Air Wonder Stories, December 1929 — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

CITIES IN THE AIR metal, few of the hundred close-massed cruisers that waited with their crews upon it had suffered serious injury in the awful course of the battle so far. “And now Macklin and Connell and Hilliard and I were racing across the plaza toward those cruisers, into the fore- most of them and up to its bridge-room. Then Macklin jumped to the controls, as I called an order into the distance-phone over the titanic drumming of guns. In the next moment our hundredcruisers. were driving up like mad things above the titanic battle raging there above. Up—up—through a wild inferno of rushing shells, up over all the struggling, thundering, reeling cities we sped, on the wild venture that was our last wild chance. As we drove upward, I now saw others of our cetitral mass of air-cities falling. Atlanta and Cleveland and Mexico City were whirling downward, giant masses of lights in which glowed countless great fusing craters of metal, gyrating insanely down through the darkness to crash in awful destruction on the surface of the affrighted earth far below! Hardly more than a half- hundred,-indeed, remained of all our air-cities now; and the odds against them swiftly lengthened, as they were hammered still upon an anvil of fire and death by the circle that hemmed them in. They were staggering ever swifter, were reeling and swaying so that within a few minutes, even as I had said, the remorseless fire from all about them would send them to earth also, and wipe the last of the cities and peoples of the American Federation from above the earth! But, as I saw that, our own cruisers were whirling on above that giant central mass, toward the great ring of enemy cities about them. Macklin at the con- trols, with teeth set, sent our ship and those behind it driving low above the awful combat with the storms of rushing shells from both sides thick about us. Ship after ship behind us was flaring and fusing and falling in white-glowing meteoric destruction, unnoticed and unheeded by any in the titanic thundering: battle be- neath! On—on—we sped, rocketing through the night, seemingly the only cruisers now in the air, since the two great fleets had all but annihilated themselves. Yet as we shot on, it seemed almost that no cruisers could exist in the air over that great battle; since in dozens, in scores, our own ships were falling, stricken by the tempests of shells through which we were rushing! z But now we were-teaching our goal, the giant Berlin that hung there in the enemy’s circle with all its mighty batteries thundering again our doomed cities. Down toward it our cruisers swiftly rushed, unseen by any in the wild confusion that swept that city below us; down until we saw plainly the terrific spectacle of thundering batteries and wildly-rushing men. Here and there were heat-shells bursting and flaring in dazzling death, as the guns of our own cities roared savage answer. Down toward it moved our ships, now hardly more than a score in number, until there loomed just be- neath us, that mighty central static-tower in which we had been so recently imprisoned! As we shot’ down toward it I beheld a glass ball above its tip, recognized that as similar in purpose to the periscopic-screens on our own tower's tip, and then we had shot down past it, until our score of cruisers hoved beside the great tower’s side, at the fifth level. Hovering there in that moment beside the tower, with all the wild confusion raging beneath, and the plaza below still empty, we were still unseen by any beneath, by any in the great batteries that were thunder- ing all around that plaza. Poised there in the darkness. sol we could see that the windows beside us were- bright- lighted; that guards were swarming in the static-tower’s upper levels, rushing to and fro. Then as our cruiser’s door swung open, just level with a window beside us, Macklin and Connell and Hilliard and I were springing forth from that door and across the narrow gap, through that window, our heat-pistols ready in our hands! And at the same moment there burst after us our crew, and from all the windows around that level, from all the cruisers hovering beside those windows, a stream of black-uniformed Americans with heat-pistols in hands were pouring into the tower's fifth level! Instantly the guards in that level were snapping their own weapons up toward us; but before they could fire a score of cartridges from our pistols had flicked and flared among them. As they sank lifeless in scorched, burned heaps of flesh we were racing through the other rooms and corridors of that level, killing the guards in it with our heat-pistols, the surprise of our. attack taking them unawares. So awful was the drumming of the titanic battle all around and outside, that no alarm of our presence penetrated to the levels above and be- low us, and, now with the last of the guards wiped from that fifth level, I turned toward my three com- panions, “Connell and Hilliard! Take half our men and find your places here in the tower, keeping anyone in ‘its upper levels from getting farther down -than ‘this! Macklin, watch with our cruisers outside—at this low height the batteries around the plaza can’t reach the ships, can’t pivot toward you—and be ready to keep anyone from getting into the tower from outside!” As they whirled to obey my orders with the other half. of our men, some hundred: and fifty in-number, I was running toward the cage-lifts. With:swift blows we destroyed the controls that guided them from level to level of the tower, and then we rushed toward the narrow stairs that led also downward. Another mo- ment and we were rushing down those stairs, while as we did so there came a scuffle of battle above us, and we knew that the alarm had penetrated to the upper floors of the tower and that the guards there were pouring down to battle. with Connell and Hilliard and their men. We leaped on downward, though, down until we had burst down into the fourth level. There our surprise was as complete, and before the guards there were aware of our presence, almost, we had sent our heat-cartridges flaring among them, had swept‘them from existence and were leaping down to the third level. And in that it went the same; and in the second below it, and then, with hearts pounding, we were rush- ing down into the first-level! As we poured down into its anterooms, its guards rushed toward us and their own heat-pistols came up; but they too were falling in scorched heaps a moment later, and we were dashing through the. anterooms toward the great circular inmost chamber that held the inmost controls of this great air-city of Berlin! Through those anterooms we burst, the surprised guards falling lifeless and burnt before us, and then into the inmost circular room! All around its panelled walls moved green-uniformed attendants who whirled with surprise from their switches and dials-at our entrance; while at the room’s center there was what seemed at first to be a great dull-glass globe! We knew that that globe enclosed. within itself the great: table-map and controls of Berlin; and now theré were bursting out, through an opening in that globe, the three gréen- uniformed men who had been within it—the First. Air Chief of the European Federation and the two officers sk