voice—
“But pardon me for interrupting what seems a very pleasant conversation with my—my sister, I should like to ask, with all due deference to the infinitely superior wisdom of the rulers of Aeria, whether it is not rather a risky thing for you to travel thus about the world, possessing secrets which any man or woman would almost be willing to die even to know for a few minutes, when, after all, you are but human even as the rest of humanity are?
“You, for instance, are only two among millions; how would you protect yourselves against the superior force of numbers? Supposing you were taken unawares under circumstances which make your superior knowledge unavailing. You know, human nature is the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, despite the superficial varnish of civilisation.
“The passions of men are only curbed, not dead. There may be men on earth to-day who, to gain such knowledge as you possess, would even resort to the tortures used by the Inquisition in the sixteenth century. Suppose you found yourself in the power of such men as that, what then? Would you still preserve your secret intact, do you think?”
Alan heard him to the end without moving a muscle of his face, and without even withdrawing his hand from Olga’s clasp. But at the last sentence he snatched it suddenly away, half-turned in his seat, and faced him. Then, looking him straight in the eyes, he said in a tone as cold and measured as might have been used by a judge sentencing a criminal to death—
“We do not fear anything of the sort, simply because each one of us holds the power of life and death in his hands. If you laid a hand on me now in anger, or with an intent to do me harm, you would be struck dead before you could raise a finger in your own defence.
“Do you think that we, who are as far in advance of you as you are in advance of the men of a hundred years ago, would trust ourselves amongst those who might be our enemies were we not amply protected against you? Tell me, have you ever read a book, written nearly two hundred years ago in the Victorian Age, called The Coming Race?”
“Yes,” said Serge, thinking, as he spoke, of the possibilities contained in the secret will of Paul Romanoff, “I have read it, and so has Olga. What of it?”
“Well,” said Alan quietly, without moving his eyes from those of Serge. “I had better tell you at once that we have realised, to all intents and purposes, the dream that Lytton dreamt when he wrote that book. I can tell you so much without breaking the pledge of which I have spoken. All that the Vril-Ya did in his dream we have accomplished in reality, and more than that.
“Our empire is not bounded by the roofs of subterranean caverns, but only by the limits of the planet’s atmosphere. We can soar beyond the clouds and dive beneath the seas. We have realised what he called the Vril force as a sober, scientific fact; and if I thought that you, for instance, were my enemy, I could strike you dead without so much as laying a hand on you. And if a dozen like you tried to overcome me by superior brute force, they would all meet with the same fate.
“I’m afraid this sounds somewhat like boasting,” he continued in a more gentle tone, and dropping his eyes to the floor of the car, “but the turn the conversation has taken obliged me to say what I have done. Suppose we give it another turn and change the subject. We have unintentionally got upon rather uncomfortable ground.”
Serge and Olga were not slow to take the pointed hint, and so the talk drifted into general and more harmless channels.
Chapter V.
A Vision from the Clouds.
At Königsberg, which was reached in nine hours after leaving London, that is to say, soon after seven o’clock in the evening, the Eastern express divided: five of the cars went northward to St. Petersburg, carrying those passengers who were going to participate in the Winter Festival, while the other five which made up the train went on to Moscow and the East.
During the twenty minutes’ stop at Berlin, Olga had found an opportunity of having a few words in private with Serge, and had succeeded in persuading him, much against his will, of the necessity of postponing their marriage, and therefore their visit to Moscow, for the execution of a daring and suddenly-conceived plan which she had thought out, but which she had then no time to explain to him.
Serge, though very loath to postpone even for a day or two the consummation of his hopes and the hour which should make Olga irrevocably his, so far as human laws could bind her to him, was so far under the domination of her imperious will that, as soon as he saw that she had determined to have her own way, he yielded with the best grace he could.
Olga chided him gently and yet earnestly for his outbreak of temper towards Alan, and told him plainly that, where such tremendous issues were concerned as those which were involved in the struggle which sooner or later they must wage with the Aerians, no personal considerations whatever could be permitted a moment’s serious thought. If she could sacrifice her own feelings, and disguise her hatred of the tyrants of the world under the mask of friendliness, for the sake of the ends to which both their lives were devoted, surely he, if he were at all worthy of her love, could so far trust her as to restrain the unreasoning jealousy of which he had already been guilty.
Either, she told him, he must trust to her absolutely for the present, or he must take the management of affairs into his own hands; and, as she said in conclusion, he must find some influence stronger than hers in their dealings with him who would one day be the ruler of Aeria, and, therefore, the real master of the world, should it ever be possible to dispute the empire of Earth with the Aerians.
From the influence which she exercised over himself, Serge knew only too well that he could not hope to rival her in this regard where a man was concerned, and so he perforce agreed to her proposal, and for the present left the conduct of affairs in her hands.
A telephonic message was therefore sent from Königsberg to the friends who expected them at Vorobièvŏ, near Moscow, to tell them of the change in their plans; and when the train once more glided out over the frozen plains of the North, the four were once more seated together in the brilliantly-lighted car, which flashed like a meteor through the gathering darkness of the winter’s night.
About half an hour after they had passed what had once been the jealously-guarded Russian frontier, a dazzling gleam of light suddenly blazed down from the black darkness overhead, and Olga, who was sitting by one of the windows of the car, bent forward and said—
“Look there! What is that? There is a bright light shining down out of the clouds on the train.”
Alan saw the flash across the window, and, without even troubling to look up at its source, said—
“Oh, I suppose that’ll be the air-ship that was ordered to meet us at St. Petersburg. You know, we usually have one of them in attendance, when we trust ourselves alone among our possible enemies of the outer world.”
The last sentence was spoken with a quiet irony, which brought home both to Olga and Serge the not very pleasant conviction that their previous conversation had by no means been forgotten. Serge, perhaps fearing to give utterance to his thoughts, remained silent, but Olga looked at Alan with a half-saucy smile, and said almost mockingly—
“Your Majesties of Aeria may well esteem yourselves impregnable, while you have such a bodyguard as that at your beck and call. I suppose that air-ship would not have the slightest difficulty in blowing this train, and all it contains, off the face of the earth at a moment’s notice, if it had orders to do so?”
“Not the slightest,” said Alan quietly. “But in proof of the fact that it has no such hostile intentions, you shall, if you please, take a voyage beyond the clouds in it the day after to-morrow, from St. Petersburg.”
“What!” said Olga, her cheeks flushing and her eyes lighting up at the very idea of such an experience. “Do you really mean to say that you would permit a daughter of the earth, as I am told you call the women who have not the good fortune to be born in