Twin of the Amazon

by John Russell Fearn

  “They made no effort to. They assumed you were the Metrix, and so tried no further. Claire Del Foye, however, was suspicious. Many of our ‘transferred’ subjects have been aware for some time of the trickery going on on your planet —but it is at an end, as is your own career.”

  The Amazon smiled faintly. “I have been told that many a time before, my friend—yet I am still here.”

  . . . . . . .

  Upon the return to Mars, settling the Ultra at the space-ground from which it had started, the Amazon found herself forced to leave her machine without the slightest chance of disabling it by removing the desseminator-pin. Ilthan kept close behind her, one of his guns pressed hard into the base of her spine.

  “Walk,” he instructed. “I have all my plans laid for you— and have had ever since you returned here as our supposed beloved Metrix. You killed her, Amazon, which is more than enough justification for you suffering the same fate.. .. You observe how clearly your memories and thoughts have given you away?”

  The Amazon made no response, busy as she was in grappling with the problem. That there was no immediate way of escape was perfectly obvious to her. The great space-grounds were thickly tenanted with Martians, men and women, most of them mechanics who were tending the vast assembly of flying saucers which filled every available space. Evidently Ilthan noticed her absorption, for he said:

  “We are carrying out your scheme to go to Earth in one body and overwhelm what resistance there is. Departure has been arranged for forty-eight hours hence. I shall, of course, use your Ultra, so that the Earth people will be fooled until the last moment into thinking it is you returning—Turn to the right!” he broke off, and the girl obeyed.

  With every second, she realized, she was walking farther and farther away from the Ultra, but under the black sleeve of her costume was the magnetic compass, tuned to the vessel’s magnetic prow—granting the chance ever came to reach the space-ship again. At the moment such a chance could not have seemed more remote.

  The walk she and Ilthan took down a short and deserted side road between massive buildings led to a flight of metal steps descending into a long, seemingly endless passage with a string of dim lights along its roof. To one side, as the two followed a narrow pathway, there raced a fast-flowing stream.

  “The sewers,” Ilthan explained. “An excellent place for such as you. The only advantage they have over your Earth sewers is that they are not mephitic.”

  Another right turn took them away from the interminably long vista and into a wide, machine-made “cavern,” fairly well lighted and with walls of solid metal—which, from the look of it, the Amazon judged to be 96.

  In the middle of the metal floor stood a narrow frame of similar type metal, about six feet high and three wide. Its purpose was soon evident to the girl, as the fierce strength of Ilthan hurled her into it and clamps snapped out of the sides to grip her waist and ankles and pin her arms immovably to her sides. She pulled and strained gently, but the metal was solid, more solid than anything she had ever known before. She looked at it, confirming her worst suspicions that the stuff was 96, and therefore inconceivably hard.

  “To me, I think, belongs the credit of having literally trapped the Golden Amazon,” Ilthan commented, putting his gun away and allowing himself a grimly triumphant smile. “You cannot break free of that frame, Amazon. I had it tested under strains infinitely greater than any your muscles can create. In forty-eight hours we shall be leaving this planet—every one of us. Two and a half hours after that, if I read your mind correctly, a million miles of the trip will have been covered, and I shall fire your Ultra’s proton-gun at our twin suns and blow this world asunder....

  “All you have to do is stand and wait, through the hours, measuring the moments, and as you do so think of our devoted Metrix whom you destroyed! Oh yes, one other thing —I will leave the lights burning. When we depart for Earth they will go out. In that way you will know our movements, and how long you have left.”

  The Martian contemplated the girl’s expressionless, amber-tinted face.

  “Your thoughts,” he commented, “are not of the pleasantest towards me, Amazon.”

  He moved towards her suddenly, and she expected he would take advantage of her helplessness to deliver a blow; but instead he unbuckled the belt from about her waist and put it over his shoulder.

  “Thank you for mentally warning me that this belt might help you,” he murmured. “And now I will take my leave....”

  He gave a slow, cynical bow and departed, his tall figure faintly illumined as he passed through the gigantic opening and into the main sewer pathway again. There was the sound of his receding footfalls, and the Amazon was left alone.

  For several minutes she remained motionless, held rigid, the manacles firmly gripped into her ankles and arms. As was her custom, she was assessing the situation before attempting to find a way out of it. There were no advantages this time save one: the very nature of the sewers ensured that there was no door to break down if she could get free of this frame.

  There was a clear way to the upper underworld—if she could break free, a way even straight to the Ultra, since her compass had not been noticed beneath her sleeve, nor, fortunately, had she had it in mind for Ilthan to know of it.

  And she had forty-eight hours.

  “That I could forget that they can read thoughts!” she whispered to herself bitterly. “The one factor I overlooked! The best of us do, I suppose....” She considered what she had just said, and added musingly to herself, “In which case there may be some factor which Ilthan, too, has overlooked —something which to him is so natural that he forgets to include it in his scheme; just as I forgot to include the power of telepathy because normal humans don’t possess it.”

  It was several minutes later before she found the loose point in Ilthan’s reasoning. He had made sure of every point save one. He had not included the gravitation—normal to him, but excessively light to the Amazon. He had assumed it would have the same drag on her as on himself.

  “In which he errs,” the girl murmured, giving a slow smile. “I have not ten times normal but nearly thirty times normal strength, and that being so, I wonder if he calculated aright?”

  Suddenly she threw every scrap of her strength into tearing her pinned arms free of the clamps. For twenty seconds she exerted every vestige of her stupendous muscular power, but the clamps did not budge in the slightest. She relaxed again, breathing hard and looking about her. From that one mighty effort she knew perfectly well that no amount of physical strength, weak gravity or otherwise, could enable her to break free.

  Presently another thought took possession of her as she saw the walls of the great chamber were not smooth. Parts of the 96 metal, evidently hastily cast, were serried along the surfaces, giving a kind of “relief map” effect where the shadows caught them.

  “To cut a diamond you use a diamond,” she murmured. “To cut 96 you use 96: I know that from my own laboratory experiments. That may be the key!”

  She swayed herself back and forth, and found to her satisfaction that the frame gave gently with her movements, not being secured to the floor. With an effort she keeled it right over so that she fell on her back. The execution of the remainder of her plan relied on muscular effort, aided by the lesser gravity.

  Forcing herself suddenly upwards on the left side, she turned completely over, sideways, on to her face—then a pause and on to her back again. Again on to her face. Until finally she had reached the nearer wall of the cavern.

  She waited for a while and then levered herself from her face on to her side so that her back was resting horizontally in the frame against the wall. With the tips of her fingers, her wrists being completely immovable, she felt the rough projections in the metal behind her and seized hold of one larger than the others. Effort upon it inched the frame up very slightly and wedged it over the small metal spur so that her head was three inches from the ground whilst her feet were still upon it.

&n
bsp; Two more efforts, with a long rest between each one, had brought her diagonal to the wall—then the frame slipped and she crashed down on her side again. Untiringly she went to work once more—twice—three times, and wedged the frame securely. Then again, and yet again, until she was upright and panting from her vast efforts, keeping her position only by a finger-hold, and that back-handedly. But at least she was in the position she wanted, with the razor-edged irregularities in the cavern wall pressing hard against the bars of the frame.

  By moving herself gently from side to side, going three inches out of the perpendicular each time, and keeping up the action deliberately, she felt the metal wall scraping on the bars, hack-saw fashion.

  It was wearying, painful work, pinned down as she was so that circulation in her limbs had nearly ceased. It brought weariness far quicker than the mightiest physical effort. Then as she paused for a moment and pulled savagely she had the satisfaction of finding one side bar giving way and snapping in two, bitten clean through.

  From that moment, with one arm free, she knew she had won this particular battle. She hacked and tore frenziedly at the rest of the frame, and then the manacles themselves, until after another hour of intense effort the last of the fetters had dropped away from her.

  She sat down, her back to the wall, and spent nearly another fifteen minutes recovering from her efforts. Refreshed again at last, she got to her feet and glided to the door of the cavern, looked up and down the length of the sewer’s vista. It was completely deserted in its string of yellow lights.

  CHAPTER XIII

  She began to move in the direction in which Ilthan had forced her to come. There was murder in her violet eyes as she moved and, having no weapons, her fingers were crooked in the fashion of claws on either side of her, ready for instant gouging action.

  Upon her strength, and the friendly lesser gravity, there now relied her last chance of escaping from the planet.... And then what? If she were even successful in reaching the Ultra the Martians would know the moment it departed that she was responsible. Even if she could somehow escape the underworld, by blasting a way through the metal shield with the weapons she had aboard the craft, every Martian would have departed from the planet in the flying saucers long before she could blow it to pieces in accordance with her former plan.

  She slowed her onward advance as these thoughts occurred to her, pondering them carefully. In effect, her plan to fuse the twin suns was now useless.... But there was yet another plan, an even better one perhaps, even though it involved a much greater risk to herself. If, on the other hand, it succeeded, the Martians would not only be disposed of, but Mars itself would escape undamaged— empty—and free to colonize. To succeed, the plan demanded that Ilthan be disposed of without anybody else being aware of it, and she taking his place.

  She went on again a few minutes later and reached the steps leading from the sewer. With infinite caution, she ascended them and looked about her. There was no sign of anybody. The narrow side street was as deserted as it had been on the previous occasion, but once she reached the main city artery she knew she would meet with difficulties, unless—

  She nodded to herself and worked her way to the end of the side street, where, concealed in the shadows cast by the tall buildings, she watched the Martian men and women passing up and down on various errands. Altogether she had to wait for nearly an hour before a woman came in sight during a lull, when the main street was quiet from end to end.

  As she passed the corner the woman found a strangling forearm beneath her jaw and she was dragged backwards into the shadows. She was a six-foot Martian woman, strong as all of them were, but utterly powerless in spite of her struggles against the smaller yellow-faced being who had sprung on her.

  The forearm suddenly released her and a bunched fist came down on the back of her neck, laying her senseless on the ground.... Quickly the Amazon pulled off the woman’s flowing outer clothing and donned it herself, together with the queer head-dress which she arranged so that her own blonde hair was completely concealed beneath it.

  Next she removed the woman’s queerly fashioned calf-high boots, and into them stuffed shreds torn from the woman’s clothing. The result was that the Amazon added some three inches to her normal five feet eight, which she considered enough to enable her rough disguise to pass.

  To complete the illusion she wiped dirt from the roadway into her cheeks to disguise the yellow tint and give her something of the Martian woman’s swarthiness. Then, moving unsteadily on her small improvised stilts, she went into the main street and passed amongst the Martian men and women without any of them paying the least attention to her.

  Gaining the space-grounds by using her compass, which faithfully directed her back to the position of the Ultra, she stood for a while and watched the orderly files of Martian men and women who were already entering the fleet of flying saucers, perched on their cradles, ready for departure. Silent, undetected, she skirted the fringe of the vast crowd and reached the Ultra. Evidently Ilthan was perfectly certain that she could not escape from the sewer cavern, for the airlock of the machine was open just as she had left it.

  She gave a quick glance about her, saw that no attention was being paid to her, and moved through the air-lock into the control-room. She was fully prepared to find somebody present—even Ilthan himself—but to her satisfaction nobody had arrived as yet.

  Smiling triumphantly to herself, she hurried along the narrow metal passage which gave on to the various rooms of the space-ship, and in the room she used exclusively for herself she rid herself of the Martian outfit and flexed her aching legs as she returned to normal height and balance.

  From the cupboard she took out a duplicate instrument belt and strapped it on, washed—not daring to bathe in case she were interrupted—and then went in search of food. She obtained it, and a long drink, without anything untoward occurring. Then, ready for action, she stole back into the control-room, climbed up the main roof stanchion, and pushed up what appeared to be a section of the metal ceiling.

  Actually, since she was the designer of the vessel, she knew this ventilation flap to be the entrance to a store chamber lying between the ceiling and the machine’s outer plates. Squirming into the narrow space, she lay flat, face down, and re-closed the flap, the ventilation holes serving for her to view the control-room below.

  Whilst she waited for something to happen she twice fell asleep, worn out with her exertions, but each time she awoke more refreshed and keener in mind and body. On the third occasion it was sounds below which aroused her. Her eyes narrowed at the vision of Ilthan and a colleague moving about the control-room.

  The air-lock was closed, and she could tell from the pressure that the Ultra was being driven swiftly heavenwards. From her angle she could not see if the fleet of flying saucers was following the vessel, but she assumed they were.

  The sudden realization that her thoughts might be read decided her to wait no longer. Since Ilthan was concentrating on the controls, he had evidently not noticed the influence of her brain above him—nor apparently had Ilthan’s colleague, busy studying a cosmic chart.

  Silently the Amazon raised the flap and laid it on one side. She tensed in readiness for one of the men looking up. From her belt she took out her protonic-gun, sighted it on the man with the chart, and fired. His head seemed to vanish in a blaze of fire, and the sudden queer zzzing sound made Ilthan glance round.

  “Don’t dare take your hands off those controls!” the Amazon ordered him, in Martian.

  He did not, chiefly because he was so astounded. If she had been amazed at his arrival on the first occasion, it was nothing compared to his at the moment. He stared at her as though she were a ghost as she dropped lithely to the floor and prodded her gun in his back.

  “I think, Ilthan, that positions are reversed,” she murmured.

  “But—but how did you—”

  “Never mind! Keep driving!”

  She glanced outside and smiled at the visi
on of the great armada of golden flying saucers glinting in the sun and starshine, trailing behind the Ultra like a train of precious gems.

  “Your entire race following the faithful leader, eh?” she asked coldly. “In a word, Mars is empty?”

  “Yes, empty!” Ilthan retorted, his tawny eyes glaring.

  “So it won’t matter if you do blow it up—But that isn’t what I read in your mind,” he went on, his expression changing. “You have a new scheme—a horrible one—”

  “You, my friend, will do just as you are told,” the Amazon interrupted. “If you don’t I’ll incapacitate you, as you intended to incapacitate me. You are going to give an order to your followers over the short-wave. The order is simply this: You have had information over the radio from Earth that it will be safest to detour. All the ranicawls following you must take the same course as you do if they are to survive destruction. That’s all. You’ll be obeyed because you are the leader.”

  “I won’t do it!” Ilthan declared in desperation. “I know what is in your mind, and if I keep silent you can’t get away with it, then I can—”

  The proton-gun blazed suddenly across his eyes and left him blinking into livid green fire.

  “I’m not joking, Ilthan,” the Amazon breathed, her mouth relentless. “Do it! Or have your eyes destroyed! Please yourself.”

  She snapped on the radio instruments and waited.

  Still the Martian hesitated, then as she raised the gun to a level with his face he spoke quickly.

  “Attention all officers!” And he gave, word for word, the order the girl had commanded.

  Satisfied, she nodded and switched off.

  “Which finishes my connection with you, my friend,” she commented.

  Reading her thoughts and intentions, he flung himself at her, his mighty seven-foot body bearing her backwards before she could fire her gun. He whipped it from her hand and then dropped it again as her fist smote squarely in his face. He had not recovered from the impact before the fist smote again, hard as stone, and again, battering him back across the control-room.