"Cruiser-captains and men of this fleet," he said, "we have beaten back the first attack of the European Federation fleet. And I have received but now a distance-phone message from the Second Air Chief, commanding the western fleet out of San Francisco. He reports that his own fleet, meeting the oncoming Asiatic Federation fleet, was able after a battle as terrific as our own to drive it back also, by using the same cloud-ambush device in the air-forts as we used here. Thus on this day to west and east we have accomplished the impossible."
He paused, and at his words, his news, a wilder cheer went up from all our ships and air-forts, hanging motionless there against the crimson of the dying sunset. But now, his voice solemn, the First Air Chief went on.
"We have won today, in east and west, but what we have won is but a respite. The mighty European and Asiatic Federations have gathered all their forces to annihilate our American Federation. Their great fleets have been cut in half by these two battles, but so have ours. And they not only outnumber us still by far, but they can build new cruisers faster than we. Undoubtedly within weeks, days perhaps, there will come another mighty onslaught from them, from west and east, an onslaught for which they have been preparing and are preparing some colossal and terrible plan or weapon of which we know nothing. It is some unknown device that it is rumored will enable them to move gigantic forces upon us. We must stand against them, nor can we hope to surprise them with the cloud-ambushes used by us today. Yet whatever forces they bring against us, whatever giant new weapons or terrific attacks they loose upon us, whatever is the great end of this Last Air War that today has started, you of the American Federation fleet can be proud always of the way this first battle was fought and won!"
There was silence a moment and then another shattering cheer. And then, the First Air Chief's cruiser leading, our fleet was moving smoothly westward toward the sunset, and toward New York. As we moved on our watchful patrols were already out from the fleet's main body to north and south, while behind us the great air-forts, slowly and ponderously, were following us, spreading into a long single line which with the ceaseless patrols was to guard us from any surprise attacks or raids. Already, by now, the dusk was gathering behind and about us, the sunset's light waning in the west. And by the time that our fleet came again in sight of New York the great air-city's outline was visible only as a mass of brilliant lights floating high in the gathering darkness. The mighty city, as we learned, had begun to move eastward to meet us upon hearing of the results of the day's battles, and now glimmered before us like a great mass of brilliant gathered stars, the giant beams of its searchlights sweeping the night.
Onward and down toward the mighty city shot our fleet, and as Macklin and Hilliard gazed down with me we saw the cruisers that landed upon the white-lit plazas across the immense floating city surrounded at once by joyful crowds, their weary crews carried high on shoulders. The whole great city, indeed, was rejoicing, though that rejoicing was not extravagant, being tempered by the knowledge that it was but the first attacks of the European and Asiatic Federations and that other and greater attacks might be expected to follow soon. So although the great city blazed with lights as our fleet slanted down toward it, its great towers and pinnacles and pyramids seeming like magic palaces of radiance floating there in the night of the upper air, yet its great watchful searchlights stabbed and circled still, and there came and went still high above it and to north and east and south the humming patrols, on guard now and challenging every craft that approached the city.
Then our cruiser was landing, and Macklin and Hilliard and I were emerging from it with our crew, mindless of the shouting crowds that surrounded every landing plaza, stumbling in our utter weariness through those crowds to our barracks, to fall into a stupor-like sleep of utter exhaustion....
The Respite Ended
It was the middle of the afternoon when we awoke, more than a score of hours later. Our quarters lay in one of the uppermost levels of the great barracks-tower, and as I rose and after dressing joined Macklin and Hilliard at the window, we could see far out over the air-city's great expanse. Above us blazed the afternoon sun shining on numberless patterned windows of all the gigantic metal towers about us. Far overhead there still hummed and flashed the ceaseless patrols, still watchfully hovering above and around New York. Beneath, on the city's landing plazas, there rested still the hundreds of cruisers of our returned fleet, and now we saw that upon the great central plaza where our own ship lay there were gathered now some two hundred and fifty of our twelve hundred and fifty ships, and that about these central ships were swarming a great horde of mechanics and attendants; caring for and inspecting their great motors, filling the liquid-air tanks that supplied constant breathable air, refilling their magazines with shining masses of heat-shells.
I turned puzzled toward the other two. "Strange that they should be giving such swift attention to those two hundred and fifty cruisers," I said.