But, though we were being decimated by the fire of the closing crescents on either side, our own terrific concentrated fire was having effect upon the closing horns of cities north of us, and in the moments while we rushed toward them, Singapore, Colombo and Brussels had been sent down in white-hot destruction by our awful fire. The remaining cities in those two projecting horns were still rushing toward each other with their utmost speed to close the gap between them before our great circle could speed through it. With Moscow and Shanghai at their eastern and western tips, the two horns swiftly closed toward each other; while as swiftly and with every motor droning its loudest, with every heat-gun thundering northward, we shot onward. For a moment the whole great race was in doubt; for a moment it seemed to us that our great mass of cities could flash through that gap before it closed. But as we watched in tense, terrible hope, even as our mighty cities raced northward, the cities of those closing horns seemed to make a last supreme effort, a last great burst of speed. They shot forward, their leaders Shanghai and Moscow almost racing into each other; and then, with all their tube-propellers reversed, they were suddenly halting a barrier of mighty air-cities all around us! But nothing now could halt our tremendous mass, so awful was our speed and so close were we to the enemy's line. I saw those cities looming suddenly gigantic before our own mass as we raced on; heard hoarse exclamations from Yarnall and Connell beside me; and then with a terrific shock, that seemed the shock of meeting worlds, our vast northward-flying mass of air-cities had crashed headlong into the great line of cities before us! CHAPTER XI City Against City In the moment that followed, after our flashing circle of cities had thundered headlong into the line before us, all other sounds, all the thunder of countless guns and the drone of motors and the hiss of tube-propellers and cries of voices, were drowned in one tremendous splintering crash of metal upon metal. The giant mass of cities about us seemed to reel drunkenly in mid-air in that moment. New York at their center staggered from the awful shock transmitted to it. Then upon the screen north of me, I saw titanic metal masses that had been cities falling downward. Moscow with Sydney and Algiers, and Boston with Detroit, these whirled downward in that moment--no longer recognizable as air-cities and seeming to the eye but great twisted bulks of rended metal.