As we poured down into its ante-rooms, its guards rushed toward us and their own heat-pistols came up; but they too were falling in scorched heaps a moment later, and we were dashing through the ante-rooms toward the great circular inmost chamber that held the inmost controls of this great air-city of Berlin! Through those ante-rooms we burst, the surprised guards falling lifeless and burnt before us, and then into the inmost circular room! All around its panelled walls moved green-uniformed attendants who whirled with surprise from their switches and dials at our entrance; while at the room's center there was what seemed at first to be a great dull-glass globe! We knew that that globe enclosed within itself the great table-map and controls of Berlin; and now there were bursting out, through an opening in that globe, the three green-uniformed men who had been within it—the First Air Chief of the European Federation and the two officers who with him had been controlling the movements of all the mighty combined European and Asiatic cities!
The Captured City
As the leader saw me, his swarthy face lit for a moment with a flash of recognition, of astonishment; and then he and his fellows were leaping toward us, their hands flashing down toward the heat-pistols at their belts as the attendants around the room jerked forth their weapons also. But as they did so, our own heat-pistols flashed up and for the next instant the great room seemed full of flares of blinding light as the cartridges burst among them, sending them staggering and swaying and falling in seared heaps! I shouted to my men swift orders that sent a score of them to the great switch-panels to take the places of the attendants there; while the remainder rushed toward the great doors that opened from the tower's lowest level into the plaza outside. Swiftly they closed those doors, barred them and massed behind them, and then I was rushing toward the great dull-glass ball at the room's center.
Inside that ball stood the great table-map upon its great block, while beside it were the six levers and speed-knob which controlled the speed and direction of Berlin. As I took the seat before them now, I gazed about me, and saw that the great ball's interior was in effect a great periscopic screen itself, one in which I could gaze in any direction through the other great ball above the static-tower's tip. And now, gazing into it around me there, I could see that in the outer night there stretched still the giant ring of the enemy cities, of which this Berlin was the heart, surrounding our own survivors and hammering them still with that deadly fire which would soon bring them crashing to earth. Far out over that mighty field of battle, its brilliant lights and blinding heat-flares stabbing the darkness, and its thunderous roar of guns shaking the air, I could gaze; while even at the same moment I heard, high above, Connell and Hilliard and their men engaged fiercely in holding the guards in the upper tower back. At the same instant came a sudden knocking, an alarmed rapping and then a battering and crying of voices against the great tower's door from outside; as the alarm spread from the tower's upper levels!
Disregarding all these things, I grasped the controls before me, watching the scene all about the great city through the periscopic ball about me. Swiftly I jerked open the speed-knob, at the same time slamming down one of the direction-levers; and, as I did so, I saw that the whole great city of Berlin was soaring up now above the ring of cities in which it had hovered, until it was a little above their level. And then I thrust back the lever in my hand and jerked down another; as I did so the mighty air-city of Berlin, the titanic air-capital whose controls we had captured and which lay now in my hands, was driving sidewise toward Geneva, that hung beside it in the ring. Toward it we sped, driving at top speed toward it at a height a little above it, so that our colossal base was on the level of Geneva's upper towers. And with set teeth I drove Berlin onward, and in the next moment its great base had sheared right across the upper towers of Geneva, had mowed down those great towers like blades of wheat before a reaper!
Then as Berlin drove on from above it I saw Geneva wavering in mid-air behind us for a moment, and then crashing down to earth through the night! I had mowed away the great electrostatic tower whose collection of cosmic energy held it aloft, and Geneva went crashing down to earth through the darkness like some giant comet of blazing lights plunging to doom! And then, beneath my hands, Berlin was driving still onward across and over that great ring of enemy cities, shearing now in the same way across the towers of city upon city in that ring. Stockholm and Cape Town and Bucharest fell as I mowed their power-towers from them; and to them that awful spectacle of Berlin rushing upon them and sending them to doom, crashing across their great towers, must have been utterly stunning and inexplicable in that wild moment!
On—on—around the great ring I held, almost insane with wild fury and excitement in that moment of triumph, driving through the night on our captured air-city and sending city after city whirling to death. I was dimly aware that the fighting above had ceased. Connell and Hilliard and their men had wiped out the guards in the tower above, and they had rushed down to defend the electrostatic tower's doors, against which a wild battering was resounding now. Huge crowds were surging madly against the tower as they felt their great city rushing through the night and crashing in wild destruction across their fellow-cities! But, in the wild excitement that was surging through me now, I paid no attention to all about me; for surely I was swaying such colossal forces as no man ever had swayed before.
The European and the Asiatic cities were breaking from me, in wild panic, disorganized and shattered; since there came now no commands to them from this city of Berlin that had held their commander. And as they broke into a disorganized mass, the half-hundred American cities massed in the center, who had seen the terrible havoc that Berlin, beneath my hands, was wreaking upon their enemies, were themselves rushing to the attack once more; and all their guns were thundering toward the disorganized mass of their enemies!
Up toward Berlin from that mass as we rushed forward there rose to meet us the giant air-capital of Peking, battered, scarred; its commander seeking to stay this crazy destruction its sister-capital was wreaking upon their own forces. Up it came; and for an instant it seemed that Berlin and Peking must crash together bodily, but with a last wrench of the speed-control I sent Berlin racing higher. And then, as we met Peking, crashed over it, that mighty capital's power-tower also, with its other clustered towers, was sheared from it by our great base. Peking was wavering for a moment and then went whirling down to death! Yet even as it wavered, slipped and fell, its great guns were thundering savagely upon us until it had crashed to earth far below!