"Steady, Hilliard," I told him, my hand on his shoulder. "It's the end, I think—the end for our Federation as well as ourselves—but we must face it."
Now the air-city from the north was rushing closer, was hanging northward of Berlin, and we saw that it was Stockholm. And, even as it came to rest out there beside us, two other air-cities were rushing up from the south; looming larger swiftly and identifying themselves, when they too shot up to hang near our central city, as Geneva and Rome. And then from the west were coming others, Paris and Brussels and Amsterdam; while down from the cold east were speeding Moscow and Helsingfors and Leningrad. City after city was rushing from all quarters of the compass, from every part of the European Federation, until they filled the sky. Through the hours of that afternoon we watched their numbers grow until they numbered over a hundred. They had come from every part of the earth, over which the European Federation held sway. From the bleak eastern steppes, from the jagged peaks and green valleys of the Pyrenees, from the great ice-locked fiords of the north and from the blue plains of southern Africa, they were rushing at colossal speed to gather here in a great circle about their capital city—Berlin! Great air-cities, each of which flashed through the air at the same tremendous speed, each of which bore upon it great batteries of those giant heat-guns that nothing else in the air could sustain, each of which held upon it a soaring electrostatic tower and thousands of other clustered pinnacles. As in Berlin, the crowding, seething millions of its peoples had been left on the ground quarters prepared for them. The gathering of the cities! At last, with the coming of sunset, all but the last few of the Federation's mighty air-cities had gathered around Berlin!
By then, gazing out from our window high in the electrostatic tower, Hilliard and I seemed to be looking across a single gigantic city that stretched in mid-air as far as the eye could reach, so closely were the scores of great hovering air-cities hanging together! It was as though we were looking forth across an endless plain of clustered towers of metal, from which rose here and there the higher pinnacle of a city's power-source; a titanic plain of towers and streets of metal, crowded with millions of the European Federation's soldiery. And, as the blood-red sunset flamed eastward upon all this huge assemblage, now waiting only for the last of their number, something seemed to snap in my brain, and all the stoicism which I had summoned to meet our fate and our nation's fate abruptly vanished.
"We can't stay here while doom rushes upon our nation!" I cried madly. "Since they start out tonight—since our time is up and we die ourselves tonight—we'll go to death fighting for our freedom!"
But, now, it was Hilliard who endeavored to calm me. "It's useless, Brant," he said. "A few hours more; then all will be rushing west while the Asiatic Federation is moving east upon our air-cities. And at any moment now, before that attack starts, they will be coming here for us."
"But they'll not take us to a death like that!" I exclaimed, a cold, long-repressed fury surging up within me. "If we're to die we'll do it, striking a blow at our enemies!"
Like a caged tiger I paced the little cell's interior, growing shadowy and dusky now; the sun had disappeared. From the corridor outside came the voices of the guards, and at any moment I expected the door to swing open and admit those who would take us to a last examination at which our silence would bring immediate death. Already, far out over the great mass of scores upon scores of giant air-cities that filled the air about us, a great, complicated pattern of brilliant lights was gleaming through the deepened twilight; and now, from south and east and west, the last of the great European Federation's air-cities were assembling about that tremendous gathered mass of cities. Then, as I turned from the metal door which I had been examining in blind and futile rage, my eyes fell upon our bunk-racks and the strong but slender strips of metal that held them out from the metal wall, against which they were set diagonally. And, as I looked at them an idea, a last flame of hope, burned into my brain, and I turned swiftly to Hilliard.
"Those strips of metal!" I exclaimed, pointing toward them. "Those bunk-supports—it's a chance to escape! A chance that means death, Hilliard, I think—but death is upon us now in any case—"
Swiftly, almost incoherently, I explained to him the idea that had suggested itself to me. I heard his breath catch as he comprehended its appalling nature. Then I saw his eyes gleam as he realized that, inasmuch as almost certain death awaited us, death in escaping could not deter us, for we were already doomed. So, we grasped one of the metal strips and tried with all our force to tear its lower end loose from the metal wall. That lower end, set directly in the wall, seemed integral with its metal; and, as we pulled upon the metal strip, gasping with our great effort, muscles tired, we still kept on. We had to work quietly lest some sound betray us to the guards without. It seemed that we could never tear it loose. Straightening from the violent exertion, with dizzy heads, muscles aching, we paused for a moment, then reached to grasp the strip again, braced ourselves against the wall and exerted all our force upon it. It held for a terrible moment, then seemed to give, to bend—and then, with a little grating sound, we had pulled the strip loose from the wall into which it had been set.