Air Wonder Stories, December 1929 — page 63: what you’re looking at

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

CITIES IN THE AIR 541 Sitting astride that opening, while Hilliard watched anxiously behind me, I placed the metal angle I carried upon the flat metal sill of the window, one end of its angle catching on the sill while the other end, to which my leather rope was fastened, pointed straight down- ward toward the great plaza a thousand feet beneath. Then, holding to that leather rope, I slid out of the window’s opening; and hung: by my hands-from the slender rope: with only empty-air between me and: the plaza far below. Tensely I swung there in that -mo- ment, but the metal-angle caught-in the sill held my weight.- And so, sliding: down the leather rope fasteried to it; I felt my feet strike in a moment against the sill of the window below. Another moment and I stood upon that sill; crouching within that window’s opening. The window in which I crouched: opened-into one of the great upper corridors of -the electrostatic tower; but I knew that to venture: back into the building, swarming now with guards, was to meet death, nor did I plan-to do so. Giving my leather rope a twitch, I worked loose-the angle resting on-the sill above; and, when that dropped toward me, I placed it onthe sill on which I stood, and the next moment was. sliding down-to the window below, And now above me Hil- liard, using his own: metal angle and leather rope in the same way, was following me, was sliding from win- dow to window after me, down the smooth side of the mighty pinnacle to the street: far below. Down—down —like: two strange insects we crept. downward from window to window. None in the streets below glimpsed the two tiny shapes crawling down the mighty tower's side; for: the darkness had deepened now, and. in the plaza directly beneath us. there were none of the crowds that swirled: elsewhere. Our greatest danger, indeed, was that we would be seen by someone inside the tower as we swung down from window to window; and twice-I was forced to hang fora few seconds from my leather rope above a window inside which I could hear voices, Yet. still down and down we swung, praying that the regular: line of windows in the static-tower’s ‘sidé, extended unbroken clear to its base; for otherwise we were lost. Down and down we went, moving more hastily now despite the awful hazards of our progress; so hastily that once Hilliard’s hook or angle slipped halfway: out from the sill upon which-it hung, and all but precipi- tated him down. to. death before he could slide into the window beneath: him. But now we were within the last dozen levels of the plaza’s surface,.and were down with all the eagerness of renewed hope. For in the-plaza there beneath us there lay. still the unguarded cruisers, their officers:and crews gathered in the great tower down which we-were creeping. Another level—another—and down we swung through the dusk, in such a descent-as surely man never had made before. The plaza-was close beneath, the window of our cell now far above. From far around that plaza, from Berlin and from all the air-cities about, we heard the great hum of final preparations being made. I knew they were ready now to sally forth upon their gigantic attack. But we were within the last. few levels of the plaza, now, swinging down with mad haste from window to window. toward its smooth sur- face. And then it was, when we were within a few yards of that surface, that I heard a dim cry from far above. “Down now with all your strength, Hilliard!” I cried to my friend above me. “They’ve come to our cell after us—are giving the alarm!” “The nearest cruiser there below!” he exclaimed thickly as “he swung madly down after me. “We'll make it-yet!” But now the cry of our guards high above was being taken-up and® repeated by other voices in the great electrostatic tower, That cry was.coming down through it from level to level, even as we swung from the last window to the level-plaza, And, as we staggered across it, toward the open door of the nearest cruiser, there came a series. of popping detonations from above and the next moment little flares of terrific heat were. burst- ing all about us-as the guards shot their heat cartridges down toward us! From their-great height and through ‘the dusk: their aim was poor,-and ina. moment more we were at the cruiser’s open door. But now the alarm was spreading over-all the tower behind us, and at the same moment that we flung ourselves in through the cruiser’s open door, slamming it behind us, we heard a wild clamor of voices fron the power-tower’s base! The next instant, though, we were bursting up-into the cruiser’s bridge-room and for a moment of agony I fumbled at-its controls, set differently from those of our American criisers. Then the motor-stud had clicked beneath. my fingers and, as the great. electric totors beneath:droned suddenly-loud with the current rushing through them, I sent all their power into the cruiser’s tube-propellers. Up it went rushing, up and away_at terrific speed and ata steep slant, even as a mass of green-uniformed figures burst from the electro- static tower into the plaza! Out and over that plaza at terrific speed we shot, out and-upward at such awful Motnting velocity. that, before the great. batteries of heat-guns around us could turn, before the alarm from the power-tower- had time to spread, we were, whirling up and through the dusk over all-the massed towers anid gleaming lights of the great air-city Berlin! Out and over—and now as-we soared tipward into the rarefied levels-of the air like a shooting-star, our cruiser was driving outward over. the cities, stabbing westward through the air; literally chasing the sun that had disappeared hours before.. From Berlin behind us there rose a hundred cruisers, soaring in swift and deadly pursuit! But so swift had-been-our rush, so tardy had been the alarm of our escape, that before the great batteries-of Berlin could blast us from the air we were beyond them; and before the other: massed air-cities over which we were rushing could receive that alarm we:had-split the air westward above them, and had rushed out from over- the last of their titanic floating masses:and into the night! “We're clear- of the cities!” £ yelled to Hilliard over the thunderous droning of:our motors and the roar of winds aboutus. “If we-can shake off these pursuing cruisers we'll win back across the Atlantic yet!’ “But their whole battle-fleet is: rising now!” cried Hilliard, gazing back, “And now all their air-cities are beginning to move westward too—all their hundred air-cities are moving west to the attack?” Across the Atlantic ESPITE the wild peril of our rushing ship, I felt for a moment all the blood congealing around my heart as Hilliard yelled:those words, atid I looked back- ward-for one last glimpse. For there, behind us, behind the hundred ships that were pursuing us, the whole two thousand-cruisers of the. European battle-fleet had risen and were coming westward also. They were not pur- suing us so.much as they were speeding westward ac- cording to their plan, moving after us in a great cres- cent formation! And, behind them, we could see now all the hundred: gigantic.air-cities of the European Fed-