I gazed anxiously at Yarnall, a strange dread taking possession of me for an instant as the tremendous armadas came on. Would he never give the order to fire? He was sitting still as a carved statue, his eyes upon the screens and his lips compressed; and in that moment there came to me a dim sense of all the terrific responsibility that weighed upon him, the leader of a third of earth's cities and peoples battling against the remainder of mankind. Silent he sat and still, while the great approaching armadas rushed nearer, their cities coming more and more distinctly into view in our far-seeing screens. In another moment, I knew, another thunderous broadside would be belching toward us. But, just as I looked for it to come, Yarnall spoke a single word and, as Connell's swift voice sent that word flying out to all our cities, as my own flashed it to all the batteries of our center-most city of New York, there was a hush of a split-second. And then, out from all our own hundred giant cities, there broke such a titanic thundering detonation as seemed to shake violently all the air about us! And, an instant later, we saw the heat-shells from our batteries falling in thousands upon the two advancing armadas, upon their rushing gigantic cities, and flaring into white-hot craters of fusing metal. Before that terrific blow the two advancing masses seemed to stagger a little in mid-air, to hesitate for an instant; but then they advanced steadily onward and their own great batteries thundered an answer to our salvo. Then, as the two giant circles drew nearer to our own on either side, the whole world seemed swallowed again in one ceaseless thundering of sound. The giant batteries of all our great air-cities burst forth again, to send a storm of heat-shells rushing east and west upon our enemies! The air between us and the armadas nearing on either side must have been filled with shells in that moment; for we saw tremendous flares there in mid-air as shells of ours met some of theirs and burst. But few of them did that, most of them whirling through the air to burst and flare in all their awful destroying heat and brilliance upon the air-cities!