Lord of Atlantis. John Russell Fearn
which she could descry the dim outline of a watching face.
She got into a spacesuit and stepped out of the Ultra’s safety lock and onto the vessel’s roof. The slight mass of the Ultra and the much heavier mass of the globe did strange things to her sense of balance. She found herself floating upward with the buoyancy of a feather, her leaded feet kicking in the sheer abyss of space.
Helplessly she turned several somersaults and then with a slight bump she hit the side of the globe. Immediately she caught hold of the ladder rungs, and began to cautiously haul herself up to the metal door. Below her was infinity, depthless, powdered with the sparkling lights of unguessably distant stars. It was a view thar would have affected a normal being from insupportable vertigo—but not the Amazon. In these great wastes of infinity she felt at home.
Reaching the metal door, she hammered upon it with her metal-and-rubber gloved hand, using the other hand to cling to the rail. There was only a moment’s interval, then the door opened and she stepped into the blank darkness of an air-valve chamber, so designed that it refilled with air pressure identical to that beyond the second door.
Accustomed to this normal routine in space, she waited in the darkness; then the second door opened and she stepped into a wide control room, brilliantly lighted by the sunlight blazing through the roof conning tower.
Three men were at an enormous control board, all of them lightly dressed in toga-like costumes. Near the massive power generators was a tall, thin-faced man of uncertain age who was watching her closely.
Unlike the men at the control board, he was fully dressed in a costume that looked like cloth-of-gold, ornamented with numberless emblems and decorations. Then the Amazon switched her attention to the tallest man in the room.
He stood almost seven feet and was scantily clad, his folded arms revealing the rippling health of his bronzed skin and the tremendous development of his muscles. He was handsome beyond the ordinary, with pointed features, a resolute chin, and a shock of golden hair in the waves of which the blazing sun lingered. In spite of herself, the Amazon found her gaze fixed by his reddish-blue eyes.
He smiled at her and she promptly stiffened. Just for a moment she had forgotten she was the Golden Amazon, and had almost become a living, breathing woman. She had only experienced such an emotional upheaval once before, and that had been when she had first met this extraordinarily handsome young man with the frame and features of some mythical Grecian god.
With a quick movement the Amazon unfastened the catch that secured her helmet and tipped the covering back on its hinge to her shoulders. She advanced slowly.
“Abna,” she said quietly. “So I guessed correctly.”
“I’m glad to see you again, Vi,” he responded in his pleasant baritone and he came over to her.
“I cannot say that I can return the compliment,” she said.
He considered her. “I suppose it is you this time?” he asked drily. “Not a synthetic model, like the one you foisted on me when we left Mercury?”
“I explained that.” The girl swung on him, her violet eyes bright with scorn. “You must have got my communication through the image, explaining my reasons for parting company with you.”
“Yes. I got them. But you don’t suppose that two such as us—both scientists—could remain parted forever, do you? My first thought when I returned home to Jupiter was to come back and make you realise how mistaken you had been about me.”
“You chose a very spectacular method! I hope you feel satisfied, now that you have created a world-wide earthquake, brought Mu from the depths, and drowned thousands of innocent people in tidal waves.”
“That,” the Atlantean giant said quietly, “is unfortunate. I hardly thought resurrecting Mu would have caused such chaos.” He changed the subject abruptly and motioned to the tall, saturnine being with the decorations on his golden raiment.
“This is His Excellency Sefner Quorne,” he introduced. “He is my chief adviser. Formerly, he held that position with my father who was, as you may remember, the ruling dignitary of our small race of 3,000 males. Now, unhappily, my father has passed on, and I have taken his place as the ruler of the surviving Atlanteans.”
The Amazon nodded but did not say anything. Sefner Quorne bowed toward her with solemn dignity and then straightened again, his heliotrope-coloured eyes watching her with an intensity she did not like.
“Don’t you think it’s time you explained what this is all about, Abna?” she asked curtly. “You seem to forget that I am the ruler of Earth, and that what happens to Earth people is very much my business. I don’t intend to tolerate your having this monstrous vessel of yours here, causing havoc whenever the mood seizes you. What do you intend doing next—take over Atlantis?”
“Why not? It has been drawn from the depths by the simple process of degravitation. A neutralizing beam was directed from this space-globe, which negated gravity around the area of Mu and caused that continent to rise, with Atlantis intact upon it, still sealed as it was at the time of the Deluge. The next step is to destroy the sealing dome that surrounds it. Then we shall come to Earth and restore the scientific amenities of the city.”
“I won’t allow it!” the Amazon snapped. “It’s tantamount to invasion!”
“Maybe, but don’t forget we have four-dimensional weapons and you have not. They can strike you down before you can deal with them.”
The Amazon was silent. She knew Abna spoke the truth. Four-dimensional science was an art the Atlanteans thoroughly understood.
“Of course,” Abna added, with a reassuring smile, “you have synthesis, and that is a secret we have yet to master.”
The Amazon flashed a glance at him. “You don’t intend to let me forget that, do you?”
“No reason why I should, is there? I was merely intimating that with synthesis you could put legions of zombies against me and create them as fast as I could destroy them. You might even beat me that way, by sheer weight of numbers.”
The Amazon smiled faintly. “As for your race mastering synthesis, you will never learn that secret from me. I haven’t forgotten that was one of the reasons you tried to trick me into marriage the last time.”
Abna tightened his lips. “There was no trickery intended. The only trickery came from you, when you ran out on me on Mercury!”
There was a grim, smouldering silence for a moment; then Sefner Quorne came forward quietly. For the first time he spoke, in a richly mellow voice. “Perhaps, highness, this is an opportune moment to suggest a little refreshment for Miss Brant?”
Abna said, “Yes, excellency. See to it, will you?” The adviser withdrew and Abna continued:
“Have a seat, Vi. Let me have your suit.”
She hesitated and then unfastened the clamps that caused the rubber-and-metal sheathing to fall away from her in slack folds. Abna took it and laid it on one side, following her thereafter to the table.
“Now,” he said, seating himself comfortably, “let’s talk like civilized people. You’re far too nice a girl to be spitting brimstone with every word you utter.”
The Amazon half opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it.
Before Abna could speak again, the adviser returned, motioning to two servants to lay out the meal. When he was satisfied that everything was as it should be, he retired to a distance and remained watchful.
“I’m not particularly impressed by your adviser,” the Amazon commented.
“Quorne?” Abna smiled a little. “Oh, he’s all right, Vi. A bit tight-lipped but extremely efficient. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
He began the task of serving the rich, exquisitely cooked food. “The issue,” he said, when the meal was under way, “is quite simple,