Lower the Ultra sank and lower. Half a mile — one mile — a mile and a half. Down here the cold of the surface had not yet reached and fish were not affected. Gulper eels, with their vast mouths, were fairly common; then came the Giant Lantern fish, the Black Swallower, the Constellation fish — all of them known to science. But as the Ultra went still lower, fish were rare, but now and again lights did pick out incomprehensible shapes, huge beyond imagination, prehistoric monsters of the deep, so built that they would withstand the terrific pressures existing at this depth. And it was this thought of pressures which presently caused the Amazon to glance about her in some anxiety.
“What is it?” Abna questioned.
“I’m thinking of the risk were taking. This machine is not made to stand vast pressure. It’s for space travel where there is no pressure worth mentioning. If the plates should cave in, we’ll be finished!”
“They won’t,”Abna replied. “While you slept, I had the Ultra sheathed in metal of the same type we’re using for the shelters, capable of withstanding enormous pressure. When I said I had made all preparations I meant it.”
The Amazon relaxed again, a half smile curving her lips.
“You accomplish the most extraordinary feats in the most matter-of-fact, way,” she said. “That is one of the qualities I admire in you, Abna.”
“I hope there are others, too,” he murmured.
The Amazon did not continue the topic. She kept on, nosing the Ultra down into the depths, farther than any living beings had ever explored before — and still those fantastic shapes, against which whales would have been mere shrimps, occasionally drifted in the still, deadly silent world.
“Four and a half miles down,” Abna said at last. “That must be about the limit at this point of the ocean—”
He had scarcely completed his sentence before there was a bump and the Ultra seemed to bounce. A thick, oily ooze surged up around the windows, disturbed by the vessel’s plunge into the seabed. When it had cleared, the Amazon and Abna stared intently into the space illuminated by the searchlights.
“There it is!” Abna said abruptly, pointing. “The remains of that rocket ship.”
The Amazon saw it at the same moment, a framework of metal, its plates buckled and bent from the water pressure, its nose half buried in the oozing sand.
“Easier than we expected,” she commented thankfully.
“All we want on it are magnetic grapples and we’ll take it back to the surface.”
She switched on the magnetic grapples connected to the power plant and the power-bar hummed with the energy passing through it and the strain entailed. Gradually, drawn irresistibly, the hulk tore free of the ocean bed and attached itself to the magnets.
“Up we go,” the Amazon murmured, and snapped in the switches.
The effect now was that the recoil apparatus pushed the vessel upward, helped by its natural buoyancy, where formerly it had been operating in the opposite direction — against the mass of water — thrusting the vessel down.
Chapter XVI
Suddenly there was a violent jolting. It was so severe it nearly knocked them from their feet. At the same instant the power plant whined dangerously, a sure sign that a great amount of energy was being squandered to no purpose, and with the accompanying danger of a power burn-out.
The Amazon flung herself to the outlook window, and, seizing the searchlight controls, swung the beam around outside. As she did so the floor heaved and rocked so violently that she could hardly stay on her feet.
“It’s a fish!” she gasped at last. “As big as a cathedral! Just look at the thing!”
Abna stumbled over to her side and stared out at a sea denizen so vast it was nearly incredible. Evidently it belonged to a class of sea monster long since banished from the Earth. Whatever it was, for its bulk was so enormous as to be shapeless, the 500-foot long Ultra was small by comparison and at the moment was in the thing’s vast jaws, the rocking being caused by the fish’s motion as it travelled through the depths.
The Amazon said: “The protonic gun should blow it to pieces — its head anyway, and that’s the part that’s annoying us.
He joined her at the switchboard controlling the weapon. To focus the gun on the yawning roof of the giant’s mouth was only a moment’s work; then the buttons were pressed.
The monster was only wounded and it threshed about with inconceivable savagery, whirling the Ultra around in its mighty jaws until Abna and the Amazon were flung from the gun and pitched helplessly up and down on the floor and against the walls.
Outside the vessel the jutting noses of the proton guns were snapped off against the creatures triple rows of teeth, rendering the weapon useless — a fact which soon became evident to Abna when, struggling to his feet, he tried the guns again.
“Only one thing for it” he said. “We’ll have to put on every scrap of power we’ve got and try to drag her free. If we don’t, this thing may take us to some lair from which we’ll never escape. If he exerts enough pressure he’ll crack the vessel.”
With the control cabin gyrating wildly around him, Abna lurched to the driving panel and moved the power levers. The already whining plant began to shriek as with every bolt of its available energy the Ultra strove to tear loose. Fascinated, the Amazon stared out of the window, watching results, clinging to the wall stanchions to save herself being thrown over.
The Ultra jerked, evidently having torn loose from part of the monster’s grip. Then for fifteen minutes it was a tug-of-war between the giant’s teeth and the atom plant.
Throughout the time the power plant shrieked its song of defiance, radiating a drenching heat and turning the air stale. Time and again the monster felt his prize slipping and again tightened his hold. It was like a determined terrier swinging by his teeth to a gradually slipping leash. But slowly the monster began to tire, partly because of the wounds he had received which no doubt made his grip less deadly than it would otherwise have been.
Then came a moment when at last the straining Ultra ripped clear, so suddenly it seemed to bounce. The swaying and gyrations ceased and the horrific monster of the deep was lost in his own abysmal region.
“Thank heaven,” the Amazon whispered, heaving a sigh. “And I hope we meet no more of them! The rocket ship’s still safely anchored,” she added, peering obliquely out of the window.
“We ought to be able to—”
Abna paused and exchanged a startled look with the girl. For the noise of the power plant had ceased and there was a complete, unnatural quiet.
Together they moved to the nerve centre of the vessel, expecting to find some part of the motor had been burned out under the excessive demands which had been made upon it. Instead they beheld the jaws of the main bar pressed tightly together with no copper block between.
“We’re out of fuel!” the Amazon said blankly. “The power bar’s been completely consumed. It must have been in our struggle with that fish. I have no spare power bars either. I never thought they would be needed. There was enough energy in that bar to carry us to Mars and back.”
“We overlooked a point,” Abna said. “Flying to Mars demands hardly any power beyond the initial take-off. In outer space there is no retardation, but here we fight resistance every inch of the way.”
He went to the control board and studied the meters and gauges. He turned. “We’re motionless,” he said. “Neither rising nor descending. I should have thought our buoyancy would have carried us up—”
“So it should,” the Amazon insisted, staring out of the window, “but not while that holds us.” Abna saw what she meant. The vessel was ensnared in a filigree of unidentifiable water vegetation, its roots evidently in the sea bed. Normally the vessel would have ripped through it with ease, but now, without power; it was caught.
“There’s only one way,” Abna said at last, and the girl looked at him hopefully.
“We must dismantle everything we can,” he said, “and use it in the power plant. Pu
re copper is the best medium, but everything that has atomic energy. We shall also lighten the load in the ship. All the instruments, the guns, everything we can find must be converted into energy. The pity is that atomium can only release its energy under the influence of a fixed supersonic vibration, otherwise we could use that.”
For the next half hour they behaved pretty much like vandals, tearing away everything metallic that was not immediately needful and throwing it on the floor in a pile. It made the Amazon wince to have to dismantle much of her valuable apparatus for scrap, but it had to be done. Even several stanchion bars were unbolted. These, together with the pile of smaller objects, Abna fixed between the jaws of the power plant and then switched on the current. Immediately the mass of metal began to glow and shrink slightly, but the Ultra jolted, swerved, and then restarted its ascent to the surface.
Throughout the trip the Amazon kept her gaze anxiously on the fast consuming material. Not being copper, or even intended for the purpose of providing atomic energy, the metal evaporated at an alarming speed. Only a small residue was left by the time the Ultra had finished its ascent and struck hard against the underside of the ice. Abna, who had been controlling the vessel, switched off the power and stood thinking.
“How thick this ice is we don’t know,” he said At length, “and the heat beams are fed from the power plant. Do you suppose we have enough stuff left to get through?”
“We’ve got to,” the Amazon responded. “Let’s see what else we can part with.”
The storage cupboards were taken to pieces, together with the metal shelves. The stands for the protonic guns were dismantled. Whole sections of the switchboard with its basically metal material were sacrificed — until at last it seemed there was enough. The material was fed to the power plant and the current switched on again.
This time the girl took the controls while Abna directed the heat beams. The underside of the ice began to melt under the vibration and an ever-widening chasm started to appear, boiling where the furious heat struck it and expanding into battered clouds of steam. Slowly, through dense, foggy water, the Ultra began to move up, walls of ice sliding past in the process.
How long it took to penetrate the barrier neither the Amazon nor Abna noticed. They were too intent on either watching the diminishing fuel or else the riven path ahead. This was the critical time, for if the power failed now, the ice would reform, expand by natural law, and crush the Ultra like an egg shell before any more scrap could be found. As it was, the plant was labouring at times, struggling with the double task of providing the heat beams with energy and forcing the vessel upward.
Then the Amazon suddenly gave a cry of delight. “We’re through, Abna! We’ve made it!”
He smiled in relief. The Ultra had split the last skin of ice and with a mighty surge it now leaped clear and into the air as the Amazon made a lightning change in the controls. Gone was all the pressure as the vessel climbed ever faster into the dark mid-afternoon sky, with its ghost of a sun and myriad glittering stars. The whine of the power plant dropped to its normal humming.
“Just about enough fuel to reach London,” Abna said, contemplating the atom plant’s jaws.
He was right. The last pieces of metal were vaporizing as the Ultra came within sight of the frozen city and swept down to the ice outside the shelter’s massive doors. The Amazon switched off, and they got into their fur suits, and then she opened the airlock.
“Best thing we can do is drive the Ultra into the shelter,” she said. “Left out here it will either be frozen in or crushed under the Great Glacier when it comes. We shall have to re-equip everything we’ve pulled to pieces, too.”
Abna nodded and followed her out into the biting air.
Chapter XVII
Two hours later the inhabitants of the shelter were in possession of the facts of the desperate journey to the ocean’s depths; then the Amazon and Abna retired to the laboratory at the second shelter level. Here, behind closed doors, they went to work to examine the hulk of the rocket flier and the atomium that had lodged on it.
Their search took them four hours, and when they had completed it they had upon the testing bench about four ounces of granular grey material remarkably like coke but of tremendous heaviness.
“How do you suppose we can test it?” the Amazon inquired. “If we have too great a quantity we might wreck the entire underworld. According to my calculations the smallest fragment possess a power of inconceivable violence.”
“The first thing we have to do,” Abna responded, “is build a projector — a portable one — capable of generating the required supersonic vibration. The projector must be put aboard the Ultra. We must refit and fuel up; then go on a lone journey and test the stuff. We might even try it on the Great Glacier and see if it halts it.”
“Two birds with one stone,” the Amazon agreed. “A good idea.”
Their plan decided upon, they both set to work, but it was a job which took far longer than they had estimated. With intervals for rest and refreshment, and discussions with Chris Wilson upon the various details connected with shelter life — at which he was informed, to his delight, that the doomed sun might yet be saved — it took three days to complete the projector. Its wavelength was tested by instruments, the atomium being well out of range, and was found to be correct at 3,000,000 vibrations to the second. There remained nothing but to test the stuff in actual practice — so on the fifth day the refuelled Ultra started off once more into the skies.
The Ultra also carried Morris Arnside, of which fact the Amazon and Abna were unaware. This last surviving member of the former triumvirate had watched the Amazon and Abna assiduously — not because he was interested in their experiments but because he was anxious to stop them. He knew, as did the rest of the shelter population, what was afoot. There was nothing he wanted more than to destroy the Amazon’s plans as his own had been. That he was wrecking the hopes of all humanity of the sun’s return mattered nothing.
So at this moment, having slipped unnoticed amidst the crowd before the Amazon and Abna had entered the Ultra, he was concealed in the vessel’s false roof, peering down into the control room through the ventilator slats. As yet his plan was not ready to be put into action. That would come later.
“The glacier’s getting dangerously close,” the Amazon commented presently, nodding through the main window.
Abna looked. The machine, heading swiftly northward at 2,000 feet, through air which was brilliantly clear with frost and a 50-below zero temperature, had come within range of the advancing barrier. It was awe-inspiring, rearing a mile and a half into the air, its deadly crushing maw composed of powdered granite, rock, slag, and all the stony amalgam it had gathered in its ponderous creep from the Arctic Circle.
The Ultra circled high above it. There was no doubt that once that mass closed over the British Isles the entombed survivors would stay below forever until warmth came and melted the ice by natural means. No heat beams would be able to break it open as long as the frigid, interspacial cold remained outside to harden it to iron rigidity. And, when the southerly glacier joined it, then indeed the end of the surface world would be complete — the Earth a dead planet, in its cocoon of frozen air and snow, the few survivors existing below, their future unpredictable, the generations yet to come never to know the meaning of blue sky, soft winds, or the friendly warmth of a golden sun.
Thoughts such as these passed swiftly through the Amazon’s mind as she considered the Great Glacier; then she turned to Abna as she slowed the Ultra down.
“What do we do?” she asked him. “You seem to know more about atomium than I do.”
He responded. “Halt the Ultra — make it stationary — and then we’ll lower a square inch of atomium to the glacier. We’ll keep it in the sights of the projector and from a safe distance we’ll release the supersonic beam. Then we’ll see — and doubtless feel — what happens.”
The Amazon gave a nod and turned to make preparations. The atomium cu
be, so small as to look ridiculous, was lowered swiftly on the cradle and wire to the white wilderness below. It was a scarcely visible dark speck to the naked eye — but in the sights of the projector which Abna was handling, it came clearly into focus.
“You drive,” he instructed. “And we’d better use dark goggles. The glare from this stuff is likely to be terrific.”
He handed over a pair of purple goggles, donned a pair himself, and then the Amazon settled at the controls. She circled the machine once or twice, then bringing the helicopter screws into play she set it motionless, hovering a mile from the speck which, though quite invisible to her through the dark glasses, Abna said he could detect clearly through the projector sights.
“Ready?” he questioned.
The girl looked intently through the window. “Ready — yes.”
The projector hummed and through the freezing air there stabbed the supersonic vibration, in a straight line. What happened afterward the Amazon was not at all sure — nor was Abna, who was more or less expecting it.
Small though the fragment of atomium was, its compressed energy was far beyond anything ever before known. Three square miles of glacier lifted right out of the earth, its granite hardness smashed into powder. In the midst of a chaos of mushrooming smoke and intolerable flame, blinding even through the purple glasses, the atomium exploded. Tremendous air disturbances bounced and rocked the Ultra, swinging it from its hovering position.
The Amazon clung to the controls, operated them swiftly, and rode the tortured air for a while — then gradually the disturbances began to subside, leaving behind a mighty cleft in the glacier, the water within it already freezing over and a towering column of woolly smoke climbing bank upon bank into the icy heaven.
Conquest of the Amazon Page 9