For one moment we gazed toward them and toward the advancing cruisers that rushed before them, as though held by the grandeur of the spectacle. The tremendous mass of our air-cities hanging there, high above the earth the gleaming ranks of our own two thousand cruisers that poised to east and west, the advancing cruiser-fleets of twice their strength behind which there rushed gigantically on the great massed air-cities of our enemies--it was a spectacle breath-taking enough! But, then, the two enemy cruiser-fleets had come within a short distance of our own waiting cruisers; and, as they did so, both their fleets shot suddenly upward, as though in answer to a common order, to drive above our own cruisers and our air-cities! Instantly Yarnall had uttered a swift order; and as Connell's quick voice sent that order flying out to our cruiser-masses, they too whirled upward and forward to meet the onrushing enemy fleets. Then, far out in mid-air to east and west of us the great cruiser-fleets had met, had smashed into each other with blind fury. Through our screens we saw cruisers enveloped by scores in blinding flares, in that first moment of combat, as they raged in two separate mighty battles. But, east and west, our own cruisers were outnumbered two to one and, despite their fierce resistance, were being pressed steadily back toward our gathered cities. Closer and closer through the air toward us were reeling those struggling lines of cruisers, more and more American ships falling in white-hot destruction as the heat-guns of their opponents concentrated upon them. Still far beyond them, to east and west, the colossal masses of the European and Asiatic air-cities were now rushing on toward us! Yarnall sent another order flying out, and the next moment a mass of cruisers that had remained at the edges of our gathered cities, on either side, and had not been in the first battle, were leaping forward now, like suddenly released hounds after prey. A score of them to the eastern combat and a score to the western one they flashed; and each, as it reached the lines of struggling ships, shot up over them and then flashed along their lines above them. And as they did, there shot downward from them over the battling cruisers intense jets of concentrated water-vapor, which puffed out instantly into great white cloud-masses that enveloped all the grappling thousands of ships!