Great loads of shining heat-shells were being transferred from the stores that had been brought to Berlin, to the giant batteries of heat-guns around the city's edge and its central plaza around the electrostatic tower. The cruisers of the European battle-fleet, still some two thousand in number, were resting on all the landing plazas, and were being cared for and inspected by hordes of green-uniformed attendants. All other air-craft were lowered into the great city's base-hangars to be out of the way during the oncoming combat. By a stroke of genius on the part of Berlin's commander, the power of the great air-forts had been added to that of the city itself, by simply placing the air-forts here and there on unused landing plazas, where they formed in effect great armored gun-turrets on the city's surface. And, finally, the mighty city's speed and power to maneuver had been tested rigorously. With all its peoples inside its metal towers, it was shot at terrific speed low and high above the earth; turning and dipping and rising at that awful velocity like a flashing airplane rather than a gigantic city of the magnitude it really had. Through all the hours of that night, and the next day (the thirteenth of our imprisonment) those great preparations, that unceasing rush of excited activity, continued. Night came, and still the last preparations were to be made; magazines were being filled, and green-uniformed figures were swarming in countless numbers in the streets; going about their maneuvers; battle-cruisers were moving ceaselessly across the sky. During the hours of that night, as Hilliard and I sat silent there, high above all the tremendous turmoil of the streets and plazas below, we sometimes raised our eyes to watch also the calm, slow march of the great constellations across the sky above; glittering groups of stars that seemed to look down with cool and contemptuous eyes upon all this mad flurry of human excitement and human endeavor. Dozing a little now and then, we sat there until at last dawn sent its rosy light across the world. It was the last dawn, I knew, that Hilliard or I would look upon. Now, it seemed, all the preparations in the giant air-city about us were completed. The crowds that had moved in its streets during the day and night before remained, but silent now with the thrill of approaching combat. Tense and silent the city remained, as the sun crept up toward the zenith through the morning hours of that fateful day. And, high in our tower-cell, Hilliard and I found ourselves gripped by the same tense feeling of anticipation. From our window as we watched the city, we made out the west, a dark spot rushing through the air toward Berlin, a spot that was growing steadily larger in size, that was broadening out into a large dark disk; and then as it came swiftly closer we saw with astonishment that it was a city, a giant air-city almost as large as Berlin itself! The Gathering of the Cities