Читать книгу The Cosmic Crusaders: The Golden Amazon Saga, Book Eight - John Russell Fearn - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

PLANETFALL

Their observations satisfied them that they were still on course and vastly nearer Alpha and Proxima than they had formerly been.

“It gives one some idea of how enormously empty space really is,” Abna said thoughtfully, loading another copper bar into the power plant. “In all the light-years we’ve covered, we have not encountered a single obstacle, yet to look at the heavens from Earth one would think it difficult to dodge collision.…”

“Planets!” Viona gasped out excitedly. “I can see planets around the Alpha-Proxima luminary!”

The Amazon raised her head sharply from contemplating the navigation instruments.

“How many of them?”

“As near as I can tell, there are three. Two fairly close to the lumi­nary, and one a long way out. The farthest one looks queer, somehow: misty, phosphorescent. Better take a look for yourselves.”

The Amazon looked first, silently contemplating the disks of two quite clearly defined worlds bathed in the twin lights of Alpha and Proxima. At a rough estimate she decided that these worlds were probably about 180 million miles from their dual primary—twice as far as Earth from her own sun. But obviously, they would be worlds of intense heat due to the much vaster size of Alpha compared to the Earthly sun. Added to this there would be the not inconsiderable light and warmth of Proxima as well.

But that farther world was indeed strange. Either it was enveloped in highly luminous mist, or else it was indeed oddly phosphorescent in nature. It was too far away to be reflecting the light of the dual primary, there­fore the glow must be something in­herent in its own structure.

“Definitely a bit of a mystery,” Abna admitted, when he, too, had looked. “Might make it our first port of call and see if we can decide what’s the matter with it. I never saw a world like it before.…”

Silent, they sat before the observation window and contemplated their goal. To each one of them there was a thrilling satis­faction in having covered 20,000 billion miles of empty space without mishap and—relatively—within a reasonable time, too.

“Have to start slowing down even further,” Abna said after a while, as their still stupendous velocity caused the Alpha-Proxima sys­tem to leap nearer even as they watched it. “If we start decelerating again now, we’ll be at just about the right velocity when we reach that outermost luminous world.”

He moved over to the switchboard and converted the power of the replacement copper bar to the forward jets on full blast. By this means their terrific onrush was slowly but relentlessly slowed down by the opposite pressure striving to force the Ultra backwards as it hurtled forwards. With the passage of time, the ‘braking’ effect at last began to have an appreciable effect.

“It looks to me,” Viona said, at the telescope as usual, “as though both those nearer worlds are populated. If not that, then they at least have something resembling cities.”

The Amazon came across to the in­strument and looked for herself. Under the ultra-powerful lenses the nearer planets to the binary, which appeared smudgy to the naked eye, leaped into acid-sharp prominence, revealing several things simultaneously. There was an atmosphere on each world for one thing, and indeed drifts of water vapor, which announced clouds. Beneath these clouds was a patchwork of light and dark areas, probably corresponding to continents and oceans. The main point was that the continental areas were pockmarked with square shapes inter­woven with straight lines. Definitely they could not be natural formations, so the only conclusion was cities linked by roads, rails, or some other form of communication.

“Wonder if they’re a backward people?” Viona asked, as her mother looked at her thoughtfully, “If they are, we’ll seem like beings of wonder: If they’re not, we’ll probably be re­sented as interlopers.”

“Either way, we can take care of ourselves,” the Amazon replied, shrugging. Then she took over Abna’s job at the control board while he, too, made a study of the scene ahead.

His interest, however, was not concentrated so much on the normal worlds as upon the luminous outer­most one, toward which he presently directed the telescope. Even now, how­ever, when they were only a few million miles from the planet, he could not detect anything beyond the uni­form glowing grayness. The only prob­lem that was resolved was that sun­light was not responsible for the glow. It was internal.

“Maybe molten,” he decided finally, when Viona and the Amazon had looked.

“Maybe,” the Amazon agreed. “In which case we’ll give it a wide berth.”

“The other possibility is radioactivity,” Viona suggested. “I know that a world entirely radioactive seems a tall order, but it could happen just the same. Why don’t we try the long-range Geiger-counter apparatus?”

Abna nodded and moved towards it. Switching it so that its long-range beam would directly impinge on the gray world ahead of them, he then waited for results, Viona and the Amazon to either side of him. Nor was it long before the reflected beam, operating much on the principle of radar, returned and set up a violent clicking noise.

“It is radioactive!” Viona gasped, surprised. “That guess of mine was dead right! Listen to the row! It must be absolutely crawling with atomic disintegration or something.”

“Must be,” Abna admitted soberly, switching off. “I think we’d do best to keep clear of that planet. Its ema­nations might conceivably pierce our neutralizing screens and cause plenty of trouble.… We’ll change course and head to that world which is a shade farther from the binary than its neighbor. If there should be intelli­gent people, we might learn more about this distant radioactive planet.”

“Evidently it isn’t dangerous enough to send radioactive emanations across space to these other worlds,” Viona remarked.

“Or else,” the Amazon pointed out, “the people populating those worlds are not affected by radioactivity. Be­cause our physical structure cannot stand radioactivity does not mean that theirs cannot.”

There was no other way of finding out the true conditions but to land on the nearest of the two ‘normal’ planets, and to this end Abna again took control of the switches, still cutting down the speed of the Ultra until after a long interval it had dropped from its former velocity to a trifling 10,000 miles an hour. It was when this ‘crawl’ had been achieved that the outermost layer of the nearest planet’s atmosphere was also contacted.

Still Abna cut down the velocity, leveling the huge machine out so it was finally flying parallel to the sur­face of this infinitely far-flung world. Intently, the Amazon and Viona gazed below, their view only momentarily obscured by cloud drifts. They could descry—as they had in space through the telescope—quite normal-looking continents and oceans, the former laced with what were plainly cities of gray-colored metal. Streets and ter­races there were in abundance, but nowhere a sign of a pedestrian or traffic level, as on Earth. No moving vehicles. No aircraft or space ships. Only this waste of gray-colored build­ings, becoming larger as the Ultra swept lower.

Finally Abna selected clear ground beyond one of the cities and brought the Ultra down with scarcely a jar. Switches clicked in rapid succession and the soft humming of the power plant ceased. The silence seemed, for a moment, incredible.

“Twenty thousand billion miles and not a hitch!” the Amazon exclaimed, giving a triumphant glance.

“Notice the double shadows every­where?” Abna asked, peering outside. “Result of two suns close together.”

Viona and the Amazon nodded together. Through the observation window there was a wilderness of barren rock, slate-gray in color, and all of it brightly illuminated by the double suns. Angling her head against the window, Viona peered up­ward and then blinked. For a moment she caught a glimpse of the blazing circle which was Alpha Centauri, ap­pearing about twice as large and twice as bright as the sun seen from Earth, whilst to the left of this torrid giant there was a smaller sun, intense blue white, and adding to the intense heat which must be outside the Ultra. Within it, the insulated walls kept everything at normal temperature.

“I suppose—there must be people?” Abna hesitated over the question as he surveyed the empty pale blue sky. “We didn’t see anybody.”

“Nor vehicles or aircraft,” Viona added. “Be just too bad if we’ve come to a dead world.”

“Most sensible thing is to see what kind of a world it is and then decide our course of action,” the Amazon said, and with that she turned to the instruments that gave direct contact with the exterior.

“Atmosphere is breathable enough,” she announced at length. “Fairly high preponderance of hydrogen, but that should not worry us. Traces, too, of copper gas in a highly volatile condition, which augurs well for supplies of copper for the power plant. Atmospheric pressure eighteen pounds to the square inch, which isn’t too much different from our own fourteen. Humidity sixty-five percent, which will prove pretty clammy. Temperature 130 degrees F. Gravity similar to Earth, or as near as makes no difference.…”

“In fact, a world quite able to support our type of life,” Abna said. “What do we do, then? Fly around it and see what there is?”

“No point in doing that.” the Amazon responded. “We’ve seen it is a world of almost equal division of continents and oceans, and just where we are now there is a city close by. Best thing to do is arm ourselves and start exploring”

“Why not try the radio?” Viona suggested. “Even if we don’t understand the language, we’ll be able to tell if there’s anybody alive. Surely a civilization worth anything has radio developed as one of its sciences?”

Without waiting for her mother or father to reply, she tuned in the radio equipment arid stood listening. Then she frowned in vague disbelief. There was not the faintest whisper. Only a crackling of static, probably engendered by the mighty sun and far-off radioactive planet. Certainly there were no voices or anything resembling music.

“No need to look so disappointed.” Abna commented. “If anybody had landed on Earth in the Middle Ages, they would not have heard radio, either: I’m beginning to hope that we really have landed on a world where science is not very well de­veloped. We’ll be able to teach them something.”