Massed there as they were, the hundred mighty air-cities seemed, even as the European ones had seemed to me, but one vast plain of metal towers and streets. As far as the eye could reach, there stretched away the tremendous forest of those soaring towers, with here and there rising from them the taller spires of each city's great electrostatic tower. And, everywhere among those towers, everywhere around the rim of each great circular air-city and at its center there loomed great batteries of giant heat-guns; while here and there, on the plazas of the cities rested the turret-like cubes of the recalled great air-forts, their own grim heat-guns protruding expectantly. And through streets and towers, between the batteries and around the air-forts and across the plazas of the assembled cities, there swarmed the millions of their peoples, wild with excitement now as the last dread hour approached. And, massed there above all the great floating cities, hung grim and motionless the two thousand or more cruisers that still remained of the American Federation's eastern and western fleets. It was toward these massed battle-cruisers, at a level somewhat higher than that of the air-cities, that our own hundred cruisers were rushing. Over those assembled giant cities we raced, the great mass of them below us almost hiding the ground beneath. As we shot above them, I saw now that they had been ranged in a tremendous circle, the great capital of New York hanging in the center. Across the great ring of the air-cities we rushed; were racing at last above New York, toward its own giant power-tower. Then we had reached it, and were sinking vertically downward, until our hundred cruisers came to rest upon the central plaza. Here, even as in Berlin, the central plaza was reserved always for the ships of the First Air Chief and his followers; so that, although immense crowds now beat through all the streets and plazas about it, there were none around our hundred ships. And in an instant Macklin and Hilliard and I were out of that which had brought us and hastening across the clear space toward the static-tower's base. Preparations On past its guards and through the ante-rooms we strode, and in another moment were in the office of the First Air Chief. There was unfamiliar apparatus among the great switchboards of its walls, I noted as we entered. The First Air Chief himself had risen from his great table-map as we entered and was coming toward us; beside him, another figure, whom I recognized instantly as Connell. Then both of them were grasping the hands of Hilliard and of myself. "Brant!" Yarnall was exclaiming: "I got Macklin's report of your escape and his rescue of you--man, but I'm glad that you got free! And it was what you did there in Berlin, what you did to help Connell and Macklin escape, that has enabled us to use Connell's knowledge and fit our air-cities for the coming battle!"