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.]
_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!