Olga Romanoff

by George Chetwynd Griffith

Still the sentinel ships, hanging high in air over the valley, and constantly patrolling the outer slopes of the mountains, saw no sign of hostile approach. The last messages that had been received from the great cities of the Federation had told brief but fearful stories of the desolation that was following in the path of Moslem and Russian conquest.

The bridges of Gibraltar and the Bosphorus had been forced, and thousands after thousands of Moslem troops had been poured into Europe. Frenzied by fanaticism and the new-born lust of battle and conquest, the hordes of Asiatic tribesmen who had escaped the one terrific onslaught of the fleet under the command of Alexis had, now that the guardian ships were withdrawn, been hurried through Russia, and hurled upon the wealthy and almost defenceless cities of Western Europe.

The Federation was on the point of utter collapse, divided in its counsels, confused in its plans of defence, its armies undisciplined, and its fleets disorganised and daily diminishing in number and effectiveness.

In America, Australia, and Southern Africa there was anarchy on earth and terror in the air. Cities had been terrorised into capitulation by aerial squadrons, and then looted and burnt, and their ruins given up to be the miserable prey of the revolutionaries who now, as ever, had taken advantage of the universal panic to revolt against all government, and deny all rights but that which they claimed to prey upon the helpless, all liberty that was not license, and all property that was not plunder.

The last tidings of all that came from Europe were received from Britain, and, after recounting the destruction of London and the collapse of the Government, concluded with the news that Olga had publicly embraced the faith of Islam, and, in conjunction with the Sultan, whom she was to marry as soon as the conquest of Europe was finally complete, was forcibly converting her Russian subjects to the creed of the Koran.

So the affairs of the world stood when the sun went down on the 15th of July. On the meridian of Aeria it set at nine minutes to eight; at thirteen minutes past eight, according to the calculations made by the Martian and verified by the Aerian astronomers, the herald of Fate would approach within the range of terrestrial vision.

Before the brief period of tropical twilight had passed every telescope in the valley was turned to that spot in the constellation of Andromeda at which it was predicted to become visible. As the revolving earth swept Aeria into the shadow of night every light was extinguished, for it was known that the astronomers of Mars would be anxiously watching for a signal that would announce the correctness or the error of their calculations.

Vassilis Cosmo, seated at the eye-piece of the great equatorial telescope on Mount Austral, with his hand on the switch which controlled the electric currents that were waiting to do his bidding, watched the fields of space darken, and the stars of Andromeda shine out. Just a little below the line which joins the Square of Pegasus with the constellation of Cassiopeia, he saw, as usual, the oval, luminous cloud of the great nebula in Andromeda.

Four degrees towards the zenith, above the centre of the star-cloud, a tiny fan-shaped spray, faint and pale as a dissolving puff of white smoke, was floating in the black abyss of space. Precisely at the thirteenth minute of the hour he turned the switch, and the great suns on the mountain-tops blazed out and flashed the signal to the sister-world to tell its inhabitants that their prediction had been fulfilled to the second.