Avoiding the Ambush
Now it seemed as though in all the world was nothing but thundering guns and bursting shells; for now as they came nearer toward each other the three great circles of cities were exchanging a veritable tempest of heat-shells upon each other. Watching that hell of battle through our screens, we three sat tensely there. Yarnall's eyes were intent upon the advancing armadas; Connell, gripping his distance-phone, was barking orders to the great cities that were thundering about us. The two giant circles of the enemies' cities were very near our own now, rushing toward us at their tremendous speed; and, as they thus neared us, it seemed that nothing could surpass the tremendous roaring broadsides that were hurled from city to city. I saw Amsterdam and Madrid staggering a little behind their fellows, reeling beneath our awful fire, saw Hong-Kong in the Asiatic forces, its great towers all but levelled by the flaring heat-shells, plunge suddenly downward as more of those shells reached its motors! But in our own mass now New Orleans was plunging likewise beneath the fire of the advancing fleets; and St. Louis was swaying as though badly hit!
But at that moment there came an abrupt exclamation from Yarnall; and then we saw that the two advancing circles of the enemy cities, rushing toward our own, were changing their form, were changing swiftly into two great crescents of which the horns of each were toward us. Those two giant crescents were moving to join each other, to form one great circle; and, if they did so, our own mass of cities would be completely surrounded by the overwhelming numbers of our enemies, the easy target for all their mighty batteries. We would inevitably be annihilated by the enclosing circle of the enemy. But, even before I had understood that maneuver, Yarnall's swift order was flashing out to all our gathered cities.
"North at full speed for all cities! Unchanged formation!"
The next instant our whole great mass of cities was moving, was moving with swiftly mounting speed northward! For, as his order sounded I had jerked open the speed-control before me, had flung back one of the direction-levers. And, as I did so, there had come a great droning of motors from beneath, resounding even above the madly-thundering guns, flinging all the mighty city of New York northward. Also there came the great hissing of the numberless new tube-propellers that were jerking it swiftly forward! And, as New York leaped northward at my touch, all its great batteries still detonating, so were all the great air-cities that ringed us leaping northward, and all their guns were still thundering toward the advancing armadas!
But now the enemy had seen our swift leap northward, and, as their commanders guessed our purpose, they sent their own two crescents whirling toward us with even greater speed to enclose us before we could escape! For the next moment it was a race between the three great city-masses, a race in which our own sought to evade the two that closed upon it from either side. And, as our cities and theirs raced through the air at tremendous speed, every gun still firing, it seemed that we must lose! For, just north of us, the two northward horns of the closing crescents had almost met, were almost joined before us! That northward horn of the Asiatic crescent held Shanghai and Colombo and Singapore and others; while the horn that projected from the European mass had foremost in it Moscow and Brussels and Algiers. And as we shot northward in that wild moment, to escape before those two horns could join, Yarnall sent flying forth a swift order for all batteries in all our cities to concentrate their fire now upon the foremost cities in the two closing horns to the north!
At once our own guns were thundering with redoubled fury; for, unless we could destroy in the next few minutes the foremost of those cities north of us, they would have closed upon us and brought our irretrievable doom. So, disregarding for the time all the other air-cities of the two closing crescents about us, all fire was concentrated upon the foremost cities of the two horns closing northward. A storm of heat-shells rushed thick through the air toward them; but at the same time the masses of European and Asiatic cities east and west of us were pouring down upon us the broadsides of their own giant batteries! And beneath that terrific fire, cities among our mass were falling swift in fusing destruction. St. Louis and Miami and Seattle were whirling to death as we raced onward; all the people in them who had been left alive by the shells were meeting annihilation in the great crash far below!
But, though we were being decimated by the fire of the closing crescents on either side, our own terrific concentrated fire was having effect upon the closing horns of cities north of us, and in the moments while we rushed toward them, Singapore, Colombo and Brussels had been sent down in white-hot destruction by our awful fire. The remaining cities in those two projecting horns were still rushing toward each other with their utmost speed to close the gap between them before our great circle could speed through it. With Moscow and Shanghai at their eastern and western tips, the two horns swiftly closed toward each other; while as swiftly and with every motor droning its loudest, with every heat-gun thundering northward, we shot onward. For a moment the whole great race was in doubt; for a moment it seemed to us that our great mass of cities could flash through that gap before it closed.
But as we watched in tense, terrible hope, even as our mighty cities raced northward, the cities of those closing horns seemed to make a last supreme effort, a last great burst of speed. They shot forward, their leaders Shanghai and Moscow almost racing into each other; and then, with all their tube-propellers reversed, they were suddenly halting a barrier of mighty air-cities all around us! But nothing now could halt our tremendous mass, so awful was our speed and so close were we to the enemy's line. I saw those cities looming suddenly gigantic before our own mass as we raced on; heard hoarse exclamations from Yarnall and Connell beside me; and then with a terrific shock, that seemed the shock of meeting worlds, our vast northward-flying mass of air-cities had crashed headlong into the great line of cities before us!