I said anything very amusing,” she remarked briefly, and turned back into the control room, her very movements showing she was having difficulty in keeping her temper.
“Quite right, you didn’t.” Abna remained where he was, surveying her. “I was just thinking back to a time when you were a very different person, when your sole aim in life was to use your scientific skill to crush out the lesser factions and establish yourself as mistress of everything. Times have changed, Vi. Behold the beneficent empress,” he finished dryly.
The Amazon swung. “You don’t have to go back over the past, do you? Certainly my original aim was to dominate, until I found it paid better to make friends with people. I couldn’t help myself in that. Part of my upbringing. It changed.…”
“When I came along,” Abna grinned, crossing over to her—and taking no notice of her petulant look, he grasped her shoulders and embraced her gently.
“Stop being primitive,” the Amazon muttered, even though she made no attempt to pull away.
“Very pretty,” observed a girl’s voice, and Viona came from the corridor where she had just completed a rest period.
Abna and the Amazon disengaged themselves and looked at her—Viona of the copper-gold hair and sapphire blue eyes.
“Don’t mind me,” she smiled, lounging across. “I suppose it’s natural for husband and wife to get affectionate sometimes. I wouldn’t know. All I got for a husband was Sefner Quorne.”
The mention of the dead Sefner Quorne, once Viona’s husband, brought a grim silence for a moment; then the Amazon moved into the gap.
“We were just saying, Viona, that the Milky Way might afford something interesting. Cruising around like this is pointless.”
“I could have told you that long ago. All right, let’s see what the possibilities are.”
Viona led the way across to the multiple switchboard and snapped a series of buttons. Automatically, two things happened. The control room’s atomic lights extinguished themselves, leaving only the soft glow of eternal starlight; and upon a big screen nearby there appeared a reflected image of the Milky Way picked up by the Ultra’s radio-telescope.
“Not much there,” Viona sighed, pouting. “Or if there is, we can’t see it.”
“That’s just the point,” Abna commented. “We’re so far away from the nearest stellar systems we can’t sort them out properly. Only thing to do is narrow the distance. Set the computer to work, Viona. Let’s see how far away we are from the nearest dense cluster of stars.”
The girl restored the lights, then, switching on the computer, she fed it with the basic mathematics and waited while it electronically sorted them and finally produced an answer. The number of light years given in the totality display made the three glance at each other.
“Whew!” Viona whistled. “That’s a stupendous distance in any language.”
“We can cover it rapidly enough by exceeding the speed of light by several times, traveling through hyperspace in the fourth dimension,” Abna said calmly. “I’ll set the course and fix the alarms to ring and waken us when we’re reasonably near the cluster.”
Abna computed the path through space, checking the figures by the infallible master computer, and then gradually swung the mighty vessel around until its nose was pointing directly towards the Milky Way. This done, he set the power plant in action and switched in the automatic control.
“Ready?” the Amazon enquired, and Abna nodded.
“Quite ready. We’d better get to the pressure-beds.”
He, Viona, and the Amazon all stretched themselves flat on the pressure beds against the wall, beds in which the springs and cushioning were designed to expand and contract with the minimum of discomfort under extreme accelerative pressure. Then gradually the Ultra began to build up velocity, until it achieved that intolerable speed which brought down unconsciousness upon the three travelers. At the same time, entirely by automatic processes, the Ultra was plunged into hyperspace. In this region, the normal limitations on objects exceeding the speed of light no longer applied. Relative to the normal universe, the Ultra’s velocity steadily increased to the speed of light…and beyond it. Faster and faster.…
CHAPTER TWO
THE PETRIFIED PLANET
As usual, the flawless design of the alarm system operated perfectly, and immediately several automatic controls came into operation. As the Ultra dropped back into normal space, the forward thrust of the power plant ceased and instead became retrogressive, slowing down the machine’s incredible velocity through the deeps—and as the deceleration process continued so the Amazon, Abna and Viona gradually returned to consciousness as the strain was lifted from their hearts. They stirred, waited a few moments for final physical and mental adjustment, and then, without exchanging any words, they crossed to the great outlook window.
The view was incredibly changed from what it had been, A distant section of The First Galaxy—or Milky Way—was no longer an ocean of stardust and indeterminate points of light, but a vast, overwhelming mass of stellar systems.
The instruments showed that they had covered their huge spatial leap in a little over a week of Earth-time as measured in their ship itself, and that they were now within reach of the nearest stellar systems. But which system to choose in the midst of so many?
“The best thing to do,” Abna commented, “is use a process of elimination. In other words, discard as useless the systems that do not contain features similar to our own. We want a system with a G-type dwarf sun, such as our own system has, and worlds with atmosphere similar to Earth’s. Among this multitude we ought to find something.”
The Amazon nodded silent assent and there began the task of setting the automatic analyzers to work. While the machines functioned the trio took the opportunity to refresh themselves after their enforced week-long sleep, and by the time this had been done the master-analyzer had gathered the computations of the “slaves” and produced an answer.
“Mmmm, sounds promising,” Abna commented. “There is a system in the ninth quadrant from here, seven planets and a G-type dwarf sun. Each planet possessing oxy-hydro-nitrogen atmosphere, like our own earth.”
“Ninth quadrant?” Viona repeated. “All right—let’s head that way.”
Abna and the Amazon knew she was experienced enough to handle the controls, so they moved to the window while she went to work. It seemed as though the ship remained motionless while the infinity of systems swung leftwards—then the course had been set and the radio-telescope was put in action. The perfect mechanics of the instruments made it that the required system was now exactly centered on the screen.
Abna and the Amazon crossed to Viona’s side in the now darkened control room and surveyed the screen’s image critically. The point that struck them immediately was that the system was somewhat unusual, in that there were six planets, all of similar size, so placed that they formed the six points of a hexagon. The instruments showed they were following a steady “follow-my-leader” orbit round the sun, each world exactly the same distance from it. The most surprising thing was that there was a seventh world, smaller than the others, comparatively close to the sun.
“That smaller world,” Viona said, reading the instruments, “is 7,900 miles in diameter. I don’t know whether it’s coincidence or not, but Earth is exactly that diameter also. The other worlds vary between 9,200 and 9,800 miles diameter. The little world is about 70,000,000 miles from the sun, and the others are quite 100,000,000.”
“Altogether a remarkable planetary system,” the Amazon remarked, pondering. “The balance of it would be disturbed, you’d think, by that solitary inner world—yet everything seems in order.”
“Whatever the peculiarities it looks like the right system for us to investigate,” Abna decided.
The Ultra