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!"