E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  XIV

  Seaton opened his eyes and gazed about him wonderingly. Only half conscious, bruised and sore in every part, he could not remember what had happened. Instinctively drawing a deep breath, he coughed as the plus-pressure gas filled his lungs, bringing with it a complete understanding of the situation. He tore off his helmet and drew himself across to Dorothy’s couch.

  She was still alive!

  He placed her face downward upon the floor and began artificial respiration. Soon he was rewarded by the coughing he had longed to hear. Snatching off her helmet, he seized her in his arms, while she sobbed convulsively on his shoulder. The first ecstasy of their greeting over, she started guiltily.

  ‘Oh, Dick! See about Peggy – I wonder if …’

  ‘Never mind,’ Crane said. ‘She is doing nicely.’

  Crane had already revived the stranger. DuQuesne was nowhere in sight. Dorothy blushed vividly and disengaged her arms from around Seaton’s neck. Seaton, also blushing, dropped his arms and Dorothy floated away, clutching frantically at a hand-hold just out of her reach.

  ‘Pull me down, Dick!’ Dorothy laughed.

  Seaton grabbed her ankle unthinkingly, neglecting his own anchorage, and they floated in the air together. Martin and Margaret, each holding a line, laughed heartily.

  ‘Tweet, tweet – I’m a canary,’ Seaton said, flapping his arms.

  ‘Toss us a line, Mart.’

  ‘A Dicky-bird, you mean,’ Dorothy said.

  Crane studied the floating pair with mock gravity.

  ‘That is a peculiar pose, Dick. What is it supposed to represent – Zeus sitting on his throne?’

  ‘I’ll sit on your neck, you lug, if you don’t get a wiggle on with that rope!’

  As he spoke, however, he came within reach of the ceiling, and could push himself and his companion to a line.

  Seaton put a bar into one of the engines and, after flashing the warning light, applied a little power. The Skylark seemed to leap under them; then everything had its normal weight once more.

  ‘Now that things have settled down a little,’ Dorothy said, ‘I’ll introduce you two to Miss Margaret Spencer, a very good friend of mine. These are the boys I told you so much about, Peggy. This is Dr Dick Seaton, my fiancé. He knows everything there is to be known about atoms, electrons, neutrons, and so forth. And this is Mr Martin Crane, who is a simply wonderful inventor. He made all these engines and things.’

  ‘I may have heard of Mr Crane,’ Margaret said, eagerly. ‘My father was an inventor, too, and he used to talk about a man named Crane who invented a lot of instruments for supersonic planes. He said they revolutionized flying. I wonder if you are that Mr Crane?’

  ‘That is unjustifiably high praise, Miss Spencer,’ Crane replied, uncomfortable, ‘but as I have done a few things along that line I could be the man he referred to.’

  ‘If I may change the subject,’ Seaton said, ‘where’s DuQuesne?’

  ‘He went to clean up. Then he was going to the galley to check damage and see about something to eat.’

  ‘Stout fella!’ Dorothy applauded. ‘Food! And especially about cleaning up – if you know what I mean and I think you do. Come on, Peggy, I know where our room is.’

  ‘What a girl!’ Seaton said as the women left, Dorothy half-supporting her companion. ‘She’s bruised and beat up from one end to the other. She’s more than half dead yet – she didn’t have enough life left in her to flag a hand-car. She can’t even walk; she can just barely hobble. And did she let out one single yip? I ask to know. “Business as usual,” all the way, if it kills her. What a girl!’

  ‘Include Miss Spencer in that, too, Dick. Did she “let out any yips”? And she was not in nearly as good shape as Dorothy was to start with.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Seaton agreed, wonderingly. ‘She’s got plenty of guts, too. Those two women, Marty my old and stinky chum, are blinding flashes and deafening reports … Well, let’s go get a bath and shave. And shove the air-conditioners up a couple of notches, will you?’

  When they came back they found the two girls seated at one of the ports. ‘Did you dope yourself up, Dot?’ Seaton asked.

  ‘Yes, both of us. With amylophene. I’m getting to be a slave to the stuff.’ She made a wry face.

  Seaton grimaced too. ‘So did we. Ouch! Nice stuff that amylophene.’

  ‘But come over here and look out of this window. Did you ever see anything like it?’

  As the four heads bent, so close together, an awed silence fell upon the little group. For the blackness of the black of the interstellar void is not the darkness of an Earthly night, but the absolute absence of light – a black beside which that of platinum dust is merely gray. Upon this indescribably black backdrop there glowed faint patches which were nebulae; there blazed hard, brilliant, multi-colored, dimensionless points of light which were stars.

  ‘Jewels on black velvet,’ Dorothy breathed. ‘Oh, gorgeous … wonderful!’

  Through their wonder a thought struck Seaton. He leaped to the board. ‘Look here, Mart. I didn’t recognize a thing out there and I wondered why. We’re heading away from the Earth and we must be making plenty of light-speeds. The swing around that big dud was really something, of course, but the engine should have … or should it?’

  ‘I think not … Unexpected, but not a surprise. That close to Roche’s Limit, anything might happen.’

  ‘And did, I guess. We’ll have to check for permanent deformations. But this object-compass still works – let’s see how far we are away from home.’

  They took a reading and both men figured the distance.

  ‘What d’you make it, Mart? I’m afraid to tell you my result.’

  ‘Forty-six point twenty-seven light-centuries. Check?’

  ‘Check. We’re up the well-known creek without a paddle … The time was twenty-three thirty-two by the chronometer – good thing you built it to stand going through a stone-crusher. My watch’s a total loss. They all are, I imagine. We’ll read it again in an hour or so and see how fast we’re going. I’ll be scared witless to say that figure out loud, too.’

  ‘Dinner is announced,’ said DuQuesne, who had been standing at the door, listening.

  The wanderers, battered, stiff and sore, seated themselves at a folding table. While eating, Seaton watched the engine – when he was not watching Dorothy – and talked to her. Crane and Margaret chatted easily. DuQuesne, except when addressed directly, maintained a self-sufficient silence.

  After another observation Seaton said, ‘DuQuesne, we’re almost five thousand light-years away from Earth, and getting farther away at about one light-year per minute.’

  ‘It’d be poor technique to ask how you know?’

  ‘It would. Those figures are right. But we’ve got only four bars of copper left. Enough to stop us and some to spare, but not nearly enough to get us back, even by drifting – too many lifetimes on the way.’

  ‘So we land somewhere and dig us some copper.’

  ‘Check. What I wanted to ask you – isn’t a copper-bearing sun apt to have copper-bearing planets?’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  ‘Then take the spectroscope, will you, and pick out a sun somewhere up ahead – down ahead, I mean – for us to shoot at? And Mart, I s’pose we’d better take our regular twelve-hour tricks – no, eight; we’ve got to either trust the guy or kill him – I’ll take the first watch. Beat it to bed.’

  ‘Not so fast.’ Crane said. ‘If I remember correctly, it’s my turn.’

  ‘Ancient history doesn’t count. I’ll flip you a nickel for it. Heads, I win.’

  Seaton won, and the worn-out travelers went to their rooms – all except Dorothy, who lingered to bid her lover a more intimate goodnight.

  Seated beside him, his arm around her and her head on his shoulder, she sat blissfully until she noticed, for the first time, her bare left hand. She caught her breath and her eyes grew round.

  ‘Smatter, Red?’

&
nbsp; ‘Oh, Dick!’ she exclaimed in dismay, ‘I simply forgot everything about taking what was left of my ring out of the doctor’s engine!’

  ‘Huh? What are you talking about?’

  She told him; and he told her about Martin and himself.

  ‘Oh, Dick – Dick– it’s so wonderful to be with you again!’ she concluded. ‘I lived as many years as we covered miles!’

  ‘It was tough … you had it a lot worse than we did … but it makes me ashamed all over to think of the way I blew my stack at Wilson’s. If it hadn’t been for Martin’s cautious old bean we’d’ve … we owe him a lot, Dimples.’

  ‘Yes, we do … but don’t worry about the debt, Dick. Just don’t ever let slip a word to Peggy about Martin being rich, is all.’

  ‘Oh, a matchmaker now? But why not? She wouldn’t think any less of him – that’s one reason I’m marrying you, you know – for your money.’

  Dorothy snickered sunnily. ‘I know. But listen, my poor, dumb, fortune-hunting darling – if Peggy had any idea that Martin is the one and only M. Reynolds Crane she’d curl right up into a ball. She’d think he’d think she was chasing him and then he would think so. As it is, he acts perfectly natural. He hasn’t talked that way to any girl except me for five years, and he wouldn’t talk to me until he found out for sure I wasn’t out after him.’

  ‘Could be, pet,’ Seaton agreed. ‘On one thing you really chirped it – he’s been shot at so much he’s wilder than a hawk!’

  At the end of eight hours Crane took over and Seaton stumbled to his room, where he slept for over ten hours like a man in a trance. Then, rising, he exercised and went out into the saloon.

  Dorothy, Peggy and Crane were at breakfast; Seaton joined them. They ate the gayest, most carefree meal they had had since leaving Earth. Some of the worst bruises still showed a little, but, under the influence of the potent if painful amylophene, all soreness, stiffness, and pain had disappeared.

  After they had finished eating, Seaton said, ‘You suggested, Mart, that those gyroscope bearings may have been stressed beyond the yield-point. I’ll take an integrating goniomete …’

  ‘Break that down to our size, Dick – Peggy’s and mine,’ Dorothy said.

  ‘Can do. Take some tools and see if anything got bent out of shape back there. It might be an idea, Dot, to come along and hold my head while I think.’

  ‘That is an idea – if you never have another one.’

  Crane and Margaret went over and sat down at one of the crystal-clear ports. She told him her story frankly and fully, shuddering with horror as she recalled the awful, helpless fall during which Perkins had been killed.

  ‘We have a heavy score to settle with that Steel crowd and with DuQuesne,’ Crane said, slowly. ‘We can convict him of abduction now … Perkins’s death wasn’t murder, then?’

  ‘Oh, no. He was just like a mad animal. He had to kill him. But the doctor, as they call him, is just as bad. He’s so utterly heartless and ruthless, so cold and scientific, it gives me the compound shivers, just to think about him.’

  ‘And yet Dorothy said he saved her life?’

  ‘He did, from Perkins; but that was just as strictly pragmatic as everything else he has ever done. He wanted her alive: dead, she wouldn’t have been any use to him. He’s as nearly a robot as any human being can be, that’s what I think.’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with you … Nothing would please Dick better than a good excuse for killing him.’

  ‘He isn’t the only one. And the way he ignores what we all feel shows what a machine he is … What’s that?’ The Skylark had lurched slightly.

  ‘Just a swing around a star, probably.’ He looked at the board, then led her to a lower port. ‘We are passing the star Dick was heading for, far too fast to stop. DuQuesne will pick out another. See that planet over there’– he pointed – ‘and that smaller one, there?’

  She saw the two planets – one like a small moon, the other much smaller – and watched the sun increase rapidly in size as the Skylark flew on at such a pace that any Earthly distance would have been covered as soon as it was begun. So appalling was their velocity that the ship was bathed in the light of that strange sun only for moments, then was surrounded again by darkness.

  Their seventy-two-hour flight without a pilot had seemed a miracle; now it seemed entirely possible that they could fly in a straight line for weeks without encountering any obstacle, so vast was the emptiness in comparison with the points of light scattered about in it. Now and then they passed closely enough to a star so that it seemed to move fairly rapidly; but for the most part the stars stood, like distant mountain peaks to travelers in a train, in the same position for many minutes.

  Awed by the immensity of the universe, the two at the window were silent, not with the silence of embarrassment but with that of two friends in the presence of a thing far beyond the reach of words. As they stared out into infinity, each felt as never before the pitiful smallness of the whole world they had known, and the insignificance of human beings and their works. Silently their minds reached out to each other in understanding.

  Unconsciously Margaret half shuddered and moved closer to Crane; and a tender look came over Crane’s face as he looked down at the beautiful young woman at his side. For she was beautiful. Rest and food had erased the marks of her imprisonment. Dorothy’s deep and unassumed faith in the ability of Seaton and Crane had quieted her fears. And finally, a costume of Dorothy’s well-made – and exceedingly expensive! – clothes, which fitted her very well and in which she looked her best and knew it, had completely restored her self-possession.

  He looked up quickly and again studied the stars; but now, in addition to the wonders of space, he saw a mass of wavy black hair, high-piled upon a queenly head; deep brown eyes veiled by long, black lashes; sweet, sensitive lips; a firmly rounded, dimpled chin; and a beautifully formed young body.

  ‘How stupendous … how unbelievably great this is … Margaret whispered. ‘How vastly greater than any perception one could possibly get on Earth … and yet …

  She paused, with her lip caught under two white teeth, then went on, hesitatingly, ‘But doesn’t it seem to you, Mr Crane, that there is something in man as great as even all this? That there must be, or Dorothy and I could not be sailing out here in such a wonderful thing as this Skylark, which you and Dick Seaton have made?’

  Days passed. Dorothy timed her waking hours with those of Seaton – preparing his meals and lightening the tedium of his long vigils at the board – and Margaret did the same thing for Crane. But often they assembled in the saloon, while DuQuesne was on watch, and there was much fun and laughter, as well as serious discussion, among the four. Margaret, already adopted as a friend, proved a delightful companion. Her ready tongue, her quick, delicate wit, and her facility of expression delighted all three.

  One day Crane suggested to Seaton that they should take notes, in addition to the photographs they had been taking.

  ‘I know comparatively little of astronomy, but, with the instruments we have, we should be able to get data, especially on planetary systems, which would be of interest to astronomers. Miss Spencer, being a secretary, could help us?’

  ‘Sure,’ Seaton said. ‘That’s an idea – nobody else ever had a chance to do it before.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to – taking notes is the best thing I do!’ Margaret cried, and called for pad and pencils.

  After that, the two worked together for several hours on each of Martin’s off shifts.

  The Skylark passed one solar system after another, with a velocity so great that it was impossible to land. Margaret’s association with Crane, begun as a duty, became a very real pleasure for them both. Working together in research, sitting together at the board in easy conversation or in equally easy silence, they compressed into days more real companionship than is usually possible in months.

  Oftener and oftener, as time went on, Crane found the vision of his dream home floating in his min
d as he steered the Skylark in her meteoric flight or as he lay strapped into his narrow bunk. Now, however, the central figure of the vision, instead of being a blur, was clear and sharply defined. And for her part, Margaret was drawn more and more to the quiet and unassuming, but steadfast young inventor, with his wide knowledge and his keen, incisive mind.

  The Skylark finally slowed down enough to make a landing possible, and course was laid toward the nearest planet of a copper-bearing sun. As vessel neared planet a wave of excitement swept through four of the five. They watched the globe grow larger, glowing white, its outline softened by the atmosphere surrounding it. It had two satellites; its sun, a great, blazing orb, looked so big and so hot that Margaret became uneasy.

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous to get so close, Dick?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Watching the pyrometers is part of the pilot’s job. Any overheating and he’d snatch us away in a hurry.’

  They dropped into the atmosphere and on down, almost to the surface. The air was breathable, its composition being very similar to that of Earth’s air, except that the carbon dioxide was substantially higher. Its pressure was somewhat high, but not too much; its temperature, while high, was endurable. The planet’s gravitational pull was about ten per cent higher than Earth’s. The ground was almost hidden by a rank growth of vegetation, but here and there appeared glade-like openings.

  Landing upon one of the open spaces, they found the ground solid and stepped out. What appeared to be a glade was in reality a rock; or rather a ledge of apparently solid metal, with scarcely a loose fragment to be seen. At one end of the ledge rose a giant tree, wonderfully symmetrical, but of a peculiar form, its branches being longer at the top than at the bottom, and having broad, dark-green leaves, long horns, and odd, flexible, shoot-like tendrils. It stood as an outpost of the dense vegetation beyond. The fern-trees, towering two hundred feet or more into the air were totally unlike the forests of Earth. They were an intensely vivid green and stood motionless in the still, hot air. Not a sign of animal life was to be seen; the whole landscape seemed to be asleep.