Cities in the air

By Edmond Hamilton
Edmond Hamilton
Here is one of the most extraordinary stories that it has been our good fortune to read. For sheer audacity in construction, excellence in science and breath-taking adventure, this story undoubtedly stands in the foreground of science air-fiction stories of the year.
The recent advances in aeronautics where airplanes have been in the air for weeks at a time without coming down to the ground, point the way for tremendous achievements in the generations to come.
City life today is a conglomeration of structures close together. We have buildings now that house as many as 40,000 people at one time and soon we will have single business buildings that will house 100,000 and more individuals at the same time. Furthermore, every doctor will tell you that living at the surface of the earth is usually unhealthy because of the dust and the high density of the air, which gives rise to most pulmonary diseases, particularly consumption, colds and the like. At high altitudes such diseases tend to disappear. Therefore physicians usually send their afflicted patients to the higher altitudes.
You may be sure that conditions such as are described by the author of this marvelous story will come about sooner or later.
We also know that this story will arouse a great storm of discussion among our readers, due particularly to the audacity of the author in picturing his ideas as to future aviation—which by the way will not seem so fantastic two hundred years hence as they might seem now.
Captain Martin Brant, of American Federation Air-Cruiser 3885!
As the high clear voice rang through the bridge-room of my racing cruiser, I turned toward the distance-phone from which it issued. Pressing a stud beneath the instrument I answered into it.
Captain Brant speaking.
Order of the First Air Chief to Captain Brant: You are informed that the European and Asiatic Federations have combined in alliance to launch a great and unexpected attack upon the American Federation. The European Federation fleet of five thousand air-cruisers is now racing over the Atlantic toward New York and other eastern cities, while the Asiatic Federation fleet of the same size is heading over the Pacific toward our western coasts. All American cruisers patrolling east of the Mississippi, including your own, are ordered to head at full speed toward New York, where our eastern squadrons are assembling to meet the European Federation fleet. Upon arriving there yourself and all other squadron commanders will report at once to the First Air Chief.