Captured
That mad whirl downward of our wrecked cruiser is now to me more of a memory of some strange and torturing dream than a memory of actual happenings. Flung sidewise and downward against the bridge-room's floor as our cruiser whirled over with that mighty crash from above, I glimpsed Macklin and Hilliard tossed about there with me, rolling over and over. The black gloom of night about us, the mass of our onrushing ships above, the colossal brilliant air-city beneath, the two wrecked cruisers that were tumbling downward with our own—all these things seemed to whirl about us like some great wheel of swift-succeeding impressions as we glimpsed them in that mad moment through the bridge-room's whirling windows.
It seemed but a single brief moment before I glimpsed the great mass of lights, the soaring towers, of the air-city beneath rushing up toward us with unearthly speed. Even as I glimpsed it another turn of the spinning ship had thrown Macklin and Hilliard over again, and this time I clutched for a hold, found one upon the cruiser's wheel. Then, with the droning of the still-operating motors and the cries of my two companions and of the crew beneath loud in my ears, I reached with a great effort toward the control of the motors, clinging to my hold with a supreme effort. My fingers found that control, but at the moment they did so I heard a last hoarse cry from Macklin, glimpsed but yards beneath us, it seemed, the smooth surface of one of the city's narrow streets, and then flung over the control, shifting all the power of the motors from our horizontal tube-propellers to our vertical ones. The next moment a blaze of light seemed all about us, there was a terrific crash, and as I was hurled back across the bridge-room by the impact, my head met the metal wall of it and consciousness left me.
When I came to it was to the realization of someone's hands endeavoring to revive me. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on a long seat of metal, with above me the metal ceiling of a white-lit room, and with Macklin and Hilliard bending anxiously over me. I strove to speak to them, desisted as my first movement made apparent to me a painful swelling on the side of my head. And then with their helping arms behind my back I sat up, looked dazedly about me. Then, the memory of what had happened rushed suddenly back upon me and I was filled with an abrupt dismay.
For the white-lit room in which I sat, seeming an ante-room to other chambers beyond, held beside us three a half-dozen of men in the green, tight-fitting uniforms of the European Federation's forces, alike save in colour to our own black uniforms. They were ranged before us, watching us closely, and there swung at the belt of each a shining, long-barrelled heat-pistol, one of those hand-weapons that throw heat-cartridges smaller than the great heat-shells and bombs, but as destructive and deadly on a smaller scale. These six European Federation soldiers had their heat-pistols ready beneath their hands, and were contemplating us intently. And as I saw that, and glimpsed also through the open door to the right of us a great, smooth-floored plaza and immense buildings towering up into the outside night, brilliant with lights, and heard the roar of the crowds that seethed among those buildings, I remembered all that had befallen us, clutched Macklin's arm tightly.
"The cruiser fell!" I exclaimed. "I remember the crash, now—then this is Berlin, Macklin, and we're captured!"
"Captured," Macklin quietly said. "You and Hilliard and I were the only ones to survive our cruiser's crash, Brant—and we survived only because we were in the ship's bridge-room, its upmost part, when it crashed. You had been stunned, and before Hilliard and I could recover from that crash the European guards had swarmed up over the wreck and captured us, taking us here to the great central electrostatic tower."
"We three the only survivors?" I repeated. "Then—then all our crew—?"
Macklin did not answer, but as his eyes held mine I read my answer in them, and as I did so something hard seemed to form in my throat. Our crew—the hundred cheery lads that had manned my cruiser for long, and each of whom I had known by name—and all annihilated in that great crash downward which we three in the bridge-room had alone escaped. I felt Macklin's understanding grip on my shoulder, and then we were suddenly recalled to realization of our position as a door in the ante-room's left side clicked open, another green-uniformed figure emerging from within. He spoke a brief order to our guards in the European tongue, that Latin-Teutonic combination of languages which was universal throughout the European Federation and which I myself spoke and understood to some extent. Instantly our guards motioned us to the door from which the other had emerged, and as we passed through that door before them we found ourselves in a larger and circular room, white-lit like the first.
It was, I saw instantly, the central control-room of the great power-tower, of the whole great air-city of Berlin. Like the similar control-room in the power-tower of New York it held on its walls panel upon panel of dials and gleaming-knobbed switches, while at the center of the room were also six great controls that directed the great air-city's movements through the air in any direction, and the single power or speed-control. Beside these was another great raised table-map, this one mounted upon a solid block of metal, with upon it the red circles of the world's air-cities. And beside that map there sat now a dozen or more men in the same green uniform as our guards, though with metal wing-like insignia upon their sleeves. They were, I knew without asking, the highest Air Chiefs and officers of all the European Federation, gathered here in the control-room of that Federation's capital city.