implications,” the Amazon replied. “If what I am thinking proves correct, it will be found that there is no corpse in the grave.”
“What!” Viona exclaimed, startled. “Then he has genuinely come back from the dead?”
“No; not quite that.” The Amazon turned away, obviously unwilling to discuss the matter further until she had all the facts. “Let us see what develops first. In the meantime we have routine science to attend to.”
Viona glanced at her father, then shrugged. Had he wished, he could quite easily have read the Amazon’s mind, but unless extreme emergency demanded otherwise, he always respected her privacy.
For perhaps an hour, normal laboratory work—research into atomic laws—continued, then came the call for which the Amazon was waiting. She picked up the visiphone as it buzzed and the face of the government official appeared on the scanner.
“Examination of the coffin of Worker 78965 LH reveals the coffin to be empty, Miss Brant.” There was a wondering look in the man’s eyes. “How this comes to be the case it is hard to understand, for the screws on the coffin lid were still in place.”
“Thank you,” the Amazon said, a gleam in her violet eyes. “That is all I wished to know.”
“It is? But is it the correct answer?”
“As far as I am concerned it is, yes. I am much obliged.”
The Amazon switched off and found Abna and Viona gazing at her. They had heard the official’s voice in the receiver.
“Any suggestions?” Abna asked.
“Yes.” The Amazon tightened her mouth. “Just one—Neptune!”
Abna looked puzzled and then sighed. “Well, I suppose I ought to see the connection, Vi, but I don’t.”
“Purely because you’re not exerting yourself,” she replied sharply. “Think, Abna! You have the powers of a god when you care to use them—but how rarely you do!”
“What’s all this about Neptune?”
“Well, you surely haven’t forgotten that we discovered Neptune, or at least part of it, to be a duplicate of Earth? Even to containing people who look like Earthlings?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten, but— Wait!” Suddenly Abna got a grip on the situation. “Are you suggesting that this worker is a Neptunian?”
“I am. The whole business seems pretty plain to me. The Neptunians—or rather the Uranians, since they have migrated from Uranus—have started sending their doubles here, at the same time removing the originals.”
“What!” Viona exclaimed. “But—but at that rate what’s going to happen? Nobody’s going to know who is genuine and who isn’t.”
“Exactly. It is also perfectly logical, from this premise, that the Neptunians are bent on conquest. Plainly they must use an atomic dissembler to accomplish their purpose. A counterfeit Earthling is sent there, garbed exactly like the Earth original, and the Earth original is switched back to Neptune. But in this one instance there has been a mistake.”
“And a big one—for them,” Abma said grimly. “They were not aware that this worker had died in the interval since they took his original pattern—but they will be now, because the exchange will hand them a corpse. Possibly they will even realize that they have unwittingly exposed their hand.”
“Possibly,” the Amazon admitted.
“The lapses of memory are plainly accounted for then,” Viona commented. “A Neptunian, sent here, would be versed in the life of his original counterpart, of course, but there might be some things he wouldn’t know, things which even radio waves and television cannot tell to the watchers of Neptune.”
CHAPTER THREE
TOO LATE TO ACT
Abna said: “Hundreds of Neptunians may be in our midst and no normal people are aware of it.”
“Quite likely.” The Amazon moved restlessly. “Thank heaven that girl brought this to our notice, otherwise months might have elapsed before we found out the deception. Not that any of this is any surprise to me. You remember my saying when we escaped from Neptune, that the last thing I could believe was that the Neptunians were engaged in making themselves resemble Earthlings purely for the sake of it? Not they! Why, there are even duplicates of ourselves on Neptune, the very duplicates which enabled us to make our escape.”
The Amazon’s violet eyes met Abna’s. At that instant the same thought had struck both of them.
“Quorne!” the Amazon exclaimed.
“Yes,” Abna conceded, reflecting. “That guard we defeated when we escaped looked identical to him. Yet the original Quorne is dead.”
“So we believe,” the Amazon mused. “But—” She stopped, lost in speculation.
“Would one of you mind telling me what this is all about?” Viona pleaded. “What is there about this man named Sefner Quorne which always seems to trouble you? I’ve heard you mention him so often, and always in the terms of healthy respect.”
The Amazon hesitated and gave Abna a glance. Though she no longer remembered the fact, Viona had once been the wife of the original Sefner Quorne and by him had had a son, Sefian. The child’s mathematical genius, at the age of two years, had saved the Universe from destruction, but since that very conquest had involved the death of the son and produced disastrous bereavement upon Viona, Abna had blotted from her mind all memory of her son and Quorne. But she was always dimly aware that, somewhere, a piece was missing from her life.
“Quorne,” Abna said, “was my adviser on Jupiter, Viona, long before you were born. More than once he has tried to master the Solar System with his superb science, and each time your mother and I have beaten him. The last we heard of him, when the Dark threatened to engulf the Universe, was that he had been killed—by a being of another world named Kron. But on Neptune, when we escaped from there, there was an individual heading the guard who looked exactly like him. A man with purple eyes and jet-black hair. If he really was Quorne, reincarnated, then we can be pretty sure that this Neptune counterfeit business has his mind back of it.”
“Meaning,” Viona asked, “that this is yet another effort on his part to wrest power?” Then, as her father nodded, she laughed contemptuously. “And is he fool enough to think he can stand up to us three? Why, between us, we can—”
She stopped. Something was different about the laboratory. She and her mother and father noticed it at the same moment. It was hazing strangely under the force of electromagnetic stresses. Then all three of them cried out helplessly as unendurable anguish descended upon them and they were snuffed into oblivion.
Gradually the blankness of total unconsciousness lifted. Minds and then bodies knitted themselves swiftly back into place. Unhurt, but utterly bewildered, the Amazon, Abna, and Viona stood gazing before them—once again at a laboratory, but certainly not their own. What appeared to be Earthmen were grouped around a massive switch-panel, the foremost being slender in build, remarkable for his high forehead, polished black hair, and heliotrope eyes,
“Quorne!” the
