60! And abruptly the Golden Amazon was no longer present.
There was a smell of ozone, a feeling of intense static resistance, and the five in the laboratory looked wonderingly at one another.... To the Amazon herself, at the moment of dissolution there had come a brief overwhelming anguish for which she had been fully prepared—and then a period of total blankness. Her senses drifted back to her to bring the realization that she was staring at a pale-blue sky. Around her stirred a thin, cold wind, carrying with it a fine dusting of grains.
Comprehending that she was lying on her back, she made to get to her feet, forgot the two-fifths less gravity, and landed flat on her face after turning a somersault. Slowly she tried again, and got on her feet.
Mars! There was no doubt of it—and if her calculations were correct she was standing in the midst of what Earth astronomers call the Mare Australe, the desert which once had been the bottom of an ocean.
There were no clouds in the pale-blue heaven. It was pallid, cruel, chilly, with a ridiculously small sun—by Earth standards—glowing coppery red at the zenith. The Martian noon. This, too, she had correctly calculated.
Slowly she turned and contemplated the view. It was appalling in its monotony. A waste of rust-red sand in every direction, unbroken by a single hill or rise of ground. Nowhere a trace of perhaps a ruined city, or vision of a living being.
“Dead,” she whispered. “Utterly and completely dead.”
She stood for a moment breathing the thin air, finding it produced an effect as though a band were tight across her chest. Then from her belt she took a detector instrument, one capable of registering the life-aura of a living body over a thousand miles of distance. Nothing, she knew, if it lived, could escape it—but the needle, insulated against registering her own life-aura, lay immovably at zero. Wherever she trained it—above, below, and to the four points of the compass, there was no reaction. Not a spark of life moved in this arid, desolate planet, so long a riddle to the astronomers of Earth.
She put the instrument away again, went carefully on her knees in the awkward gravity, and examined the sand. With more of her instruments she tested it, arriving finally at a discovery which made her frown.
“Almost pure ferric oxide,” she murmured. “In fact, there is more of it than there is of sand.... Most interesting. In that case these Martian deserts are not so much made up of sand as rust!”
She glanced up sharply. She could have been sure, for just the briefest moment, that somebody was watching her. It was a curious sensation, similar to the illusion of something seen out of the corner of the eye, which vanishes upon being looked at.
There was nothing. The desert was empty—utterly empty. And yet there was this growing conviction of being watched. Gradually she got on her feet again and once more tried the life-aura detector. No life, not even if invisible to the eye, could hide from the instrument; but it still remained at zero.
This conviction of hidden surveillance disturbed her, baffled her. She was still thinking about it when the reverse mechanism on the Earth equipment operated and that blank, anguishing darkness again descended on her.
The fogs of total unconsciousness cleared finally to reveal her own laboratory and the watching faces of the quintet. With something of an effort she moved forward and switched off the apparatus.
“That,” Chris Wilson said, “is what I call travelling! Eighty million miles in half an hour.”
“Less,” the Amazon told him. “I spent nearly half an hour on Mars and...” She paused, musing. “There’s something about that planet which I don’t understand.”
“Can there ever be something which you don’t understand?” Ruth Kerrigan asked, in genuine surprise.
“I think I was watched,” the Amazon said pensively. “Though I found no trace of life. Either it was an illusion of the mind produced by the utterly unearthly environment or else there is a type of life on Mars which is beyond anything we’ve yet experienced.... However...”
She put the issue on one side for the moment and turned to more immediate matters.
“As far as Mars itself is concerned, I see no reason why we should not go right ahead with our plans for colonizing it. The conditions are exactly as we had expected—thin air pressure, low temperature, slight gravity, and almost complete absence of water vapour. With deficiences in the climate made good by scientific instruments Mars might well become a very pleasant colonized planet to be included in the Federation.”
She stopped, again frowning over a thought.
“What is it, Vi?” Commander Kerrigan asked quietly. “Still worried about that alien life you couldn’t see?”
“No, Howard—not that. I’m really baffled by the Martian deserts. You see, they are not really sand at all, as we have always assumed. They’re made up of vast wildernesses of powdered ferric oxide, which undoubtedly accounts for Mars’ red colour.”
“You mean rust deposit?” Chris exclaimed in astonishment.
“Yes. It has to be seen to be credited. Of course,” the Amazon continued, thinking, “the planets of our system are basically iron ore, and the effect of erosion and oxygen upon the surface of any planet would doubtless create deserts of rust in the long run. We can even see the first signs of it in our own Painted Desert. But that an entire planet should be powdered in rust deserts is most unusual. Not a city, not a tree, not a shrub, not a hill, but what has been levelled to all-pervading red dust.”
There was a long silence—almost an uncomfortable one. The Amazon seemed to have brought something of the chill of dead Mars back to Earth with her.
“What do you think it means, then?” Ethel Wilson asked; but the Amazon shook her blonde head.
“I just don’t know. Certainly when we colonize that world we will have to volatilize the deserts and get down to firm foundations on which to build Martian cities.... Since this isn’t the time to conjecture as to whether there is life on Mars or not, you, Chris, had better call a meeting of the Interplanetary Engineers for tomorrow morning, and then I’ll outline the details for the first colonization moves.”
Chris Wilson nodded. “Okay, Vi, I’ll do that. And congratulations on successfully crossing space there and back.” The Amazon only smiled—a smile of complete self-sufficiency.
CHAPTER II
A week later, with her plans for the colonization of Mars taking shape in workshops and engineering foundries throughout Britain, the Amazon had practically forgotten the strange fact that there might be life on Mars, so buried was she in new scientific plans for the conquest of the red planet.
For this reason she was not conscious of a momentary ripple across the easy-going, prosperous life of 1990 British life. It was a giant meteorite which provided the diversion.
Seamen saw it, so did one or two space-ship commanders far out in the void. In remotely flung hamlets there was a perfect view of it in the summer night sky. Lovers in quiet lanes were startled; animals howled or took to their heels. Wherever the meteorite’s path lay there was a brief pale-blue effulgence which paled the brightest noonday sun, and with it came the deep satanic roaring usually associated with in earthquake—until at last the meteorite dived beyond horizon limit and vanished in an abyss of quiet.
As chance had it, not only the Amazon, but none of those connected with the Dodd Space Line, saw the phenomenon, though they gained all the details about it from the newscasts and telescreens the following morning. From all accounts, no meteorite of such size had fallen since the famous Siberian meteorite of June 30, 1908, which had landed five hundred miles north of Irkutsk. This one had fallen, mercifully, in the wastes of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire and buried itself a quarter of a mile deep in the earth. Even so, the heat and gases emanating from it prevented sightseers and scientists from getting any nearer to it than two miles. What investigation was possible had to be made from hover-planes.
The Amazon had only just gathered these facts from the teleview screen, accompanied by the announcer’s explanation, when
the visiphone buzzed. She got up and switched on the instrument, to behold Chris Wilson’s face in the scanner.
“Hello, Chris,” the Amazon greeted. “Early caller. I was just having breakfast—”
“Heard about the meteorite?” Chris interrupted.
“Yes; I was viewing it a moment ago on the televisor—or rather the best view hover-planes can get. What about it?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. Do you think it’s just coincidence that that meteorite happened to fall now, when we’re planning to colonize Mars, or is there more behind it?”
The Amazon laughed. “More behind it? I can’t think why in the world there should be. And supposing there is? What do you think we should do about it?”
“Examine the meteorite. It might even be some kind of space-ship. Frankly, I just can’t get it out of mind that you were convinced when on Mars that somebody was watching you. This meteorite seems to me to be a natural consequence of that.”
“We’ll know better when it cools, Chris,” the Amazon responded. “Nothing can emerge from that meteorite, or enter it, as long as it remains superheated. In the meantime, forget about it. Certainly I have far too much on hand to be bothering over it.”
“Okay,” Chris agreed, though he still sounded uneasy. “Just thought I’d mention it.”
He switched off, and the Amazon did likewise. She stood musing for a moment or two, pondering the implication of Chris’s words and wondering if perhaps her own absorption with scientific matters had perhaps rendered her insensible to other possibilities. But that the meteorite should have any connection with Mars..!
“Most unlikely,” she decided, shaking her head. “And it cannot be a space-ship, because I give the Martians—if any —credit for being better scientists than to let their spaceships get red-hot in their fall through the atmosphere.”
She turned away from the visiphone, pressed the button for her maid, Tana, to clear away the breakfast things, and then went into her laboratory to commence the day’s routine work—chiefly on problems which would be encountered when, in six months, the first engineers landed on Mars to commence climatic alterations....
. . . . . . .
It was another week before the great Salisbury Plain meteorite cooled sufficiently to permit of it being examined, and it was a task which proved about as interesting—and as fruitful—as studying a gigantic cannon-ball.
The huge, irregular globe was pitted and pock-marked after its wild flight through the atmosphere, and carefully though the many scientists went over it, they could nowhere find any trace of an air-lock or possible door which might announce that the object had a hollow interior. All normal means of lifting it from its hole failed, so finally three freighter space-machines with magnetic grapple anchors were put into service. These, not without difficulty, dragged the clumsy, vastly heavy globe from its crater so that the section which had been buried could be studied. But here again there was a similar answer. Nowhere was there a sign of a door.
Finally, interest cooled off. The vast globe was left where it was in the midst of Salisbury Plain, a monument to a trip through space. The novelty over, men and women ceased their sight-seeing and returned to normal pursuits. The scientists wrote off the object as just another meteorite... and that was that.
It seemed indeed as though the even-flowing current of life was destined for a long spell of tranquillity again—until the annexation of Mars should give rise for rejoicing—but the peace was shaken again, this time by the extraordinary affair at the Central Power-house in London.
Here there functioned the gigantic atomic-generators which powered London, subsidiary power-houses in different zones of the British Isles taking their loads directly from it. And on the night of June 12, three weeks after the fall of the Salisbury meteorite, trouble hit the Central Power-house good and hard.
Chief-Engineer Setton was prowling on his inspection tour around ten o’clock, a journey which took him along gridded aisles between banks of switch-panels, across gangways lined with gigantic, softly-humming engines. His task was to be certain that every unit, inconceivably complicated and yet completely foolproof, was operating to maximum efficiency, and if not, to report the fact immediately to the Atomic Power Board.
Setton, a first-class engineer, was perfectly satisfied that everything was in order. He stopped before each checking-dial, read off the numbers and position of the gauge-needles, checking them against the log card he carried. Then as he entered the last gangway the thing happened.
The two mighty flywheels on the central generator, heart of the whole massive power-plant, literally burst asunder. Engineer Setton had not the least warning or chance to save himself. At one moment the wheels were spinning normally, so flawlessly precision-balanced that they appeared motionless; and the next great chunks of rended metal were hurtling through the air, smashing their way with the force of projectiles into the surrounding apparatus, flinging themselves through switch-panels, and upwards towards the roof.
Setton himself, open-mouthed in wonder, had only five seconds to watch what was happening, then an irregular chunk struck his chest, went clean through it, and landed on the gangway behind him. Stone dead, Setton crashed on his back.
The power-house, deprived of its central control, whined and shrieked weirdly. Several smaller units raced themselves to pieces and then became silent, burned out and smoking sulphurously. Up and down the country fled an automatic ripple of alarms, advising distant engineers that the Central Power-house was out of action.
In various zones lights in buildings and streets winked, blazed with tremendous brilliance, and then expired. Darkness and power-loss spread a paralyzing hand over both London and the provinces until harassed engineers could switch in the subsidiary old-fashioned electric light and power system.
In her own home, the Amazon, deep in an armchair reading a formulated plan she had worked out for colonization, glanced up sharply as the tall reading-lamp above her head glowed blue, pink, and then went out. She sat in the dark, waiting. The glow of the atom-bar fire in the wall paled and expired too.
The door clicked softly, and the maid came in with a torch.
“It’s all right, Tana,” the Amazon said. “Power-house failure, I think. Nothing we can do at the moment. Keep the torch: I don’t need it.”
“Yes, Miss Brant.” The maid went out again silently, and the Amazon got to her feet.
With perfect assurance, since she could when she chose see quite clearly in the dark, she went to the visiphone. Her intention to ’phone the Chief Engineer was frustrated, as she found that the instrument was out of action.
“Then it must be a general power failure,” she muttered. “Very strange. It has never happened since atom-power was installed.”
Turning, she left the room by a private door and went into the hangar annexed to the laboratory. A touch on a switch, connected with batteries, moved aside the hangar’s roof; then she went across to her helicoplane and climbed into it.
The small but powerful atomic motor lifted the little machine into the dark. Moving the controls, the Amazon turned northwards towards the great looming abyss which normally was a blaze of light marking the city of London.
Frowning, she looked about her into the night. As far as she could see there were no lights anywhere. The darkness was absolute. There had never been such a universal power failure before. Then suddenly, almost magically, lights appeared again, and she recognized them immediately as the pale illuminants of electricity, having none of the curious bluish tinge common to atomic power.
When she reached the site in central London where the main power-house should have been standing she stared incredulously into the reflecting infra-red screens over the switch-panel. Every detail was as bright as by day, revealing to her a scene of indescribable chaos. The entire Central Power-house was in a state of collapse, its metal walls dissolving and crumbling even as she watched; its roof long since had fallen inwards. It was as though that mighty edifice
, composed of the toughest resistant insulating metal known to science, were made of tallow, wilting now before a heat-wave.
Her face troubled, the Amazon darted her helicoflyer to another quarter of the city, intent on viewing the secondary power-house group, but before she got there other and more impressive scenes caught her attention. Fascinated, the helicoplane hovering, she watched.
The first incident to catch her eye was the dissolution of the Westminster Bridge. Of late years the stone structure had been replaced by a wider span of durrilium-x metal, nearly as tough as tungsten and, technically, in the same class of resistance as that of which the Central Power-house had been made. Yet, almost at the moment of her crossing it, at an elevation of five hundred feet, she saw it suddenly begin to crack, bend, and flow like lead before a fire. The lights on it smashed into a broken string of jewels and extinguished themselves. The traffic crossing at the time rolled sideways and vanished in the Thames. In less than ten minutes Westminster Bridge completely dissolved.
Fascination, horror, and then scientific curiosity, took possession of the Amazon by turns. Throughout the night, drawn by the uncanny mystery of what was happening, she flitted about the country from far north to far south, beholding in that time innumerable disasters wherein supposedly invincible structures melted into nothing. Until by dawn, when at last she returned to her home, she had in memory a list of some thirty disasters, so far without explanation.
She was somewhat surprised to find on entering her home that Chris Wilson, Kerrigan, and Slater Pratt, the head of the Atomic Power Board, were waiting for her in the lounge.
“Vi!” Chris exclaimed, jumping up as she came in. "We’ve been waiting for you since dawn. Where on earth have you been?”
“Cruising,” she answered quietly, and after pressing the button for Tana she settled in a chair. “Cruising and giving myself a series of shocks as well!”
“None of us here had a wink of sleep last night,” Chris hurried on. “Ever since that first power failure at ten last night. Do you realize what’s happening? Power-houses are simply falling to bits; metal buildings are coming down— locomotives, ships, airplanes, and even space-ships are corroding away with some kind of devilish metallic rot.”
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