, the hundred great air-cities of the Asiatic Federation would be rushing eastward; the two great forces of hurtling air-cities were converging upon the American Federation. Then, as we shot forward with our own greater and terrific speed, the vast massed cities and the fleet before them had passed from sight behind us and only the hundred grim pursuing cruisers were visible in the night as we hurtled on!
On—on—and now I shouted to Hilliard to go beneath to the cruiser's motor room. He moved down toward them while I gripped the wheel tightly, standing there alone in the bridge-room of the long great cruiser that had but Hilliard and I inside it. And, while we hurtled on at our maximum terrible speed, as the cruisers behind drove steadily after us, we realized that we and our pursuers were outracing the sun around the earth! We saw by the growing light that we were high above the sea instead of land. The sea that we saw through breaks in the vapor-layer, gleamed to the west of us with sunset lines. We were over the Atlantic, and now, as hope of escape from our pursuers burned stronger within me, there came a sudden faltering in the steady drone of our great motors! I felt our cruiser lose speed in that moment, knew that faltering to be caused by the circuit-breakers tripping at the tremendous power we were using. But then after an awful moment of hesitation the motors were droning as loudly as ever as Hilliard, beneath, had thrown back the circuit-breakers in the connections that conveyed the static electricity from the atmospheric charge about us to our transformers. Only a moment had we faltered thus; but in that moment the hundred pursuers behind had come swiftly closer!
Onward still, like some phantom, we rushed, minute after minute of droning, racing flight, with the sunset ahead flaming brilliant now, as we overtook it. Steadily, the long gleaming ships behind us were creeping closer while the sun rose in the western sky. Though Hilliard was working like a madman in the motor-room beneath, tending the motors as a mother anxiously watches her child, he was but one and could not do the work of a dozen. And so, on after us, they came; drawing toward us so close that at last I knew that we could not win free of them in our frenzied flight. For, although we had rushed on for a time that seemed endless to us, and a few hundred miles remained between us and the American coast, their leaders were so near now that another minute, I knew, would find them using their bow-guns upon us.
Even as the thought came to me, there was a thundering detonation behind us and then but a few feet to either side, a shining heat-shell flashed past us. Another detonation, and another followed, and I knew that not for long could we escape them thus; since with each moment the shooting was becoming more accurate. So, just as a dozen of their bow guns thundered again, I suddenly drove the cruiser downward in a flying headlong plunge down through the vapor-layer beneath us; and, as the pursuing ships plunged straight down after us, I sent our own cruiser instantly whirling upward and through that layer once more!
It was a maneuver that gained us a moment's advantage; since when the pursuing ships drove up through the vapor-masses again on my track, it took them an instant to locate and shape their course after me. In that instant we had moved a little from them; but now, remorselessly as ever, they came on after us, as pursued and pursuing ships drove like light toward the flaming western sky. On and on, on until again they were close behind, until again their guns were beginning to thunder, and then I repeated my former maneuver, my last resort. I dived headlong downward again through the vapor-layer, and upward again, as their ships drove after me. But, when I flashed up again through the vapor-masses this time, I suddenly slowed my ship, slowed it and then held it motionless there in mid-air, with cold of icy fear tight around my heart in that moment! For, this time, half of the hundred pursuing ships had not dived down after me but had flashed on ahead as I drove down; and so, now, when I flashed up they hung before me, while the remainder drove still toward me from behind! I was trapped at last between their masses of ships before and behind me!
Slowing my cruiser, holding it motionless there with mechanical fingers in that moment, I knew it to be the end. Our last moment had come. The two masses of ships were moving toward me, from ahead and behind, were moving toward our cruiser. Our only escape cut off, no twists or turns now could save us; they were converging upon us, were moving deliberately toward us from either side. Another moment, I knew, and hundreds of heat-guns would thunder from them, hundreds of heat-shells would send our ship downward in flaring, fusing destruction. Another moment—
A great cry sounded beside me, and I wheeled to find Hilliard pointing mutely upward toward a mass of long, gleaming shapes that were rushing headlong down upon us from high above, that were diving headlong down upon the European cruisers to east and west of us, raining a hail of heat-shells upon them! "American ships!" My cry was echoing Hilliard's. Great gleaming cruisers, outnumbering the hundred east and west of us, were driving down upon those hundred with all their heat-guns thundering! Then in the next moment, while our own cruiser hung motionless, helpless there in mid-air, American and European cruisers were whirling in a mad, swift battle about us, ships striking and falling like lightning on all sides of us. And before we could comprehend with our stunned minds what was taking place, the European cruisers had suddenly dropped from that battle, had massed together and were splitting the air eastward, rushing back eastward and disappearing toward the mighty approaching armada of great air-cities and cruisers of which they were the scouts.
Now from the mass of the American cruisers one shot toward our own, level and hung beside our own ship, and as its door was flung open we opened the door of our own. I stared at a tall figure, not crediting my eyes.
"Macklin!" I cried as I recognized him: "Macklin! You got clear, then?"
"Brant—Hilliard—!" he was himself exclaiming: "It is you two in that ship, then! We were sent on a last patrol out here, saw your ship attacked by other European ships, came to your rescue—"
"We escaped from Berlin," I told him: "But you, Macklin, we thought you and Connell dead, saw your cruiser struck by heat-shells and falling—"
"It was a last ruse," Macklin swiftly explained: "Those pursuing ships were overtaking us; so, when their batteries fired a storm of heat-shells after us, we fired one of our own heat-guns back toward them at the same time, and our shells meeting one or two of the oncoming ones made them burst and flare there behind us. Then, at the next moment, we sent our ship whirling down as though struck and destroyed."
"But Connell, then!" I cried: "Connell got back with his great secret. All the hundred European Federation air-cities are rushing across the Atlantic to the attack!"
We leaped across the gap to the gangway; the door of Macklin's cruiser closed behind us; and he gave the order that sent it, with the whole cruiser fleet; westward at swiftly mounting speed. Then he turned back to us.
"Connell got back with his secret, yes," he said: "And though the hundred European Federation air-cities are rushing westward and word has come that the massed hundred Asiatic Federation cities also are rushing eastward for the attack, they will find the great air-cities of the American Federation massed together and ready for them! In the ten days since our return, every effort of our cities has been exerted to make use of Connell's knowledge, and to equip with the new tube-propellers that will give them the same tremendous speed as our enemies. And now all our cities are massed together and waiting for the attack of our enemies."
The Battle of the Air-Cities
Now the hundred cruisers of our force were cleaving the air westward at terrific speed, while Macklin and Hilliard and I stood together in the bridge-room of the foremost as it rushed on. Beneath us, the gray Atlantic showed here and there through openings in the vapor-masses, and ahead the sun still hung in the western sky. And within a few minutes more, we saw that the vapor-layer beneath was thinning, and that now we were flashing not over the sea but over land; over green hills and valleys that we could glimpse rushing past far beneath us. I gazed to north and south in search of New York and the other coastal air-cities that should have hung there, but nothing was in sight.
"All our American Federation air-cities," Macklin told me: "are massed together, hanging south of the Great Lakes. From Buenos Aires to Winnipeg, they've come."
"You think, then, that the European and Asiatic Federation air-cities are going to make a simultaneous attack from both sides?" I shouted to him above the roaring of our flight. He nodded emphatically.
"Undoubtedly. The Asiatic Federation cities are over the Pacific now, and are keeping in touch with the European ones by distance-phone to time their attack to coincide from east and west. They know our own cities have massed together, must know now that they've been equipped with the great new speed-tubes also; but they're coming on."
"Two to one," I said: "Two hundred air-cities attacking our one hundred. God, what a battle it will be!"
But now Hilliard had broken into our conversation, was pointing far ahead toward a dark, flat mass that stood out against the brilliant western sky, and toward which we were moving. The terrific speed at which we had been racing on for hours was decreasing now. Far beneath the land was still rolling back at great speed, long green plains now; since already we had flashed west over the Alleghanies. Then, as the dark mass westward grew steadily with our approach to it, other ships were driving suddenly beside our own, watchful patrols that drove down upon our hundred cruisers and swiftly challenged them. Macklin answered those challenges by the distance-phone, but for the moment I paid small attention to him, gazing forward with heart beating rapidly at the great mass that hung high in mid-air before us. For, as we drove closer toward that mass, it was becoming visible to our eyes as our goal, the hundred giant air-cities of the American Federation!
The hundred mighty American Federation air-cities were clustered there miles above the green plains, in a great circular mass, with New York, most colossal of all of them, at the center! Cities that had long hung over North and South America from sea to sea, air-cities whose names were those of the long-vanished cities of the land, that once had dotted the surface of those continents. Boston and Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro and Chicago, Mexico City and Quebec, Valparaiso and Miami—these and scores of others hung there in that great cluster. All the air-cities of the American Federation were gathered here about their air-capital of New York to withstand the tremendous attacks now closing in from east and west!
Massed there as they were, the hundred mighty air-cities seemed, even as the European ones had seemed to me, but one vast plain of metal towers and streets. As far as the eye could reach, there stretched away the tremendous forest of those soaring towers, with here and there rising from them the taller spires of each city's great electrostatic tower. And, everywhere among those towers, everywhere around the rim of each great circular air-city and at its center there loomed great batteries of giant heat-guns; while here and there, on the plazas of the cities rested the turret-like cubes of the recalled great air-forts, their own grim heat-guns protruding expectantly. And through streets and towers, between the batteries and around the air-forts and across the plazas of the assembled cities, there swarmed the millions of their peoples, wild with excitement now as the last dread hour approached. And, massed there above all the great floating cities, hung grim and motionless the two thousand or more cruisers that still remained of the American Federation's eastern and western fleets.
It was toward these massed battle-cruisers, at a level somewhat higher than that of the air-cities, that our own hundred cruisers were rushing. Over those assembled giant cities we raced, the great mass of them below us almost hiding the ground beneath. As we shot above them, I saw now that they had been ranged in a tremendous circle, the great capital of New York hanging in the center. Across the great ring of the air-cities we rushed; were racing at last above New York, toward its own giant power-tower. Then we had reached it, and were sinking vertically downward, until our hundred cruisers came to rest upon the central plaza. Here, even as in Berlin, the central plaza was reserved always for the ships of the First Air Chief and his followers; so that, although immense crowds now beat through all the streets and plazas about it, there were none around our hundred ships. And in an instant Macklin and Hilliard and I were out of that which had brought us and hastening across the clear space toward the static-tower's base.
Preparations
On past its guards and through the ante-rooms we strode, and in another moment were in the office of the First Air Chief. There was unfamiliar apparatus among the great switchboards of its walls, I noted as we entered. The First Air Chief himself had risen from his great table-map as we entered and was coming toward us; beside him, another figure, whom I recognized instantly as Connell. Then both of them were grasping the hands of Hilliard and of myself.
"Brant!" Yarnall was exclaiming: "I got Macklin's report of your escape and his rescue of you—man, but I'm glad that you got free! And it was what you did there in Berlin, what you did to help Connell and Macklin escape, that has enabled us to use Connell's knowledge and fit our air-cities for the coming battle!"
"I did no more than the others," I told him: "But you know of the enemy's coming then? You know that already the European Federation cities are on their way?"
He nodded. "They and the Asiatic Federation's cities from the westward, Brant," he said: "And we are awaiting them here—awaiting them with a chance at least, thanks to you four—to strike back at them when they come. And already they are near—by the map here you can see—"
And he turned toward the great table-map upon which was depicted the whole of the earth's surface, the red circles upon it denoting as before the position of the air-cities that hung above it. Now, however, all the circles of the American Federation cities were massed together south of the white outline of the Great Lakes, hanging motionless as the cities around us were hanging motionless. Away to the east on the map, though, just moving in from the Atlantic over the eastern coast, there was creeping across the map another mass of red circles, moving slowly toward our own, that represented the great gathered cities of the European Federation that were rushing westward toward us. And in from the Pacific was creeping a similar mass of a hundred little red circles that were, I knew, the Asiatic Federation's cities.
From east and west they were moving, there on the map, moving even as the cities they represented moved through the air, automatically showing their positions and progress. This was accomplished, I knew, by means of special batteries of cruiser-finders, tuned and trained to detect the great electrostatic-motors of air-cities, and recording instantly thus whenever those cities moved with their great electric fields. Their records were carried through complicated mechanical calculators which plotted the exact positions and movements of the cities; and these calculators, in turn, were connected to small special projectors set beneath the great ground-glass table-map, casting upward upon it the red circles of the air-cities. Thus those red circles moved upon the map, even as the great air-cities moved across the world.
This arrangement, indeed, was of no late date, and was used by both European and Asiatic Federations as well as by ourselves; but as I gazed now about the great circular room I saw that within it were some new arrangements also. These consisted of a series of six great glass screens which were arranged in box-like form about the great air-city's controls at the room's center. And, while the First Air Chief swiftly explained to us their purpose and design, I saw that one sitting inside their box-form, with four on four sides, and one above and one below, could see in all those directions as though from the very top of the great power-tower. For they were in effect great electrical periscopes; four great similar screens had been set on four sides of the electrostatic tower's high tip, and another one above that tip, while the sixth had been set in the under-side of the great city's base. The views possible to those six screens were then transferred down to the six there about us; the light-vibrations that struck the screens above and beneath being transformed by television receivers into electrical vibrations and brought down to television reproducers behind our own six screens.
Sitting there at the city's controls, amid those six screens and looking into them, one could see as clearly as though from the power-tower's tip in all directions. It was quite necessary, too, that this should be the case; since the man who operated the great air-city, from its six direction-controls and its single speed-control there, must see clearly in all directions, now that the great air-cities could rush at such tremendous speed through the air. When I said as much to the First Air Chief, who had turned now and was gazing intently at the great table-map upon which the eastern and western masses of circles were slowly creeping toward our own, he nodded, and contemplated me for a moment with a curious expression.
"The man," he said finally, "who is to hold the controls of New York in the battle tomorrow, will be you, Brant!"
"The honor is great," I said: "I've operated the city's controls, though never did I expect to take it into battle. But Macklin and Hilliard here—I want them to stay here for the time being—I want the hundred cruisers on the plaza outside to stay there during the battle."
"You have a plan?" the First Air Chief asked, but I shook my head.
"No more than an idea," I said: "An idea that may help us if the battle goes against us, if their attack is too strong for us. Even then it is too insane, perhaps, to be of any use, but it might help us—"
Yarnall nodded assent, and then Macklin and Hilliard had joined the two dozen or more of black-garbed attendants and engineers who were busy at the great switchboards that lined the circular room's walls. They scrutinized its dials to determine the rate of the vast currents rushing down from the power-tower's tip far above to the motors in the city's great base; added a fresh battery of transformers or threw in resistances to hold that current steady; and moved ceaselessly about the walls in their anxious watch. Now, Yarnall and Connell and I were marking our own places, the three metal seats there behind the big table-map, with the great screens of the electrical periscopes all about us. Yarnall would sit in the center, with eyes upon the red circles on the great map, tensely watching their progress, as admiral of our mighty fleet of colossal cities, ready to direct it and our cruisers to the battle. Connell would be at his right, before him the black mouthpiece and speaker of a single distance-phone. Behind that were the scores of switches and intricate controls, which connected that distance-phone to the operators of all our hundred air-cities.
The Battle Nears
As the third of the trio, I would sit at Yarnall's left, before me the six switch-levers which sent the colossal city of New York whirling through the air in any direction; while beside them was the gleaming knob which regulated the city's speed. The great batteries of New York were at my command also; all their mighty heat-guns around the city's edge and around our electrostatic tower and elsewhere were controlled by the distance-phone whose mouthpiece rose before me. The great batteries of all our other cities were controlled in the same way by their own operators, and were subject like New York to the commands of the First Air Chief beside me, who could maneuver our whole great armada of tremendous cities at will through the air. In the city of San Francisco, too, we knew, was the Second Air Chief, placed there to take command in case New York were destroyed or the First Air Chief disabled.
Thus, on the morrow were grouped we three, who were to sway such colossal forces in a battle as no men had seen before. Now, Yarnall was pointing to the table-map's surface, where the red massed circles of the European and Asiatic Federation armadas were indicated but a few hundred miles on either side of our own great mass of cities. Watching them there, we sat in silence, save for the clicking of occasional switches by the engineers about us. From far away, far across New York and all the other air-cities gathered around it, there was coming the dull, dim throbbing of the life of millions that swarmed through those cities. And now Yarnall reached forward and touched the control of the great electrical periscopes whose screens boxed us in.
Instantly those dull-glass screens were alive with light, and it was as though we were gazing forth from the very tip of the power-tower out over our gathered mass of cities. North and east and south and west, from all the screens about us the views were alike, of a tremendous mass of clustered metal towers that encircled New York. Below us was the screen, above which our metal seats were suspended on supports. It seemed a trap-door through which we were gazing down toward the green plains far beneath; though in reality all the city's massive base lay between us and that view. So intensely realistic was the scene that lay about us that we all but forgot the great circular room in which we really were, and seemed suspended high in air above the great mass of our gathered air-cities.
"The enemy armadas," said Yarnall, his voice low, "will be in sight within fifteen minutes."
For upon the map the two masses of red circles were rushing on from east and west, and seemed now almost upon the mass of circles that was our own great fleet of cities. Looking out over those cities, through the periscopic screens about us, we could see the forts raising their great guns to firing range. I realized, as I saw it, that the battle now ready to start would mean annihilation to half the world. This was indeed Armageddon, when on earth itself was left no human being at peace; when every nation was rushing through the air toward this last conflict!
Now, however, Yarnall touched another control, and from the electrostatic tower's tip, high above us flashed great signals of brilliant lights that were taken up and repeated from all the power-towers of all the hundred cities that ringed us round. And, as those signals flashed, the great crowds that filled the streets of the air-cities were suddenly flowing out of those streets into the cities' towers; until within a few moments none were visible in all the streets and plazas, save those black-uniformed men who stood ready at the great heat-guns of our batteries. And those crowds went quietly, despite their tense excitement, because they knew that they were being ordered inside for their greater protection. There was no refuge upon the earth's surface far beneath, for them; when the destructive powers of all the world were battling above it in the air.
Then the First Air Chief spoke a brief order and, as Connell beside him repeated it swiftly into the distance-phone (as he did with Yarnall's orders in all the combat that followed) the great fleet of cruisers hanging above us and visible in our top screen divided into two masses, of a thousand or more ships each, which swept swiftly to east and west. Beyond the great ring of air-cities they leaped, until they were far out; and each division then formed into a great curving line screening our ring of cities to east and west, facing the fleets rushing toward them from those directions. Then we were gazing again at the table-map before us, a deathly silence seeming to grip all the world. Upon that map we could see the European and Asiatic armadas were now within hardly more than a hundred miles of our own; and tensely we watched the east and western screens now, gazing out beyond our cities.
"They'll use their cruiser-fleets for their first attack," Yarnall was saying as we gazed tensely forth. "They'll try to wipe out our cruisers before they bring their cities on to attack ours."
I nodded. "It would give them a big advantage when the cities come to blows. But our cruisers beat them back once with the odds two to one, and now—"
I broke off sharply, and at the same moment heard a low breath from Yarnall and Connell simultaneously, felt seemingly a low tremor that seemed to run instantaneously across all our massed air-cities. For there, far to the westward, black against the sky, there had appeared a line of far-flung black dots that were growing very quickly in size, and that were massed together in a crescent formation whose horns were toward us. It was the advancing cruiser-fleet of the Asiatic Federation forces. Tensely we watched it as it came on; then we looked to the east to see a similar crescent of advancing dots, the European cruiser fleet. On they came, smoothly rushing toward our own lines of cruisers, hanging to the east and west of our cities; and then for the moment we forgot them as we made out, to east and west, behind them, advancing toward us, great black masses that even at that distance seemed to fill the air. They were the two massed mighty armadas of the European and Asiatic Federation's air-cities, rushing to battle with our own!