Cities in the Air

By Edmond Hamilton

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Air Wonder Stories November, December 1929
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Edmond Hamilton

Here is one of the most extraordinary stories that it has been our good fortune to read. For sheer audacity in construction, excellence in science and breath-taking adventure, this story undoubtedly stands in the foreground of science air-fiction stories of the year.

The recent advances in aeronautics where airplanes have been in the air for weeks at a time without coming down to the ground, point the way for tremendous achievements in the generations to come.

City life today is a conglomeration of structures close together. We have buildings now that house as many as 40,000 people at one time and soon we will have single business buildings that will house 100,000 and more individuals at the same time. Furthermore, every doctor will tell you that living at the surface of the earth is usually unhealthy because of the dust and the high density of the air, which gives rise to most pulmonary diseases, particularly consumption, colds and the like. At high altitudes such diseases tend to disappear. Therefore physicians usually send their afflicted patients to the higher altitudes.

You may be sure that conditions such as are described by the author of this marvelous story will come about sooner or later.

We also know that this story will arouse a great storm of discussion among our readers, due particularly to the audacity of the author in picturing his ideas as to future aviation—which by the way will not seem so fantastic two hundred years hence as they might seem now.

"Captain Martin Brant, of American Federation Air-Cruiser 3885!"

As the high clear voice rang through the bridge-room of my racing cruiser, I turned toward the distance-phone from which it issued. Pressing a stud beneath the instrument I answered into it.

"Captain Brant speaking."

"Order of the First Air Chief to Captain Brant: You are informed that the European and Asiatic Federations have combined in alliance to launch a great and unexpected attack upon the American Federation. The European Federation fleet of five thousand air-cruisers is now racing over the Atlantic toward New York and other eastern cities, while the Asiatic Federation fleet of the same size is heading over the Pacific toward our western coasts. All American cruisers patrolling east of the Mississippi, including your own, are ordered to head at full speed toward New York, where our eastern squadrons are assembling to meet the European Federation fleet. Upon arriving there yourself and all other squadron commanders will report at once to the First Air Chief."

The clear voice ceased, and I turned from the distance-phone to meet the startled eyes of Macklin, my first officer, who stood at the cruiser's wheel beside me.

"Head eastward—full speed, Macklin!" I cried to him. "It's war at last—war with the European and Asiatic Federations!"

Instantly Macklin swung over the wheel in his hands, and as he did so the whole long bulk of our cruiser swung likewise in mid-air, curving up and backward to race eastward above the green plains, the descending sun at our backs. A moment more and the cruiser's long torpedo shape, gleaming and unbroken metal save for the rows of portholes and the raised, transparent-walled bridge-room in which we stood, was splitting the air eastward at a speed that mounted with each moment. I reached for the order-phone, and as Hilliard, my young second officer, answered from the motor-rooms beneath, I informed him briefly of what had just been told me. Then there was a muffled cheer from the hundred-odd members of our crew, beneath, and a few minutes later the drone of the great motors had reached to an even higher pitch, and we were racing through the sunlight high above the earth at more than a thousand miles an hour.

Standing there with Macklin in the bridge-room as we shot eastward, though, my thoughts were grave enough despite the exciting quality of the news we had just heard. War!—the war that we of the American Federation had expected, had feared for decades. It had not been more than thirty years since the third Air War of 2039. Three mighty nations alone now shared the world between them; the American Federation, comprising the whole North and South American continents, with New York as its capital; the European Federation, which included all Europe west of Caucasus and all Africa, its center at Berlin; and the Asiatic Federation, which held all Asia and Australasia for the brown and yellow races, with Peking as its capital.

And though for three decades now there had been peace between them, it had been an uneasy peace dictated by the fact that each feared to attack another lest he be attacked by the third. The great navies of air-cruisers of the three mighty Federations had patrolled the air in ceaseless vigilance, their air-forts ever watchful. Lately, however, it had become apparent to all that a rapprochement had taken place between the European and Asiatic Federations, and such an alliance could only mean an attack upon our own, the American. So we had stood even more vigilantly upon the watch, and now that for which we had waited had come at last, and the two great Federations had launched their two mighty fleets upon us.

Gazing ahead, as our cruiser drove onward, I was as silent as Macklin, at the wheel beside me, and as young Hilliard, who had come up into the bridge-room from beneath. Far beneath us the green plains were rolling swiftly backward, as our motors hummed their unceasing song of power. Those great electric motors drew their current in limitless quantities from the electrostatic or atmospheric electricity surrounding the earth, by means of great transformers that changed it from electrostatic to current electricity to give us a power that could hurl us forward with almost unlimited endurance and speed. Connected as they were to our great horizontal tube-propellers, which were set in the cruiser's walls and which moved it forward by drawing immense volumes of air at vast speed through themselves from ahead, those motors could fling us on at more than a thousand miles an hour. This utmost force, as our indicators told us, was shooting us eastward now.

Beneath us the green plains had given way to the great tumbled folds and peaks of the Alleghanies. Somewhere to the south lay Pittsburgh, and to the north Cleveland and Buffalo, but being headed directly to New York, we therefore did not see them. Beneath us we could make out in swift flashes of vision masses of the air-traffic between those cities, great passenger-liners and bulky freight-carriers and slender private craft, but in our own military-craft level there moved only a few cruisers like our own racing eastward toward New York in answer to the alarm. With these, however, there was small danger of collision.

Now the Alleghanies had dropped behind and we were rocketing over the rolling, pleasant countryside that lies between them and the eastern Appalachians. As we shot on I gazed downward, over the green and silent and empty landscape rushing beneath us, and wondered momentarily what a citizen of fifty years ago would have thought to see this once-populous land over which we were speeding lying as lifeless and deserted beneath us as it was now. Then it had given way to the greater folds and ridges of the Appalachians, and then, as we shot on and over their tumbled masses, Macklin lifted his hand from the wheel to point ahead.

"The air-forts!" he said.

On to New York

Swiftly they were looming before us as we rushed on toward them, giant domed cubes of dull metal, each five hundred feet in width, that hung in a great, curving line in mid-air before us, five miles above the green land. At intervals of five miles they hung, floating motionless there in a great grim chain or ring, the metal sides and dome of each bristling with great heat-guns like those of our own cruisers, and with narrow openings from which the occupants could gaze forth. Each of these great air-forts, we knew, was suspended thus high above the ground by the gravity-repelling effect of the cosmic rays. It had been but fifty years since the machinery had been discovered which directed the great power of the cosmic rays to overcome the force of gravity. It had been found that the rays could be collected and their power concentrated in the structures that they were to support. Dynamic towers were used for the collection of this great limitless energy.

In a great ring they hung before us, the line of them curving away vastly to right and left, a great ring that encircled and defended New York, as air-forts hang in rings about all air-cities for defence. Then as we drove toward the nearest of these great fortresses of the air, there came from the distance-phone before me its sharp challenge.

Swiftly I replied to that challenge and then we were driving past the air-fort, past the openings in its walls through which we could see those inside standing ready at the great heat-guns. We heard faintly their cheers as we flashed past them toward the east; we cheered ourselves somewhat by the sight of the air-forts. They could maneuver in space in any direction, though at only a fraction of the speed of the air-cruisers. They would form a stubborn defence for New York, we knew, though incapable of meeting alone a swift invading fleet. But now far ahead, as we rushed within the mighty ring of the air-forts, we glimpsed the gray gleam of the Atlantic's vast expanse, stretching away to the east, the green, irregular coastline, the narrow little island, between a larger island and that coast, that had been the site of the New York of fifty years before. Green and deserted as all the countryside behind us it lay now, but I glanced at it only, looking up as there came a low exclamation from Hilliard, beside me.

"New York!"

Full before us lay the mighty city, now, waxing with each moment greater as we raced on toward it. The air about and beneath us was filled with the great swarms of cruisers like our own and of merchant-traffic that was converging from north and west and south upon it. For the moment we three gazed toward it, forgetful of the peril that had brought us to it. We were caught and entranced as always by the splendid and superb beauty of this New York. For it was a New York immeasurably different from that city upon the earth, that decades ago had born its name. It was a city, not of the earth, but of the air.

It was a city whose close-clustered spires and towers and pyramids had been gathered together upon a vast metal disk-like base, and hung suspended five miles above the green earth! It was circular in form and of five miles diameter, the colossal metal base or disk upon which it rested more than a thousand feet in thickness, the metal buildings and towers that rose from that base and were integral with it soaring for five thousand feet farther upward! A colossal city floating there in the air, with its streets and buildings swarming with activity, with thronging hordes, and with great masses of fear-driven craft speeding through the air toward it from all directions.

A city of the air! Suspended by huge batteries of great electrostatic motors in its base, motors that drew the exhaustless energy of earth's atmospheric electricity from countless slender pinnacles that soared from the central plaza; whence the current was conducted along cables within the pinnacles to the giant motors beneath. The cities too were suspended by the gravity-repelling quality of the collected cosmic rays. To this had mankind come, at last. The flimsy airplanes of a good century before, with their little endurance records of weeks and months in the air, had given way to the great electric-driven cruisers which drew their power from the static about them, and which could stay aloft indefinitely. And then had come the great air-forts, held aloft in the same way, and finally, when the great air-wars had made life upon the ground so unsafe as to approach suicide, then had come the construction of giant metal cities, on huge metal bases, that contained enough great motors and tube-propellers to hold themselves in any direction at moderate speed.

The Great Conference

Such now were all the cities of earth; Chicago, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Berlin and Tokio. Great cities that hung always in mid-air, usually near the sites of those vanished cities of earth from which they had gained their names. But the air-cities could move from place to place now and then for better climate or defence. These great cities held within them all the world's population; the earth beneath being used only for the mining of metallic ores and the minerals used in the creation of the synthetic foods and fabrics now universal.

The great cities were each protected by a ring of air-forts, and also by great batteries of heat-guns set within their own walls. A hundred of such huge air-cities there were in the American Federation, holding in their colossal masses of clustered sky-flung towers an average of five million inhabitants each. And in the European and Asiatic Federations combined, I knew, there were more than two hundred mighty cities of the air.

Now, though, it was the huge air-city of New York that held all our attention, and as we rushed closer toward it I saw that above it, above the panic-driven masses of air-craft that were swirling down to take refuge within it, there hung squadron upon squadron of cruisers like our own, over two thousand in number, hanging there in grim, motionless ranks, as though unconscious of the swarming, fear-driven activity in the huge city beneath them. From every quarter other cruisers were arriving to join those squadrons, cruisers that came like our own from patrols over the green inland plains, from above the icy Labrador wastes, from over the jungle-bordered Caribbean coasts, all rushing to answer the call to arms. As our own ship neared the city, we headed down toward the central plaza.

"Straight down to the central plaza, Macklin," I said. "The First Air Chief will be there and orders are to report to him first."

Macklin had already slowed our ship's speed, and now as we drove to a position beside the aspiring central pinnacle, with its clustered points, the city's static-tower, he turned the power of our motors completely from our horizontal tube-propellers, into our vertical ones, which held us motionless in mid-air. Then, as he slowly decreased that power, we sank smoothly down until in a moment more we had come to rest upon the smooth central plaza among a score or more of other cruisers. These rested in a great ring about the plaza's edge, their crews waiting within them, but at the center of that ring, beside the mighty static-tower's base, stood a little group of men, the First Air Chief, Yarnall, and his squadron-commanders.

As our cruiser came to rest I opened the door beneath the bridge-room, and stepped onto the metal plaza and across it toward that group. Around the great plaza, I noted, were vast, seething crowds, thousands upon thousands of the mighty air-city's inhabitants. Other thousands were gazing down toward us from the towers that soared around us into the golden afternoon sunlight. These people, watching us and the mighty fleet hanging grimly far above, were silent, but from beyond them there came to my ears from far across the air-city's mighty mass, the dull roar of millions of blended voices, in unceasing, excited shouts. Then I reached the First Air Chief and the group before him, my hand snapped to a salute, which Yarnall silently returned. And then, gazing for a moment in silence from one to another of us, his strong face and gray eyes grave, he began to speak to us.

"You, the squadron-commanders of our eastern forces," he said, "know why you have been summoned here, why I, under the orders of the Federation's Central Council, have summoned here you and all the cruisers that wait above us. The great European Federation fleet, twice as large as our forces, is rushing westward over the Atlantic toward us, and within the hour we must meet that fleet in battle."

He paused, and in the silence that ensued the dull, dim roar of the great city about us seemed suddenly infinitely remote from our ears. Then the First Air Chief went on.

"Within the hour we must meet that fleet in battle and as we go out to meet it our western forces will be going out from San Francisco, under the command of the Second Air Chief, to meet the Asiatic Federation fleet racing eastward toward it. And upon those two battles rests now the fate of our nation. If they are lost, if either of them is lost, within days our nation will be but a memory, our cities annihilated. If the two approaching fleets are defeated and beaten back, then we shall have won for ourselves a respite in which we can prepare to meet the great enemies that crowd now upon us. So I say to you, the Central Council says to you, that this battle must not be lost!

"The fleet that we must meet has twice the number of cruisers of our own, and there have been rumors of some new method being prepared by them with which to attack us, now or later. We have to aid us only the air-forts about this city, which have been equipped with a new device. I have ordered them to move east of the city to lie between it and the enemy. This great air-city itself, when we go out from it, will move inland at its highest speed away from the battle, just as Boston and Charleston and Miami and San Francisco and Los Angeles and all our great air-cities, north and south. There will be, therefore, none but our cruisers gathered above and our air-forts massing eastward to fight this battle upon which the Central Council has staked our fate.

"But great as these odds are against us, this battle must not be lost! We are the sons of the Americans who fought through the First and Second and Third Air Wars, who reared this nation out of the blood of a thousand air battles until now its hundred air-cities hold in their power a third of all the world. And now that the rest of that world comes against us, the Last Air War begins. My word to you is this: Fight only as those men before you fought, and before tomorrow the European Federation fleet shall have been beaten back—or the last of our cruisers and our air-forts and ourselves will have perished!"

There was silence as the First Air Chief ceased, and then from us assembled commanders there broke a great cheer, a cheer that was taken up by the massed thousands around the plaza and that spread like fire over all the great air-city about us. Then we all returned toward our waiting cruisers, the First Air Chief toward his own, and a moment later his cruiser, with its three parallel stripes of silver running from stem to stern distinguishing it from all others, was rising smoothly upward, followed by our own. Upward we shot, a vast roar coming up to us from the mighty floating city beneath us. Then our score or more of ships were taking their places each at the head of its squadron of a hundred ships, while the First Air Chief in his silver-striped flagship rushed to a position at the head of all. There we hung, the dull, great roar coming unceasingly up to us from the city below, and then as an order sounded from the distance-phones of all the fleet we were moving forward, eastward, out from over the great air-city, from over the green coastline, out over the gray expanse of the Atlantic.

With Macklin and Hilliard again beside me as our own cruiser moved forward at its squadron's head, we three turned to glance back. We saw New York, its mighty towers splendid against the descending sun, moving also, but slowly westward and away from us, away from the coming battle, dwindling to a dark spot and vanishing as we raced on outward over the gray Atlantic. Now we were racing above the great air-forts that had massed in a great double line a score of miles out from the coast, high above the waters. Over these too we sped, at steadily mounting speed, until with great motors droning, crews shouting as they ran our heat-guns out from tops and sides and keels, winds whining shrill about us, our great fleet reached its maximum speed toward that great oncoming battle by which our Federation was to stand or fall.

CHAPTER II

The Battle Over the Atlantic

Gazing ahead, Macklin and Hilliard and I stood together in the bridge-room of our cruiser. The squadron which we headed was at the lead of one of our fleet's great columns. Far behind us stretched its ships, flashing forward at uniform speed. Then from the distance-phone before us came the First Air Chief's voice.

"Squadrons 1 to 6 take up scouting positions!" he ordered.

Instantly the first six squadrons of the two columns, our own one of the first, leapt forward and out from the two great lines of the main fleet. Our own and another squadron moved straight ahead, past the silver-striped flagship of the First Air Chief, until our two hundred ships had spread out into a great, thin fringe that was flying forward miles before the main body of our fleet. Two of the other four squadrons drove to right and left of the fleet, spreading there in the same way, the remaining two taking up positions high above and far beneath our two great columns. Thus, with its great lines of scouts fringing it and protecting it from surprise on all sides, our great fleet drove on toward the east over the gray and endless plain of the Atlantic, holding at Yarnall's orders a speed of eight hundred miles an hour.

The crimson descending sun flaming in the heavens behind us, the great gray ocean stretching endlessly beneath us, we rushed on through empty sea and sky. By then Hilliard had gone down to take up his position with the crew beneath, but Macklin and I still stared into the great empty vista before us. With the drone of our great motors and those of the scouts flying beside us, we seemed like a great flight of bees. Beneath there was no sound now from the crew, a silence that told of the tenseless, of expectancy. But still before us was no sign of the great fleet that we had come out to meet, and almost it seemed that in spite of our certain information as to its course we had missed it, since already we were some hundreds of miles out to sea. Then suddenly, as I gazed ahead, I caught my breath, and the next moment had turned swiftly to the distance-phone.

"Squadron 1 reporting," I said rapidly. "The scouts of the European Federation fleet are in sight and are heading toward us!"

For there ahead a great line of dark dots had appeared suddenly in the empty sky, a great fringe of dark dots that were rushing toward us and that were becoming quickly larger! With each moment that they raced toward us they became larger, until they had come plain to our eyes as long torpedo-shaped cruisers like our own. They differed from our own only in that their bridge-rooms, instead of being raised like our own, were sunk flush with their upper-surfaces, only their transparent forward-windows showing. They were the scouts of the European fleet, and at the same time I saw them they must have seen us, for they changed their course slightly. So racing straight toward us were five hundred cruisers opposing the two hundred of our far-flung line. On and on they came, and I saw momentarily far behind them a great cloud of other cruisers, the mighty main body of the European fleet. I shouted the information into the distance-phone. Then the next moment the speeding line of cruisers before us had rushed straight into our own onrushing line!

The next moment all the air about us seemed filled with whirling, striking cruisers, as the two scouting lines met and crashed. In that first moment a score of our cruisers crumpled and collapsed in headlong collisions with European cruisers. And then as Macklin threw the wheel up at my hoarse cry, our own ship heeled over with sickening speed to avoid two European cruisers hurtling straight toward us. Then as we rushed by them there came the swift sharp detonations of their great heat-guns and a storm of shining cylindrical heat-shells rushed from them toward us. At that moment Macklin swung our cruiser back upward and over the two rushing European ships, and as there came a word from Hilliard to the crew, our own keel heat-guns rained down a score of heat-shells upon the two ships. One of those ships the heat-shells missed, but the other was struck squarely by three of them.

Instantly there was a blinding flare of white light as the striking heat-shells burst, releasing upon the luckless European ship all the terrific heat contained within them, the vast vibrations of radiant heat. For this was the most deadly weapon of modern air-warfare, these shining shells in which, by special processes, the vibrations of intense radiant heat could be concentrated. And as those shells struck and burst upon the luckless ship below we saw the ship hang motionless for a moment in the midst of that blinding flare, its metal sides glowing and fusing. Then we saw it plunge downward like a great meteor toward the gray Atlantic!

But now our own cruisers were whirling up and backward, back toward the struggling ships that hung now in a mighty, struggling line. Like swooping hawks our own craft flashed, diving down upon that battling line with bow and keel guns raining heat-shells upon the European ships below, racing down at a giddy angle into that wild melee of struggling ships and heat-shells that the combat there had become. So wild and fierce had been the combat in the few moments since we had met the European scouts that already scores of ships had plunged down in white-hot destruction toward the ocean. But we had, I saw, well accounted for ourselves in those moments, since almost twice as many of the European cruisers had fallen as our own, and they seemed staggered. Then as our ships leapt like angry birds of prey after them, there came a quick order from the distance-phone that abruptly halted us.

"Main body of European forces approaching! All front and side scout-squadrons rejoin our fleet!"

Trapped!

Instantly Macklin whirled our cruiser again up and back, and as the rest of our scout-squadrons turned and leaped back through the air after us, we saw that the battered European scout-lines were receding also, racing back toward their own main fleet. That mighty fleet was in full sight to the eastward now, its five thousand great cruisers advancing majestically toward us in the familiar battle-formation of the European Federation—a great ring or hollow circle of ships. On they came, the scouts taking their place within that circle with the rest. Then we, too, had fallen back into place at the head of our own two great columns, the silver-striped flagship of the First Air Chief before us, and slowly now, with ten miles more of clear air between them, the two giant armadas were advancing toward each other.

Standing there with Macklin, heart pounding, I gazed watchfully ahead as our fleet and the European one swept nearer toward each other. We came each withholding our fire for the moment, since the heat-guns have but a short effective range. Although outnumbered two to one, we were moving steadily toward the oncoming giant circle of the enemy. Then suddenly the ships of the great European fleet, still holding its circular formation, had leapt steeply upward with sudden tremendous speed, to slant above us!

As they did so, a quick order rang from the distance-phone and the two great columns of our fleet had leapt upward also, up to the level of the other until a split-second more would have seen us crashing headlong into that oncoming circular fleet. I saw the air before me filled with gleaming ships rushing lightning-like towards us, heard another order ring out, and then Macklin had swung our cruiser to the right and our whole great fleet had divided, one column flashing like light to the right of the oncoming European fleet and the other column to the left of it. Before they could change formation or slant down to escape that swift maneuver of ours, we were flashing past them on both sides, and then to right and left of them our heat-guns were thundering and loosing a storm of swift heat-shells.

As those shells struck, as our passing column loosed a hail of them upon the European cruisers, the air about us seemed filled completely with blinding bursts of light and heat. Scores, hundreds, of the enemy ships were withered by that deadly fire from right and left, glowing and melting and plunging downward like chariots of white fire.

Surprised as they were by our swift maneuver comparatively few fired upon us as we raced past them, but even those few shells found their marks among the cruisers of our rushing column. Cruisers of my own squadron were struck and hanging there glowing and fusing from the terrific heat released upon them, unable to avoid the fast-speeding ships behind them which raced headlong into the white-hot wrecks. Then our columns were past them and as behind us their ships fell thick in white-hot melting ruin, I turned toward Macklin, exultant.

"We're beating them!" I cried. "Another blow like that one and——"

A cry from the second officer cut me abruptly short, and quickly I gazed back to where he was pointing, toward the mighty ring of the European fleet. Our two columns had converged inward toward each other after that deadly blow, when the great ring-shaped formation of cruisers behind us had halted abruptly its own forward flight, and had shot back a great double file of its cruisers between our own two racing columns! And then, before we could see and forestall its menace, before we had time to obey the swift command that the First Air Chief shouted from the distance-phone, that double tongue of ships had split, each line moving sidewise with terrific force and speed toward our own two lines, pressing them outward from each other, separating them, rolling them sidewise and backward in two great enveloping motions.

In that moment I felt our cruiser reel madly as a European cruiser shot against it, saw Macklin clinging madly to the wheel as I was thrown down and backward, while about us in that mad moment the heat-shells were speeding forth from ship to ship to burst in flaring destruction about us. Then as Macklin swung our cruiser up to a level keel, our heat-guns beneath detonating now as our gunners worked them like mad beings, we were fighting the remorseless lines of the enemy that swept us back and I was aware that our fleet's two columns had been swept hopelessly apart, that our forces had been fatally divided and that each division of them was now completely encircled by the outnumbering masses of cruisers of the European fleet!

Cruisers on all sides of us now seemed to fill the air, enemy cruisers that tossed about us in a great sea of ships and that made our own ships the target now of their unceasing volleys. Our column, rolled together by that irresistible maneuver, had massed into a solid group, the silver-striped flagship of the First Air Chief just beside our own. The air around us was livid with flares of blinding light as the heat-shells broke and burst in unceasing destruction, as the thunder of our detonating guns seemed to drown all other sounds in the universe.

Not for long could we thus remain the target of these masses of cruisers that swarmed about and above and beneath us. Our other column had been swept back and that was surrounded by enemy cruisers and fighting desperately even as we were. Unless we could join them, and reunite our shattered fleet, we must inevitably be destroyed. At that moment the voice of the First Air Chief rang from the distance-phone before me in a high command.

"Triangle formation!" he shouted. "North at full speed!"

Instantly the ships behind and about us, reforming swiftly and smoothly even under the rain of shells shifted into a great wedge-shaped formation, a great triangle of solid ships whose apex was the First Air Chief's cruiser, and which pointed north, toward the other isolated and struggling half of our fleet. Then the next moment our great triangle had leaped forward straight toward the north at full speed, into the swarming masses of European ships that surrounded us. Our own cruiser hung just behind the First Air Chief's, just behind the triangle's apex. Then with a terrific crash we had smashed into the solid wall of ships before us.

Our cruiser rocked and reeled beneath me as its sharp stem rammed at full speed into a European cruiser that had swung broadside in an attempt to escape us. Its side crumpled beneath that awful blow and I saw it reel back and downward, I felt other rending crashes that shook our ship wildly as our triangle crashed through the European fleet. Then suddenly we were through it, had smashed our way by sheer force through its sea of ships and had reached the second half of our fleet, joining with it once more. Scores, hundreds even, of our own cruisers and of the enemy's were tumbling and twisting downward toward the sea, battered wrecks of metal that had been all but annihilated in our mad crash through the enemy armada!

Now swiftly our re-united fleet, still almost two thousand strong, were massing together in a single long rectangle, our flagship speeding to its head, and as we moved toward the scattered swarms of European ships about us, that numbered almost four thousand still, they had formed into a similar formation. Then as our own long rectangle or column rushed toward them they were racing sidewise at the same speed as ourselves, so that side by side now our two great fleets sped through the air, our heat-guns detonating again as we held still to the awful struggle. Our cruiser seemed to bear a charmed life, since as we drove headlong through that hail of shining death, behind the First Air Chief's cruiser, we were sometimes missed by inches only. And now as Macklin, his eyes steady but burning, held our ship onward with those about us in this mad running fight of the two great fleets, I was aware that in that fight they were both slanting steadily downward, down toward the gray Atlantic far beneath!

Fleet hanging to fleet, the air between them thick with shining heat-shells, down we rushed until we were within yards and then feet of the ocean's tossing surface! But, still firing at each other steadily, they were swooping downward still until we were plunging straight down into the ocean's depths. For these great air-cruisers could move beneath water as well as through the air. Each opening in them sealed tight during flight, their air-supplies always automatically furnished by great tanks of liquid-air, their great tube-propellers sucking water through them at immense speed even as they did air, and hurling the cruiser on at a speed which while far less than that in the air was still great—with these features our cruisers were now down into the great waters of the Atlantic.

"Hold steady!" I cried to Macklin as we swooped downward, and the waters rushed up toward us. "Keep in line with the First Air Chief's ship!"

I saw his hands clench upon the wheel, and then the waters were just beneath us, were rushing nearer and nearer, while even then our ships and those about us were loosing their heat-shells upon the European fleet whose great column was plunging downward like our own. Down—down—and then with a shock our cruiser had plunged into the great waters, had rushed beneath the waves, and instantly the light of sunset all about us had vanished, had given way to the green translucence of the waters. Through that green obscurity there shot yellow shafts of revealing light, the underwater searchlights in the walls of our cruiser which I had snapped on. From all the ships before and behind us came other brilliant shafts. Our great fleet still grappled with the European fleet rushing down to our right, our heat-guns loosing their deadly shells still through the green waters toward each other's fleet! The great battle over the Atlantic was to be carried on in the great ocean's very depths!

CHAPTER III

Under the Sea

Green depths that swirled about us, shafts of yellow light that swung and stabbed through them, rushing cruisers and detonating guns and drone of motors and wild shouts—all these merged and mingled in one great phantasmagoria of strange impressions in those first moments. I had shot under the ocean's surface in my cruiser many a time before, but never in battle. And now, with our two great fleets plunging down into those peaceful depths, all about me seemed for a moment a strange dream. Then I saw before us, the cruisers of the First Air Chief and those about him, dark long bulks that gleamed there in the depths beneath us as the yellow shafts of light struck and crossed them.

Peering downward, figure tensed over the wheel, Macklin was holding the cruiser behind those rushing ones ahead, and now, looking away to the right, I could make out the dark, long bulks of the European cruisers also. And across the gap from fleet to fleet were hurtling storms of the heat-shells still, shot forth by our great heat-guns whose valve-breeches made them capable of underwater operation. And as they burst there broke from them the same great flare of light and heat as in the air above, little affected for the moment by the waters about them, destroying in that moment the ships they struck and making the waters about those fusing ships boil terribly with their terrific released heat.

But straight downward through those boiling waters swirled and swept the following cruisers of the two great fleets. As our guns thundered there in the great deep, as heat-shells raced and broke and flared about us, I saw schools of fish and strange sea-creatures and denizens, for a moment in the glow of the yellow searchlights or the flares of bursting heat-shells. The fish were all striving desperately to escape from this hell of battle and death that we men had carried down with us. And still downward—our two great columns were racing, hanging to each other with fierce, resistless tenacity, raking each other still with the great heat-guns as we shot lower into the mighty depths!

Finally Hilliard dashed up into the bridge-room from below.

"This can't keep on much longer!" he cried. "The cruiser's walls can't stand this heat and speed!"

"It'll have to keep on as long as the First Air Chief keeps on!" I shouted to him, over the drone of motors and thunder of guns. "If the battle is to end for both fleets here—let it!"

But I saw even in that moment that Hilliard was right, and that the walls about us, the transparent metal of the windows, had become searing to the touch. Not only had we raced through areas of water boiling at terrific temperatures from heat-shells that had burst in ships there, but our own immense speed was producing by its friction with the waters a heat that was almost softening the cruiser's walls. Yet I saw that still the First Air Chief's cruiser was rushing deeper and deeper before us, and that still the great column of our own fleet and that of the European fleet were following locked in that colossal death-grip, their heat-guns thundering still toward each other.

I could see too that the cruisers of the European fleet were suffering far more than our own in this awful undersea battle, since there in the green depths, only able to half see each other and to aim their heat-guns by the uncertain light of their searchlights, their greater numbers were of but small advantage to them. And our gunners, following the former orders of the First Air Chief, were concentrating their fire upon the European column's head, so that when ships were struck there by heat-shells, changed to motionless white-hot wrecks in the waters, those behind were unable in the green depths to see them in time to swerve aside, and so crashed into the fusing wrecks and were themselves destroyed. It was a maneuver that the First Air Chief had long before explained to us for use in undersea warfare, and now it was proving of the highest effectiveness and score after score of the European ships were flaring and crashing in their opposing column.

Our gunners, following the orders of the First Air Chief, were concentrating their fire on the European column's head, there in the ocean's green depths.

For only a moment more, though, did the two great columns continue thus, for then the European fleet, feeling the great losses which it was experiencing in this terrific underwater combat, responded suddenly to some order, curving sharply upward again. Instantly the First Air Chief snapped an order from the distance-phone, and instantly our own great column of ships had turned upward too, had curved upward through the waters after the racing European fleet like wheeling sharks after prey, their guns and ours still beating a tattoo of thundering death there in the great depths. Now as we rushed upward again at undiminished speed the waters were becoming green and translucent once more. Then as we flashed up through those green depths, heat-guns sounding still from fleet to fleet, the cruisers ahead and above us, and then our own, burst suddenly up from the waters into the sunlit air once more!

Into the Clouds

Surely some battle out of a nightmare was this, in which our two great masses of cruisers hung still with deadly purpose upon each other. Macklin and Hilliard and I aware of ourselves now only as infinitesimal and unreasoning parts of this mighty fleet about us, moved upward, miles again above the waves. The two rushing fleets slowed, halted, as though by mutual purposes. Slowed and halted there in two great masses of cruisers in mid-air, our own to the west and the European one to the east, and then, with every heat-gun detonating and with the air between them seemingly filled with shining, hurtling shells, they were hanging motionless in a mighty death-grip!

The great struggle for its sheer intensity was appalling, as the two giant fleets hung there unmoving, high in the air, each unheeding its own danger, intent only upon annihilating the other. I was aware, as though I were a spectator, that I was shouting hoarse commands into the order-phone, that in obedience to those commands our gun-crews beneath were working the great heat-guns like madmen, loosing an unceasing hail of shining shells toward the fleet opposite, shouting as they did so even as Macklin and Hilliard were shouting wildly beside me. I was aware of heat-shells that seemed exploding all around us, of brilliant and unceasing flares of blinding heat and light that burst in dozens each second amid either fleet, their cruisers whirling downward now in score of hundreds.

I know now that that motionless battle there in mid-air could not have exceeded a few minutes, yet then it seemed an eternity. I was aware dimly that our ships were falling faster than the Europeans, that their greater numbers were telling upon us once more here in the open air, and that but few more than a thousand ships were left to us, no more than half of our original number. Yet more than twice that number of European cruisers remained, smothering us with shining shells! Then suddenly the silver-striped ship of the First Air Chief, that had swayed beside our own, turned westward, and at the same moment Yarnall's voice came sharply from the distance-phone.

"Retreat-formation!" he was shouting. "All ships retreat westward at full speed!"

"Retreat!" My cry was one of incredulity, of mad anger. Retreat—we were beaten, then, our great battle lost—I was aware of Macklin hovering in irresolutely over the wheel, of Hilliard almost sobbing in his rage.

Then despite our fury the sense of discipline was reasserting itself, and with the First Air Chief's ship at its head, our great mass of ships was turning, was forming swiftly into a great T, the longer column or stem of it pointing westward, moving westward at swiftly mounting speed with the flagship at its head, while the shorter column or head of the T lay across its rear at right angles. This protected us somewhat from the European fleet that now was leaping swiftly after us, triumphant, exultant at our flight. Our stern guns still firing toward them as they leapt upon our track, we raced westward, on until at full speed. And now, even as the thunder of guns still came to our ears from behind, a dull, dead silence reigned over our own ship, and those about us, Macklin and Hilliard as silent beside me as myself, a silence of the apathy of utter dismay and despair. For never, surely, had any American fleet ever thus fled homeward, before, pursued by a conquering enemy.

On to the westward though we raced still, our rear-guard line of cruisers now the targets of numberless heat-guns. Still cruisers among them were being destroyed by the heat-shells, and still, too, they were striking savagely back to find their marks here and there among the mass of our pursuers. On and on we rushed, the European fleet closing gradually toward us, and now we were but a score or so of miles from the coast, I knew, and should be sighting the great double line of our air-forts that were hanging far out to sea. It was the one chance of escape for our outnumbered fleet, I knew, to gain the shelter of those great forts. And now it was clear that it was with this object that the First Air Chief was leading our fleet in full retreat westward. But as we gazed ahead, we saw that though we should have been within sight of them the great air-forts were nowhere to be seen! Save for a great, long bank of floating white clouds ahead the sky was completely empty, and of the air-forts there was no trace!

"The air-forts gone!" I cried. "Our last chance gone!"

"But our fleet's going on!" exclaimed Macklin. "The First Air Chief's leading us into those clouds!"

The Ambush

Gazing ahead, incredulous, I saw in a moment that it was so, that the First Air Chief's cruiser was flying straight on toward the great long bank of clouds ahead, leading our whole fleet into their fleecy white masses. Even as I stared unbelievingly, I saw his silver-striped ship rush into those clouds and vanish from view, and after it were rushing our own ship and all those about us, all the long mass of our fleet! Unable to credit my eyes, almost, I stared, for it was a suicidal maneuver, to attempt to elude our pursuers in those fleecy masses. They needed only to surround the cloud-bank and then wait and destroy us one by one as we emerged again. Yet even as I gazed forward our ships were speeding into the white masses of vapor, after our flagship, our rear cruisers still returning the fire of our pursuers. Then as our own cruiser flashed into them, all things vanished from about us save the thick masses of cloud-vapor that hemmed us in, that seemed to press against our windows, curtaining all things else from sight!

I stared forth tensely with Macklin and Hilliard in a vain attempt to see through those masses, heard the thunder of guns still going off blindly somewhere in the great cloud-mass behind us, knew that in the wild heat of pursuit the European fleet had rushed after us into that great cloud-bank. Then came a swift order of "All ships halt!" from the distance-phone, and as we came swiftly to a halt there in the blinding, fleecy masses, motors droning still, we heard the crash of ship on ship behind us in the cloud-bank as the foremost cruisers of the European fleet drove blindly into our own, then halted fearfully themselves, milling confusedly about in fear of further collisions and with neither fleet firing now in the absolute blindness that held each ship. Thus the two mighty fleets hung there for the moment blind and helpless in the huge cloud-bank, and in that moment there came again the First Air Chief's voice from before us in a swift, shouted command.

"All American Federation ships—drop!"

Before the order had ceased to echo Macklin's hand had flashed to the power-stud, and as the great drone of our motors suddenly lessened our cruiser dropped downward like a falling stone, plunged downward until in a moment more it had ripped through the great fleecy mass of the cloud-bank and into the open clear air beneath it, leaving the great European fleet for the moment still in it. And in that moment, even as our cruisers halted their plunging downward fall, there came a great hissing sound from above as of the hissing of terrific jets of air, and at the same instant we saw the mighty cloud-bank above breaking up, disintegrating, its great fleecy masses whirling suddenly away in all directions, driven away in a moment as though by mighty winds, breaking away in formless flying vapors! Breaking away to leave clear air where they had been, to leave the European fleet hanging there, appearing to our sight suddenly as a confusedly milling mass of numberless ships above us! And coming to——? on either side of that confused mass of ships was the great double line of our giant air-forts!

"The air-forts!" My cry was echoed in that moment by Macklin and Hilliard beside me, by all in our cruiser, in our fleet.

The air-forts! On either side of the disorganized European fleet they hung, in their mighty double line, and as that fleet saw them now for the first time with the sudden disappearance of the cloud-bank that had hidden them, it seemed to hang motionless still as though stunned with astonishment. Then the great heat-guns of the air-forts had swung toward them, were thundering in swift chorus, were loosing storm upon storm of heat-shells upon the confused, astounded ships that swung between them! Were pouring forth in that awful moment all the concentrated fire of their mighty batteries upon the European ships caught between them.

The air-forts! And it was between them, between their two mighty lines, that the First Air Chief had purposely led the European fleet, I saw now. For this, then, was the new device of the air-forts of which he had spoken to us before our start, this device which enabled them to surround themselves with a great cloud-bank that kept them hidden from all and unsuspected by any enemy. Some device for projecting forth great masses of water-vapor it must be, that had enabled them to form that great artificial cloud-bank about themselves. And when the First Air Chief, staking all upon the device, had led the pursuing European fleet into that great cloud-bank, into that giant ambush of the air-forts, then with our own fleet dropping down out of it they had needed only to disperse the artificial cloud-mass about them by means of great air-jets of terrific power, to disperse the cloud-mass and to turn all the fury of their great guns upon the European fleet that hung still dazed there in the withering fire of those suddenly-unmasked batteries!

For now above us the European ships, whirling aimlessly about in that terrific fire that raked them from either side, were falling faster still! Their own shells burst and flared along the sides of the great air-forts, but were too few in number to cripple or destroy any of those gigantic, heavily-armored edifices. And at that moment, even as the European ships strove to mass together to escape from that great death trap of the air, the First Air Chief's ship was slanting up toward them, and now we needed no orders to follow as we raced up after him. Up until our great fleet rushing upward in a single mass was pouring up before us a third terrific fire of heat-shells which, added to that of the air-forts on either side, sent blinding death-flares dancing and leaping over all the mass of ships above us.

And now above us the European ships, whirling about aimlessly in the terrific fire that raked them from either side, were falling faster still. And even as they massed together to escape that great death trap, we were slanting up after them.

"They're turning!" cried Hilliard. "They're fleeing!"

Homeward

Fleeing! Even as our fleet shot up toward them the European ships, reduced now to hardly more than two thousand in number, and unable to bear the terrific fire concentrated upon them from three directions, were soaring frantically upward above the air-forts, up and away to the eastward, massing together in a close-bunched, irregular formation. And our fleet had shot up after them, sending a rain of shining messengers of death among them as we shot after them, pursuing them with bow-guns firing just as minutes before they had pursued us. Then, broken and disorganized and incapable of further resistance for the time being, the great European fleet was drawing away from us as an order from the First Air Chief halted our wild pursuit. Outnumbered still as we were by two to one we could not carry the pursuit too far from our supporting air-forts.

As we halted, we saw the European ships racing on in a struggling mass, dwindling and vanishing from us quickly against the gathering dusk eastward. Then our own battered cruisers were turning, heading back westward, back toward the brilliant, waning sunset, and with our flagship at our head until we paused above the air-forts. There, with the wild exultation of victory we three in the bridge-room, Macklin, Hilliard and myself, and our crew and all the cruiser crews about us, expressed ourselves in great roaring shouts. And then, once more, there came from the distance-phone before us the voice of the First Air Chief.

"Cruiser-captains and men of this fleet," he said, "we have beaten back the first attack of the European Federation fleet. And I have received but now a distance-phone message from the Second Air Chief, commanding the western fleet out of San Francisco. He reports that his own fleet, meeting the oncoming Asiatic Federation fleet, was able after a battle as terrific as our own to drive it back also, by using the same cloud-ambush device in the air-forts as we used here. Thus on this day to west and east we have accomplished the impossible."

He paused, and at his words, his news, a wilder cheer went up from all our ships and air-forts, hanging motionless there against the crimson of the dying sunset. But now, his voice solemn, the First Air Chief went on.

"We have won today, in east and west, but what we have won is but a respite. The mighty European and Asiatic Federations have gathered all their forces to annihilate our American Federation. Their great fleets have been cut in half by these two battles, but so have ours. And they not only outnumber us still by far, but they can build new cruisers faster than we. Undoubtedly within weeks, days perhaps, there will come another mighty onslaught from them, from west and east, an onslaught for which they have been preparing and are preparing some colossal and terrible plan or weapon of which we know nothing. It is some unknown device that it is rumored will enable them to move gigantic forces upon us. We must stand against them, nor can we hope to surprise them with the cloud-ambushes used by us today. Yet whatever forces they bring against us, whatever giant new weapons or terrific attacks they loose upon us, whatever is the great end of this Last Air War that today has started, you of the American Federation fleet can be proud always of the way this first battle was fought and won!"

There was silence a moment and then another shattering cheer. And then, the First Air Chief's cruiser leading, our fleet was moving smoothly westward toward the sunset, and toward New York. As we moved on our watchful patrols were already out from the fleet's main body to north and south, while behind us the great air-forts, slowly and ponderously, were following us, spreading into a long single line which with the ceaseless patrols was to guard us from any surprise attacks or raids. Already, by now, the dusk was gathering behind and about us, the sunset's light waning in the west. And by the time that our fleet came again in sight of New York the great air-city's outline was visible only as a mass of brilliant lights floating high in the gathering darkness. The mighty city, as we learned, had begun to move eastward to meet us upon hearing of the results of the day's battles, and now glimmered before us like a great mass of brilliant gathered stars, the giant beams of its searchlights sweeping the night.

Onward and down toward the mighty city shot our fleet, and as Macklin and Hilliard gazed down with me we saw the cruisers that landed upon the white-lit plazas across the immense floating city surrounded at once by joyful crowds, their weary crews carried high on shoulders. The whole great city, indeed, was rejoicing, though that rejoicing was not extravagant, being tempered by the knowledge that it was but the first attacks of the European and Asiatic Federations and that other and greater attacks might be expected to follow soon. So although the great city blazed with lights as our fleet slanted down toward it, its great towers and pinnacles and pyramids seeming like magic palaces of radiance floating there in the night of the upper air, yet its great watchful searchlights stabbed and circled still, and there came and went still high above it and to north and east and south the humming patrols, on guard now and challenging every craft that approached the city.

Then our cruiser was landing, and Macklin and Hilliard and I were emerging from it with our crew, mindless of the shouting crowds that surrounded every landing plaza, stumbling in our utter weariness through those crowds to our barracks, to fall into a stupor-like sleep of utter exhaustion....

The Respite Ended

It was the middle of the afternoon when we awoke, more than a score of hours later. Our quarters lay in one of the uppermost levels of the great barracks-tower, and as I rose and after dressing joined Macklin and Hilliard at the window, we could see far out over the air-city's great expanse. Above us blazed the afternoon sun shining on numberless patterned windows of all the gigantic metal towers about us. Far overhead there still hummed and flashed the ceaseless patrols, still watchfully hovering above and around New York. Beneath, on the city's landing plazas, there rested still the hundreds of cruisers of our returned fleet, and now we saw that upon the great central plaza where our own ship lay there were gathered now some two hundred and fifty of our twelve hundred and fifty ships, and that about these central ships were swarming a great horde of mechanics and attendants; caring for and inspecting their great motors, filling the liquid-air tanks that supplied constant breathable air, refilling their magazines with shining masses of heat-shells.

I turned puzzled toward the other two. "Strange that they should be giving such swift attention to those two hundred and fifty cruisers," I said.

Macklin nodded, frowning. "And our cruiser among them," he commented. "One would almost think that—" He stopped short as our door snapped open and an attendant stepped inside, saluting.

"Captain Martin Brant to report at once to the First Air Chief's headquarters in the tower," he said, "and all cruiser officers and crews of Squadrons 1 to 4 to rejoin their ships at once!"

Again he saluted and disappeared, leaving us staring blankly at each other. Then we were struggling into the tight black jackets of our uniforms, were striding out in a moment and down to the great air-city's "ground" level in one of the building's electrostatic-motored cage-lifts. Through the crowded streets we strode, seeing now that in all those streets other black-uniformed men of the squadrons named were pressing toward their cruisers in the central plaza. Then we three had reached that central plaza, from whose center rose the mighty electric power-tower, and around which the two hundred and fifty cruisers rested, all of our first four squadrons that had survived the battle.

Already, I saw, the crews of those cruisers were taking their places within them, and as Macklin and Hilliard took up their positions in our own I strode on across the plaza toward the huge tower's base, in which were the headquarters of the First Air Chief. Passing challenging guards at its door, I passed through a few narrow white-lit ante-rooms, and then had stepped into the great circular room that was his innermost office. The curving walls of that room were covered with panel after panel of instruments and switches, which controlled the vast electrical currents that rushed down from the electric-tower's tip and transformers to those motors in the city's base. Near the room's center was the battery of six great switches which controlled the city's direction of motion, moving it in any direction at will at slow and ponderous speed, the speed-control's gleaming knob beside them. And beyond the controls of the great air-city, there stood a great table-map of the world, upon which a myriad of red circles automatically showed the position of the world's air-cities.

Behind this table-map, as behind a desk, the First Air Chief was sitting as I entered, while around the panelled walls there moved a half-dozen black-jacketed attendants constantly watching and controlling the flow of current from the power-tower's tip to its motors. The First Air Chief, as I entered, motioned me silently to a metal seat before himself, at the great table-map's edge, and then for a moment contemplated me in silence, as though considering his words before speaking. Regarding me intently, he began.

"For a second time, Captain Brant," he was saying, "I have summoned you here to me, but this time alone, and with the two hundred and fifty remaining cruisers of our first four squadrons summoned also outside. You are wondering, no doubt, why I have done so.

"The victory we have gained is, as I said, but a respite. We know that the two great Federations, though beaten back with great losses will soon be launching another and a far greater attack upon us, one against which I think we cannot stand. From the European Federation to the east and from the Asiatic Federation to the west that mighty second attack will be loosed upon us, with some terrible new weapon or plan whose nature we cannot guess. For though hundreds of agents have been sent by us to all the European and Asiatic air-cities, months before the outbreak of this war even, they have been either captured and made away with, or have been able to report only that immense preparations of some sort are going on in those cities, in Berlin and Peking especially. And the rumors which have reached us through them indicate that whatever great new colossal weapon or thing they are devising at Berlin and Peking, it is one which, they boast, will enable them to sweep all our cities from the air in a single mighty attack.

"You see, then, that to wait for them to develop their great weapon or plan, to await this terrible attack without action, is but to pave the way for our own doom. We must strike out to halt them, to cripple or destroy their great secret plans, must strike at the European and Asiatic Federations both before they expect us. And that is why I have called you here to me. For it is my intention to launch a great raiding attack of our own at both Berlin and Peking. If we can strike a smashing blow at those two air-capitals, can damage or destroy the great military preparations within their arsenals, which must hold their great secret also, we shall have crippled, for the time being, their plans and shall have gained time for us to learn and counteract those plans. Even now our two hundred and fifty ships are ready and wait to start for Berlin, while from San Francisco a similar number will raid westward to Peking. And it is my order that you, Captain Brant, shall command this great raid eastward, for your conduct in the great battle of yesterday proves you worthy of the command. So soon after that battle, our enemies will never dream of our lesser forces attacking them, so now is your great chance to strike back at them, to flash across the Atlantic in a great surprise raid and strike down out of the night with all your power at the great air-capital of Berlin!"

CHAPTER IV

A Desperate Plan

For a moment, I think, I stood in stupefied silence as the meaning of the First Air Chief's breath-taking plan sank into my brain. Then I had snapped to sudden attention, saluting, my eyes shining. Yarnall was smiling, too.

"The plan is bold enough," he said, "but it means a chance to strike a terrific blow at our enemies, to cripple and perhaps destroy their great preparations that mean doom for us. The two hundred and fifty cruisers gathered here in the central plaza have been completely replenished with supplies and inspected while you slept, their magazines filled with heat-shells, their bomb-slots with mighty heat-bombs. You can thus start at once, heading straight across the Atlantic toward the air-city of Berlin. And if you can reach it with your cruisers, under the cover of darkness and the unexpectedness of your coming, win through their great patrols and chains of air-forts, and reach the great air-capital, you will be able to strike a blow that may yet save us. I know, and you know, Captain Brant, what perils lie between your cruisers and their goal, but I need not speak of those perils and need not tell you what hopes depend upon your raid. I need only give you now a single order—to start at once!"

Five minutes later our two hundred and fifty cruisers, humming like a great swarm of bees, were rising up into the brilliance of the sky. My own cruiser leading, the familiar figures of Macklin and Hilliard again in the bridge-room beside me, I wondered momentarily if ever I was to return to New York. The mighty city floating there beneath us, its crowds now watching in wondering silence as we rose from it, its masses of buildings suspended there between earth and sky like a strange new galaxy of stars—it was home to me, and it was somberly enough that I watched it dropping now away from our ships.

Upward we rose, hovered, then shot toward the west, driving smoothly until the great mass that was New York had dropped out of sight behind us. Then as I spoke an order into the distance-phone our ships turned, circling widely to the south, and then moved eastward, out of sight of New York. It was a necessary maneuver, I knew, to make it appear that our cruisers had gone westward. Necessary because in New York's millions there were certain to be European spies who would have endeavored to warn their capital had they suspected that we were in reality racing eastward.

And now as we shot out over the Atlantic again, I gave another order and our two hundred and fifty cruisers massed quickly into a compact triangle with my own ship at its apex. It was the best formation for a raiding party, and holding to it our little fleet shot upward now and onward, onward until we were racing above the great line of our air-forts hanging miles out over the Atlantic in a great watchful chain. We had answered their challenge and were rushing on above and beyond them.

Within minutes they had vanished behind us, and our cruisers were rocketing forward at swiftly mounting speed, racing onward and upward until at more than a thousand miles an hour we were rushing eight miles above the ocean's surface.

As we were rushing toward the east, as fast as the sun was rushing away from us, the night came upon us swiftly. There came dusk and then the stars. We were at an altitude at which we would be sighted by almost no other craft, I knew, an altitude rarely used by any ships. Though the modern closed-construction and air and heat arrangements of air-craft made flying at that height practicable enough, it was necessary by reason of the greater tenuity of the air to use more of the motors' power to attain the same speed. As we hummed on at that great height, all sight of the ocean beneath was hidden from us by the great vapor-layer that lay over it beneath us and only the pale stars above and the triangle of gleaming cruisers behind were visible to us. Yet as we shot on, it was not these, our immediate surroundings, that held my thoughts, but the object of our flight. Gazing beside into the night, with Macklin silent at the wheel beside me and with all our long ships rushing close behind, I could not but be aware in those moments of the desperateness of this raiding attack upon which we were engaged.

To flash across the sea with but little more than two hundred cruisers, to attempt a raid upon the European Federation's mighty capital even while a similar raid was made from westward upon the Asiatic Federation's capital, seemed indeed so desperate as to approach insanity. Berlin was guarded by a great chain of air-forts and patrols hanging over the eastern Atlantic; which held within itself, without doubt, all the great European battle-fleet of thousands of cruisers; which bore upon itself countless mighty batteries of giant heat-guns. Could we, in the face of these, reach Berlin, and send our heat-bombs crashing down upon its great arsenals?

Above the Enemy

These were the doubts that assailed me as our triangle of cruisers throbbed on and on through the upper night, but resolutely I thrust them away, remembering what our attack, what the crippling of our enemies' great and mysterious preparations, would mean to our American Federation. Then I turned as Macklin pointed silently to the glowing-figured dial of our distance-log, and saw by it that while I had brooded there at the window we had swept far out over the Atlantic at our tremendous speed. Within a short time, I knew, the European coasts would be beneath us, but during all the course of our flight so far we had sighted no other ships whatever, all merchant-traffic over the great ocean having been swept from the air by the first alarms of war, while we were still too far to the west to be meeting the far-flung patrols of the European Federation forces.

Soon, though, these would be coming into sight, I knew, and the result of our daring expedition depended upon our success in passing them unobserved. If we were seen by them, a minute would suffice for the patrols to give the alarm by distance-phone, and then from all the European air-cities ahead, from Stockholm and London and Berlin and Marseilles and a hundred others, numberless patrol-cruisers would be swiftly converging upon us in answer to the alarm. And the European battle-fleet itself, we knew, in Berlin, the air-city we had come to attack, would be swift to answer also, so that never could we hope to win through if we were but for a moment detected.

But still we were rushing westward through the night, my cruiser in the lead, and still as Macklin and I peered intently ahead and below, Hilliard having taken up his station beneath, we could make out nothing but the chill masses of the great vapor-layer far beneath us, and the gleaming, rushing shapes of the cruisers behind us. Then, I peered ahead and down toward the right, with body tense, and in the next moment had snapped out the green guiding light at our cruiser's stern, and had uttered a quick order into the distance-phone before me.

"European Federation patrols ahead and beneath!" I warned quickly. "All cruisers reduce to quarter-speed!"

Instantly in obedience to that order the triangle of rushing ships behind was slowing, each cruiser swiftly reducing speed, the great drone of their motors dying to a steady hum. Moving forward thus, as slowly and silently as possible, I pointed downward, Macklin's eyes following my pointing finger.

"The patrols!" I whispered to him. "There beneath us—moving northward!"

Far beneath us indeed they were, a little circle of moving lights that hung just above the great vapor-layer and that was moving steadily toward the north, from our right to our left. Some twenty or more of those white lights there were, moving smoothly along in the same ring-like formation, and though we could not see the shapes of the cruisers from which those lights gleamed up through the night, we knew that they could be only one of the enemy's westward patrols, flying in the familiar European Federation circular formation. Watching them, Macklin and I unconsciously held our breath, while from our ship and from all the ships behind there came no sound other than the low hum of the motors. Slowly beneath those motors' lessened power our cruisers were moving forward through the upper darkness, while beneath the little ring of lights were still holding toward the north. Our presence far above them was apparently unsuspected by them.

I knew, though, that if they were to turn toward us by any chance the great cone-shaped cruiser-finders which are set in the sides of all war-cruisers and air-forts and air-cities, that we would be detected soon enough, since undoubtedly the patrol-ships beneath carried them also. Those great cone-like instruments, when turned in any direction can detect by means of super-sensitive induction-balances the operation of any electrostatic-motors. Fortune favored us, though, for without dreaming of our existence there above them the ring of patrol-cruisers, the circle of moving lights, moved smoothly on to the north while we held eastward until they had vanished behind us.

Now as I spoke a swift order we were picking up speed again, our cruisers accelerating once more to their former velocity. I knew that we must be very near the southwestern coast of England. Our course lay high above that coast, taking us along a line that would lie midway between the two mighty air-cities of London and Paris, avoiding both purposely on our great flight toward the mightier air-city of Berlin. Soon, I knew, the great air-fort chain that guarded the whole western coasts of Europe would be drawing within sight, and intently enough we were peering forth in search of it, but though that must be passed still we had won through apparently, the outer patrols, without discovery.

"It's hardly likely that they'd have a second line of outer patrols out," I said to Macklin, as we peered together through the dim night from the bridge-room of the rushing ship. "And once we get past the air-forts we'll have a good chance."

He nodded. "They'll never dream of us making a raid upon them tonight, and if we aren't picked up by the air-forts' cruiser-finders we can reach—"

He broke off, suddenly, and at the same moment as he, I gazed down toward the right. Another ring of moving lights was there in the darkness beneath, northward, too. But this one had paused for a moment and was slanting straight up toward us!

"Another patrol!" Macklin's cry was echoed into the distance-phone.

Another patrol—and it had seen us! And then, even as that patrol's twenty cruisers slanted up toward us, to challenge us, eighty of the cruisers of the lowest of our great triangle of ships had whirled like light down toward them, without command or formation, whirled down upon them massed together like a great striking thunderbolt of gleaming metal! For they knew, without need of command, that in an instant more the patrol-cruisers beneath would see and recognize the purpose of all our racing ships, would instantly with their distance-phones send the alarm spreading like flame over all the European Federation. And so our eighty down-rushing cruisers, massed solidly together, fired no guns and dropped no bombs, but simply flashed downward in a terrific ramming swoop and in an instant more had crashed their great mass squarely into the ring of the uprising European ships!

There was a rending crash of metal that seemed to split the air beneath us, and then in a great shower of wrecked and twisted cruisers the ships beneath were falling, tumbling down and vanishing into the vapors far beneath on their headlong fall toward the Atlantic! All of the twenty enemy cruisers, and about twenty-five of our own four-score that had crashed down into them, fell thus, annihilated almost by that terrific collision. It had been the one means, though, of instantly destroying their patrols without using our heat-guns whose detonations might give the alarm. And we knew that only that swift, unordered action on the part of our lowest ships had saved us. Then the fifty-five survivors had rushed up again among us, and then our ships that had slowed there for the moment were rushing still on eastward.

The Air-Forts

Onward we shot through the upper night, shaken still by that sudden peril and escape, and then I uttered a warning word into the distance-phone from our cruiser leading. For now, far ahead, we could make out great beams of white light that hung in a great row extended from north to south as far as the eye could reach, and that seemed like white fingers of light whirling and reaching through the air as they ceaselessly swung and circled. A full four miles above the earth, and more than that beneath the level of our own onrushing ships, hung this great line of restless beams, and we knew it, at once, for the great line of air-forts that guarded the western approaches of the European Federation. For the beams we saw were the great beams of the air-forts' mighty searchlights, and those swinging shafts of radiance were of such intense brilliance and magnitude that even at our greatest flying height we could not hope to pass over them undetected.

It seemed, indeed, that to pass them was hopeless, since the air-forts, hanging above the great layer of misty vapor that stretched beneath, could instantly detect with those mighty beams any cruisers passing above them, at whatever height, and could blast them from the air with their gigantic batteries of heat-guns. To pass beneath the great vapor-layer was as impossible, since the air-fort chain which the European Federation put forth here in war-time was a double one, and its second line hung, farther eastward a little, beneath the vapor area, watching with its own great beams and guns for any ships passing there. There remained but one alternative, to pass through the thick mists of the vapor-layer itself, but that, though concealing us from the guns of air-forts above and beneath, would be in itself suicide, since such vapor-layers between the forts were invariably filled in war-time with floating air-mines, great cube-like metal containers held aloft and motionless by their own electrostatic-motors and tube-propellers and which contained a terrific heat-charge which was instantly released upon any luckless ship that touched them.

But now as our ships slowed at sight of the ominous fingers of light far ahead I spoke quickly into the distance-phone. "Our one chance is to go through the vapor-layer," I said, "and use our cruiser-finders to avoid the air-mines. By going through in a three-ship column we may be able to make it."

At my order therefore our great triangle of cruisers shifted its formation abruptly into one of a long slender line, three ships in width, and then that line with my own cruiser at its head was slanting sharply downward toward the great mists beneath us. A moment more and our cruisers had entered those mists, were moving forward enveloped in them, the great vapor-layer through which we moved hiding all things from about us, hiding our cruisers even from each other. But though we could not see them, we knew that the great air-forts hovered ahead and above us, now, and that the vapor-layer into which we were moving was one sown thick with the deadly air-mines. So, with Macklin at the cruiser's wheel guiding it slowly forward at the head of our column of ships, holding a course eastward through the mists by the compass and creeping forward now at the same low speed as the ships behind, I ordered Hilliard, beneath, to swing out the cone-like cruiser-finders from our ship's sides, and to report instantly any air-mines they detected before us.

Behind us, too, the cruisers that followed were using their own cruiser-finders as they crept through the mists after us, at my order; for though as leading ship we could report to them all air-mines which we encountered before us, it was necessary for the cruisers behind to feel their way forward independently, since in the concealing mists they could not follow exactly upon our own ship's track. Now, though, listening intently at the order-phone, I waited Hilliard's reports. And in moments more, as our cruiser-finders' coils picked up the hum of the enemy's electrostatic-motors a little ahead and to the right, he reported sharply and I repeated the information swiftly to Macklin, who instantly swung our ship a little to the left. And still Hilliard remained with the cruiser-finders, whose super-sensitive coils caught instantly the electrostatic-motors of the air-mines before and about us.

Onward thus we crept, Hilliard reporting at intervals of every few moments as an air-mine was picked up ahead, while at my swift repetition of his report Macklin would swerve our ship to avoid it. Behind our own craft, we knew, all the scores of our cruisers were creeping forward through the great vapor-layer in the same manner. Now we could plainly hear the great, unceasing drone of the mighty air-forts above, as we crept through the vapor-layer beneath them, and knew that were we to emerge into any chance opening in the thick mists about us we would have but short shrift enough from the giant guns of those forts overhead. Yet still we crept on, praying that none of our cruisers struck the deadly mines, since a single one striking would loose a great flare of heat and light from the bursting air-mine that would betray us all. Even our own ship, as it swerved from an air-mine that Hilliard had hastily reported, almost ran full onto another one in the opposite direction, a great cube of metal, holding within it a hell of condensed heat and death and suspended by its power gained from the concentrated cosmic trap. And though Macklin whirled our cruiser aside in time to graze by it it seemed impossible that all our ships could feel through this field of death without disaster.

Yet still we were creeping onward, through the thick mists, and now the great air-forts' drone came from behind and above us, as we passed on beneath them. On and on, feeling blindly forward through that zone of potential death we went, over the second chain of air-forts whose motors' sound came up to us muffled through the mists, and then that too was dropping behind us. For some moments, though, we continued to feel forward in the vapor-layer, and then I had given the ships behind the order to rise and at once, as carefully as ever, our cruisers were feeling their way upward until they emerged at last into the open air above the mists, a tight steel hand seeming to unclose from about my heart as we came up from out that terrible zone of death into the dim starlight of the upper night, the white beams of the upper air-forts now far behind us.

On to Berlin

"Through at last!" I cried to Macklin, as we drove upward. "It seems incredible that all our ships could have won through that mine-field!"

Macklin nodded. "We'd not have made it had the air-forts there been using their own cruiser-finders," he said. "But they never dreamed that any ships would try to get through the mine-sown mists, evidently."

Now I spoke into the distance-phone another order, and our ships were swiftly forming into their triangle formation, were racing forward again at rapidly mounting speed to the east, air-forts and deadly mines and questing outer patrols out of sight. And now, as with Macklin and Hilliard, who had joined us from beneath after his work with the cruiser-finders, I gazed forth, I could see that the great layer of mists beneath us was thinning somewhat as we raced on, knew from that fact that we had raced from above the Atlantic and now were moving far above land, since always these mist-layers were far denser above the sea than above land. That land over which we were now speeding could only be that of southwestern England, I knew, and even now our flashing triangle of cruisers was veering further to the south to avoid the great air-city of London. Then, as we hummed on eastward at the same great height as before, we made out a great mass of lights far to the north, a mass of white lights that hung high above the earth and that glowed toward us like a single soft light through the mists that lay between it and our eastward racing ships, smaller beams stabbing and circling from it.

There were needed not the exclamations of Macklin and Hilliard beside me to inform me of that great light-mass' identity, for an air-city of that size in this region could be but London. The great city, I judged, had moved eastward somewhat from its usual position over the center of southern England and further away from the great chain of air-forts and mine-fields that guarded it to the west. It was not London, though, that was our flying force's objective on this night, and we raced onward with no backward glances toward it, peering ahead with growing tenseness. Far below us we could glimpse, now and then, occasional formations of merchant-ships flying toward or away from London, and convoyed usually by a half-dozen war-cruisers, but these were far beneath and as we were showing no lights and rushing on at tremendous speed they did not glimpse us.

No patrols were in evidence now about us, the main reliance of the European Federation air-chiefs having apparently been put upon their great outer circle of air-forts and patrols, through which we had managed to break. Nor, was it evident, did they dream that the American Federation, depleted as its fleets were despite their victories in the battles of the day before, would attempt any such daring attack upon an enemy so superior as we were rushing upon now.

As we fled onward, holding our three-sided formation, I wondered momentarily what that other American force was now doing that was heading in the same way toward Peking, and then my wonder passed as another great glow of white light showed itself ahead and to the south. It was Paris, we knew, a great air-city as large as London and outranked in size only by the three colossal air-capitals of the world. But it was not Paris, either, that was our goal, and we veered now to the north somewhat to avoid it, flying on at such a great height and distance from it as to pass far beyond the reach of the great searchlight beams that swung and circled from it as they had done from London. Then it too had dropped behind to the south, and regardless now of the other air-cities that we glimpsed far off in the night, we were rushing eastward high above what had once been France, were speeding forward at the same tremendous height on the last lap of our daring journey.

Now other masses of air-traffic were manifesting themselves far beneath us, as squadrons of moving lights, but neither Macklin nor Hilliard nor I, nor any in our ships, were paying attention to these, all our souls centered on the horizon ahead, on the dim darkness of night that stretched before us. Gazing out into that darkness, my two friends beside me, as tense as I leaned, there at the bridge-room's windows as our droning flight of ships sped on. Nothing dispelled that darkness but the dim starlight from above, but now, as we gazed forth, we became aware of a faint light coming feebly toward us from far ahead, a faint light that seemed like a great, feebly-glowing cloud in the darkness, and that was intensifying in radiance with each moment that we rushed toward it. The glowing cloud seemed to sink steadily as we sped on, seeming to become lower until from our own ten-mile height we saw at last that it was hanging at a height of four miles from the earth. And swiftly it was growing in size, ahead and beneath us, until as we neared it high above, it changed suddenly to our eyes from a great glowing cloud of light to a colossal circle of uprushing white radiance, a mighty circular city floating there in mid-air, that was as huge as New York itself, and that blazed in the night before us as our own city was wont to blaze.

"Berlin!"

Our three exclamations came together in that moment, exclamations that must have been echoed then from every watcher in our onrushing ships. Berlin! In all its stupendous, radiant splendor it hung before and beneath us, the mighty air-city that was the European Federation's capital and center, equalled in size only by New York and Peking. There between earth and stars it floated, its white-lit towers soaring up from the mighty metal base, all out-topped by the slender central pinnacle that was the great city's electrostatic tower which drew from earth's charge its electric power. Around the city's edge there stabbed and circled the giant white beams of its great searchlights, sweeping to and fro over the still-thronged streets, in which we knew there surged the crowding masses of the great air-city's population. And high above these, moving restlessly to and fro, there came and went the great network of patrols which guarded the great metropolis of the air on all sides.

But our own ships, winging more slowly on at our tremendous height, were never glimpsed by the patrols so far beneath us, never caught at our great height by the great white beams that came and went below, and that only occasionally clove the night above. And as my order brought our ships to a halt, we could make out more details in the white-lit city floating far beneath us. Could make out, as we hung there motionless, the great batteries of pivoted heat-guns set at the central plaza and all around the city's encircling wall, the great square metal buildings of the arsenals, in two groups at the city's east and western edges, the central headquarters and arsenals of all the European Federation's military forces. On the plazas around those buildings rested long ranks of gleaming cruisers, cruisers that numbered thousands and, we knew, were those with whom we had battled so furiously over and in the Atlantic a day before. And it was down toward these buildings and these cruisers that we gazed now, in that moment before the city's cruiser-finders beneath could detect us and spread the alarm.

"The cruisers and military buildings and arsenals below will be our main objective," I said into the distance-phone as we hung there in that tense moment, above the shining city. "The city's electrostatic tower is so closely defended by heat-gun batteries that we could never get near it, and like all power-towers of air-cities it's of metal alloys that the heat of our shells and bombs wouldn't affect, so we can't hope to destroy it and thus crash the city to earth by cutting off its sustaining flow of power. Our goal must be the cruisers and arsenals, and we'll attack them in two great swoops, the eastern ones first and then the western, and if all goes well can then swiftly escape before the forces below can gather and rise against us!"

A Sudden Attack

Now, poised there miles above the great air-city, which was itself poised high over the earth, our great triangle of ships hung like so many birds of prey for the moment. Beside me Macklin was gazing downward as tensely as myself, Hilliard beneath with our waiting gunners, while under my fingers lay the four rows of white buttons the pressing of each of which would release from our cruiser's bomb-slots a portion of the immense heat-bombs they held. Poising there in that tense moment the whole scene was imprinted unforgettably upon my brain—the gloom of night about us, the vast radiant circle of the colossal air-city beneath, the patrols swarming over it, the throngs that filled its streets, excited no doubt over the beginning of the long-expected war that was to annihilate the American Federation. Then I spoke one sharp order into the distance-phone and instantly with all our motors droning suddenly loud our great triangle of cruisers was diving straight downward upon the radiant air-city beneath!

Down we shot with dizzying speed in that mighty swoop, down with my own cruiser flashing foremost and with all our others close behind it, down through miles of space in a flashing moment, it seemed, until our hurtling wedge of ships had crashed down into and through the swarming patrols above the city, had driven like light down through them toward the eastern mass of military structures and cruisers that was our goal! From all of our ships no single gun sounded nor from the patrol-cruisers through which we dropped, so stunned were they by our great crash downward through them. It was as though for that moment a tense silence had been enforced upon all the world, a silence broken only by the drone of our motors as we plunged. Then I was aware in a swift succession of flashing impressions of the white-lit city's towers and buildings rushing like light up toward us, of the great square military arsenals and buildings with the gleaming ranks of cruisers about them, just beneath us. Then as we plunged to within a half-mile of those buildings and cruisers my own foremost-flashing cruiser curved forward and, as our down-plunging ships levelled out behind it, I pressed swiftly a row of the buttons beneath my fingers. The next moment our cruiser was swaying from side to side as it rushed on, and down from it and from all the massed ships behind and about us were plunging thousands of giant, cylindrical heat-bombs!

Even before those heat-bombs struck, our onrushing ships had curved like lightning upward again, but the next moment were reeling and tossing even in the mad upward rush as from beneath came a titanic merged flare of all the bursting heat-bombs, from which an awful wave of super-heated air rushed up and overtook us, and beneath whose terrific released heat dozens of the huge military buildings beneath had fused and melted. We could glimpse, too, that below a full half thousand or more of the resting cruisers had perished also in that giant flare, and that it was as though a whole great area of the gigantic air-city beneath us had been transformed suddenly by the released heat of our mighty bombs into a huge crater of white-hot, melting metal near the floating city's edge! And from all across the mighty white-lit mass of Berlin, that had reeled itself in mid-air from that terrific blow, there rose a dull, roaring clamor of millions of voices that came up to us even over the drone of our great motors and the rush of winds about us!

Upward at utmost speed we were rushing, and just in time for hardly had our heat-bombs struck when, despite the utter unexpectedness of our attack, the great batteries of heat-guns around the central electrostatic tower that guarded it were wheeling toward us and thundering as they shot a storm of heat-shells above the white-lit city toward us. Even as I had said, those vigilant watchers at the power-tower would have blasted our fleet from the air before we could have ever got near to the tower itself, but as it was we had struck a terrific blow at the military arsenals and the resting fleet, and had flashed upward again in time to escape the blasting guns at the city's center. But now, through the night above the vast roaring city, the batteries all around its rim were swinging their pivoted guns toward us and sending a hail of shells after us while, as all the city's great searchlights wheeled their beams madly through the air toward us, the swarming patrols all around us had recovered from their stunned astonishment and were leaping also toward us!

"One more attack!" over the uproar I was yelling into our distance-phone as we shot upward through that mad chaos of whirling beams and ships and shells. "The city's western arsenals this time—loose the other half of our bombs on them!"

Holding still to our triangular formation in that wild mélange of sight and sound, our ships levelled out once more, high above the city again now, and with only a scant dozen having been reached by the hail of heat-shells that had rushed after us from beneath. Then we were speeding westward over the tremendous city, high above it, scorning to stop for the swarms of patrol-cruisers that were dashing toward us. Those cruisers were rushing with suicidal fury toward us with every heat-gun detonating, but our own gunners were plying our batteries even as we dashed forward above the air-city, and on all sides of us the patrol-craft were flaring and fusing and crashing down toward the city beneath! Here high over the city, though, the shells of all the heat-guns that now were booming toward us could not reach us, and through battling ships and whirling beams and gloom of night we rushed westward over the giant air-city until in a moment more we were pausing over the western arsenals, and the western plaza where rested other massed cruisers of the great European battle-fleet. And then as I gave another order we were diving once more, down toward those buildings and cruisers!

The Second Blow

This time, though, all the colossal city beneath us was roused and roaring with fury as we shot downward, and from beneath there slanted up toward us a terrific hail of shining heat-shells from all the city's great batteries. Eastward the cruisers that had escaped our bombs there were rising and forming to attack us, while, even as we shot down, the cruisers beneath were rising and flinging themselves to one side for the moment to escape our swooping rush and bombs. But through storming shells and blinding beams we shot again on our terrific dive, until in another moment our fleet was levelling again above them and as Macklin drove our cruiser level before the rest I had pressed the remaining buttons, had sent our remaining heat-bombs whirling downward with those of all the ships about me! And then as our ships curved upward again, our terrific blow struck, the bombs were finding their mark again, were flaring and fusing with terrific heat and power into another giant mass of melting metal and awful heat there at the city's western edge.

And now, bombs gone, our cruisers were whirling upward now to escape from the great city we had struck such two awful blows, to head westward again over the Atlantic. About us a wild hail of heat-shells from the guns beneath were rushing upward and dozens of our cruisers were flaring and falling before we could gain a height again that put us beyond reach of the batteries beneath. Then we paused a moment, massing again to head westward, with only a few patrol-cruisers dashing futilely toward us from about and above us, now. Beneath us the giant air-city of Berlin lay with two white-hot craters of fusing metal glowing near its eastern and western edges amid the brilliance of its myriad lights, the great city hanging still in mid-air with the great motors in its base untouched by our two awful blows. Through its streets were rushing panic-mad crowds, and over it were rising the cruisers of its battle-fleet, striving to form and follow us as the guns thundered madly toward us and the searchlights wildly stabbed and circled.

But as we hung there for that moment, massing together again, a wild triumphant cheer was coming from all in our cruiser and all the cruisers of our mass. For we had lost but a few dozens of our ships and had all but destroyed the mighty Berlin arsenals and a thousand of the European Federation cruisers, had struck a staggering blow at our enemy. And even as we gathered now we knew that the cruisers rising from beneath, striving to form their shattered and disorganized and stunned squadrons, would be too late to pursue us. Westward lights were gleaming in the upper air, growing larger, and we knew them to be other patrol-cruisers rushing in answer to the alarm from the city beneath, knew that even at that moment the great air-forts hanging in a chain westward would be rushing back to defend Berlin, knew that easily we could evade them and with their great chain broken could head westward at full speed over the Atlantic and win back to our own land. We had succeeded in our daring, insane plan, and our cheers were rolling out still as we began to move westward above the great, panic-roaring air-city.

"We did it!" I cried to Macklin as our cruisers leapt forward now. "We struck a blow this time that they never dreamed we had the power to strike!"

"And we'll win clear!" Macklin exclaimed, as he sent our cruiser shooting forward at the head of the others. And Hilliard, bursting up into the bridge-room from beneath, was crying, "We made it, Brant—we've destroyed their arsenals and a fourth of their fleet!"

"And now back westward!" I exclaimed as our cruiser shot ahead. "Now back—but look there above us!"

My words had changed suddenly into that wild cry of warning, and as the others glanced up they saw above that which had brought that cry from me. Two of the patrol-cruisers of the enemy that were dashing about us still in futile attack as we started away had drawn back and had circled upward high above us. And now, without using heat-guns and for that reason not detected by us until that last moment, they had joined together and side by side were rushing straight down upon us like a great single projectile of flying metal! Were rushing straight down toward our cruiser, that sped in front of all the mass of our cruisers, identifying it in that way as the ship of our expedition's commander, and sacrificing themselves to destroy us in a headlong crash in revenge for our bombing of the city beneath! Even as I had glimpsed them, had cried out, they were looming just above us, rushing down toward us!

Even as that wild cry had left my lips and as the others had looked up other cries had come from them, from Macklin and Hilliard. "Over!" I screamed to Macklin as his hands shot to the wheel, and in the next instant he was whirling the wheel over, to send our cruiser whirling sidewise to escape that thunderbolt of twin destruction from above. But in the next moment, before it could answer to the wheel, the down-thundering ships above had crashed squarely down into our own! We reeled there with them for a single instant, three twisted wrecks of metal hanging there in mid-air in that instant, and then theirs and our own wrecked cruiser were falling, were hurtling crazily downward through the upper night toward the giant radiant circle of the great air-city miles below!

CHAPTER V

Captured

That mad whirl downward of our wrecked cruiser is now to me more of a memory of some strange and torturing dream than a memory of actual happenings. Flung sidewise and downward against the bridge-room's floor as our cruiser whirled over with that mighty crash from above, I glimpsed Macklin and Hilliard tossed about there with me, rolling over and over. The black gloom of night about us, the mass of our onrushing ships above, the colossal brilliant air-city beneath, the two wrecked cruisers that were tumbling downward with our own—all these things seemed to whirl about us like some great wheel of swift-succeeding impressions as we glimpsed them in that mad moment through the bridge-room's whirling windows.

It seemed but a single brief moment before I glimpsed the great mass of lights, the soaring towers, of the air-city beneath rushing up toward us with unearthly speed. Even as I glimpsed it another turn of the spinning ship had thrown Macklin and Hilliard over again, and this time I clutched for a hold, found one upon the cruiser's wheel. Then, with the droning of the still-operating motors and the cries of my two companions and of the crew beneath loud in my ears, I reached with a great effort toward the control of the motors, clinging to my hold with a supreme effort. My fingers found that control, but at the moment they did so I heard a last hoarse cry from Macklin, glimpsed but yards beneath us, it seemed, the smooth surface of one of the city's narrow streets, and then flung over the control, shifting all the power of the motors from our horizontal tube-propellers to our vertical ones. The next moment a blaze of light seemed all about us, there was a terrific crash, and as I was hurled back across the bridge-room by the impact, my head met the metal wall of it and consciousness left me.

When I came to it was to the realization of someone's hands endeavoring to revive me. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on a long seat of metal, with above me the metal ceiling of a white-lit room, and with Macklin and Hilliard bending anxiously over me. I strove to speak to them, desisted as my first movement made apparent to me a painful swelling on the side of my head. And then with their helping arms behind my back I sat up, looked dazedly about me. Then, the memory of what had happened rushed suddenly back upon me and I was filled with an abrupt dismay.

For the white-lit room in which I sat, seeming an ante-room to other chambers beyond, held beside us three a half-dozen of men in the green, tight-fitting uniforms of the European Federation's forces, alike save in colour to our own black uniforms. They were ranged before us, watching us closely, and there swung at the belt of each a shining, long-barrelled heat-pistol, one of those hand-weapons that throw heat-cartridges smaller than the great heat-shells and bombs, but as destructive and deadly on a smaller scale. These six European Federation soldiers had their heat-pistols ready beneath their hands, and were contemplating us intently. And as I saw that, and glimpsed also through the open door to the right of us a great, smooth-floored plaza and immense buildings towering up into the outside night, brilliant with lights, and heard the roar of the crowds that seethed among those buildings, I remembered all that had befallen us, clutched Macklin's arm tightly.

"The cruiser fell!" I exclaimed. "I remember the crash, now—then this is Berlin, Macklin, and we're captured!"

"Captured," Macklin quietly said. "You and Hilliard and I were the only ones to survive our cruiser's crash, Brant—and we survived only because we were in the ship's bridge-room, its upmost part, when it crashed. You had been stunned, and before Hilliard and I could recover from that crash the European guards had swarmed up over the wreck and captured us, taking us here to the great central electrostatic tower."

"We three the only survivors?" I repeated. "Then—then all our crew—?"

Macklin did not answer, but as his eyes held mine I read my answer in them, and as I did so something hard seemed to form in my throat. Our crew—the hundred cheery lads that had manned my cruiser for long, and each of whom I had known by name—and all annihilated in that great crash downward which we three in the bridge-room had alone escaped. I felt Macklin's understanding grip on my shoulder, and then we were suddenly recalled to realization of our position as a door in the ante-room's left side clicked open, another green-uniformed figure emerging from within. He spoke a brief order to our guards in the European tongue, that Latin-Teutonic combination of languages which was universal throughout the European Federation and which I myself spoke and understood to some extent. Instantly our guards motioned us to the door from which the other had emerged, and as we passed through that door before them we found ourselves in a larger and circular room, white-lit like the first.

It was, I saw instantly, the central control-room of the great power-tower, of the whole great air-city of Berlin. Like the similar control-room in the power-tower of New York it held on its walls panel upon panel of dials and gleaming-knobbed switches, while at the center of the room were also six great controls that directed the great air-city's movements through the air in any direction, and the single power or speed-control. Beside these was another great raised table-map, this one mounted upon a solid block of metal, with upon it the red circles of the world's air-cities. And beside that map there sat now a dozen or more men in the same green uniform as our guards, though with metal wing-like insignia upon their sleeves. They were, I knew without asking, the highest Air Chiefs and officers of all the European Federation, gathered here in the control-room of that Federation's capital city.

The Captors' Threat

For a moment we three faced them in silence, our guards watchful still behind us, and then the center-most of the seated figures, a swarthy, black-haired officer with black, probing eyes, whose five metal wing-insignia marked him as the First Air Chief of the European forces, spoke to us, in our own tongue.

"You are Captain, First Officer and Second Officer of the American Federation cruiser which crashed in our streets just as the main body of your ships escaped," he said, and even at the words my heart raced with sudden gladness. Our ships had escaped safely back over the Atlantic, then, as I had known they would! "——and we desire to know," the European First Air Chief was continuing, "just what forces remain to the Americans and which engaged in this attack."

I faced him in utter silence, my own eyes meeting his probing black ones calmly, and at my silence I saw a contraction of the muscles about those eyes, a sudden flush beneath his swarthy skin.

"I think it would be best for you to answer," he said quietly, "nor need you think that silence will help your countrymen in any way. For though your cruisers struck a great blow at us here in Berlin this night, though word has reached me that as great a one was struck by other American ships at Peking, these are but two of the two hundred great air-cities of our two Federations, but a fraction of our great forces. And we know that your fleets lost many ships in the battles of yesterday despite their victories, and desire to know what forces are left them."

Still in stony silence I stood, my eyes meeting squarely the eyes of the men before me, while beside me Macklin and Hilliard stood in the same stiff silence. I saw the European Commander's flush of anger deepen, saw him half-rise with hand clenched to hurl an order at our guards, and then he had relaxed back into his seat, was smiling grimly.

"A most unwise course to follow, Captain, you may believe me. I take it that your officers are as mule-headed? Well, there is no immediate hurry and a few days of consideration, of meditation, may change your minds. As a subject for your meditations, you may take my promise to you that unless you become more communicative at the end of the fortnight I give you, we shall be forced to use somewhat unpleasant procedures with you. An earnest consideration of that fact will, I think, change your viewpoint somewhat."

He turned, snapped an order in his own tongue to the captain of the guards behind us. "A cell in the one hundredth story for these three—put them with the other American, and if after a fortnight they're still stubborn, we'll deal with all four."

Immediately our guards had marched us back to the door through which we had entered, and across the ante-room beyond through another door and into a short, broad hall along the sides of which rested the great tower's lift-cage. We were ordered into one of the cages, our guards holding their heat-pistols full upon us now, and then as a stud was pressed and the motors' power was turned through the cage's powerful vertical tube-propellers, those tube-propellers drove us up with a thin whistling of air up through the narrow shaft the cages moved in, up until in a moment more we had stopped and were emerging into a similar hall on the great tower's hundredth floor. From that hall we moved into a short corridor that ran the width of the great tower, which at this height was but a hundred or more feet in diameter, its slender pinnacle tapering as it rose to its tip, while much of that pinnacle's space was occupied by the great connections which carried the city's electrical power down from the mighty tower's tip.

Along that corridor we went, one lined with solid metal doors on either side, and finally were halted before one of those doors. Then one of our guards drew from a pocket a small instrument resembling an electric torch, from which he flashed a tiny beam into a transparent-fronted little opening in the wall beside the door. At once there came a clicking of locks, and the door swung open, its locks unbolted by the beam of light or force, rather, whose vibratory rate was exactly tuned to affect a delicate receiver tuned to the same frequency, set in the wall and controlling the lock. These vibration-locks, indeed, had long ago replaced the old, clumsy keys, and were far safer in that they responded only to one certain frequency vibration out of the millions possible, and thus could be opened only by one who knew the correct frequency. Now, as the door swung open, our guards pointed inside with their heat-pistols and perforce we stepped within, the door snapping shut behind us.

We found ourselves in a small, metal-walled cell some ten feet in length and half that in width, furnished with but a few metal bunk-racks swung from the walls. At its farther end from us was the only opening beside the door, a small square window that was quite open and unbarred, and that looked out over all the colossal mass of the great air-city of Berlin, a giant field of blazing lights stretching far around and beneath the great tower in which we were prisoned. Then, as we gazed about the little cell with our eyes becoming accustomed to its lack of light, we made out suddenly a figure standing near its window, a dark, erect figure who seemed watching us for the moment and who then was striding across the cell toward us.

"Brant!" he exclaimed, as his eyes made out our faces through the dusk. "Brant—and you were with the ships that attacked the city but now—you were captured in some way!"

But now my own eyes had penetrated the dusk enough to recognize the features of the man who was gripping my arms, the keen, daredevil countenance that I remembered at once.

"Connell!" I cried. "You prisoned here! Then you're the other American the European First Air Chief ordered us prisoned with. But I had thought you dead!"

"Dead I might be as well as here," said Connell, suddenly somber. "For four weeks I have been here, Brant—for weeks before the beginning of this war. And now that this war has begun I, who alone might save our American Federation from annihilation in it, am prisoned here with only death awaiting me, and that in a few days."

I stared at him, astonished. Connell had been one of the cruiser captains of the American Federation forces for several years, and had been a friend of my own in those years. A year before he had withdrawn from active duty, no one knew to where, and finally, but a few weeks before the breaking forth of this war, our First Air Chief had told us in answer to our queries that Connell had been sent upon a special mission, but that since he had not reported for several weeks he had undoubtedly met death in the course of it. To meet him here, in the heart of Berlin and prisoned with ourselves, astounded me, and the more so since from his first words we understood that he had been confined thus for weeks even before war had burst upon us. But now, motioning us to seats on the bunk-racks beside us, Connell was questioning us eagerly as to the course of the combat between the great Federations so far, and his eyes shone when we described to him that terrific battle over and in the Atlantic that we had fought but a day before, and that daring attack on Berlin that he had himself witnessed from his window.

"I saw the European Federation's fleet massing and sailing westward yesterday," he said, "and knew it was launching its great attack, knew when it returned disorganized and shattered that the American fleet had beaten back that attack. But I did not expect this attack you made on Berlin tonight, and was as astounded as all in the city when you swooped down with your great bombs. A great blow, Brant—a great and successful blow against the whole European Federation, yet such a blow alone cannot halt the menace which it and the Asiatic Federation are preparing to loose upon our own nation. Such a blow, nor a hundred such blows, would avail but little in the end against the stupendous plans and forces that are preparing and massing even now to roll out upon the American Federation in an avalanche of doom!"

A Strange Tale

He paused, and in the dusky cell Macklin and Hilliard and I sat as silent as himself, gazing toward him in sudden startled surprise. From far out over the great air-city about us came the droning of rushing ships and the dim roar of voices from beneath. But Connell was speaking again—

"You, nor anyone else, knew where I went when I left active service in our fleet, none but the first Air Chief, who sent me. That was a year ago, and he told me then that it was evident that the European and Asiatic Federations were preparing to attack us, and that rumors had been heard of some mighty new weapon or plan with which, if their ordinary forces failed, they would completely crush us. Hundreds of agents, said the First Air Chief, were being sent to the European and Asiatic air-cities to try to learn the nature of this new weapon, and I was one of those to be sent to Berlin, as I knew the European tongue thoroughly. I was to go in disguise, was to endeavor to work myself into the European Federation fleet, and was then to risk everything in an effort to find out what this great new plan or weapon was. And so in disguise, a year ago, I came here.

"Eight months it took me to work my way into the European fleet, eight months in which I was chiefly occupied in establishing my new false identity as a European citizen. Then I enlisted in the fleet, entering the motor-section. Of course, as a cruiser-captain in our own fleet, all types of motors were perfectly familiar to me, and I had no difficulty in swiftly rising through various promotions to the status of under-officer in one of the European cruisers. Then came at last the opportunity for which I had waited for months, and which I had begun to despair of ever occurring. I was ordered to report back from my cruiser to the First Air Chief's headquarters here in Berlin, and when I did report I was questioned by a board of a half-dozen European officers on my knowledge of motors and tube-propellers. It must have seemed to them that I had unusual ability and knowledge for a mere under-officer, for they informed me that I had proved satisfactory and that I had been selected to form one of the workers on a great new work that was being carried out secretly, and ordered me to report to a certain compartment in the great air-city's base.

"I reported there, eager now as I sensed myself on the trail of that which I sought, and found that there were whole vast compartments in the city's great base in which only selected men and certain high officers of the European fleet were permitted to venture. These were the compartments in which were placed the giant tube-propellers which are set horizontally in the great air-city's base, and which when the power of its great motors is turned into them move the city in any desired direction. Every air-city in the world has, as you know, these great tube-propellers that move it about. But as you know too, so much of the motors' power must be used in the life of the city, that the horizontal tube-propeller can only move the great cities through the air at an extremely slow rate of speed. It is a predicament which cannot be altered, either, by adding more motors, since to add them you must add to the city's size, and so the problem remains the same.

"But now, as I found when I first entered those compartments, these European Federation officers and inventors had solved that problem! They had devised a way that would enable them to send their gigantic air-cities rushing through the air at almost the speed of a cruiser itself! They had done this by devising a wholly new form of horizontal tube-propeller capable of infinitely greater tractive effect on the air and rotating at a much higher rate of speed. Thus the great air cities, miles across and with all their towers upon them, could rush through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, needing only to use their vertical tubes when they were hovering motionless in mid-air or were moving very slowly.

"And this was the great weapon, the great plan, of the European and Asiatic Federations! For I saw at once that it was a great weapon indeed, a terrific weapon which would enable them to annihilate all the air-cities and peoples of our own nation. You see what it meant? It meant that they could gather together all their scores of giant air-cities, outnumbering our own one hundred cities by two to one, and could rush over the oceans at awful speed toward our American air-cities, could fall upon them with all the giant batteries of heat-guns with which each colossal city is equipped, like our own. And because our own would not be able to move at that tremendous speed, because our own air-cities could only move at a comparatively creeping rate through the air, they would be able to mass their outnumbering forces around our own cities and blast them from the air, annihilating them and all the millions of our people inside them, sending them hurtling to earth in titanic fusing wrecks!

"To rush forth to battle, to the annihilation of our own cities, in their great air-cities! To send those gigantic cities of the air, Berlin and Peking and Tokio and all the scores of others of the two great Federations, thundering through the air to battle, each with its masses of towers on it. They have made provision for all people who are not entirely engaged in battle, to descend to the earth and remain there in specially constructed buildings. This will help also to reduce the weight of the cities. That was their great plan, their great weapon, and I knew that with it, even as they said, they could burst forth and annihilate our own air-cities. But, holding still to my work there in the lower compartments, I strove to penetrate the heart of the secret, the design of the great new horizontal tube-propellers which were to accomplish this, to send the mighty cities rushing through the air at such immense speed. Each of the great air-cities of the European and Asiatic Federations, as I learned, was being secretly equipped with these new tube-propellers, and I knew that if I could learn their secret, could take that secret back with me, our own American air-cities could be equipped with the new tubes likewise and could meet the attacking cities at equal speed, on equal terms, even though outnumbered.

The Great Danger

"So I endeavored in every way to penetrate the secret of the new tubes, to ascertain their construction, which was jealously guarded by the European and Asiatic Air Chiefs. And at last, hardly a month ago, I did that, was able to make my way from my own work to one of the great tube-propellers which was being installed in another compartment, and by taking a place among those working on it was able to learn the details of its construction. That construction was simple enough, I found, amounting in fact to hardly more than a use of many smaller tubes within the main tube-propeller, smaller tubes which drew air from different directions upward and ahead, and thus by their shaping and construction were able to fling a great air-city supported by them onward through the air at that tremendous speed. I had learned the great secret for which hundreds of our agents had sought, and needed only to escape with that secret.

"I needed only to escape, to race back to my own land, and knew that it would take our own engineers but a very short time to fit our own cities with similar speed-tubes, since though the European and Asiatic forces had been working with them for months that work so far had been mostly experimentation. But it was then, when I tried to escape, that my luck came abruptly to an end. For I was captured by the fleet-officers here in Berlin as I was on the very point of leaving, captured when the false identity which I had established at such pains was upset at the last moment through the detection of one of the documents I had forged. I was captured, and knowing that I had within my brain that great secret of theirs which would make their air-cities resistless, they would never, I knew, release me. They took me at once before their commander, the First Air Chief of the European fleet, and then by him and by a number of the Asiatic Air Chiefs also I was questioned exhaustively.

"They wanted most to know what other American agents like myself were hidden within their air-cities. They knew that those agents or the greater part of them were known to me, and they knew that if I described or named them they would be able to catch them all and thus prevent the possibility of another spy learning their great secret as I had done. I refused utterly, though, to give them the information they wished, to reveal to them my fellow-agents in the various cities. At last they saw, after days of questioning and half-torture, that they could not as yet wring from me that information, so confined me here in a cell high in the central tower with the information that only death awaited me within days unless I acceded to their demands. And, confined here, I saw from the window that the whole European Federation fleet had begun to mass here at the air-city of Berlin, quietly and unobtrusively, and guessed then that they meant to loose their attack upon the American Federation.

"The great tubes that were to move their cities through the air at such terrific speed were not yet finished, but they did not wait for these, launching out their great fleet of cruisers which with the Asiatic fleet outnumbered the American ships by two to one and should be able to overwhelm them, they thought. I think that their reason for starting that attack so soon, before their greater preparations were completely finished, was that they feared lest another spy like myself might discover their great secret and escape with it. So they let loose their fleets upon the American Federation to begin the war and forestall that contingency by beating down the American forces in a first tremendous attack. If that first great attack failed, they could swiftly complete the preparations that would make their air-cities of such immense speed and power, and then could launch all those air-cities upon the American ones in a second attack that nothing could resist.

"And even now, despite that daring and deadly attack which your ships made here upon Berlin tonight, and upon Peking, as you say, the great preparations of the European and Asiatic Federations are going swiftly on, and soon now those preparations will be completed and their great air-cities will be able to whirl through the air at that tremendous speed. And then will come the end, for our American Federation. The two hundred air-cities of the European and Asiatic Federations will flash upon our own nation from east and west, with all their millions of people and giant batteries of heat-guns, and will send our own slow-moving air-cities crashing to earth, will send all the scores of cities and all the millions of people of the American Federation into destruction and death!"

"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.

CHAPTER VI

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.

"It is a 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!"