discover a fantastic world of mental parasites drawing form and substance from our own Earth, fifty light years distant. The planet is ruled by a being identical to the Golden Amazon herself—but an Amazon who’s coldly scientific and vicious, mirroring the original Amazon as she had once been early 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.…
Book Eleven: The Shadow People
The Cosmic Crusaders discover a planet whose people are subject to a baleful influence from outer space that sweeps across their world—and for a brief while embraces every man, woman and child. It stirs the emotions of the sexes against each other. Men desire only to destroy women, and women men. Only those with higher types of mind are able to build a resistance against it. The struggle is dire and dreadful, and leaves its victims physical and mental wrecks. The less fortunate are left dead after the Wave has passed.
But when the Crusaders identify and destroy the source of the problem, they precipitate an even greater menace.…
Book Twelve: Kingpin Planet
The Cosmic Crusaders are plunged into a strange new space, where all the probabilities of electronic law were strangely altered, a complete and stunning inversion of the so-called natural laws. They discover the mysterious silver planet of Tuca, and deep below its surface they find an enigmatic machine—the legacy of a vanished race. Masters of science, they had over-reached themselves by constructing a strange machine that could alter the very laws of nature and electronic probability. The machine had ultimately destroyed them, and blasted a neighboring planet into a cosmic cinder—and unless the Cosmic Crusaders can stop it, it may well destroy the entire universe!
Book Thirteen: World in Reverse
Continuing their cosmic crusade amongst the stars, the Golden Amazon and her companions discover a planet in another space where living beings are being synthetically created. The mystery deepens with the discovery that the synthetic race is evolving backwards! Determined to solve these mysteries, the Crusaders find themselves up against the Mithons, a sadistic alien race led by a being known as the Supreme One. Can the Amazon save the day?
CHAPTER ONE
FLIGHT INTO DARKNESS
Darkness, utter and complete. A darkness so intense it was more than blackness: it was the utter absence of all light. In front, to the rear, on all sides, there was not a star, not a glimmer, not even a luminous smudge—and such a condition, in the midst of the Milky Way, was rather surprising.
The only light in the Universe at the moment was inside the huge spaceship Ultra, moving leisurely through the vacuity. The light, atomic-powered, speared back from polished facia and switches, from banks of instruments and the complicated mass of the power plant. Everywhere inside the ship was drenched in the soft radiance, but outside lay the brittle, deadly dark of the void of space without a single guiding star.
A lone observer, clothed entirely in close-fitting black, stirred at last from before of the giant outlook windows of non-reflective glass. She rose and stretched her arm languidly—a magnificent figure of a woman, perfect in physique, beautiful of face, ageless in years. The fabulous golden Amazon of Earth.
“No end to it yet, apparently,” she commented. “Maybe it’s time we had a meal, then we can look again.”
“Good idea,” replied the giant at the control board, and he put in the automatic pilot and then rose to his feet—a classic god of a man, standing seven feet tall and proportionately broad. Here was Abna, once lord of Jupiter, but now the husband of the Amazon and, with her, joint leader of the quartet known as the Cosmic Crusaders, At the moment the other two members of the quartet—Viona, daughter of Abna and the Amazon, and Mexone, husband of Viona, were in the sleeping quarters, waiting to be alerted if anything unusual showed itself.
But nothing did—or had. All four knew that the Ultra had accidentally wandered into the starless region known on Earth as the ‘Coal Sack’, and since then the great vessel had plunged onwards, and still onwards, into the unknown. It was the first time, in all the wanderings through space and dimensions, that any of the four had arrived in a space where light seemed nonexistent.
“Any ideas about this region we’re in?” Abna asked, striding to the nearest window and peering into the vacuum.
“A few, perhaps, but I don’t know how accurate they are.”
The Amazon crossed to her husband’s side and for a while they stood gazing together. Presently Abna’s great arm stole around the Amazon’s shoulder and he laughed a little.
“What?” the Amazon asked, surprise in her depthless violet eyes.
“Oh, I was only thinking. We travel countless light-centuries, visit all manner of worlds and get lost in all sorts of dimensions, yet now we don’t know where we are! A bit of a comedown for the great scientists, isn’t it? Maybe we should go back to Earth and live a quiet life.”
“A quiet life!” There was utter contempt in the Amazon’s voice. “You know how much use we’d have for that don’t you? Our purpose is to always keep going, to bring the benefits of science to—”
“To the worlds that need them,” Abna finished “Yes, Vi, I know—but we’re not doing that right now. We’ve been going for forty-eight hours at a speed about half that of light, and much though I hate to remind you, the power plant is not inexhaustible.”
The Amazon gave a little start and pulled free of Abna’s grip. With the lithe movements of a panther she hurried over to the power plant and surveyed it. Her brows knitted slightly.
“Not much left is there?” Abna asked, coming to her side.
The Amazon did not answer. She stared at the copper cube in the power plant’s matrix—the copper from the atomic energy of which all motive power and light for the ship was derived. It had originally been nearly two feet square. Now it was shrunken to a quarter of the size.
“I’d better cut the accelerative power to zero,” Abna said. “Then we’ll have just enough reserve to repel us from any foreign bodies that may show up.… We’ve got to have copper from somewhere, and quickly. When that’s gone, we haven’t a scrap.”
The Amazon was about to reply when Viona and Mexone came into the control room, both of them obviously refreshed after long sleep.
“So we’re still going!” Viona exclaimed, looking through the window.
“And only a thimbleful of power left,” the Amazon answered her, grimly. “If this dark space doesn’t present a copper-bearing planet pretty soon, we’re going to be in difficulties.”
The Amazon moved from the power plant, her face troubled. “If only we had a star, or something, on which to fix our attention!”
She turned to the windows again and stared out on the utter blackness. Then presently
