Victory!
And now, down through the night upon the mass of our enemy cities, I sent Berlin slanting down toward them, at its full speed, and across them in a tremendous ramming swoop that sheared the towers from a dozen of them, even as they attempted confusedly to rise and meet the onthundering mighty city! Of that confused, disorganized and broken mass there remained of them at last hardly more than a score, still savagely belching death from their guns toward our half-hundred American cities and still sending an occasional one downward! But now as I whirled the giant mass of Berlin back toward them like a striking, gigantic bird of prey, I was aware of a tremendous battering and clanging of metal; and at the same moment Hilliard was shouting to me from the great doors that opened from the ante-rooms into the plaza.
"They're breaking down the doors, Brant!" he was screaming above the wild thunder of battle and the clamor of giant crowds that surged against those doors outside: "Fight on, though—we'll try to hold them back!"
"Hold them a moment longer!" I yelled back to him: "A moment more—!"
For now I sent Berlin whirling downward in another terrific swoop across the mass of our enemy cities and it sheared across half their mass, as they sought by rising or sinking to avoid that deadly swoop. But a half-score were left of them now, and now the half-hundred cities of the American Federation had gathered about them and were hammering them with terrific fire. No gun sounded now on Berlin, all its crews and soldiers were rushing wildly across it toward the electrostatic tower, as the city whirled and crashed and fought and ran there against their own allied cities! Caught in the terrific fire of the cities around them, the half-score European and Asiatic cities were going down with guns thundering into annihilation. But now I was aware at the same moment of a terrific uproar there at the tower's doors and of wild shouts and clanging blows there as our men fought to hold back the madly surging crowds outside!
Gripping the levers before me for one last effort, I jerked open the speed-control to its widest; and then, as it shot above the mass of the European and Asiatic cities, only a half-dozen in number now, I whirled the mighty mass of Berlin down upon them in one last tremendous swoop from which they sought in vain to swerve. They too were hesitating for a moment and then went whirling down to death, the last of the European and Asiatic cities save for Berlin itself about me! And then, as I brought that city to a stay, with the last of its companions crashing beneath and with the American cities hanging all about us now, there was a great clang of falling metal at the tower's doors, and back through them wild crowds without were pushing our black-uniformed defenders!
Connell and Hilliard at their head, our men were being pushed back through the ante-rooms, back toward the great circular room in which I sat at the controls; and, as I gazed out through the opening in the great periscope ball about me, I saw that an instant more would see them overpowering the last of our men, rushing in upon me to take the city's controls once more! But as I saw that, I reached forward, slammed down the lever that sent the city rushing downward! I gripped that lever and with a supreme effort tore it completely from its socket! The next moment a wilder cry came from the crowds fighting through the door and the crowds over all the city outside, as they felt that city whirling and swaying beneath them, felt it whirling down to death through the night to annihilation!
And as they uttered that tremendous cry, as the swaying city flashed downward, their struggle at the door forgotten in that awful moment of doom, I was aware subconsciously that I was staggering with Connell and Hilliard and our remaining men, up the narrow stair. Up to the great tower's second level and to its windows, beside which hung our cruisers with Macklin and a skeleton crew, holding them there beside the tower even as the great city whirled with awful speed downward! Then we jumped through those windows into the cruisers. And the next moment, just as the cruisers with ourselves inside them drove upward like light from the falling city, Berlin had crashed into the earth just beneath us, with a terrific, annihilating shock that buckled it, broke it, made of it but a great twisted mass of rended metal!
Then we were driving up toward the half-hundred remaining American air-cities that hung still high above, the giant city of New York still at their center. Up until we had soared above those cities and they lay beneath us, giant circles of brilliant light, scarred here and there with countless craters of fused metal! Their great crowds of peoples had surged, now, from their towers, out into their squares and streets. They gazed as if incredulously stunned by their deliverance, at the empty air and night about them, where so shortly before had hung the enemy that had been sending them to doom. In that moment, as we hung there high over them, in that moment of incredible surprise and dawning joy, it seemed that all the world was silent after the terrific thunder of that wild rushing battle that had riven earth and sky so short a time before. It was as though the night, and the winds about us, and the white stars overhead, were as silent with astonishment in that moment as the crowds on the cities that hung around and beneath us.