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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  The girls went to prepare a meal and DuQuesne sat down beside Seaton.

  ‘Have you gentlemen decided what you intend to do with me?’

  ‘No. We haven’t discussed it yet, and I can’t make up my own mind – except that I’d like to have you in a square ring with four-ounce gloves. You’ve been of altogether too much real help on this trip for either of us to enjoy seeing you hanged. At the same time, you’re altogether too much of a scoundrel for us to let you go free … I, personally, don’t like anything we can do, or not do, with you. That’s the fix I’m in. What would you suggest?’

  ‘Nothing,’ DuQuesne replied, calmly. ‘Since I am in no danger whatever of either hanging or prison, nothing you can say or do along those lines bothers me at all. Hold me on free me, as you please. I will add that, while I have made a fortune on this trip and do not have to associate any longer with Steel unless it is to my interest to do so, I may find it desirable at some future time to obtain a monopoly of X. If so, you and Crane, and possibly a few others, would die. No matter what happens or does not happen, however, this whole thing is over as far as I’m concerned. Done with. Fini.’

  ‘You kill us? You talk like a man with a paper nose. Peel off, Buster, any time you like. We can out-run you, out-jump you, throw you down, or lick you – hit harder, run faster, dive deeper and come up dryer – for fun, money, chalk on marbles …’

  A thought struck him and every trace of levity disappeared. Face hard and eyes cold, he stared at DuQuesne, who stared unmovedly back at him.

  ‘But listen, DuQuesne,’ Seaton said slowly, every word sharp, clear and glacially cold. ‘That goes for Crane and me personally. Nobody else. I could be arrested for what I think of you as a man; and if anything you ever do touches either Dorothy or Margaret in any way I’ll kill you like I would a snake – or rather, I’ll take you apart like I would any other piece of scientific apparatus. And don’t think this is a threat. It’s a promise. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly. Goodnight.’

  For many hours Earth had been obscured by clouds, so that the pilot had no idea of what part it was beneath them. To orient himself, Seaton dropped downward into the twilight zone until he could see the surface, finding that they were almost directly over the western end of the Panama Canal. Dropping still lower, to about ten thousand feet, he stopped and waited while Crane took bearings and calculated the course to Washington.

  DuQuesne had retired, cold and reticent as usual. After making sure that he had overlooked nothing, he put on the leather suit he had worn when he left Earth. He unlocked a cubby, taking therefrom a Kondalian parachute. Then, making sure every foot of the way that he was not observed, he made his way to the airlock and entered it.

  Thus, when the Skylark paused over the Isthmus, he was ready. Smiling sardonically, he opened the outer valve and stepped out into ten thousand feet of air. The neutral color of his parachute was lost in the twilight a few seconds after he left the vessel.

  The course computed. Seaton set the bar and the Skylark core through the air. When about half the ground had been covered Seaton spoke suddenly.

  ‘Forgot about DuQuesne, Mart. We’d better lock him in, don’t you think? Then we’ll have to decide whether we want to put him in the jail-house or turn him loose.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ Crane said.

  He returned immediately with the news.

  ‘Hmmm. He must have picked up a Kondalian parachute. You can’t quite put one in your pocket, but pretty near. But I can’t say I’m sorry he got away … Anyway, we can still get him any time we want him, because that compass is still looking right at him.’

  ‘I think he earned his liberty,’ Dorothy declared.

  ‘He deserves to be shot,’ Margaret said, ‘but I’m glad he’s gone. He gives me the cold, creeping shivers.’

  At the end of the calculated time they saw the lights of a large city beneath them; and Crane’s fingers tightened upon Seaton’s arm as he pointed downward. There were the landing-lights of Crane Field – seven searchlights throwing their mighty beams upward into the night.

  ‘Nine weeks, Dick,’ he said unsteadily, ‘and Shiro would have kept them burning for nine years if necessary.’

  The Skylark dropped easily to the ground and the wanderers leaped out, to be greeted by the half-hysterical Japanese. Shiro’s ready vocabulary of peculiar but sonorous words failed him completely and he bent himself double in a bow, his face one beaming smile. Crane, with one arm around his wife, seized Shiro’s hand and wrung it in silence.

  Seaton swept Dorothy off her feet and their arms tightened around each other.

  SKYLARK THREE

  1

  DuQuesne Goes Traveling

  In the innermost private office of Steel, Brookings and DuQuesne stared at each other across the massive desk. DuQuesne’s voice was cold, his black brows were drawn together.

  ‘Get this, Brookings, and get it straight. I’m shoving off at twelve o’clock tonight. My advice to you is to lay off Richard Seaton, absolutely. Don’t do a thing. NOTHING, understand? Just engrave these two words upon your brain – HOLD EVERYTHING. Keep on holding it until I get back, no matter how long that may be.’

  ‘I am very much surprised at your change of front, doctor. You are the last man I would have expected to be scared off after one engagement.’

  ‘Don’t be any more of a fool than you have to, Brookings. There’s a lot of difference between being scared and knowing when you are simply wasting effort. As you remember, I tried to abduct Mrs Seaton by picking her off with an attractor from a spaceship. I would have bet that nothing could have stopped me. Well, when they located me – probably with an automatic Osnomian emission detector – and heated me red-hot while I was still better than two hundred miles up, I knew then and there that they had us stopped: that there was nothing we could do except go back to my plan, abandon the abduction idea, and kill them all. Since my plan would take time, you objected to it, and sent an airplane to drop a five-hundred-pound bomb on them. Airplane, bomb, and all, simply vanished. It didn’t explode, you remember, just flashed into light and disappeared. Then you pulled several more of your fool ideas, such as long-range bombardment, and so on. None of them worked. Still you’ve got the nerve to think that you can get them with ordinary gunmen! I’ve drawn you diagrams and shown you figures – I’ve told you in great detail and in one-syllable words exactly what we’re up against. Now I tell you again that they’ve GOT SOMETHING. If you had the brains of a louse you would know that anything I can’t do with a spaceship can’t be done by a mob of ordinary gangsters. I’m telling you, Brookings, that you can’t do it. My way is absolutely the only way that will work.’

  ‘But five years, doctor!’

  ‘I may be back in six months. But on a trip of this kind anything can happen, so I am planning on being gone five years. Even that may not be enough – I am carrying supplies for ten years, and that box of mine in the vault is not to be opened until ten years from today.’

  ‘But surely we shall be able to remove the obstructions ourselves in a few weeks. We always have.’

  ‘Oh, quit kidding yourself, Brookings! This is no time for idiocy! You stand just as much chance of killing Seaton …’

  ‘Please, doctor, please don’t talk like that!’

  ‘Still squeamish, eh? Your pussyfooting always did give me an acute pain. I’m for direct action, word, and deed, first, last, and all the time. I repeat, you have exactly as much chance of killing Richard Seaton as a blind kitten has.’

  ‘How do you arrive at that conclusion, doctor? You seem very fond of belittling our abilities. Personally, I think that we shall be able to attain our objectives within a few weeks – certainly long before you can possibly return from such an extended trip as you have in mind. And since you are so fond of frankness, I will say that I think Seaton has you buffaloed, as you call it. Nine-tenths of these wonderful Osnomian things I am assured by competent authorities are scientifically impossi
ble, and I think that the other one-tenth exists only in your own imagination. Seaton was lucky in that the airplane bomb was defective and exploded prematurely; and your spaceship got hot because of your injudicious speed through the atmosphere. We shall have everything settled by the time you get back.’

  ‘If you have I’ll make you a present of the controlling interest in Steel and buy myself a chair in some home for feeble-minded old women. Your ignorance and unwillingness to believe any new idea do not change the facts in any particular. Even before they went to Osnome, Seaton was hard to get, as you found out. On that trip he learned so much new stuff that it is now impossible to kill him by any ordinary means. You should realize that fact when he kills every gangster you send against him. At all events be very, very careful not to kill – nor even hurt – his wife in any of your attacks, even by accident, until after you have killed him.’

  ‘Such an event would be regrettable, certainly, in that it would remove all possibility of the abduction.’

  ‘It would remove more than that. Remember the explosion in our laboratory, that blew an entire mountain into impalpable dust? Draw in your mind a nice, vivid picture of one ten times the size in each of our plants and in this building. I know that you are fool enough to go ahead with your own ideas, in spite of everything I’ve said; and, since I do not yet actually control Steel, I can’t forbid you to, officially. But you should know that I know what I’m talking about, and I say again that you’re going to make an utter fool of yourself just because you won’t believe anything possible that hasn’t been done every day for a hundred years. I wish that I could make you understand that Seaton and Crane have got something that we haven’t – but for the good of our plants, and incidentally for your own, you must remember one thing, anyway; for if you forget it we won’t have a plant left and you personally will be blown into atoms. Whatever you start, kill Seaton first, and be absolutely certain that he is definitely, completely, finally, and totally dead before you touch one of Dorothy Seaton’s red hairs. As long as you only attack him personally he won’t do anything but kill every man you send against him. If you touch her while he’s still alive, though – Blooie!’ and the saturnine scientist waved both hands in an expressive pantomime of wholesale destruction.

  ‘Probably you are right in that.’ Brookings paled slightly. ‘Yes, Seaton would do just that. We shall be very careful, until after we succeed in removing him.’

  ‘Don’t worry – you won’t succeed. I shall attend to that detail myself, as soon as I get back. Seaton and Crane and their families, the directors and employees of their plants, the banks that by any possibility may harbor their notes or solutions – in short, every person and every thing standing between me and a monopoly of “X” – all shall disappear.’

  ‘That is a terrible program, doctor. Wouldn’t the late Perkins’ plan of an abduction, such as I have in mind, be better, safer, and quicker?’

  ‘Yes – except for the fact that it will not work. I’ve talked until I’m blue in the face – I’ve proved to you over and over that you can’t abduct her now without first killing him, and that you can’t even touch him. My plan is the only one that will work. Seaton isn’t the only one who learned anything – I learned a lot myself. I learned one thing in particular. Only four other inhabitants of either Earth or Osnome ever had even an inkling of it, and they died, with their brains disintegrated beyond reading. That thing is my ace in the hole. I’m going after it. When I get it, and not until then, I’ll be ready to take the offensive.’

  ‘You intend starting open war upon your return?’

  ‘The war started when I tried to pick off the women with my attractor. That is why I am leaving at midnight. He always goes to bed at eleven-thirty, and I will be out of range of his object-compass before he wakes up. Seaton and I understand each other perfectly. We both know that the next time we meet one of us is going to be resolved into his component ultra-microscopic constituents. He doesn’t know that he’s going to be the one, but I do. My final word to you is to lay off – if you don’t, you and your “competent authorities” are going to learn a lot.’

  ‘You do not care to inform me more fully as to your destination or your plans?’

  ‘I do not. Goodbye.’

  2

  Dunark Visits Earth

  Martin Crane reclined in a massive chair, the fingers of his right hand lightly touching those of his left, listening attentively. Richard Seaton strode up and down the room before his friend, his unruly brown hair on end, speaking savagely between teeth clenched upon the stem of his reeking, battered briar; brandishing a sheaf of papers.

  ‘Mart, we’re stuck – stopped dead. If my head wasn’t made of solid blue mush I’d’ve had a way figured out of this thing before now, but I can’t. With that zone of force the Skylark would have everything imaginable – without it, we’re exactly where we were before. That zone is immense, man – terrific – its possibilities are unthinkable – and I’m so damned dumb that I can’t find out how to use it intelligently – can’t use it at all, for that matter. By its very nature it is impenetrable to any form of matter, however applied; and this calc here,’ shaking the sheaf of papers viciously, ‘shows that it must also be opaque to any wave whatever, propagated through air or through ether, clear down to cosmic rays. Behind it we would be blind and helpless, so we can’t use it at all. It drives me frantic! Think of a barrier of pure force, impalpable, immaterial, and exerted along a geometrical surface of no thickness whatever – and yet actual enough to stop a radiation that travels a hundred million light-years and then goes through twenty-seven feet of solid lead just like it was so much vacuum! That’s what we’re up against! However, I’m going to try out that model, Mart, right now. Let’s go!’

  ‘You are getting idiotic again, Dick,’ Crane rejoined calmly, without moving. ‘You know, even better than I do, that you are playing with the most concentrated essence of energy that the world has ever seen. That zone of force probably can be generated—’

  ‘Probably, nothing!’ barked Seaton. ‘It’s just as evident a fact as that stool,’ kicking the unoffending bit of furniture halfway across the room as he spoke. ‘If you’d’ve let me I’d’ve shown it to you yesterday.’

  ‘Undoubtedly, then. Grant that it is impenetrable to all matter and to all known wave-lengths. Suppose that it should prove impenetrable also to gravitation and to magnetism? Those phenomena probably depend upon the ether, but we know nothing fundamental of their nature, nor of that of the ether. Therefore your calculations, comprehensive though they are, cannot predict the effect upon them of your zone of force. Suppose that that zone actually does set up a barrier in the ether, so that it nullifies gravitation, magnetism, and all allied phenomena; so that the power-bars, the attractors, and repellors, cannot work through it? Then what? As well as showing me the zone of force, you might well have shown me yourself flying off into space, unable to use your power and helpless if you released the zone. No, we must know more of the fundamentals before you try even a small-scale experiment.’

  ‘Oh, bugs! You’re carrying caution to extremes, Mart. What can happen? Even if gravitation should be nullified, I would rise only slowly, heading south the angle of our latitude – that’s thirty-nine degrees – away from the perpendicular. I couldn’t shoot off on a tangent, as some of these hop-heads have been claiming. Inertia would make me keep pace, approximately, with the Earth in its rotation. I would rise slowly – only as fast as the tangent departs from the curvature of the Earth’s surface. I haven’t figured out how fast that is, but it must be pretty slow.’

  ‘Pretty slow?’ Crane smiled. ‘Figure it out.’

  ‘All right – but I’ll bet it’s slower than the rise of a toy balloon.’ Seaton threw down the papers and picked up his slide rule, a twenty-inch deci-trig duplex. ‘You’ll concede that it is allowable to neglect the radial component of the orbital velocity of the Earth, for a first approximation, won’t you – or shall I figure that in too?�
��

  ‘You may neglect that factor.’

  ‘All right – let’s see. Radius of rotation here in Washington would be cosine latitude times equatorial radius, approximately – call it thirty-two hundred miles. Angular velocity, fifteen degrees an hour. I want secant fifteen less one times thirty-two hundred. Right? Secant equals one over cosine – um-m-m-m – one point oh three five. Then point oh three five times thirty-two hundred. Hundred and twelve miles first hour. Velocity constant with respect to sun, accelerated respecting point of departure. Ouch! You win, Mart – I’d step out! Well, how about this, then? I’ll put on a suit and carry rations. Harness outside, with the same equipment I used in the test flights before we built Skylark One – plus the new stuff. Then throw on the zone, and see what happens. There can’t be any jar in taking off, and with that outfit I can get back O.K. if I go clear to Jupiter!’

  Crane sat in silence, his keen mind considering every aspect of the motions possible, of velocity, of acceleration, of inertia. He already knew well Seaton’s resourcefulness in crises and his physical and mental strength.

  ‘As far as I can see, that might be safe,’ he admitted finally, ‘and we really should know something about it besides the theory.’

  ‘Fine! I’ll get at it – be ready in five minutes. Yell at the girls, will you? They’d break us off at the ankles if we pull anything new without letting them in on it.’

  A few minutes later the ‘girls’ strolled out into Crane Field, arms around each other – Dorothy Seaton, her gorgeous auburn hair framing violet eyes and vivid coloring; black-haired, dark-eyed Margaret Crane.

  ‘Br-r-r, it’s cold!’ Dorothy shivered, wrapping her coat more closely about her. ‘This must be the coldest day Washington has seen for years!’

  ‘It is cold,’ Margaret agreed. ‘I wonder what they are going to do out here, this kind of weather?’