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 like that for nearly a year now, and getting cooler all the time. I also noticed as we left the planet that the Martian ice caps extended halfway down to his equator now, whereas Earth is splotched all over with ice drifts. As for the sun we didn’t even need the screens up during our voyage. His light’s feeble, and his heat enormously decreased. Then there are those terrific dark marks all over him. What’s happened, dad? Are we running into a spatial glacial epoch or something?”
“I’ve heard reports,” Chris Wilson answered slowly, “to the effect that the sun is dying. All things die, even suns—but this has happened millions of years before science expected it.”
Ethel reflected. She did not appear frightened, as indeed she was not. She had been in too many tight comers to be easily scared.
“I sort of suspected something like that,” she said at last. “Í thought first-hand information on how space looks, and the conditions on Mars, might help you and Aunt Vi. Naturally she is going to try to do something?”
His daughter’s unswerving loyalty to the Golden Amazon—whom she called her Aunt Vi—was something which always made Chris Wilson smile.
“I don’t doubt your Aunt Vi would do something if she were available,” Chris Wilson replied, “but she isn’t—and I can’t locate her. For the past eighteen months she’s been missing—about the same length of time you’ve been away.”
“But she’s got to be found,” Ethel said. “The Earth is in danger of extinction—and in fact the whole solar system is if the sun should die. We can’t fight a thing so vast by ourselves. Our science isn’t up to it.”
Chris Wilson said nothing. There was nothing he could say. He and the Golden Amazon were friends—nothing more—and that only in the line of business. The Golden Amazon had no real affection for anybody, unless it were for Ethel. Risking the Amazon’s anger in an attempt to locate her was more than Chris Wilson dared do.
Ethel resumed. “She hadn’t returned from space before I left for Mars, to stay with the Kerrigans—”
“She never did come back—at least as far as I know. In her last message from space—before static swamped it—she was about to express her concern about something. I haven’t seen her since—eighteen months ago.”
“Surely, before things get really bad, she’ll turn up and help us?”
“I sincerely hope so.”
“If Aunt Vi doesn’t come back, what is going to be done?”
“I don’t know. Man always survives. We might go underground. The World Council is meeting tomorrow to make a statement. I’ve made private plans. We’re giving up our London residence and going to Brazil. There’s still warmth there, enough to keep us comfortable for maybe a year. England is becoming impossible to live in these days.”
Ethel had no particular wish to go to Brazil. Her father had maintained a residence there for some years, chiefly for the use of the Amazon when she required it, for her researches often took her to the tropics. But the place was lonely, miles from anywhere, on the very edge of the trackless forest.
She said: “I hope nothing’s happened to Aunt Vi. She takes such fantastic risks sometimes. What can she be doing, I wonder?”
Her father reached for his coat. “No use conjecturing, I’m afraid. Let’s get along and give your mother a pleasant surprise. She’s aching to have you back home. Tomorrow we’ll see what the Council has to say. I have to attend it. You might as well come too.”
* * * *
On the following day there was little change in the weather.
The sky was grey, the wind biting, the daylight dim. Chris Wilson and Ethel found their car held up at times by traffic blocks and snowdrifts as they were driven to the World Council meeting in the centre of the city; then upon entering the great edifice, they partly forgot the external discomfort in the midst of the light and warmth which greeted them.
In the assembly hall, its huge cupola of roof lined with batteries of cameras and television transmitters, were gathered delegates from every land, all of them members of the World Council, the elected body of the people of Earth whose duty it was to rule, extending the same justice and protection to all races and creeds.
Chris Wilson took his place, Ethel beside him, and waited. He recognized scientists, engineers, commercial giants, astronomers—every type and profession. Then he turned his attention to the rostrum as President Vancourt, head of the World Council, rose to speak.