Air Wonder Stories, December 1929 — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SO ae a a a 538 AIR WONDER STORIES Swiftly, though, the numberless pursuing cruisers were converging upon it, and then, as we strained our eyes to see the flying gleaming craft, there came a greater thundering of guns as all the suddenly-alarmed bat- teries at the air-city's westward edge loosed their shells upon the fleeing cruiser! That cruiser. seemed to halt for a moment unaccountably, there was a great blind- ing flare that could be made only by heat-shells strik- ing, and then the cruiser, the cruiser that held Macklin and Connell and’ all the American Federation’s fate, was reeling blindly downward and out of sight, whirl- ing lifelessly downward toward the earth far below! CHAPTER VII The Great Movement Starts TUNNED and stupefied, Hilliard and I gazed S out in that moment from our window, out through the dusk above the air-city to where the cruiser of our two friends had plunged to death. I think now that for those first few moments. neither of us was able completely to comprehend what had happened, to comprehend what malign fate it was that had sent our friends down to death there:as they seemed making their escape. Staring forth blankly, we saw the ctuisers that had been pursuing them, that had been overtaking them, turning back now toward the air-city, heard a cheer rolling across that city as the crowds in its streets witnessed the destruction of the fleeing craft, the flare of the shells that had destroyed it. That great roaring cheer from beneath penetrated at last into my brain with realization of what had hap- ned. ee Macktin—Connell—” I whispered. “Macklin and Connell—gone—and the fast chance to warn our Fed- eration gone—” Hilliard’s eyes were bright with unshed tears, “Our last chance,” he said. Looking back, I think now that it was not the passing of our one chance for freedom, nor the passing even of otir one chance to carry Connell’s great secret home- ward, that weighed upon us most in the following time, Tt was the swift passing of our two friends, of Macklin especially, who for long had formed with Hilliard and tyself the trio that commanded my cruiser, that stab- bed’ us most in those first following hours and days. Prisoned there as before, but two of us now where there had been four, we waited now in a certain heed- lessness for the doom that we knew awaited us and our Federation. The wild break for freedom that two of us had made and that had ended in those two’s dest“uction, had apparently not changed the plans of the European First Air Chief in regard to us, and we knew that at the end of the designated fortnight, less than ten days hence now, we must either reveal all our knowledge of the American forces, which we could not do, or suffer death. We knew, too, that even as Connell had guessed, it was at thé 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 Euro- pean 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 thou- sands and placed in all our own American air-cities. If Connell had escaped! But Connell had not es- caped, 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 out- side 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, altho 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-uniform- ed officials unceasingly moving in and out of the head- quarters 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 tremen- dous 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-mount- ing 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 flash- ing 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 comicbooks.com