Читать книгу Triangle of Power - John Russell Fearn - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

PLAN FOR CONQUEST

As the Ultra moved swiftly toward it, Io changed visibly from a rough, craggy world into something more interesting. There were deep valleys, heavily cratered plains and hillsides clothed with fantastic vegetation. Unlike the parent body, Jupiter, Io now had breathable air, most of it centred up to a height of three-quarters of a mile in the vegetation-covered valleys.

Io was a weird, fantastic little world, bathed in the triple lights of Europa, Ganymede, and the distant sun, to which was added the sullen green of vast Jupiter occupying all the sky. And yet, it was a world on which an oxygen-breathing animal could now live, which was more than could be said of the ammoniated-hydrogen atmosphere of Jupiter.

Finally the instrument showed the shallow air level had been contacted. The Amazon closed a switch and the Ultra came to a gradual halt, hovering helicopter-style over a valley.

The Amazon hurried to the chamber in which Abna was sealed. Taking her protonic gun from her belt as a safeguard, she pushed away the clamps with her free hand and then stood back.

“Come out, Abna,” she ordered—and waited.

The metal door opened slowly and Abna’s gigantic figure appeared. He looked at the alert girl, and at the protonic gun in her hand. To try conclu­sions with that deadly weapon would be suicidal, so he walked slowly past her into the control room. She followed him, her weapon keeping him covered.

“Apparently the stories I have heard about you, Vi, are correct,” he said quietly. “You haven’t a spark of decent human feeling in your make-up. You’re nothing but a....”

“I’m not interested, Abna,” the Amazon broke in. “Open that floor trap and get the ladder dropped. We’re fifty feet from the surface of Io, and that’s where I’m leaving you. You won’t die. There is enough edible vegetation on Io to last you the rest of your life—and water, too. Not a very glorious end for the once-proud ruler of Jove, but necessary.”

Abna said no more. He moved forward to the floor trap and began to slide the bolts back—then abruptly his hands shot upward instead and simultaneously gripped the Amazon’s gun wrist and her throat. A vicious twist flung the gun out of her grip, and the clutch on her throat slammed her against the curved wall.

“Since you want it this way, Vi, all right,” Abna said.

The Amazon’s hands clamped suddenly on Abna’s wrist as he pinned her neck. She strained her muscles to the utter­most and, powerful though he was, he had to give way because of pain in his wrist and forearm. He brought his other hand up, then snatched it back as the Amazon’s teeth bit into it savagely.

The instant his grip left her she brought up her knee and struck him in the stomach. He doubled, gasping slightly, only to meet the more-than-human impact of her right fist as it slammed into his jaw. He staggered a few paces and half fell at the bench in front of the control board. When he straightened up again the Amazon had recovered her protonic gun.

With her foot she kicked away the bolts on the floor trap and then lifted it back on its hinges. The air of Io came drifting into the control room, heavy with the scent of genetically-engineered vegetation. She snapped a switch on the control panel and from the bot­tom of the Ultra, below the trap, a ladder extended itself into the depths.

“Get down,” she ordered coldly.

Abna considered her, then he smiled faintly. She wondered why. Then, without another word, he stepped into the hole in the floor and began to descend. When he reached the lowest rung and dropped lightly in Io’s third-normal gravity, she closed the switch that returned the ladder into posi­tion and rebolted the trapdoor.

Her last vision of Abna as she retracted the suspensory-screws and switched in the atomic power was of him standing on a rocky ledge watching the machine’s movement to the upper reaches. He became remote, and then was gone.

Just as the Amazon was preparing to settle at the control board, she was suddenly flung to the metal floor and held there by a tremendous surge of acceleration with which even the gravity nullifiers could not cope. At the same moment she heard the change in rhythm in the power plant as its load was nearly quadrupled.

Weighted down with the force of countless tons, the Amazon clawed her way along the floor, straining every muscle in a frantic effort to reach the control board. She realized what had happened. Abna, when he had fallen by the switches, had altered the delayed-action power control. She knew what it meant if she did not reach it. The Ultra would hurtle into outer space at inconceivable speed until every scrap of atomic power was used up. The acceleration, constantly mounting, would so crush down on her heart and lungs that she would become unconscious, strong as she was, until the power plant was exhausted and constant velocity achieved.

She reached the bench below the control board and lay panting. Then she began to strain upward. Her fingertips came within three inches of the controls—then she could strain no more.

She collapsed senseless on the floor.

* * * *

To the southwest of London stood a residence apart from its fellows. Its tenant, a tall, austere-looking man of uncertain age, was not the type to attract attention. Jeffrey Carshaw was considered to be a wealthy bachelor who had retired to this home with a single manservant to escape the rush and bustle of the busy city.

Jeffrey Carshaw, however, was Sefner Quorne. To this home he had retired when his grandiose scheme for destroying the female sex of the Earth race had been beaten by the dual activities of the Amazon and Abna. Here he had lived quietly, his features altered by disguise, his whereabouts unknown by his electrical trick of altering his aura.

On the day after the ceremony Quorne sat in his library, pondering. Presently he rang a bell and his ser­vant entered. He was the only other survivor of the Atlantean race whom Quorne had brought to Earth with him.

“You rang, excellency?” he asked, still clinging to the designation Quorne had borne on Jupiter.

“Yes. I’ve verified a suspicion of mine, Nalgo, and I think you should know it. It was not the real Arch­bishop of Canterbury who married the Golden Amazon and his ex-highness yesterday. It was a synthetic image. This morning I viewed the archbishop as he lay in state after his sudden demise yesterday. I chose an oppor­tune moment to remove a sample of his skin from the fingertip—and my an­alysis in the laboratory satisfies me that he was never a real human being.

“The Golden Amazon created that archbishop from the original and held him by her mind until she was too far away to do it any longer. Then he collapsed and ‘died’.”

“Might I ask, excellency, why she did this?”

Quorne smiled slightly. “I have never succeeded in divining the intentions of the Golden Amazon, Nalgo—nor, for that matter, do I particularly want to. All we know is that her marriage is not legal, which will probably distress his ex-highness quite a lot if and when he learns of it. However, the interest­ing thing to us is that we now have a lever by which we can perhaps win popular favour. Suppose I stepped into the scene and brought this archbishop back to life? What would the people think of that?”

“Excellent idea, sir—but do you know where he is?”

“Yes. From the constitution of the synthetic image—which is exact in every detail with its original pattern—it was possible for me to mathematic­ally determine the archbishop’s aura number. After that, the compass showed me where he is. The Amazon has no longer a monopoly over an aura compass, Nalgo. The archbishop is still alive and being kept a prisoner in a lonely house in Cornwall. I as­sume that several of the Amazon’s most trusted confidants are keeping watch over him.”

“She has taken a risk doing that, excellency. If he should escape, her whole subterfuge will be exposed.”

Quorne shrugged. “Obviously she had some reason for keeping him alive, because she knows the image must ‘die’ with her influence removed. Maybe she even planned as we are planning to restore him from apparent death and strengthen her hold on the imagi­nation of the people. That is by the way: we are going to act while she is away. According to her public announcement, she will not return for two months. We can do much in that time.”

Nalgo asked: “Am I to assume, excellency, that having failed to achieve dominance over the race by destroying the females, you now intend to turn this planet into a scientific workshop for the conquest of the Solar System—and later the Universe?”

Quorne nodded. “We come from a race who hold power above everything, Nalgo. We have knowledge beyond anything these Earth fools ever heard of. We can dominate this planet by the science we possess. Tonight we will rescue the archbishop.”

“Yes, excellency. And then what? The synthetic body is guarded night and day, and will be until the funeral. How do you propose to—“

“We have weapons, Nalgo, which can reduce those guards to suspended ani­mation, their faculties moving so slowly they will have no idea of what is going on around them, and no remembrance of anything when they recover. The body will still be there, but it will be the real one, sleeping, until I am ready to ‘restore’ it. Yes, indeed, I can im­agine how these Earth fools will wor­ship it. Anything a little beyond their imagination they call a miracle. They have no scientific intelligence what­ever, Nalgo.”

Nalgo nodded. Whatever Sefner Quorne said was law—with good reason. Quorne’s knowledge of science bordered on the uncanny.

“We have much to do,” Quorne said, rising. “You had better come down to the laboratory with me.”

Thus began Quorne’s plan. At nightfall he and Nalgo, armed with queer weapons, drove to Cornwall, guided by the unerring aura-compass, which showed exactly where the missing archbishop was to be found.

The minions of the Amazon guarding the archbishop stood no chance against the sudden electrical onslaught that hit them. One minute they were aware of Quorne and Nalgo making entry into the lonely house; the next they were dead. The archbishop, unharmed, sat in the big main room of the house, gazing blankly at the two men who had wrought such havoc in a few seconds.

“We are friends, Dr. Cranton,” Quorne said. “I much regret this violent in­trusion, but it was necessary in order to effect your rescue.”

“Murder is never necessary,” the archbishop retorted.

“You have been the captive of the Golden Amazon. Were you aware of that?”

“Certainly. She informed me that I was in some danger and so transferred me here. Knowing Miss Brant as I do, I am sure her methods were justified.”

“Many things have happened while you have been in captivity,” Quorne murmured, realizing the archbishop had been duplicated without his knowledge. “I shall now escort you back to London.”

The archbishop rose, frowning. “Who are you?”

“My name is Jeffrey Carshaw,” Quorne lied. “Your abduction has been a source of worry to me, hence my decision to rescue you. That these guardian murderers have been killed in the process I regard as irrelevant.”

“And I repeat that—”

“Quite,” Quorne broke in. Then his right hand suddenly came out of his pocket and fired a blunt-nosed instru­ment. The archbishop found himself enveloped in a pale blue powder, which gravitated toward and settled upon him in a curious fashion.

“Asleep?” Nalgo asked presently, as Dr. Cranton became motionless.

“Atomic dust has many uses, Nalgo,” Quorne answered. “He will not revive until I wish it. When he does, he will not remember what has happened here. Now, bring him out to the car.”

Nalgo moved forward, lifted the mo­tionless body on to his shoulder, then followed Sefner Quorne outdoors. The hardest part of the job had been accom­plished. To deal with the men who were guarding the synthetic body in the Abbey would be child’s play. Ahead of him Sefner Quorne saw his master plan unfolding.

* * * *

The Amazon gradually moved, the tips of her fingers rubbing along the cold metal floor. A gradual tide crept over her numbed limbs, the slow return of life after many hours of complete unconsciousness.

She sat up, frowned. Gradually she remembered. The sudden whirlwind acceleration, her inability to stop it, the force that had crushed her into insensibility. Her eyes strayed to the chronometer. It had stopped under the strain.

She got on her feet, swayed dizzily for a moment, then had control of her­self. The normal light had expired and the emergency circuit had come into operation. The drone of the power plant had stopped. She went over to it, her face grim. Every trace of the copper blocks, whose atomic energy provided the driving force, had gone from between the massive jaws. As each block had been converted to energy, automatic mechanisms had inserted a fresh block into place, until all the fuel had been exhausted. Then, when all the blocks had been entirely converted into energy, the Ultra had achieved a constant velocity—yet it seemed motionless to the Amazon. As acceleration had decreased to zero she had recovered.

She hurried to the outlook port and contemplated the void. Puzzled, she looked even more intently upon all sides, above and below. Still unable to believe what she saw, she mounted to the conning tower on the vessel’s roof and examined the abysmal depths of space through the instruments. Every reading brought home the staggering truth to her.

She was well outside the solar system! Acceleration unchecked, the Ultra had reached an incredible velocity before the fuel had been exhausted—only a fraction beneath the speed of light, the fastest speed possible within the normal universe.

She was lost! For the first time in her career she was abroad in space without the least conception of where she was.

The speed was still being maintained at a constant velocity because there was nothing to check it. She was flying blindly on­ward into the unknown.

“And no fuel,” she finished, looking about her helplessly. “I’m sure Abna would be glad to know how completely his plot worked.”

To admit defeat was not the Amazon’s way. She took the situation in hand and first revived herself with a meal and essences: then she concentrated on the problem.

Spare copper blocks she had none. To use the rockets to slow down her acceleration was feasible, but they could not last very long. The atomic dust explosive they used was only sufficient for a normal round-the-System hop.

An hour of solid thinking still left her no wiser than at first. The problem seemed to be insurmountable. Yet if it were not solved, the Ultra would continue hurtling onward through free space until it came within range of some heavy body; then it would immediately be drawn to it. This thought decided the Amazon against using the rockets in a futile effort to check her speed. She might need them yet to re­sist the pull of some alien gravity field.

At last she got up from her chair and went to the window, looking again on the incomprehensible void. She had never been frightened of it before, as long as she was within measurable limits of home—but here, billions of miles from all she had ever known, she found herself battling a rising tide of terror.

A sudden movement in the Ultra made her look about her sharply. She was conscious of it by the pressure against her feet. The giant machine was turn­ing slowly. Through the window she saw the endless stars changing position. Her speed had not decreased, but direction had certainly changed and she could see no reason for it. The only answer could be that she had fallen into the attraction of an as yet invisible body.

Hurrying over to the control board, she set the instruments in action. The super-radar beam she projected gave back an answer. Tens of millions of miles ahead of her was a small but immensely heavy planetoid, uncharted, unknown as far as she was concerned, and towards it the Ultra was hurtling. There could only be one result when she struck that body. Vessel and planetoid would fuse into one, welded by the inconceivable force of the concussion.

Instantly she gave power to the forward rockets. By blasting toward the body with every vestige of force, it was possible that she might slow down her terrific speed—but even at that she could see no possible way to escape being disintegrated when the crash came.

With the knowledge that she had done all she could she remained at the controls, staring intently into the jet of space. Certainly her near-light speed was rapidly slowing. Slower, and slower still. Then she glimpsed the cause of her troubles ahead. It was a small planetoid, perhaps the size of Ceres, but with a strong gravity due to dense material.

The Ultra struck the planetoid. Then all sense of strain was gone. There was no shock, no jarring. And yet the Ultra was motionless, its titanic speed gone. The whole business was at vari­ance with science.

She looked outside. The sun was a mere pinpoint of light, but the radiance of the Milky Way and distant nebulae was sufficient to show a perfectly level land­scape, which looked like sponge-rub­ber. No hills, no dales, no vegetation, no clouds. It suggested there was no air—that this was some lifeless planetoid that lay far beyond her own solar system, but had been torn away from some other stellar system perhaps thousands of years ago, and was now a wanderer in the gulfs of interstellar space, far beyond the ordinary ken of intelligent beings.

Slowly the Amazon moved, utterly baffled to find herself still alive. Switching on the external gauges, she read them carefully. Her guess was right: there was no air, and the temperature reading was below zero. No place to venture—yet if she did not—?

She had scrambled into a spacesuit, snapped the transparent helmet in position, and with her weapon-belt well loaded, tugged open the airlock.

Gravity pulled her down the moment she stepped outside. It dragged her flat on her face. She rose only at the cost of vast physical strain. The amaz­ing ground dented at every step she took and then sprang back into place with the resiliency of rubber. With her knife she hacked a sample of it for examination and put it in her specimen-bag.

The place affected her brain in the most incredible fashion. Each thought she had seemed to echo, setting her head jangling unbearably. She thought of Earth and home, and immediately the conception was slammed back at her with such intensity it swamped every other idea in her mind. Since she could not exist without thinking, it meant that every notion that came into her brain was reflected back to its source until she felt she would go crazy. Dazed, her head ringing, she clawed her way back into the Ultra and slammed the door. The queer mental ‘echo’ effect ceased immediately.

Here was a mystery of immense proportions, even to so skilled a scientist as was the Amazon. She spent a few mo­ments recovering her balance after she had clambered from the spacesuit; then, since the answer seemed to lie in the planetoid’s peculiar constitution, she set to work on an analysis of the sample she had brought with her. It explained much, if not everything.

The specimen was tissue and mineral in about equal proportions, just as a human bone is hard on the exterior with marrow and pulp within. Incredible though the Amazon found the fact, there was no doubt that, in a dim kind of way, the planet was a living thing. One titanic nerve-centre, but of such a low order of intelligence it had not the power of thought, only the power of reflecting them if they came from an outside source.

“Which accounts for my own thoughts being flung back at me,” the Amazon mused. “This tissue-mineral reflects thoughts as a mirror reflects light-waves. It is vastly resilient, which is why when the Ultra struck it at incredible speed it absorbed the impact.”

Then she remembered something. Once, when she had been with Abna, they had been being flung into space by a force beam generated by Quorne. He had solved the problem by his knowledge of the fourth dimension, in which space itself could be foreshortened to zero. The Amazon, in her recent troubled state of mind, had forgotten that she had learned every secret Abna possessed.

Setting the computers to work to check her equations, she arrived at the answer by one of the most complicated feats of mathematics she had ever attempted. Four-dimen­sional geometry was something new to her. She no longer wondered why Abna had wanted to keep it a secret: it un­locked the door to a thousand mysteries of space and time.

Theoretically, she knew now how to bridge the inconceivable gulf of space between herself and the distant solar system using only the minimal amount of ordinary rocket fuel that remained. Once she had done that she could radio to Earth or Mars for more supplies of copper, and so reach home—but first there was the practical problem of converting her existing power-plant into a four-dimensional one. Then she would need just enough power to give a ten-second burst of furious energy. That energy must envelop the Ultra and isolate it for a few brief seconds from the space in which it stood. Immediately before that happened she would fire the ordinary rockets to build up as much speed as she could, headed in the direction of Earth. After that, four-dimensional science should cause space to move around the Ultra instead of the Ultra moving through it. It depended on how accurate were the equations.

The Amazon went to work methodically, dismantling the power plant. Twice sheer exhaustion made her give up and rest. It could have been hours, days, or weeks that she toiled: she had no idea. She only knew she must not make a single mistake in the complicated conversion she was attempting. And at last she had it done.

Fixing the mechanical side of the business did not solve the problem of fuel, however—so, as she had done once before in an emergency, she sacrificed everything made of copper to the matrix of the atomic furnace. Terminals, earthing-rods, wires, struts, light-fitt­ings, switches—the whole lot was torn to pieces and finally moulded at high temperature into a moderate-sized cop­per cube. This she firmly fixed in the jaws of the power plant and then gave the intricate conversion, now linked with the control board, a final once-over. Everything was apparently in order.

She made a careful survey of the unfamiliar heavens and, as near as possible, charted the approximate position of the planetoid she was on, then with the aid of computers worked out the approximate position of the Earth. Using what remained of her ordinary rocket fuel, she aligned the Ultra’s nose in that direction, then expended all the remaining fuel to build up as much speed as possible. This done, she was ready.

She closed the switch that operated the atomic power plant and waited tensely. The plant hummed immediately, and the Ultra became envel­oped in a lavender light that flashed outward from the centre to swallow it in purple haze. To the Amazon the moments that followed were sheer anguish. She felt as if every nerve were being burned out, as if she and the machine were turning tremendously fast spins yet, paradoxically, without moving.

Space itself swung and warped before the Amazon’s vision, and it seemed as though the stars were hurtling straight towards her.