Air Wonder Stories, December 1929 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

—- CITIES IN THE AIR 543 “Tt was a last ruse,” Macklin swiftly explained: “Those pursuing ships were overtaking us; so, when their batteries fired a storm of heat-shells after us, we fired one of our own heat-guns back toward them at the same time, and our shells meeting one or two of the oncoming ones made them burst and flare there behind us. Then, at the next moment, we:sent our ship whirl- ing down as though struck and destroyed.” “But Connell, then!" I cried: “Connell got back with his-great secret, Atl the hundred European Federation air-cities are rushing across the Atlantic to the attack!” We leaped across the gap to the gangway; the door of Macklin’s cruiser closed behind us; and he gave the order that sent it, with the whole cruiser fleet; west- ward at swiftly mounting speed. Then he turned back to us. “Connell got back with his secret, yes,” he said: “And though the hundred European Federation air- cities are rushing westward and word has come that the massed hundred Asiatic Federation cities also are rush- ing eastward for the attack, they. will find the great air-cities of the American Federation massed together and ready for them! In the ten days since our return, every effort of ourcities has been exerted to make use of Connell’s knowledge, and to equip with the new tube-propellers that will give'them the same tremendous speed as our enemies. And now all our cities are massed together and waiting for the attack of our enemies.” CHAPTER 1X The Battle of the Air-Cities OW the hundred cruisers of our force: were cleaving the air westward at terrific speed, while Macklin and Hilliard and I stood together in the bridge-room of the foremost as it rushed on. Be- neath us, the gray Atlantic showed here and there through openings in the vapor-masses, and ahead the sun still hung in the western sky. And within a few minutes more, we saw that the vapor-layer beneath was thinning, and that now we were flashing not over the sea but over land; over green hills and valleys that we could glimpse rushing past far beneath us, I gazed to north and south in search of New York and the other coastal air-cities that should have hung there, but noth- ing was in sight. “AN our American Federation air-cities,” Macklin told me: “are massed together, hanging south of the Great Lakes. From Buenos Aires to Winnipeg, they've come.” “You think, then, that the European and Asiatic Federation air-cities are going to make a simultaneous attack from both sides?” I shouted to him above the roaring of our flight. He nodded emphatically. “Undoubtedly. The Asiatic Federation cities. are over the Pacific now, and are keeping in touch withthe European ones by distance-phone to time their attack to coincide from east and west. They know our own cities have massed together, must know now that they’ve been equipped with the great new speed-tubes also; but they’re coming on.” : “Two to one,” I said: “Two hundred air-cities at- tacking our one hundred. God, what:a battle it will be!” But now Hilliard had broken into our conversation, was pointing far ahead toward a fark, flat mass that stood out against the brilliant western sky, and toward which we were moving. The terrific speed at which we had been racing on for hours was decreasing now. Far beneath the land was still rolling back at great speed, long green plains now; since already we had flashed west over the Alleghanies. Then, as the dark mass westward grew steadily with our approach to it, other ships were driving suddenly beside our own, watchful patrols that drove down upon onr hundred cruisers and swiftly challenged them. Macklin answered those chal- lenges by the distance-phone, but for the moment I paid small attention to him, gazing forward with heart beat- ing rapidly at the great mass that hung high in mid- air before us, For, as we drove closer toward that mass, it was becoming visible to-our eyes as our goal, the hundred giant air-cities of the American Federation! The hundred mighty. American Federation air-cities were clustered there miles above the green plains, in a great circular mass, with New York, most colossal of all-of them, at the center! Cities that had long hung over North and South America from sea to sea, air- cities whose names were those of the long-vanished cities of the land, that once had dotted the surface of those continents. Boston and Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro and Chicago, Mexico City and Quebec, Val- paraiso and Miami—these and scores of others hung there in that great cluster. All the air-cities of the American Federation were gathered here about their air-capital of New York to withstand the tremendous attacks now closing in from east and west! Massed there as they were, the hundred mighty air- cities seemed, even as the European ones had seemed to me, but one vast plain of metal towers and streets. As far as the eye could reach, there stretched away the tremendous forest of those soaring towers, with here and there rising from them the taller spires of each city’s great electrostatic tower. And, everywhere among those towers, everywhere around the rim of each great circular air-city and at its center there loomed great batteries of giant-heat-guns; while here and there, on. the plazas of the cities rested the turret-like cubes of the recalled great air-forts, their own grim heat- guns protruding expectantly, And through streets and towers, between the batteries and around the air-forts and across the. plazas of the assembled cities, there swarmed the millions of their peoples, wild with excite- ment now as the last dread hour approached. And, massed ‘there above all the great floating cities, hung grim and: motionless the two thousand or more cruisers that still remained: of the American Federation’s eastern and western fleets. Tt was toward these massed battle-cruisers, ata level somewhat higher than that of the air-cities, that our own hundred cruisers were rushing. Over those assem- bled giant cities we raced, the great mass of. them below us almost hiding-the ground beneath. As we shot above them, I saw now that they had been ranged in a tremendous circle, the great capital of New York hanging in the center. Across the great ring of the air- cities we rushed; were racing at last above New York, toward its own giant power-tower. Then we had reached it, and were: sinking vertically downward, until our hundred cruisers came to rest upon the central plaza. Here, even as in Berlin, the central plaza was reserved always for the ships of the First Air Chief and his followers; so that, although immense crowds now beat through all the streets.and plazas about it, there were none around our. hundred ships. And in an instant Macklin and Hilliard and I were out of that which had brought us and hastening across the clear space toward the static-tower’s base, Preparations O*% past its guards and through the ante-rooms we strode, and in another moment were in the office Comicbooks.com > ‘aor Gai wf’ i