LITMIR.BIZ

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Cornwall, guided by the unerring aura-compass, which showed exactly where the missing archbishop was to be found.

      The minions of the Amazon guarding the archbishop stood no chance against the sudden electrical onslaught that hit them. One minute they were aware of Quorne and Nalgo making entry into the lonely house; the next they were dead. The archbishop, unharmed, sat in the big main room of the house, gazing blankly at the two men who had wrought such havoc in a few seconds.

      “We are friends, Dr. Cranton,” Quorne said. “I much regret this violent in­trusion, but it was necessary in order to effect your rescue.”

      “Murder is never necessary,” the archbishop retorted.

      “You have been the captive of the Golden Amazon. Were you aware of that?”

      “Certainly. She informed me that I was in some danger and so transferred me here. Knowing Miss Brant as I do, I am sure her methods were justified.”

      “Many things have happened while you have been in captivity,” Quorne murmured, realizing the archbishop had been duplicated without his knowledge. “I shall now escort you back to London.”

      The archbishop rose, frowning. “Who are you?”

      “My name is Jeffrey Carshaw,” Quorne lied. “Your abduction has been a source of worry to me, hence my decision to rescue you. That these guardian murderers have been killed in the process I regard as irrelevant.”

      “And I repeat that—”

      “Quite,” Quorne broke in. Then his right hand suddenly came out of his pocket and fired a blunt-nosed instru­ment. The archbishop found himself enveloped in a pale blue powder, which gravitated toward and settled upon him in a curious fashion.

      “Asleep?” Nalgo asked presently, as Dr. Cranton became motionless.

      “Atomic dust has many uses, Nalgo,” Quorne answered. “He will not revive until I wish it. When he does, he will not remember what has happened here. Now, bring him out to the car.”

      Nalgo moved forward, lifted the mo­tionless body on to his shoulder, then followed Sefner Quorne outdoors. The hardest part of the job had been accom­plished. To deal with the men who were guarding the synthetic body in the Abbey would be child’s play. Ahead of him Sefner Quorne saw his master plan unfolding.

      * * * *

      The Amazon gradually moved, the tips of her fingers rubbing along the cold metal floor. A gradual tide crept over her numbed limbs, the slow return of life after many hours of complete unconsciousness.

      She sat up, frowned. Gradually she remembered. The sudden whirlwind acceleration, her inability to stop it, the force that had crushed her into insensibility. Her eyes strayed to the chronometer. It had stopped under the strain.

      She got on her feet, swayed dizzily for a moment, then had control of her­self. The normal light had expired and the emergency circuit had come into operation. The drone of the power plant had stopped. She went over to it, her face grim. Every trace of the copper blocks, whose atomic energy provided the driving force, had gone from between the massive jaws. As each block had been converted to energy, automatic mechanisms had inserted a fresh block into place, until all the fuel had been exhausted. Then, when all the blocks had been entirely converted into energy, the Ultra had achieved a constant velocity—yet it seemed motionless to the Amazon. As acceleration had decreased to zero she had recovered.

      She hurried to the outlook port and contemplated the void. Puzzled, she looked even more intently upon all sides, above and below. Still unable to believe what she saw, she mounted to the conning tower on the vessel’s roof and examined the abysmal depths of space through the instruments. Every reading brought home the staggering truth to her.

      She was well outside the solar system! Acceleration unchecked, the Ultra had reached an incredible velocity before the fuel had been exhausted—only a fraction beneath the speed of light, the fastest speed possible within the normal universe.

      She was lost! For the first time in her career she was abroad in space without the least conception of where she was.

      The speed was still being maintained at a constant velocity because there was nothing to check it. She was flying blindly on­ward into the unknown.

      “And no fuel,” she finished, looking about her helplessly. “I’m sure Abna would be glad to know how completely his plot worked.”

      To admit defeat was not the Amazon’s way. She took the situation in hand and first revived herself with a meal and essences: then she concentrated on the problem.

      Spare copper blocks she had none. To use the rockets to slow down her acceleration was feasible, but they could not last very long. The atomic dust explosive they used was only sufficient for a normal round-the-System hop.

      An hour of solid thinking still left her no wiser than at first. The problem seemed to be insurmountable. Yet if it were not solved, the Ultra would continue hurtling onward through free space until it came within range of some heavy body; then it would immediately be drawn to it. This thought decided the Amazon against using the rockets in a futile effort to check her speed. She might need them yet to re­sist the pull of some alien gravity field.

      At last she got up from her chair and went to the window, looking again on the incomprehensible void. She had never been frightened of it before, as long as she was within measurable limits of home—but here, billions of miles from all she had ever known, she found herself battling a rising tide of terror.

      A sudden movement in the Ultra made her look about her sharply. She was conscious of it by the pressure against her feet. The giant machine was turn­ing slowly. Through the window she saw the endless stars changing position. Her speed had not decreased, but direction had certainly changed and she could see no reason for it. The only answer could be that she had fallen into the attraction of an as yet invisible body.

      Hurrying over to the control board, she set the instruments in action. The super-radar beam she projected gave back an answer. Tens of millions of miles ahead of her was a small but immensely heavy planetoid, uncharted, unknown as far as she was concerned, and towards it the Ultra was hurtling. There could only be one result when she struck that body. Vessel and planetoid would fuse into one, welded by the inconceivable force of the concussion.

      Instantly she gave power to the forward rockets. By blasting toward the body with every vestige of force, it was possible that she might slow down her terrific speed—but even at that she could see no possible way to escape being disintegrated when the crash came.

      With the knowledge that she had done all she could she remained at the controls, staring intently into the jet of space. Certainly her near-light speed was rapidly slowing. Slower, and slower still. Then she glimpsed the cause of her troubles ahead. It was a small planetoid, perhaps the size of Ceres, but with a strong gravity due to dense material.

      The Ultra struck the planetoid. Then all sense of strain was gone. There was no shock, no jarring. And yet the Ultra was motionless, its titanic speed gone. The whole business was at vari­ance with science.

      She looked outside. The sun was a mere pinpoint of light, but the radiance of the Milky Way and distant nebulae was sufficient to show a perfectly level land­scape, which looked like sponge-rub­ber. No hills, no dales, no vegetation, no clouds. It suggested there was no air—that this was some lifeless planetoid that lay far beyond her own solar system, but had been torn away from some other stellar system perhaps thousands of years ago, and was now a wanderer in the gulfs of interstellar space, far beyond the ordinary ken of intelligent beings.

      Slowly the Amazon moved, utterly baffled to find herself still alive. Switching on the external gauges, she read them carefully. Her guess was right: there was no air, and the temperature reading was below zero. No place to venture—yet if she did not—?

      She had scrambled into a spacesuit, snapped the transparent helmet in position, and with her weapon-belt well loaded, tugged open the airlock.

      Gravity pulled her down the moment she stepped outside. It dragged

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