Skylark DuQuesne s-4

by Edward E Smith

  Sleemet’s strange eyes glowed. “If you will go mind to mind with me on that I can now assure you of such cooperation as no member of my race has ever given to any non-Fenachrone form of life,” he declared; and DuQuesne handed him a headset.

  It wasn’t easy, not even for such an accomplished liar as Marc C. DuQuesne was, to make the four-dim gizmo very much more incomprehensible than it actually was; but he accomplished the feat — and he actually did give Sleemet practically everything else.

  The DQ went into a one-day orbit above one point of an immense plain of the barren planet that was its goal. A plain some ten thousand square miles of which became forthwith an Area of Work. Enormous mechanisms sprang into being, by means of which DuQuesne and several hundred top-bracket Fenachrone engineers sent gigantic beams of force hurtling across the galaxy to the Skylark of Valeron and to hundreds of thousands of other micrometrically determined points.

  But not Sleemet. That wight, knowing now almost everything that DuQuesne knew, was working in his own private laboratory — working with all the power of his tremendous mind on the various mental aspects of the battle of giants to come.

  Hour after hour, Crane worked in his master control at the base of the Brain, with Madame Barlo and Drasnik and Margaret, each wearing an extra-complex headset, sitting close to him. They were mapping and modeling three galaxies, on such a large scale that the vast “tank” of the Skylark of Valeron was millions of times too small. They were using a discus-shaped volume of open space some ten light-years in diameter and three light-years thick.

  Galaxy DW-427-LU was already meticulously in place; its every celestial body being represented by a characteristically colored light. “Above” Galaxy DW-427-LU and “below” it (the terms are used in the explanatory sense only; “on one side of” and “on the other side of” could be used just as well) as close to it as possible, two other galaxies were being modeled; each as nearly like DW-427-LU in size and shape as could be found in that part of the First Universe. They were so close together that in many places the three models actually interpenetrated.

  Now in the space-time continuum of the strictly material — the plenum in which we ungifted human beings live and which our friends the semanticists would have us believe is the only one having any reality — the map is not the territory. That is taken as being axiomatic. In the demesne of The Talent, however, known to some scholars as psionics and to scoffers as magic or witchcraft, the map is — and definitely! — the territory.

  Thus, as Madame Barlo and Drasnik, those two matched poles of tremendous power; and Crane, the superlatively able coordinator and his matching pole Margaret; and that immense Brain — as these five labored together, the “map” (in this case the meticulously accurate space-chart) became filled with tendrils and filaments of psionic force, connecting models of suns with models of suns and those of planets with those of planets. And as those joinings occurred in the map, the same joinings occurred in the actual galaxies out in deep space.

  Those joinings were invisible, it is true, and intangible, and indetectable to any physical instrument. But they were nevertheless as real as was the almost infinite power from which they sprang.

  The other pairs of psiontists were also hard at work. Fodan and Grand Dame Barlo, Sacner Carfon and KayLee, Charles van der Gleiss and Madlyn Mannis, Mergon and his Luloy, Tammon and Sennlloy — all were shooting heavy charges fast and flawlessly straight. And as all those matched pairs labored, and as the automatics of pure psionic force they produced reproduced themselves in geometric ratio, the intergalactic couplings increased at a rate that was that ratio squared.

  Seaton was fantastically busy, too. He was deep in his controller, with Dorothy and Stephanie de Marigny, both helmeted, one on each side of him. Dorothy, was, of course, his matched pole of power; Stephanie was his link to DuQuesne. He, too, was operating a ten-thousand-square-mile Area of Work with the speed of thought and he was not making any mistakes. It is true that the Skylark of Valeron was the biggest thing he had ever built before, and that the members with which he was working now were parsecs instead of inches long. Nevertheless each one fitted perfectly into place and every one that was supposed to connect with anything of DuQuesne’s connected perfectly therewith. After many hours of this furiously grinding work, a myriad of hells began to break out, at the rate of hundreds of thousands per second. Of hells, that is, infinitely hotter than anything imaginable by man. Of super-novae, no less. In one galaxy, a large hot sun vanished…

  It reappeared instantaneously — with no lapse of time whatever — close beside the sun of a Chloran-dominated solar system in Galaxy DW-427-LU.

  And in that same no-time the Tellus-type planet in the Chloran system vanished therefrom and reappeared in a precisely similar orbit around a Type G dwarf sun in Galaxy B, the third galaxy in the psiontists’ tremendous working model.

  And those two suns in the Chloran solar system in Galaxy DW-427-LU, with photospheres in contact and with intrinsic velocities not only diametrically opposed but increased horribly by their mutual force of gravitation, crashed together in direct central impact and splashed with tremendous force.

  Except for the heat, the collision might have lasted for a long time. But heat was the all-important factor — the starkly incomprehensible heat of hundreds of millions of Centigrade degrees.

  Each of those suns was already an atomic furnace in precise equilibrium, generating and radiating the energy of some five million tons per second of matter being converted completely into energy. Thus there was no place for the added energy of billions of tons of matter to go. It could not be absorbed and it could not be radiated. Therefore the whole enormous mass of super-hot, super-dense material began to go into the long series of ultra-atomic explosions that is the formation of a supersuper-nova — the most utterly, the most fantastically violent display of pure, raw energy known to or possible in the universe of man.

  Flares and prominences of this insanely detonating material were hurled upward and outward for millions upon millions of miles. Shock-wave after shock-wave, so hellishly hot as to be invisible for days, raged and raved spherically outward; converting instantaneously all the flotsam in their paths into their own unknown composition or atomic and subatomic debris. Planets lasted a little longer. Oceans and mountain ranges boiled briefly; after which each world evaporated comparatively slowly, as does a drop of water riding a cushion of its own steam on a hot steel plate. And the sphere of annihilation, ravening outward with unabated ferocity, reached and passed the outermost limits of the Chloran solar system and kept on going…

  On and on… And on…

  Until there came to pass an event which not even Seaton, not even Madame Barlo herself had foreseen… and an event which nearly canceled all their efforts and their lives as well; for the Chlorans were not left without resources even in the destruction of their galaxy…

  29. DUQUESNE TO THE RESCUE

  As has been said, the Chlorans of Galaxy DW-427-LU as a race were more conversant with the Talent than were any of the human or near-human races of the First Galaxy: that is, with the phases or facets of it that had to do with the remarkable hypnotic qualities of their minds. Thus their mathematicians were more or less familiar with no-space-no-time theory, and some of the Greater Great Ones had played with it a little more or less for fun, in practice. Since they had never had any real use for it as a weapon, however, it had never been fully developed.

  Thus there were no detectors or feeling for that type of attack. “It was not sixth-order, but no-space-no-time, which is no-order.” Thus millions upon millions of Chloran planets were destroyed without any intelligent entity either giving or receiving warning that an attack was being made.

  And that was the way Richard Seaton wanted it. This was not a game; not a chivalric tournament. This was a matter of life and death, in which the forces of human civilization, outnumbered untold billions to one, needed all the advantage they could get.

  Unfortunately for S
eaton’s desires and expectations, the Chlorans had a Galactic Institute for Advanced Study.

  In common with all such institutions everywhere, its halls harbored at least one devotee of any nameable subject, however recondite or arcane that subject might be. So there was one old professor of advanced optical hypnosis who, as a hobby, had been delving into no-space-no-time for a couple of hundred years. He did not feel the light preliminary surveying tendrils of the human witches; but when the big Gunther beams began to come in he became interested fast and got busy fast.

  He called his first assistant and his most advanced student — the latter a Greater Great One who was also interested in and a possessor of the Talent and thus familiar with the mysterious power of the number three — and, synchronizing their three minds, they traced those beams to the Skylark of Valeron and the DQ, and to Seaton and to Crane and to DuQuesne.

  “First,” the professor told his two weaker fellows, “we will attune our Union of Three to theirs and break it apart with blasts of psionic force. Then, each of us having tuned to one of the separated strands, we will kill the three murderers forthwith.”

  And the Chlorans proceeded to do their best to bring this event about — and their best was very potent indeed.

  If things did not quite work out the way they had planned it, it was no fault of the individual Chlorans. Their minds were fully capable of killing three “murderers” at a distance. The first enormous surge of mental energy they thrust into the Tellurian union of minds destroyed its fabric. The coupling of “poles of power” was wrenched asunder.

  The individual minds of the operators were left alone against the Chloran thrust… and each of the three Chlorans selected one of the three mightiest intellects of their enemies and commanded it to die.

  In that moment, Seaton, Crane and DuQuesne were seized and pinned. The minds that thundered destruction at them were not merely of great intrinsic power, carefully trained: they were backed up by all the million-year evolution of Chloran science, aided by the impact of total surprise.

  The three helpless Tellurians were helpless before they knew what hit them.

  But they did not die. What saved them was DuQuesne’s bargain with the Fenachrone.

  Sleemet had had a few microseconds’ warning by that Fenachrone ferocity, and the backing of every last member of his feral race.

  His primary purpose was, of course, the defense of DuQuesne’s life — not for the sake of DuQuesne, to be sure, but for the protection of the Fenachrone. He succeeded.

  DuQuesne’s rigidity melted and he was back in control of himself, his own great intellect reinforcing Sleemet’s counterblows. The two of them had enough psionic power left over to help Seaton and Crane… but not enough. The blow had been too powerful and too sudden.

  Both Seaton and Crane slumped bonelessly to the floor of the control room, leaving their controllers empty and idle.

  In that moment the one great pole of strength left to humankind was-Dr. Marc C.

  DuQuesne.

  To Dorothy Seaton, that moment was pure horror. It was every terrible fear she had ever thought of, all come to pass at once: Seaton disabled, perhaps dying; DuQuesne in control of all the mighty resources of the Skylark. Dorothy shrieked and leaped from her chair.

  And was stopped in her tracks by DuQuesne’s shout, crackling out of a speaker to emphasize his hard-driven thoughts:

  “Dorothy! Margaret! Quit it! Pick up your loads and carry ’em. Pole to me!”

  And Dorothy hesitated, irresolute, torn between her love for Seaton and her urgent duty to help against the Chlorans, while the whole vast net of human mental energies wavered and hung in the balance.

  “Now!” snarled DuQuesne, the thought like a lash. “Move! To hell with the dead—”

  Dorothy screamed again — “You’re still alive! But you won’t be long if you goof off!”

  Rapidly he scanned the quavering net. “You Barlo women and your poles! Drop what you’re doing and locate this interference for me — fast! All of you — find it for me so I can slug it! Hunkie? Yeah — good girl! Stay with it just as you are!”

  “But DuQuesne,” Dorothy protested, “I’ve got to…”

  “Oh, hell!” DuQuesne wrenched out, every nuance of his tone showing the tremendous strain under which he was laboring. “Savant Sennlloy! You can’t be spared from there, but have you got a couple of girls who can tune themselves to me?”

  “Yes, Doctor DuQuesne.” Neither she or any other Jelm aboard understood why Seeker Sevance of Xylmny had been masquerading as Doctor Marc C. DuQuesne of Tellus when he received his Call. They all knew, however, that it had to do with his Seeking; hence none of them did anything to interfere with it. “We have many very good mentalists in our party.”

  “Fine! Have two of ’em relieve these two weak sisters here — and fast!”

  “Here we are, sir,” two thoughts came in, in unison. And two powerful female Jelman minds — the minds of two girls with whom he was already very well acquainted — fitted themselves snugglingly to his and picked up the loads that the two Earthwomen had been unable to carry.

  It was not that either of those Earthwomen was weak. Both were tremendously strong; mentally and psychically. Both disliked DuQuesne so intensely, however, that it was psychologically impossible for either of them to work with him. Of course, he regarded that fact itself as an extreme weakness. Sentiment was as bad as sentimentality, he held, and both bored him to tears.

  “Ah, that’s better.” DuQuesne’s thought was a sigh of relief. “That makes it at least possible.”

  And it did. DuQuesne and his two new assistants did not do much to keep the wave of destruction sweeping through Galaxy DW-427-LU, but he and they, with a lot of very high-powered Fenachrone help, did hold the Chloran attackers at bay until the three witches and the three warlocks found the planet upon which the Chloran Galactic Institute of Advanced Study was located. Then, with locked teeth and hard-set muscles and sweating face, he made the superhuman effort required to drive that three-man beam single-handed and keep those three rabid Chloran attackers at bay besides.

  By a miracle of coordination and timing he did it — and practically collapsed when all attack and all necessity of resistance ceased. The Chloran Institute simply ceased to be. Its members died. DuQuesne recovered so quickly that no one else except the two Jelman girls knew that he had been affected at all.

  “Dorothy! Margaret! Break it up!” he snapped. Doctors had been working on Seaton and Crane for minutes. Both were beginning to recover consciousness. Neither, apparently, had been permanently damaged; and both their wives were making enthusiastically joyful noises. “Come on, come on, take them home to do your slobbering over them. The rest of us have work to do — or do you expect us to hold this demolition job up until they organize another threesome to go to the mat with us?”

  Stretchermen carried Seaton and Crane away; Dorothy and Margaret went along. The Chloran blow at the lives of the two Skylarkers had been deadly and fast, but it had not succeeded — quite.

  And the “demolition job” went on.

  In the great light-years-thick “tank” that was the psiontists’ working model of the three galaxies they were manipulating, lights were winking out and reappearing as stars and planets were hurled through four-dimensional curves to new orbits and positions.

  Already Galaxy A — the “raw-material” source that was being used for a supply of suns — was visibly dimmer, visibly poorer in stars. Tens of millions of them had already been stolen away and tossed through four-space into Chloran suns in Galaxy DW-427-LU. And when they reappeared, in a head-on collision course with those Chloran suns, and struck, and destroyed themselves in the titanic outflow of energies that produced super-nova blasts, the model of Galaxy DW-427-LU showed another tiny but blindingly bright flare — and another — and another.

  There were more than fifty thousand million suns to move, in all. As the first targets had been the strongest and most dangerous Chloran sys
tems, resistance soon ceased to matter; the task became monotonous, exhausting and mind-deadening.

  To the Chlorans, of course, it was something else again. They died in uncounted trillions. The greeny-yellow soup that served them for air boiled away. Their halogenous flesh was charred, baked and desiccated in the split-second of the passing of the wave front from each exploding double star, moments before their planets themselves began to seethe and boil. Many died unaware. Most died fighting. Some died in terrible, frantic efforts to escape…

  But they all died.

  And for each sun that DuQuesne’s remorseless net located and flung into the Chloran galaxy, an oxygen-bearing, human-populated planet was snatched out of the teeth of the resulting explosion and carried through four-space into the safety of Galaxy B, there to slip quietly into orbit around a pre-selected, hospital sun. No human world was destroyed in all of Galaxy DW-427-LU.

  It went on and on… And then it was over.

  Marc DuQuesne rose, stretched and yawned. “That’s all. Everybody dismissed,” he said, and at once the vast psiontic net ceased to be. He was alone for the first time in many hours.

  His face was lined, his eyes deeper and darker than ever. Apart from that there was no sign of the great extermination he had just conducted. He was simply Marc DuQuesne. The man who slew a galaxy looked no different after the deed than he had before.

  He allowed his sense of perception to roam for a moment about the “working model”. In Galaxy A, where billions of suns had gone through the stellar cycle of evolution for billions of years, there was scarcely a corporal’s guard of primaries left. It was a strange, almost a frightening sight. For with the loss of the suns the composition of the galaxy had changed to something never before seen in all the plenum of universes.