Edmond Hamilton

“ Now over all the great air-city, over all the mighty mass of Berlin was spreading a roar of alarm, and now the cruisers that had rushed up in pursuit were rocketing westward after that single fleeing one, the batteries beneath us holding their fire lest they strike their own pursuing ships. With our hearts pounding Hilliard and I saw that single little cruiser leap on, saw it shooting through the dusk until its gleaming shape was now far away from the great air-city, racing westward! ”

“ But now as I whirled the giant mass of Berlin back toward them like a striking, gigantic bird of prey, I was aware of a tremendous battering and clanging of metal; and at the same moment Hilliard was shouting to me from the great doors that opened from the ante-rooms into the plaza.
"They're breaking down the doors, Brant!" he was screaming above the wild thunder of battle and the clamor of giant crowds that surged against those doors outside: "Fight on, though—we'll try to hold them back!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ And still at ever-mounting speed, the hissing of power and the tremendous roar of winds increasing still, the mighty air-city was whirling on, its soaring towers of metal swaying back beneath the awful winds of their progress, whipping through high cloud-banks and out into clear air again, giving us flashing glimpses from our own wind-swept window of the ground far outward and beneath flashing back at immense speed as we shot onward, as all the colossal city sped on, at a velocity that I knew by then must be over a hundred and fifty miles an hour! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The titanic circle of enemy air-cities about us and our own great throng of cities, each a giant circular mass of belching flame, floating there miles above the earth; the thunder of each city's giant batteries, and the terrific brilliance of the storms of heat-shells that struck from city to city; the great glowing craters of metal that each striking shell made in a city, all these things seemed merged in the six periscopic screens that enclosed us like some chaotic and meaningless panorama! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A storm of heat-shells rushed thick through the air toward them; but at the same time the masses of European and Asiatic cities east and west of us were pouring down upon us the broadsides of their own giant batteries! And beneath that terrific fire, cities among our mass were falling swift in fusing destruction. St. Louis and Miami and Seattle were whirling to death as we raced onward; all the people in them who had been left alive by the shells were meeting annihilation in the great crash far below! ”

“ Down—down—with our batteries thundering still across the gulf toward Peking, whose own guns answered with as great a fury, though in their city as in ours, battery after battery was being silenced! Down—down—until the green earth beneath, lit by the descending afternoon sun, seemed just beneath us, rushing up toward us with awful speed as we shot down to it! Yet in that dread moment neither line of struggling cities straightened upward, each fearful of the other's gaining an advantage. In an instant more, it seemed, New York must crash together headlong into the earth. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the moment that followed, after our flashing circle of cities had thundered headlong into the line before us, all other sounds, all the thunder of countless guns and the drone of motors and the hiss of tube-propellers and cries of voices, were drowned in one tremendous splintering crash of metal upon metal. The giant mass of cities about us seemed to reel drunkenly in mid-air in that moment. New York at their center staggered from the awful shock transmitted to it. ”

“ The air between us and the armadas nearing on either side must have been filled with shells in that moment; for we saw tremendous flares there in mid-air as shells of ours met some of theirs and burst. But few of them did that, most of them whirling through the air to burst and flare in all their awful destroying heat and brilliance upon the air-cities!
In that instant, as the batteries of all three gigantic armadas thundered, it seemed that numberless fountains of brilliant light and terrific heat were springing into being amid the metal towers of all the three masses of great air-cities! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They moved away to north and south and east and west, to vanish as dark, dwindling spots in the skies, until New York alone of them remained hovering there high above the earth. And then, Yarnall's eyes returned to the screen beneath us, where there were revealed the great, shattered wrecks, laying half-buried in the green earth far below.
"We win," he said, slowly: "The American Federation wins; but at what cost? Two-thirds of the world's cities have crashed to annihilation and death, and a half of our own." ”

“ And, high in our tower-cell, Hilliard and I found ourselves gripped by the same tense feeling of anticipation. From our window as we watched the city, we made out the west, a dark spot rushing through the air toward Berlin, a spot that was growing steadily larger in size, that was broadening out into a large dark disk; and then as it came swiftly closer we saw with astonishment that it was a city, a giant air-city almost as large as Berlin itself! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”