of metal projections, the explosion of disrupted plates, the hiss of shattered rocket tubes—then a dead quiet. The power plant had stopped.
Slowly the Amazon got to her feet and looked about her. The first thing she noticed was the lightness of the gravity. Relka also struggled up. Neither he nor the Amazon were hurt, thanks to the powerful shock absorbers.
Her face grim, the Amazon moved across to the control board and made a test of the power unit. It wheezed in a very odd fashion, its copper bar atom provider out of alignment. Outside the machine, clouds of smoke rose as vegetation was briefly incinerated by the smashed rocket tubes.
“Ditched!” the Amazon declared bitterly. “I don’t think the Ultra has ever taken such a beating before— Just let me get my hands on Quorne!”
She clenched her fists and glared through the observation window upon Ganymede’s landscape.
The vessel had landed in the midst of a riotous jungle of weird, genetically engineered plants, over which shone the varied lights of Jupiter, the sister moons and—infinitely far away—the sun.
“Did you say Ganymede?” Relka asked, joining the Amazon in her scrutiny.
“Yes. One of the larger moons which the Cosmic Engineers from Earth have started to modify at my instructions, so as to make it a possible future mining colony. Slight gravity, oxygen-hydrogen air up to two miles, lush vegetation specially created to help generate oxygen. On the same lines as Io—where I once ditched Abna. Maybe this is just retaliation. It’s certainly not going to be a simple job to repair the Ultra. We’d better get outside and see what the damage is. We don’t need space suits, because as well as created air there’s a controlled release of heat from underground.”
She turned to the airlock and unscrewed it. Pulling it open, she jumped lightly down into the undergrowth and began wandering around the huge bulk of the almost upended vessel. Everywhere she and Relka looked they saw damage. The rocket tubes were completely shattered, several plates were no longer of use, and there were fissures in the outer casting.
“This job is going to take us several weeks,” the Amazon decided finally, coming to a stop when the examination was complete. “But it’s got to be done.”
She paused and looked upward toward Ganymede’s grey sky, her eyes narrowing. Against the backdrop of stars and attendant satellites an S of sparks was curving as a space flyer came swiftly down from the void.
“Quorne!” Relka said.
The Amazon said nothing, but her hand removed her ray gun and she stood waiting. The space machine swept over the area where the Ultra lay, then it came back and settled nearby. The airlock opened and a slim, dark-headed man in the lilac-coloured clothing of a Jovian dignitary appeared. With his gun in his hand, he came through the undergrowth, followed by four other men. The Amazon waited, making no move.
When the Jovian scientist was close, his eyes, the colour of heliotrope, glanced over the battered Ultra.
“Rare for you to make a crash landing, Miss Brant,” he commented.
“We can dispense with the fancy speeches, Quorne,” she retorted, then she fired her ray gun.
Quorne remained as he was, grinning a little as the chest of his garment smoked into rags. Beneath it, a dully gleaming metal plate became visible.
“Precaution,” he explained, and with a lightning movement he snatched the Amazon’s gun from her. “Naturally, I would not have walked so boldly toward you had I not been protected.”
“Negative energy and a chest shield,” the Amazon snapped. “Both neat tricks, which upset my calculations. As a scientist, I congratulate you.”
“Praise indeed,” Quorne murmured, smiling acidly. “You will appreciate the fact, of course, that you cannot continue to upset my plans—”
“I was not aware you had any. For all I have known to the contrary—until now—you were dead.”
“I gather my present of a Jovian reptile was something you did not feel able to accept?”
“Only as a challenge,” the Amazon retorted. “Which I assume it was intended to be. I did not know even then that you were the sender, but it seemed a logical assumption. Like your hypnosis upon me for the past year.”
A change of expression came to Quorne’s thin, intellectual features.
“Hypnotism? I don’t quite understand, Miss Brant.”
She did not gratify him by explaining any further. A thought was turning over in her mind. She felt pretty sure from the Jovian scientist’s manner that he was genuinely surprised; and if that were so, then who had created hypnotism?
“Naturally, I escaped Saturn,” Quorne continued. “The dense cloud coverings helped me. After that I returned to my own planet—Jupiter. Then,” Quorne nodded towards the four men with him, “I released the last remaining Atlantean men from the penal colony.” He smiled faintly. “You did not quite succeed in your attempt to wipe out my race when you smashed the protective dome over our main city.”
The Amazon frowned. She had completely forgotten about the small separate settlement, which Abna’s father had created for banished criminals.
“Naturally they were grateful, and are loyal to me,” Quorne continued. “Together we revived the science of Atlantis, and got the city to work again under its protective dome. Then I set out to accomplish the purpose for which I have so long striven—to break you, Miss Brant. The snake was a bait, yes, but I gather you lost your nerve at the last moment, since you turned away from Jupiter and headed for Saturn.”
“I changed my plans.”
“Change or otherwise, the answer is the same,” Quorne commented. “First I am going to destroy this vessel of yours, then I am going to kill you and this Jovian who seems to have become so attached to you.”
Quorne had forgotten for the moment that the Jovian had the power to read thoughts—hence Relka was warned in advance of what was intended.
Regardless of consequences, Relka dived forward, lashing up his scaled fist as he moved. It struck Quorne a glancing blow as he jerked his head sideways, but the next moment the scaly, vastly strong body had crashed into him and knocked him spinning. Immediately the four other men whipped around their ray guns. Two of them jabbed livid flame at the Jovian’s scaly hide, but it had little effect: the other two found themselves grappling with the Golden Amazon, and being quite ordinary men, they felt as if they were fighting a tigress.
The Amazon’s first dive in the light gravity brought her hands around the necks of the nearer two men. She smashed both men’s heads together. They fell apart, half-senseless. Down came a yellow hand on the arm of the nearest man and a wrench snapped the bone viciously. He screamed, and it died in his throat as he was hurled a dozen yards and crashed unconscious into a rock.
Relka swung around, picked up the dazed Quorne in one hand, and then dashed him down to the ground again. Quorne gave a cry of anguish and grabbed at a gun within a foot of him. He fired blindly, the ray carving across the Amazon’s left leg. She staggered, gritting her teeth with the pain as flesh charred to the bone, and the bone broke. Then she fell to the ground.
Relka’s mailed fist crashed down on the head of the second man and flattened him to the ground. The third and fourth men swung their weapons around, but before they could fire them, that packed mass of supermuscle was plowing amidst them, battering at them with such force that bones broke under the blows.
Quorne, by no means unconscious, saw his chance. He fired, and the flame bit into the Jovian at the one vulnerable point—the unscaled portion across his midriff. He writhed desperately, then became still.
The Amazon lay as she had fallen, her face masked with pain.
Quorne got up and said: “I am wondering whether to fire a beam straight through your heart, Miss Brant, and finish you—or whether I should let you