Air Wonder Stories, December 1929 — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

550 AIR WONDER STORIES mand; it raced on through the vapor-masses instead of beneath them! In the next moment we had shot eur own line upward again to race:side by side with-them still; but we were too late, for that moment ‘had given them, at their tre- mendous ‘speed, the advantage for which they sought. For in that moment, rushing on through the vapor- masses instead of beneath them, they had gained a little; so that when we shot upward again to their level they were ahead of us as wellas beside us! And then their line ahead of us was swiftly curving back and around our other side! As we slowed. instantly, to avoid a collision that would annihilate-us and all our mass, they swept the end of their longer line around the rear of our own, and thus in the next instant were forming a complete circle around our cities. They had at last accomplished their great object, had managed to surround our mass of mighty cities, outnumbering us still. As their circle closed lightning-like about us, we three sat in that moment as though stunned; and then, from all the air-cities that encircled us, a terrific thunderous fire was pouring upon us! Encircled, we were a per- fect target now for all the European and Asiatic gun- ners around us,. pouring all their mighty broadsides upon us. And now Yarnall had leaped to his feet, the tense agony in his eyes reflected in those of Connell and myself in that terrible moment. “They've got us!” he was crying hoarsely: “They’ve got us inside their circle at last—they’re hammering us to doom!” “Can't we break out?” I cried: “Break through this circle about us?” He shook his head, his eyes burning: “No—their circle is complete. around us now and we ’d only crash our own cities to earth—but we'll-try above and below!” With: the words, he gave a brief order and, as Con- . Nell’s voice flashed that order to all our confused mass of cities, they leaped upward in sudden concerted mo- tion, all their motors’ energy turned suddenly into their vertical lifting power. But, as they shot. upward thus, to win free of the circle about us, that circle lifted at the same’ speed as our own mass, hovering still around us and beating us still with all the relentless fire, of their massed batteries. And, when we shot suddenly downward in an attempt to escape from below: they sank downward at as quick a speed, were encircling us still, And now, beneath that awful hammering fire of all the massed cities that enclosed us, our own were beginning to stagger ; to sway and reel! The titanic circle of enemy air-cities about us and our own great throng of.cities, each a giant circular mass of belching flame, floating there miles above the earth; the thunder of-each city’s giant batteries, and the terrific brilliance of the storms of heat-shells that struck from city to city; the great glowing craters of metal that each striking shell made in a city, all these things seemed merged in the six periscopic screens that en- closed us like some chaotic and meaningless panorama! I was aware of Yarnall’s agonized expression, as we strove with every power that was ours to save our great air-cities from destruction. For now in our cluster, city after city: was falling beneath that deadly fire of fusing shells. Los Angeles, Winnipeg, Panama, and Nashville whirled down: one after the other. "And, though our batteries were still thundering their roar- ing answers, our surrounded cities were still striking savagely out, with the colossal batteries of New York still thundering loudest, I saw how swiftly we were being annihilated! For, raging there in fearful battle - OE SQ ae a ee high in the dusk between earth and stars, there was left now hardly more than sixty of our hundred air- cities; while in the circle about us there still hung, despite the giant blows we had struck them, a hundred or more of the European and Asiatic cities! And. with all their guns thundering into us, the odds were swiftly changing and becoming more in their favor! Finally I stood up, as though jerked to my feet by some strange force greater than myself, and wheeled toward the First Air Chief. “Tt’s the end now, Yarnall!” I cried to him above that thunderous roar of battle that seemed splitting all the night about us: “The end for all our cities within an hour if this keeps on!” “The end!” he said, his own face grim: “But there’s no escape—we can only meet it fighting!” My eyes held his fixedly in. that tense moment. “The hundred cruisers in the plaza outside!” I said: “The cruisers I had you keep waiting for me—that last crazy plan of. mine is our one chance now!” “Your plan?” he cried, a flicker of hope rising into his eyes, But when I explained that plan in a few swift words his eyes widened with sudden stunned astonishment, and he cried out: “The thing’s insane, Brant! You'll never make it!” “But it’s our last-chance!” I shouted to him as the thunderous drumming of doom all about us deepened, and two more of our cities crashed earthward. “It’s the one last chance to save our cities!” He paused there silent a second, then reached, wrung my hand tightly. “Then go, Brant! he said simply: “Take the hundred cruisers—and God grant that you are able to do the thing!” I shouted to the black-jacketed attendants who were working like tnadmen around the great room’s instru- ment-panels, cutting out motors that the heat reached, switching in spare motors and tube-propellers, keeping the mighty sustaining power of New York steady. Two of them leaped swiftly at my call, to the side of Yarnall to take the: places of Connell and myself. And then Macklin and Hilliard who had been working with them, were running toward us also, and we four were run- ning across the room and through the ante-rooms until we issued out from the electrostatic tower’s base into ‘the great plaza. Standing there in that plaza with the darkness gather- ing about us, there stretched from horizon to horizon a boundless mass of gigantic light-gemmed cities, our own and the titanic ring that encircled us. The myriad lights of those cities, though, by which their gun-crews worked the great batteries, were feeble in comparison to the tremendous and blinding flares of brilliance in all directions that were fountaining up in giant gouts of dazzling light. Across all those cities floating, there leaped and flew the heat-shell flares, and the thunder of the guns was deafening, titanic, like the thunder of a stream of falling worlds! Beneath that thunder there came to us thin, high cries, the wild cries of crowds. in-the towers of cities and in their streets and plazas. And high, high above all these, far, far over- head, began to gleam the pale mocking eyes of the dis- tant, watching stars. All about us, in that moment that we burst out onto the plaza, it-seemed that heat-shells were striking and flaring. But the static-tower itself was of a composi- tion that the shells could not harm, the rare refractory alloy that in air-cities is used only ‘for the vital power- towers. And, though shells had struck here and there at the plaza’s edge and on its surface, though there were on it and around it still-glowing craters of fusing COMmeweokes com ge ed ies a a“ s ee ee ee ee de ee Ps ‘ d « if = i ; i = Soe ey te ee Te ew ween ye