I strode to the square little window, looked forth from it. It was quite open and unbarred, and large enough too to allow one to pass through it, yet as I projected my head from it and gazed up and downward in the darkness I saw that there was no need of bars across it. For the little window was set directly in the sheer, towering side of the mighty power-tower's pinnacle. Far up above our level soared that tremendous tapering tower, so far that the tip seemed among the stars above, while far below, a thousand feet at least, lay the smooth metal of the great plaza. And though there were other windows below and above us, each was separated a full ten feet or more from the other, and, as we knew, to merely escape from our cell into another level of the great tower would avail us nothing, since to gain the plaza outside we would need to pass through the tower's lower levels thronged always with armed guards. It seemed, indeed, that as Connell had said there was no hope of escape for us, the door being solid, thick metal, and as I turned back toward the other three something of Connell's own hopelessness had taken root within my heart. And that hopelessness grew within me in the hours that followed. For when day came and illumined with brilliant light all the giant air-city that stretched far around us it seemed only to emphasize the utter helplessness of our position. Far beneath on the great plaza lay many cruisers, and could we win to one of them we might well make a break at top speed across the Atlantic, since so simple in design and so unvarying in their exhaustless power-supply are modern air-cruisers that one man alone at their bridge-room controls could operate them. Yet to win down to those cruisers, down to the great plaza's surface--that seemed impossible. And so as that day waned, and night swept over the great floating mass of the towers of Berlin, to be followed by day again, my despair was waxing ever stronger, deeper. For during those days we could see plainly from our window the great preparations going on still in the air-city about us. Already throngs of workers had cleared away the twisted and fused wreckage that had been made by the attack of our ships, and new masses of supplies were pouring into Berlin in shipload after shipload from all the air-cities of the European Federation, to replace those we had destroyed in their great arsenals. The air seemed filled, indeed, with great freight-carriers and official cruisers arriving and departing. And beneath all this great surface activity and preparation, we knew, down in the great tube-propeller compartments of the air-city's mighty base, other and greater preparations were going on, other and different tube-propellers were replacing the city's tubes, and swiftly the time was approaching when all the city would be able to rush meteor-like through the air.