Читать книгу Daughter of the Amazon: The Golden Amazon Saga, Book Five - John Russell Fearn - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

UNHAPPY AMAZON

Amid the poisonous wastes of the planet Saturn there lay one particular territory forever sacrosanct—an area of indeterminate size and com­pletely apart from the atmosphere of ammoniated-hydrogen and plains of pulverized rock lighted by the twi­light glow of a far distant sun.

In this territory were green fields and silver streams, the blue of an Earth summer sky, the gold of a warm sun, and in the midst of it an incredible city of amethyst-tinted metal. That a woman living here could not be happy seemed impossible,

Yet the Golden Amazon was the most unhappy woman in the System.

Hexa, the one servant who attended to all her wants, was secretly worried. So much so he finally put his thoughts into words as he came upon the Amazon lost in thought in one of the mighty lounges. He hesitated for a moment as he studied her—the most perfect woman ever born, the glare of the synthetic sun etching out every detail of her flawless figure in its close-fitting golden gown. Ageless beauty, superhuman strength, scien­tific genius. All these attributes, but the Golden Amazon was desolate.

“May—may I speak with you, Amazon?” Hexa asked at last.

The Amazon glanced up in surprise. Hexa moved forward, a muscular young giant in a Grecian-type toga.

“Certainly, Hexa. What is it?”

“I have been noticing, Amazon, how distraught you are. I wondered if I could do anything to help?”

“I’m afraid not, Hexa—though I ap­preciate your asking. You know the situation as well as I do. My husband and daughter have gone—forever, as far as I know. My daughter is in the Twenty-Fifth Plane of matter, and my husband also. And my daughter’s husband is in the Twenty-Seventh Plane.…”

“One can bring them back here,” Hexa ventured.

“I know—but I do not wish it.” The Amazon turned to look at the servant directly. There was a tiredness about her deep violet eyes. “If you had the choice of recovering your daughter and your sworn enemy, what would you do? I cannot have my daughter back without her hus­band because they are in the same mathematical matrix.”

“I should be inclined to risk the enemy,” Hexa answered,

The Amazon shook her head. Hexa was not acquainted with the scientific ruthlessness of Sefner Quorne, hus­band of Viona, the Amazon’s daugh­ter. Once back in the normal plane he would, once again, set no limits on his ambition.

“I think,” the Amazon said presently, “that I am making the mistake of staying in surroundings which constantly remind me of my husband and daugh­ter. It was in this city of Millennia where it all happened. Instead of it bringing the peaceful pursuit of scien­tific problems, as my husband had intended, it has brought me only grief.”

Hexa did not answer. He was think­ing of Tarnec Brodix, the Mind of Minds, the super-mathematician of an exterior universe who could, with his astounding computations, restore Viona, Abna, and Sefner Quorne at any mo­ment he was asked. But the Amazon still set her face rigidly against it,

“I shall return to Earth,” she decided finally. “There may be problems there requiring my attention.”

Her decision made, it was typical of her that she wasted no time in putting it into effect. Within an hour she was in her spaceship, the Ultra, pulling away from Saturn’s vast surface into the void.

She brought the mighty machine down at the main London spaceport and it attracted no particular attention since the populace in general was conversant with the comings and goings of the strange woman who—though not offi­cially—ruled the entire solar system.

Her first call was at the executive office of the Space Line. Chris Wilson, head of the Earth-end of the line, looked up in surprise as the Amazon came into his office. He glanced briefly over her black-suited form with the scarlet cape at her shoulders, then rose with extended hand.

“Hello, Vi. Been ages since I last saw you. People have been asking where you’ve been.”

“Have they?” the Amazon said indif­ferently.

She settled in a chair, and Chris looked in puzzled interest at the dis­tance in the girl’s unfathomable eyes and the droop about her usually resolute mouth.

“Been far?” he asked.

“Saturn. I have lost Viona forever. And Abna. I am utterly alone! It be­gan when Tarnec Brodix, the master mathematician, disrupted Sefner Quorne into the 27th Dimension,” the Amazon explained. “Since Quorne is married to Viona, the mathematical configurations also affected her. You will remember how she became transparent, and finally disappeared. She vanished into the 25th Dimension, two stages removed from her husband because, although mated, they are not identical in molecular makeup. I asked Brodix to bring Viona back, but that he cannot do with­out bringing Quorne as well. I refused to take that risk. Abna and I quarrelled over it, and finally he decided to go and stay beside Viona and protect her. Bro­dix arranged that. That left me alone.”

“Your only answer to that, Vi, is to have Brodix bring Viona and Abna back and take your chance on Quorne.”

The Amazon shook her head. “I dare not, Chris. He has only one avowed intention—to destroy me, and Abna, if he can, and rule the System. When I last saw Viona, some months ago now, she was going to have a child. It will be hers and Sefner Quorne’s. Thus has he perpetuated himself. What that child will be like I shudder to think, unless it has inherited more of the character­istics of Viona than Quorne. That is another reason why I dare not bring even Viona back. I have only one satis­faction—Quorne is probably the most unhappy man in the Universe because there is withheld from him one mathe­matical factor in his makeup. That will make him an eternal victim to an unsatisfied longing. The torture of in­completeness will always be upon him. That missing factor is in the mind of Tarnec Brodix.”

Chris said: “I cannot see why with your tremendous knowledge you cannot have Brodix bring back all three and then deal with Quorne.”

“And alienate Viona? Whilst both Abna and I know him to be a scientific force for evil, Viona is young and sees Quorne only as a misguided scientist who is, nonetheless, likable enough otherwise. She has never realized his real depths. If I were to wipe him out, she would never forgive me.”

“You’ve lost her anyway. Why not take the risk and let Brodix get busy?”

“No. Quorne is one man of whom I am really afraid. He has knowledge that even exceeds mine in many things.… No, I shall let things rest and hope that memory will slowly die and leave me as I was to start with—a lone wolf, caring nothing for anybody. With a woman like me sentiment should have no place, and yet it has. The surgical operation that made me a superwoman was not complete. It left me with emotions, and I cannot always rule them.”

A clerk came in with a message, and the Amazon rose.

“Anything needing my immediate at­tention?” she asked. “If nothing is re­quired, I’ll retire to my Surrey home and lose myself in experiments. I had better get used to being alone again.”

“No, nothing,” Chris said. “The world is at peace and everybody seems more or less satisfied. Conditions are normal on Mars and the Moon and—” Chris stopped, looking at the message in his hand. “Take a look at this,” he said.

The Amazon took the note handed to her. It was on the Space Line communication form and read:

“Have space pilots check up on un­explained dark patch in remoter deeps of space. Not clearly visible from Earth and would bear investigation. Office of the Astronomers.”

The Amazon read the message and for a moment there was something of the old gleam of interest in her eyes, then it faded out.

“Probably a dark area like Cygnus,” she said, handing the message back. “They appear at times.… Well, since there is nothing more exciting than that I’ll be on my way.”

Half an hour later she was in her own home in Surrey—a home of scien­tific gadgets and robot servants, yet with a touch of femininity here and there. The Amazon had a meal, changed into laboratory coveralls, and then considered what to do next. At the back of her mind was the memory of the message Chris had received. She could not help her scientific interest even though she had brushed the matter aside at the time. In another hour it would be nightfall.…

“Better than nothing,” she muttered to herself and went into the laboratory­-observatory annexed to the house. By the time she had adjusted the light-wave telescope to her satisfaction, an instrument infinitely more powerful than any other in the world since it drew light-waves unto itself in their original clarity from any given distance, the darkness was deepening and the night was clear.