Cities in the Air by Edmond Hamilton

1. Captured

That mad whirl downward of our wrecked cruiser is now to me more of a memory of some strange and torturing dream than a memory of actual happenings. Flung sidewise and downward against the bridge-room's floor as our cruiser whirled over with that mighty crash from above, I glimpsed Macklin and Hilliard tossed about there with me, rolling over and over. The black gloom of night about us, the mass of our onrushing ships above, the colossal brilliant air-city beneath, the two wrecked cruisers that were tumbling downward with our own -- all these things seemed to whirl about us like some great wheel of swift-succeeding impressions as we glimpsed them in that mad moment through the bridge-room's whirling windows.