CHAPTER IV
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!