air-cities had gathered around Berlin! By then, gazing out from our window high in the electrostatic tower, Hilliard and I seemed to be looking across a single gigantic city that stretched in mid-air as far as the eye could reach, so closely were the scores of great hovering air-cities hanging together! It was as though we were looking forth across an endless plain of clustered towers of metal, from which rose here and there the higher pinnacle of a city's power-source; a titanic plain of towers and streets of metal, crowded with millions of the European Federation's soldiery. And, as the blood-red sunset flamed eastward upon all this huge assemblage, now waiting only for the last of their number, something seemed to snap in my brain, and all the stoicism which I had summoned to meet our fate and our nation's fate abruptly vanished. "We _can't_ stay here while doom rushes upon our nation!" I cried madly. "Since they start out tonight--since our time is up and we die ourselves tonight--we'll go to death fighting for our freedom!" But, now, it was Hilliard who endeavored to calm me. "It's useless, Brant," he said. "A few hours more; then all will be rushing west while the Asiatic Federation is moving east upon our air-cities. And at any moment now, before that attack starts, they will be coming here for us." "But they'll not take us to a death like that!" I exclaimed, a cold, long-repressed fury surging up within me. "If we're to die we'll do it, striking a blow at our enemies!" Like a caged tiger I paced the little cell's interior, growing shadowy and dusky now; the sun had disappeared. From the corridor outside came the voices of the guards, and at any moment I expected the door to swing open and admit those who would take us to a last examination at which our silence would bring immediate death. Already, far out over the great mass of scores upon scores of giant air-cities that filled the air about us, a great, complicated pattern of brilliant lights was gleaming through the deepened twilight; and now, from south and east and west, the last of the great European Federation's air-cities were assembling about that tremendous gathered mass of cities. Then, as I turned from the metal door which I had been examining in blind and futile rage, my eyes fell upon our bunk-racks and the strong but slender strips of metal that held them out from the metal wall, against which they were set diagonally. And, as I looked at them an idea, a last flame of hope, burned into my brain, and I turned swiftly to Hilliard. "Those strips of metal!" I exclaimed, pointing toward them. "Those bunk-supports--it's a chance to escape! A chance that means death, Hilliard, I think--but death is upon us now in any case--"