Cities in the Air by Edmond Hamilton

1. 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.