We knew, too, that even as Connell had guessed, it was at the end of that fortnight, ten days hence, that the European and Asiatic Federations planned to launch their final gigantic attack of air-cities, since it was evident that they wished to gain their information from us only to use it immediately in their attack. For now below, in the city's base-compartments, the great new tube-propellers that were to whirl it through the air at such terrific speed were being completed, we knew, as in all the two hundred air-cities of the European and Asiatic Federations. The long months of experimentation over, it needed but weeks or days to rush those new tube-propellers into place. And had Connell escaped with his secret it might well have been, I thought, that even in the ten days left the new-type tubes could have been swiftly manufactured by thousands and placed in all our own American air-cities.
If Connell had escaped! But Connell had not escaped, Connell had plunged to death with Macklin, amid the flaring heat-shells. Prisoned there in our little cell, Hilliard and I despite that ever-approaching doom almost paid no attention whatever to all outside and about us, brooding there in silence hour upon hour as night followed day and day night. We had not, even, the slightest further thoughts of escape, although such thoughts would have been hopeless, for now our door was never opened save by the full score of armed guards outside. So, losing all thought and all hope of freedom, we sat on in our little prison high in the mighty tower, dead to all the unceasing rush of preparations and gathering of cruisers in the city about us.
But at last, upon the eighth day after the break of Connell and Macklin, and the second day before our approaching doom, there came an event which roused us suddenly from that renewed apathy into which we had fallen. For days we had noticed that the crowds in the streets were proving fewer and fewer, the only people now remaining being groups of green-uniformed officials unceasingly moving in and out of the headquarters there. There was finally made clear to us the reason of their activities. For, as we gazed forth from our window on the afternoon of that day, we seemed to sense a certain air of anticipation in the people that remained. They swarmed forth into the great air-city's streets; we heard in a moment more a strange great hissing from far below us, all around the city's base and edge; and then were aware that with that hissing sound and with a great tremor of power that beat through all its colossal metal mass, the great air-city was moving! Was moving not slowly and majestically as air-cities commonly move, but was leaping forward through the air with sudden tremendous speed. We knew now that most of the city's population had been removed to the ground and the movement toward the west had started.
Now came excited roars from the crowds beneath, as the giant mass that was Berlin leapt forward, and now as Hilliard and I leaned from our window with an excitement almost as great we caught our breaths. For we could see now, from the cloud-masses that lay beneath in the distance, that the great air-city was cleaving the air at a speed that was rapidly mounting to over a hundred miles an hour. Terrific winds were whirling all about our power-tower, as it shot through the atmosphere, and those same winds sweeping with titanic force through the city's streets and about its towers forced the crowds in those streets swiftly within the shelter of the structures. And still at ever-mounting speed, the hissing of power and the tremendous roar of winds increasing still, the mighty air-city was whirling on, its soaring towers of metal swaying back beneath the awful winds of their progress, whipping through high cloud-banks and out into clear air again, giving us flashing glimpses from our own wind-swept window of the ground far outward and beneath flashing back at immense speed as we shot onward, as all the colossal city sped on, at a velocity that I knew by then must be over a hundred and fifty miles an hour!
A colossal city, speeding through earth's atmosphere! Awed, despite ourselves, Hilliard and I clung at our window there as with all else in the city we sped on. A colossal city five full miles in its diameter, with all its works and streets and giant batteries of heat-guns, and rushing above earth at a velocity seeming almost unattainable! And even as we watched, we felt the great city slanting upward with the same terrific speed, climbing swiftly upward until the air about us was all but freezing and then diving down toward earth once more on a long, gliding swoop! Then it had turned in mid-air, was flashing back over its course, was going through maneuver after maneuver until at last the great hissing from its base ceased, and it hung at its former height above the earth once more, the crowds in its towers surging forth now to renew their excited shouts.
Last Preparations
Hilliard and I gazed for a long moment at each other. "The tube-propellers they were putting in—finished—," he said slowly, "And Berlin ready now for the great attack—"
"And all the other European Federation cities," I said, "and all those of the Asiatic Federation—all must be nearly completed now, their new tube-propellers installed also. And in two more days——"
In two more days! It was the thought that beat hammer-like in my brain and in Hilliard's in those hours that followed, those hours that were now closing down, one by one, upon the doom of ourselves and of all our nation. Two more days! Two more days at the end of which would have ended the fortnight of our imprisonment, when would come for us the death that had loomed larger and larger during each of those passing days. Two more days at the end of which the great air-cities of the European and Asiatic Federations would rush like whirlwinds over the oceans toward our own slow-moving and helpless cities, to beat them down with all the thunder of their giant batteries. Two more days!—and at the end of them for us and for all the great air-cities and all the millions of the American Federation, doom!