in her career. Inevitably, they become locked in a deadly duel—to the death!
Book Ten: World Out of Step
The Cosmic Crusaders find themselves on a planet that seems mysteriously not to conform with natural law, a world out of step with the universe. It leaps ahead into time at unexpected moments, thereby suddenly adding many years of age to the flower-like inhabitants, and killing tens of thousands of individuals through death and old age. In trying to find the alien menace responsible, The Golden Amazon and her fellow Crusaders are flung backwards and forwards through time and space, threatening their own survival.…
CHAPTER ONE
EMERGENCE
Here was the unbelievable. The highly trained scientific minds of the Golden Amazon of Earth, and her husband, Abna of Jupiter, were grappling with the completely unexpected—a vision such as they had never hoped to see; and now they did see it, they could not understand it.
The space machine in which they were traveling was nearly motionless. It hung in a lavender haze, an infinite space, in which there was no top or bottom. It extended to the limit of vision—and yet here and there were glittering stars, brightly scintillating points that suggested there were other worlds. Yet how could this be when occasionally across the vastness there marched the shadows of gigantic people—shadows so enormous that they plunged the space machine into eclipse every time they passed.
At last the Amazon stirred from the wonder of the view. She turned a face of phenomenal beauty and intelligence to the man beside her, and Abna, the seven-foot giant of Jupiter, merely shrugged.
“I don’t understand it, Vi,” he admitted. “We’ve been in lots of queer places, but never one like this.”
“There’s Viona’s space machine, anyway,” the Amazon said, nodding to the infinity.
“Yes.…” Abna relapsed into thought, swiftly going over the events that had led up to this singular experience.
Some time before, an enormously powerful nuclear bomb had been exploded. For some reason unexplained, its core had released a mysterious form of purple energy that had blown Viona—daughter of the Amazon and Abna—into an entirely different space. Now the Amazon and Abna had repeated the condition and they, too, were absorbed into this unexplained region. The only concrete thing they could hang on to was the fact that Viona’s machine was not far away, moving against the pinpoints of the stars. Within the machine the girl herself was presumably alive, and Mexone, her husband, also.
“Try radio,” Abna decided at length, and crossed to the instrument board. He spent a moment or two adjusting the controls and listening to the queer whistling note from the speaker.
“Abna calling Viona,” he intoned into the microphone. “Can you hear me?”
There was a crackling of static, a wailing note, and then a reedy voice answered. It was unmistakably the voice of Viona.
“Dad! It’s you? Where are you?”
“Approximately 2,000 miles away,” Abna responded, looking at the instruments. “We can see you clearly as a moving speck despite the distance. I’ll flash a signal light and maybe you’ll be able to spot it.”
He gave a nod to the Amazon, and she promptly pressed the switch of the single searchlight with which the machine was equipped. A brilliant light flashed on and off into the void, and immediately Viona’s voice chattered again in the loudspeaker.
“Yes, I see it! Keep on flashing so I shan’t lose you. What do I do now? Fly toward you?”
“Yes, you’d better do that. All four of us had better get together again. We’re not going to achieve anything separately.”
With that Abna switched off and crossed to the window to watch developments. The Amazon beside him, they stood surveying the lilac haze—the shadows of people crossing it occasionally—and in particular their attention concentrated on that tiny glittering speck which was Viona’s space machine. Why it glittered when there was no visible sun was only one of the mysteries in this region. Light seemed to be transmitted brilliantly, but indirectly.
“There was something in that bomb which caused all this to happen,” the Amazon remarked, as she watched the distant space machine slowly turn and head in their direction. “I’m just trying to think what it could have been. And it repeated twice, don’t forget—once for Viona and Mexone, and again for us.… We’ve got to find out what happened.”
“True enough, but it can wait until later. I want to find out something about this space to begin with.”
The Amazon nodded, taking her eyes for a moment from the advancing space machine to the mysteries of infinity around her. She frowned as a titanic pair of legs came and went—shadows again, like the elongated shadows cast by a setting sun. They seemed to extend for infinite miles. For a moment she thought she had the solution, then it evaded her again.
The distant space machine grew. Abna waited until it was near enough to see the outlines clearly, then he crossed again to the radio and switched it on.
“Draw alongside,” he instructed. “We’ll put airlock to airlock and you can jump through. Okay?”
“Yes—okay,” came Viona’s young, eager voice. “Shan’t be long now.”
In that she was correct. When at last a dull thud and a slight quiver of the spaceship announced that contact was complete, Abna unfastened the somewhat old-fashioned airlock. Presently the airlock of Viona’s machine was drawn into airtight contact by suction, and in a moment she and Mexone had made the easy leap from one machine to the other.
“Thank goodness for that!” Viona exclaimed, and threw herself into the Amazon’s arms.
For a moment there was a tangle of golden and copper hair as mother and daughter embraced. Abna grinned, shook the big hand of Mexone, and then closed the airlock. In a few moments he was driving the machine away from the abandoned vessel, cruising to nowhere in particular.
“Well, what sort of a place are we in?” Viona questioned, turning at last and swinging to Abna’s embrace. “Any ideas, dad?”
“I’ve had little time to formulate any. One thing I do know: this is a space we’re not familiar with. Even the stars and constellations are cockeyed, aren’t they, Vi?”
But the Amazon did not reply. She was again at the window, her unfathomable violet eyes contemplating space. She did not even seem to be aware there were others in the control room. Her extraordinary mind was given over entirely to the mystery of the surroundings.
“We’ve tried to figure it out, but we just get nowhere,” Mexone said, as Abna glanced at him. “It was something to do with that exploding bomb we dropped—and that seems to be the limit of what we can discover.”
“You weren’t hurt at all when you were blown in this space?” Abna asked.
“Not at all,” Viona responded. “Plenty of bruises, but we don’t bruise easy. We were worried because we didn’t know how to begin finding the way back. Now, of course, everything will be all right.”
Abna smiled slightly. The superb trust the younger ones had in himself and the Amazon was something he did not accept lightly. He knew the responsibility,
