Cities in the Air by Edmond Hamilton

1. The Battle of the Air-Cities

Now the hundred cruisers of our force were cleaving the air westward at terrific speed, while Macklin and Hilliard and I stood together in the bridge-room of the foremost as it rushed on. Beneath us, the gray Atlantic showed here and there through openings in the vapor-masses, and ahead the sun still hung in the western sky. And within a few minutes more, we saw that the vapor-layer beneath was thinning, and that now we were flashing not over the sea but over land; over green hills and valleys that we could glimpse rushing past far beneath us. I gazed to north and south in search of New York and the other coastal air-cities that should have hung there, but nothing was in sight.