He paused, and in the dusky cell Macklin and Hilliard and I sat as silent as himself, gazing toward him in sudden startled surprise. From far out over the great air-city about us came the droning of rushing ships and the dim roar of voices from beneath. But Connell was speaking again—
"You, nor anyone else, knew where I went when I left active service in our fleet, none but the first Air Chief, who sent me. That was a year ago, and he told me then that it was evident that the European and Asiatic Federations were preparing to attack us, and that rumors had been heard of some mighty new weapon or plan with which, if their ordinary forces failed, they would completely crush us. Hundreds of agents, said the First Air Chief, were being sent to the European and Asiatic air-cities to try to learn the nature of this new weapon, and I was one of those to be sent to Berlin, as I knew the European tongue thoroughly. I was to go in disguise, was to endeavor to work myself into the European Federation fleet, and was then to risk everything in an effort to find out what this great new plan or weapon was. And so in disguise, a year ago, I came here.
"Eight months it took me to work my way into the European fleet, eight months in which I was chiefly occupied in establishing my new false identity as a European citizen. Then I enlisted in the fleet, entering the motor-section. Of course, as a cruiser-captain in our own fleet, all types of motors were perfectly familiar to me, and I had no difficulty in swiftly rising through various promotions to the status of under-officer in one of the European cruisers. Then came at last the opportunity for which I had waited for months, and which I had begun to despair of ever occurring. I was ordered to report back from my cruiser to the First Air Chief's headquarters here in Berlin, and when I did report I was questioned by a board of a half-dozen European officers on my knowledge of motors and tube-propellers. It must have seemed to them that I had unusual ability and knowledge for a mere under-officer, for they informed me that I had proved satisfactory and that I had been selected to form one of the workers on a great new work that was being carried out secretly, and ordered me to report to a certain compartment in the great air-city's base.
"I reported there, eager now as I sensed myself on the trail of that which I sought, and found that there were whole vast compartments in the city's great base in which only selected men and certain high officers of the European fleet were permitted to venture. These were the compartments in which were placed the giant tube-propellers which are set horizontally in the great air-city's base, and which when the power of its great motors is turned into them move the city in any desired direction. Every air-city in the world has, as you know, these great tube-propellers that move it about. But as you know too, so much of the motors' power must be used in the life of the city, that the horizontal tube-propeller can only move the great cities through the air at an extremely slow rate of speed. It is a predicament which cannot be altered, either, by adding more motors, since to add them you must add to the city's size, and so the problem remains the same.
"But now, as I found when I first entered those compartments, these European Federation officers and inventors had solved that problem! They had devised a way that would enable them to send their gigantic air-cities rushing through the air at almost the speed of a cruiser itself! They had done this by devising a wholly new form of horizontal tube-propeller capable of infinitely greater tractive effect on the air and rotating at a much higher rate of speed. Thus the great air cities, miles across and with all their towers upon them, could rush through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, needing only to use their vertical tubes when they were hovering motionless in mid-air or were moving very slowly.
"And this was the great weapon, the great plan, of the European and Asiatic Federations! For I saw at once that it was a great weapon indeed, a terrific weapon which would enable them to annihilate all the air-cities and peoples of our own nation. You see what it meant? It meant that they could gather together all their scores of giant air-cities, outnumbering our own one hundred cities by two to one, and could rush over the oceans at awful speed toward our American air-cities, could fall upon them with all the giant batteries of heat-guns with which each colossal city is equipped, like our own. And because our own would not be able to move at that tremendous speed, because our own air-cities could only move at a comparatively creeping rate through the air, they would be able to mass their outnumbering forces around our own cities and blast them from the air, annihilating them and all the millions of our people inside them, sending them hurtling to earth in titanic fusing wrecks!
"To rush forth to battle, to the annihilation of our own cities, in their great air-cities! To send those gigantic cities of the air, Berlin and Peking and Tokio and all the scores of others of the two great Federations, thundering through the air to battle, each with its masses of towers on it. They have made provision for all people who are not entirely engaged in battle, to descend to the earth and remain there in specially constructed buildings. This will help also to reduce the weight of the cities. That was their great plan, their great weapon, and I knew that with it, even as they said, they could burst forth and annihilate our own air-cities. But, holding still to my work there in the lower compartments, I strove to penetrate the heart of the secret, the design of the great new horizontal tube-propellers which were to accomplish this, to send the mighty cities rushing through the air at such immense speed. Each of the great air-cities of the European and Asiatic Federations, as I learned, was being secretly equipped with these new tube-propellers, and I knew that if I could learn their secret, could take that secret back with me, our own American air-cities could be equipped with the new tubes likewise and could meet the attacking cities at equal speed, on equal terms, even though outnumbered.
The Great Danger
"So I endeavored in every way to penetrate the secret of the new tubes, to ascertain their construction, which was jealously guarded by the European and Asiatic Air Chiefs. And at last, hardly a month ago, I did that, was able to make my way from my own work to one of the great tube-propellers which was being installed in another compartment, and by taking a place among those working on it was able to learn the details of its construction. That construction was simple enough, I found, amounting in fact to hardly more than a use of many smaller tubes within the main tube-propeller, smaller tubes which drew air from different directions upward and ahead, and thus by their shaping and construction were able to fling a great air-city supported by them onward through the air at that tremendous speed. I had learned the great secret for which hundreds of our agents had sought, and needed only to escape with that secret.