Authors: E. E. 'Doc' Smith
‘Be sure that you have. Above all, remember the mental attitude toward Seaton – hero worship. He is not only the greatest man that Earth ever produced; he is the king-pin of the entire galaxy, and we rate him just a hair below God Himself. Think that thought with every cell of your brain. Concentrate on it with all your mind. Feel it – act it – really believe it until I tell you to quit.’
‘I’ll do that. Now what?’
‘Now we hunt up the
Violet
, transfer to her, and set this cruiser adrift on a course toward Earth. And while I think of it, we want to be sure not to use any more power than the
Skylark
could, anywhere near the Green System, and cover up anything that looks peculiar about the power plant. We’re not supposed to know anything about the five-light drive of the Fenachrone, you know.’
‘But suppose that you can’t find the
Violet
, or that she has been destroyed?’
‘In that case we’ll go on to Osnome and steal another one just like her. But I’ll find her – I know her exact course and velocity, we have ultrarange detectors, and her automatic instruments and machinery make her destruction-proof.’
DuQuesne’s chronometers were accurate, his computations were sound, and his detectors were sensitive enough to have revealed the presence of a smaller body than the
Violet
at a distance vastly greater than the few millions of miles which constituted his unavoidable error. Therefore the Osnomian cruiser was found without trouble and the transfer was effected without untoward incident.
Then for days the
Violet
was hurled at full acceleration toward the center of the galaxy. Long before the Green System was reached, however, the globular cruiser was swung off her course and, mad acceleration reversed, was put into a great circle, so that she would approach her destination from the direction of our own solar system. Slower and slower she drove onward, the bright green star about which she was circling resolving itself first into a group of bright-green points and finally into widely spaced, tiny green suns.
Although facing the completely unknown and about to do battle, with their wits certainly, and with their every weapon possibly against overwhelming odds, neither man showed or felt either nervousness or disorganization. Loring was a fatalist. It was DuQuesne’s party; he was merely the hired help. He would do his best when the time came to do something;
until that time came there was nothing to worry about.
DuQuesne’s, on the other hand, was the repose of conscious power. He had laid his plans as best he could with the information then at hand. If conditions changed he would change those plans; otherwise he would drive through with them ruthlessly, as was his wont. In the meantime he awaited he knew not what, poised, cool, and confident.
Since both men were really expecting the unexpected, neither betrayed surprise when something that was apparently a man materialized before them in the air of the control room. His skin was green, as was that of all the inhabitants of the Green System. He was tall and well proportioned, according to Earthly standards, except for his head, which was overlarge and particularly massive above the eyes and backward from the ears. He was evidently of advanced years, for his face was seamed and wrinkled, and both his long, heavy hair and his yard-long, square-cut beard were a snowy white, only faintly tinged with green.
The Norlaminian projection thickened instantly, with none of the oscillation and ‘hunting’ which had been so noticeable in the one which had visited
Skylark Two a
few months earlier, for at that comparatively short range the fifth-order keyboard handling it could hold a point, however moving, as accurately as a Terrestrial photographic telescope holds a star. And in the moment of materialization of his projection the aged Norlaminian spoke.
‘I welcome you to Norlamin, Terrestrials,’ he greeted the two marauders with the untroubled serenity and calm courtesy of his race. ‘Since you are quite evidently of the same racial stock as our very good friends the doctors Seaton and Crane, and since you are traveling in a ship built by the Osnomians, I assume that you speak and understand the English language which I am employing. I suppose that you are close friends of Seaton and Crane and that you have come to learn why they have not communicated with you of late?’
Self-contained as DuQuesne was, this statement almost took his breath away, squaring almost perfectly as it did with the tale he had so carefully prepared. He did not show his amazed gratification, however, but spoke as gravely and as courteously as the other had done:
‘We are very glad indeed to see you, sir; particularly since we know neither the name nor the location of the planet for which we are searching. Your assumptions are correct in every particular save one …’
‘You do not know even the name of Norlamin?’ the Green scientist interrupted. ‘How can that be? Did not Dr Seaton send the projections of all his party to you upon Earth, and did he not discuss matters with you?’
‘I was about to explain that.’ DuQuesne lied instantly, boldly, and convincingly. ‘We heard that he had sent a talking, three-dimensional picture of his group to Earth, but after it had vanished all the real information
that any one seemed to have obtained was that they were here in the Green System somewhere, but not upon Osnome, and that they had been taught much of science. Mrs Seaton did most of the talking, I gather, which may account for the dearth of pertinent details.
‘Neither my friend Loring, here nor I – I am Stewart Donovan, by the way – saw the picture, or rather, projection. You assumed that we are Seaton’s close friends. We are engineers in his company, but we have not the honor of his personal acquaintance. His scientific knowledge was needed so urgently that it was decided that we should come out here after him, since the chief of construction had heard nothing from him for so long.’
‘I see.’ A shadow passed over the seamed green face. ‘I am very sorry indeed at what I have to tell you. We did not report anything of it to Earth because of the panic that would have ensued. We shall of course send the whole story as soon as we can learn what actually did take place and can deduce therefrom the probable sequence of events yet to occur.’
‘What’s that – an accident? Something happened to Seaton?’ DuQuesne snapped. His heart leaped in joy and relief, but his face showed only strained anxiety and deep concern. ‘He isn’t here now? Surely nothing serious could have happened to him.’
‘Alas, young friend, none of us knows yet what really occurred. It is highly probable, however, that their vessel was destroyed in intergalactic space by forces about which we have as yet been able to learn nothing; forces directed by some intelligence as yet to us unknown. There is a possibility that Seaton and his companions escaped in the vessel you knew as
Skylark Two
, but so far we have not been able to find them.
‘But enough of talking; you are strained and weary and you must rest. As soon as your vessel was detected the beam was transferred to me – the student Rovol, perhaps the closest to Seaton of any of my race – so that I could give you this assurance. With your permission I shall direct upon your controls certain forces which shall so govern your flight that you shall alight safely upon the grounds of my laboratory in a few minutes more than twelve hours of your time, without any further attention or effort upon your part.
‘Further explanations can wait until we meet in the flesh. Until that time, my friends, do nothing save rest. Eat and sleep without care or fear, for your flight and your landing shall be controlled with precision. Farewell!’
The projection vanished instantaneously, and Loring expelled his pent-up breath in an explosive sigh.
‘Whew! But what a break, chief, what a—’
He was interrupted by DuQuesne, who spoke calmly and quietly, yet insistently: ‘Yes, it is a singularly fortunate circumstance that the Norlaminians detected us and recognized us; it probably would have required weeks for us to have found their planet unaided.’ DuQuesne’s lightning mind found a way of covering up his companion’s betraying exclamation and sought
some way of warning him that could not be overheard. ‘Our visitor was right in saying that we need food and rest badly, but before we eat let us put on the headsets and bring the record of our flight up to date – it will take only a minute or two.’
‘What’s biting you, chief?’ thought Loring as soon as the power was on. ‘We didn’t have any—’
‘Plenty!’ DuQuesne interrupted him viciously. ‘Don’t you realize that they can probably hear every word we say, and that they can see every move we make, even in the dark? In fact, they may be able to read thoughts, for all I know; so
think straight
from now on, if you never did before! Now let’s finish up this record.’
He then impressed upon a tape the record of everything that had just happened. They ate. Then they slept soundly – the first really untroubled sleep they had enjoyed for weeks. And at last, exactly as the projection had foretold, the
Violet
landed without a jar upon the spacious grounds beside the laboratory of Rovol, the foremost physicist of Norlamin.
When the door of the spaceship opened, Rovol in person was standing before it, waiting to welcome the voyagers and to escort them to his dwelling. But DuQuesne, pretending a vast impatience, would not be dissuaded from the object of his search merely to satisfy the Norlaminian amenities of hospitality and courtesy. He poured forth his prepared story in a breath, concluding with a flat demand that Rovol tell him everything he knew about Seaton, and that he tell it at once.
‘It would take far too long to tell you anything in words,’ the ancient scientist replied placidly. ‘In the laboratory, however, I can and will inform you fully in a few minutes concerning everything that has happened.’
Utter stranger himself to deception in any form, as was his whole race, Rovol was easily and completely deceived by the consummate acting, both physical and mental, of DuQuesne and Loring. Therefore, as soon as the three had donned the headsets of the wonderfully efficient Norlaminian educator, Rovol gave to the Terrestrial adventurers without reserve his every mental image and his every stored fact concerning Seaton and his supposedly ill-fated last voyage.
Even more clearly than as if he himself had seen them all happen, DuQuesne beheld and understood Seaton’s visit to Norlamin, the story of the Fenachrone peril, the building of the fifth-order projector, the demolition of Fenor’s space fleet, the revenge-purposed flight of Ravindau the scientist, and the complete volatilization of the Fenachrone planet.
He saw Seaton’s gigantic space cruiser
Skylark Three
come into being and, uranium-driven, speed out into the awesome void of intergalactic space in pursuit of the last survivors of the Fenachrone race. He
watched the mighty
Three
overtake the fleeing vessel, and understood every detail of the epic engagement that ensued, clear to its cataclysmic end. He watched the victorious battleship speed on and on, deeper and deeper into the intergalactic void, until she began to approach the limiting range of even the stupendous fifth-order projector by means of which he knew the watching had been done.
Then, at the tantalizing limit of visibility, something began to happen; something at the very incomprehensibility of which DuQuesne strained both mind and eye, exactly as had Rovol when it had taken place so long before. The immense bulk of the
Skylark
disappeared behind zone after impenetrable zone of force, and it became increasingly evident that from behind those supposedly impervious and impregnable shields Seaton was waging a terrific battle against some unknown opponent, some foe invisible even to fifth-order vision.
For nothing was visible – nothing, that is, save the released energies which, leaping through level after level reached at last even to the visible spectrum. Yet forces of such unthinkable magnitude were warring there that space itself was being deformed visibly, moment by moment. For a long time the space strains grew more and more intense, then they disappeared instantly. Simultaneously the
Skylark
’s screens of force went down and she was for an instant starkly visible before she exploded into a vast ball of appallingly radiant, flaming vapor.
In that instant of clear visibility, however, Rovol’s stupendous mind had photographed every salient visible feature of the great cruiser of the void. Being almost at the limit of range of the projector, details were of course none too plain; but certain things were evident. The human beings were no longer aboard; the little lifeboat that was
Skylark Two
was no longer in her spherical berth; and there were unmistakable signs of a purposeful and deliberate departure.
‘And,’ Rovol spoke aloud as he removed the headset, ‘although we searched minutely and most carefully all the surrounding space we could find nothing tangible. From these observations it is all too plain that Seaton was attacked by some intelligence wielding dirigible forces of the sixth order; that he was able to set up a defensive pattern; that his supply of power uranium was insufficient to cope with the attacking forces; and that he took the last desperate means of escaping from his foes by rotating
Skylark Two
into the unknown region of the fourth dimension.’
DuQuesne’s stunned mind groped for a moment in an amazement akin to stupefaction, but he recovered quickly and decided upon his course.
‘Well, what are you doing about it?’
‘We have done and are doing everything possible for us, in our present state of knowledge and advancement,
to do,’ Rovol replied placidly. ‘We sent out forces, as I told you, which obtained and recorded all the phenomena to which they were sensitive. It is true that a great deal of data escaped them, because the primary impulses originated in a level beyond our present knowledge, but the fact that we cannot understand it has only intensified our interest in the problem. It shall be solved. After its solution we shall know what steps to take and those steps shall then be taken.’
‘Have you any idea how long it will take to solve the problem?’