“Welcome, Metrix,” one of the men said, and the Amazon gave him a sharp questioning look.
“How comes it that you are heading this retinue, Ilthan? What of Thraxal? Is he not my Chief Advisor?”
The men exchanged dubious glances.
“Well, well, what is the matter?” the Amazon demanded.
“Thraxal is dead, Metrix,” Ilthan replied gravely. “He was actively engaged in the pursuit of the Golden Amazon when she escaped her prison and... and she killed him.”
The Amazon gestured impatiently.
“I have nothing but fools around me!” she declared. “You allowed that Earth-woman to beat you at every turn— even allowed her to pursue me as far as her home planet! Fortunately I dealt with her—and Commander Kerrigan. They will not trouble us again.”
The expressions on the men’s faces changed to quiet satisfaction.
“I would have audience with you, gentlemen,” the Amazon added, motioning. “Come with me: we will discuss whilst we dine.”
With great pomp and courtesy she was conducted to a large waiting helicoflyer, and the pilot transported the machine swiftly to the Metrix’s headquarters in the city centre. With the Amazon in the lead the party entered the building and, unerringly, the Amazon went into the lounge, crossing to the button which summoned a servant.
In a moment or two a man entered, and the girl glanced at him.
“We are dining immediately,” she said, still speaking in perfect Martian.
The man bowed and went out. The Amazon waved the retinue to the enormous cushions. They settled themselves, watching as she spread herself gracefully in the luxurious satins. Her unfathomable eyes looked from one man to the other.
“There is no doubt of one thing, gentlemen,” she said presently. “Those fools on Earth are beaten! I’ve hoodwinked them from the very start. They are perfectly sure that I am none other than the Golden Amazon, and for that reason have followed out my orders to the last detail....” She gave a grim smile. “In fact, things have gone much better than I had hoped. The ursugas have made a terrible inroad into their cities, and the people are utterly demoralized.... So much so, I saw no further purpose could be achieved by staying there.”
“But was it not your original intention to stay there and then summon us when the time was ready?” Ilthan asked, musingly.
“Plans change, my friend—and who are you to question them? Incidentally, some forty more Earthlings will be soon here for brain transference. I saw the other forty whom you sent, and I congratulate you. The master-surgeons did a good job of work.”
“The master-surgeons are dead, Metrix,” Ilthan responded, with a grim look. “The Golden Amazon slew them. Assistants did that transference work—and I had grave doubts as to whether they had done their work properly.”
“They did; I saw the results. But to get down to more important matters,” the Amazon continued. “We are now ready to take over Earth—every one of us, which means manufacturing enough ranicawls for all of us to make the journey. How many are there, all told, which can be used?”
“Fifty,” Ilthan responded. “Which, under pressure, can carry six people apiece.”
“Or three hundred of the two thousand people there are here,” the Amazon reflected. “In that case we’ll need three hundred more ranicawls manufactured.”
“I see no reason why that cannot be done within a week, Metrix,” Ilthan responded.
“Then I leave it in your hands, Ilthan. Turn every available resource to that purpose. When we leave here it must be in a body, not in driblets. We have to descend on Earth in such a panoply of power that our coming will crush what remains of resistance. You understand?”
The Martian and his colleagues nodded, then there was a pause for a while as a meal was brought. As it was proceeded with, Ilthan asked a question:
“And during the period whilst these ranicawls are being manufactured, Metrix, what do you propose doing?”
“Cross-indexing our population and deciding how everybody will fit into the new order when we arrive on Earth. Naturally, once there, each of you will be given an Earth body so as to withstand the rigorous conditions of that planet. As for myself, I rather think I shall retain this body. It is so beautifully adapted for Earth, and so strong.”
“Yes, I am sure it is,” Ilthan murmured, and though his voice was quietly respectful, there was a curious edge in it which the Amazon could not quite analyse. “In fact, Metrix,” he added, “it is the only thing you can do. Your own body was destroyed—once again by the Golden Amazon.”
The Amazon sighed and compressed her lips. Her eyes looked at each man in cold reproach.
“I can only think that all of you were asleep whilst I was away, to let that Earth-woman get away with things as she did.... However, it does not signify. My own body would have been more or less useless on Earth.”
The meal finished with no further exchanges of words— save that as he departed Ilthan promised to go to work immediately on the manufacture of the ranicawls. The Amazon, left to herself, sighed with relief and lay pondering in the cushions for a while—then she rose.
Calling once more on her “borrowed knowledge”, she found her way to the main laboratory where the Metrix had passed much of her time. It was a large annex to the “palace”, and, though well equipped, had not the range of usefulness of the Amazon’s own laboratory on Earth.
“None the less,” she murmured, gazing around her, “sufficient for experiment, I fancy.”
Making sure that the doors were secured, she then spent half an hour going over the laboratory carefully, making absolutely certain that there was no trace of a hidden sound or vision pick-up which might relay her activities back to any member of her retinue.
Satisfied that no such apparatus existed, she removed from two of the pouches on her belt a couple of microscopic instruments which she had brought with her from Earth. In appearance they resembled detectors, and were equipped with delicately oscillating needles.
Climbing up on to the bench, she pulled back the shutters of the windows and gazed out for a while on the vision of the twin synthetic suns drenching the Martian underworld. Then she picked up the two instruments and held them in her hands, directing them each in turn towards the twin suns. One detector registered maximum reading, and the other zero—and no matter where she turned them there was no variation.
Smiling to herself, she climbed down from the bench and began to busy herself with calculations. When she had finished them she sat thinking and murmuring to herself.
“Which means that both of them are of identical atomic energy—positive, and not positive-negative, as is sometimes the case. Each one is emanating seventy-two million atomic volts a second, which disrupted, is about enough power to blow Mars clean out of his orbit, and everything with it. Multiply that once by fusing both suns simultaneously, and there will be an outward explosion with a core energy of something like a hundred and forty million atomic volts. Mars will vanish in one titanic flash of outwardly expanding energy. The outcome will shake all the other planets to the depths because of the shift in equilibrium, but none of them should fall over the danger line.... And Mars and all it contains will cease to be. We shall lose it as a colony planet, but we shall be sure that no Martian will ever again attack us—and of the two issues that seems to be the most important.”
CHAPTER XII
For a long time afterwards the Amazon still sat and meditated, but her views had changed but little at the end of her cogitation. She was resolved upon her plan: the extraordinary one of blowing the red planet into cosmic dust by forcing the two synthetic suns to collide. With a like charge of atomic force repulsing like, the collision of the two could only result in an explosion of cataclysmic dimensions. Her next move was to determine exactly how to accomplish the feat and herself escape the consequences.
She began figuring rapidly, crossing out and starting again, until by degrees the semblance of a mathematical formula began to appear.
. Once she had this worked out in detail, its practical application would be simple.
Nevertheless, it was a task which occupied her extensively in the week which followed; but for the sake of keeping up appearances before the Martians she emerged from the laboratory at intervals and flew to different parts of the underworld, apparently busy with her cross-indexing system; nor did she refuse the occasional audiences Ilthan required to settle some matter or other in connection with the production of the flying saucers.
During this period the twenty flying saucers from Earth came back with forty anaesthetized human beings aboard. The fact was immediately reported to the Amazon by Ilthan himself.
“I am not sure,” the girl said thoughtfully, “that it would be such a good idea to transfer the brains now.”
The Martian considered her, his face expressionless, as she paced slowly up and down the great reception lounge.
“There is no reason,” the Amazon added, “why they cannot be included in the mass-transference which will take place the moment we arrive on Earth.”
“That, Metrix, is for you to decide,” Ilthan responded placidly. “I would only point out that since they are here we——”
“I am none too sanguine about these amateur surgeons who have taken the place of the masters,” the Amazon interrupted, thankful that she had found a reasonable excuse to avert the heinous business of more brain transference, and its inevitable consequence of creating that many more Martians to be tracked down later.
“As you wish, Metrix,” Ilthan murmured. “Though you did pronounce yourself satisfied with the work of these assistant-surgeons. ’ ’
The Amazon gave him a steady look.
“Can it be that you are questioning my decision, Ilthan?”
“Metrix, I would not have the temerity.”
“Very well, then. Keep those Earthlings unconscious, and give them nourishment by injection. They will go with us when we leave for Earth. I myself am paying a visit to Earth any moment, to check up on the final details. By the time I return I shall expect to find every ranicawl completed and the populace within them ready to depart at my order. You will find that my cross-indexing plan has been given to the appropriate civic authorities.”
“I understand, Metrix,” Ilthan assured her, and then he withdrew backwards, closing the doors.
“Which,” the Amazon muttered, “is the last I’ll see of you, my friend, or those forty Earthlings. I’m afraid they will have to die with the rest of the Martians, because there is no other way out. However, being under anaesthetic, they will never know what really happened to them...”
Her mind made up, she left the lounge actively and summoned her private helicoplane. It took her to the immense Martian airport, where the Ultra lay just as she had left it. She entered it, fitted the desseminator-bar into the power-plant, and then sealed the air-lock.
Carefully, to herself, she went over the plan in her mind. It was a remarkable plan in so far that it relied for its fruition upon the flawless operation of her mental mathematics. It was based on her taking the Ultra into space for exactly one million miles, computable from the meters, and from that point—her exact position being determined by the fixed stars—projecting from the Ultra a deadly stream of force, one of the proton-guns being converted for the purpose. To this gun would be added the firing chambers of three of the other guns, which would give the necessary power to fire a beam in a straight fine for a million miles.
The beam, mathematically exact in relation to Mars, would strike the planet and pass through it in a stream of destructive energy, in the form of an axis, so calculated that it would hit first one “sun” and hurl it forward clean into the other one, in a straight line with it. The fusion of the two under this straight-line impact could only result in that which the Amazon had planned—the utter destruction of Mars and all it contained.
“Yes, satisfactory,” she decided, at the end of her thinking. “Most satisfactory.”
She settled in the control chair, switched on the power, and hurtled the Ultra upwards. At her command through the radio the Central Valve was opened, and the space-ship passed through into the pale-blue Martian sky, and beyond it again into the void.
Moving at slow velocity with the automatic pilot in position—slow so that she would not overfly the million-mile deadline—the Amazon began the task of dismantling and conversion of the four proton-guns. It was a job which took her two hours, and at the end of that time she was 750,000 miles from Mars and advancing at a crawl.
The guns ready for action, she returned to the control chair and began a painstaking study of her instruments, which had to be used in conjunction with her mathematics.
For the remaining 250,000 miles she slowed the Ultra down very gradually, until by the time the gauge said she was the exact one million miles from her objective the vessel was at a standstill, the rocket recoil keeping the craft stationary against the great gravitational fields reaching out into space as currents move an unanchored ship.
Very carefully she eased the machine round into position, Mars looming like a monstrous orange ball, streaked with the lines of the “canals”—
“I would suggest, Amazon, that you go no farther!” a voice warned, in Martian.
The girl’s hands froze on the switches, and blank dismay struck her. Never had she been taken so completely by surprise. She turned her head sharply, knowing even as she did so whom she would behold. It was Ilthan, still in his courtier’s attire, a levelled weapon in his hand. His square, austere face was without expression as he came forward, stopping within a foot of the seated girl.
“Had your scheme worked, Amazon, it would have been most effective, I’m sure,” he commented. “To blow my home planet to pieces from a million miles distance is certainly brilliant—that is, if you can do it!”
The Amazon’s hand lashed out abruptly to the switch which would fire the protonic gun—but the switch vanished in a flash of intolerable brilliance as the beam from the Martian’s gun struck it. The Amazon snatched her fingers away and waited, her yellow face grim.
“In your urgency to complete your scheme, Amazon, you were apparently unaware of one thing,” Ilthan continued coldly. “We of Valdon have the power to read thoughts! I read all of yours from the moment you set foot on our planet. I waited to see just how far you would go, and when I knew you were intending to depart for the purpose of completing your plan I came aboard this vessel—a simple matter since the air-lock was open.... Yes, every thought you possessed I read—and at this very moment I am in full possession of your plot to destroy my world by the fusion of the atomic suns. Clever, Amazon—very clever; but not quite clever enough.”
The Amazon was silent, bitterly reviling herself. She remembered now that the Metrix had said that the Martians possessed the power of telepathy, but so involved had she been with her plans she—
“You have not been at all brilliant, you know,” Ilthan continued dryly. “For instance—Claire Del Foye.”
“What about her?” the girl demanded, surprised.
“She read your thoughts the moment you spoke to her, and knew whom you were. She advised us by radio to be on the look out for your possible return to our planet. Since, from your mind, I understand that you killed her, I gather she was not aware at the time of the fate you had in mind for her.”
“When we first met, no,” the Amazon agreed. “I only decided how to deal with her afterwards.”
“Ah—I see.”
Silence.
“And now what do you propose doing?” the Amazon asked, her eyes glinting.
“I still propose to use your scheme, after we have all left our planet, leaving you behind...
The girl pressed herself backwards in the chair, feeling the powerful springs crush inwards. She waited, poised.
“You mean that you will leave me helpless on your planet and then blow it to pieces in the way I had intended?”
“Precisely,” Ilthan acknowledged. “Nothing easier, sinc
e I have all the details of your plan from your mind. And,” he added dryly, “I also know that you are planning to attack me by vaulting out of that chair with the springs to help you. I should not attempt to do so if—”
The Amazon acted, doing the very thing the Martian had read from her mind. With the impact of a battering ram she hurtled out of the spring chair and straight into the man, lashing up her fist towards his face. Being not entirely unprepared for the attack he jerked his head sideways so that the killing blow missed its mark.
Instead the girl felt a savage pain at the back of her neck as the butt of Ilthan’s gun descended on it. Breathless and dazed, she crashed on the control-room floor.
“Get up!” Ilthan ordered coldly. “And don’t attempt any more moves like that! You can’t get away with it, not whilst I know what you are thinking about.... Let me add that I have no objection to wounding you if I have to—but I will not kill you. That would spoil your enjoyment of— er—the final scene.”
He seized her arm and whirled her on her feet, glaring down into her angry face from his seven feet of height, his gun pressing hard in her middle. Then with a fierce shove he sent her spinning back into the control chair.
“Drive back to Valdon,” he ordered.
“And supposing I refuse?”
“If you do I will drive myself, using your brain for my knowledge of how to control this craft. And I’ll incapacitate you so you can do no mischief during the journey.”
The Amazon reflected swiftly. Injury she dared not risk. Tight though her predicament was, she still had the chance to fight as long as she remained in one piece. With a bitter look she switched on the power, swung the Ultra’s nose round, and began the trip back towards Mars.
llthan stood watching her narrowly; and after a while she glanced up.
“It seems strange to me, Ilthan, that only Claire Del Foye warned you of my identity,” she commented. “What about the ranicawl pilots: didn’t they read my mind too?”
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