Now from the mass of the American cruisers one shot toward our own, level and hung beside our own ship, and as its door was flung open we opened the door of our own. I stared at a tall figure, not crediting my eyes. "Macklin!" I cried as I recognized him: "Macklin! You got clear, then?" "Brant--Hilliard--!" he was himself exclaiming: "It is you two in that ship, then! We were sent on a last patrol out here, saw your ship attacked by other European ships, came to your rescue--" "We escaped from Berlin," I told him: "But you, Macklin, we thought you and Connell dead, saw your cruiser struck by heat-shells and falling--" "It was a last ruse," Macklin swiftly explained: "Those pursuing ships were overtaking us; so, when their batteries fired a storm of heat-shells after us, we fired one of our own heat-guns back toward them at the same time, and our shells meeting one or two of the oncoming ones made them burst and flare there behind us. Then, at the next moment, we sent our ship whirling down as though struck and destroyed." "But Connell, then!" I cried: "Connell got back with his great secret. All the hundred European Federation air-cities are rushing across the Atlantic to the attack!" We leaped across the gap to the gangway; the door of Macklin's cruiser closed behind us; and he gave the order that sent it, with the whole cruiser fleet; westward at swiftly mounting speed. Then he turned back to us. "Connell got back with his secret, yes," he said: "And though the hundred European Federation air-cities are rushing westward and word has come that the massed hundred Asiatic Federation cities also are rushing eastward for the attack, they will find the great air-cities of the American Federation massed together and ready for them! In the ten days since our return, every effort of our cities has been exerted to make use of Connell's knowledge, and to equip with the new tube-propellers that will give them the same tremendous speed as our enemies. And now all our cities are massed together and waiting for the attack of our enemies." CHAPTER IX The Battle of the Air-Cities Now the hundred cruisers of our force were cleaving the air westward at terrific speed, while Macklin and Hilliard and I stood together in the bridge-room of the foremost as it rushed on. Beneath us, the gray Atlantic showed here and there through openings in the vapor-masses, and ahead the sun still hung in the western sky. And within a few minutes more, we saw that the vapor-layer beneath was thinning, and that now we were flashing not over the sea but over land; over green hills and valleys that we could glimpse rushing past far beneath us. I gazed to north and south in search of New York and the other coastal air-cities that should have hung there, but nothing was in sight.