Authors: E. E. 'Doc' Smith
He broke off as the record from the torpedo stopped suddenly and the operator’s voice came through a speaker.
‘General Fenimol! Scoutship K3296, patrolling the detector zone, wishes to give you an urgent emergency report. I told them
that you were in council with the Emperor, and they instructed me to interrupt it, no matter how important the council may be. They have on board a survivor of the Y427W, and have captured and killed two men of the same race as those who destroyed our vessel. They say that you will want their report without an instant’s delay.’
We do!’ barked the general, at a sign from his ruler. ‘Put it on here. Run the rest of the torpedo report immediately afterward.’
In the projector, Seaton stared at Crane a moment, then a light of grim understanding spread over his features.
‘DuQuesne, of course – I’ll bet a hat no other Tellurian is this far from home. I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor devil – he’s a darn good man gone wrong – but we’d’ve had to kill him ourselves, probably, before we got done with him; so it’s probably just as well they got him. Pin your ears back, everybody, and watch close – we want to get this, all of it.’
The capital city of the Fenachrone lay in a jungle plain surrounded by towering hills. A perfect circle of immense diameter, its buildings, of uniform height, of identical design, and constructed of the same dull gray, translucent metal, were arranged in concentric circles, like the annular rings seen upon the stump of a tree. Between each ring of buildings and the one next inside it there were lagoons, lawns, and groves – lagoons of tepid, sullenly-steaming water; lawns which were veritable carpets of lush, rank rushes and of dank mosses; groves of palms, gigantic ferns, bamboos, and numerous tropical growths unknown to Earthly botany. At the very edge of the city began jungle unrelieved and primeval; the impenetrable, unconquerable jungle possible only to such meteorological conditions as obtained there. Wind there was none, nor sunshine. Only occasionally was the sun of that reeking world visible through the omnipresent fog, a pale, wan disk; always the atmosphere was one of oppressive, hot, humid vapor. In the exact center of the city rose an immense structure, a terraced cone of buildings, as though immense disks of smaller and smaller diameter had been piled one upon the other. In these apartments dwelt the nobility and the high officials of the Fenachrone. In the highest disk of all, invisible always from the surface of the planet because of the all-enshrouding mist, were the apartments of the emperor of that monstrous race.
Seated upon low, heavily-built metal stools about the great table in the council-room were Fenor, Emperor of the
Fenachrone; Fenimol, his General-in-Command; and the full Council of Eleven of the planet. Being projected in the air before them was a three-dimensional moving, talking picture – the report of the sole survivor of the warship that had attacked the
Skylark Two
. In exact accordance with the facts as the engineer knew them, the details of the battle and complete information concerning the conquerors were shown. As vividly as though the scene were being reenacted before their eyes they saw the captive revive in the
Violet,
and heard the conversation between the engineer, DuQuesne, and Loring.
In the
Violet
they sped for days and weeks, with ever-mounting velocity, toward the system of the Fenachrone. Finally, power reversed, they approached it, saw the planet looming large, passed within the detector screen.
DuQuesne tightened the control of the attractors, which had never been entirely released from their prisoner, thus again pinning the Fenachrone helplessly against the wall.
‘Just to be sure you don’t try to start something,’ he explained coldly. ‘You have done well so far, but I’ll run things myself from now on, so that you can’t steer us into a trap. Now tell me exactly how to go about getting one of your vessels. After we get it, I’ll see about letting you go.’
‘Fools, you are too late! You would have been too late, even had you killed me out there in space and had fled at your utmost acceleration. Did you but know it, you are as dead, even now – our patrol is upon you!’
DuQuesne whirled, snarling, and his automatic and that of Loring were leaping out when an awful acceleration threw them flat upon the floor, a magnetic force snatched away their weapons, and a heat-beam reduced them to two small piles of gray ash. Immediately thereafter a force from the patrolling cruiser neutralized the attractors bearing upon the captive, and he was transferred to the rescuing vessel.
The emergency report ended, and with a brief ‘Torpedo message from flagship Y427W resumed at a point of interruption’, the report from the ill-fated vessel continued the story of its destruction, but added little to the already complete knowledge of the disaster.
Fenor of the Fenachrone leaped up from the table, his terrible, flame-shot eyes glaring venomously – teetering in berserk rage upon his block-like legs – but did not for one second take his full attention from the report until it had been completed. Then he seized the nearest object, which happened to be his chair, and with all his enormous strength hurled it to the floor, where it lay, a battered, twisted, shapeless mass of metal.
‘Thus shall we treat the entire race of the accursed beings who have done this!’ he stormed, his heavy voice reverberating throughout the room. ‘Torture, dismemberment, and annihilation to every …’
‘Fenor of the Fenachrone!’ a tremendous voice, a full octave lower than Fenor’s own terrific bass, and of ear-shattering volume and
timbre in that dense atmosphere, boomed from the general-wave speaker, its deafening roar drowning out Fenor’s raging voice and every other lesser sound.
‘Fenor of the Fenachrone! I know that you hear, for every general-wave speaker upon your reeking planet is voicing my words. Listen well, for this warning shall not be repeated. I am speaking by and with the authority of the Overlord of the Green System, which you know as the Central System of this our galaxy. Upon some of our many planets there are those who wished to destroy you without warning and out of hand, but the Overlord has ruled that you may continue to live provided you heed these his commands, which he has instructed me to lay upon you.
‘You must forthwith abandon forever your vainglorious and senseless scheme of universal conquest. You must immediately withdraw your every vessel to within the boundaries of your own solar system, and you must keep them there henceforth.
‘You are allowed five minutes to decide whether or not you will obey these commands. If no answer has been received at the end of the calculated time the Overlord will know that you have defied him, and your entire race will perish utterly. Well he knows that your very existence is an affront to all real civilization, but he holds that even such vileness incarnate as are the Fenachrone may perchance have some obscure place in the Great Scheme of Things, and he will not destroy you if you are content to remain in your proper place, upon your own dank and steaming world. Through me, the two thousand three hundred forty-sixth Sacner Carfon of Dasor, the Overlord has given you your first, last, and only warning. Heed its every word, or consider it the formal declaration of a war of utter and complete extinction!’
The awful voice ceased and pandemonium reigned in the council hall. Obeying a common impulse each Fenachrone leaped to his feet, raised his huge arms aloft, and roared out rage and defiance. Fenor snapped a command, and the others fell silent as he began howling out orders.
‘Operator! Send recall torpedoes instantly to every out-lying vessel!’ He scuttled over to one of the private-band speakers. ‘X-794-PW! Radio general call for all vessels above E blank E to concentrate on battle stations! Throw out full-power defensive screens, and send the full series of detector screens out to the limit! Guards and patrols on invasion plan XB-218!
‘The immediate steps are taken, gentlemen!’ He turned to the Council, his rage unabated. ‘Never before have we supermen of the Fenachrone been so insulted and so belittled! That upstart Overlord will regret that warning to the instant of his death, which shall be exquisitely postponed. All you of the Council know your duties in such a time as this – you are excused to perform them. General Fenimol, you will stay with me – we shall consider together such other details as may require attention.’
After the others had left the room Fenor turned to
the general.
‘Have you any immediate suggestions?’
‘I would suggest sending at once for Ravindau, the Chief of the Laboratories of Science. He certainly heard the warning, and may be able to cast some light upon how it could have been sent and from what point it came.’
The emperor spoke into another sender, and soon the scientist entered, carrying in his hand a small instrument upon which a blue light blazed.
‘Do not talk here, there is grave danger of being overheard by that self-styled Overlord,’ he directed tersely, and led the way into a ray-proof compartment of his private laboratory, several floors below.
‘It may interest you to know that you have sealed the doom of our planet and of all the Fenachrone upon it.’ Ravindau spoke savagely.
‘Dare you speak thus to me, your sovereign?’ roared Fenor.
‘I so dare,’ replied the other, coldly. ‘When all the civilization of a planet has been given to destruction by the unreasoning stupidity and insatiable rapacity of its royalty, allegiance to such royalty is at an end. SIT DOWN!’ he thundered as Fenor sprang to his feet. ‘You are no longer in your throne-room, surrounded by servile guards and by automatic devices. You are in
my
laboratory, and by a movement of my finger I can hurl you into eternity!’
The general, aware now that the warning was of much more serious import than he had suspected, broke into the acrimonious debate.
‘Never mind questions of royalty!’ he snapped. ‘The safety of the race is paramount. Am I to understand that the situation is really grave?’
‘It is worse than grave – it is desperate. The only hope for even ultimate triumph is for as many of us as possible to flee instantly clear out of this galaxy, in the hope that we may escape the certain destruction to be dealt out to us by the Overlord of the Green System.’
‘You speak folly, surely,’ returned Fenimol. ‘Our science is – must be – superior to any other in the universe!’
‘So thought I until this warning came in and I had an opportunity to study it. Then I knew that we are opposed to a science immeasurably higher than our own.’
‘Such vermin as those two whom one of our smallest scouts captured without a battle, vessel and all? In what respects is their science even comparable to ours?’
‘Not those vermin, no. The one who calls himself the Overlord. That one is our master. He can penetrate the impenetrable shield of force and can operate mechanisms of pure force beyond it; he can heterodyne, transmit, and use the infra-rays of whose very existence we were in doubt until recently. While that warning was being delivered he was, in all probability, watching you and listening to you, face to face. You in your ignorance supposed his warning borne by the ether, and thought therefore he must be close to this system. He is very probably at home in the Central
System, and is at this moment preparing the forces he intends to hurl against us.’
The emperor fell back into his seat, all his pomposity gone, but the general stiffened eagerly and went straight to the point.
‘How do you know these things?’
‘Largely by deduction. We of the school of science have cautioned you repeatedly to postpone the Day of Conquest until we should have mastered the secrets of sub-rays and of infra-rays. Unheeding, you of war have gone ahead with your plans, while we of science have continued to study. We know little of the sub-rays, which we use every day, and practically nothing of the infra-rays. Some time ago I developed a detector for infra-rays, which come to us from outer space in small quantities and which are also liberated by our power-plants. It had been regarded as a scientific curiosity only, but this day it proved of real value. This instrument in my hand is such a detector. At normal impacts of infra-rays its light is blue, as you see it now. Some time before the warning sounded it turned a brilliant red, indicating that an intense source of infra-rays was operating in the neighborhood. By plotting lines of force I located the source as being in the air of the council hall, almost directly above the table of state. Therefore the carrier wave must have come through our whole system of screens without so much as giving an alarm. That fact alone proves it to have been an infra-ray. Furthermore, it carried through those screens and released in the council room a system of force of great complexity, as is shown by their ability to broadcast from those pure forces without material aid a modulated wave in the exact frequency required to energize our general speakers.
‘As soon as I perceived these facts I threw about the council room a screen of force entirely impervious to anything longer than infra-rays. The warning continued, and I then knew that our fears were only too well grounded – that there is in this galaxy somewhere a race vastly superior to ours in science and that our destruction is only a matter of hours, perhaps only of minutes.’
‘Are these infra-rays, then, of such a dangerous character?’ asked the general. ‘I had supposed them to be of such infinitely high frequency that they would be of no practical use whatever.’
‘I have been trying for years to learn something of their nature, but beyond working out a method for their detection and analysis I can do nothing with them. It is perfectly evident, however, that they lie below the level of the ether, and therefore have a velocity of propagation infinitely greater than that of light. You may see for yourself, then, that to a science able to guide and control them, to make them act as carrier waves for any other desired frequency – to do all of which the Overlord has this day shown himself capable – they afford weapons before which our every defense would be precisely as efficacious as so much vacuum. Think a moment! You know that we know nothing fundamental concerning even our servants, the sub-rays.
If we really knew them we could utilize them in thousands of ways as yet unknown to us. We work with the merest handful of forces, empirically, while it is practically certain that the enemy has at his command the entire spectrum, embracing untold thousands of bands, of unknown but terrific potentiality.’