A Single Chance
Intently for a moment we listened without moving; but there came no
sound of alarm from without, nothing but the occasional voices of the
guards. And now we grasped another of the metal bunk-supports, and
wrenched its metal strip loose from the wall with another tremendous
effort. We had in our hands two metal strips, each of some three feet
in length. These we now bent swiftly into two L's or right angles of
equal sides, using all our combined strength on each to bend the strong
metal. Then, swiftly loosening the long, strong leather belts that
criss-crossed over our black air-jackets, we formed of them swiftly two
leather ropes ten feet in length. Each of these we attached to one of
our metal L's, making each fast to one of the jagged, broken ends of
one of the bent strips. Then, panting from our swift efforts, we stood
erect, and moved toward our little window.
Night lay over the world now, and from our window we saw the cities
illumined by their lights stretching out to the horizon. On the landing
plazas of the air-city beneath us rested the great European Federation
battle-fleet. In the plaza directly beneath us, that which surrounded
the base of our great electrostatic tower, there rested but a few score
of cruisers, those of the commanders who were now at the headquarters
inside the great tower's base. The plaza was practically deserted; for
it was the evening meal. For a moment I stood there at the window,
gazing out over that tremendous mass of giant air-cities. Then,
summoning all my courage, I flung my right leg over the window's base,
through its opening.
Sitting astride that opening, while Hilliard watched anxiously behind
me, I placed the metal angle I carried upon the flat metal sill of the
window, one end of its angle catching on the sill while the other end,
to which my leather rope was fastened, pointed straight downward toward
the great plaza a thousand feet beneath. Then, holding to that leather
rope, I slid out of the window's opening; and hung by my hands from the
slender rope with only empty air between me and the plaza far below.
Tensely I swung there in that moment, but the metal angle caught in the
sill held my weight. And so, sliding down the leather rope fastened to
it, I felt my feet strike in a moment against the sill of the window
below. Another moment and I stood upon that sill, crouching within that
window's opening.
The window in which I crouched opened into one of the great upper
corridors of the electrostatic tower; but I knew that to venture back
into the building, swarming now with guards, was to meet death, nor
did I plan to do so. Giving my leather rope a twitch, I worked loose
the angle resting on the sill above; and, when that dropped toward
me, I placed it on the sill on which I stood, and the next moment was
sliding down to the window below. And now above me Hilliard, using his
own metal angle and leather rope in the same way, was following me, was
sliding from window to window after me, down the smooth side of the
mighty pinnacle to the street far below. Down--down--like two strange
insects we crept downward from window to window. None in the streets
below glimpsed the two tiny shapes crawling down the mighty tower's
side; for the darkness had deepened now, and in the plaza directly
beneath us there were none of the crowds that swirled elsewhere.
Our greatest danger, indeed, was that we would be seen by someone
inside the tower as we swung down from window to window; and twice
I was forced to hang for a few seconds from my leather rope above a
window inside which I could hear voices. Yet still down and down we
swung, praying that the regular line of windows in the static-tower's
side, extended unbroken clear to its base; for otherwise we were lost.
Down and down we went, moving more hastily now despite the awful
hazards of our progress; so hastily that once Hilliard's hook or angle
slipped halfway out from the sill upon which it hung, and all but
precipitated him down to death before he could slide into the window
beneath him.
But now we were within the last dozen levels of the plaza's surface,
and were down with all the eagerness of renewed hope. For in the plaza
there beneath us there lay still the unguarded cruisers, their officers
and crews gathered in the great tower down which we were creeping.
Another level--another--and down we swung through the dusk, in such
a descent as surely man never had made before. The plaza was close
beneath, the window of our cell now far above. From far around that
plaza, from Berlin and from all the air-cities about, we heard the
great hum of final preparations being made. I knew they were ready now
to sally forth upon their gigantic attack. But we were within the last
few levels of the plaza, now, swinging down with mad haste from window
to window toward its smooth surface. And then it was, when we were
within a few yards of that surface, that I heard a dim cry from far
above.
"Down now with all your strength, Hilliard!" I cried to my friend above
me. "They've come to our cell after us--are giving the alarm!"
"The nearest cruiser there below!" he exclaimed thickly as he swung
madly down after me. "We'll make it yet!"
But now the cry of our guards high above was being taken up and
repeated by other voices in the great electrostatic tower. That cry
was coming down through it from level to level, even as we swung from
the last window to the level plaza. And, as we staggered across it,
toward the open door of the nearest cruiser, there came a series of
popping detonations from above and the next moment little flares of
terrific heat were bursting all about us as the guards shot their heat
cartridges down toward us! From their great height and through the dusk
their aim was poor, and in a moment more we were at the cruiser's open
door. But now the alarm was spreading over all the tower behind us, and
at the same moment that we flung ourselves in through the cruiser's
open door, slamming it behind us, we heard a wild clamor of voices from
the power-tower's base!
The next instant, though, we were bursting up into the cruiser's
bridge-room and for a moment of agony I fumbled at its controls, set
differently from those of our American cruisers. Then the motor-stud
had clicked beneath my fingers and, as the great electric motors
beneath droned suddenly loud with the current rushing through them, I
sent all their power into the cruiser's tube-propellers. Up it went
rushing, up and away at terrific speed and at a steep slant, even as
a mass of green-uniformed figures burst from the electrostatic tower
into the plaza! Out and over that plaza at terrific speed we shot,
out and upward at such awful mounting velocity that, before the great
batteries of heat-guns around us could turn, before the alarm from
the power-tower had time to spread, we were whirling up and through
the dusk over all the massed towers and gleaming lights of the great
air-city Berlin!
Out and over--and now as we soared upward into the rarefied levels of
the air like a shooting-star, our cruiser was driving outward over the
cities, stabbing westward through the air, literally chasing the sun
that had disappeared hours before. From Berlin behind us there rose a
hundred cruisers, soaring in swift and deadly pursuit! But so swift had
been our rush, so tardy had been the alarm of our escape, that before
the great batteries of Berlin could blast us from the air we were
beyond them; and before the other massed air-cities over which we were
rushing could receive that alarm we had split the air westward above
them, and had rushed out from over the last of their titanic floating
masses and into the night!
"We're clear of the cities!" I yelled to Hilliard over the thunderous
droning of our motors and the roar of winds about us. "If we can shake
off these pursuing cruisers we'll win back across the Atlantic yet!"
"But their whole battle-fleet is rising now!" cried Hilliard, gazing
back. "And now all their air-cities are beginning to move westward
too--_all their hundred air-cities are moving west to the attack_!"
Across the Atlantic
Despite the wild peril of our rushing ship, I felt for a moment all the
blood congealing around my heart as Hilliard yelled those words, and I
looked backward for one last glimpse. For there, behind us, behind the
hundred ships that were pursuing us, the whole two thousand cruisers of
the European battle-fleet had risen and were coming westward also. They
were not pursuing us so much as they were speeding westward according
to their plan, moving after us in a great crescent formation! And,
behind them, we could see now all the hundred gigantic air-cities of
the European Federation, massed there in a colossal circular formation
about their central city of Berlin; moving westward also behind the
crescent of their fleet, they were flashing with terrible majesty
through the air in their circular-massed formation; at a speed that
mounted swiftly to two hundred miles an hour!
The great attack had begun!
Only a moment I gazed back upon that colossal spectacle never seen by
man before, and knew that in that moment, far on the world's other
side, the hundred great air-cities of the Asiatic Federation would be
rushing eastward; the two great forces of hurtling air-cities were
converging upon the American Federation. Then, as we shot forward with
our own greater and terrific speed, the vast massed cities and the
fleet before them had passed from sight behind us and only the hundred
grim pursuing cruisers were visible in the night as we hurtled on!
On--on--and now I shouted to Hilliard to go beneath to the cruiser's
motor room. He moved down toward them while I gripped the wheel
tightly, standing there alone in the bridge-room of the long great
cruiser that had but Hilliard and I inside it. And, while we hurtled on
at our maximum terrible speed, as the cruisers behind drove steadily
after us, we realized that we and our pursuers were outracing the
sun around the earth! We saw by the growing light that we were high
above the sea instead of land. The sea that we saw through breaks in
the vapor-layer, gleamed to the west of us with sunset lines. We were
over the Atlantic, and now, as hope of escape from our pursuers burned
stronger within me, there came a sudden faltering in the steady drone
of our great motors! I felt our cruiser lose speed in that moment,
knew that faltering to be caused by the circuit-breakers tripping at
the tremendous power we were using. But then after an awful moment
of hesitation the motors were droning as loudly as ever as Hilliard,
beneath, had thrown back the circuit-breakers in the connections that
conveyed the static electricity from the atmospheric charge about us
to our transformers. Only a moment had we faltered thus; but in that
moment the hundred pursuers behind had come swiftly closer!
Onward still, like some phantom, we rushed, minute after minute of
droning, racing flight, with the sunset ahead flaming brilliant now,
as we overtook it. Steadily, the long gleaming ships behind us were
creeping closer while the sun rose in the western sky. Though Hilliard
was working like a madman in the motor-room beneath, tending the motors
as a mother anxiously watches her child, he was but one and could not
do the work of a dozen. And so, on after us, they came; drawing toward
us so close that at last I knew that we could not win free of them in
our frenzied flight. For, although we had rushed on for a time that
seemed endless to us, and a few hundred miles remained between us and
the American coast, their leaders were so near now that another minute,
I knew, would find them using their bow-guns upon us.
Even as the thought came to me, there was a thundering detonation
behind us and then but a few feet to either side, a shining heat-shell
flashed past us. Another detonation, and another followed, and I knew
that not for long could we escape them thus; since with each moment the
shooting was becoming more accurate. So, just as a dozen of their bow
guns thundered again, I suddenly drove the cruiser downward in a flying
headlong plunge down through the vapor-layer beneath us; and, as the
pursuing ships plunged straight down after us, I sent our own cruiser
instantly whirling upward and through that layer once more!
It was a maneuver that gained us a moment's advantage; since when the
pursuing ships drove up through the vapor-masses again on my track,
it took them an instant to locate and shape their course after me. In
that instant we had moved a little from them; but now, remorselessly as
ever, they came on after us, as pursued and pursuing ships drove like
light toward the flaming western sky. On and on, on until again they
were close behind, until again their guns were beginning to thunder,
and then I repeated my former maneuver, my last resort. I dived
headlong downward again through the vapor-layer, and upward again, as
their ships drove after me. But, when I flashed up again through the
vapor-masses this time, I suddenly slowed my ship, slowed it and then
held it motionless there in mid-air, with cold of icy fear tight around
my heart in that moment! For, this time, half of the hundred pursuing
ships had not dived down after me but had flashed on ahead as I drove
down; and so, now, when I flashed up they hung before me, while the
remainder drove still toward me from behind! I was trapped at last
between their masses of ships before and behind me!
Slowing my cruiser, holding it motionless there with mechanical fingers
in that moment, I knew it to be the end. Our last moment had come.
The two masses of ships were moving toward me, from ahead and behind,
were moving toward our cruiser. Our only escape cut off, no twists or
turns now could save us; they were converging upon us, were moving
deliberately toward us from either side. Another moment, I knew, and
hundreds of heat-guns would thunder from them, hundreds of heat-shells
would send our ship downward in flaring, fusing destruction. Another
moment--
A great cry sounded beside me, and I wheeled to find Hilliard pointing
mutely upward toward a mass of long, gleaming shapes that were rushing
headlong down upon us from high above, that were diving headlong
down upon the European cruisers to east and west of us, raining a
hail of heat-shells upon them! "American ships!" My cry was echoing
Hilliard's. Great gleaming cruisers, outnumbering the hundred east
and west of us, were driving down upon those hundred with all their
heat-guns thundering! Then in the next moment, while our own cruiser
hung motionless, helpless there in mid-air, American and European
cruisers were whirling in a mad, swift battle about us, ships striking
and falling like lightning on all sides of us. And before we could
comprehend with our stunned minds what was taking place, the European
cruisers had suddenly dropped from that battle, had massed together and
were splitting the air eastward, rushing back eastward and disappearing
toward the mighty approaching armada of great air-cities and cruisers
of which they were the scouts.
Now from the mass of the American cruisers one shot toward our own,
level and hung beside our own ship, and as its door was flung open we
opened the door of our own. I stared at a tall figure, not crediting my
eyes.
"Macklin!" I cried as I recognized him: "Macklin! You got clear, then?"
"Brant--Hilliard--!" he was himself exclaiming: "It is you two in that
ship, then! We were sent on a last patrol out here, saw your ship
attacked by other European ships, came to your rescue--"
"We escaped from Berlin," I told him: "But you, Macklin, we thought you
and Connell dead, saw your cruiser struck by heat-shells and falling--"
"It was a last ruse," Macklin swiftly explained: "Those pursuing
ships were overtaking us; so, when their batteries fired a storm of
heat-shells after us, we fired one of our own heat-guns back toward
them at the same time, and our shells meeting one or two of the
oncoming ones made them burst and flare there behind us. Then, at
the next moment, we sent our ship whirling down as though struck and
destroyed."
"But Connell, then!" I cried: "Connell got back with his great secret.
All the hundred European Federation air-cities are rushing across the
Atlantic to the attack!"
We leaped across the gap to the gangway; the door of Macklin's cruiser
closed behind us; and he gave the order that sent it, with the whole
cruiser fleet; westward at swiftly mounting speed. Then he turned back
to us.
"Connell got back with his secret, yes," he said: "And though the
hundred European Federation air-cities are rushing westward and word
has come that the massed hundred Asiatic Federation cities also are
rushing eastward for the attack, they will find the great air-cities
of the American Federation massed together and ready for them! In
the ten days since our return, every effort of our cities has been
exerted to make use of Connell's knowledge, and to equip with the new
tube-propellers that will give them the same tremendous speed as our
enemies. And now all our cities are massed together and waiting for the
attack of our enemies."