Introduction

The topologists are very short of ZFC examples of non-metrizable perfectly normal compact spaces. The most daring hypotheses about this class persist for dozens of years without noticeable progress in their solution. In fact all perfectly normal compact spaces known in ZFC are some derivatives of the double arrow space S (such as continuous images of closed subsets of , where I is the unit segment [0,1] with its usual topology). That's why D.H.Fremlin asked if it was consistent that any perfectly normal compact space has a two-to-one continuous map onto a metrizable one. This question was cited by G.Gruenhage in [5].

It seems to be a folklore that no Souslin continuum with all its intervals non-separable admits a continuous map onto a metrizable space with the inverse images of all points metrizable. This clearly implies that the negative answer to D. H. Fremlin's question is consistent with ZFC.

If a space X can be mapped continuously and with metrizable fibers onto a metrizable space, we say that X is metrizably fibered. We take a look at the class of compact metrizably fibered spaces. It is proved that is strictly smaller than the class of first countable compact spaces. We show that is invariant under open maps, but not under the continuous ones. We establish, however, that if X is a perfectly normal compact space from , then any continuous image of X belongs to too. We also introduce the class of weakly metrizably fibered spaces and prove that each Eberlein compact space of weight less than or equal to continuum belongs to it.