Authors: E. E. 'Doc' Smith
‘Blackie, how would you like to become a pure intellect? A bodiless intelligence, immaterial and immortal, pursuing pure knowledge and pure power throughout all cosmos and all time, in company with seven other such entities?’
‘What are you trying to do, kid me?’ DuQuesne sneered. ‘I don’t need any sugar coating on my pills. You are going to take me on a one-way ride – all right, go to it, but don’t lie about it.’
‘No; I mean it. Remember the one we met in the first
Skylark
? Well, we captured him and six others, and it’s a very simple matter to dematerialize you so that you can join them. I’ll bring them in, so that you can talk to
them yourself.’
The intellectuals were brought into the control room, the stasis of time was released, and DuQuesne – via projection – had a long conversation with One.
‘That’s the life!’ he exulted. ‘Better a million times over than any possible life in the flesh – the ideal existence! Think you can do it without killing me, Seaton?’
‘Sure can – I know both the words and the music.’
DuQuesne and the caged intellectuals poised in the air, Seaton threw a zone around cage and man, the inner zone of course disappearing as the outer one went on. DuQuesne’s body disappeared – but not so his intellect.
‘That was the first really bad mistake you ever made, Seaton,’ the same sneering, domineering, icily cold DuQuesne informed Seaton’s projection in level thought. ‘It was bad because you can’t ever remedy it – you
can’t
kill me now! And now I
will
get you – what’s to hinder me from doing anything I please?’
‘I am, bucko,’ Seaton informed him cheerfully. ‘I told you quite a while ago that you’d be surprised at what I could do, and that still goes as it lays. But I’m surprised at your rancor and at the survival of your naughty little passions. What d’you make of it, Drasnik? Is it simply a hangover, or may it be permanent in his case?’
‘Not permanent, no,’ Drasnik decided. ‘It is only that he has not yet become accustomed to his changed state of being. Such emotions are definitely incompatible with pure mentality and will disappear in a short time.’
‘Well, I’m not going to let him think, even for a minute, that I slipped up on his case,’ Seaton declared. ‘Listen, you! If I hadn’t been dead sure of being able to handle you I would have killed you instead of dematerializing you. And don’t get too cocky about my not being able to kill you yet, either, if it comes to that. It shouldn’t be impossible to calculate a zone in which there would be no free energy whatever, so that you would starve to death. But don’t worry – I’m not going to do it unless I have to.’
‘Just what do you think you
are
going to do?’
‘See that miniature spaceship there? I am going to compress you and your new playmates into this spherical capsule and surround you with a stasis of time. Then I am going to send you on a trip. As soon as you are out of the galaxy this bar here will throw in a cosmic-energy drive – not using the power of the bar itself, you understand, but only employing its normal radiation of energy to direct and to control the energy of space – and you will depart for scenes unknown with an acceleration of approximately three times ten to the twelfth centimeters per second. You will travel at that acceleration until this small bar is gone. It will last something more than one
hundred thousand million years; which, as One will assure you, is but a moment.
‘Then these large bars, which will still be big enough to do the work, will rotate your capsule into the fourth dimension. This is desirable, not only to give you additional distance, but also to destroy any orientation you may have remaining, in spite of the stasis of time and not inconsiderable distance already covered. When and if your capsule gets back into three-dimensional space you will be so far away from here that you will certainly need most of what is left of eternity to find your way back here.’ Then, turning to the ancient physicist of Norlamin: ‘O.K., Rovol?’
‘An exceedingly scholarly bit of work,’ Rovol applauded.
‘It is well done, son,’ majestic Fodan gravely added. ‘Not only is it a terrible thing indeed to take away a life, but it is certain that the unknowable force is directing these disembodied mentalities in the engraving upon the Sphere of a pattern which must forever remain hidden from our more limited senses.’
Seaton thought into the headset for a few seconds, then again projected his mind into the capsule.
‘All set to go, folks?’ he asked. ‘Don’t take it too hard – no matter how many millions of years the trip lasts, you won’t know anything about it. Happy landings!’
The tiny spaceship prison shot away, to transport its contained bodiless intelligences into the indescribable immensities of the superuniverse; of the cosmic all; of that ultimately infinite space which can be knowable, if at all, only to such immortal and immaterial, to such incomprehensibly gigantic mentalities as were theirs.
The erstwhile Overlord and his wife sat upon an ordinary davenport in their own home, facing a fireplace built by human labor, within which nature-grown logs burned crackingly. Dorothy wriggled luxuriously, fitting her gorgeous auburn head even more snugly into the curve of Seaton’s shoulder, her supple body even more closely into the embrace of his arm.
‘It’s funny, isn’t it, lover, the way things turn out? Spaceships and ordinary projectors and forces and things are all right, but I’m awfully glad that you turned that horrible Brain over to the Galactic Council in Norlamin and said you’d never build another. Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but it’s ever so much nicer to have you just a man again, instead of a – well, a kind of a god or something.’
‘I’m glad of it, too, Dot – I couldn’t hold the pose. When I got so mad at DuQuesne that I had to throw away the headset I realized that I never could get good enough to be trusted with that much dynamite.’
‘We’re both really human, and I’m glad of it. It’s funny, too,’ she went on dreamily, ‘the way we jumped around and how much we missed. From here across thousands of solar systems to Osnome, and
from Norlamin across thousands of galaxies to Valeron. And that we haven’t seen either Mars or Venus, our next-door neighbors, and there are lots of places
on Earth, right in our own back yard, that we haven’t seen yet, either.’
‘Well, since we’re going to stick around here for a while, maybe we can catch up on
our local visitings.’
‘I’m glad that you are getting reconciled to the idea; because where you go I go, and if I can’t go you can’t, either, so you’ve
got
to stay on Earth for a while, because Richard Ballinger Seaton Junior is going to be born right here, and not off in space somewhere!’
‘Sure he is, sweetheart. I’m with you, all the way – you’re a blinding flash and a deafening report; and, as I may have intimated previously, I love you.’
‘Yes … and I love you … it’s wonderful, how happy you and I are … I wish more people could be like us … more of them will be, too, don’t you think, when they have learned what cooperation can do?’
‘They’re bound to. It’ll take time, of course – racial hates and fears cannot be overcome in a day – but the people of good old Earth are not too dumb to learn.’
Auburn head close to brown, they stared into the flickering flames in silence; a peculiarly and wonderfully satisfying silence.
For these two the problems of life were few and small.
Appearances are deceiving. A polished chunk of metal
that shines like a Christmas-tree ornament may hold – and release – energy to destroy a city. A seed is quite another order of being to the murderous majesty of a toppling tree. A match flame can become a holocaust.
And the chain of events that can unseat the rulers of galaxies can begin in a cozy living room, before a hearth …
Outwardly, the comfortable (if somewhat splendidly furnished) living room of the home of the Richard Ballinger Seatons of Earth presented a peaceful scene. Peaceful? It was sheerly pastoral! Seaton and Dorothy, his spectacularly auburn-haired wife, sat on a davenport, holding hands. A fire of pine logs burned slowly, crackling occasionally and sending sparks against the fine bronze screen of the fireplace. Richard Ballinger Seaton Junior lay on the rug, trying doggedly, silently, and manfully, if unsuccessfully, to wriggle toward those entrancing flames.
Inwardly, however, it was very much otherwise. Dorothy’s normally pleasant – as well as beautiful – face wore a veritable scowl.
The dinner they had just eaten had been over two hours late; wherefore not one single item of it had been fit to feed to a pig. Furthermore, and worse, Dick was not relaxed and was not paying any attention to her at all. He was still wound up tight; was still concentrating on the multitude of messages driving into his brain through the button in his left ear – messages of such urgency of drive that she herself could actually read them, even though she was wearing no apparatus whatever.
She reached up, twitched the button out of his ear, and tossed it onto a table. ‘Will you please lay off of that stuff for a minute, Dick?’ she demanded. ‘I’m fed up to the eyeballs with this business of you killing yourself with all time work and no time sleep. You
never
had any such horrible black circles under your eyes before and you’re getting positively
scrawny
. You’ve got to quit it. Can’t you let somebody else carry some of the load? Delegate some authority?’
‘I’m delegating all I possibly can already, Red-Top.’ Seaton absently rubbed his ear. Until Dorothy had flipped it away, the button had been carrying to him a transcription of the taped reports of more than one hundred Planetary Observers from the planet of Norlamin, each with the IQ of an Einstein and the sagacity of an owl. The last report had had to do with
plentiful supplies of X metal that had been turned up on a planet of Omicron Eridani, and the decision to dispatch a fleet of cargo-carrying ships to fetch them away.
But he admitted grudgingly to himself that that particular decision had already been made. His wife was a nearer problem. Paying full attention to her now, he put his arm around her and squeezed.
‘Converting a whole planet practically all at once to use fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-order stuff is a job of work, believe me. It’s all so new and so tough that not too many people can handle any part of it. It takes brains. And what makes it extra tough is that altogether too many people who are smart enough to learn it are crooks. Shysters – hoodlers – sticky-fingers generally. But I think we’re just about over the hump. I wouldn’t wonder if these Norlaminian Observers – snoopers, really – from the Country of Youth will turn out to be the answer to prayer.’
‘They’d better,’ she said, darkly. ‘At least,
something
had better.’
‘Besides, if you think I look like the wrath of God, take a good look at Mart sometime. He’s having more grief than I am.’
‘I already have; he looks like a refugee from a concentration camp. Peggy was screaming about it this morning, and we’re both going to just simply …’
What the girls intended to do was not revealed, for at that moment there appeared in the air before them the projected simulacra of eight green-skinned, more-or-less-human men; the men with whom they had worked so long; the ablest thinkers of the Central System.
There was majestic Fodan, the Chief of the Five of Norlamin; there was white-bearded Orion, the First of Astronomy; Rovol, the First of Rays; Astron, the First of Energy; Drasnik, the First of Psychology; Satrazon and Caslor, the Firsts of Chemistry and of Mechanism, respectively; and – in some ways not the least – there was that powerhouse of thought, Sacner Carfon the two thousand three hundred forty-sixth: the hairless, almost porpoise-like Chief of the Council of the watery planet Dasor. They were not present in the flesh. But their energy projections were as seemingly solid as Seaton’s own tall, lean body.
‘We come, Overlord of the System, upon a matter of—’ the Chief of the Five began.
‘
Don’t
call me “Overlord”. Please.’ Seaton broke in, with grim foreboding in his eyes, while Dorothy stiffened rigidly in the circle of his arms. Both knew that those masters of thought could scarcely be prevailed upon to leave their own worlds even via projection. For all eight of them to come
this
far – almost halfway across the galaxy! – meant that something was very wrong indeed.
‘I’ve told you a dozen times, not only I ain’t no Overlord but I don’t want to be and won’t be. I
don’t
like to play God – I simply have not got what it takes.’
‘“Coordinator”, then, which is of course a far better term
for all except the more primitive races,’ Fodan went imperturbably on. ‘We have told you, youth, not a dozen times, but once, which should have been sufficient, that your young and vigorous race possesses qualities that our immensely older peoples no longer have. You, as the ablest individual of your race, are uniquely qualified to serve total civilization. Thus, whenever your services become necessary, you will so serve. Your services have again become necessary. Orion, in whose province the matter primarily lies, will explain.’
Seaton nodded to himself. It was going to be bad, all right, he thought as the First of Astronomy took over.
‘You, friend Richard, with some help from us, succeeded in encapsulating a group of malignant immaterial entities, including the disembodied personality of your fellow-scientist Dr Marc C. DuQuesne, in a stasis of time. This capsule, within which no time whatever could or can elapse, was launched into space with a linear acceleration of approximately three times ten to the twelfth centimeters per second squared. It was designed and powered to travel at that acceleration for something over one hundred thousand million Tellurian years; at the end of which lime it was to have been rotated through the fourth dimension into an unknown and unknowable location in normal three-dimensional space.’
‘That’s right,’ Seaton said. ‘And it will. It’ll do just exactly that. Those pure-intellectual louses are gone for good; and so is Blackie DuQuesne.’