CHAPTER VIII
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."