. . . . . . .
In silence the Amazon and Kerrigan sat side by side on the bunk nearest the door of their cell, watching intently for the moment when the shaft would draw back. It had already proved a wait of seemingly interminable duration, each of them taking it in turns to rest whilst the other remained on watch.
“According to my calculations, Vi,” Kerrigan said presently, peering at his watch in the gloomy light, “we’ve been in this cell for forty-eight hours now, and nobody’s come near us. If I don’t get something to eat and drink soon I’ll go crazy!”
“I’m only just commencing to feel hungry,” she answered him. Then she continued thoughtfully: “It’s possible that on this world the time-ratio is different. I have a Martian body, and am just starting to feel hunger; you have an Earth body, and are ravenous. Maybe something anatomical behind it.”
“They’re probably leaving us here to rot,” Kerrigan said bitterly.
“I think not. Valina told me that she was intending to lake her body over again one day—so I at least am not destined to die just yet awhile. They’ll bring food and drink for me, and maybe for you. In any case you can have half of mine.”
“So that hell cat expects to have your—her—body back, does she?” Kerrigan mused. “Say, is that an angle, do you think? Which of them would dare to injure you when you’re in the body of the Metrix? You might use it as a lever to get us free!”
“I can try,” the Amazon admitted, “but I don’t feel too sanguine about—” She stopped and gripped Kerrigan’s arm.
The bar of the lock was sliding back gently, and it finally clicked into place at the limit of its withdrawal.
The door opened, and a seven-foot guard came in with a large tray in one hand and a weapon in the other. Upon the tray was food palatable enough to be given to honoured guests. He set it down on the nearest bed and then went out again, drawing the door to. Motionless, the girl and Kerrigan watched, but the lock bar did not slide back into place.
“It worked!” Kerrigan breathed at last. “Come on, let’s go—!”
“No, no, give it time!” The Amazon caught his powerful arm as he got up. “Besides, we need food first....” She surveyed the repast, complete even to a bottle of wine. “Evidently the Metrix isn’t anxious for her body to be undernourished upon reclamation,” she commented dryly. “It happens to be your luck that you can share the stuff. Come on, eat.”
Both of them did—Kerrigan voraciously, and the girl mainly as an act of necessity. All the time they watched the door, but nobody came. It remained latched but not locked. When they had finished the meal and still nobody had come to investigate they looked at each other.
“You must have guessed right, Vi,” Kerrigan said. “There is no short-circuit and they’re none the wiser.... I want to be moving. After a meal like that I’m just about ready to blot out anybody who gets in my way.”
He caught the girl’s arm and advanced to the door, raised the latch gently and drew the door open. Outside was the dreary length of the corridor, lined with its dull 96 metal. Half-way along the vista a guard was pacing on sentry duty, his back turned at the moment. Quickly Kerrigan dodged back into the cell again.
“Think you can handle him?” the girl asked quickly.
“Coming from you, that’s the queerest question ever,” Kerrigan murmured, grinning. “Shows how much reliance you placed on that superstructure of yours. Yes, I can handle him,” he assented, becoming serious. “He may be seven feet high and tough, but I’ve the lesser gravity to help me. Here I go—”
He stood waiting, his massive hands ready, until the sentry’s tall, broad-shouldered figure came to the cell door. He realized in that split second that it was open, but at the same second Kerrigan hurled himself upwards with all his strength, his right fist outflung in front of him.
It crashed into the sentry’s jaw and knocked him backwards. Following up his advantage, Kerrigan leapt on him, twisted his arm savagely, and wrenched the gun from him; then he brought it down with blinding force on the base of the man’s skull. He relaxed and became still.
“Good,” the Amazon commented, a tall, regal figure in her purple gown. “Now let’s see what happens next. It seems to me that our main problem is to find the radio section in this complicated underworld, no matter what risks we take. We’ve just got to get a message through to Earth somehow and upset all Valina’s plans.”
“We’d better go up this passage to the right,” Kerrigan suggested. “It’s the way we were brought in so it ought to lead out into the city somewhere.”
The Amazon beside him, he hurried up the corridor and turned right. They continued going for half a mile along the ill-lighted vista; then they paused as ahead of them loomed a quartet of guards, sitting on the floor with their backs to the walls, weapons on their knees. They were casually discoursing on some topic in their own flutelike language.
“Four of ’em,” Kerrigan muttered, his eyes narrowed. “ This isn’t going to be easy, Vi.”
“Don’t be too sure,” she responded. “Watch this...
She felt behind her, wrenched at something, and then to Kerrigan’s surprise she tugged off the heavy, voluminous gown with its huge, multi-fluted skirt. It left her somewhat scantily attired, and Kerrigan gave a rather embarrassed grin.
“Why the strip tease?” he enquired.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” the Amazon retorted. “It’s not me you are looking at but Valina. Why should I care? As for my reason—well, what do you think of this?”
She ran forward swiftly, freed from the encumbrance of the heavy garment. The guards looked up in surprise as they saw her approaching, but before any of them could get on their feet she had shot upwards, leaping high above them— and at the identical right moment she dropped the voluminous dress in a billowing parachute. It covered all four men like a tent.
With an adroit twist she swung round the moment she touched the floor, pulling hard at the ends of the dress, and with Kerrigan now helping her. Between them it was a simple job to so smother the four struggling men in the folds that they had no chance of finding an immediate way out.
“So far so good,” the Amazon panted.“ And I’m glad to be able to move with a bit of freedom—even though this body does feel as though the Metrix never took much exercise.”
“If you’re expecting to find a body as flawless as your own you’re liable to have to search the universe—in vain,” Kerrigan told her, as in gigantic leaps and hops they hurried through the gloomy tunnels.
Twice more in their journey through the weird Martian catacombs they encountered guards—and dodged them by the simple expedient of leaping upwards to the rough metal roof and clinging there, feet and fingers dug tightly into the metal’s irregularities, until the unsuspecting guards passed below them and continued on their way.
So ultimately they came to the end of the passages, which apparently were driven deep into the rock core of Mars, and emerged through a gigantic opening into the sudden glare of the twin suns. Stretched before them was the horizonless wonderland which comprised the civilization of Mars. To it led a long, rocky slope leading from this isolated section where, evidently, the condemned were incarcerated.
Kerrigan glanced at the girl and then started. Now he could see her clearly he realized she was wearing no more covering than an ordinary swim-suit. If it did nothing else, it revealed the magnificent stature of the Martian woman.
“If the people see their Metrix as you are, what’s going to happen?” Kerrigan demanded, and the Amazon glanced down at herself and gave a smile.
“Matter of fact, Howard, I don’t care what happens,” she responded. “It’s ourselves I’m thinking about—”
“So am I. That’s why I think you should be properly dressed, otherwise you won’t be able to call yourself the Metrix. Nobody will ever believe it, having never seen the ruler like—this. I don’t suppose they have, anyway.”
“Nothing we can do about it,” the Amazon answered, shrugging the mass
ive white shoulders; then she turned and pointed. “Look over there—about a mile off. Unless I miss my guess, those are radio masts. That’s the place we want, if only we can get to it.”
She looked anxiously about her. Just here there was no trace of Martians being present, but in the busy thoroughfares near by there was every sign of activity by both Martian men and women, including silent, queerly fashioned vehicles.
“If only there were some night in this confounded underworld!” Kerrigan breathed, clenching his fists and glaring up at the twin luminaries. “With those infernal suns blazing all the time, what chance have we? To do anything is about as simple as committing murder in the middle of a searchlight beam.”
“Those suns, incidentally, are created by atomic power,” the Amazon said, interested in the scientific issue. “For that very reason they won’t ever go out; so this land must be soaked in perpetual day....”
She paused, moving her gaze from the suns to a slow-moving air flyer making for the city. Kerrigan caught the direction of her stare and watched too.
The machine was approaching from a distant region of I the mighty underworld and, in circling, was heading directly for this rocky eminence on which the two were standing. The Amazon appeared to suddenly make up her mind.
“We’ve one chance, if the gravitation helps us enough,” she said quickly, turning. “This ’plane looks likely for crossing near here. If we leap with all the power we’ve got we might be able to grab that landing-gear which is hanging down. Then we can drop off again on the first available roof. It’ll be a big risk, but it’s worth it—”
She had no further chance to speak, for the ’plane was 'practically over them—a curious, wing-like type of craft apparently using the inevitable atomic force.
The Amazon crouched momentarily, and then leapt upward with all her strength, hands outflung above her. She overestimated the leap and hit the ’plane hard, only just saved herself in time from falling by grabbing the undercarriage with one hand. She twirled dizzily for a moment, then hauled herself up. Kerrigan, being far heavier, landed with perfect co-ordination. Together they sat on the landing-gear and watched the buildings sweeping past crazily below them.
“Think the pilot saw us?” Kerrigan asked, breathing hard.
The Amazon, the black hair blown back from her face, took her eyes from the scene to look at him.
“I’ve no idea—but I hardly think so. We were directly beneath the machine when we leapt. Apparently, though,” she added, looking below her again, “the people down there are quite interested!”
Kerrigan gazed between his swinging feet. Men and women were pointing upwards, or gesticulating to each other as the ’plane dropped lower and lower, evidently heading for a landing-field. Roofs came sweeping into nearer perspective, most of them flat.
“We’d better drop while the going’s good,” the Amazon said. “If we don’t, we might hit against something.”
She swung down so that she hung by her hands; then she released her grip and dropped. She fell lightly and landed with hardly a jar against the lesser gravity. Kerrigan fell not five yards away, and they gazed after the ’plane as it swept down towards its landing-field.
“Well, we’re that much nearer the radio building,” Kerrigan said, and pointed to the masts two roofs away. “We’d better see what we can do before the populace get curious and start hunting around for us. Come on.”
They began moving swiftly across the flat roof and then paused and gazed upwards and westwards at the vision of something surprising. Speeding high against the ebon black of what was actually 96 metal lining the underworld, were at least twenty gigantic circular objects, apparently as thin as plates and gleaming with a fantastically golden light. They moved with incredible swiftness and without a sound, speeding to some distant part of the sprawling Martian underworld.
“Flying saucers!” Kerrigan ejaculated blankly. “That’s just how they were described by people who saw ’em on Earth some fifty years ago—”
“Yes, and Valina told us that flying saucers are spaceships, so that is what those must be,” the Amazon said grimly. “Either they are coming back from space, or else just starting off—”
“Starting off!” Kerrigan interrupted her. “Look!”
The Amazon saw what he meant as, curiously, the entire fleet seemed to soar up into the darkness three miles away and then completely vanish—evidently through one of the opened valves giving egress to the surface.
“Well, that’s that,” Kerrigan muttered, as the last one disappeared.
“And I don’t like it, Howard!” The Amazon shook her bead. “There can only be one place where they’re going, and that’s Earth. Just what devilry is that woman up to in my name, I wonder? Come—let’s see if we can’t break into this radio station.”
With an added urgency now in their movements they leapt from one roof to the other, across gaps of busy streets—risks they would never have dared take without a friendly gravity to aid them—and so eventually reached the wide, flat roof of what was clearly a radio station, possibly a subsidiary of a larger group of them elsewhere in the Martian complexity.
“There’s a way in here,” Kerrigan said, pointing to a grating countersunk into the roof. “Probably a ventilation shaft, but I’ll risk going down it if you will.”
The Amazon did not even hesitate. Between them, she and Kerrigan hauled the grating out of its socket, and warm air, stale and spent, came gushing up to them. Kerrigan shaded his eyes and peered down into the depths.
“It’s narrow enough for me to brace my back and feet against the sides and prevent a headlong drop,” he said. “I’ll go first and see what I can do.”
The Amazon nodded, and he lowered himself, then slid gently out of sight by slow degrees. The girl waited a moment or two, and then began to follow his example. Halfway down the shaft widened a little and she lost her grip, slithering and falling for nearly forty feet and coming to a halt in a small, square chamber in which Kerrigan had also fallen.
They were both behind a latticed grating, and in front of them loomed an expanse of radio laboratory, illuminated by gigantic windows. It appeared that radio instruments were everywhere, together with tall switch-panels. Unknown voices were speaking in the Martian language from loudspeakers. Here and there Martian men and women in overalls were moving about, attending to the maze of complicated apparatus.
“Part of a radio control station—if not all of it,” Kerrigan whispered. “And we seem to be behind some kind of ventilator grid. What’s the next move?”
“That’s not an easy one, Howard: best thing we can do is wait for a while and think things out. They don’t seem to have heard us, anyway....” The Amazon peered intently through the metal filigree for a while, then she added: “From the look of things this is a sort of central radio exchange—like a telephone exchange—where radio calls are transmitted and received.”
“Uh-huh,” Kerrigan agreed, nodding.
“It also wouldn’t surprise me,” the Amazon continued, as the loudspeakers went in chattering, “if some of the information being sent concerns us. The guards must have informed the authorities by this time—and those people in the street saw us hanging on to the ’plane.... The pity is that we don’t understand the Martian language.”
“How we get out of this particular mess I’ll be damned if I know,” Kerrigan said frankly. “I don’t see how we’re to tackle all these workers in here. They’d overpower us in a matter of seconds.”
“Right,” the Amazon agreed soberly, her yellow eyes surveying the scene again. “I’m just trying to think of some way by which we might—”
“Listen!” Kerrigan interrupted abruptly, and gripped her arm. “Am I crazy, or can I hear English coming from one of those loudspeakers?”
After a moment the Amazon nodded an urgent confirmation, and they both became silent, straining their ears to catch the words, nor was it an easy task above the multiple babble of the other loudspeakers. Parts of t
he sentences did, however, reach them—
“...And from this latest information from Scotland Yard it is now assumed that... Amazon acted with... in dealing with the interlopers in Earthly bodies. It... obvious we cannot fight the superior science of Martians... ruthless iron-eaters are still corroding our civilization despite... but faith in Golden Amazon is undiminished, desperate though the position is—”
The voice ceased speaking abruptly, either switched off or else obliterated by static interference.
Kerrigan frowned hard as he glanced at the girl.
“What do you suppose that was?” he asked. “It sounded like a news bulletin from London.”
“I think that’s exactly what it was, picked up by these Martian instruments and probably relayed to some spot in this underworld where the powers-that-be are listening....” The Amazon clenched her fists. “I’d give something to know what the Metrix is up to! From the sound of that bulletin she’s already fixed it so that the iron-eaters have full play—the very thing I tried to prevent. And it also sounds as though she’s squared things with the police for those murders I committed. Howard, we’ve got to do something, and do it quickly! Let me think now..”
She looked about her again in the narrow, confined space, and then into the radio room. Absently her gaze moved to the double doors as they opened momentarily and swung shut again to admit an official. It was as the doors swung before closing that there was a brief glimpse of what lay beyond diem.
There were long tables, countless instruments, and—transient though the glimpse had been—there was something else of vital importance.
“I believe I’ve got it!” the Amazon whispered tensely, her eyes glowing. “Did you happen to see beyond those doors just now when they opened?”
“For a second or two, yes. Another radio room, isn’t it?”
“No—it’s an operating theatre—the same one, I think, where I was forced to change places with Valina. Evidently all the science laboratories in this city are gathered under one roof—radio, surgery, and so on. But that isn’t the point. I caught a glimpse of my double, seated in a corner.”
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