sun would never again recover his radiation. It would become small and useless—like the Companion of Sirius.”
The astronomer seemed impossibly calm considering what he was saying. Nor had he finished. He continued quietly:
“Something—we are not certain what—caused the sun’s internal temperature to become enormously increased for a brief time. It coincided with an abnormal number of spots. The spots, with their cooling blanket, kept in the sun’s internal heat and the atoms were stripped. It was, in effect a vast cave-in, of which the sunspots are the outward sign. Finally the sun’s photosphere will collapse, and the white dwarf stage will then have been reached. Some of those sun spots are even now tens of thousands of miles across.”
Arnside gazed up again through the window on the yellow orb. It looked a mockery as it hung there, blotched and ugly. About it stars were faintly visible in the violet-tinged heaven. Arnside’s own thoughts of a holiday in Florida under blue skies upon sun-drenched beaches suddenly underwent a drastic revision. With difficulty he found words.
“There’s—no possibility of a mistake?”
“I wish there were.” The astronomer returned the file to its cabinet and stood with hands in pockets, musing. “It is for the government of the World Council to decide what shall be done. As I see it, there are two alternatives facing the human race. One is to go underground and there be prepared to spend the rest of its life until Earth crumbles away with age—or to somehow create another sun.” He shook his head and smiled wanly. “Great though our science is, it is not great enough for that.”
The first shock having abated somewhat, Arnside stood musing. Then presently he spoke:
“Doctor, there must be some reason why the sun increased its internal temperature as it did. It just couldn’t do it in the ordinary way, could it?”
“It could, but it is most unlikely,” Blandish responded. “Stray matter in space, drawn into the sun and exploded atomically by the terrific heat might have caused it. But I don’t think it that it was such an accident....”
“Why not?” the food controller asked sharply.
The astronomer said: “Two years ago the Earth was invaded by robotic probes that settled into close orbits above our planet. Naturally, they were eventually destroyed by interceptor craft and our missile defences, but by that time they had already completed their work—which was to spy out the land. Captured probes proved that—they were all equipped with transmitting cameras and electronic apparatus of obviously alien origin. Not long afterwards an alien armada was detected entering our solar system and headed for Earth. The implication was obvious—we were about to be invaded. So Violet Ray Brant—or as she is more popularly called, the Golden Amazon—flew into space to try and deal with them. Her private vessel the Ultra was the only spaceship capable of intercepting them whilst they were still in deep space. She then somehow caused them to be hurled into the sun and destroyed....”
Arnside frowned heavily: “But how could something as relatively tiny as a fleet of spaceships affect the sun?”
Blandish shrugged. “Don’t forget they were alien machines. To have crossed an interstellar gulf they must have had fantastically powerful engines. The power plants in those machines employed technologies unknown to us, perhaps utilizing contra-terrene matter. Could not that armada and the exploding contra-terrene engines—if such they were—set up a vast solar disturbance?”
Blandish paused thoughtfully, then added: “There, I think, you have the answer. It occurred to me long ago, and the time of the disturbance’s commencement dates from when that armada fell in the sun, hurled there by the Golden Amazon. Whatever the initial cause, we have to face the consequences.”
“You mean the Golden Amazon has,” Arnside snapped. “If she hadn’t caused that armada to be flung into the sun it wouldn’t be dying now! That makes her directly responsible!”
“But unwittingly,” the astronomer protested. “She risked her life to destroy that armada. It saved the world from horrible invasion. It would be preposterous to accuse the Amazon of being the cause of our troubles.”
The food controller gave a grim smile. “That’s a matter of opinion, doctor. As a scientist you probably admire the Amazon because she is also a scientist. I am one of her enemies. I believe that 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