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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  ‘Margaret – Peggy – I had intended to wait – but why should we wait? You know how much I love you, my dearest!’

  ‘I think I do … I know I do … my Martin!’

  Presently they made their way back to the engine-room, hoping that their singing joy was inaudible, their new status invisible. They might have kept their secret for a time had not Seaton promptly asked, ‘What did you find, Mart?’

  The always self-possessed Crane looked panicky; Margaret’s fair face glowed a deeper and deeper pink.

  ‘Yes, what did you find?’ Dorothy demanded, with a sudden, vivid smile of understanding.

  ‘My future wife,’ Crane answered, steadily.

  The two girls hugged each other and the two men gripped hands, each of the four knowing that in these two unions there was nothing whatever of passing fancy.

  A planet was located and the Skylark flew toward it.

  ‘It’s pretty deep in, Mart. DuQuesne and I haven’t got enough dope yet to plot this mess of suns, so we don’t know exactly where any of them really are, but that planet’s somewhere down in the middle. Would that make any difference?’

  ‘No. There are many closer ones, but they are too big or too small or lack water or atmosphere or have some other drawback. Go ahead.’

  When they neared atmosphere and cut the drive, there were seventeen great suns, scattered in all directions in the sky.

  ‘Air-pressure at the surface, thirty pounds per square inch.

  ‘Composition, approximately normal except for three-tenths of one per cent of a fragrant, non-poisonous gas with which I am not familiar. Temperature, one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Surface gravity, four-tenths Earth,’ came the various reports.

  Seaton let the vessel settle slowly toward the ocean beneath them; the water was an intensely deep blue. He took a sample, ran it through the machine, and yelled.

  ‘Ammoniacal copper sulphate! Hot dog! Let’s go!’ Seaton laid a course toward the nearest continent.

  XVI

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

  ‘Wonder what that racket is,’ Seaton said. ‘Sounds like big guns and high explosive – not atomic, though.’

  ‘Check,’ DuQuesne said. ‘Even allowing for the density of this air, that kind of noise is not made by pop-guns.’

  Seaton closed the lock to keep out the noise, and advanced the speed lever until the vessel tilted sharply under the pull of the engine.

  ‘Go easy, Seaton,’ DuQuesne cautioned. ‘We don’t want to stop one of their shells – they may not be like ours.’

  ‘Easy it is. I’ll stay high.’

  As the Skylark closed up, the sound grew heavier and clearer. It was one practically continuous explosion.

  ‘There they are,’ said Seaton, who, from his board, could scan the whole field of vision. ‘From port six, five o’clock low.’

  While the other four were making their way to the indicated viewpoint Seaton went on. ‘Aerial battleships, eight of ’em. Four are about the shape of ours – no wings, act like ’copters – but I never saw anything like the other four.’

  Neither had either Crane or DuQuesne.

  ‘They must be animals,’ Crane decided, finally. ‘I do not believe that any engineer, anywhere, would design machines like that.’

  Four of the contestants were animals. Here indeed was a new kind of animal – an animal able and eager to engage a first-class battleship.

  Each had an enormous, torpedo-shape body, with scores of long tentacles and a dozen or so immense wings. Each had a row of eyes along each side and a sharp, prow-like beak. Each was covered with scale-like plates of transparent armor; wings and tentacles were made of the same substance.

  That it was real and highly effective armor there was no doubt, for each battleship bristled with guns and each gun was putting out an almost continuous stream of fire. Shells bursting against the creatures filled the region with flame and haze, and produced an uninterrupted roll of sound appalling in its intensity.

  In spite of that desperate concentration of fire, however, the animals went straight in. Beaks tore yards-wide openings in hulls; flailing wings smashed superstructures flat; writhing, searching tentacles wrenched guns from their mounts and seized personnel. Out of action, one battleship was held while tentacles sought out and snatched its crew. Then it was dropped, to crash some twenty thousand feet below. One animal was blown apart. Two more battleships and two more animals went down.

  The remaining battleship was half wrecked; the animal was as good as new. Thus the final duel did not last long.

  The monster darted away after something, which the observers in the Skylark saw for the first time – a fleet of small airships in full flight away from the scene of battle. Fast as they were, the animal was covering three miles to their one.

  ‘We can’t stand for anything like that!’ Seaton cried, as he threw on power and the Skylark leaped ahead. ‘When I yank him away, Mart, sock him with a Mark Ten!’

  The monster seized the largest, most gaily decorated plane just as the Skylark came within sighting distance. In four almost simultaneous motions Seaton focused the attractor on the huge beak of the thing, shoved on its power, pointed the engine straight up and gave it five notches.

  There was a crash of rending metal as the monster was torn loose from its prey. Seaton hauled it straight up for a hundred miles, while it struggled so savagely in that invisible and in-comprehensive grip that the thousands of tons of mass of the Skylark tossed and pitched like a rowboat in a storm at sea.

  Crane fired. There was a blare of sound that paralyzed their senses, even inside the vessel and in the thin air of that enormous elevation. There was a furiously-boiling, furiously-expanding ball of … of what? The detonation of a Mark Ten load cannot be described. It must be seen; and even then, it cannot be understood. It can scarcely be believed.

  No bit large enough to be seen remained of that mass of almost indestructible armor.

  Seaton reversed the bar and drove straight down, catching the crippled flagship at about five thousand feet. He focused the attractor and lowered the plane gently to the ground. The other airships, which had been clustering around their leader in near-suicidal attempts at rescue, landed nearby.

  As the Skylark landed beside the wrecked plane, the Earthmen saw that it was surrounded by a crowd of people – men and women identical in form and feature with themselves. They were a superbly-molded race. The men were almost as big as Seaton and DuQuesne; the women were noticeably taller than the two Earthwomen. The men wore collars of metal, numerous metallic ornaments, and heavily-jeweled belts and shoulder-straps which were hung with weapons. The women were not armed, but were even more highly decorated than the men. They fairly scintillated with jewels.

  The natives wore no clothing, and their smooth skins shone a dark, livid, utterly strange color in the yellowish-bluish-green glare of the light. Their skins were green, undoubtedly; but it was no green known to Earth. The ‘whites’ of their eyes were a light yellowish-green. The heavy hair of the women and the close-cropped locks of the men were a very dark green – almost black – as were also their eyes.

  ‘What a color,’ Seaton said, wonderingly. ‘They’re human, I guess … except for the color … but Great Cat, what a color!’

  ‘How much of that is pigment and how much is due to this light is a question,’ said Crane. ‘If we were outside, away from our daylight lamps, we might look like that, too.’

  ‘Horrors, I hope not!’ Dorothy exclaimed. ‘If I’m going to I won’t take a step out of this ship, so there!’

  ‘Sure you will,’ Seaton said. ‘You’ll look like a choice piece of modern art and your hair will be jet black. Come on and give the natives a treat.’

  ‘Then what color will mine be?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘I’m not quite sure. Probably a very dark and very beautiful green,’
he grinned gleefully. ‘My hunch is that this is going to be some visit. Wait ’till I get a couple of props … Shall we go? Come on, Dot.’

  ‘Roger. I’ll try anything, once.’

  ‘Margaret?’

  ‘Onward, men of Earth!’

  Seaton opened the lock and the five stood in the chamber, looking at the throng outside. Seaton raised both arms above his head, in what he hoped was the universal sign of peaceful intent. In response a man of Herculean build, so splendidly decorated that his harness was one gleaming mass of jewels, waved one arm and shouted a command. The crowd promptly fell back, leaving a clear space of a hundred yards. The man unbuckled his harness, let everything drop, and advanced naked toward the Skylark, both arms aloft in Seaton’s own gesture.

  Seaton started down.

  ‘No, Dick, talk to him from here,’ Crane advised.

  ‘Nix,’ Seaton said. ‘What he can do, I can. Except undress in mixed company. He won’t know that I’ve got a gun in my pocket, and it won’t take me more than half an hour to pull it if I have to.’

  ‘Go on, then. DuQuesne and I will come along.’

  ‘Double nix. He’s alone, so I’ve got to be. Some of his boys are covering the field, though, so you might draw your gats and hold them so they show.’

  Seaton stepped down and went to meet the stranger. When they had approached to within a few feet of each other the stranger stopped, stood erect, flexed his left arm smartly, so that the finger-tips touched his left ear, and smiled broadly, exposing clean, shining, green teeth. He spoke – a meaningless jumble of sound. His voice, coming from so big a man, seemed light and thin.

  Seaton smiled in return and saluted as the other had done.

  ‘Hail and greetings, Oh High Panjandrum,’ Seaton said, cordially, his deep voice fairly booming out in the dense, heavy air. ‘I get the drift, and I’m glad you’re peaceable; I wish I could tell you so.’

  The native tapped himself upon the chest. ‘Nalboon,’ he said, distinctly and impressively.

  ‘Nalboon,’ Seaton repeated; then said, in the other’s tone and manner, while pointing to himself, ‘Seaton.’

  ‘See Tin,’ Nalboon said, and smiled again. Again indicating himself, he said, ‘Domak gok Mardonale.’

  That was evidently a title, so Seaton had to give himself one. ‘Boss of the Road,’ he said, drawing himself up with pride.

  Thus properly introduced to his visitor, Nalboon pointed to the crippled plane, inclined his royal head slightly in thanks or in acknowledgement of the service rendered – Seaton could not tell which – then turned to face his people with one arm upraised. He shouted an order in which Seaton could distinguish something that sounded like ‘See Tin Basz Uvvy Roagd.’

  Instantly every right arm in the crowd was aloft, that of each man bearing a weapon, while the left arms snapped into that peculiar salute. A mighty cry arose as all repeated the name and title of the distinguished visitor.

  Seaton turned. ‘Bring out one of those big four-color signal rockets, Mart!’ he called. ‘We’ve got to acknowledge a reception like this!’

  The party appeared, DuQuesne carrying the rocket with an exaggerated deference. Seaton shrugged one shoulder and a cigarette-case appeared in his hand. Nalboon started and, in spite of his self-control, glanced at it in surprise. The case flew open and Seaton, after taking a cigarette, pointed to another.

  ‘Smoke?’ he asked, affably. Nalboon took one, but had no idea whatever of what to do with it. This astonishment at simple sleight-of-hand and ignorance of tobacco emboldened Seaton. Reaching into his mouth, he pulled out a flaming match – at which Nalboon jumped straight backward at least a foot. Then, while Nalboon and his people watched in straining attention, Seaton lit the weed, half-consumed it in two long drags, swallowed the half, regurgitated it still alight, took another puff, and swallowed the butt.

  ‘I’m good, I admit, but not that good,’ Seaton said to Crane. ‘I never laid ’em in the aisles like that before. This rocket’ll tie ’em up like pretzels. Keep clear, everybody.’

  He bowed deeply to Nalboon, pulling a lighted match from his ear as he did so, and lighted the fuse. There was a roar, a shower of sparks, a blaze of colored fire as the rocket flew upward; but, to Seaton’s surprise, Nalboon took it quite as a matter of course, merely saluting gravely in acknowledgement of the courtesy.

  Seaton motioned his party to come up and turned to Crane. ‘Better not, Dick. Let him keep on thinking that one Boss is all there is.’

  ‘Not by a long shot. There’s only one of him – two of us bosses would be twice as good.’ He introduced Crane, with great ceremony, as ‘Boss of the Skylark,’ whereupon the grand salute of the people was repeated.

  Nalboon gave an order, and a squad of soldiers brought up a group of people, apparently prisoners. Seven men and seven women, they were of a much lighter color than the natives. They were naked, except for jeweled collars worn by all and a thick metal belt worn by one of the men. They all walked proudly, scorn for their captors in every step.

  Nalboon barked an order. Thirteen of the prisoners stared back at him, motionlessly defiant. The man wearing the belt, who had been studying Seaton closely, said something, whereupon they all prostrated themselves. Nalboon waved his hand – giving the group to Seaton and Crane. They accepted the gift with due thanks and the slaves placed themselves behind their new masters.

  Seaton and Crane then tried to make Nalboon understand that they wanted copper, but failed dismally. Finally Seaton led the native into the ship and showed him the remnant of the power-bar, indicating its original size and giving information as to the number desired by counting to sixteen upon his fingers. Nalboon understood, and, going outside, pointed upward toward the largest of the eleven suns visible, and swung his arm four times in a rising-and-setting arc. He then invited the visitors to get into his plane, but Seaton refused. They would follow, he explained, in their own vessel.

  As they entered the Skylark, the slaves followed.

  ‘We don’t want them aboard, Dick,’ Dorothy protested. There are too many of them. Not that I’m exactly scared, but …

  ‘We’ve got to,’ Seaton decided. ‘We’re stuck with ’em. And besides – when in Rome, you’ve got to be a Roman candle, you know.’

  Nalboon’s newly-invested flagship led the way; the Skylark followed, a few hundred yards behind and above it.

  ‘I don’t get these folks at all,’ Seaton said, thoughtfully. ‘They’ve got next century’s machines, but never heard of sleight-of-hand. Class Nine rockets are old stuff, but matches scare them. Funny.’

  ‘It is surprising enough that their physical shape is the same as ours,’ Crane said. ‘It would be altogether too much to expect that all the details of development would be parallel.’

  The fleet approached a large city and the visitors from Earth studied with interest this metropolis of an unknown world. The buildings were all of the same height, flat-topped, arranged in random squares, rectangles, and triangles. There were no streets, the spaces between the buildings being park-like areas.

  All traffic was in the air. Flying vehicles darted in all directions, but the confusion was only apparent, not real, each class and each direction having its own level.

  The fleet descended toward an immense building just outside the city proper and all landed upon its roof except the flagship, which led the Skylark to a landing-dock nearby.

  As they disembarked Seaton said, ‘Don’t be surprised at anything I pull off – I’m a walking storehouse of all kinds of small junk.’

  Nalboon led the way into an elevator, which dropped to the ground floor. Gates opened, and through ranks of prostrate people the party went out into the palace grounds of the emperor of the great nation of Mardonale.

  It was a scene of unearthly splendor. Every shade of their peculiar spectrum was there, in solid, liquid, and gas. Trees were of all colors, as were grasses and flowers along the walks. Fountains played streams of various and constantly-changing
hues. The air was tinted and perfumed, swirling through metal arches in billows of ever-varying colors and scents. Colors and combinations of colors impossible to describe were upon every hand, fantastically beautiful in that strong, steady, peculiar light.

  ‘Isn’t this gorgeous, Dick?’ Dorothy whispered. ‘But I wish I had a mirror – you look simply awful – what kind of a scarecrow am I?’

  ‘You’ve been under a mercury arc? Like that, only worse. Your hair isn’t as black as I thought it would be, there’s some funny green in it. Your lips, though, are really black. Your teeth are green …’

  ‘Stop it! Green teeth and black lips! That’s enough – and I don’t want a mirror!’

  Nalboon led the way into the palace proper and into a dining hall, where a table was ready. This room had many windows, each of which was festooned with sparkling, scintillating gems. The walls were hung with a cloth resembling spun glass or nylon, which fell to the floor in shimmering waves of color.

  There was no woodwork whatever. Doors, panels, tables and chairs were made of metal. A closer inspection of one of the tapestries showed that it, too, was of metal, its threads numbering thousands to the inch. Of vivid but harmonious colors, of a strange and intricate design, it seemed to writhe as its colors changed with every variation in the color of the light.

  ‘Oh … isn’t that stuff just too perfectly gorgeous?’ Dorothy breathed. ‘I’d give anything for a dress made out of it.’

  ‘Order noted,’ Seaton said. ‘I’ll pick up ten yards of it when we get the copper.’

  ‘We’d better watch the chow pretty close, Seaton,’ DuQuesne said, as Nalboon waved them to the table.

  ‘You chirped it. Copper, arsenic, and so forth. Very little here we can eat much of, I’d say.’

  ‘The girls and I will wait for you two chemists to approve each dish, then,’ Crane said.

  The guests sat down, the light-skinned slaves standing behind them, and servants brought in heaping trays of food. There were joints and cuts of many kinds of meat; birds and fish, raw and cooked in various ways; green, pink, brown, purple, black and near-white vegetables and fruits. Slaves handed the diners peculiar instruments – knives with razor edges, needle-pointed stilettos, and wide, flexible spatulas which evidently were to serve as both forks and spoons.