World Beneath Ice. John Russell Fearn

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СКАЧАТЬ back of her mind she has never had but one thought—to destroy this world of ours and all it contains. She tried it once in her early days, remember—and failed. Why shouldn’t she try it this way, masking her treachery under the cloak of bravery by destroying the aliens, potential enemies, at the same time?”

      The astronomer gave a shrug. “I have nothing but the frankest admiration for her. She is certainly the greatest scientist the world has ever known, and sometimes I wonder where we would have been without her. She revolutionized our uses of atomic power, helped to commercialize space travel, bringing about the colonization of other worlds, destroyed all menaces likely to afflict us.”

      “She is still a dangerous woman with only one objective, doctor—to either master or destroy the people of this planet. Concerning this business with the sun.... Have you asked her for an opinion?”

      “It was the first thing I tried to do—over eighteen months ago when the trouble first became apparent and I realized what was coming. Unfortunately, she can’t be located.”

      The food controller thought for a while, then he said: “With your permission, doctor, I will stay here for a day or so and take down all the necessary facts concerning this solar trouble so I can report to the World Council, and explain the crop failures. You, I assume, will support me later when you make your own statement?”

      “Of course.” The astronomer moved to the door. “Come this way, controller. I am sure everything can be arranged for your comfort as long as you wish to stay.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE PLOT

      One evening some days later Morris Arnside called upon Brice Torrington, the metals king, at his Surrey residence. Though it was the first day of June, Arnside’s limousine wound its way between banks of snow that marked the drive of the Torrington house. The evening had darkened prematurely, as did all evenings now, the yellow globe hanging over the horizon dispensing hardly any light or heat.

      Brice Torrington was in his library, expecting his visitor. Tall and lean, with a mouth like a spring trap, he was undisputed boss of world metals.

      “I’m here for two reasons,” Arnside said. “The present solar trouble—and the Golden Amazon. The end of the world is within sight. I thought you should know that. In a day or two Dr. Blandish will be telling everybody about it.”

      “End of the world?” Torrington repeated, musing. “From a materialist like you that’s a remarkable statement.”

      Arnside gave the facts as they had been given to him by Blandish, but without the technical details. Torrington brooded as he listened, his eyes narrowed.

      “There’ll be a way around it,” he said finally.

      “Blandish is going to suggest deep shelters and underworld galleries when he addresses the Council. According to him, the surface of the Earth will be uninhabitable in two years. By then every man, woman, and child must be below ground, warmed and lighted by atomic power. You, as metals king, will naturally be called upon to supply the shelters. You’ll make your already tremendous fortune six or seven times as large.”

      “What else is on your mind?”

      “The Golden Amazon. I think we have a chance at last to get rid of her—legally, I mean. She is as much your enemy as mine. Blandish thinks that the alien armada being thrown into the sun caused it to start decaying. That makes the Golden Amazon directly responsible. What is more significant is the fact that she cannot be found anywhere in this moment of deadly crisis when her scientific knowledge is so desperately needed. Doesn’t it look as though she deliberately set out to ruin the sun, and then vanished? Doesn’t it look like revenge on her part? She found that she could not control this world as she wanted, and apparently reversed her tactics and gave her knowledge freely to advance mankind—but I believe she has only been waiting for the supreme chance to hit back, and has done so.”

      “Perhaps,” Torrington muttered.

      Arnside said: “If she remains absent we can convince the Council that she’s the cause of our troubles. We can insist that she be found, brought to trial, and then banished as a menace to society. We can be rid of her. Without her cold-blooded supervision, you could do much more. So could I. So could Swainson of Atomic Corporation, Ranleigh of Transport, and many others. We wouldn’t get the Dodd Space Line behind us, of course, because the Dodds and Wilsons are indirectly related to the Amazon.”

      Torrington said: “To be rid of the Golden Amazon has been the ambition of my life. I’ll call a conference at my office of Swainson, Ranleigh, and others. We’ll agree on a policy, and state it at the World Council when Blandish makes his statement. In the meantime, let’s hope the Amazon stops away and so blackens her case.”

      While Arnside and Torrington were talking, the space liner Atom Cloud was landing at the spaceport, in central London, at the end of a journey from Mars. Aboard it, one of the 200 passengers was Ethel Wilson, daughter of the Controller of the Earth terminal of the Dodd Space Line.

      She hurried through the customs and routine medical checks, her VIP status as daughter of the Controller ensuring that she was fast-tracked. She was slim, dark-headed, blue-eyed, and completely self-assured. In the administration building she took an elevator to the twentieth floor.

      Ethel hurried along the corridor to the door at the far end. She tapped lightly and entered. The grey-haired, heavy-shouldered man at the big desk glanced up in the glow of the cold-light globes in the ceiling.

      “Rosy Cheeks!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “Am I glad to see you again.”

      “Hello dad.” The girl giggled affectionately as her father embraced her. “And please stop calling me Rosy Cheeks!”

      “But they are!”

      “In a wind like this, what else do you expect? It’s my childhood name, though, and I am twenty-eight.”

      Chris Wilson, head of the Earth Space Line terminal, smiled and drew up a chair for his daughter. When she was seated, he stood surveying her.

      “Grand to have you back,” he said. “Your mother and I have missed you a lot. Have a good time with the Kerrigans on Mars? How are Ruth and the Commander?”

      “Ruth is fine, and so is Howard,” the girl answered. Ruth Kerrigan—formerly Dodd—was the daughter of the man who had designed the first successful commercial space line. She had married the chief pilot of the line, and through her friendship with the Wilsons, had gained the services—when she deigned to give them—of the Golden Amazon as Chief Scientist. They ran the Mars terminal of the Dodd space line, whilst Chris Wilson and his wife Beatrice—the Amazon’s foster-sister—controlled the Earth end. Ethel frowned and went on:

      “But as I told you over the space-radio, I thought it was time I flew back and discussed something with you. Something very important.”

      “I’ve been looking forward to it ever since I got your message. Well, what is this important something? A boy friend?”

      “No, dad. It’s the sun.”

      “The sun!” Wilson repeated. “The only topic of conversation everywhere one goes.”

      “What’s happened to it?” Ethel broke in. “On Mars, where the temperature was never very high, it’s fallen by more than half. It has been СКАЧАТЬ