Chris. You know as well as I do how much needs handling. Whatever report Ethel has to make can wait until I get back.”
CHAPTER TWO
THREAT FROM SPACE
An hour later the Ultra, the huge, super-fast air-and-space machine which the Amazon alone understood in detail, was streaking into the twilight—upward to the stratosphere, thence through successively weakening layers of atmosphere until the machine had plunged through into the void.
It was not a new scene that lay before the girl, or indeed to anybody in these space-conscious days of the late twenty-first century; yet it always had a certain gripping quality. The majestic sun, blinding and intolerable to look upon without intervening purple shields; the drifting hosts of stars and planets; the paler moon, at the first quarter and below the gigantic bulk of Earth, receding now as the Ultra swept onward into the abyss.
Motionless, the Amazon sat at the controls, watching through the observation port for the first sign of that golden circle toward which the instruments told her she was speeding.
She was no longer the scarlet-costumed ruler of Earth, queen of the inner solar system, but a black-suited adventuress, the negativity of her attire relieved only by the solid gold belt about her slender waist, a belt packed with every needful instrument and weapon. Such an attire she always wore when on business bent. In any moment of crisis making demands upon her physique, the close-fitting elastic-glass mesh of which the suit was made gave her absolute freedom. Her golden hair was swept back now from her forehead and held in place by a gleaming band with twin rubies at either end. A stray hair in her way when she needed absolute clarity of vision might prove fatal. To the Amazon no detail was too trivial to be overlooked. She had learned from hard experience the need of precision and deadly accuracy.
When presently the golden circle came into view from the depthless black of infinity, she became more alert, her right hand near enough to the protonic gun to press the switch if any attempt was made to attack her. Nothing happened, however, and she flew steadily on.
When she was 20,000 miles from Earth, she inspected the giant space-globe as she flew the Ultra around it. The mirrors were concave in shape like the reflector of an arc, and she judged them to be twenty feet in diameter and made of some highly polished substance beside which the most brilliant chrome finish would have seemed dull.
That the craft itself was man-made was no longer in doubt. The rivets that held the globe’s two hemispheres together were plainly visible. So were the catwalk ladders and transparent conning towers, behind which she could see dim evidences of people moving—probably watching her Ultra as it cruised around like a wasp, darting, diving, sweeping, taking avoiding action in case of attack.
Then suddenly the Amazon found the Ultra seized in the grip of tremendous magnetic power. Though she exerted all the strength of the atomic plant to break free, she found it impossible. Relentlessly, the Ultra was dragged toward the globe, and finally came to rest anchored against it.
Grim-faced, furious at being beaten, the Amazon switched off the power and looked out of the window. Close to it was the nearest catwalk ladder on the side of the globe, leading up to a closed metal door. Near to the door was a small window through which she could descry the dim outline of a watching face.
She got into a spacesuit and stepped out of the Ultra’s safety lock and onto the vessel’s roof. The slight mass of the Ultra and the much heavier mass of the globe did strange things to her sense of balance. She found herself floating upward with the buoyancy of a feather, her leaded feet kicking in the sheer abyss of space.
Helplessly she turned several somersaults and then with a slight bump she hit the side of the globe. Immediately she caught hold of the ladder rungs, and began to cautiously haul herself up to the metal door. Below her was infinity, depthless, powdered with the sparkling lights of unguessably distant stars. It was a view thar would have affected a normal being from insupportable vertigo—but not the Amazon. In these great wastes of infinity she felt at home.
Reaching the metal door, she hammered upon it with her metal-and-rubber gloved hand, using the other hand to cling to the rail. There was only a moment’s interval, then the door opened and she stepped into the blank darkness of an air-valve chamber, so designed that it refilled with air pressure identical to that beyond the second door.
Accustomed to this normal routine in space, she waited in the darkness; then the second door opened and she stepped into a wide control room, brilliantly lighted by the sunlight blazing through the roof conning tower.
Three men were at an enormous control board, all of them lightly dressed in toga-like costumes. Near the massive power generators was a tall, thin-faced man of uncertain age who was watching her closely.
Unlike the men at the control board, he was fully dressed in a costume that looked like cloth-of-gold, ornamented with numberless emblems and decorations. Then the Amazon switched her attention to the tallest man in the room.
He stood almost seven feet and was scantily clad, his folded arms revealing the rippling health of his bronzed skin and the tremendous development of his muscles. He was handsome beyond the ordinary, with pointed features, a resolute chin, and a shock of golden hair in the waves of which the blazing sun lingered. In spite of herself, the Amazon found her gaze fixed by his reddish-blue eyes.
He smiled at her and she promptly stiffened. Just for a moment she had forgotten she was the Golden Amazon, and had almost become a living, breathing woman. She had only experienced such an emotional upheaval once before, and that had been when she had first met this extraordinarily handsome young man with the frame and features of some mythical Grecian god.
With a quick movement the Amazon unfastened the catch that secured her helmet and tipped the covering back on its hinge to her shoulders. She advanced slowly.
“Abna,” she said quietly. “So I guessed correctly.”
“I’m glad to see you again, Vi,” he responded in his pleasant baritone and he came over to her.
“I cannot say that I can return the compliment,” she said.
He considered her. “I suppose it is you this time?” he asked drily. “Not a synthetic model, like the one you foisted on me when we left Mercury?”
“I explained that.” The girl swung on him, her violet eyes bright with scorn. “You must have got my communication through the image, explaining my reasons for parting company with you.”
“Yes. I got them. But you don’t suppose that two such as us—both scientists—could remain parted forever, do you? My first thought when I returned home to Jupiter was to come back and make you realise how mistaken you had been about me.”
“You chose a very spectacular method! I hope you feel satisfied, now that you have created a world-wide earthquake, brought Mu from the depths, and drowned thousands of innocent people in tidal waves.”
“That,” the Atlantean giant said quietly, “is unfortunate. I hardly thought resurrecting Mu would have caused such chaos.” He changed the subject abruptly and motioned to the tall, saturnine being with the decorations on his golden raiment.
“This is His Excellency Sefner Quorne,” he introduced. “He is my chief adviser. Formerly, he held that position with my father who was, as you may remember, the ruling dignitary of our small race of 3,000 males. Now, unhappily, my father has passed on, and I have taken his place as the ruler of the surviving Atlanteans.”
The Amazon nodded
