But now we were reaching our goal, the giant Berlin that hung there in the enemy's circle with all its mighty batteries thundering again our doomed cities. Down toward it our cruisers swiftly rushed, unseen by any in the wild confusion that swept that city below us; down until we saw plainly the terrific spectacle of thundering batteries and wildly-rushing men. Here and there were heat-shells bursting and flaring in dazzling death, as the guns of our own cities roared savage answer. Down toward it moved our ships, now hardly more than a score in number, until there loomed just beneath us, that mighty central static-tower in which we had been so recently imprisoned! As we shot down toward it I beheld a glass ball above its tip, recognized that as similar in purpose to the periscopic screens on our own tower's tip, and then we had shot down past it, until our score of cruisers hoved beside the great tower's side, at the fifth level. Hovering there in that moment beside the tower, with all the wild confusion raging beneath, and the plaza below still empty, we were still unseen by any beneath, by any in the great batteries that were thundering all around that plaza. Poised there in the darkness, we could see that the windows beside us were bright-lighted; that guards were swarming in the static-tower's upper levels, rushing to and fro. Then as our cruiser's door swung open, just level with a window beside us, Macklin and Connell and Hilliard and I were springing forth from that door and across the narrow gap, through that window, our heat-pistols ready in our hands! And at the same moment there burst after us our crew, and from all the windows around that level, from all the cruisers hovering beside those windows, a stream of black-uniformed Americans with heat-pistols in hands were pouring into the tower's fifth level! Instantly the guards in that level were snapping their own weapons up toward us; but before they could fire a score of cartridges from our pistols had flicked and flared among them. As they sank lifeless in scorched, burned heaps of flesh we were racing through the other rooms and corridors of that level, killing the guards in it with our heat-pistols, the surprise of our attack taking them unawares. So awful was the drumming of the titanic battle all around and outside, that no alarm of our presence penetrated to the levels above and below us, and, now with the last of the guards wiped from that fifth level, I turned toward my three companions. "Connell and Hilliard! Take half our men and find your places here in the tower, keeping anyone in its upper levels from getting farther down than this! Macklin, watch with our cruisers outside--at this low height the batteries around the plaza can't reach the ships, can't pivot toward you--and be ready to keep anyone from getting into the tower from outside!"