In that instant, as the batteries of all three gigantic armadas thundered, it seemed that numberless fountains of brilliant light and terrific heat were springing into being amid the metal towers of all the three masses of great air-cities! Great fountains of heat unthinkable, beneath which all the metal about them fused and melted instantly, and about which all life was scorched into annihilation! Yet this had taken but the first moment of the battle to accomplish; and now, as the two great circles of the European and Asiatic Federations swept nearer, I saw that two of the foremost of the great European cities, Paris and Lisbon, were staggering and reeling as they rushed forward with the rest! They had met an awful storm of striking heat-shells from our own cities; and though their great motors were deep in their mighty bases, though the alloy of their electrostatic towers could not be affected by heat-shells, yet the deadly hail of shells that had fallen upon them had penetrated apparently almost down to their great motors beneath! I whirled to Yarnall, "Paris and Lisbon!" I cried: "They're falling behind the rest a little--they're hit hard!" He nodded, eyes burning now: "All east batteries concentrate on Paris and Lisbon!" he ordered; and, as Connell's voice sent the order flying out to our eastern massed cities, their batteries were thundering with even greater fury. But now all their shells were aimed toward the two crippled cities of Paris and Lisbon, and a hell of bursting shells were flaring across those two ill-fated giants of the air. It was as though a living wave, of brilliant heat and light from the bursting shells, were dancing like lightning across the two cities; and in that instant it must have burned from them all the life in their towers, even as they were striving to do with our own. The towers of each city became in that moment almost a single great surface of fusing, white-hot metal; its awfulness added to by the exploding of the stores of heat-shells and magazines beneath the terrific flares. Out beyond them and around them there swept other cities of the European armada to protect them. There came Madrid and London and Moscow, all their guns thundering answer; but now our own gunners were not to be denied of their prey. As our batteries sent repeated storms of shells upon the two doomed cities we saw Paris staggering, slipping to a lower level, hanging a moment there, and then whirling sidewise downward, down to the green earth far below! In a moment it had crashed, with a terrific rending and cracking of metal! I heard a dull roar of cheers rolling across our city above and between the thunder of the guns, cheers that were redoubled a moment later as Lisbon too whirled downward to annihilation, a mere mass of fusing metal. But, even as the cheers sounded they were stilled, and Yarnall was uttering further orders to our batteries.