Conquest of the Amazon Read online

  CONQUEST

  OF THE AMAZON

  by

  JOHN RUSSELL FEARN

  The Golden Amazon first made her appearance' in Fantastic Adventures, for July, 1939, in a 10,000 word story — which incidentally won the 75 dollars prize over Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Scientists Revolt. After that the Amazon appeared in three more novelettes, and then faded out when I quit writing for the American magazines in 1943. But throughout the war years, the idea remained that she was too good to lose, so I decided to make a full-length book about her....

  In the original short stories she was lost on Venus as a baby, and the Venusian climate turned her into a superwoman: in the first novel about her, published by World’s Work in April, 1944, she was a baby lost in the Blitz, operated upon by a super-surgeon. He changed her glandular structure which — at maturity — would mean she would have more than human strength, abnormally brilliant intelligence, and an almost sexless outlook on life. The surgeon’s idea was that she would lead the world to eternal peace; but he miscalculated and her incredible knowledge of science practically led her to destroy the world by her finding of atomic power (prior, be it noted, to the actual discovery of the atomic bomb.) In this novel she also discovered synthesis, including how to make an exact image of herself, and by this means she escaped punishment as the world, seeing ‘her’ die, assumed she was done for. Actually it was her synthetic image which died. This paved the way for The Golden Amazon Returns.

  The Golden Amazon, however, attracted the attention of Toronto Star when it was submitted to them and they published it also, in the March 25th 1945 issue, as the novel of the week. Since that time every adventure of the Amazon has been published first by them, and the British version by World’s Work. But World’s Work, unfortunately, had more paper trouble than Toronto Star, which explains why the latter had published the sixth adventure by the time the second book was being issued.

  With The Golden Amazon Returns, which concerned itself with V-2 attack and atomic power, as it well might be in the future, the superwoman seemed to settle down into a routine job, namely, the advancement of Earth’s scientific culture on the one hand, and the routing of menaces, physical and scientific, on the other. She changed her tactics also — realizing she was biting off too much in trying to rule the world she instead decided to fight on the side of the law. She became a kind of super female Robin Hood, with scientific trimmings, outwitting every kind of public menace from shady financiers to master-scientists.

  With this novel came the beginnings of space travel which were carried a stage further in The Golden Amazon’s Triumph, wherein the conquest of Venus was attempted, to a great extent successfully. Much business was left unfinished however, and a Venusian, menace returned in The Amazon’s Diamond Quest, said menace being effectually routed this time. In fact, it was not the main plot; this consisted of the discovery of a cavern of pure diamonds (created by volcanic action) which the Amazon had to protect from thieves both Venusian and Earthly. In her travels she routed the Chameleon Men of Venus — who could assume any form at will which made her job difficult — and turned over the diamond cavern to the Earth authorities.

  Now that Venus is safely in the bag and a space line established (not by the Amazon who is a lone wolf, but by her friends of the early days) the Amazon can apparently relax somewhat. But she finds that the menace of the earlier stories, Carl Mueller, had a daughter who, now grown up, proves as big a nuisance as her father. So in The Amazon Strikes Again, the Amazon sets off to deal with this scientific young woman, and her adventures carry her from a subtropical basin at the South Pole to the planet Venus once again, in the course of which the Earth is in danger of destruction from synthetically-created tornadoes. Here, on Venus, the menace angle is finished completely and Venus is out of the picture — now a safe colony of Earth.

  Pursuing her ideal to make the whole solar system one Union of the Universe the Amazon next set out to conquer Mars — with a race of 5,000 highly-scientific Martians — to bring the apparently empty planet next in line as an Earth colony. But the Martians have similar aspirations for the Earth. The upshot is — after the Amazon is duplicated by the Martian Controllix and the Earth nearly brought to ruin because of it — that the last of the Martian armadas are tricked by the Amazon into being hurled into the sun. This leaves Mars as an empty world to be taken over.

  But the atomic power motors of the space machine which have been flung into the sun have a detrimental effect on the sun itself. This is the main theme of Conquest of the Amazon. In this yarn the Amazon — with a new character, Abna of Atlantis — fights this time to restore the monarch of the heavens to his former glory, and at the same time has to live down the blame for causing the trouble....

  And so it goes on — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto — and beyond. With a woman like the Amazon anything can — and probably will — happen!

  John Russell Fearn

  Blackpool, Lancs.

  2nd November, 1948.

  Chapter I

  Morris Arnside, autocratic chief of the World Food Combine, could not quite believe the figures he was studying. In an earlier time he could easily have thought that statisticians had erred in their calculations, or perhaps that there was some double-dealing going on somewhere — but in this modem era there was no room for doubt. Men racked their brains no more with calculations. Flawless machines computed everything to the last fraction, and they never made a mistake - for which reason the report was all the more mystifying.

  “Beyond me,” Arnside confessed to himself.

  For a moment or two he sat gazing out of the window. Light snow was falling, driven by flurries of bitter wind. It might have been mid-January instead of late May — but then it had been intensely cold for six months and more.

  Finally Arnside pressed a button on his desk and his assistant and deputy food controller entered.

  “Good morning Mr. Arnside,” he greeted — and Arnside glared at him with prominent grey eyes.

  “I’ll be hanged if it is! Sit down, Mathers. There’s something I want to talk over with you.”

  The assistant settled in the chair at the opposite side of the desk and waited. For Morris Arnside to be short-tempered was nothing new. He lived well, ate heartily, took little exercise, and was always volcanic in consequence. But for him to be anxious was definitely unusual.

  “I’ve just had the reports for the first three months of this year,” Arnside said at length. “They’re staggering! Crops and staple foods are nearly 80 per cent below the normal yield. If things go on at this rate there won’t be enough to feed the world’s population by the end of the year, and that means we’ll have to fall back on synthetic products, something which the majority of people hate.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mathers agreed imperturbably.

  “I’ve been trying to think of some reason for this tremendous falling off,” Arnside added, his fleshy jowls wagging with the emphasis of his words. “I’ll be hanged if I can, though. What has happened to our own British agriculture, the Canadian wheat fields, the United States grain-growing areas? All of them are just dying, man! Dying!”

  “It has puzzled me,” Mathers responded. “The reports are similar from all sources. The seasons are said to be changing. Take today, for instance, and we’re right in the middle of spring. Snowing fast, and looks likely to continue. And the temperature hasn’t risen much over freezing point since December of last year. I have been gathering weather reports from all over the world recently, and in every case there is a marked decline in mean temperatures — even in the tropics. Crops, in consequence are far behind normal.”

  “The members of the combine must be made to produce 80 per cent more than
they usually do,” Arnside decided. “If they don’t there’ll be a penalty, and I’ll issue a directive to that effect. It’s the only way. Laziness, that’s what it is! Living in a world of plenty, they think they can relax. They can’t — and most certainly they’re not going to make an unusually cold spring the excuse. Ill settle it!”

  “Yes, sir,” Mathers murmured.

  “It would help,” Arnside added, “if you showed a little more enthusiasm.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t, sir. I think I know what we are fighting, and it rather terrifies me.”

  The food controller stared. “A slowing up in crop production terrifies you? Don’t be an idiot, man!”

  Mathers knew his chief far too well to take offence at his brusqueness. “I have been studying this business pretty thoroughly — not entirely for professional reasons, but because I’m naturally curious. I may be wrong, but I don’t think we’ll ever get the crops to rights again. And I don’t think we’ll ever get warm weather again, either.”

  “Do you mind telling me what on earth you’re talking about?” Arnside demanded.

  Mathers rose and went to the immense window. He stood gazing out over the fantastically lofty roofs of London; then he turned and motioned his superior. Arnside joined him and they stood gazing through the whirling snow into the grey sky.

  “Well?” Arnside asked bluntly.

  “Through the cloud breaks, sir, you can see the sun,” Mathers said, pointing. “There — practically overhead at this hour.”

  Arnside peered diagonally through the glass. “Yes, I see it,” he acknowledged. “Look pretty yellow, too. More like a foggy sun than a spring one. Mist intervening, I suppose.”

  “Partly,” Mathers acknowledged, “but look at the sun itself. What do you notice about it?”

  Arnside did not think it strange at that moment that he could gaze at the sun without difficulty. It hurt the eye no more than if seen through dense orange-tinted glass. Curious for it to be so dim in late spring. For some moments he stared, then clouds drifted across and hid the view.

  “It looks a bit speckled,” he decided. “Rather like a pudding into which somebody has spattered currants.”

  “An apt simile, sir,” Mathers observed. “Sun spots.”

  The food controller thumped the window frame. “Look here, Mathers, talk sense, will you? What have sun spots got to do with it? There have been sun spots ever since — well, ever since the sun came into being, I suppose. They cause trouble, sure - such as radio interference, thunderstorms, and so forth, but they can’t interfere with crops, surely?”

  “Not directly, sir, but I think that an excess of them is causing the cool weather. The sun has not been free of spots for the last two years. I know, because I’m an amateur astronomer and I’m interested in such things. The average citizen hardly seems to know what a sun spot looks like, and he certainly doesn’t study them. It’s extraordinary for sun spots to keep on growing on the sun’s disc. They usually abate after their normal cycle is complete. This time they haven’t!”

  There was something tremendously wrong up there in the bleak grey sky, Arnside realized. He knew Mathers intimately. He was a cold-blooded, youngish man, a clever scientist in his way, and certainly not given to exaggeration.

  Arnside groped for words. “Are you telling me that the sun’s gone haywire or something?”

  “There is that possibility,” Mathers replied. “It is as prone to disorder and death as any other sentient thing. Scientists are perfectly aware that the sun must die some day from some cause or other, and I have the uneasy feeling that that day may not be far distant.”

  This time Arnside did not say anything. The situation was too preposterous to grasp.

  “Only one person or group of persons can solve this,” he said at last. “The astronomers. And if they have been withholding vital information I’ll tell them publicly exactly what I think about them! Book me a reservation on the next helicoliner following the Mount Everest route. I’m going to find out what Dr. Standish has to say.”

  Dr. Luke Standish was the astronomer-in-chief of Everest Observatory, that lofty eminence built in 1990 and jointly controlled by every nation on the Earth. Here, above the clouds, surrounded by scientific appliances, which brought a tempered warmth to the former climbers’ paradise, the spare, middle-aged Standish with his quiet voice and profound thinking kept a constant watch on the heavens, pooling the information supplied him by his own army of assistants and from the other observatories scattered about the world.

  With space travel as common as flying, the presence of any danger in outer space was his responsibility. Thousands might die if he made one miscalculation upon a flying meteor or deadly cosmic gas area.

  He confessed to a certain inner surprise when from his office he saw the London-Tibet helicoliner detouring from its normal course to land in the observatory grounds. He was even more surprised when only one passenger alighted, and almost immediately he recognized the heavy figure and blunt features of the food controller.

  When Arnside had been shown into the office, Dr. Standish said: “Unexpected pleasure. Have a seat.” And glancing through the window he added: “I take it you are not returning immediately, since you have permitted the liner to continue its journey?”

  “I expect to be here quite a few hours,” Arnside replied. “I’m going to dig for information — lots of it! My job, and maybe the fate of the world’s population may depend on how much you can tell me.”

  “Indeed? What’s the trouble?”

  “What in blazes is the matter with the sun?”

  “You have anticipated me by a few days,” Standish remarked. “I was — and still am — intending to make an announcement after consultation with the various officials responsible for the world’s well-being... Yourself included, of course.”

  Chapter II

  Arnside said: “Dr. Standish, my assistant — a keen amateur astronomer — tells me that the sun is going crazy or something. That it has spots longer than it should have. Now, I’m a commercial man. But even I can’t help but notice that the sun looks queer. What do you think is going to happen?”

  “I think,” Standish answered, “that we are witnessing the death of a monarch, and the inevitable end of the world.” The food controller sat motionless.

  Standish went on: “You must be aware of the lowering temperature all over the world? Even the tropical regions are chilly compared to what they should be.”

  “That I know. I’m here because crops are failing and I’ve got to find out why.”

  “I’m afraid there is nothing you can do — except provide synthetic foods. I have withheld the facts for as long as possible to be sure that there’s no possibility of a mistake. Now I am forced to the staggering truth. The sun is dying. One might call it a solar cancer.” The astronomer got to his feet. “Come with me, controller, and let me explain in more detail. You will merely have a preview of what all the world will have to know shortly.”

  Arnside rose and followed Standish through an adjoining doorway and into the filing-room. Standish took some pictures from a cabinet.

  “These,” he said, as the food controller looked on, “are spectro-heliograph plates of the sun taken two years later. You wish me to be as untechnical as possible, of course?” “Yes, I’m a practical man.”

  “Well, then, normally sun-spot cycles reach a certain maximum and then fade out. These show the beginning of the present cycle.”

  Standish laid down a series of plates. The sun was flawlessly photographed with two irregular marks on the centre of his disc.

  Standish continued, “Last year, and the plates showed as many as six sun spots with the two original ones vastly enlarged. And this was taken two days ago,” Standish finished.

  Arnside stared at the final plate with a queer feeling at his heart. The sun was visible as a circle, but all over his face were mottled holes and chasms, infinitely more of them than the naked eye could see. The sun looked like a fo
otball spattered with mud.

  “Never before,” the astronomer resumed, “have sun spots spread to the solar poles, where they are now. Instead of passing away after their normal cycle they have gone on multiplying.” A shade of emotion quavered his voice. “Imagine our feelings when we saw this happening — when we could watch it in a movie film photographed day by day. The death pangs of the lord of day and—”

  Arnside interrupted impatiently. “What’s the cause of it? Can’t we stop it? We’ve got space travel. We can reach the sun if we want—”

  “And do what?” Standish shook his head. “The explanation is scientific, Mr. Arnside, and perfectly in accord with astronomical law. There are two types of stars in the universe - main sequence or red stars and white dwarfs. Our sun is a main-sequence star with a stellar absolute magnitude of 4.85. The absolute magnitude is between 4.88 and 3.54. Therefore, our sun being at 4.85 was dangerously near the line of instability. You follow me?” “What’s that got to do with his spots?”

  “The internal temperature of our sun was about 32,000,000 degrees when it was normal. It was a star in which the atoms were still surrounded by the K-rings of electrons, while the exterior rings had been stripped away by the tremendous heat. But any substantial rise in the internal temperature of the sun would cause the atoms to no longer exist as such. There’d only be free electrons and stripped nuclei. The star would rapidly become unstable and gradually move on to the next state of instability — that of the white dwarf.”

  “And what would that mean — in plain language.” “That the sun would never again recover his radiation. It would become small and useless — like the Companion of Sirus.”

  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 sun spots 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.”