Alan learnt soon after landing that King Albert the Second, the fourth in descent from Edward VII., who was King during the War of the Terror, was at Windsor, and that the House of Commons and the Senate, which for over a hundred years had filled the place of the old House of Lords, had dissolved for the spring recess, and would not meet again until after the General Election, which was held every 1st of June.
He therefore caused a message to be sent to His Majesty at Windsor, requesting him to name a time for an interview on the following day, and then, sufficient watches having been set on all the vessels, he and Alexis, with the majority of the crews, took a few hours’ leave, not a little glad of the opportunity of stretching their legs on terra firma, after their three days’ confinement to the air-ships.
The reply which he received from the King fixed eleven o’clock in the morning of the 22nd as the time of the interview for which he had asked, and, just as the castle clock was beginning to sound the strokes of the hour, the Ithuriel swept up out of the distance towards Windsor Castle, and, after hovering for a moment in mid-air, sank quietly down until she rested on that portion of the terrace which overlooks the Home Park. Her arrival had been announced to the King as soon as she hove in sight, and he was on the terrace ready to receive his visitors when she alighted.
Albert II., King of England, Emperor of Britain, and President of the Anglo-Saxon Federation, was a monarch only in name. Nothing but the trappings of sovereignty remained to himself or his station, and he would not even have retained these had it not been for the fact that, during its hundred years of actual rule, the Supreme Council had insisted upon the maintenance of the monarchical principle in those countries where it had obtained at the end of the nineteenth century.
The first formal greetings over, the King caused Alan to be escorted to his private apartments in the castle, and as soon as they were alone together in the room which he reserved for his own special use, he motioned Alan to a seat and, throwing himself back upon a lounge with an air of weariness which accorded but ill with the hour of the day, he said in a somewhat querulous tone—
“We are quite alone now and you can speak with perfect freedom. I am sure it must be important business that has brought you here with a whole fleet of your air-ships, and I shall be glad if you will tell me at once what it is. I hope nothing has occurred to imperil our peace and safety?”
“On the contrary, your Majesty,” replied Alan. “I regret to say that my errand is to tell you that, not only is that the case, but that it is a practical certainty that within twelve months from now the whole world will be plunged into war.”
“What! what!” exclaimed the King, jerking himself up to a sitting posture. “Surely you don’t mean that? I thought that no war would be possible without the permission of your Council. Surely you would not allow the nations of the world to go to war with each other again, and repeat all the horrors that happened a hundred and thirty years ago?”
“Your Majesty forgets that when we renounced the control of the world six years ago we gave back to the nations the right of making war upon each other, although we hardly believed that they would be foolish enough and wicked enough to exercise it. That, however, is beside the question, because war is now inevitable, and, what is even more important, the Council of Aeria is unhappily powerless to prevent it.”