Dwellers in Darkness: The Golden Amazon Saga, Book Fourteen. John Russell Fearn
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shouldn’t worry about it too much. Give it time.”
Turning, he crossed to the control board and with a final burst from the forward rockets he brought the vessel to a virtual standstill. He gave a troubled glance toward the power plant, then slowly eased the power into the rear rockets. When an infinitesimal but steady acceleration was registering he cut down to keep the thrust constant.
“We’re going back the way we came, nearly the same route,” he explained, as the others glanced at him. “We’ll inevitably come to that dark area in time, but let’s hope it won’t be dark on this occasion. Incidentally, everything is contingent on the copper holding out—even the neutralizer machine, since it’s powered from the plant. If the copper fails us, we’ll have no lights, power, or anything else. In fact, it will be the finish.”
The others glanced. There was little more than an orange-sized piece of copper left between the jaws of the power plant’s matrix.
The hours passed. Sleeping and eating periods went by. The copper still decreased, and the blank void remained—at least until Viona, returning from a rest period, went to the window and stared outside. She was expecting the all-familiar dark, but this time there was something different. There were luminous edges on the face of infinity.
“Mother! Father! Come and look!”
Immediately the Amazon and Abna hurried to her side. Mexone, also, who had just come in, drifted across to the non-reflective glass.
“Stars and nebulae beginning to appear,” the Amazon said tensely. “That can only mean one thing. Our neutralization of the spatial warp has had a progressive effect, just as you theorized, Abna. Definitely the view is becoming clearer with every moment.”
This was definitely correct. In a matter of minutes, further stars had merged into view, while those already in sight had brightened in intensity. The darkness of the whole area was rapidly being dispelled.
“At this rate, there ought to be something visible in front,” Abna said abruptly, and turned to the main front observation window. Then he gave a start. Directly in the path of the Ultra, lying some millions of miles away as yet, was the outermost planet of a six-planet system, lighted by an extremely distant green sun.
“From the look of things,” the Amazon said, as she and the others joined him, “we must have passed very close to that planet straight ahead. Quite possibly it could be the main cause of the darkness. Wonder why?”
“I don’t know. At the moment I’m interested in something far more vital. That green sun seems to suggest copper—and if it has a copper flame in its spectrum, then it’s logical to think its planets must have it, too. Soon find out.”
Glad of the chance for some activity at last, he swung the telescopic spectroscope into action and gazed at it intently. The Amazon watched also, and she caught her breath in satisfaction at the intense emerald flame that the spectroscope reproduced.
“That’s copper, by all the laws we know,” she said, her eyes bright. “In that case, we ought to land on that planet nearest us and see what we can find.”
Throughout the journey the Amazon was continually making tests, and finally she made an announcement.
“No air whatever on that planet, which probably explains why everything is so sharp and clear. Apparently no water either. Gravity seems about the same as Earth’s, which is an advantage. Sunlight, what there is of it, is about a tenth of that received on Earth. A desolate, twilight world, yet apparently rich in copper veins if my experiments are correct.”
Abna nodded briefly. His whole attention now was concentrated on bringing the vessel down without mishap, and this did not prove a difficult task with no hampering atmosphere or adverse conditions. The Ultra finally leveled out, swept between two mighty mountain peaks, and then coasted down to one of the innumerable plateaus. A slight jerk and the journey was over.
The Amazon, Viona, and Mexone moved to the nearest window and gazed outside. They were not particularly impressed. The scene reminded them of a lunar landscape, except that in this case the rocks and plateau were utterly black instead of covered with reflective pumice dust. The sky, due to the absence of air, was, of course, completely black, and powdered with myriads of glittering stars and unfamiliar constellations, backed by the distant green sun with its mighty bars of zodiacal light shafting into the void.
“Seems our machine has worked all right,” Abna remarked, glancing towards it. “We’ve certainly brought light back to this region, and from the look of things, it’s still spreading out to the farther stars. I can imagine several astronomers on Earth in the far future—when the light from here finally reaches the solar system—scratching their heads and trying to figure out why the famous Black Coal Sack has suddenly become star-strewn again.”
“The unexplained puzzle for us is why it was ever black in the first place,” the Amazon responded; then with sudden activity she turned from the window. “However, first things first. We’re here to find copper. Let’s go.”
It took them perhaps ten minutes to don their space suits, equip themselves with instruments, and then get the airlock open. The air rushed out of the Ultra in a singing hiss and left clogged masses of iron-hard frost around the rim of the airlock, where the vacuum of space held sway.
“Right?” came Abna’s question, through his audiophone.
Three heads nodded inside the grotesque transparent helmets. Abna clipped the safety line to all three belts, after his own, and then fastened the loose end to a projection on the airlock. By this means constant touch with the ship was possible. This done, Abna stepped out into the waste of rock and then stood surveying the merciless, star-dusted sky.
In a moment or two the Amazon had caught up with him, and his survey ceased. As usual, the Amazon was concentrated solely on one thing—in this case the finding of copper. The actual scenery—such as it was—presented no interest. With Abna at her side, and Viona and Mexone coming on behind, she went carefully forward over the plain, holding the long copper-detecting analyzer straight ahead of her and moving it from side to side with a fanlike movement. In practice, the instrument was not unlike a mine detector.
“Right!” she exclaimed suddenly in her audio-phone. “There’s copper here—and judging from the racket the instrument’s making, there’s more than we can ever handle.”
Abna checked her findings with his own instrument and then gave a nod. He motioned his enormous gloved hand to Mexone and Viona.
“We start drilling right here,” he explained. “Unless I miss my guess, these rocks are actually copper themselves. If so, we can load the Ultra to the limit.”
The four went to work immediately, a fantastic little group under the icy stars. And Abna’s guess that the rocks themselves were copper was substantiated a moment later as the shafting flame from their electronic drills reflected back from the gleaming metal, Copper in abundance, thousands of tons of it, ready for the picking up.
For nearly two hours the quartet were at work. While Abna and the Amazon dug the metal up in gleaming chunks—only the topside being dull in appearance—Viona and Mexone transported it back to the Ultra and set the shaping machine to work.
Automatically it shaved and modeled the rough chunks into gleaming cubes exactly the right size for the power plant’s matrix.
At the end of the two hours the storage hold was well stocked with copper blocks, and the Amazon and Abna relaxed a little in their efforts and paused to survey the bleak desolation of the landscape.
“A wealthy planet as far as copper is concerned,” Abna commented at length, “but absolutely useless for anything else. Wonder if life ever existed here?”
The Amazon did not answer. Abna glanced at her, and in the weak green sunlight he beheld her studying one of the instruments on her gold belt.
“Anything the matter?” he inquired.
“I don’t quite know.” The Amazon’s voice