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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  ‘I don’t know,’ Seaton said. ‘But that isn’t the question. What can we do about it?’

  The three talked briefly, then put on space-suits, which they smeared liberally with thick red paint. Under their helmets they wore extra-heavy welding goggles, so dark in color as to be almost black.

  ‘This’ll stop that kind of monkey business,’ Seaton exulted, as he again threw the Skylark into the Mardonalian fleet.

  It took about fifteen seconds for the enemy to get their projectors focused, during which time some twenty battleships were volatized; but this time the killing light was not alone.

  The men heard, or rather felt, a low, intense, vibration, like a silent wave of sound, a vibration which smote upon the eardrums as no possible sound could smite, a vibration that racked the joints and tortured the nerves as though the whole body were being disintegrated. So sudden and terrible was the effect that Seaton uttered an involuntary yelp of surprise and pain as he once more fled to the safety of space.

  ‘What the devil was that?’ DuQuesne demanded. ‘Can they generate and project infra-sound?’

  ‘Yes,’ Seaton replied. ‘They can do a lot of things that we can’t.’

  ‘If we had some fur suits …’ Crane began, then paused. ‘Put on all the clothes we can, and use ear-plugs?’

  ‘We can do better than that, I think.’ Seaton studied his board. ‘I’ll short out this resistor, so as to put more juice through the repellors. I can get a pretty good vacuum that way; certainly good enough to stop any wave propagated through air.’

  Back within range of the enemy, DuQuesne, reaching for his gun, leaped away from it with a yell. ‘Beat it!’

  Once more at a safe distance, DuQuesne explained.

  ‘That gun had voltage, and plenty of it. It’s lucky that I’m so used to handling hot stuff that I never really make contact with anything at first touch. That’s easy, though. Thick, dry gloves and rubber shields is all we need. It’s a good thing for all of us that you have those fancy handles on your levers, Seaton.’

  ‘That must have been how they got Dunark and his crew. But why didn’t they get you two, then? Oh, I see. They had it tuned to iridium. They don’t know anything about steel – unless they chipped a sample off somewhere – so it took them until now to tune to it.’

  ‘You recognize everything that happens,’ Crane said. ‘Can you tell what they’re going to do next?’

  ‘Not quite everything. This last one was new – it must be the big new one Dunark was worrying about. The others, yes; but the defenses against them are purely Kondalian in technique and material, so we have to roll our own as we go. As to what’s coming next …’ He paused in thought, then went on. ‘I wish I knew. You see, I got too many new things at once, so most of them are like dimly-remembered things that flash into real knowledge only when they happen. But maybe mentioning something would do the trick. Let’s see … what have they given us so far?’

  ‘They’ve given us plenty,’ DuQuesne said, admiringly. ‘Light, ultra and visible; sound, infra- or sub-sound; and solid jolts of high-tension electricity. They haven’t yet used X-rays, accelerated particles, Hertzian waves, infra-red heat …

  ‘That’s it – heat!’ Seaton exclaimed. ‘They project a wave that sets up induced currents in arenak. They can melt armor that way – given time enough.’

  ‘Our refrigerators can handle a lot of heat,’ Crane said.

  ‘They certainly can … the limit being the amount of water on board … and when we run out of water we can hop over to the ocean and cool the shell off. Are we ready?’

  They were, and soon the Skylark was again dealing out death and destruction to the enemy vessels, who again turned from the devastation of the helpless city to destroy this tiny, but incredibly powerful, antagonist. And DuQuesne, considerably the faster of the two gunners, was now shooting Mark Tens – and in the starkly incomprehensible violence of those earth-shaking blasts ten or twelve battleships usually went into their component atoms instead of only two or three.

  After only a few minutes the Skylark’s armor began to heat up and Seaton turned the refrigerators, already operating at full rating, up to the absolute top of fifty percent overload. Even that was not enough. Although the interior of the ship stayed comfortably cool, the armor was so thick that it simply could not conduct heat fast enough. The outer layers grew hotter and hotter – red, cherry red, white. The ends of the rifle barrels, set flush with the surfaces of the arenak globes holding them, began to soften and melt, so that firing became impossible. The copper repellors began to melt and to drip away in flaming droplets, so that exploding shells and missiles came closer and closer.

  ‘Well, it looks as though they have us stopped for the moment,’ DuQuesne said calmly, with no thought of quitting apparent in either voice or manner. ‘Let’s go dope out something else.’

  They again went up out of range, but had only started discussing ways and means when a call came, uncoded and on the general wave.

  ‘Karfedix Seaton – Karfedix Seaton – acknowledge, please – Karfedix Seaton – Karfed—’

  ‘Seaton acknowledging!’

  ‘This is Karfedelix Depar, commanding four task forces. The Karbix Tarnan has ordered me to report …’

  ‘He has broken radio silence, then?’ Seaton demanded.

  ‘I have.’ The Karbix did not go on to explain, either that it was necessary or that it was now safe to do so. Seaton knew both of these facts.

  ‘Good!’ and Seaton went on to explain to both commander-in-chief and commander the nature and deadliness of Mardonale’s new weapon. ‘Karfedelix Depar, continue your report.’

  ‘The Karbix Tarnan ordered me to report to you for orders. There is a Mardonalian fleet approaching from the east. Have I your permission, sir, to attack it?’

  ‘Can you insulate against twenty kilovolts all the iridium your men must touch?’

  ‘I think so, sir,’

  ‘Thinking so isn’t enough. If you can’t, land and get insulation before engaging with any Mardonalian vessel. Are any more of our task forces en route?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Four within the quarter-hour, three more in one, two, and three hours respectively, sir.’

  ‘Report acknowledged. Stand by.’ Seaton frowned in thought. He had to appoint an admiral; but he certainly did not want to ask, with every living Kondalian listening, whether or not this Depar was a big enough man for the job.

  ‘Karbix Tarnan, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Tarnan acknowledging.’

  ‘Sir, which of your officers now in air is best fitted to command the defense fleet now assembling?’

  ‘Sir, the Karfedelix Depar.’

  ‘Sir, thank you. Karfedelix Depar, I give you authority to handle and responsibility for handling correctly the forthcoming engagement. Take command!’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Seaton dropped his microphone. ‘I’ve got it doped,’ he told Crane and DuQuesne. ‘The Skylark’s faster than any shell ever fired, and has infinitely more mass. She’s got four feet of arenak, they have only an inch. Arenak doesn’t begin to soften until it’s radiating high in the ultra-violet. Strap down solid – this is going to be a rough party from now on.’

  Again the Skylark went down. Instead of standing still, however, she darted directly at the nearest warship under twenty notches of power. She crashed straight through it without even slowing down. Torn wide open by the forty-foot projectile, its engines wrecked and its helicopter screws and propellors useless, the helpless hulk plunged through two miles of air to the ground.

  Darting here and there, the spaceship tore through vessel after vessel of the Mardonalian fleet. Here indeed was a guided missile: an irresistible projectile housing a human brain, the brain of Richard Seaton, keyed up to highest pitch and fighting the fight of his life.

  As the repellors dripped off, the silent waves of sound came in stronger and stronger. He was battered by the terrific impacts, nauseated and almost blacked out by
the frightful lurches of his hairpin turns. Nevertheless, with teeth tight-locked and with eyes gray and hard as the fracture of high-carbon steel, Richard Seaton fought on. Projectile and brain were, and remained, one.

  Although it was impossible for the eye to follow the flight of the spaceship, the mechanical sighting devices of the Mardonalians kept her in fair focus and the projectors continued to hurl into her a considerable fraction of their death-dealing output. Enemy guns were still emitting streams of shells; but unlike the waves, the shells moved so slowly compared to their target that very few found their mark. Many of the great vessels fell to the ground, riddled by the shells of their sister-ships.

  Seaton glanced at his pyrometer. The needle had stopped climbing, well short of the red line marking the fusion-point of arenak. Even as he looked, it began, very slowly, to recede. There weren’t enough Mardonalian ships left to maintain such a temperature. He felt much better, too; the sub-sound was still pretty bad, but it was bearable.

  In another minute the battle was over; the few remaining battleships were driving at top speed for home. But even in flight they continued to destroy; the path of their retreat was a swath of destruction. Half-inclined at first to let them escape, Seaton’s mind was changed as he saw what they were doing to the countryside beneath them. He shot after them, and not until the last vessel had been destroyed did he drop the Skylark into the area of ruins which had once been the palace grounds, beside the Kondal, which was still lying as it had fallen.

  After several attempts to steady their whirling senses the three men were able to walk. They opened the lock and leaped out, through the still white-hot wall. Seaton’s first act was to call Dorothy, who told him that the royal party would come up as soon as engineers could clear the way. The men then removed their helmets, revealing pale and drawn faces, and turned to the Kondal.

  ‘There’s no way of getting into this thing … Oh, fine! They’re coming to!’

  Dunark opened the lock and stumbled out. ‘I have to thank you for more than my life, this time,’ he said, his voice shaken as much my emotion as by the shock of his experience as he grasped the hands of all three men. ‘I was conscious most of the time and saw most of what happened. You have saved all Kondal.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ Seaton said, uncomfortably. ‘Both nations have been invaded before.’

  ‘Yes, but not with anything like this. This would have been final. But I must hurry. If you will relinquish command to me, Dick, please, I will restore it to the karbix. The Kondal will, of course, be his flagship.’

  Seaton snapped to attention and saluted. ‘Kofedix Dunark, sir, I relinquish to you my command.’

  ‘Karfedix Seaton, sir, with thanks for what you have done, I accept your command.’

  Dunark hurried away, talking as he went with surviving officers of the grounded Kondalian warships.

  In a few minutes the emperor and his party rounded a heap of boulders. Dorothy and Margaret screamed in unison as they saw the haggard faces of their husbands and saw their suits dripping with red. Seaton dodged as Dorothy reached him, and tore off his suit.

  ‘Nothing but red paint,’ he assured her, as he lifted her off the ground.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Kondalians staring in open-mouthed amazement at the Skylark. He turned. She was a huge ball of frost and snow!

  As Seaton came back to the girls from shutting off the refrigerators, Roban came up and gave the Earthmen thanks in the name of his nation for what they had done.

  ‘Has it yet occurred to you, Karfedix Roban,’ Margaret said, diffidently, ‘that, had it not been for your rigid adherence to your Code, none of us Tellurians would have been on Osnome or near it when the Mardonalians attacked you?’

  ‘No, my daughter … by no means … I still fail to see the connection. Will you explain, please?’

  ‘Dick’s idea was to have Dunark take the first eight bars of copper and sail for Mardonale. Then we would take the next forty bars – which would take about half an hour to make – and leave immediately for Earth. Then, when Dunark arrived over Mardonale he would have been shot down out of control wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Undoubtedly … I understand now, but go ahead.’

  ‘How long did it take the Mardonalian fleet to get here, about?’

  ‘About forty of your hours.’

  ‘Then assuming that Dunark didn’t take any time at all in getting over there, we would have been gone about thirty-nine and a half hours when they struck … but there wasn’t that much time! They must have been well on the way while we were getting the copper!’

  ‘Very true, daughter Margaret, but the end result would have been precisely the same. You would have been gone at least one hour – which, for us, would have been as bad as one thousand.’

  The Karfedix Roban stood facing the party from Earth. Back of him stood his family, the officers and nobility, and a multitude of people.

  ‘Is it permitted, karfedo, that I award your captive some small recognition of the service he has done my nation?’ Roban asked.

  ‘It is permitted,’ Seaton and Crane replied, in unison; whereupon Roban stepped forward and, after handing DuQuesne a heavy bag, fastened about his left wrist the emblem of the Order of Kondal.

  ‘I welcome you, Karfedelix DuQuesne, to the highest nobility of Kondal.’

  He then clasped around Crane’s wrist a bracelet of ruby-red metal bearing a peculiarly-wrought, heavily-jeweled disk, at the sight of which the nobles saluted and Seaton barely concealed a start of surprise.

  ‘Karfedix Crane, I bestow upon you this symbol; which proclaims that, throughout all Kondalian Osnome, you have authority as my personal representative in all things, great and small.’

  Approaching Seaton, Roban held up a bracelet of seven disks so that everyone could see it. The nobles knelt; the people prostrated themselves.

  ‘Karfedix Seaton, no language spoken by man possesses words able to express our indebtedness to you. In small and partial recognition of that indebtedness I bestow upon you these symbols, which declare you to be our overlord, the ultimate authority upon all Osnome.’

  Lifting both arms above his head he continued.

  ‘May the great First Cause smile upon you in all your endeavors until you solve the Prime Mystery; may your descendants soon reach the Ultimate Goal. Goodbye.’

  Seaton spoke a few heart-felt words in response and the five Earthpeople stepped backward toward their ship. As they reached it the standing emperor and the ranks of nobles snapped into the double salute – truly a rare gesture. ‘What’ll we do now?’ Seaton whispered. ‘I’m fresh out of Ideas.’

  ‘Bow, of course,’ Dorothy said.

  They bowed, deeply and slowly, and entered their vessel and as the Skylark shot into the air the grand fleet of Kondalian warships fired a royal salute.

  XXII

  DuQuesne’s first act upon gaining the privacy of his own cabin was to open the bag presented to him by the emperor. He expected to find it filled with rare metals, with perhaps some jewels, instead of which the only metal present was in a heavily-insulated tube – a full half pound of metallic radium!

  The least valuable items of his prize were hundreds of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds of very large size and of flawless perfection. Merely ornamental glass to Roban, he had known their Earthly value. To this wealth of known gems Roban had added a rich and varied assortment of the strange jewels peculiar to his own world, the faidon alone being absent from the collection. DuQuesne’s calmness almost deserted him as he sorted out and listed the contents of the bag.

  The radium alone was worth millions of dollars; and the scientist in him exulted at the uses to which it would be put, even while he was also exulting at the price he would get for it. He counted the familiar jewels, estimating their value as he did so – a staggering total. That left the strange gems, enough to fill the bag half full – shining and glowing and scintillating in multi-colored splendor. He sorted them out and counted
them, but made no effort to appraise them. He knew that he could get any price he pleased to set.

  ‘Now,’ he breathed to himself, ‘I can go my own way!’

  The return voyage through space was uneventful. Several times, as the days wore on, the Skylark came within the gravity range of gigantic suns; but her pilots had learned the most important fundamental safeguard of interstellar navigation. Automatic indicating and recording goniometers were now on watch continuously, set to give alarm at a deviation of two seconds of arc; and their dead reckoning of acceleration and velocity was checked, twice each eight-hour shift, by triangulation and the application of Schuyler’s Method.

  When half the distance had been covered the bar was reversed, the travelers holding an impromptu ceremony as the Skylark spun through an angle of one hundred eighty degrees.

  A few days later Seaton, who was on watch, thought he recognized Orion. It was by no means the constellation he had known, but it seemed to be shifting, ever so slowly, toward the old, familiar configuration. It was Orion.

  ‘C’mere, everybody!’ he shouted, and they came.

  ‘That, my friends, is the most gladsome sight these feeble old eyes have rested on for many a long and weary moon. Wassail!’

  They ‘wassailed’ with glee, and from that moment on the pilot was never alone at his board. Everyone who could be there was there, looking over his shoulders to watch the firmament while it assumed a more and more familiar aspect.

  They identified Sol; and, some time later, they could see Sol’s planets.

  Crane put on all the magnification he had, and the girls peered excitedly at the familiar outlines of continents and oceans upon the lighted half of the visible disk.

  It was not long until these outlines were plainly visible to the unaided vision, the Earth appearing as a softly shining, greenish half-moon, with parts of its surface obscured by fleecy wisps of cloud, with its ice-caps making of its poles two brilliant areas of white. The wanderers stared at their world with hearts in throats as Crane made certain that they would not be going too fast to land.