Читать книгу Quorne Returns - John Russell Fearn - Страница 9

CHAPTER FOUR

THE BIG BREAK

The Amazon submitted to being half-thrown into the cell by the robots, Abna and Viona stumbling in after her. Then the door slammed shut, was electrically locked, and finally there came a heavy bump as the big stone was pushed into position.

“Do you suppose they intend to leave us here?” Viona asked presently, looking around her upon the metal walls, faintly visible in the dim light from the ceiling.

“I suppose so, until Quorne decides what comes next,” Abna replied. “We shan’t be left to die, since I gather he is hoping to use us in the future. In the meantime, since I have a distinct dislike for such complete confinement, I had better see how we can get out.”

The walls were composed of solid sheets of metal without any sign of joining. The ceiling was similar, a solitary lamp glowing in its centre. Above again, presumably, was the whole mass of the building. The only opening was in the ventilator grille at the top of the door, which the stone outside left clear.

“Even if we could smash open that grille we’d be no better off,” Abna said. “It would be too small for us to get through. And we have no weapons with us.”

The Amazon said: “I had just changed for dinner when Elsa Vincent arrived.”

Viona said: “Somebody is bound to come and feed us, and they can’t do it except by opening the door and pushing back the stone. We might do something then.”

“I think not,” came the voice of Sefner Quorne, apparently from the air itself. “I am aware of your conversation, but do not trouble to discover the loudspeaker from which my voice is emanat­ing. There is no loudspeaker: it is a trans­mission to you direct, and your brains are capable of picking it up. Nobody will open the door until I am ready for them to do so. As for food, it will reach you like this.”

There was a pause, then out of the air itself there materialized a tray filled with quite a sizeable meal and costly essences. There came a dry chuckle from Sefner Quorne as the tray finally settled on the floor.

“The fourth dimension can be most useful at times,” he said. “Now I must leave you. I have much to do on Earth. We shall meet upon my return, and when that happens, I shall have partly achieved my ambition to dominate the System.”

His voice ceased and Abna clenched his fists in fury. Swinging around, he went to the door, locked his fingers in the grille, and pulled with all his colossal strength. But the metal was proof against him. He finally desisted and returned to the centre of the cell, where the Amazon and Viona were calmly partaking of a meal.

The Amazon whispered: “I can never understand why, when you have tran­scending powers, you never use them in a crisis!”

Abna said: “I prefer to be human and have some happiness.”

The Amazon mused. “I’ve wondered many a time— However, in regard to our present problem, the answer is to think our way out.”

“I have been trying to do that ever since we got in here!”

“I mean it literally,” the Amazon said, pouring herself a glass of restorative.

“You mean,” Viona asked, after a moment, “that we should break this prison down by mind force? That’s ask­ing a lot, mother, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so—providing your father chooses to use the powers he possesses to the utmost degree. Matter is always subordinate to mind, so with his mind and my own—and yours, my dear—I do not see why we can’t get free. We might as well make the attempt, because we’ll certainly never escape by physical means, not this time.”

“And when we have escaped?” Abna asked, eating slowly, and it was curious to note that he did not entertain any doubt that escape was possible. “What then? We shall only walk right into the hands of the Neptunians!”

“There you go again!” the Amazon exclaimed, irritated. “One moment you admit the possibility of getting out of this prison, and the next you ask how we fare amongst the Neptunians! We destroy them, of course, if they get in our way, and we’ll use physical or mental means to do it, whichever is the more favourable.”

“Physically we have no weapons beyond our strength, Vi, and that wouldn’t be equal to an army of them. Neither would mental power. Destroying dead metal and stone is not difficult because there is no mental opposition—as I found on Saturn when I created the city of Millennia by thought alone—but when you deal with thinking beings there’s a terrific amount of opposition.”

“Only thing to do with that is deal with it when we come to it,” Viona said. “For my part, I’m willing to try mother’s suggestion.”

Abna considered while he finished his meal, then nodded.

“Very well, we’ll try it,” he assented, “but let us have some order in the situation. We want particularly to know where the spaceport is located, so we can steal a machine and make good use of our liberty. We’re con­siderably helped by the fact that this city is a duplicate of London, so once we know in which direction the spaceport lies, the rest is easy. Now, let me see what I can do.”

He stood motionless, concentrating, and neither the Amazon nor Viona disturbed him, chiefly because they were incapable of reaching the heights of mental exaltation that were natural to him. For his own part, his mind objectified every detail that lay outside the prison cell, as clearly as though he was viewing it on a television screen.

“The spaceport lies that way,” he said finally, pointing left. “That’s the direction we have to go when we get out of here.”

“A moment,” the Amazon put in. “Why try and escape into space? Would it not be better to try to get to the dissembly equipment, which we know is above us in the laboratory in this very building, and then transfer ourselves back to Earth before Quorne gets there? Unless, of course, he has also used that method to cover the journey. It would be infinitely quicker, and we could get to grips with him much more swiftly.”

Abna nodded. “Good idea. The spaceport notion we can use as second best. Now, are you ready?”

Viona, and the Amazon closed their eyes and began to concentrate their mind force against the solid metal and stone that hemmed them in. Abna, far more experienced in the art of mind control, kept his eyes open, but the rigidity of his body showed the immense concentrated effort he was making.

Gradually the unrelenting effect of the mind-waves began to make itself evident. The wall on the door side of the cell visibly misted until it was no more than a gossamer veil, its very atoms obeying the superior law battering at it.

“Come,” Abna murmured in a far­away voice, and with the Amazon on one side of him and Viona on the other he stepped forward, entirely fear­less, and kept on walking until they were in the midst of the hazy trans­parency. Here they needed the ulti­mate of unwavering concentration, for a fraction of a second’s disbelief in their power would have snapped the wall back to normal, crushing them to atomic dust in the process. But no such thing happened. Beyond a faint tingling sen­sation, the radiant effect of atomic clusters in subjection to mind-force, they passed through the wall safely and found themselves in the dim cor­ridor.

At that they relaxed and the wall reformed, as solid as before. Abna glanced about him but there was nobody in sight.

“So far so good,” he commented. “Be ready for anything. We know our way back to the laboratory anyhow. If robots are about, ignore them and they will probably ignore us, since no minds will be directing them to watch us.”

He started forward, Viona beside him, both of them regretful that they had no physical weapons they could use. They knew their limitations when it came to mental force.

Without mishap they mounted a flight of stairs to the upper corridor and then paused. Three men were approaching, looking exactly like Earthmen, and were obviously coming from the labora­tory.

“One of them is Dral,” Abna murmured to the Amazon. “You remem­ber? We talked with him on the last occasion we were here? He’s the ruler of the planet. From what I can read of his mind, he has just been into the laboratory to see Quorne off on his journey to Earth.”

The advancing Dral and his two advisers stopped, utterly bewildered at the sight of the trio, then their hands flew to their guns. But in that instant they were overpowered.

The Amazon singled out Dral for herself, whirled him around, then delivered a blow that knocked him spin­ning backwards towards the corridor’s huge window, outside which blazed the glare of the artificial sun. Dral gasped and choked, trying to recover himself, but before he could do so the Amazon was upon him again, her yellow fingers tight about his neck. To her surprise, however, she found her strength was unequal to the task of squeezing the life out of the ruler: in fact, she herself was gradually being overpowered as his hands clutched her throat and tightened relentlessly.

Encumbered as she was by her sweeping gown, she took the only chance she could and wrenched herself free, narrowly missing the savage jet of a flame gun which one of the other men fired at her. Neither Abna nor Viona had overpowered their own adversaries, either, and were glancing about them for a means of escape.

The Amazon hesitated no longer. Since the men seemed too tough to be smashed down by ordinary methods, the only thing to do was get them out of the way for a while. So she twisted backwards quickly, seized Dral by the collar and belt of his jacket, then whirled him over her head and through the big window. With a tinkling of glass he sailed outside, dropping down forty feet to the street below. In a matter of seconds Viona and Abna had dealt likewise with the other two men, dodging the ray-gun beams that stabbed at them.

They sped down the corridor and into the laboratory. The place was deserted and the equipment switched off. Presumably Quorne had transmitted himself to Earth and the technicians had departed. Quickly the Amazon hurried to the dissembler and studied its panels, then she nodded in satisfaction.

“Practically a duplicate of my own invention,” she said. “And the settings are registering Earth—for Quorne, I suppose—so we’ll have no troubles in that direction. Quickly, one of you, switch on the power.”

Viona obeyed, or attempted to, but before she could grip the master-switch a robot glided unexpectedly from its concealed recess and seized her arm with its pincer hand. Instantly she tried to use the other hand, but this, too, was prevented.

Abna glanced around and saw what was happening. Immediately he hurtled for the monstrosity of metal, and by sheer strength tore open the pincers holding Viona’s arms. But by the time he had done this, other robots came gliding into view, evidently directed by post-hypnotic orders to protect the laboratory against all intruders.

“Get away from them!” the Ama­zon cried, and they all raced through the laboratory door into the corridor. They kept going until the corridor took a sharp right turn to the main street outside. In the doorway were guards, one on each side, guns at the ready. As the trio came hurtling towards them they swung, ready for action.

“Risk knocking them over,” Abna said. “Quorne likely left orders for us to be left unharmed, so we’ll hope they won’t fire.”

His guess was correct, and by the time the guards had been reached, their hands were wavering uncertainly about their guns—and that was as far as they got. Knuckles smashed into their faces and sent them reeling down the steps to the street. Passers-by, exactly akin to Earthlings, paused in amazement and helped the guards to rise.