“You had no mercy on me, Torrington, or upon the people who met death and injury in your rotten shelters,” the Amazon murmured. “So I’m going to kill you — as you deserve to be killed.”
He tore at the black-clad forearms reaching down to him. He punched and kicked and writhed but failed completely to dislodge the grip on his throat.
The Amazon relaxed at last and contemplated the body. Then with a gesture of contempt she got to her feet and looked at the other two men. To her surprise she found on examination that Swainson was also dead. The smashing blow she had delivered on his neck had broken it. Only Arnside still lived, groaning slowly into consciousness. Reaching down, the Amazon whirled him to his feet and then pinned him hard against the wall with one hand at his throat.
“Listen to me, Arnside—!” She slapped his face until he came back to awareness. “You remain alive out of three. I could kill you — and indeed enjoy it — but I think you are too insignificant to bother with. You had great dreams and thought Torrington could make them come true. Forget them and henceforth do as I order. If you don’t, I’ll finish you... That’s all!”
She released him and he stood fingering his smashed nose and looking at her. Then she picked up her proton gun, returned it to her belt, and sped to the open doorway. Just at that moment Abna came in with Chris Wilson and Ethel behind him. He gazed about the headquarters.
“Dead?” he inquired, looking at Swainson and then Torrington.
“Yes.” The Amazon shrugged. “They deserved it. They got it. That has always been my code.”
“It has the merit of being thorough,” Abna commented, musing. “And what do you propose doing now?”
“Since I have made myself the leader I propose spending the next few hours getting order out of chaos and having the shelters up and down the country tested and put to rights. It will be hard going and I shall need every trustworthy lieutenant I can find. You will be my right-hand man, Abna, then will come you, Chris, you Rosy—”
“And my wife,” Chris interrupted. “She’s okay, I found out that much. She’ll be joining us shortly.”
“All right.” The Amazon glanced over the room again. “This may as well remain headquarters. Summon the engineers and all those engaged on the shelter work — and the head of the clerical staff. We’ll hold a conference. After that, Abna and I have a journey to make to the Pacific.” After all the equipment of her laboratory had been transferred to the shelter, the Amazon threw herself into her task with all the terrific energy of which she was capable, immediately after she had held a conference and worked out details.
She worked so furiously that Chris, his wife and Ethel just could not keep up with her. She refused to sleep; she brooded over plans, worked out new schemes, had shelters tested in all parts of the country and the reports sent to her — then fresh instructions went out to the blast furnaces which were working underground. She and Abna devised a new metal for protection, one capable of withstanding the vast pressure of the Great Glacier when it finally came.
Instead of several separate shafts, one alone was decided upon. Going down two miles into the earth to virgin rock, was to be one huge underground city, having all the amenities and facilities of a surface city. At the top of the shaft would be a transparent dome, fitted with defreezing devices which would prevent the glacier from forming on top of it, thereby permitting of ingress and egress if journeys into the outer world became necessary.
Tests had shown that the metal with which the shaft was to be made, and the glass for the dome, could withstand a direct pressure of 15,000,000 tons to the square inch without cracking. Only when this perfection was reached did the Amazon pass the metal for manufacture in vast quantities.
It took two days to make the plans and test the metals, using every scientific device — then the actual work began, every able-bodied person being pressed into commission. As far as could be the actual planning was complete. Whether or not the shaft and underworld could be finished before the glacier came was something nobody could forecast. Working to the limit of human endurance it might just be managed.
So, finally, after a week of tireless endeavour, the Amazon felt reasonably satisfied that she had done all she could. The rest was up to the unswerving and prompt execution of her orders and the supervision of the engineers under her command. For a week she had not slept and only eaten tabloids and drunk restoratives when necessity had compelled it. She was commencing to feel the strain. It was visible in her lined face and the weary smile she gave Abna as he sat beside her at the big desk in the headquarters office.
“You need sleep,” he told her, “before anything further is attempted.”
She sighed. “Sleep! What time is there for that! Don’t you realize that if we’re unable to find atomium and develop it for use within the next few weeks it may be too late? By then the last spark will have gone out of the sun and we’ll be doomed to stay below here for ever.”
“I realize it,” Abna responded. “And I also realize that you need sleep.”
“Don’t you need it as well?” the girl questioned. “You have worked ceaselessly beside me, and by rights ought to be feeling the effects as much as I am. I can stand a good deal but I do know my limits.”
Abna considered her tired face and smiled. “I know you do. That is one of the many things I like about you. It satisfies me that you are still a woman underneath the exterior of superhuman power and intelligence. I could never be interested in a woman who is just a sexless machine,” he finished. “The world has done you a great injustice in calling you that.”
“I asked,” the Amazon questioned deliberately, “whether or not you feel tired?”
“No, I don’t. Like the rest of my race I have trained my mind to control my body. I could only feel tired if my mind was tired — and it is not.”
Abna got to his feet, then before the Amazon could gather his intentions he picked her up from the chair and bore her into the adjoining room which she was using as her own. He laid her down gently on the bed and smiled.
“I’ll call you when I think you have rested enough,” he said. “In the meantime I’ll see that the Ultra is in order — with an atomium-detector aboard — for our Pacific journey, together with all other preparations—”
“But you don’t know anything about the Ultra'.” the Amazon exclaimed.
“I know more than you think. Please rest. You need it.” The Amazon hesitated, still not sure whether or not she had been commanded to sleep — in which case, on principle, she would have tried to keep awake — or whether Abna was genuinely solicitous for her well-being. She was still trying to figure the business out when drowsiness overtook her and she relaxed, losing herself in dreams.
The young giant beside her stood for a few minutes contemplating her earnestly, considering the beauty of her face even in sleep, the sensitive amber-tinted hands limply relaxed, giving no hint of the power they possessed.
“Yes ...” he murmured finally. “You are the woman.” He straightened up, switched off the light, and went to ask Chris Wilson to come to the headquarters office.
“Frankly, Mr. Wilson, I want a few facts, and you are the best man to give them to me,” he said.
“Willingly, if I can.”
“Tell me then about Miss Brant. I know her life history as far as records and public reports have given it — but I would like to know everything. I think you will agree she is not the kind of woman to answer of her own volition, so I am asking you.”
“Before I do,” Chris said, “please answer me a question. Are you in love with Vi — Miss Brant?”
“I am. I loved her when I first saw her through our telescopic equipment. My feeling about her is that she and I would make a perfect union. But what worries me is that if she is as sexless as records paint her she will never have any regard for me.”
“Now I understand,” Chris said. “You can discount such nonsense—”
“Not very easily, I am afraid. She is a supernorma
l female member of your community. Her entire structure was altered by that Dr. Axton when she was but three years of age. What guarantee is there that he did not render her as sexless as records claim?”
“I believe,” Chris answered, “that Vi is as much a woman as any other member of her sex. In my long association with her I have been aware of her hatred of men, of course, but it has been a hatred directed against men who have deserved it. Her contempt for men has been because on the one hand she had never met a man capable of standing up to her either physically or mentally; and also because she has an intensely individual character, complete unto itself But I have seen times when there has been tenderness in her make-up — even a great loneliness which has probably made her far more cruel than she would otherwise have been. She knows she is not a natural woman and at times I think she rebels against it. But,” Chris finished. “I’d stake everything I’ve got that a man like you is just the kind of partner she needs.”
Abna said, “I have a plan in mind, Mr. Wilson. The union of myself and Miss Brant — marriage as you call it — would be a wonderful thing, but it would only make us legal partners pursuing scientific aims far above the normal ken of people on this planet. If though, there were children ... Did you ever stop to think what the children of two such people as Miss Brant and myself might be like?”
Chris shrugged. “It never occurred to me — but my imagination is not so limited that I cannot help but foresee a race of supermen and superwomen in time.”
“Who in time would inherit the earth,” Abna said. “That is part of my dream, Mr. Wilson, which one day I shall hope to discuss with Miss Brant herself. It can never succeed if there are never any children. Did Dr. Axton, in his experiment, have the unparalleled cruelty to render Miss Brant incapable of bearing children?”
“According to the reports I have seen, which Miss Brant herself once showed my wife and me, no,” Chris replied. “Axton gave her great beauty, immense strength and almost eternal life — but there he stopped. Axton, my friend, was not a devil. He was a surgical genius who wanted to improve the world. He would never have destroyed the birthright of a child.”
“Thank you.” Abna got to his feet, and with his arm about the smaller man’s shoulder, walked to the door. “I’m grateful to you, Mr. Wilson.”
Chris said: “I have many a time suggested to her that she find a partner, and been laughed at for my trouble. I think she loves children in her own possessive way. Certainly she is profoundly fond of Ethel, my daughter, and always has been. You saw how she reacted when she thought Ethel was in danger of dying.”
“I still remember her words,” Abna responded. “She said, “I look upon her as though she were my own daughter.’ A woman with no womanly feeling would never have said that.”
Chapter XV
The Amazon awoke as her shoulder was shaken gently. She was conscious upon opening her eyes of feeling greatly rested in mind and body. Her gaze rested on Abna. He had a tray in his hands and upon it a meal.
“Breakfast in bed!” the Amazon asked drily, propping herself up on her elbow. “How little you know me yet!”
“Have it just the same,” he suggested, pulling up a chair. There seemed to be no point in arguing, so the Amazon began the meal and took the drink he poured out and handed to her. After a while she glanced at the clock.
“Eleven ... At night or in the morning?” she asked. “Morning. You’ve been asleep for 48 hours.”
The Amazon sighed. “Then I’m losing my grip! I never slept so long in my life before.”
“Perhaps you never worked so hard in your life before. I have everything prepared for the Pacific flight,” Abna continued, before she could comment further. “We are not going to have an easy time, either. The Pacific is freezing over, according to reports, and it will be touch and go whether the part we want is clear of ice or not. However, I notice your Ultra has protonic gun equipment and heat beams so we should overcome our difficulties.”
“We will,” she assured him, in her old, confident tone. “What of the Great Glacier? How far away is it?”
“It has reached North Scotland and is travelling steadily south. The latest bolometer reading of the sun puts his temperature as 2,500 centigrade and still dropping. He has turned from yellow to red, the penultimate stage of devolution before he comes to the dark star range. We’ve a fight on our hands Vi.”
At the mention of her first name which Abna had never before used, the Amazon looked at him with her steady violet eyes.
“Is Abna your first or second name?” she asked abruptly. “Both. Atlantean names are mostly single. The name of the progenitor. I hope you are not offended at my using your own first name?”
“On the contrary. I was wondering when you were going to.” The Amazon smiled a little, met the calm scrutiny in his eyes, and then brought her refreshment to a hurried close.
“Freshen up, and then join me in the headquarters office,” Abna said, “You’ll need the heaviest furs you’ve got.” When later they left the underworld the Amazon found it hard to believe that they were still on the same planet. On the other side of the barrier the world had, to the Amazon, anyway, changed incredibly in the past week.
The snow had frozen solid and to glasslike hardness. She and Abna moved clumsily in their heavy fur wrappings, floundering up the slope which led from the doors, and so reaching what had been the snow-covered expanse outside the station. Now it was one sheet of ice.
It was high noon, and as dark as a winter’s dawn! For the moment there was no blizzard; not even a cloud. London, and probably the whole world, had become a wilderness in the past ten days — a terrifying wilderness in which no living thing moved. The sun, a deep red with neither heat nor light, the globe spotted with chasms which were eating away his life. Dim, hardly visible, loomed the moon. Only the stars were alive — brilliant, winking, spared the fate of their doomed brother.
“Grim, isn’t it?” Abna asked, through the audiphone which connected him with the Amazon’s helmet.
“It will be still grimmer if we don’t act fast,” she responded, as they went on again. “The cold now is pretty nearly equal to that of outer space. Nothing can live on the surface any more. I’ve imagined what the death of the sun might look like, but in my wildest imagining I never thought of this.”
Before they reached the Ultra — from which Abna had removed his own flier and housed it in the shelter — the calmness had gone. A blizzard developed with incredible speed, swallowing up the heavens in surging clouds and driving before it blinding sheets of powdered ice and snow. The screaming wind bit deep, even through the protective furs.
Struggling on like two Arctic explorers, Abna and the Amazon continued moving until at last the Ultra, poised high atop a glassy ridge, loomed dimly before them. They struggled with the airlock, their big gloves hindering their movements, but finally they got it open. Thankfully they tumbled into the control room and slammed the heavy operculum shut behind them.
“I suppose,” Abna said, switching on the lights and the autoheater, “that you and I, Vi, should be glad that we are not as other men and women — that we have the endurance to carry on. Ordinary human beings would never be able to make the fight we are making.”
The Amazon tugged off her furs and Abna did likewise. He found her looking at him quizzically.
“You never forget to mention how alike we are in physical power and interests, do you?” she questioned.
He smiled but made no comment. The Amazon shrugged, turned aside, and settled at the control board. Abna moved to her side and nodded to the navigational map.
“I worked it out in advance to save time,” he explained. “We should be able to fly straight to the spot.”
The Amazon nodded. There seemed to be no point in questioning Abna’s knowledge. Apparently he had learned all there was to learn about the Ultra. She switched on the atomic power plant, then moved the switches. With a grinding roar the vessel tore free of the imprisoning grip of ice
about her base and nosed up in an almost vertical ascent. The storm area persisted for many thousands of feet, a belt of tremendous upheavals far greater than anything the Amazon had ever experienced.
Then suddenly the storm area had been left behind — but instead of the accustomed blaze of the sun at those vast heights there was only a glitter of the stars and the burned-out hulk of the lord of the day.
The Amazon stopped the Ultra’s climb and turned the vessel south-westward, gradually building up to the maximum air speed of 5,000 miles an hour, cleaving through the attenuated gulf at the very edge of the stratosphere with the black maw of the unnatural dark infinitely far below.
When the Caribbean was reached the clouds had thinned and there was a view of frozen sea, with tiny specks of vessels crushed in its remorseless jaws. The West Indies and Central America lay under a blanket of ice; and so onward to the Pacific, and then a southerly turn. Here again all was ice.
“We should start going down now,” Abna said, studying his atomium detector. “The needle’s pointing almost directly below us.”
The Amazon who had been watching the instruments at intervals, began to dip the machine’s nose, sweeping down with tremendous velocity from the airless heights to the region of snow clouds once more. She flew the Ultra low over the icy wilderness which was the Pacific ocean; then she began to circle the vessel until she had reached the point where the atomium detector needle gave the exact downward reading.
“Heat beams!” she cried.
Abna was already at the projectors, and he snapped the instruments on. Invisible radiation of the equivalent wavelength of intense heat stabbed down into the ice field. Steam rose. The ice cracked and then melted, until finally it was boiling. Slowly, with the machine circling, Abna cut out a big cleft in the ice and the Amazon sent the Ultra diving into it.
Conquest of the Amazon Page 8