It was, therefore, almost impossible to tell without certain information where and how the blows of the enemy would be struck, or from how many points the European area of the Federation might be assailed at once, and vast indeed were the responsibilities and anxieties which weighed upon the man whose single brain was the centre of this vast and complicated system of defence, and on whose decisions would depend the safety or the destruction of millions of human beings.
Alan had managed to get four hours’ sleep in the afternoon between Moscow and Gibraltar, and he snatched two hours more before midnight. Then he was called, and the Avenger was just about to take the air to return to the Russian frontier, so that he might supervise the operations there, when the look-out on the summit of the Rock of Gibraltar saw and answered the Aerian private signal from the sky, and a few minutes later a fleet of more than a hundred air-ships dropped down out of the darkness and hovered over what is now called the neutral ground between the Rock and Spain.
One of these alighted at the signal station itself. It was the Isma, and within three minutes after she had touched the ground Alan was shaking hands with Alexis and asking him what brought him back so soon from the East.
“I have come back because there is nothing much more to do there,” said Alexis. “Have you had any fighting here?”
“Yes,” said Alan; “or, at anyrate, a big massacre.”
And then he described what had befallen the Sultan’s expeditions.
“Horrible but necessary, I suppose!” replied Alexis, not without a shudder at the news. “I have been doing my damage on land. I didn’t wait for the enemy to begin hostilities, so as soon as day broke we got to work. We have wrecked Ekaterinburg, Slatonsk, Orenburg, and Uralsk, and blocked the four roads into Russia from Asia.
“The Tsarina’s Asiatic forces had concentrated there in large numbers ready to come into Europe. We found some air-ships intended to cover them, but we had the best of the elevation, and smashed them up. The slaughter has been something perfectly frightful. I had a hundred and fifty ships in action, and there isn’t a man left of the Asiatic troops that is not getting back to where he came from as fast as he can go.
“The towns are mere heaps of ruins and the railways utterly useless. I left twenty ships to patrol the frontier and stop any further movements into Russia, and twenty more are strung out in a line from the Caspian to the head of the Red Sea to cut communications between Asia and Africa.
“We came westward over Odessa this afternoon, and had a skirmish, in which, I am sorry to say, I lost five ships, but we destroyed twenty Russians, blew up the dockyard, and shelled the city by way of punishment. And now I’ve got myself and a hundred and thirty ships to place at your disposal for the present. There is nothing more to be feared from the East, for by to-morrow night, I think, the Asiatics will be thoroughly terrorised.”