Читать книгу The Central Intelligence: The Golden Amazon Saga, Book Seven - John Russell Fearn - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

CASTAWAYS

A clear blue sky, the golden light of a yellow sun, and warm, entirely breathable air. Yet the world where these conditions reigned was not Earth: it was not even a world in the Earth universe at all, but a planet in a different plane of matter.

And here, on this remote speck in the seas of infinity, three people sat on a massive boulder and considered the complexities of their position. Unexpected events had reduced them—from the perspective of the Earth universe—to microcosmic smallness. Near them the machine in which they had reached this alien world stood smashed almost in pieces, seem­ing to them in their small size to be as huge as a mountain.

For three ordinary people to be lost on this remote planet would have been hopeless; but these three were not ordinary. They probably repre­sented the most brilliant scientific minds ever evolved in human form. One was the Golden Amazon, queen of the Earth Solar System; the second was Abna, once lord of Jupiter and now the Amazon’s husband; and the third was their daughter Viona, su­premely clever and massively strong, as were her parents, but having much of the thoughtlessness and lack of perception common to youth.

Surveying the desolate waste of rocky plain upon which the sunlight was pouring, Abna said: “We’re lost in both time and space.”

The Amazon turned to look at him.

“The problem is grim both for ourselves and Quorne,” she said. “But we are probably better off than he is because we have each other. I cannot imagine anything more terrifying than to be alone on an unknown world with no apparent means of escaping from it.”

Sefner Quorne, master scientist of Jupiter, had more than once tried to impose his will and powers upon other worlds, always to be beaten by the three who now sat on the boulder. There had even been a time when he had been married to Viona—and, in the legal sense, he still was. But de­struction of her memory of Quorne’s enforced union with her, which her father had mentally produced upon her, had made Viona oblivious to the fact that she was still Quorne’s wife and had even borne him a son, whose very genius had destroyed him.

The immediate events leading up to the present predicament had been less sinister. A flaw in their space machine’s power plant had reduced the trio on the boulder to smallness. Quorne, who had also been aboard the vessel, had stayed at normal size and the crash had not killed him. Where he was now was not certain. He had last been seen as a giant figure striding away with seven-leagued boots to­ward the horizon. He and the three on the boulder were sworn enemies and, until he or they were extin­guished, there could never be peace.

“Quorne is huge; we are small,” Abna said. “Whether that is an advantage or not, I don’t know yet.”

He stood up, as massive as a Gre­cian god with his enormous shoulders and—normally speaking—seven feet of height. Slowly he surveyed the dreary scene.

“Do you suppose there is life on this planet?” the Amazon asked, also getting to her feet.

“I have no more idea than you, nor can I see that it matters. Our sole problem is to find the way back home.”

“I agree,” the Amazon conceded, “but we might be immensely aided in that task if we could find intelligent scientists to help us.”

Abna gave a rather grim smile. “Intelligent scientists, Vi? What do you suppose we are?”

“There is more assurance in numbers!” she retorted.

Viona rose and gave them a mean­ing look from her blue eyes. She was accustomed to these wranglings between her parents and, more often than not, was the means of subduing them.

“Between us,” she said, “we are surely capable of solving our own problem? You are, father, in any case. You can make matter obey your mental powers when you try and—”

“I am perfectly aware that I can behave as a god when the occasion warrants it,” Abna interrupted, “but I am afraid this is too much even for me. Think what is involved! Time, space, subatomic dimensional wormholes—the whole vast mathematical complexity. Don’t you recall that before the ma­chine crashed we had the computers at work trying to determine for us the way home—?”

“Which they would have done had there been time,” Viona interrupted.

“True—but they were machines, and infallible. I am flesh and blood and liable to inaccuracy.”

The Amazon sighed. She gave Abna a reproachful glance from her unfathomable eyes and then looked at Viona.

“Your father is behaving like a schoolboy again, Viona,” she said, shrugging. “He always does when he faces a crisis, and I’ll never understand why.”

Abna grinned. “Too much exer­cise of godlike power destroys the desire to be human,” he explained. “And if I no longer felt human, I’d cease to love you and Viona…then where would I be?”

“Look!” Viona said sharply, pointing.

Her mother and father turned, and stood gazing at the incredible vision of an approaching figure. He appeared as big as a cathedral, so im­mense that his head and shoulders were lost to sight in altitude. Feet that shook the ground, and which seemed as big as double-decker buses, came steadily forward. It was Sefner Quorne, still in his space-boots and close-fitting flying-kit.

Quickly the minimized trio scuttled out of the way of the behemoth boots, and then close beside each other waited to see what Colossus would do next. He, unable to detect them, since from his point of view they were less in size than the point of a needle, turned and strode toward the “moun­tain range” which was actually the Ultra, the wrecked time-space ma­chine. When he reached it he became busy amidst the debris, shifting great sheets of metal that clanged so violently to the watching three the sound ­waves threatened to split their eardrums.

“Looks to me,” the Amazon said, “as though he’s already explored this world and not found anything on it. How big do you suppose this planet is?”

“Not large.…” Abna seemed to be musing over something else. “If we were normal size, we could probably cir­cumnavigate it in a reasonable time. As it is, it would take us about as long as walk­ing around the Earth.… Materials are densely packed, obviously, for, despite this world’s smallness, Quorne isn’t walking lightly. Which means dense matter.”

“It looks to me,” Viona remarked, “as though he is trying to patch up the Ultra. Not that I can see it will be any use to him if he does. The computers must be wrecked, and they are the only instruments which can work out the formula of infinite ex­pansion necessary to get back to our normal universe.”

“Quorne,” the Amazon replied, “is probably repairing the Ultra so he can have somewhere to live. He can also possibly make it void-worthy, which means he can travel to various other worlds until perhaps he finds one that is inhabited. There he may settle until he can solve how to get back home.”

“Best thing for us to do,” Viona said, “is to let him get the Ultra fixed up, then go inside it and travel to wherever he decides. We’ll never be seen, though we also have the problem of food and drink to cope with.”

“True,” the Amazon said. “What do you think of the suggestion, Abna?”

He was studying one of the instruments with which his waist-belt was adorned. When he spoke he did not answer the Amazon’s question. Instead he said: “This high frequency detector responds to Quorne. Look at the needle: it is following his every move­ment.”

The Amazon gave an impatient glance. “What of it? We can see where Quorne is without a de­tector.…”

“There’s only one explanation for this,” Abna continued, lost in speculations. “Quorne was originally expand­ed to infinite size by Molith of Ur, was he not, in an attempt to destroy him? Then by a mistake our computers brought him back again. It can only mean that the original energy expended upon him by Molith’s ap­paratus has been absorbed by him, so strongly that it affects this high-frequency detector. In other words, wherever Quorne may go we shall al­ways be able to approximate his posi­tion by means of this detector.”

“Yes,” the Amazon agreed. “Now, will you please answer my question? Should we go aboard the Ultra and go wherever Quorne goes? Remember our purpose, to destroy him, is still unfulfilled.”

Abna put away the detector and stood thinking, his keen eyes on the Goliath who was busy in the wreckage of the Ultra.

“To just fly around as minute stowaways from one world to another is not my idea of fun,” Abna said presently. “Besides, in our present size we can never defeat Quorne. We cannot handle a single instrument because we’re too small.”

The Amazon said: “We must have nourishment and shelter. Also, we have no guarantee that the climate of this planet will always be as calm as it is now.”

“All of which I have taken into account,” Abna responded. “It seems that for once in my life I have got to abandon all material methods and turn to pure thought to get us home. I hadn’t wanted to be bothered, but ap­parently there is nothing else to do.” He settled down again upon the boul­der and pondered. “I’ll have to work it out. When I have done so, I’ll tell you what to do. Don’t interrupt me.”