The Space Opera Megapack

by John W. Campbell

  “We take one trick, anyway!” blazed Seaton, as he threw on the power of the attractor and diffused its force into a screen over the party, so that the enemy could not materialize in the air above them and crush them by mere weight. “As pure mental force, you’re entirely out of my class, but when you come down to matter, which I can understand, I’ll give you a run for your money until my angles catch fire.”

  “That is a childish defiance. It speaks well for your courage, but ill for your intelligence,” the animal said, and vanished.

  A moment later Seaton’s hair almost stood on end as he saw an automatic pistol appear upon the board directly in front of him, clamped to it by bands of steel. Paralyzed by this unlooked-for demonstration of the mastery of mind over matter, unable to move a muscle, he lay helpless, staring at the engine of death in front of him. Although the whole proceeding occupied only a fraction of a second, it seemed to Seaton as though he watched the weapon for hours. As the sleeve drew back, cocking the pistol and throwing a cartridge into the chamber, the trigger moved, and the hammer descended to speed on its way the bullet which was to blot out his life. There was a sharp click as the hammer fell—Seaton was surprised to find himself still alive until a voice spoke, apparently from the muzzle of the pistol, with the harsh sound of a metallic diaphragm.

  “I was almost certain that it wouldn’t explode,” the stranger said, chattily. “You see, I haven’t derived that formula yet, so I couldn’t make a real explosive. I could of course, materialize beside you, under your protective screen, and crush you in a vise. I could materialize as a man of metal, able to stand up under this acceleration, and do you to death. I could even, by a sufficient expenditure of mental energy, materialize a planet around your ship and crush it. However, these crude methods are distasteful in the extreme, especially since you have already given me some slight and unexpected mental exercise. In return, I shall give you one chance for your lives. I cannot dematerialize either you or your vessel until I work out the formula for your peculiar atomic structure. If I can derive the formula before you reach the boundaries of my home-space, beyond which I cannot go, I shall let you go free. Deriving the formula will be a neat little problem. It should be fairly easy, as it involves only a simple integration in ninety-seven dimensions.”

  Silence ensued, and Seaton advanced his lever to the limit of his ability to retain consciousness. Almost overcome by the horror of their position, in an agony of suspense, expecting every instant to be hurled into nothingness, he battled on, with no thought of yielding, even in the face of those overwhelming mental odds.

  “You can’t do it, old top,” he thought savagely, concentrating all the power of his highly-trained mind against the intellectual monster. “You can’t dematerialize us, and you can’t integrate above ninety-five dimensions to save your neck. You can’t do it—you’re slipping—you’re all balled up right now!”

  For more than an hour the silent battle raged, during which time the Skylark flew millions upon millions of miles toward Earth. Finally the stranger spoke again.

  “You three win,” it said abruptly. In answer to the unspoken surprise of all three men it went on: “Yes, all three of you got the same idea and Crane even forced his body to retain consciousness to fight me. Your efforts were very feeble, of course, but were enough to interrupt my calculations at a delicate stage, every time. You are a low form of life, undoubtedly, but with more mentality than I supposed at first. I could get that formula, of course, in spite of you, if I had time, but we are rapidly approaching the limits of my territory, outside of which even I could not think my way back. That is one thing in which your mechanical devices are superior to anything my own race developed before we became pure intellectuals. They point the way back to your Earth, which is so far away that even my mentality cannot grasp the meaning of the distance. I can understand the Earth, can visualize it from your minds, but I cannot project myself any nearer to it than we are at present. Before I leave you, I will say that you have conferred a real favor upon me—you have given me something to think about for thousands of cycles to come. Good-bye.”

  Assured that their visitor had really gone, Seaton reduced the power to that of gravity and Dorothy soon sat up, Margaret reviving more slowly.

  “Dick,” said Dorothy solemnly, “did that happen or have I been unconscious and just had a nightmare?”

  “It happened, all right,” returned her lover, wiping his brow in relief. “See that pistol clamped upon the top of the board? That’s a token in remembrance of him.”

  Dorothy, though she had been only half conscious, had heard the words of the stranger. As she looked at the faces of the men, white and drawn with the mental struggle, she realized what they had gone through, and she drew Seaton down into one of the seats, stroking his hair tenderly.

  Margaret went to her room immediately, and as she did not return, Dorothy followed. She came back presently with a look of concern upon her face.

  “This life is a little hard on Peggy. I didn’t realize how much harder for her it would be than it is for me until I went in there and found her crying. It is much harder for her, of course, since I am with you, Dick, and with you, Martin, whom I know so well. She must feel terribly alone.”

  “Why should she?” demanded Seaton. “We think she’s some game little guy. Why, she’s one of the bunch! She must know that!”

  “Well, it isn’t the same,” insisted Dorothy. “You be extra nice to her, Dick. But don’t you dare let her know I told you about the tears, or she’d eat me alive!”

  Crane said nothing—a not unusual occurrence—but his face grew thoughtful and his manner, when Margaret appeared at mealtime, was more solicitous than usual and more than brotherly in its tenderness.

  “I shall be an interstellar diplomat,” Dorothy whispered to Seaton as soon as they were alone. “Wasn’t that a beautiful bee I put upon Martin?”

  Seaton stared at her a moment, then shook her gently before he took her into his arms.

  * * * *

  The information, however, did not prevent him from calling to Crane a few minutes later, even though he was still deep in conversation with Margaret. Dorothy gave him an exasperated glance and walked away.

  “I sure pulled a boner that time,” Seaton muttered as he plucked at his hair ruefully. “It nearly did us.

  “Let’s test this stuff out and see if it’s X, Mart, while DuQuesne’s out of the way. If it is X, it’s SOME find!”

  Seaton cut off a bit of metal with his knife, hammered it into a small piece of copper, and threw the copper into the power-chamber, out of contact with the plating. As the metal received the current the vessel started slightly.

  “It is X! Mart, we’ve got enough of this stuff to supply three worlds!”

  “Better put it away somewhere,” suggested Crane, and after the metal had been removed to Seaton’s cabin, the two men again sought a landing-place. Almost in their line of flight they saw a close cluster of stars, each emitting a peculiar greenish light which, in the spectroscope, revealed a blaze of copper lines.

  “That’s our meat, Martin. We ought to be able to grab some copper in that system, where there’s so much of it that it colors their sunlight.”

  “The copper is undoubtedly there, but it might be too dangerous to get so close to so many suns. We may have trouble getting away.”

  “Well, our copper’s getting horribly low. We’ve got to find some pretty quick, somewhere, or else walk back home, and there’s our best chance. We’ll feel our way along. If it gets too strong, we’ll beat it.”

  When they had approached so close that the suns were great stars widely spaced in the heavens, Crane relinquished the controls to Seaton.

  “If you will take the lever awhile, Dick, Margaret and I will go downstairs and see if we can locate a planet.”

  After a glance through the telescope, Crane knew that they were still too far from the group of suns to place any planet with certainty, and began taking notes. His
mind was not upon his work, however, but was completely filled with thoughts of the girl at his side. The intervals between his comments became longer and longer until they were standing in silence, both staring with unseeing eyes out into the trackless void. But it was in no sense their usual companionable silence. Crane was fighting back the words he longed to say. This lovely girl was not here of her own accord—she had been torn forcibly from her home and from her friends, and he would not, could not, make her already difficult position even more unpleasant by forcing his attentions upon her. Margaret sensed something unusual and significant in his attitude and held herself tense, her heart beating wildly.

  At that moment an asteroid came within range of the Skylark’s watchful repeller, and at the lurch of the vessel, as it swung around the obstruction, Margaret would have fallen had not Crane instinctively caught her with one arm. Ordinarily this bit of courtesy would have gone unnoticed by both, as it had happened many times before, but in that heavily-charged atmosphere it took on a new significance. Both blushed hotly, and as their eyes met each saw that which held them spellbound. Slowly, almost as if without volition, Crane put his other arm around her. A wave of deeper crimson swept over her face and she bent her handsome head as her slender body yielded to his arms with no effort to free itself. Finally Crane spoke, his usually even voice faltering.

  “Margaret, I hope you will not think this unfair of me…but we have been through so much together that I feel as though we had known each other forever. Until we went through this last experience I had intended to wait—but why should we wait? Life is not lived in years alone, and you know how much I love you, my dearest!” he finished, passionately.

  Her arms crept up around his neck, her bowed head lifted, and her eyes looked deep into his as she whispered her answer:

  “I think I do… Oh, Martin!”

  Presently they made their way back to the engine-room, keeping the singing joy in their hearts inaudible and the kisses fresh upon their lips invisible. They might have kept their secret for a time, had not Seaton promptly asked:

  “Well, what did you find, Mart?”

  A panicky look appeared upon Crane’s self-possessed countenance and Margaret’s fair face glowed like a peony.

  “Yes, what did you find?” demanded Dorothy, as she noticed their confusion.

  “My future wife,” Crane answered steadily.

  The two girls rushed into each other’s arms and the two men silently gripped hands in a clasp of steel; for each of the four knew that these two unions were not passing fancies, lightly entered into and as lightly cast aside, but were true partnerships which would endure throughout the entire span of life.

  * * * *

  A planet was located and the Skylark flew toward it. Discovering that it was apparently situated in the center of the cluster of suns, they hesitated; but finding that there was no dangerous force present, they kept on. As they drew nearer, so that the planet appeared as a very small moon, they saw that the Skylark was in a blaze of green light, and looking out of the windows, Crane counted seventeen great suns, scattered in all directions in the sky! Slowing down abruptly as the planet was approached, Seaton dropped the vessel slowly through the atmosphere, while Crane and DuQuesne tested and analyzed it.

  “Pressure, thirty pounds per square inch. Surface gravity as compared to that of the Earth, two-fifths. Air-pressure about double that of the Earth, while a five-pound weight weighs only two pounds. A peculiar combination,” reported Crane, and DuQuesne added:

  “Analysis about the same as our air except for two and three-tenths per cent of a gas that isn’t poisonous and which has a peculiar, fragrant odor. I can’t analyze it and think it probably an element unknown upon Earth, or at least very rare.”

  “It would have to be rare if you don’t know what it is,” acknowledged Seaton, locking the Skylark in place and going over to smell the strange gas.

  Deciding that the air was satisfactory, the pressure inside the vessel was slowly raised to the value of that outside and two doors were opened, to allow the new atmosphere free circulation.

  Seaton shut off the power actuating the repeller and let the vessel settle slowly toward the ocean which was directly beneath them—an ocean of a deep, intense, wondrously beautiful blue, which the scientists studied with interest. Arrived at the surface, Seaton moistened a rod in a wave, and tasted it cautiously, then uttered a yell of joy—a yell broken off abruptly as he heard the sound of his own voice. Both girls started as the vibrations set up in the dense air smote upon their eardrums. Seaton moderated his voice and continued:

  “I forgot about the air-pressure. But hurrah for this ocean—it’s ammoniacal copper sulphate solution! We can sure get all the copper we want, right here, but it would take weeks to evaporate the water and recover the metal. We can probably get it easier ashore. Let’s go!”

  They started off just above the surface of the ocean toward the nearest continent, which they had observed from the air.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Nalboon of Mardonale

  As the Skylark approached the shore, its occupants heard a rapid succession of heavy detonations, apparently coming from the direction in which they were traveling.

  “Wonder what that racket is?” asked Seaton.

  “It sounds like big guns,” said Crane, and DuQuesne nodded agreement.

  “Big guns is right. They’re shooting high explosive shells, too, or I never heard any. Even allowing for the density of the air, that kind of noise isn’t made by pop-guns.”

  “Let’s go see what’s doing,” and Seaton started to walk toward one of the windows with his free, swinging stride. Instantly he was a-sprawl, the effort necessary to carry his weight upon the Earth’s surface lifting him into the air in a succession of ludicrous hops, but he soon recovered himself and walked normally.

  “I forgot this two-fifths gravity stuff,” he laughed. “Walk as though we had only a notch of power on and it goes all right. It sure is funny to feel so light when we’re so close to the ground.”

  He closed the doors to keep out a part of the noise and advanced the speed lever a little, so that the vessel tilted sharply under the pull of the almost horizontal bar.

  “Go easy,” cautioned Crane. “We do not want to get in the way of one of their shells. They may be of a different kind than those we are familiar with.”

  “Right—easy it is. We’ll stay forty miles above them, if necessary.”

  As the great speed of the ship rapidly lessened the distance, the sound grew heavier and clearer—like one continuous explosion. So closely did one deafening concussion follow another that the ear could not distinguish the separate reports.

  “I see them,” simultaneously announced Crane, who was seated at one of the forward windows searching the country with his binoculars, and Seaton, who, from the pilot’s seat, could see in any direction.

  The others hurried to the windows with their glasses and saw an astonishing sight.

  “Aerial battleships, eight of ’em!” exclaimed Seaton, “as big as the Idaho. Four of ’em are about the same shape as our battleships. No wings—they act like helicopters.”

  “Four of them are battleships, right enough, but what about the other four?” asked DuQuesne. “They are not ships or planes or anything else that I ever heard of.”

  “They are animals,” asserted Crane. “Machines never were and never will be built like that.”

  As the Skylark cautiously approached, it was evident to the watchers that four of the contestants were undoubtedly animals. Here indeed was a new kind of animal, an animal able to fight on even terms with a first-class battleship! Frightful aerial monsters they were. Each had an enormous, torpedo-shaped body, with scores of prodigiously long tentacles like those of a devil-fish and a dozen or more great, soaring wings. Even at that distance they could see the row of protruding eyes along the side of each monstrous body and the terrible, prow-like beaks tearing through the metal of the warships opposing them. T
hey could see, by the reflection of the light from the many suns, that each monster was apparently covered by scales and joints of some transparent armor. That it was real and highly effective armor there could be no doubt, for each battleship bristled with guns of heavy caliber and each gun was vomiting forth a continuous stream of fire. Shells bursting against each of the creatures made one continuous blaze, and the uproar was indescribable—an uninterrupted cataclysm of sound appalling in its intensity.

  * * * *

  The battle was brief. Soon all four of the battleships had crumpled to the ground, their crews absorbed by the terrible sucking arms or devoured by the frightful beaks. They did not die in vain—three of the monsters had been blown to atoms by shells which had apparently penetrated their armor. The fourth was pursuing something, which Seaton now saw was a fleet of small airships, which had flown away from the scene of conflict. Swift as they were, the monster covered three feet to their one.

  “We can’t stand for anything like that,” cried Seaton, as he threw on the power and the Skylark leaped ahead. “Get ready to bump him off, Mart, when I jerk him away. He acts hard-boiled, so give him a real one—fifty milligrams!”

  Sweeping on with awful speed the monster seized the largest and most gaily decorated plane in his hundred-foot tentacles just as the Skylark came within sighting distance. In four practically simultaneous movements Seaton sighted the attractor at the ugly beak, released all its power, pointed the main bar of the Skylark directly upward, and advanced his speed lever. There was a crash of rending metal as the thing was torn loose from the plane and jerked a hundred miles into the air, struggling so savagely in that invisible and incomprehensible grip that the three-thousand-ton mass of the Skylark tossed and pitched like a child’s plaything. Those inside her heard the sharp, spiteful crack of the machine-gun, and an instant later they heard a report that paralyzed their senses, even inside the vessel and in the thin air of their enormous elevation, as the largest X-plosive bullet prepared by the inventors struck full upon the side of the hideous body. There was no smoke, no gas or vapor of any kind—only a huge volume of intolerable flame as the energy stored within the atoms of copper, instantaneously liberated, heated to incandescence and beyond all the atmosphere within a radius of hundreds of feet. The monster disappeared utterly, and Seaton, with unerring hand, reversed the bar and darted back down toward the fleet of airships. He reached them in time to focus the attractor upon the wrecked and helpless plane in the middle of its five-thousand-foot fall and lowered it gently to the ground, surrounded by the fleet.