Authors: E. E. 'Doc' Smith
Sacner Carfon, the porpoise-like, hairless, naked Dasorian councilor, heaved his six and a half feet of height and his five hundredweight of mass into Dunark’s vessel and greeted the Osnomian prince with a grave and friendly courtesy.
‘Yes, friend, everything is wonderfully well with Dasor,’ he answered Dunark’s query. ‘Now that our one lack, that of power, has been supplied, our lives can at last be lived to the full, unhampered by the limitations which we have hitherto been compelled to set upon them. But this from Norlamin is terrible news. What know you of it?’
During the trip to Norlamin the three leaders not only discussed and planned among themselves, but also had many conferences with the Advisory Five of the planet toward which they were speeding, so that they arrived upon that ancient world with a complete knowledge of what they were to attempt. There Rovol and Drasnik instructed them in the use of fifth-order forces, each according to his personality and ability.
To Sacner Carfon was given command, and he was instructed minutely in every detail of the power, equipment, and performance of the vessel which was to carry the hope of civilization. To Tarnan, the best balanced of his race, was given a more limited knowledge. Dunark and Urvan, however, were informed only as to the actual operation of the armament, with no underlying knowledge of its nature or construction.
‘I trust that you will not resent this necessary caution,’ Drasnik said carefully. ‘Your natures are as yet essentially savage and bloodthirsty; your reason is all too clouded by passion. You are, however, striving truly, and that is a great good. With a few mental operations, which we shall be glad to give you at a later time, you shall both be able to take your places as leaders in the march of your peoples toward civilization.’
Fodan, majestic chief of the Five, escorted the company of warriors to their battleship of space, and what a ship she was! Fully twice the size of
Skylark Three
in every dimension she lay there, surcharged with power and might, awaiting only her commander’s touch to hurl herself away toward distant and inimical Earth.
But the vengeful expedition was too late by far. DuQuesne had long since consolidated his position. His chain of interlinked power stations encircled the globe. Governments were in name only. World Steel now ruled the entire Earth and DuQuesne’s power was absolute. Nor was that rule as yet unduly onerous. The threat of war was gone, the tyranny
of gangsterism was done, everybody was working for high wages – what was there to kick about? Some men of vision of course perceived the truth and were telling it, but they were being howled down by the very people they were trying to warn.
It was thus against an impregnably fortified world that Dunark and Urvan directed every force with which their flying superdreadnought was armed. Nor was she feeble, this monster of the skyways, but DuQuesne had known well what form the attack would take and, having the resources of the world upon which to draw, he had prepared to withstand the massed assault of a hundred vessels – or a thousand.
Therefore the attack not only failed; it was repulsed crushingly. For from his massed generators DuQuesne hurled out upon the Norlaminian spaceship a solid beam of such incredible intensity that in neutralizing its terrific ardor her store of power-uranium dwindled visibly, second by second. So rapidly did the metal disappear that Sacner Carfon, after waging the unequal struggle for some twenty hours, abandoned it and drove back toward the Central System, despite the raging protests of Dunark and of his equally tempestuous lieutenant.
And in his private office, which was also a complete control room, DuQuesne smiled at Brookings – a hard, cold smile. ‘Now you see,’ he said coldly. ‘Suppose I hadn’t spent all this time and money on my defenses?’
‘Well, why don’t you go out and chase ’em? Give ’em a scare anyway?’
‘Because it would be useless,’ DuQuesne stated flatly. ‘That ship carries more stuff than anything we have ready to take off at present. Also, Dunark does not scare. You might kill him, but you can’t scare him – it isn’t in the breed.’
‘Well, what is the answer, then? You have tried to take Norlamin with everything you’ve got – bombs, automatic ships, and projectors – and you haven’t got to first base. You can’t even get through their outside screens. What are you going to do – let it go on as a stalemate?’
‘Hardly!’ DuQuesne smiled thinly. ‘While I do not make a practice of divulging my plans, I am going to tell you a few things now, so that you can go ahead with more understanding and hence with greater confidence. Seaton is out of the picture, or he would have been back here before this. The Fenachrone are all gone. Dunark and his people are unimportant. Norlamin is the only known obstacle between me and the mastery of the galaxy, therefore Norlamin must be either conquered or destroyed. Since the first alternative seems unduly difficult, I shall destroy her.’
‘Destroy Norlamin – how?’ The thought of wiping out that world, with all its ancient culture, did not appall – did not even affect – Brookings’ callous mind. He was merely curious concerning the means to be employed.
‘This whole job so far has been merely a preliminary toward that destruction,’ DuQuesne informed him levelly. ‘I am now ready to go ahead with the second step. The planet Pluto is, as you may or may not know,
very rich in uranium. The ships which we are now building are to carry a few million tons of that metal to a large and practically uninhabited planet not too far from Norlamin. I shall install driving machinery upon that planet and, using it as a projectile which all their forces cannot stop, I shall throw Norlamin into her own sun.’
Raging but impotent, Dunark was borne back to Norlamin; and, more subdued now but still bitterly humiliated, he accompanied Urvan, Sacner Carfon, and the various Firsts to a consultation with the Five.
As they strolled along through the grounds, past fountains of flaming color, past fantastically geometric hedges intricately and ornately wrought of noble metal, past walls composed of self-luminous gems so moving as to form fleeting, blending pictures of exquisite line and color, Sacner Carfon eyed Drasnik in unobtrusive signal and the two dropped gradually behind.
‘I trust that you were successful in whatever it was you had in mind to do while we set up the late diversion?’ Carfon asked quietly, when they were out of earshot.
Dunark and Urvan, his fierce and fiery aides, had taken everything that had happened at its face value, but not so had the leader. Unlike his lieutenants, the massive Dasorian had known at first blast that his expedition against DuQuesne was hopeless. More, it had been clear to him that the Norlaminians had known from the first that their vessel, enormous as she was and superbly powerful, could not crush the defenses of Earth.
‘We knew, of course, that you would perceive the truth,’ the First of Psychology replied as quietly. ‘We also knew that you would appreciate our reasons for not taking you fully into our confidence in advance. Tarnan of Osnome also had an inkling of it, and I have already explained matters to him. Yes; we succeeded. While DuQuesne’s whole attention was taken up in resisting your forces and in returning them in kind, we were able to learn much that we could not have learned otherwise. Also, our young friends Dunark and Urvan, through being chastened, have learned a very helpful lesson. They have seen themselves in true perspective for the first time; and, having fought side by side in a common and so far as they know a losing cause, they have become friends instead of enemies. Thus it will now be possible to inaugurate upon those two backward planets a program leading toward true civilization.’
In the Hall of the Five the Norlaminian spokesman voiced thanks and appreciation for the effort just made, concluding:
‘While as a feat of arms the expedition may not have been a success, in certain other respects it was far from being a failure. By its help we were enabled to learn much, and I can assure you now that the foe shall not be allowed to prevail – it is graven upon the Sphere that civilization is to go on.’
‘May I ask a question, sir?’ Urvan was for the first time
in his bellicose career speaking diffidently. ‘Is there no way of landing a real storming force upon Earth? Must we leave DuQuesne in possession indefinitely?’
‘We must wait, son, and work,’ the chief answered, with the fatalistic calm of his race. ‘At present we can do nothing more, but in time …’
He was interrupted by a deafening blast of sound – the voice of Richard Seaton, tremendously amplified.
‘This is the
Skylark
calling Rovol of Norlamin …
Skylark
calling Rovol of Norlamin …’ it repeated over and over, rising to a roar and diminishing to a whisper as Seaton’s broadcaster oscillated violently through space.
Rovol laid a beam to the nearest transmitter and spoke: ‘I am here, son. What is it?’
‘Fine! I’m away out here in—’
‘Hold on a minute, Dick!’ Dunark shouted. He had been humble and sober enough since his return to Norlamin, realizing as he never had before his own ignorance in comparison with the gigantic minds about him; the powerlessness of his entire race in comparison with the energies he had so recently seen in action. But now, as Seaton’s voice came roaring in and Rovol and his brain-brother were about to indulge so naïvely and so publicly in a conversation which certainly should not reach DuQuesne’s ears, his spirits rose. Here was something he could do to help.
‘DuQuesne is alive, has Earth completely fortified, and is holding everything we can give him,’ Dunark went on rapidly. ‘He’s got everything we have, maybe more, and he’s undoubtedly listening to every word we’re saying. Talk Mardonalian – I know for a fact that DuQuesne can’t understand that. They’ve got an educator here and I’ll give it to Rovol right now – all right, go ahead.’
‘I’m clear out of the galaxy,’ Seaton’s voice went on, now speaking the language of the Osnomian race which had so recently been destroyed. ‘So many hundreds of millions of parsecs away that none of you except Orion could understand the distance. The speed of transmission is due to the fact that we have perfected and I am using a sixth-order projector, not a fifth. Have you a ship fit for really long-distance flight – as big as
Three
was, or bigger?’
‘Yes; we have a vessel twice her size.’
‘Fine! Load her up and start. Head for the Great Nebula in Andromeda – Orion knows what and where it is. That isn’t very close to my line, but it will do until you get some apparatus set up. I’ve got to have Rovol, Drasnik, and Orlon, and I would like to have Fodan; you can bring along anybody else that wants to come. I’ll sign on again in an hour – you should be started by then.’
Besides the four Norlaminians mentioned, Caslor, First of Mechanism, and Astron, First of Energy, also elected to make the stupendous flight, as did many ‘youngsters’ from the Country of Youth. Dunark would not be left behind, nor would adventurous Urvan. And lastly there was Sacner Carfon the Dasorian, who remarked
that he ‘would have to go along to make the boys behave and to steer the ship in case the old professors forget to.’ The spaceship was well on its way when at the end of the hour Seaton’s voice again was heard.
‘All right, put me on a recorder and I’ll give you the data,’ he instructed, when he had made sure that his signal was being received.
‘DuQuesne has been trying to put a ray on us and he may try to follow us,’ Dunark put in.
‘Let him,’ Seaton shot back grimly, then spoke in English: ‘DuQuesne, Dunark says that you’re listening in. You have my urgent, if not cordial, invitation to follow this Norlaminian ship. If you follow it far enough, you’ll take a long, long ride, believe me!’
Again addressing the voyagers, he recounted briefly everything that had occurred since the abandonment of
Skylark Three
, then dived abruptly into the fundamental theory and practical technique of sixth-order phenomena and forces.
Of that ultra-mathematical dissertation Dunark understood not even the first sentence; Sacner Carfon perhaps grasped dimly a concept here and there. The Norlaminians, however, sat back in their seats, relaxed and smiling, their prodigious mentalities not only absorbing greedily but assimilating completely the enormous doses of mathematical and physical science being thrust upon them so rapidly. And when that epoch-making, that almost unbelievable, tale was done, not one of the aged scientists even referred to the tape of the recorder.
‘Oh, wonderful – wonderful!’ exclaimed Rovol in ecstasy, his transcendental imperturbability broken at last. ‘Think of it! Our knowledge extended one whole order farther in each direction, both into the small and into the large. Magnificent! And by one brain, and that of a youth. Extraordinary! And we may now traverse universal space in ordinary time, because that brain has harnessed the practically infinite power of cosmic radiation, a power which exhausted the store of uranium carried
by Skylark Three
in forty hours. Phenomenal! Stupendous!’
‘But do not forget that the brain of that youth is a composite of many,’ said Fodan thoughtfully, ‘and that in it, among others, were yours and Drasnik’s. Seaton himself ascribes to that peculiar combination his successful solution of the problem of the sixth order. You know, of course, that I am in no sense belittling the native power of that brain. I am merely suggesting that perhaps other noteworthy discoveries may be made by superimposing brains in other, but equally widely divergent, fields of thought.’
‘An interesting idea, truly, and one which may be fruitful of result,’ assented Orlon, the First of Astronomy, ‘but I would suggest that we waste no more time. I, for one, am eager to behold with my own inner consciousness the vistas of the galaxies.’
Agreeing, the five white-bearded scientists seated themselves
at the multiplex console of their fifth-order installation and set happily to work. Their gigantic minds were undaunted by the task they faced – they were only thrilled with interest at the opportunity of working with magnitudes, distances, forces, objects, and events at the very contemplation of which any ordinary human mind would quail.