The First Clash
For one moment we gazed toward them and toward the advancing cruisers that rushed before them, as though held by the grandeur of the spectacle. The tremendous mass of our air-cities hanging there, high above the earth the gleaming ranks of our own two thousand cruisers that poised to east and west, the advancing cruiser-fleets of twice their strength behind which there rushed gigantically on the great massed air-cities of our enemies—it was a spectacle breath-taking enough! But, then, the two enemy cruiser-fleets had come within a short distance of our own waiting cruisers; and, as they did so, both their fleets shot suddenly upward, as though in answer to a common order, to drive above our own cruisers and our air-cities!
Instantly Yarnall had uttered a swift order; and as Connell's quick voice sent that order flying out to our cruiser-masses, they too whirled upward and forward to meet the onrushing enemy fleets. Then, far out in mid-air to east and west of us the great cruiser-fleets had met, had smashed into each other with blind fury. Through our screens we saw cruisers enveloped by scores in blinding flares, in that first moment of combat, as they raged in two separate mighty battles.
But, east and west, our own cruisers were outnumbered two to one and, despite their fierce resistance, were being pressed steadily back toward our gathered cities. Closer and closer through the air toward us were reeling those struggling lines of cruisers, more and more American ships falling in white-hot destruction as the heat-guns of their opponents concentrated upon them. Still far beyond them, to east and west, the colossal masses of the European and Asiatic air-cities were now rushing on toward us! Yarnall sent another order flying out, and the next moment a mass of cruisers that had remained at the edges of our gathered cities, on either side, and had not been in the first battle, were leaping forward now, like suddenly released hounds after prey. A score of them to the eastern combat and a score to the western one they flashed; and each, as it reached the lines of struggling ships, shot up over them and then flashed along their lines above them. And as they did, there shot downward from them over the battling cruisers intense jets of concentrated water-vapor, which puffed out instantly into great white cloud-masses that enveloped all the grappling thousands of ships!
Yarnall had brought into the battle, I saw, those great artificial cloud projectors that had saved us in our first great battle over the Atlantic! And, even as their white masses enveloped the struggling ships, he sent forth another order; and our own cruisers shot upward and downward out of those cloud-masses, at the very instant that they had been formed. Then, with all our own cruisers clear of the cloud-masses to east and west, and the European and Asiatic ships inside them driving for the moment in blind confusion, our cruisers poured a deadly hail of heat-shells down into the cloud-masses and the thousands of ships that swirled inside them! Only for a moment was it that they remained within the cloud-masses before fighting their way free; but in that moment they had been unable to fire a single effective shell at our own ships outside, and we had poured a veritable storm of deadly shells into the cloudy masses. So when, a moment later, the European and Asiatic ships broke from the vapor-clouds east and westward, our broadsides had taken toll of hundreds of their blinded ships, and hardly more than our own forces did they number now!
But, when they broke free from the cloud-masses and into open air again, they did not advance toward our awaiting ships; instead they shot back from either front toward their cities, in answer to some mysterious order. At once a similar order from Yarnall brought flashing back, to form again above our own cities, our own ships—still nearly two thousand strong and almost as many in number as the combined cruisers of our enemies. I heard dimly the great cheers that were rolling across all our cities, for this mighty blow which had beaten back our enemies' cruiser-fleets once more. Then those cheers died swiftly away; for, far away to east and west, the gigantic masses of the approaching air-cities loomed larger and larger, rushing through the air toward us!
Eastward the European Federation was approaching, in a gigantic circle that seemed to fill the whole eastern sky. To us three sitting there amid our periscopic screens, it was as though all the eastern screen was filled with that great oncoming mass of cities: Paris, London, Moscow, Cairo, Rome—all the tremendous air-cities of the great European Federation—and their capital of Berlin still at the center.
And westward, upon our western screen, loomed equally gigantic the similar circle of air-cities of the Asiatic Federation. Peking, the third in size of the world's air-capitals, at the center of its cluster of cities rushed at the same smooth speed toward us, with Shanghai and Tokio and Bombay and Rangoon foremost in its circle. From east and west thus the two stupendous circles of cities rushed toward our own, grimly waiting; and, as we watched them, there flashed over me in that tense moment a strange wonder as to the feelings with which one of a hundred years before would have watched this battle. Then I laid aside that passing wonder as the two great circles drew nearer to the range of our great heat-gun batteries. And this, surely, was a spectacle that none had ever seen or dreamed before—this spectacle of the world's mighty cities converging swiftly upon each other in battle to the death!
And as strange, too, must have been the sight of us three, sitting there amid our box-like periscopic screens, the heart of the mighty tower's base; yet seeing and directing from there all the great mass of the hundred mighty cities around us.
"They're not going to join forces!" I exclaimed: "They're going to strike us at the same moment from east and west!"
Yarnall nodded, his eyes intent upon the screens: "Either that," he said, "or—"
Armageddon!
He broke off suddenly; for at that moment there came to us a giant salvo of thunder from both east and west, a terrific shock of sound that rolled deeply through the air toward us from the two distant armadas advancing! An instant later there was a whistling sound over our own cities, and we knew that a great storm of heat-shells was plunging toward them. A few struck with wild bursting flares across our massed cities, and with their suddenly-released gigantic heat there appeared great craters of fusing, melting metal. The greater part of the shells, though, fell short, whirled down to earth to flash on the ground far below. The range was not yet closed, I knew; and so far our own great cities remained silent as death. Yarnall was watching now with hands clenched tightly, as the two circles from east and west came on. A moment later there rolled from them another great salvo, and another mass of shells rushed toward us; but, though most of these also fell short, a greater number than before flared and fused in melting, searing death upon our own massed cities!
I gazed anxiously at Yarnall, a strange dread taking possession of me for an instant as the tremendous armadas came on. Would he never give the order to fire? He was sitting still as a carved statue, his eyes upon the screens and his lips compressed; and in that moment there came to me a dim sense of all the terrific responsibility that weighed upon him, the leader of a third of earth's cities and peoples battling against the remainder of mankind. Silent he sat and still, while the great approaching armadas rushed nearer, their cities coming more and more distinctly into view in our far-seeing screens. In another moment, I knew, another thunderous broadside would be belching toward us. But, just as I looked for it to come, Yarnall spoke a single word and, as Connell's swift voice sent that word flying out to all our cities, as my own flashed it to all the batteries of our center-most city of New York, there was a hush of a split-second. And then, out from all our own hundred giant cities, there broke such a titanic thundering detonation as seemed to shake violently all the air about us! And, an instant later, we saw the heat-shells from our batteries falling in thousands upon the two advancing armadas, upon their rushing gigantic cities, and flaring into white-hot craters of fusing metal.
Before that terrific blow the two advancing masses seemed to stagger a little in mid-air, to hesitate for an instant; but then they advanced steadily onward and their own great batteries thundered an answer to our salvo. Then, as the two giant circles drew nearer to our own on either side, the whole world seemed swallowed again in one ceaseless thundering of sound. The giant batteries of all our great air-cities burst forth again, to send a storm of heat-shells rushing east and west upon our enemies! The air between us and the armadas nearing on either side must have been filled with shells in that moment; for we saw tremendous flares there in mid-air as shells of ours met some of theirs and burst. But few of them did that, most of them whirling through the air to burst and flare in all their awful destroying heat and brilliance upon the air-cities!
In that instant, as the batteries of all three gigantic armadas thundered, it seemed that numberless fountains of brilliant light and terrific heat were springing into being amid the metal towers of all the three masses of great air-cities! Great fountains of heat unthinkable, beneath which all the metal about them fused and melted instantly, and about which all life was scorched into annihilation! Yet this had taken but the first moment of the battle to accomplish; and now, as the two great circles of the European and Asiatic Federations swept nearer, I saw that two of the foremost of the great European cities, Paris and Lisbon, were staggering and reeling as they rushed forward with the rest! They had met an awful storm of striking heat-shells from our own cities; and though their great motors were deep in their mighty bases, though the alloy of their electrostatic towers could not be affected by heat-shells, yet the deadly hail of shells that had fallen upon them had penetrated apparently almost down to their great motors beneath!
I whirled to Yarnall, "Paris and Lisbon!" I cried: "They're falling behind the rest a little—they're hit hard!"
He nodded, eyes burning now: "All east batteries concentrate on Paris and Lisbon!" he ordered; and, as Connell's voice sent the order flying out to our eastern massed cities, their batteries were thundering with even greater fury.
But now all their shells were aimed toward the two crippled cities of Paris and Lisbon, and a hell of bursting shells were flaring across those two ill-fated giants of the air. It was as though a living wave, of brilliant heat and light from the bursting shells, were dancing like lightning across the two cities; and in that instant it must have burned from them all the life in their towers, even as they were striving to do with our own. The towers of each city became in that moment almost a single great surface of fusing, white-hot metal; its awfulness added to by the exploding of the stores of heat-shells and magazines beneath the terrific flares. Out beyond them and around them there swept other cities of the European armada to protect them. There came Madrid and London and Moscow, all their guns thundering answer; but now our own gunners were not to be denied of their prey. As our batteries sent repeated storms of shells upon the two doomed cities we saw Paris staggering, slipping to a lower level, hanging a moment there, and then whirling sidewise downward, down to the green earth far below! In a moment it had crashed, with a terrific rending and cracking of metal!
I heard a dull roar of cheers rolling across our city above and between the thunder of the guns, cheers that were redoubled a moment later as Lisbon too whirled downward to annihilation, a mere mass of fusing metal. But, even as the cheers sounded they were stilled, and Yarnall was uttering further orders to our batteries.
From the Asiatic Federation's circle, a great smothering fire of shells had been falling in those moments upon the westernmost of our own cities, upon Omaha. Its guns were still thundering in savage answer; but, battery by battery, they were going silent as there fell upon them the concentrated fire of the whole advancing Asiatic Federation cities, the great guns of Peking thundering at the center of the rest. Then Omaha, too, had slipped and staggered and was whirling down to earth in fusing destruction, its motors reached by the bursting shells at last!
Avoiding the Ambush
Now it seemed as though in all the world was nothing but thundering guns and bursting shells; for now as they came nearer toward each other the three great circles of cities were exchanging a veritable tempest of heat-shells upon each other. Watching that hell of battle through our screens, we three sat tensely there. Yarnall's eyes were intent upon the advancing armadas; Connell, gripping his distance-phone, was barking orders to the great cities that were thundering about us. The two giant circles of the enemies' cities were very near our own now, rushing toward us at their tremendous speed; and, as they thus neared us, it seemed that nothing could surpass the tremendous roaring broadsides that were hurled from city to city. I saw Amsterdam and Madrid staggering a little behind their fellows, reeling beneath our awful fire, saw Hong-Kong in the Asiatic forces, its great towers all but levelled by the flaring heat-shells, plunge suddenly downward as more of those shells reached its motors! But in our own mass now New Orleans was plunging likewise beneath the fire of the advancing fleets; and St. Louis was swaying as though badly hit!
But at that moment there came an abrupt exclamation from Yarnall; and then we saw that the two advancing circles of the enemy cities, rushing toward our own, were changing their form, were changing swiftly into two great crescents of which the horns of each were toward us. Those two giant crescents were moving to join each other, to form one great circle; and, if they did so, our own mass of cities would be completely surrounded by the overwhelming numbers of our enemies, the easy target for all their mighty batteries. We would inevitably be annihilated by the enclosing circle of the enemy. But, even before I had understood that maneuver, Yarnall's swift order was flashing out to all our gathered cities.
"North at full speed for all cities! Unchanged formation!"
The next instant our whole great mass of cities was moving, was moving with swiftly mounting speed northward! For, as his order sounded I had jerked open the speed-control before me, had flung back one of the direction-levers. And, as I did so, there had come a great droning of motors from beneath, resounding even above the madly-thundering guns, flinging all the mighty city of New York northward. Also there came the great hissing of the numberless new tube-propellers that were jerking it swiftly forward! And, as New York leaped northward at my touch, all its great batteries still detonating, so were all the great air-cities that ringed us leaping northward, and all their guns were still thundering toward the advancing armadas!
But now the enemy had seen our swift leap northward, and, as their commanders guessed our purpose, they sent their own two crescents whirling toward us with even greater speed to enclose us before we could escape! For the next moment it was a race between the three great city-masses, a race in which our own sought to evade the two that closed upon it from either side. And, as our cities and theirs raced through the air at tremendous speed, every gun still firing, it seemed that we must lose! For, just north of us, the two northward horns of the closing crescents had almost met, were almost joined before us! That northward horn of the Asiatic crescent held Shanghai and Colombo and Singapore and others; while the horn that projected from the European mass had foremost in it Moscow and Brussels and Algiers. And as we shot northward in that wild moment, to escape before those two horns could join, Yarnall sent flying forth a swift order for all batteries in all our cities to concentrate their fire now upon the foremost cities in the two closing horns to the north!
At once our own guns were thundering with redoubled fury; for, unless we could destroy in the next few minutes the foremost of those cities north of us, they would have closed upon us and brought our irretrievable doom. So, disregarding for the time all the other air-cities of the two closing crescents about us, all fire was concentrated upon the foremost cities of the two horns closing northward. A storm of heat-shells rushed thick through the air toward them; but at the same time the masses of European and Asiatic cities east and west of us were pouring down upon us the broadsides of their own giant batteries! And beneath that terrific fire, cities among our mass were falling swift in fusing destruction. St. Louis and Miami and Seattle were whirling to death as we raced onward; all the people in them who had been left alive by the shells were meeting annihilation in the great crash far below!
But, though we were being decimated by the fire of the closing crescents on either side, our own terrific concentrated fire was having effect upon the closing horns of cities north of us, and in the moments while we rushed toward them, Singapore, Colombo and Brussels had been sent down in white-hot destruction by our awful fire. The remaining cities in those two projecting horns were still rushing toward each other with their utmost speed to close the gap between them before our great circle could speed through it. With Moscow and Shanghai at their eastern and western tips, the two horns swiftly closed toward each other; while as swiftly and with every motor droning its loudest, with every heat-gun thundering northward, we shot onward. For a moment the whole great race was in doubt; for a moment it seemed to us that our great mass of cities could flash through that gap before it closed.
But as we watched in tense, terrible hope, even as our mighty cities raced northward, the cities of those closing horns seemed to make a last supreme effort, a last great burst of speed. They shot forward, their leaders Shanghai and Moscow almost racing into each other; and then, with all their tube-propellers reversed, they were suddenly halting a barrier of mighty air-cities all around us! But nothing now could halt our tremendous mass, so awful was our speed and so close were we to the enemy's line. I saw those cities looming suddenly gigantic before our own mass as we raced on; heard hoarse exclamations from Yarnall and Connell beside me; and then with a terrific shock, that seemed the shock of meeting worlds, our vast northward-flying mass of air-cities had crashed headlong into the great line of cities before us!
City Against City
In the moment that followed, after our flashing circle of cities had thundered headlong into the line before us, all other sounds, all the thunder of countless guns and the drone of motors and the hiss of tube-propellers and cries of voices, were drowned in one tremendous splintering crash of metal upon metal. The giant mass of cities about us seemed to reel drunkenly in mid-air in that moment. New York at their center staggered from the awful shock transmitted to it. Then upon the screen north of me, I saw titanic metal masses that had been cities falling downward. Moscow with Sydney and Algiers, and Boston with Detroit, these whirled downward in that moment—no longer recognizable as air-cities and seeming to the eye but great twisted bulks of rended metal.
But not even that giant collision had been able to halt the tremendous momentum of our northward-thundering mass of cities; for as those cities before us crashed downward, the whole great circle of our mass, New York still at its center, was thundering on through the gap that that crash had made in the line before us! We were sweeping northward and out beyond that line that our great crash had shattered. We had won free only by means of that awful crash. Instantly, Yarnall had cried another order, and our great mass of air-cities was swiftly shifting its formation into a long line; and at its head rushed our own city of New York. And then, while the great circle of the enemy's combined armada remained there for the moment still behind us, as though stunned by our colossal crash and escape through it, the First Air Chief sent another order flashing forth. At once our line turned like a wheeling snake, high in the air, and was rushing back upon the circle of our enemies! We were rushing back and along the line of European Federation cities that made up that circle's eastern half for the moment. And, as our long line of mighty cities whirled past them, all our batteries were thundering upon them roaring death.
Now our line turned like a wheeling snake, high in the air, and was rushing back upon the circle of our enemies. And as our long line of mighty cities whirled past them all our batteries were thundering.
Now our line turned like a wheeling snake, high in the air, and was rushing back upon the circle of our enemies. And as our long line of mighty cities whirled past them all our batteries were thundering.
Now our line turned like a wheeling snake, high in the air, and was rushing back upon the circle of our enemies. And as our long line of mighty cities whirled past them all our batteries were thundering.
The advantage now was all with us; since in their great circular formation more than half their great mass of cities could not reach us with their guns. And, so during that moment, the odds were more than even as our long line swept on, with all our batteries pouring their broadsides forth! Steady at the controls, I held New York at that colossal line's head, holding it at an even distance from the great circle of the enemy cities. I saw now that our terrific fire, as we rushed past those cities, was swiftly in that moment taking effect upon them. Even as I gazed, Amsterdam, Vienna, Cairo and Madrid were falling beneath the awful concentrated fire of our rushing cities; and in our own line Buenos Aires staggered, swayed and fell as the enemy barked savagely back toward us.
"On!" Yarnall was crying beside me: "It's our chance to strike hard at them—before they can bring the rest of their cities into action!"
"But they're doing it now!" I shouted back to him, above the thunder of guns, the drone of motors and hissing tube-propellers. "They're stringing their circle out into a line also!"
For it was plainly visible, upon the great screen beside me, that the commanders of the enemy were striving to form their great circle into a line that could meet our own more effectively in mid-air. We saw their cities rushing inward and changing formation there beside us; but we knew that our change had come and so hung upon the flank of the great mass of cities, our line rushing along it with all our guns turned toward it. And now, though Quebec was falling in our line, our guns had sent down Copenhagen, Yokohama and Calcutta in the mass beside us; since by now we had raced past the mass of the European air-cities and our guns were thundering against the Asiatic cities. Their guns roared sullenly in answer to us as we flashed past them; but, for the moment, in their disorganization, in their attempts to reform swiftly from their circle into a line like our own, their fire was seriously hampered by their own movements. In that moment we were pouring a smothering hail of shells upon them, and city upon city was whirling downward in wild destruction.
Then suddenly, with a supremely swift effort, their circle had lengthened, straightened, their confusion of the moment had vanished; and their cities had formed almost instantly into a long line, like our own, but longer than our own. We found ourselves in that moment with our own line parallel in mid-air to theirs, a mixture of European and Asiatic cities directly opposite us; and then, as we raced on, they were racing on with us, their own batteries thundering with newly-released fury, as they sought to blast us from the air beside them! I heard the sharp order of the First Air Chief beside me, and held New York steady at the head of our line. The two great city-fleets were racing through the air in a great running fight, with every gun thundering!
Directly opposite New York there raced, at the head of their line, the mighty air-city of Peking, third of the three great air-capitals. The two giants were evenly matched; and now at the head of our respective lines we engaged in a tremendous duel in mid-air, a duel so intense that, almost, I forgot the fate of the rushing armadas behind us. In all New York about us mighty fountains of brilliant light and awful heat, were flaring with each salvo of heat-shells from the Asiatic capital. But, at the same time, our own gunners were working their batteries like madmen; and we could see similar giant craters of fusing metal springing into being over all the vast mass of clustered towers that was Peking. Far behind in the enemy's line raced the third great air-capital of Berlin; and we guessed that it was now from Berlin that the movements of all our foes were being directed. But so awful was the battle that we were undergoing with the Asiatic capital opposite us that for the moment we forgot almost all else.
Behind us, I was dimly aware of all our great line of air-cities grappling with the line rushing opposite; Chicago, a little farther back in our line from ourselves, was carrying on as terrific a duel with London. Constantinople in the enemy's line was whirling downward beneath the batteries of Denver and Valparaiso. Montreal, in our own, was falling in fusing death as it became the target for all the giant batteries of the colossal city of Berlin. City after city in the two racing, struggling lines was falling to annihilation as the awful battle raged on. High above the colossal lines of racing cities, our own great fleet of cruisers and the enemy's were whirling in a wild fury, insane as our own giant battle of cities. Surely Armageddon had come upon the earth at last!
Although the European and Asiatic cities still outnumbered us, we had cut down their great margin of superiority in that attack which our line had made upon their confused circle. Now, with equal fury, they were striking from line to line.
Straight ahead of our two racing lines, there loomed now a great bank of drifting vapors, great cloud-masses drifting south from the lakes to the north. Neither of our two battling lines desired to enter those vapor-masses, and so as one, when we neared them, both lines shot downward.
Surrounded Again
Down—down—with our batteries thundering still across the gulf toward Peking, whose own guns answered with as great a fury, though in their city as in ours, battery after battery was being silenced! Down—down—until the green earth beneath, lit by the descending afternoon sun, seemed just beneath us, rushing up toward us with awful speed as we shot down to it! Yet in that dread moment neither line of struggling cities straightened upward, each fearful of the other's gaining an advantage. In an instant more, it seemed, New York must crash together headlong into the earth.
Downward we shot, and I saw the green plain looming awful beneath us. At the last moment I jerked back another of the direction-levers before me; and as, in answer to the controls, New York tipped sharply upward once more. I saw Peking opposite rushing up at the same instant, saving itself as we had done. Behind us the cities that directly followed in our two lines were curving up as swiftly, all their guns thundering still as furiously. But, farther back in the two lines, there were cities that had swooped too low to recover, had dipped lower and in the next moment had crashed and been annihilated upon the green earth, as they collided with it at their terrific speed!
But while our two lines were whirling upward at as steep a slant as they had descended, the battle seemed to deepen in furious intensity. New York and Peking were stabbing still at each other with all their forces, each colossal city seeming too mighty to be struck down, though each was flaming under a terrible fire of shells. Behind us, after a running duel that had achieved almost the magnitude and fully the intensity of our own, Chicago had given London the finishing stroke; and that great city was wavering, staggering, then slipping and falling in white-hot annihilation toward the earth! And, as all along both lines, other cities staggered and fell, I saw that above us the two whirling cruiser-fleets had almost entirely vanished. They had almost entirely annihilated each other by the insane fury of their attacks!
I felt my brain spinning, felt all things about me resolving into a wild whirl of thunderous sound and flaring light. I heard, as though from a great distance, the orders of Yarnall beside me, and the frenzied voice of Connell sending those orders flashing out from the distance-phone; heard the thunder of guns and sound of motors and propellers and wild noises that were coming from all the city about us. Then, before our two onrushing lines, there loomed another great mass of drifting vapors; and again our two lines dipped downward to avoid those masses. But, as we shot downward, the line opposite us with Peking at its head shot as quickly upward again, in answer to some command; it raced onthroughthe vapor-masses instead of beneath them!
In the next moment we had shot our own line upward again to race side by side with them still; but we were too late, for that moment had given them, at their tremendous speed, the advantage for which they sought. For in that moment, rushing on through the vapor-masses instead of beneath them, they had gained a little; so that when we shot upward again to their level they were ahead of us as well as beside us! And then their line ahead of us was swiftly curving back and around our other side! As we slowed instantly, to avoid a collision that would annihilate us and all our mass, they swept the end of their longer line around the rear of our own, and thus in the next instant were forming a complete circle around our cities. They had at last accomplished their great objective, had managed to surround our mass of mighty cities, outnumbering us still.
As their circle closed lightning-like about us, we three sat in that moment as though stunned; and then, from all the air-cities that encircled us, a terrific thunderous fire was pouring upon us! Encircled, we were a perfect target now for all the European and Asiatic gunners around us, pouring all their mighty broadsides upon us. And now Yarnall had leaped to his feet, the tense agony in his eyes reflected in those of Connell and myself in that terrible moment.
"They've got us!" he was crying hoarsely: "They've got us inside their circle at last—they're hammering us to doom!"
"Can't we break out?" I cried: "Break through this circle about us?"
He shook his head, his eyes burning: "No—their circle is complete around us now and we'd only crash our own cities to earth—but we'll try above and below!"
With the words, he gave a brief order and, as Connell's voice flashed that order to all our confused mass of cities, they leaped upward in sudden concerted motion, all their motors' energy turned suddenly into their vertical lifting power. But, as they shot upward thus, to win free of the circle about us, that circle lifted at the same speed as our own mass, hovering still around us and beating us still with all the relentless fire of their massed batteries. And, when we shot suddenly downward in an attempt to escape from below they sank downward at as quick a speed, were encircling us still. And now, beneath that awful hammering fire of all the massed cities that enclosed us, our own were beginning to stagger; to sway and reel!
The titanic circle of enemy air-cities about us and our own great throng of cities, each a giant circular mass of belching flame, floating there miles above the earth; the thunder of each city's giant batteries, and the terrific brilliance of the storms of heat-shells that struck from city to city; the great glowing craters of metal that each striking shell made in a city, all these things seemed merged in the six periscopic screens that enclosed us like some chaotic and meaningless panorama!
I was aware of Yarnall's agonized expression, as we strove with every power that was ours to save our great air-cities from destruction. For now in our cluster, city after city was falling beneath that deadly fire of fusing shells. Los Angeles, Winnipeg, Panama, and Nashville whirled down one after the other. And, though our batteries were still thundering their roaring answers, our surrounded cities were still striking savagely out, with the colossal batteries of New York still thundering loudest, I saw how swiftly we were being annihilated! For, raging there in fearful battle high in the dusk between earth and stars, there was left now hardly more than sixty of our hundred air-cities; while in the circle about us there still hung, despite the giant blows we had struck them, a hundred or more of the European and Asiatic cities! And with all their guns thundering into us, the odds were swiftly changing and becoming more in their favor!
Finally I stood up, as though jerked to my feet by some strange force greater than myself, and wheeled toward the First Air Chief.
"It's the end now, Yarnall!" I cried to him above that thunderous roar of battle that seemed splitting all the night about us: "The end for all our cities within an hour if this keeps on!"
"The end!" he said, his own face grim: "But there's no escape—we can only meet it fighting!"
My eyes held his fixedly in that tense moment. "The hundred cruisers in the plaza outside!" I said: "The cruisers I had you keep waiting for me—that last crazy plan of mine is our one chance now!"
"Your plan?" he cried, a flicker of hope rising into his eyes. But when I explained that plan in a few swift words his eyes widened with sudden stunned astonishment, and he cried out: "The thing's insane, Brant! You'll never make it!"
"But it's our last chance!" I shouted to him as the thunderous drumming of doom all about us deepened, and two more of our cities crashed earthward. "It's the one last chance to save our cities!"
He paused there silent a second, then reached, wrung my hand tightly. "Then go, Brant!" he said simply: "Take the hundred cruisers—and God grant that you are able to do the thing!"
I shouted to the black-jacketed attendants who were working like madmen around the great room's instrument-panels, cutting out motors that the heat reached, switching in spare motors and tube-propellers, keeping the mighty sustaining power of New York steady. Two of them leaped swiftly at my call, to the side of Yarnall to take the places of Connell and myself. And then Macklin and Hilliard who had been working with them, were running toward us also, and we four were running across the room and through the ante-rooms until we issued out from the electrostatic tower's base into the great plaza.
Standing there in that plaza with the darkness gathering about us, there stretched from horizon to horizon a boundless mass of gigantic light-gemmed cities, our own and the titanic ring that encircled us. The myriad lights of those cities, though, by which their gun-crews worked the great batteries, were feeble in comparison to the tremendous and blinding flares of brilliance in all directions that were fountaining up in giant gouts of dazzling light. Across all those cities floating, there leaped and flew the heat-shell flares, and the thunder of the guns was deafening, titanic, like the thunder of a stream of falling worlds! Beneath that thunder there came to us thin, high cries, the wild cries of crowds in the towers of cities and in their streets and plazas. And high, high above all these, far, far overhead, began to gleam the pale mocking eyes of the distant, watching stars.
All about us, in that moment that we burst out onto the plaza, it seemed that heat-shells were striking and flaring. But the static-tower itself was of a composition that the shells could not harm, the rare refractory alloy that in air-cities is used only for the vital power-towers. And, though shells had struck here and there at the plaza's edge and on its surface, though there were on it and around it still-glowing craters of fusing metal, few of the hundred close-massed cruisers that waited with their crews upon it had suffered serious injury in the awful course of the battle so far. And now Macklin and Connell and Hilliard and I were racing across the plaza toward those cruisers, into the foremost of them and up to its bridge-room. Then Macklin jumped to the controls, as I called an order into the distance-phone over the titanic drumming of guns. In the next moment our hundred cruisers were driving up like mad things above the titanic battle raging there above.
Up—up—through a wild inferno of rushing shells, up over all the struggling, thundering, reeling cities we sped, on the wild venture that was our last wild chance. As we drove upward, I now saw others of our central mass of air-cities falling. Atlanta and Cleveland and Mexico City were whirling downward, giant masses of lights in which glowed countless great fusing craters of metal, gyrating insanely down through the darkness to crash in awful destruction on the surface of the affrighted earth far below! Hardly more than a half-hundred, indeed, remained of all our air-cities now; and the odds against them swiftly lengthened, as they were hammered still upon an anvil of fire and death by the circle that hemmed them in. They were staggering ever swifter, were reeling and swaying so that within a few minutes, even as I had said, the remorseless fire from all about them would send them to earth also, and wipe the last of the cities and peoples of the American Federation from above the earth!
But, as I saw that, our own cruisers were whirling on above that giant central mass, toward the great ring of enemy cities about them. Macklin at the controls, with teeth set, sent our ship and those behind it driving low above the awful combat with the storms of rushing shells from both sides thick about us. Ship after ship behind us was flaring and fusing and falling in white-glowing meteoric destruction, unnoticed and unheeded by any in the titanic thundering battle beneath! On—on—we sped, rocketing through the night, seemingly the only cruisers now in the air, since the two great fleets had all but annihilated themselves. Yet as we shot on, it seemed almost that no cruisers could exist in the air over that great battle; since in dozens, in scores, our own ships were falling, stricken by the tempests of shells through which we were rushing!
But now we were reaching our goal, the giant Berlin that hung there in the enemy's circle with all its mighty batteries thundering again our doomed cities. Down toward it our cruisers swiftly rushed, unseen by any in the wild confusion that swept that city below us; down until we saw plainly the terrific spectacle of thundering batteries and wildly-rushing men. Here and there were heat-shells bursting and flaring in dazzling death, as the guns of our own cities roared savage answer. Down toward it moved our ships, now hardly more than a score in number, until there loomed just beneath us, that mighty central static-tower in which we had been so recently imprisoned! As we shot down toward it I beheld a glass ball above its tip, recognized that as similar in purpose to the periscopic screens on our own tower's tip, and then we had shot down past it, until our score of cruisers hoved beside the great tower's side, at the fifth level.
Hovering there in that moment beside the tower, with all the wild confusion raging beneath, and the plaza below still empty, we were still unseen by any beneath, by any in the great batteries that were thundering all around that plaza. Poised there in the darkness, we could see that the windows beside us were bright-lighted; that guards were swarming in the static-tower's upper levels, rushing to and fro. Then as our cruiser's door swung open, just level with a window beside us, Macklin and Connell and Hilliard and I were springing forth from that door and across the narrow gap, through that window, our heat-pistols ready in our hands! And at the same moment there burst after us our crew, and from all the windows around that level, from all the cruisers hovering beside those windows, a stream of black-uniformed Americans with heat-pistols in hands were pouring into the tower's fifth level!
Instantly the guards in that level were snapping their own weapons up toward us; but before they could fire a score of cartridges from our pistols had flicked and flared among them. As they sank lifeless in scorched, burned heaps of flesh we were racing through the other rooms and corridors of that level, killing the guards in it with our heat-pistols, the surprise of our attack taking them unawares. So awful was the drumming of the titanic battle all around and outside, that no alarm of our presence penetrated to the levels above and below us, and, now with the last of the guards wiped from that fifth level, I turned toward my three companions.
"Connell and Hilliard! Take half our men and find your places here in the tower, keeping anyone in its upper levels from getting farther down than this! Macklin, watch with our cruisers outside—at this low height the batteries around the plaza can't reach the ships, can't pivot toward you—and be ready to keep anyone from getting into the tower from outside!"
As they whirled to obey my orders with the other half of our men, some hundred and fifty in number, I was running toward the cage-lifts. With swift blows we destroyed the controls that guided them from level to level of the tower, and then we rushed toward the narrow stairs that led also downward. Another moment and we were rushing down those stairs, while as we did so there came a scuffle of battle above us, and we knew that the alarm had penetrated to the upper floors of the tower and that the guards there were pouring down to battle with Connell and Hilliard and their men. We leaped on downward, though, down until we had burst down into the fourth level. There our surprise was as complete, and before the guards there were aware of our presence, almost, we had sent our heat-cartridges flaring among them, had swept them from existence and were leaping down to the third level. And in that it went the same; and in the second below it, and then, with hearts pounding, we were rushing down into the first level!
As we poured down into its ante-rooms, its guards rushed toward us and their own heat-pistols came up; but they too were falling in scorched heaps a moment later, and we were dashing through the ante-rooms toward the great circular inmost chamber that held the inmost controls of this great air-city of Berlin! Through those ante-rooms we burst, the surprised guards falling lifeless and burnt before us, and then into the inmost circular room! All around its panelled walls moved green-uniformed attendants who whirled with surprise from their switches and dials at our entrance; while at the room's center there was what seemed at first to be a great dull-glass globe! We knew that that globe enclosed within itself the great table-map and controls of Berlin; and now there were bursting out, through an opening in that globe, the three green-uniformed men who had been within it—the First Air Chief of the European Federation and the two officers who with him had been controlling the movements of all the mighty combined European and Asiatic cities!
The Captured City
As the leader saw me, his swarthy face lit for a moment with a flash of recognition, of astonishment; and then he and his fellows were leaping toward us, their hands flashing down toward the heat-pistols at their belts as the attendants around the room jerked forth their weapons also. But as they did so, our own heat-pistols flashed up and for the next instant the great room seemed full of flares of blinding light as the cartridges burst among them, sending them staggering and swaying and falling in seared heaps! I shouted to my men swift orders that sent a score of them to the great switch-panels to take the places of the attendants there; while the remainder rushed toward the great doors that opened from the tower's lowest level into the plaza outside. Swiftly they closed those doors, barred them and massed behind them, and then I was rushing toward the great dull-glass ball at the room's center.
Inside that ball stood the great table-map upon its great block, while beside it were the six levers and speed-knob which controlled the speed and direction of Berlin. As I took the seat before them now, I gazed about me, and saw that the great ball's interior was in effect a great periscopic screen itself, one in which I could gaze in any direction through the other great ball above the static-tower's tip. And now, gazing into it around me there, I could see that in the outer night there stretched still the giant ring of the enemy cities, of which this Berlin was the heart, surrounding our own survivors and hammering them still with that deadly fire which would soon bring them crashing to earth. Far out over that mighty field of battle, its brilliant lights and blinding heat-flares stabbing the darkness, and its thunderous roar of guns shaking the air, I could gaze; while even at the same moment I heard, high above, Connell and Hilliard and their men engaged fiercely in holding the guards in the upper tower back. At the same instant came a sudden knocking, an alarmed rapping and then a battering and crying of voices against the great tower's door from outside; as the alarm spread from the tower's upper levels!
Disregarding all these things, I grasped the controls before me, watching the scene all about the great city through the periscopic ball about me. Swiftly I jerked open the speed-knob, at the same time slamming down one of the direction-levers; and, as I did so, I saw that the whole great city of Berlin was soaring up now above the ring of cities in which it had hovered, until it was a little above their level. And then I thrust back the lever in my hand and jerked down another; as I did so the mighty air-city of Berlin, the titanic air-capital whose controls we had captured and which lay now in my hands, was driving sidewise toward Geneva, that hung beside it in the ring. Toward it we sped, driving at top speed toward it at a height a little above it, so that our colossal base was on the level of Geneva's upper towers. And with set teeth I drove Berlin onward, and in the next moment its great base had sheared right across the upper towers of Geneva, had mowed down those great towers like blades of wheat before a reaper!
Then as Berlin drove on from above it I saw Geneva wavering in mid-air behind us for a moment, and then crashing down to earth through the night! I had mowed away the great electrostatic tower whose collection of cosmic energy held it aloft, and Geneva went crashing down to earth through the darkness like some giant comet of blazing lights plunging to doom! And then, beneath my hands, Berlin was driving still onward across and over that great ring of enemy cities, shearing now in the same way across the towers of city upon city in that ring. Stockholm and Cape Town and Bucharest fell as I mowed their power-towers from them; and to them that awful spectacle of Berlin rushing upon them and sending them to doom, crashing across their great towers, must have been utterly stunning and inexplicable in that wild moment!
On—on—around the great ring I held, almost insane with wild fury and excitement in that moment of triumph, driving through the night on our captured air-city and sending city after city whirling to death. I was dimly aware that the fighting above had ceased. Connell and Hilliard and their men had wiped out the guards in the tower above, and they had rushed down to defend the electrostatic tower's doors, against which a wild battering was resounding now. Huge crowds were surging madly against the tower as they felt their great city rushing through the night and crashing in wild destruction across their fellow-cities! But, in the wild excitement that was surging through me now, I paid no attention to all about me; for surely I was swaying such colossal forces as no man ever had swayed before.
The European and the Asiatic cities were breaking from me, in wild panic, disorganized and shattered; since there came now no commands to them from this city of Berlin that had held their commander. And as they broke into a disorganized mass, the half-hundred American cities massed in the center, who had seen the terrible havoc that Berlin, beneath my hands, was wreaking upon their enemies, were themselves rushing to the attack once more; and all their guns were thundering toward the disorganized mass of their enemies!
Up toward Berlin from that mass as we rushed forward there rose to meet us the giant air-capital of Peking, battered, scarred; its commander seeking to stay this crazy destruction its sister-capital was wreaking upon their own forces. Up it came; and for an instant it seemed that Berlin and Peking must crash together bodily, but with a last wrench of the speed-control I sent Berlin racing higher. And then, as we met Peking, crashed over it, that mighty capital's power-tower also, with its other clustered towers, was sheared from it by our great base. Peking was wavering for a moment and then went whirling down to death! Yet even as it wavered, slipped and fell, its great guns were thundering savagely upon us until it had crashed to earth far below!
Victory!
And now, down through the night upon the mass of our enemy cities, I sent Berlin slanting down toward them, at its full speed, and across them in a tremendous ramming swoop that sheared the towers from a dozen of them, even as they attempted confusedly to rise and meet the onthundering mighty city! Of that confused, disorganized and broken mass there remained of them at last hardly more than a score, still savagely belching death from their guns toward our half-hundred American cities and still sending an occasional one downward! But now as I whirled the giant mass of Berlin back toward them like a striking, gigantic bird of prey, I was aware of a tremendous battering and clanging of metal; and at the same moment Hilliard was shouting to me from the great doors that opened from the ante-rooms into the plaza.
"They're breaking down the doors, Brant!" he was screaming above the wild thunder of battle and the clamor of giant crowds that surged against those doors outside: "Fight on, though—we'll try to hold them back!"
"Hold them a moment longer!" I yelled back to him: "A moment more—!"
For now I sent Berlin whirling downward in another terrific swoop across the mass of our enemy cities and it sheared across half their mass, as they sought by rising or sinking to avoid that deadly swoop. But a half-score were left of them now, and now the half-hundred cities of the American Federation had gathered about them and were hammering them with terrific fire. No gun sounded now on Berlin, all its crews and soldiers were rushing wildly across it toward the electrostatic tower, as the city whirled and crashed and fought and ran there against their own allied cities! Caught in the terrific fire of the cities around them, the half-score European and Asiatic cities were going down with guns thundering into annihilation. But now I was aware at the same moment of a terrific uproar there at the tower's doors and of wild shouts and clanging blows there as our men fought to hold back the madly surging crowds outside!
Gripping the levers before me for one last effort, I jerked open the speed-control to its widest; and then, as it shot above the mass of the European and Asiatic cities, only a half-dozen in number now, I whirled the mighty mass of Berlin down upon them in one last tremendous swoop from which they sought in vain to swerve. They too were hesitating for a moment and then went whirling down to death, the last of the European and Asiatic cities save for Berlin itself about me! And then, as I brought that city to a stay, with the last of its companions crashing beneath and with the American cities hanging all about us now, there was a great clang of falling metal at the tower's doors, and back through them wild crowds without were pushing our black-uniformed defenders!
Connell and Hilliard at their head, our men were being pushed back through the ante-rooms, back toward the great circular room in which I sat at the controls; and, as I gazed out through the opening in the great periscope ball about me, I saw that an instant more would see them overpowering the last of our men, rushing in upon me to take the city's controls once more! But as I saw that, I reached forward, slammed down the lever that sent the city rushing downward! I gripped that lever and with a supreme effort tore it completely from its socket! The next moment a wilder cry came from the crowds fighting through the door and the crowds over all the city outside, as they felt that city whirling and swaying beneath them, felt it whirling down to death through the night to annihilation!
And as they uttered that tremendous cry, as the swaying city flashed downward, their struggle at the door forgotten in that awful moment of doom, I was aware subconsciously that I was staggering with Connell and Hilliard and our remaining men, up the narrow stair. Up to the great tower's second level and to its windows, beside which hung our cruisers with Macklin and a skeleton crew, holding them there beside the tower even as the great city whirled with awful speed downward! Then we jumped through those windows into the cruisers. And the next moment, just as the cruisers with ourselves inside them drove upward like light from the falling city, Berlin had crashed into the earth just beneath us, with a terrific, annihilating shock that buckled it, broke it, made of it but a great twisted mass of rended metal!
Then we were driving up toward the half-hundred remaining American air-cities that hung still high above, the giant city of New York still at their center. Up until we had soared above those cities and they lay beneath us, giant circles of brilliant light, scarred here and there with countless craters of fused metal! Their great crowds of peoples had surged, now, from their towers, out into their squares and streets. They gazed as if incredulously stunned by their deliverance, at the empty air and night about them, where so shortly before had hung the enemy that had been sending them to doom. In that moment, as we hung there high over them, in that moment of incredible surprise and dawning joy, it seemed that all the world was silent after the terrific thunder of that wild rushing battle that had riven earth and sky so short a time before. It was as though the night, and the winds about us, and the white stars overhead, were as silent with astonishment in that moment as the crowds on the cities that hung around and beneath us.
Then suddenly, from those cities, there was coming up toward us as though from a single voice a single, mighty cry!
Dawnward
At dawn of the next day our half-hundred great air-cities prepared to separate, to move back to those positions that had been theirs before danger had brought them together. Through all of that night they had hung there together, their streets crowded with weeping yet rejoicing crowds; and, now that the dawn showed them the green plains far beneath, they were beginning to depart. And we five, sitting there within the periscopic screens in the power-tower of New York, were watching them as they prepared to go.
Battered and scarred, all of them, by that titanic battle through which all had fought, many of them with great towers fused and broken, and scarred with great craters, they were crowding toward us. Washington was foremost among them, until it hung just beside our city, its great streets and plazas thronged with shouting crowds. And, in the wild shouts of those crowds, we could hear our own names, their roaring tribute. For, in their eyes, we had saved them by that last wild effort of ours. And then Washington was moving away from us, toward the southeast, speeding away and vanishing as a dark spot in the southeastern sky.
And now another was crowding beside us, and another, and still they came. Pittsburgh and Guatemala, Tacoma, Chicago and Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, Kansas City and Vancouver—one by one they were driving beside us, their giant bulks hanging beside New York, their mighty cheers reaching us. They moved away to north and south and east and west, to vanish as dark, dwindling spots in the skies, until New York alone of them remained hovering there high above the earth. And then, Yarnall's eyes returned to the screen beneath us, where there were revealed the great, shattered wrecks, laying half-buried in the green earth far below.
"We win," he said, slowly: "The American Federation wins; but at what cost? Two-thirds of the world's cities have crashed to annihilation and death, and a half of our own."
"It's so, Yarnall," I said, gazing down with him: "yet it was our necessity, and not our will. They attacked us without warning; attacked us with mighty weapons which they had devised especially to annihilate us all—and we could but defend ourselves."
"I know it, Brant," he said: "We could do nothing else—but I am glad—glad, man!—only that this greatest of all wars is the last."
"Earth's Last Air War!" It was Macklin speaking, thoughtfully: "Now, the war lords of our enemies have gone, their people will join with us to end all wars, to forget all! our enmities...."
"We will," I said, as I turned toward the controls, "but we five can never forget what has happened."
And then, as the others sat silent at my words, I was opening the speed-control before me, moving over one of the great levers, and sending New York, with its great motors droning and its tube-propellers hissing, away to the east; toward the sunrise, faster and faster, rushing eastward over the green plains that were now rolling swiftly back far beneath. On all the mighty city around us, in all its streets and plazas, its great surging crowds were shouting still, a great, rejoicing clamor. But we five there at the city's controls, in the great tower, sat silent and unmoving. Gazing out into the blue cloudless heavens before us as our city rushed dawnward, we looked into the face of the morning sun. It was the sun rising on a world at peace.
The End