Authors: E. E. 'Doc' Smith
‘So, you see, we eight hundred are the very pick of two hundred forty-one planets; which makes this an ideal primary situation. The reason I wanted you to look around carefully is that perhaps I should not be the only Prime Operative’. She paused: it was quite evident that she was not at all in favor of the idea.
‘Why not?’ DuQuesne wasn’t in favor of it, either; even though he couldn’t begin to understand either her attitude or her behavior. How could any woman possibly be as deeply in love with one man as Sennlloy very evidently was, and yet act as she was acting toward such a complete stranger as himself? It baffled him completely, but
he’d
still
play along – especially since he was suffering no pain at all. ‘It won’t make any difference in the long run, will it?’
‘Of course not. I just thought maybe you would relish diversity,’ Sennlloy said.
‘You can unthink it. I wouldn’t. There’s no tomcat blood in me – and remember what I said?’
‘Do you think I don’t? But you’ve seen some
really
beautiful women now. Much prettier than I am.’
‘You know what they call that technique in English? “Fishing”,’ grinned DuQuesne. ‘Prettier or not, Milady, you top them all by a country mile.’
‘I know about fishing. I was fishing a little, perhaps.’ She laughed happily and hugged his arm against her firm breast. ‘But it did get you to say it again, and it means
ever
so much more, now that you’ve seen the competition.’
She steered him to a table for two against a wall, where he seated her meticulously – a gesture that, while evidently new to her, was evidently liked.
‘You order,’ she said, handing him the helmet. ‘You invited me, you know.’
‘But I don’t know what you like to eat.’
‘Oh, I like almost everything, really; and if there should be anything I don’t like I won’t eat it. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ and DuQuesne proceeded to set the table with fine linen and translucent china and sterling silver and sparkling cut glass.
The first course was a thin, clear soup; which Sennlloy liked. She also liked the crisp lettuce with Roquefort dressing; the medium rare roast beef with mushroom sauce and the asparagus in butter and the baked Idaho potato stuffed with sour cream; and she especially enjoyed the fruits-and-nuts-filled Nesselrode ice cream. She did not, however, like his corrosively strong, black, unsweetened coffee at all. Wrinkling her nose, she sniffed at it, then took a tiny sip, which she let flow back into the cup.
‘How can you possibly drink such vile stuff as that?’ she demanded, and replaced it with a tall glass of a fizzy, viscous concoction that looked like eggnog and reeked of something that was halfway between almond and lemon.
After dinner – DuQuesne wanted to smoke, but since no one else was doing anything of the kind he could and would get along without it as long as he was aboard the
Mallidaxian
– they milled about with the milling throng. She introduced him right and left and showed him off generally; especially to over a hundred stunning young women, with whom she discussed the ‘project’ in American English with a completely uninhibited frankness that made DuQuesne blush more than once.
After something over an hour of this the crowd broke up; and as the two left the hall Sennlloy said, ‘Ha! We’re free now, my Vance, to go about our business!’
Arms tightly around each other, savoring
each contact and each motion, they walked slowly and in silence to Sennlloy’s room.
Three Mallidaxian days later, DuQuesne took his leave. Of Sennlloy last, of course. She put her arms around him and rubbed her cheek against his. ‘Goodbye, friend Vance. I have enjoyed our association tremendously. Scarcely ever before has work been such pleasure. So much so that I feel guilty of selfishness.’
‘You needn’t, Milady. That was exactly the way I wanted it, remember?’
‘I remember with joy; and I have wondered why.’
‘Because you are the only one of your class aboard this ship,’ DuQuesne said.
‘You said that, but still – well, I
am
the only Allondaxian aboard, which may account for our great compatibility. And there should be, as there has been, something more than the purely physical involved.’
DuQuesne was very glad she had said that; it gave him one last chance to explore. ‘Definitely,’ he agreed. ‘Liking, respect, appreciation, admiration – you’re a tremendous lot of woman, Milady Sennlloy. But not love. Naturally.’
‘Of course not. I have my love and my work and my planet; you have yours; it would be terrible for either of us or any of ours to be hurt.
‘Our rememberings of each other should be and will be most pleasant. Goodbye, friend Vance; may All Powerful Llenderllon guard you and aid you as you Seek.’
Not even Marc DuQuesne was able – quite! – to put his rather astonishing, and totally pleasurable, experiences with the Jelmi – and with one Jelm in particular! – out of his mind without a second’s hesitation. In another man, his mood as he set a minimum-time course and began to speed back to Earth, might have been called nostalgic … even sentimental.
But as the parsecs fled by his thoughts hardened. And just in time; for some very hard things indeed had to be done.
First and foremost, his deal with Seaton was utterly, irrevocably and permanently
off
. He no longer needed it. With the information he had received from the Jelmi, he had no further reason to worry about Seaton’s offensive capabilities.
Of course, there was no reason for Seaton to know that. Or not until it was entirely too late to do Seaton any good. Let Seaton go
on dawdling toward this Galaxy DW-427-LU. Seaton would be travelling at only normal max; DuQuesne would have time to make his arrangements, transact his business and
act
while Seaton was still on the way.
He did not intend to go to Earth, only to within working distance of it. Even so, he had a certain amount of time to spend. He spent it, all of it, in studying and operating the new device, which was called by the Jelm a name which Sennlloy had told him corresponded roughly to ‘quad’.
And immediately he ran headlong into trouble.
To DuQuesne’s keen disappointment, the confounded thing was both more and less useful than he had hoped. More: its range was enormous, much more than he had expected. Less: well, it simply didn’t do
any
of the normal things that
any
machine could be made to do. And he could not tell why. He had received too much knowledge too fast; it took time to nail down all the details.
He could send himself anywhere, but he could not bring himself back. He
had
to be at the controls. Remote control wouldn’t work and he couldn’t find out why not. The thing – in its present state of development, at least – couldn’t handle a working projection; and he couldn’t explain that fact, either. There was no way at all, apparently, of coupling the two transmitters together or of automating the controls – which was absurd on the face of it. There were job lots of things it couldn’t do; and in no case at all could he understand why not.
That condition was, however, perfectly natural. In fact, it was inevitable. For, as has been pointed out, the laws of the fourth-dimensional region are completely inexplicable in three-dimensional terms. Obvious impossibilities become commonplace events; many things that are inevitable in our ordinary continuum become starkly impossible there.
Tammon had told DuQuesne just that; Seaton had told him the same, and much more strongly for having been there in person; but DuQuesne could not help but boggle at such information. Of the three men, he was far and away the least able to accept an obvious impossibility as a fact and go on from there.
So Blackie DuQuesne, his face like a steel-black thundercloud, methodically and untiringly worked with his new device until he was quite sure that of all the things he could make it do, he could make it do all of them very well.
And that would be enough. Never mind the things it wouldn’t do. What it would do would be plenty to get rid of Richard Ballinger Seaton once and for all.
Within range of Earth at last, DuQuesne set about the first step in that program.
The simplest and crudest methods would work – backed by the weird fourth-dimensional powers of the quad. And
DuQuesne knew exactly how to go about recruiting the assistance he needed in those methods.
He launched a working projection of himself to the Safe Deposit Department of the First National Bank. He signed a name and counted out a sheaf of currency from a box. He then took a taxi to the World Building and an elevator up to the office of the president.
Brushing aside private secretaries, vice presidents, and other small fry, he strode through a succession of private offices into the
sanctum sanctorum
of President Brookings himself.
The tycoon was, as usual, alone. If he was surprised at the intrusion he did not show it. He took the big cigar from his mouth, little-fingered half an inch of ash from the end of it into a bronze tray, put it back between his teeth, and waited.
‘Still thinking your usual devious, petty-larceny, half-vast thoughts, eh, Brookings?’ DuQuesne sneered.
‘Still thinking your usual devious, petty-larceny, half-vast sublime gall to show up around here again,’ Brookings said, evenly. ‘Even via projection, after the raw stuff you pulled and the ungodly flop you made of everything. Especially after the way your pal Seaton dragged you out of here with your tail between your legs. Incidentally, it took everything you had coming to repair the damage you did to the building on your way out.’
‘Stupid as ever, I see. And the galaxy’s tightest penny-pincher. But back pay and the law of contracts and so forth are of no importance at the moment. What I’m here about is: with all these Norlaminian so-called “Observers” looking down the back of your neck all the time, Perkins’ successor and his goon squads must be eating mighty low on the hog.’
‘We haven’t any –’ At DuQuesne’s sardonically contemptuous smile Brookings changed instantly the sense of what he had been going to say – ‘work for them, to speak of, at that. Why?’
‘So six of your best and fastest gunnies would be interested in ten grand apiece for a month’s loaf and a minute’s work.’
‘Don’t say mine, doctor. Please! You know very well that I never have anything to do with anything like that.’
‘No? But you know who took over the Perkins Cafe and the top-mobster job after I killed Perkins. So I want six off the top downstairs in the lobby at sixteen hours Eastern Daylight Time today.’
‘You know I
never
handle—’
‘Shut up! I’m not asking you – I’m telling you. You’ll handle this, or else.’
Brookings shrugged his shoulders and sighed. He knew DuQuesne. ‘If you want good men they’ll have to know what the job is.’
‘Naturally. Dick and Dorothy Seaton, Martin and Margaret Crane, and their Jap Shiro and his wife – Apple Blossom or whatever her name is. Seaton’s fast, for an amateur, but he’s no pro. Crane is slow – he thinks and aims. And the others don’t count. I’ll guarantee complete surprise enough for
one clear shot at Seaton. Anybody who is apt to need two shots I don’t want. So – no problem.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Since DuQuesne knew that was as close as Brookings ever came to saying ‘yes’, he accepted it. ‘In advance, of course.’ Brookings held out his hand.
‘Naturally.’ DuQuesne took a rubber-banded sheaf of thousand-dollar bills out of his inside coat pocket and tossed it across the desk. ‘Count ’em.’
‘Naturally.’ Brookings picked the sheaf up and riffled through it. ‘Correct. Goodbye, doctor.’
‘Goodbye,’ DuQuesne said, and the projection vanished.
At four o’clock that afternoon DuQuesne picked up his goons – through the fourth dimension, which surprised them tremendously and scared them no little, although none of them would admit that fact – and headed for the galaxy toward which the
Skylark of Valeron
had been flying so long. The
Capital D
was of course much faster than the gigantic planetoid; and the actual difference in speed between the two intergalactic flyers was much greater than the rated one because DuQuesne was driving with all his engines at absolute max – risking burn-out, tear-out, and unavoidable collision at or near the frightful velocity of turnover – which Seaton of course was not doing. He didn’t want to endanger the
Valeron.
In the target galaxy – Galaxy DW-427-LU, according to Klazmon’s chart – there was only one solar system showing really intense sixth-order activity. Almost all of that activity would be occurring on one planet; a planet whose inhabitants were highly inimical to (probably) all other forms of intelligent life.
Klazmon’s side-bands of thought had been very informative on those points.
Thus it was by neither accident nor coincidence that DuQuesne came up to within long working range of the
Skylark of Valeron
well before that flying worldlet came within what DuQuesne thought was extreme range of a planet that DuQuesne
knew
to be a very dangerous planet indeed.
He had wanted it that way; he had risked his ship and his life to make it come out that way. When the
Valeron
came within range of the target planet she would be DuQuesne’s not Seaton’s. And DuQuesne was calmly confident that he and a
Valeron
re-tuned to his own mind could cope with any possible situation.
As a matter of fact, they couldn’t. It was not, however, DuQuesne’s error or fault that made it so; it was merely the way Fate’s mop flopped. Neither he nor Seaton had any idea whatever of the appalling magnitude of the forces so soon to be hurled against Seaton’s supposedly invulnerable flying fortress, the
Skylark of Valeron.
Operating strictly according to plan, then, DuQuesne
called his goons to attention. ‘You’ve been briefed and you’ve had plenty of practice, but I’ll recap the essential points.
‘Guns in hands. They’ll be eating dinner, with their legs under the table. Sitting ducks for one shot. But for one shot only. Especially Seaton – for an amateur he’s fast. So work fast – land and shoot. I’ll give you the usual three second countdown, beginning, now – Seconds! Three! Two! One! Mark!’ and the six men vanished.