thought back on the time when she had wondered if she really loved Abna. For a period she had believed in this possibility: the woman in her had overpowered the scientist. But now, so unpredictable was her ruthless temperament, the scientist was in charge again. With the knowledge of Atlantean science added to her own, there was nothing she could not do. Besides, Abna was a man—a godlike man, perhaps, but still male, and deep in the nature of the Golden Amazon was a burning hatred of the opposite sex. Its reason lying buried in the scientific operation that had made her a scientific machine in the vestment of the most beautiful woman the world had ever known.
Presently she fell asleep, regardless of the man locked in the metal room. But he was recovering rapidly from the gas that had paralyzed him. When finally all its after-effects had gone, he struggled to his feet and looked about him in the dim light of the single roof globe. He knew better than to attempt anything with the metal walls, his only barrier against the searing cold of absolute space-zero; so he moved to the door and pushed at it with his giant muscles. Nothing happened: the massive clamps were proof against him.
Finally he decided to wait. There must come a time when the Amazon would release him, and when that happened, tigress though she was, when it came to physical strength, he was more than her equal. Since she had renounced all love and friendship, she must play the game the hard way. So Abna relaxed, smiling grimly, listening to the steady throb of power from the atomic plant. By alterations in its rhythm he would be able to tell when the Ultra was moving off course and action could be expected.
At the first sound of the alarm buzzer, the Amazon awoke and hurried to the control board. The Ultra was just coming into the huge gravitational field exerted by Jupiter, greatest of all the planets. The Amazon swung the ship round gently, playing tag with the gravity fields, until the nose was pointing directly to Io, one of Jupiter’s largest moons.
CHAPTER TWO
PLAN FOR CONQUEST
As the Ultra moved swiftly toward it, Io changed visibly from a rough, craggy world into something more interesting. There were deep valleys, heavily cratered plains and hillsides clothed with fantastic vegetation. Unlike the parent body, Jupiter, Io now had breathable air, most of it centred up to a height of three-quarters of a mile in the vegetation-covered valleys.
Io was a weird, fantastic little world, bathed in the triple lights of Europa, Ganymede, and the distant sun, to which was added the sullen green of vast Jupiter occupying all the sky. And yet, it was a world on which an oxygen-breathing animal could now live, which was more than could be said of the ammoniated-hydrogen atmosphere of Jupiter.
Finally the instrument showed the shallow air level had been contacted. The Amazon closed a switch and the Ultra came to a gradual halt, hovering helicopter-style over a valley.
The Amazon hurried to the chamber in which Abna was sealed. Taking her protonic gun from her belt as a safeguard, she pushed away the clamps with her free hand and then stood back.
“Come out, Abna,” she ordered—and waited.
The metal door opened slowly and Abna’s gigantic figure appeared. He looked at the alert girl, and at the protonic gun in her hand. To try conclusions with that deadly weapon would be suicidal, so he walked slowly past her into the control room. She followed him, her weapon keeping him covered.
“Apparently the stories I have heard about you, Vi, are correct,” he said quietly. “You haven’t a spark of decent human feeling in your make-up. You’re nothing but a....”
“I’m not interested, Abna,” the Amazon broke in. “Open that floor trap and get the ladder dropped. We’re fifty feet from the surface of Io, and that’s where I’m leaving you. You won’t die. There is enough edible vegetation on Io to last you the rest of your life—and water, too. Not a very glorious end for the once-proud ruler of Jove, but necessary.”
Abna said no more. He moved forward to the floor trap and began to slide the bolts back—then abruptly his hands shot upward instead and simultaneously gripped the Amazon’s gun wrist and her throat. A vicious twist flung the gun out of her grip, and the clutch on her throat slammed her against the curved wall.
“Since you want it this way, Vi, all right,” Abna said.
The Amazon’s hands clamped suddenly on Abna’s wrist as he pinned her neck. She strained her muscles to the uttermost and, powerful though he was, he had to give way because of pain in his wrist and forearm. He brought his other hand up, then snatched it back as the Amazon’s teeth bit into it savagely.
The instant his grip left her she brought up her knee and struck him in the stomach. He doubled, gasping slightly, only to meet the more-than-human impact of her right fist as it slammed into his jaw. He staggered a few paces and half fell at the bench in front of the control board. When he straightened up again the Amazon had recovered her protonic gun.
With her foot she kicked away the bolts on the floor trap and then lifted it back on its hinges. The air of Io came drifting into the control room, heavy with the scent of genetically-engineered vegetation. She snapped a switch on the control panel and from the bottom of the Ultra, below the trap, a ladder extended itself into the depths.
“Get down,” she ordered coldly.
Abna considered her, then he smiled faintly. She wondered why. Then, without another word, he stepped into the hole in the floor and began to descend. When he reached the lowest rung and dropped lightly in Io’s third-normal gravity, she closed the switch that returned the ladder into position and rebolted the trapdoor.
Her last vision of Abna as she retracted the suspensory-screws and switched in the atomic power was of him standing on a rocky ledge watching the machine’s movement to the upper reaches. He became remote, and then was gone.
Just as the Amazon was preparing to settle at the control board, she was suddenly flung to the metal floor and held there by a tremendous surge of acceleration with which even the gravity nullifiers could not cope. At the same moment she heard the change in rhythm in the power plant as its load was nearly quadrupled.
Weighted down with the force of countless tons, the Amazon clawed her way along the floor, straining every muscle in a frantic effort to reach the control board. She realized what had happened. Abna, when he had fallen by the switches, had altered the delayed-action power control. She knew what it meant if she did not reach it. The Ultra would hurtle into outer space at inconceivable speed until every scrap of atomic power was used up. The acceleration, constantly mounting, would so crush down on her heart and lungs that she would become unconscious, strong as she was, until the power plant was exhausted and constant velocity achieved.
She reached the bench below the control board and lay panting. Then she began to strain upward. Her fingertips came within three inches of the controls—then she could strain no more.
She collapsed senseless on the floor.
* * * *
To the southwest of London stood a residence apart from its fellows. Its tenant, a tall, austere-looking man of uncertain age, was not the type to attract attention. Jeffrey Carshaw was considered to be a wealthy bachelor who had retired to this home with a single manservant to escape the rush and bustle of the busy city.
Jeffrey Carshaw, however, was Sefner Quorne. To this home he had retired when his grandiose scheme for destroying the female sex of the Earth race had been beaten by the dual activities of the Amazon and Abna. Here he had lived quietly, his features altered by disguise, his whereabouts unknown by his electrical trick of altering his aura.
On
