“If you will follow me...?” Thraxal requested, and opened the cabin door.
With perfect courtesy he helped the girl to alight as, in spite of her caution, the light gravity made her stumble; then Thraxal led the way into the huge building ahead of them. Kerrigan came up in the rear, glancing over his shoulder as he went, watching the other ’planes settling in various directions. He blinked up once towards the golden glare of the synthetic suns, then gave his attention to the long hall into which he had come.
The hall continued for a tremendous distance, and along it Thraxal walked with a stately tread, pausing presently at double doors which appeared to be made of bronze. He opened them and motioned beyond. The Amazon and Kerrigan went into the vast room, but Thraxal did not follow them. Instead he closed the doors upon them, and they were left viewing walls cloaked in what appeared to be cloth-of-gold, costly rugs, endless numbers of satiny cushions, and low, polished furniture. Above, lofty globes glowed with an Arabian Nights brilliance, yet cleverly cast no shadows.
“Apparently the Martians aren’t short of wealth, anyway,” Kerrigan commented finally. “Or good taste either, if it comes to that. Which, maybe, is hopeful. A race with high artistic taste might not be so coldly brutal as we expect....”
His voice slowed down and came to a stop. At the same moment as the Amazon, he had seen a figure enter the room from a door at its extreme end. In spite of himself, he stared fixedly, compelled to admire the tall magnificence of this woman of the red planet. She moved with a lithe, powerful grace, wearing a gown of deep purple, the skirt of which.swept behind her in voluminous folds as she moved.
She stood over six feet, and had the bearing of an empress. Richly black hair fell in rippling cascades to her broad, back-flung shoulders, hair which framed an oval face with.a firm chin and insolent mouth. As seemed customary among Martians, she had deep-yellow eyes and an unusual width of forehead. The Amazon stood measuring her as she came up, interested in this specimen of her own sex, equalling her indeed—in her own exotic way—in beauty, though probably not in physical power.
“This,” the woman said, in the strangely clipped accent used by Thraxal, “is an occasion of unusual moment, Miss Brant—Commander Kerrigan. The people of Earth and Valdon—or should I say Mars?—meet face to face for the first time.”
The woman gave the slightest of smiles, which transiently revealed white and somewhat pointed teeth. Whilst the Amazon inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement of the words, Kerrigan continued studying the woman broodingly. Magnificent though she was, as a woman there was also something tigerishly repellent about her.
“Please sit down,” the woman invited, motioning to the cushions. “I will have a meal brought you.”
A clap of her hands brought a male Martian into view— much less ornately attired than Thraxal and his men had been—and, after the Amazon and Kerrigan had been lounging in the cushions for a while, considering the Martian woman as she also studied them, the man returned with a huge tray upon which were curious fruits, wines, a kind of fowl, and every manner of delectable dish.
“Help yourselves,” the woman invited, and for some time after they had done so she continued to watch them, her long, heavily moulded form stretched at full length amidst the cushions so that she looked like a creation of a fairy-tale—a leopardess, perhaps, magically transformed into human outline but still possessing the beast’s inherent viciousness.
“I am not sure whether my First Elect, Thraxal, informed you or not,” she said, “but I am Valina, the Metrix of Valdon. That is—er—Empress. Ruler. Queen.”
“You are!” Kerrigan ejaculated in astonishment. “But somehow I—sort of——”
“Expected a male?” The woman looked at him and laughed gently. “But of course; how very masculine—and bow very Earthly, if I may say so. Incidentally, we of Valdon know all about your customs, laws, and rulers, I can assure you. Here, however, a woman has always ruled. It is the surest way to prevent conflict. Women are born to give and create, not snatch away and destroy, as men are.”
“It is pleasant,” the Amazon commented, “to find another woman with views similar to my own.”
“You have fought for a very long time to establish the predominance of woman over man, Miss Brant,” the Metrix responded, musing. “And the blind prejudice of man still balks you. Here it is very different. I have absolute command. I am in the position of a queen bee in your Earthly hive, or as the queen ant in the termitarium. I am absolute ruler.”
“That being the case, it is you whom we have to blame for the disasters which have blasted our planet wide open?” Kerrigan demanded, already indignant at the belittling of his sex. “That doesn’t appear to me like an act of giving and creating. It’s much more like cold-blooded massacre!”
The Martian woman fixed her big yellow eyes upon him for a while, and then said quietly:
“There is one instinct which is always uppermost in the female, Commander Kerrigan—be she animal or human. She will evolve any scheme, reveal any cruelty, perform any act, in the protection of what she believes is her own. On your world the lioness defends her cubs, the cat her kittens. On this world I defend my race, because I am the head of the race, because in that position I am looked to to do that. For that reason I am sworn to destroy everything on your world which you hold dear. I am dedicated to the task of bringing your social order into ruins, and of either obliterating you as a race or else controlling you with such relentless severity that you will never be anything but the slaves of my people.”
“That’s nice to know!” Kerrigan retorted hotly; but from the Amazon there were no manifestations of anger. She went on eating slowly, listening and thinking.
“You have only yourselves to blame,” Valina added. “Or rather you have only yourself, Miss Brant.”
The Amazon looked up.
“Of course,” she said, “I suspected from the first that it was my initial visit here—to examine the possibilities of colonization—which started our troubles on Earth, but I fail to see the purpose behind your enmity. You are the ruler of an intelligent, artistic race; I am definitely the scientific head of the Earth people. Surely there is some kind of compromise we can reach without all this misery and suffering?”
“The misery and suffering is entirely on your side, Miss Brant. We are perfectly comfortable, under my control, and we intend to remain so.”
There was a long pause, during which the superficial air of geniality faded from the woman’s manner and the relentless hardness of her real nature became increasingly obvious. Her tawny eyes began to glow as she continued speaking.
“You, Miss Brant, and your fellow Earthlings, are tantamount to invaders, determined to quell our world and convert it to your own standards. You mean, in a word, to control it as you see fit. We do not intend that you should.”
“When I decided to colonize this planet I was not aware that it was inhabited,” the Amazon pointed out.
“Even if you had been, I do not think it would have made the least difference to your plans.” The Metrix smiled coldly. “You are a woman of vast ambitions, Miss Brant. I have studied your career with interest right from the time when you first became known on your world as the ‘Golden Amazon’. Power—power—power! You think of nothing else! You admit that you are the scientific dictatress of Earth; and it is certainly a fact that you crushed the natural denizens of the world you call Venus and annexed that planet for Earthly uses. A woman who knows no bounds, such as you, would not stop at colonizing this world because it has inhabitants.... So I have decided to strike first, with what good results you already know.”
CHAPTER VI
For some time the Amazon sat in silence, a cynically amused smile on her lips. Never before had she had her innermost intentions read so perfectly.
“Evidently,” she commented, “you have read my mind, Metrix?”
“Certainly I have,” the woman responded. “Mind reading is a gift which we of Valdon possess in
high degree. That is why I know you would not stop at destroying us if we hampered your plan of colonization.... Let me be more explicit, Miss Brant. We are weary of this underworld existence of ours. We were driven down here by the ursugas—or iron-eaters, as you call them—those infinitesimal life-forms which are born of iron, much as your sea-reefs are made up of multi-millions of living creatures. Iron is the basic material of the solar system, common to every planet, and the ursugas exist in every particle of iron—but they cannot breed or come to life without a certain radiation of the sun chemically exciting them. That radiation is known in your science as the seventh octave, and it is shielded from you—as yet— by your atmospheric blanket, which is why your iron is perfectly safe.”
“Now I begin to understand,” the Amazon said slowly. “When your surface atmosphere thinned, the seventh octave got through and bred this iron-eating life in every particle of iron, bringing your civilization down round your ears?”
“Exactly. On your Moon there is the same effect. As her atmosphere thinned the ursugas were released and, nurtured by the seventh octave, they ate their way right through the satellite. Hence the craters, the gnawed rocks, the pitted mountains. Venus, with her dense blanket of air, and your world, are still safe.... However, we isolated many millions of the ursugas and kept them for study. A batch of them we recently transmitted to Earth and controlled their movements by radio waves from here, keeping them in the focus of our X-ray telescopes. For that purpose we had to transfer our observatories temporarily to the surface, since X-rays and similar radiations will not penetrate the metal with which this underworld is sheathed.”
The Amazon gave Kerrigan a significant look, and he nodded slowly.
“The ursugas attacked your power-houses,” Valina added, “and then your principal buildings and utilities. Once spawned, you understand, they do not need a seventh octave to keep them going. They keep on living and dividing, which is why they multiply on Earth in spite of your dense atmosphere.”
“And you never found a way to kill them?” the Amazon asked in surprise. “Such a scientific race as you?”
“Oh, yes, we found a way—a way which could stop their activity on Earth at this very moment.” The woman smiled enigmatically. “But it came too late to save our surface life being destroyed. So we took the only other course and came below here, sealing ourselves in with a specially created heavy metal which the ursugas cannot penetrate or consume.”
“Element 96,” the Amazon murmured. “At least it is that in our Periodic Table. I duplicated it from the meteorite you sent, and now most of our utilities are protected by it.”
The Metrix looked annoyed for a moment, and then gave her contemptuous smile.
“But why do all this?” Kerrigan asked in bewilderment. “Just to stop us coming here? What difference would it make if we did? You would be below, down here, and we would be above. We would never even meet.”
The Metrix gave him a grim look.
“You have a lamentably poor grasp of the situation, Commander,” she commented. “Consider the facts! You propose to create dense air like the Earth’s—which would inevitably filter down here and overpower us, for we have grown accustomed through centuries of evolution to a thinner atmosphere. You must have noticed that even down here the air is attenuated?”
The Amazon and Kerrigan both nodded. A persistent lightness had been in their chests ever since they had arrived.
“Very well then,” the Metrix said. “Do you think we would tolerate any atmospheric change? Further you have it in mind to create oceans, which would seep down here and perhaps drown us.... Let me tell you that, so weary of this underworld are we, we decided some fifty years ago to take over your planet as a place to live. To that end we crossed space and examined the possibilities. I believe we created quite a flutter among the scientists and astronomical people of Earth. Our space machines had the rather queer designation of ‘flying saucers’.
“However, we decided against staying, because the heavy air and greater gravitation affected our physique in a variety of ways, and we had no surgical method of overcoming the trouble. There was one way, though—we could steal Earthlings and use their bodies, which are naturally adapted to Earth conditions, and put our own brains inside them. This again we decided against because of the immensity of the task. We are only a race of some two thousand against Earth’s teeming billions, and we considered that the battle might go the wrong way for us.
“Then,” Valina breathed venomously, “you came to this world, Miss Brant! We were immediately aware of your presence, because our protective metal does not block thought waves. From your mind we read what you intended doing—colonization and so forth. We decided, in our own interests, to act first. We also appropriated several of your Earth leaders in our space machines and gave them the brains of our best spies—”
“So I am aware,” the Amazon commented. “I sought out and killed every one of them.”
Again the look of vindictive hatred crossed the Martian woman’s features.
“There will be others!” she declared bitterly. “And there will be one in particular! We have decided to take two thousand Earthlings as carriers for ourselves, and set ourselves up on Earth. The remaining Earthlings will be exhorted to war and violence so as to make our task of taking control all the easier. You may have killed the spies I set up, but there is one person all will listen to if she preaches the gospel of destruction.... I mean the Golden Amazon.” The Amazon frowned. “Well, yes, the people would listen to me,” she admitted, “but I have no intention of preaching such an unholy gospel to them.”
“But I have,” the Metrix stated. “I have been waiting for this one chance, Miss Brant—to use your body, and put within it my brain! Think of the situation on Earth! I shall be thought to be you, and the destruction of your race will be a thing so simple that none will realize until it is too late that I am not really the Golden Amazon!”
There was a long and deathly silence as the woman ceased speaking. Kerrigan sat looking from one to the other in horrified wonder—then suddenly the Martian empress’s eyes turned on him.
“From your thoughts, Commander, you are wondering what will happen to the brain of Miss Brant if mine takes its place? That is a question easily answered. You, Miss Brant, will have my body.... I believe you have a saying on Earth to the effect that ‘exchange is no robbery’? And I would add that it is useless for you to sit devising schemes, as you are now doing. Remember that I can read your thoughts.”
“Which is, of course, a disadvantage to me,” the Amazon admitted calmly; “but even to read them is not always to have the time to prevent me carrying out a plan—”
Suddenly she moved, with such terrific speed against the slight Martian gravitational pull that she seemed to leap into the air from a lazily reclining position amidst the cushions. In a matter of seconds she had clamped her fingers about the throat of the startled Metrix and held them there in immovable grip. The tawny eyes stared up at her, the black hair flowing like ink against the gleaming cushions.
“I am going to kill you, Valina,” the Amazon said deliberately. “Not because of any personal hatred of you, but because of the danger you represent to me and my entire race. I came here in the hope of perhaps finding a compromise: I have met only direct hostility—so I’ll answer back in the same coin.”
Her yellow fingers tightened inexorably, with such inhuman force that any normal woman, or man either, would have been strangled to death. Not so Valina. She remained conscious, hardly bothering to struggle. She even smiled cynically as a baffled look crossed the Amazon’s face.
“You are wasting your time, Miss Brant,” she explained. “The anatomical construction of a Martian differs from an Earthling. In an Earthling the throat is a vital spot. In a Martian a crushed throat means no more than a crushed arm. We have three distinct organs for breathing, in different parts of the body. Shutting the air from one merely makes the other two operate more freely—”
/> Fury at her mistake made the Amazon relax her grip, and Valina immediately seized her advantage. The fist of her massive right arm came round and landed with tremendous power under the Amazon’s chin. This time the gravity was her enemy. It caused her to spin backwards and land sprawling on the floor. Before she could get up again the Metrix was on her feet, a weapon glinting in her hand.
“I should think you have sense enough to know when you’re beaten, Miss Brant,” she snapped. “What chance do you stand? Surrounded by my entire race and in a sealed-in underground! Get up!”
The Amazon hesitated, her violet eyes straying momentarily to Kerrigan. He was slowly rising from the cushions, noting that in her earnestness to keep the Amazon covered the Metrix had turned her back on him.
As the Amazon slowly got up Kerrigan dived, seized the Metrix’s gun-wrist and yanked it backwards. Much though it outraged his innate sense of chivalry, he landed a smashing upper cut under the woman’s jaw. The force of it swung her round, and she staggered, tripped over the cushions on the floor, and fell amidst them. Instantly the Amazon was on top of her, twisting her on to her face and forcing her hands behind her.
“A cord or belt quickly!” the Amazon exclaimed, and Kerrigan glanced about him.
He dived for a satiny rope hanging on the wall and wrenched it free from its support. In a matter of moments the Amazon had lashed the Metrix’s arms securely behind her.
“On second thoughts,” the Amazon said slowly, “I won’t kill you. It would do little good with the rest of your race still free to do as it wishes. The only way to smash your schemes, Valina, is to rid this planet of not only you but the entire population, and maybe there’s a way to—”
“Stand still!” a voice ordered, from the direction of the double doors.
The Amazon glanced behind her and gave a start. So did Kerrigan. Thraxal was standing with a weapon in each hand, and his retinue of men was behind him. He signalled one of them, and he hurried forward to untie the Metrix. She got up slowly and gave the Amazon a glance of insolent amusement.
Twin of the Amazon Page 6