“Are you sure?” Kerrigan questioned urgently.
“Almost. Wait until the doors open again...”
Before this happened nearly ten minutes had passed, as the official who had come to the radio room on some errand or other took his departure, smiling and waving a hand cheerfully to his colleagues. Once more as the doors swung gracefully to and fro to a standstill there was that vision beyond—and this time there was no doubt about it. In a corner of the great surgery a blonde-headed, black suited woman was seated, a gleaming belt about her waist.
Then the doors had shut.
“You’re right, Vi,” Kerrigan said. “I suppose they brought your double to the surgery to try and find out what makes her tick. It’s the only place they could bring her, come to think of it.”
“And apparently they haven’t dissected her yet, or taken away her weapons,” the Amazon added. “Those weapons are real, remember—not dummies.... I do believe that things are about to happen! Her photoelectric brain is so devised that it will only respond to my telepathic orders and nobody else’s. Let’s see what I can do—and keep quiet whilst I concentrate.”
Kerrigan obeyed, his eyes fixed on the closed doors. The Amazon crouched like a statue, her gaze directed through the grating, the force of her supernormal mind hurdling the gap to the motionless synthetic being in the surgery beyond.
Then suddenly the doors swung open and Amazon 2 stood there, her head moving from side to side as she apparently looked about her. In each hand she held a gleaming weapon. One or two of the radio technicians glanced round casually at her and then started.
Before they could make any moves Amazon 2 leapt forward, high in the air, and dropped in their midst. The weapons in her hands fired relentlessly, emitting brilliant pencils of violet fire before which the demoralized radio technicians helplessly collapsed. In the space of perhaps five minutes, leaping from place to place with phenomenal agility, she had reduced the dozen men either to death or long unconsciousness.
“Simple, isn’t it?” the Amazon asked laconically, and Kerrigan gave a start.
“Uncanny would be a better word, Vi. It’s the nicest bit of ‘doubling’ I’ve seen in some time. Now what happens?”
“Come and open this grating!” the Amazon commanded her double, and immediately her image came hurrying forward with a fixed, glassy stare in her violet eyes.
Locking her yellow fingers in the metal mesh, she tugged at it savagely, and finally tore the whole facing away from its supports. Quickly the Amazon and Kerrigan scrambled out into the radio room.
“What about a message to Earth?” Kerrigan asked, glancing about him. “This looks like a good opportunity.”
“It would take too long to solve which equipment to use, and how to use it,” the Amazon answered. “I’ve another idea—and it’s just got to work! Come on, to the surgery— and you too,” she added to her image.
The three of them hurried through the great radio room and into the operating theatre adjoining. As they entered it three surgeons, white-garbed but without gloves and face-masks, came to a standstill in an advance towards the doors.
“Hold it!” the Amazon ordered them, and from her image she whipped the two guns. “This is my party, for a change.”
The surgeons obeyed her order, knowing they could do little else. Their eyes went in wonder from their scantily clad Metrix to the motionless smaller figure in black—and then to Kerrigan.
“You!” the Amazon snapped, looking at the centremost man. “You are the one who performed the brain operation on the Metrix and myself. I recognize your face.... Can you understand my language?”
“Yes, I can understand it,” the master-surgeon assented, with a somewhat cynical smile. “I observe that that brain of yours is as agile as ever. I suppose I should have had more sense than to leave your image free. We were just making preparations to dissect it and then we—”
“Never mind that,” the Amazon interrupted. “You’ve a job to do. I want my brain transferred again—and this time into the skull of my image here. In that way I can become the Golden Amazon again, since the body is an exact duplicate of the original one Valina stole from me.”
“And you think I’d do that?” the master-surgeon asked, in cynical amusement.
“I know you will!” the Amazon retorted; then she glanced briefly at Kerrigan. “Howard, these doors ought to lock somehow. See that every one of them is secured. I don’t want disturbances for the next hour.”
Kerrigan nodded and went on a swift investigation of the surgery. All the locks, he discovered, were electrical, jammed in place by a mere movement of a switch. When he had secured every one, including those which led into the radio room, he came back to the girl’s side.
“On the other occasion,” the Amazon said, addressing the surgeon again, “you performed the brain operation single-handed without any assistants.”
“Correct,” the Martian agreed. “Instruments worked for me. These two surgeons here were going to dissect your image—”
“Exactly—and I’ve no use for them.”
The guns stabbed with their lavender-tinted pencils. Kerrigan looked on in rather wondering horror as the surgeons on each side of their superior sagged and died, gaping holes torn clean through their chests.
“I have no time for gentle tactics any longer,” the Amazon explained icily. “None of you have shown any mercy—so expect none from me. You, my friend, are left—to carry out my orders, whether you wish to or not.”
“Your orders being that I operate on you?” The surgeon shook his head deliberately. “I prefer to die before doing that.”
The Amazon handed the guns to Kerrigan and then stood motionless, staring at the surgeon fixedly. He stared back, in curiosity at first, then with a growing fixity as he felt the frightful force of the Amazon’s superhuman will beating into his skull.
She made no effort to soften her commands: she hurled them into the man’s keen, sensitive brain with the force of a battering ram; until at last it became evident from his rigid, mask-like expression that he was completely under her influence. Only then did she relax and glance at Kerrigan.
“I’ve used post-hypnotism,” she explained; “by which I mean that he will obey the orders I’ve given him—in five minutes’ time. Those orders are to transfer my brain to that of my image, and he’ll do it because he can’t help himself. The moment he has done it, though, he will be normal. If he attempts anything, shoot him—and shoot to kill. Understand?”
“All right,” Kerrigan agreed, and stood waiting to see what happened next.
The Amazon turned to her double and spoke shortly.
“Lie down on that table!”
When the graceful, black-clad being had done so the Amazon went over to her and strapped her down. Then she laid herself on the adjoining table and had Kerrigan buckle her into position. He had just completed the task when the motionless surgeon seemed to remember something.
He turned jerkily and moved towards the tables, performing his actions like a blind man as he pressed a switch-button which brought instruments on a rubber-wheeled stand to his side from a distant part of the surgery.
Grim-faced, Kerrigan stood with the guns ready, watching every move. For the Amazon the laboratory slowly blanked out as her senses faded under the anaesthetic.
CHAPTER VIII
Consciousness returned to the Amazon with the awareness that a white-clad arm was striking downwards towards her. Instantly she flung up her hand and stopped the arm in its plunge, jolting from the hand a long needle-pointed glass tube which splintered on the metal floor.
In a sudden surge full consciousness returned to her, and with it the knowledge that the operation had been flawlessly performed. She was again, to all intents and purposes, herself—and she was holding the wrist of the surgeon who had performed the operation. His tawny eyes were no longer blank: they were blazing with homicidal fury as he tried to wrench himself free of her grip.
It took the A
mazon perhaps three seconds to grasp what had been intended. The contents of the splintered tube were bubbling and fuming on the floor, eating into the metal. Some distance away Kerrigan lay unconscious with his fallen guns near by. The Amazon’s eyes jolted from Kerrigan back to the master-surgeon; then she gave a slow, deadly smile.
“So, my friend, you were not quite quick enough?” she enquired. “The moment you emerged from the hypnosis and realized the nature of the operation you had performed you tried to destroy me, did you?”
Suddenly she strained with all her power and ripped in twain the central belt pinning her waist. Her hand tightened on the surgeon’s wrist with steady pressure—tighter and tighter still until she saw perspiration gloss his features.
“I’m not fool enough to attempt to choke you,” she said. “I’ve learned that that is useless on a Martian anatomy. I just want to hold you until I get free...”
She drew up her perfectly shaped legs with sudden convulsive efforts and the last two sets of straps broke. Immediately she slid off the table and to her feet, and though she was a good sixteen inches shorter than the seven-foot Martian, her tremendous grip on his wrist twisted him round to the position she required.
Then she released him—so suddenly that he could not understand why. He stared for a second, and a blinding light seemed to explode in his face. He hurtled backwards across the operating table and reeled into the instruments. Springing herself forward in the light gravity, the Amazon dived on him, whirled him up, and then planted a bone-smashing blow on his jaw which slammed him half-senseless into the wall.
She watched him sagging and glanced quickly about her —then her gaze settled on a distant row of corked glass acid-carboys. She looked back at the acid on the floor, still eating into the metal, which had been intended for her. That decided her.
“I like to pay in kind, my friend, if I can,” she said, and before the surgeon could grasp her intentions her steel-strong hands had whirled him off his feet.
In the lesser gravity she swung him round in a circle and then released him, watching as his flaying body landed in the midst of the glass carboys. They broke, fumed, and flowed—And she listened dispassionately to the man’s screams.
“I’d sooner hear them from you than from me,” she remarked callously, as they died away—then she turned her attention to Kerrigan and hauled him to his feet.
By slapping his face sharply she began to revive him. He winced and rubbed his head painfully.
“Vi!” he ejaculated, starting. He grabbed her shoulders and felt the muscles roll under the satiny flesh. “It—it is you, not that image—?”
“Both,” she answered, picking up the guns and putting them in the belt holsters. “The operation was successful, as I prayed it would be. I’m myself again, but in a duplicated body. Not that it matters, since this body is identical to my own.... As for the Metrix...!”
She looked towards the operating table, where the scantily clad body of the ruler of Mars lay motionless under the straps.
“That surgeon snapped out of his hypnosis too suddenly for my liking,” Kerrigan complained, still rubbing his head and working his neck stiffly. “Before I could do anything he hurled an instrument at me. It hit me on the head and K.O.’d me. Incidentally, he put the photoelectric brain of your image into the Metrix’s skull. It’s got me wondering if she’ll obey orders as your image did. I—I mean as you did.... Oh, I’m all mixed up,” he finished dazedly.
“Move!” the Amazon commanded the Metrix—but there was no trace of a response.
“Doesn’t work,” Kerrigan sighed. “More’s the pity. It might have been useful to have a Metrix doing as we like.”
“I didn’t think it would be any use,” the Amazon told him. “The Martian nerve-system is different to ours. That photoelectric unit will be incorrectly linked up, I expect.... Anyway, I don’t intend that the charming Valina shall have her own body back again; nor do I intend that the secret of that photoelectric brain shall ever be discovered. That being so...”
She tugged out one of her weapons, a blunt-nosed instrument like a tiny blunderbuss. When she depressed the firing button an annihilating force jetted from the instrument. The operating table, the body of the Metrix, the instruments around her—— They all vanished in one intolerably bright core of violet flame. Nothing was left save a mushroom of smoke rising to the ceiling and a disturbance of air currents.
“I have the idea,” Kerrigan murmured, grinning, “that Valina is not going to like the disappearance of her body one bit!”
“When I find her,” the Amazon answered, holstering the weapon, “she’ll not be in a position to like anything! I’m out to break her, Howard, if it’s the last thing I do.... Anyway, right now we have two problems ahead of us. The first is to get a radio message through to Earth, and the second is to find a way out of this underworld—and then to Earth. With Valina having stolen the Ultra that isn’t going to be too easy.”
Kerrigan became thoughtful for a while, then an idea seemed to strike him.
“I’ll tell you what you might try. Go out into the city in the ordinary way and convince the people that you are Valina—in the Golden Amazon’s body, of course—returned here to give further orders. Since nobody outside us knows what has gone on, they’ll believe you.”
“I don’t think they will,” the Amazon responded, shaking her head. “They all know that you and I escaped from jail: they must also know from radio reports that Valina disguised as me, is still on Earth.... No, it would never work. Our best course at the moment, I think, is to see what we can do in the radio room before any guards, on the look-out for us, get this far. The sooner we move, the better.”
They turned to the double doors leading to the radio room, and Kerrigan released the lock. They entered the great place to find the technicians lying where they had fallen— all save one, who was just staggering to his feet. Kerrigan gave a grim smile and hurried over to him. One savage upper cut made certain that that particular Martian would have his recovery indefinitely delayed.
“It’s not going to be easy to single out the right equipment to send a message,” the Amazon said, thoughtfully contemplating the various switch-panels. “Nor do I know but what our message might be intercepted and obliterated. However, we can but try. The basic principle of radio should be the same on any planet, so maybe I can find a way.”
She selected an instrument which appealed to her as a possible starter in her search for the right equipment, then as she was studying it she looked up as one of the loudspeakers came into action, evidently controlled from a distant source. It proved to be another of the relays from Earth, spoken by an American this time.
“Attention all listeners! It has just been reported from Mount Wilson Observatory that some twenty objects resembling the curious and supposedly mythical flying saucers of half a century ago have just been sighted in the four-hundred-inch telescope, heading towards Earth at high speed. This can only mean that the Martians have decided on direct attack, and all militia are warned to be alert. All Governments should give their individual orders immediately. Any suggestions which the Golden Amazon may have to make are eagerly anticipated. Stand by for further information as we receive it.”
The message stopped, and Kerrigan gave a grim glance. “Ten to one those are the twenty flying saucers we saw leaving here,” he remarked. “What do you think is the idea of them? Are they carrying Martians who are intending to subdue the folks back home?”
“Twenty machines to do that?—each machine carrying no more than perhaps two Martians apiece?” The Amazon shook her head. “There is more behind it than that, Howard. I’ll make one guess—that they’re going to pick up Earthlings who’ll be transported back here, their bodies to be used for Martian brains. That’s Valina’s main idea, remember—as she freely admitted. From the look of things she seems to have Earth lying wide open....”
She stopped talking as she saw Kerrigan looking at something behind her; then he gave a n
oticeable start. Her hand dropped to her belt, and she swung round, firing simultaneously. In so doing she blew half the right arm of a Martian guard away as he crept slowly towards her with levelled gun.
With a shriek he fell to the floor, and behind him three more guards came into view with weapons at the ready. The Amazon pressed the button of her weapon again—but nothing happened. The charges which it was capable of holding had expired. The moment she realized it she hurled herself forward, knowing the time was too short to draw a second weapon.
With cataclysmic force she plunged into the leading guard and keeled him backwards into his two comrades. The pile-driver impact of her fist behind his skull brought him down, stunned. With her foot she kicked the weapon out of the second man’s hand; and the third man she seized, whirled round, and flung with dizzying force against the wall.
“No time for more,” she said quickly, dashing back to Kerrigan. “We’ll never have any peace now to send a message. Have to abandon the idea. Let’s get out of here the way we came—up the ventilator shaft.”
Kerrigan nodded and wriggled into it, then began struggling up the shaft in the darkness, bracing his feet and back against the sides and working his way ever higher. Below, he could hear the Amazon following his example. It was hard, tough going for the forty-foot ascent, but it finally brought them out on the flat roof.
The Amazon looked about her and into the “sky”.
“I hope you’ve got some good notion as to what we do now,” Kerrigan said. “The big shots are going to turn the heat on us good and hard when they find out how much upset we’ve caused.”
“I’m thinking about flying saucers,” the Amazon answered. “If my guess is right and they are being used to go to Earth for men and women to bring back, it means that others will also go as well as the twenty we saw. When they do we’ve got to get aboard one of them somehow and use it to cross space. We’ve no other way—nor is there any other method of escaping this underworld with it all so nicely sealed up.”
Twin of the Amazon Page 9