will be like I shudder to think, unless it has inherited more of the characteristics of Viona than Quorne. That is another reason why I dare not bring even Viona back. I have only one satisfaction—Quorne is probably the most unhappy man in the Universe because there is withheld from him one mathematical factor in his makeup. That will make him an eternal victim to an unsatisfied longing. The torture of incompleteness will always be upon him. That missing factor is in the mind of Tarnec Brodix.”
Chris said: “I cannot see why with your tremendous knowledge you cannot have Brodix bring back all three and then deal with Quorne.”
“And alienate Viona? Whilst both Abna and I know him to be a scientific force for evil, Viona is young and sees Quorne only as a misguided scientist who is, nonetheless, likable enough otherwise. She has never realized his real depths. If I were to wipe him out, she would never forgive me.”
“You’ve lost her anyway. Why not take the risk and let Brodix get busy?”
“No. Quorne is one man of whom I am really afraid. He has knowledge that even exceeds mine in many things.… No, I shall let things rest and hope that memory will slowly die and leave me as I was to start with—a lone wolf, caring nothing for anybody. With a woman like me sentiment should have no place, and yet it has. The surgical operation that made me a superwoman was not complete. It left me with emotions, and I cannot always rule them.”
A clerk came in with a message, and the Amazon rose.
“Anything needing my immediate attention?” she asked. “If nothing is required, I’ll retire to my Surrey home and lose myself in experiments. I had better get used to being alone again.”
“No, nothing,” Chris said. “The world is at peace and everybody seems more or less satisfied. Conditions are normal on Mars and the Moon and—” Chris stopped, looking at the message in his hand. “Take a look at this,” he said.
The Amazon took the note handed to her. It was on the Space Line communication form and read:
“Have space pilots check up on unexplained dark patch in remoter deeps of space. Not clearly visible from Earth and would bear investigation. Office of the Astronomers.”
The Amazon read the message and for a moment there was something of the old gleam of interest in her eyes, then it faded out.
“Probably a dark area like Cygnus,” she said, handing the message back. “They appear at times.… Well, since there is nothing more exciting than that I’ll be on my way.”
Half an hour later she was in her own home in Surrey—a home of scientific gadgets and robot servants, yet with a touch of femininity here and there. The Amazon had a meal, changed into laboratory coveralls, and then considered what to do next. At the back of her mind was the memory of the message Chris had received. She could not help her scientific interest even though she had brushed the matter aside at the time. In another hour it would be nightfall.…
“Better than nothing,” she muttered to herself and went into the laboratory-observatory annexed to the house. By the time she had adjusted the light-wave telescope to her satisfaction, an instrument infinitely more powerful than any other in the world since it drew light-waves unto itself in their original clarity from any given distance, the darkness was deepening and the night was clear.
CHAPTER TWO
SUPER-SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
A switch opened the roof and she settled in the scanning chair and peered through the eyepiece. An adjustment of the focussing screw brought the hosts of heaven leaping into relief, a picture such as she might have seen anywhere in space except that in this case the atmosphere prevented the pin-sharp brilliance existing in the void.
She searched far out to the remote spaces in the region of the North Star, searching out beyond Orion, the Coal-Sack, and the Black Hole of Cygnus.
Then she saw it—a roughly-formed circle of utter darkness in which not a single star or nebula gleamed. Beneath her fingers a switch clicked and the nearer-focus control came into operation. Immediately the stars on the edge of the darkness vanished. In all her experience she had never seen anything quite so black. There was not the faintest trace of radiating streaks, not even the ghost of nebulous dust. And the one thought hammering in her mind was that it had no conceivable right to be there.
Getting to her feet, she switched on the observatory lights, and going to the filing cabinet, she pressed a button. A series of slides, illuminated from the back, paraded before her vision—photographs of the cosmos, which she had made in her sell-imposed task of photographing the entire known Universe.
When she came to plate sixteen she removed it from its rack and studied it carefully. It showed exactly the same portion of heavens at which she had just been looking. It had been originally photographed a year ago and at that time the stars were numerous. Now there was only the Darkness, as yet only a smudge on the face of infinity, but one day—
She crossed to the radio-phone and switched it through to the observatory at Mount Wilson, California.
“Violet Ray Brant here,” she said as a voice responded. “What do you make of the queer dark patch in section eight of the Northern Hemisphere?”
“I’m glad you brought up the matter, Miss Brant,” the official in charge answered. “I was thinking of contacting you about it. All spaceport executives have been asked to have their pilots make a check on the phenomenon. Not that I expect much, since even if they travelled out as far as Pluto—which they don’t—it would not bring them measurably any nearer this queer smudge.”
“When did it commence to be seen?” the Amazon asked.
“About a week ago. It was only a speck at first, blotting out two stars. Since then it has grown considerably. When we take into account our distance from it, I am pretty well shocked when I think how big it must be. And since it is growing, it is obviously coming nearer.”
The Amazon said: “Thank you for your information. I’ll see what I can discover and let you know.”
She returned to the telescope and for a while she gazed through it. Then she went to a bank of instruments and switches on an apparatus that, as the thermopile can measure heat from the surface of the Moon, gave a reading of distant space. The apparatus incorporated special fourth-dimensional processes, so that the outflowing detector-wave from the instrument was able to hurdle the void at speeds many times in excess of the speed of light.
Now and again the needle jolted and registered maximum in heat as the nearer stars were reached—then it dropped again to the zero reading of space. Hours passed. The distance must be stupendous. Still the Amazon waited, but to her amazement it was five-and-a-half hours before she got the reaction she wanted. The readings were at zero in every direction. Heat, light, electromagnetic energy—none of these things registered.
Her readings complete, the Amazon made a note of each one and then went back into the house to study them. She settled down and worked through the night, hardly stirring until 7:30 the following morning. Then she picked up the visiphone. The face of Chris Wilson, speaking from his home, appeared in the scanning-plate.
“Oh, hello, Vi! I was just leaving for work—”
“Chris, I’ve made a most disturbing discovery,” the Amazon interrupted him. “You recall that message you showed me about a dark smudge in space?”
“Why,
