Arnside gazed up again through the window on the yellow orb. It looked a mockery as it hung there, blotched and ugly. About it, stars were faintly visible in the violet-tinged heaven. Arnside !s own thoughts of a holiday in Florida under blue skies upon sun-drenched beaches suddenly underwent a drastic revision. With difficulty he found words.
“There’s — no possibility of a mistake?”
“I wish there were.” The astronomer returned the file to its cabinet and stood with hands in pockets, musing. “It is for the government of the World Council to decide what shall be done. As I see it, there are two alternatives facing the human race. One is to go underground and there be prepared to spend the rest of its life until Earth crumbles away with age — or to somehow create another sun.” He shook his head and smiled wanly. “Great though our science is, it is not great enough for that.”
The first shock having abated somewhat, Arnside stood musing. Then presently he spoke:
“Doctor, there must be some reason why the sun increased its internal temperature as it did. It just couldn’t do it in the ordinary way, could it?”
“It could, but it is most unlikely,” Standish responded. “Stray matter in space, drawn into the sun and exploded atomically by the terrific heat might have caused it.”
The food controller said: “Two years ago an armada of Martian space machines — flying saucers is they were called — were hurled into the sun and destroyed. There were atomic power plants in those machines. Would not that armada and the exploding atomic force plants set up a vast solar disturbance?”
“There, I think, you have the answer,” Standish admitted. “It occurred to me long ago, and the time of the disturbance’s commencement dates from when that armada fell in the sun, hurled there by the Golden Amazon. Whatever the initial cause we have to face the consequences.”
“You mean the Golden Amazon has,” Arnside snapped. “If she hadn’t caused that armada to be flung into the sun it wouldn’t be dying now! That makes her directly responsible!”
“But unwittingly,” the astronomer protested. “She risked her life to destroy that armada. It saved the world from horrible invasion and opened up Mars as a colony for Earth — as Venus is. It would be preposterous to accuse the Amazon of being the cause of our troubles.”
The food controller gave a grim smile. “That’s a matter of opinion, doctor. As a scientist you probably admire the Amazon because she is also a scientist. I am one of her enemies. I believe that back of her mind she has never had but one thought — to destroy this world of ours and all it contains. She tried it once with atomic power, remember— and failed. Why shouldn’t she try it this way, masking her treachery under the cloak of bravery by destroying the Martians, potential enemies, at the same time?”
The astronomer gave a shrug. “I have nothing but the frankest admiration for her. She is certainly the greatest scientist the world has ever known, and sometimes I wonder where we would have been without her. She gave us usable atomic power, space travel, colonization of other worlds, destroyed all menaces likely to afflict us.”
“She is still a dangerous woman with only one objective, doctor — to either master or destroy the people of this planet. Concerning this business with the sun. Have you asked her for an opinion?”
“It was the first thing I tried to do — over eighteen mouths ago when the trouble first became apparent and I realized what was coming. Unfortunately she can’t be located.”
The food controller thought for a while, then he said: “With your permission, doctor, I will stay here for a day or so and take down all the necessary facts concerning this solar trouble so I can report to the World Council, and explain the crop failures. You, I assume, will support me later when you make your own statement?”
“Of course.” The astronomer moved to the door. “Come this way, controller I am sure everything can be arranged for your comfort as long as you wish to stay.”
Chapter III
One evening some days later Morris Arnside called upon Brice Torrington, the metals king, at his Surrey residence. Though it was the first day of June, Arnside’s ato-limousine wound its way between banks of snow which marked the drive of the Torrington house. The evening had darkened prematurely, as did all evenings now, the yellow globe hanging over the horizon dispensing hardly any light or heat.
Brice Torrington was in his library, expecting his visitor. Tall and lean, with a mouth like a spring trap, he was undisputed boss of world metals.
“I’m here for two reasons,” Arnside said. “The present solar trouble — and the Golden Amazon. The end of the world is within sight. I thought you should know that. In a day or two Dr. Standish will be telling everybody about it.
“End of the world?” Torrington repeated, musing. “From a materialist like you that’s a remarkable statement.” Arnside gave the facts as they had been given to him by Standish, but without the technical details. Torrington brooded as he listened, his eyes narrowed.
“There’ll be a way around it,” he said finally.
“Standish is going to suggest deep shelters and underworld galleries when he addresses the council. According to him, the surface of the Earth will be uninhabitable in two years. By then every man, woman and child must be below ground, warmed and lighted by atomic power. You, as metals king, will naturally be called upon to supply the shelters. You’ll make your already tremendous fortune six or seven times as large.”
“What else is on your mind?”
“The Golden Amazon. I think we have a chance at last to get rid of her — legally. I mean. She is as much your enemy as mine. Standish thinks that the Martian armada being thrown into the sun caused it to start decaying. That makes the Golden Amazon directly responsible. What is more significant is the fact that she cannot be found anywhere in this moment of deadly crisis when her scientific knowledge is so desperately needed. Doesn’t it look as though she deliberately set out to ruin the sun, and then vanished? Doesn’t it look like revenge on her part? She found that she could not control this world as she wanted, and apparently reversed her tactics and gave her knowledge freely to advance mankind — but I believe she has only been waiting for the supreme chance to hit back, and has done so.” “Perhaps,” Torrington muttered.
Arnside said: “If she remains absent we can convince the council that she’s the cause of our troubles. We can insist that she be found, brought to trial, and then banished as a menace to society. We can be rid of her. Without her coldblooded supervision, you could do much more. So could I. So could Swainson of Atomic Corporation, Ranleigh of Transport, and many others. We wouldn’t get the Dodd Space Line behind us, of course, because the Dodds and Wilsons are indirectly related to the Amazon.”
Torrington said: “To be rid of the Golden Amazon has been the ambition of my life. I’ll call a conference at my office of Swainson, Ranleigh and others. We’ll agree on a policy, and state it at the World Council when Standish makes his statement. In the meantime, let’s hope the Amazon stops away and so blackens her case.”
While Arnside and Torrington were talking, the space liner Atom Cloud was landing at the spaceport, in central London, at the end of a journey from Venus. Aboard it, one of the 200 passengers, was Ethel Wilson, daughter of the controller of the Earth terminal of the Dodd Space Line.
She hurried through the customs, a slim, dark-headed, blue-eyed girl. In the administration building she took an elevator to the 20th floor.
Ethel hurried along the corridor to the door at the far end. She tapped lightly and entered. The grey-haired, heavy-shouldered man at the big desk glanced,up in the glow of the cold-light globes in the ceiling.
“Rosy Cheeks!” he ejaculated, jumping to his feet. “Am I glad to see you again.”
“Hello, dad.” The girl giggled affectionately as her father embraced her. “And please stop calling me Rosy Cheeks!”
“But they are!”
“In a wind like this, what else do you expect? Its my childhood name, though
, and I am 28.”
Chris Wilson, head of the Earth Space Line terminal, smiled and drew up a chair for his daughter. When she was seated he stood surveying her.
“Grand to have you back,” he said. “Your mother and I have missed you a lot. Have a good time with the Kerrigans on Venus?”
“Yes, but as I told you over the space-phone, I thought it was time I hopped back and discussed something with you. Something very important.”
“I’ve been looking forward to it ever since I got your message. Well, what is this important something? A boy friend?”
“No, dad. It’s the sun.”
“The sun!” Wilson repeated. “The only topic of conversation everywhere one goes.”
“What’s happened to it?” Ethel broke in. “On Venus, where the temperature rarely used to drop below 300 degrees, it’s only 120. It has been like that for nearly a year now, and getting cooler all the time. I also noticed as we crossed space that the Martian ice caps extended halfway down to his equator now, whereas Earth is splotched all over with ice drifts. As for the sun we didn’t even need the screens up during our voyage. His light’s feeble, and his heat enormously decreased. Then there are those terrific dark marks all over him. What’s happened, dad? Are we running into a spacial glacial epoch or something?”
“I’ve heard reports,” Chris Wilson answered slowly, “to the effect that the sun is dying. All things die, even suns — but this has happened millions of years before science expected it.”
Ethel reflected. She did not appear frightened, as indeed she was not. She had been in too many tight corners to be easily scared.
“I sort of suspected something like that,” she said at last. “I thought first-hand information on how space looks, and the condition on Venus, might help you and Aunt Vi. Naturally, she is going to try to do something?”
His daughter’s unswerving loyalty to the Golden Amazon — whom she called her Aunt Vi — was something which always made Chris Wilson smile.
“I don’t doubt your Aunt Vi would do something if she were available,” Chris Wilson replied, “but she isn’t — and I can’t locate her. For the past eighteen months she’s been missing - about the same length of time you’ve been away.”
“But she’s got to be found,” Ethel said. “The Earth is in danger of extinction — and in fact the whole solar system is if the sun should die. We can’t fight a thing so vast by ourselves. Our science isn’t up to it.”
Chris Wilson said nothing. There was nothing he could say. He and the Golden Amazon were friends — nothing more — and that only in the line of business. The Golden Amazon had no real affection for anybody, unless it were for Ethel. Risking the Amazon’s anger in an attempt to locate her was more than Chris Wilson dared do.
Ethel resumed. “She came back to Earth after destroying that Martian armada which fell into the sun; then she made arrangements for Mars to be reinhabited and provided with oceans and breathable atmosphere. After that I went to Venus to stay with the Kerrigans—”
“And your Aunt Vi told me she was going to be busy,” her father put in. “I haven’t seen her since — eighteen months ago.”
“Surely, before things get really bad, she’ll turn up and help us?”
“I sincerely hope so.”
“If Aunt Vi doesn’t come back, what is going to be done?”
“I don’t know. Man always survives. We might go underground. The World Council is meeting tomorrow to make a statement. I’ve made private plans. We’re giving up our London residence and going to Brazil. There’s still warmth there, enough to keep us comfortable for maybe a year. England is impossible to live in these days.”
Ethel had no particular wish to go to Brazil. Her father had maintained a residence there for some years, chiefly for the use of the Amazon when she required it, for her researches often took her to the tropics. But the place was lonely, miles from anywhere, on the very edge of the trackless forest.
She said: “I hope nothing’s happened to Aunt Vi. She takes such fantastic risks sometimes. What can she be doing, I wonder?”
Her father reached for his hat and coat. “No use conjecturing, I’m afraid. Let’s get along and give your mother a pleasant surprise. She’s aching to have you back home. Tomorrow we’ll see what the council has to say. I have to attend it. You might as well come too.”
Chapter IV
On the following day there was little change in the weather. The sky was grey, the wind biting, the daylight dim. Chris Wilson and Ethel found their car held up at times by traffic blocks and snow-drifts as they were driven to the World Council meeting in the centre of the city; then upon entering the great edifice they partly forgot the external discomfort in the midst of the light and warmth which greeted them.
In the assembly hall, its huge cupola of roof lined with batteries of cameras and television transmitters, were gathered delegates from every land all of them members of the World Council, the elected body of the people of Earth whose duty it was to rule, extending the same justice and protection to all races and creeds.
Chris Wilson took his place, Ethel beside him, and waited. He recognized scientists, engineers, commercial giants, astronomers — every type and profession. Then he turned his attention to the rostrum as President Vancourt, head of the World Council, rose to speak.
“My friends ...” His voice was steady but filled with a definite air of sombreness. “We are here today to listen to a statement by Dr. Standish, our chief astronomer - a statement of such profound significance that I beg you to listen to every word without interruption. It concerns the strange condition of the sun. Dr. Standish will explain what has happened, and the conditions which must be expected in the near future.”
The president sat down and Dr. Standish rose. In essence his address covered in detail the facts he had given Morris Arnside. When he finished a murmur went over the gathering. Then Brice Torrington got up.
“Dr. Standish, the information you have given us is appalling to the last degree. In your opinion, how long have we before the sun becomes extinct?”
“At the most, two years. Maybe less.”
“And at the end of that period?”
“I foresee nothing but a frozen planet from which all life has been driven — probably underground. The seas and the air will freeze, to later escape into the vacuum of interstellar space. The light of the sun will be equal to that of a full moon, and its heat no greater.”
“And is there no scientific way in which the sun can be revived before it finally becomes a white dwarf?” the president asked anxiously.
“No way that we know of, Mr. President,” said Standish. “I had hoped that there might have been present among us one person who could perhaps have helped us. I mean Miss Brant — or, as she is more popularly called — the Golden Amazon. Her science alone might be of an order to restore the sun, but I have tried for many months to get in touch with her without success. Doesn’t anybody know where she is?” he implored, spreading his hands. “Mr. Wilson, she is partly a relative of yours, is she not? Have you no idea?”
Chris Wilson stood up to reply. “She does not tell me or my family any more than she tells anybody else, doctor. I have not the least idea what has become of her this last eighteen months.”
“As regards that,” Torrington said. “I have something to say, if I am permitted the floor, Mr. President?”
“By all means, Mr. Torrington.”
“I believe,” Torrington said deliberately, “that this superwoman — this scientific creature with the strength of ten men and the scientific skill of a witch — has taken revenge upon us people of Earth and departed to places unknown, maybe to the other side of the Universe. From the very outset of her career, her avowed aim has been to control the world. Fifty-two years ago, in 1940, she was three years of age. A surgical genius experimented upon her during that time, altered her gland structure, and believed that she would grow up into a woman who could blot out war. Her altered gland structu
re gave her the strength of ten powerful men together with a beauty never seen in a normal woman. And ageless life! Long has she boasted that she will live at least 500 years, When last seen eighteen months ago she looked only twenty-five.”
“This is purely a recital of known facts,” the president commented.
“Mr. President, I am refreshing the memory of those who forget this woman’s real upbringing. She was adopted by the parents of Mr. Wilson’s wife and grew up alongside the girl whom Mr. Wilson later married. When she became a woman the wonder girl’s staggering scientific power made her attempt the conquest of London as a prelude to mastering the world. She was beaten in that. Then she apparently turned over a new leaf and gave us valuable scientific secrets. She showed us how to control atomic force. She mastered space. She gave us Venus and Mars and the Moon for colonies. She gave us untold wealth by the transmutation of elements. But that woman hates us! She has said so time and again. Therefore, what more natural than when she had the chance, she should try and destroy us all? That I believe she has done, and left us forever.”
“You mean that you think she is the cause of this solar disaster?” the president asked, puzzled.
“There’s no doubt about it! Ask Dr. Standish. If she had not flung that Martian armada in the sun it would have been as normal as ever today. I insist that she did it knowing what the later effect would be. Unable to conquer us by her own methods she has used cosmic means to do it. Probably, even now, she is somewhere listening and laughing at our discomfiture.”
“That’s a lie!” Ethel cried, leaping up with flaming cheeks beside her father. “You’ve no right to accuse my Aunt Vi like that!”
Conquest of the Amazon Page 2