"And even now, despite that daring and deadly attack which your ships made here upon Berlin tonight, and upon Peking, as you say, the great preparations of the European and Asiatic Federations are going swiftly on, and soon now those preparations will be completed and their great air-cities will be able to whirl through the air at that tremendous speed. And then will come the end, for our American Federation. The two hundred air-cities of the European and Asiatic Federations will flash upon our own nation from east and west, with all their millions of people and giant batteries of heat-guns, and will send our own slow-moving air-cities crashing to earth, will send all the scores of cities and all the millions of people of the American Federation into destruction and death!" "Destruction and death!" Connell's voice seemed echoing still about us there in the silence when he had ceased, seemed beating like great drum-notes of doom in our ears. Macklin--Hilliard--they sat beside me in the dark cell as silent as myself. And in that moment we heard again, from outside and far beneath, the great throbbing roar of the life of all the mighty air-city about us, the humming rush of cruisers to and fro above it and the dull mingled voices of its great crowds, coming dimly up to our silent little cell high in the mighty electrostatic tower. Then suddenly I had risen to my feet. "Destruction and death--but there must be some way in which we can prevent it!" I cried. "What way is there?" Connell's tone was low, hopeless. "We only know what looms above our nation, know that these preparations are coming to their end, that these air-cities plan to rush upon our own. We cannot halt the preparations that are going on in every air-city of the two great enemy Federations." "But if we could warn our own!" I said. "If we could get what you have learned back to the American Federation--could install in all our own air-cities similar new tube-propellers--then our cities could at least meet the attack of the enemy cities with equal speed and power." "But how to get back?" asked Connell. "How to escape from here? It could be done, if we could escape, for the new tube-propellers could be put in our own air-cities swiftly enough, yet to escape is impossible. I have been here days, weeks, Brant, with the one thought of escape uppermost, but the thing is hopeless." * * * * *