“That,” she exclaimed, tugging off her goggles and looking at Abna eagerly, “is power! Real power! If we had enough of it we could destroy the glacier completely.”
“We could, but we’d only fight a losing battle,” Abna replied, thinking. “As fast as we destroyed it it would freeze over again, as that rent is doing now ... No; we need all the atomium we can get for rekindling the sun and let the glacier take care of itself.”
The Amazon reflected for a moment and then said: “There’s only one thing against that, Abna. To have found the power of atomium is only half the battle without enough of the stuff to carry out our project — and even granting we do find enough of it we’ve still to work out a master plan by which we can use it to save the sun. Also, once we’re below ground in the shelter we’ll stay there, helpless, if the glacier covers the shelter before we can put our plan into operation.”
Abna moved to the control board and sat down, considering each problem in turn.
“To find more atomium shouldn’t be too difficult,” he said presently. “In the laboratory at the shelter is the big detector, more sensitive than this one we have in here. With what little atomium we have left completely insulated the detector will show us where the next source of it lies. We collect that, insulate it, and go on to the next source of supply — and so on until we have enough. Obviously the stuff will be in space, so into space we shall have to go to get it.”
“Yes, Abna, but think of the time we’ll lose coming back to earth with each lot we find!”
“We won’t come back to earth. We need a base where we can dump the stuff as fast as we get it — and it seems to me there is no better spot for that job than Mercury.”
“The nearest planet to the sun, eh?” the Amazon mused. “Good idea! All right, that settles it — but how do we operate our plan before the glacier covers the shelter?” “We live here in the Ultra, in space, until our job is done. We have laboratory equipment and we’ll be travelling space a good deal in any case — so it is the logical move. If the other people get trapped in the shelter, they can emerge when we have rekindled the sun.”
“My fear,” the Amazon said dubiously, “is that we’ll never find enough of the stuff for our purpose. However, granting we do find enough my suggestion is that we transport it to the sun from Mercury, using the Ultra for the job, of course, cutting the stuff loose from the grapples when it is within the sun’s field of attraction.”
She paused, frowning over a thought. Abna looked at her in surprise. “Perfect so far,” he approved. “What’s bothering you?”
“The fact, that the plan is all wrong.”
“But it isn’t! That is exactly what we must do.”
The Amazon hurried on: “I’ve been basing all my calculations on the fact that atomium would be disintegrated by the internal heat still remaining in the sun; now we know that it won’t. Nothing will detonate it except that special supersonic vibration. How do we get around that? It needs atmosphere if it is to function properly, as do all vibrations which come technically into the category of sound.”
“The sun has an atmosphere, Vi — a gaseous envelope. Normally it is flaming gas, but at present it will be air of sorts, sufficient for our purpose to carry the wave-length.” The Amazon sighed. “You still haven’t grasped my meaning. How do we get near enough to the sun’s atmospheric envelope to operate the supersonic equipment without ourselves being engulfed in the atomic explosion which we hope will follow when the sun is rekindled?” Abna was silent, his lips compressed. Clearly he had not considered this aspect.
“Further,” the girl added, “The sun still has the same huge gravitational mass as when he is ablaze. You can’t play tag with a gravitation like that! I tried it once and only just got away in time.”
“There is only one answer to that, since it is essential the projector operates in the solar atmosphere,” Abna said. “We must do it by remote control... In the course of your career you many a time used a duplicate of yourself, I believe — a synthetic flesh model. Is there anything to stop you doing the same again? That creature, answerable only to your will, can descend to the solar atmosphere in a small space machine which we’ll take along attached to the Ultra, and in that machine will be the supersonic projector. Your double, under your orders from Mercury, will release the projector and be destroyed in the doing, perhaps. In any case that doesn’t signify as long as the job is done.”
The Amazon’s eyes were gleaming. “Of course! Synthesis never occurred to me while I had my mind on the main problem.”
“Then our next move is to return to London and your underworld lab as fast as possible,” Abna said. “Move number one is to locate more atomium.”
The Amazon turned to the controls and swung the vessel round on a southward course. Through the slats of the ventilator in the ceiling the gleaming eyes of Morris Arnside watched intently. So far he had heard every word of the conversation and upon whether or not the Amazon and Abna left the Ultra upon landing in London in order to hammer on the doors of the shelter and gain admittance — depended his plan.
Circumstances worked things out exactly as he had hoped. Having no reason to suspect that anybody was aboard the Ultra except themselves the girl and Abna left the machine when they had brought it down within a dozen yards of the shelter doors.
Chapter XVIII
Arnside watched them depart, then he slid quickly out of his hiding place, hurried over to the airlock and bolted it. He had studied the Amazon’s actions so carefully when she had been at the control panel that he knew enough to be able to set the machine going. The rest he intended to figure out later.
So the only warning the Amazon and Abna received was when they had just reached the shelter doors. There was a sudden scream of wind behind them which they took at first for an oncoming blizzard — then to their amazement the Ultra swept up from the icefield, hurtled towards the black sky, and was gone in the space of seconds.
Abna lowered his gaze from the sky at last and met the girl’s coldly gleaming eyes behind the face mask of her furs.
“Can’t do anything now,” she said, through the audiophone. “I assume somebody must be one jump ahead of us.”
“Only one person could be to that extent — Arnside,” Abna responded.
They did not pursue the subject further at that moment, for the doors slid apart in response to their request for admittance; but once within the shelter and with the doors shut again they exchanged grim glances as they pulled off their furs.
“Something wrong?” asked Chris Wilson, to the forefront of the interested people who had been awaiting the return of the pair and a report on their experiment.
“Where’s Arnside?” the Amazon demanded.
“Arnside?” Chris looked puzzled. “Why, I — Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him for the last few hours. Does it matter?”
“He has just stolen the Ultra!”
“You mean he must have smuggled himself aboard?” Ethel asked in amazement.
“That’s just what I mean, Rosy.” The Amazon tightened her lips for a moment. “This serves me right! I should have wiped him out when I had the chance, as I did Torrington and Swainson.”
“Is it such a tragedy him stealing the Ultra?” Chris asked. “You can build a new machine, can’t you? Or for that matter, there is Abna’s machine, every bit as useful even if not as big ... I suppose Arnside’s nerve broke or something and he’s made a dash into space, where he thinks he can perhaps find safety.”
The Amazon shook her head. “I wish I could believe that. What worries me is that he heard everything we said — and saw, too. He knows atomium can be exploded with a supersonic wave, and he knows every detail of the plan we’ve made for rekindling the sun. Aboard that vessel is the supersonic projector we used, but, fortunately, no atomium. If, with the detector, he should discover some more atomium, he could drop it on this shelter, detonate it with the projector beam, and so blow us off the face of the Earth.”
/> “Why should he want to do that?” Ethel asked blankly. “He has been so completely on our side since you smashed up the triumvirate—”
“He may have fooled you, but he didn’t fool me,” the Amazon interrupted. “I thought he’d try to pull something some day, but I never expected this! I smashed up his plans to better his future at the expense of other people — and that seems to make it logical that he’ll try and smash mine, and thereby also destroy everybody else’s chances into the bargain.”
“Whatever he does, or attempts to do, we have our own plans to carry out,” Abna said. “But for that pressing necessity we could go into space in my machine and try to track him down. We may even find him when we start searching for atomium.”
“We must find him!” the Amazon declared. “As long as he’s at large he’ll do everything he can to ruin our plans.”
“Arnside apart,” Ethel said eagerly, “what happened to the experiment? Did it work, Aunt Vi? Can the sun be revived?”
“I have every reason for thinking so; the Amazon responded, and there was a roar of delight from the assembly. “But Abna and I have got to work fast. Our next job is in the laboratory.”
Chris nodded, and the Amazon and Abna wasted no time in hurrying to their scientific retreat.
“What a tragedy it is that the Ultra has that atomium detector aboard,” the Amazon said bitterly, as she switched the large one into commission. “Arnside may steal every scrap of atomium he can find to stop us getting it.”
Abna said: “He can’t do that. This detector here — which we’ll mount in my flyer later — shows us where atomium is. It would lead us straight to it — and maybe Arnside. I don’t think he’d be crazy enough to risk that possibility.” The atomium detector claimed the Amazon’s attention. The needle came to rest pointing diagonally above and moving gently. Abna raised his eyes to the girl’s.
“In space and on the move,” he said. “Probably that meteoric lump which hit your coffin-ship. It may be moving in a fixed orbit. See how far away it is.”
The Amazon set to work with the calculating equipment and finally got a figure of 200,000 miles.
“About 40,000 miles short of the moon’s orbit,” she said.
“All right, we’ll go and find it, and let’s hope it’s the first of a mass of it which can be dumped on Mercury, Arnside permitting. Your vessel has the necessary magnetic grapples, I suppose?”
“Yes, but remember that we need a small secondary pick-a-back ship to take with us, in which will be that synthetic image of you. We’ll also need a new supersonic projector, since our friend has obligingly flown away with ours.” “Delay, delay!” the Amazon breathed. “With every minute counting—” She switched on the visiphone to headquarters, where Chris Wilson was presiding. His face appeared on the screen.
“Yes, Vi? Something I can do?”
“What is the latest bolometer reading of the sun?”
Chris answered: “At noon today is was 1,600 centigrade and still falling.”
“Whew!” the Amazon whistled, startled. “It’s expiring at a frightening rate. All right, thanks. Send in the chief engineer, will you?”
“Sixteen hundred?” Abna repeated. “Assuming the rate of decline remains constant, that gives us four weeks in which to revive the sun. After that he’ll become a white dwarf. Of course the speed of decline accelerates as the deadline is neared.”
The Amazon declared: “From the chief engineer I want full co-operation in the building of the pick-a-back space ship; then I have the synthetic model to make while you build a new supersonic projector—”
The Amazon turned as the chief engineer entered the laboratory and came hurrying across to her. She gave him the details and then sat down with him to sketch out the plan of the machine she wanted — a small vessel with nothing more intricate about it than normal radio controls so that radio beams could guide it from the intended base station on Mercury.
“And I want it in 48 hours,” the Amazon told him when at last she had the plans to her satisfaction.
“You’ll get it, Miss Brant,” the engineer assured her, “if I have to press into commission every man and woman in the shelter.”
While Abna went to work to build a new projector — an intricate job even with plenty of time to spare — she set about the task of creating a synthetic image of herself. Abna, in the few moments he could spare, watched her progress. In this particular field of synthetics he admitted that she knew far more than he and it was a confession which made her smile with something of her old superiority.
Synthesis, however, was a process which could not be hurried, and the Amazon fretted and fumed in consequence. Abna did neither. He forced her to rest at intervals, saw that she ate regularly, and helped her wherever he could. First an electric “pattemer” took an impression of her image, both external and internal, which impression was passed on electronically to a shapeless mass of synthetic flesh in a vacuum tube. As a negative might appear in the developing bath, so the flesh assumed the outward appearance of the Golden Amazon, right down to the tiniest scar and exact even to the number of hairs on her head.
“Brilliant Vi — brilliant,” Abna complimented her, studying the perfect, apparently sleeping form in the sealed tube. “Though I must say I prefer the original!”
“If you met this image of mine walking about you wouldn’t know the difference,” the Amazon said.
“You think not? That is because you cannot see the living animation in your eyes, the tremendous air of energy that bangs about you. No image could fool me, Vi. I’ve studied you too closely for that. Am I to understand,” Abna asked, “that the brain of this image is its main motive power? It doesn’t come to life and act on its own?”
“It could, but it doesn’t. A radio brain, responsible to my will alone, is what I use. I once did discover how to create life, but...” The Amazon stopped, pressing finger and thumb into her eyes. “That was long ago when I wanted above all else to rule the world. I have learned better sense since then.”
Abna contemplated her broodingly: “In some ways you are far cleverer than I,” he said at last. “You can create life and duplicate any living thing. You are the mistress of life, which is the ultimate achievement. We of Atlantis have never solved that problem, so to you belongs the glory.”
“I don’t think it is glorious to create life,” the girl replied. “It is assuming far too much. It’s dangerous — terrifying! I never want to attempt it again. Life, like death, is Nature’s own responsibility. That secret is one which I shall never divulge, or use again.”
She turned, opened the vacuum tube, and spoke sharply.
“Get up and walk!’she ordered.
The image did so, moving like a somnambulist across the laboratory and halting only when the Amazon so commanded.
“You have the supersonic projector finished?” the Amazon asked, turning back to Abna.
“To the last detail. All we are waiting for now is the pick-a-back ship. Since you said forty-eight hours that gives us six more hours of freedom. Don’t you think we’re entitled to leave this laboratory for a while and talk of other things? Let’s go into the galleries. The change will do us good.” She accompanied him from the laboratory, through the headquarters office — where Chris Wilson glanced up briefly from his work—and so out to the main shelter. Here they wandered along one of the countless galleries which, at intervals, had portholes embedded in granite. Through these it was possible to see the outer world, the warmth of the shelter keeping the immensely tough glass free of frost.
“Here,” Abna said, and drew the girl down to a natural seat in the rock beside one of the portholes. “I want to talk to you, Vi, not of science, but about you and me. You don’t suppose, after the battle we’re fighting together, after the association which has sprung up between us, that I ever intend to let you go, do you?”
“Frankly, I’d never thought about it.”
“Then do, while you have a moment. It’s important.�
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“Well, what can I say?”
“Just three words. They’re pretty ordinary, I believe, but you people of Earth — the normal ones I mean — attach a great deal of importance to them.”
The Amazon laughed gently. “You mean ‘I love you?”’
“That’s it. Do you?” Abna insisted. “You must surely know from my efforts to reach you that you mean more to me than anything else in the universe—”
He broke off, frowning at the girl’s expression. She was staring fixedly through the porthole, fascinated. Startled, he turned and look, too. Then he saw it in all its awe-inspiring majesty — The Great Glacier was coming.
Chapter XIX
Immediately the Amazon was on her feet and Abna jumped up beside her.
“It can’t be more than two miles away!” he ejaculated. “That means that at the rate it’s moving it will be over the shelter, in something like an hour.”
“We’ve got to get out quickly!” the Amazon interrupted. “And if that pick-a-back vessel isn’t finished we’ll have to go without it.”
She turned and raced to the headquarters office. Chris Wilson looked up in surprise; then his surprise changed to alarm as the Amazon explained what was happening. She snapped on the inter-phone.
“Get the chief engineer here immediately,” she ordered. “I’ll go and see how the shelter’s progressing,” Chris said. “Finished or not we’ll have to go below—”
He dashed from the office, and in a few seconds the engineer came hurrying in.
“I know what’s the matter, Miss Brant,” he said breathlessly. “I heard the reports about the glacier. That pick-a-back ship you wanted is finished. I’ve got men transporting it now to your laboratory.”
“Good!” the Amazon acknowledged. “See they clamp it on top of Abna’s flyer, as arranged. I’ll join you later.” The engineer nodded and hurried out. Swiftly the Amazon followed him, Abna coming up behind her. In the main shelter outside people were milling back and forth, aware of the sudden imminent danger. Then Chris Wilson came hurrying up.
Conquest of the Amazon Page 10
