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!