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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  As she spoke, the two men stepped out of the ‘testing shed’ – the huge structure that housed their Osnomian-built space-cruiser, Skylark Two. Seaton waddled clumsily, wearing as he did a Crane space-suit which, built of fur, canvas, metal, and transparent silica, braced by steel netting, and equipped with air-tanks and heaters, rendered its wearer independent of outside conditions of temperature and pressure. Outside this suit he wore a heavy harness of leather, buckled about his body, shoulders, and legs, attached to which were numerous knobs, switches, dials, bakelite cases, and other pieces of apparatus. Carried by a strong aluminum framework which was in turn supported by the harness, the universal bearing of a small power-bar rose directly above his grotesque-looking helmet.

  ‘What do you think you’re going to do in that thing, Dickie?’ Dorothy called. Then, thinking that he could not hear her voice, she turned to Crane. ‘What are you letting that precious husband of mine do now, Martin? He looks like he’s up to something.’

  While she was speaking, Seaton had snapped the release of his face-plate.

  ‘Nothing much, Dottie. Just going to show you-all the zone of force. Martin wouldn’t let me turn it on unless I got all cocked and primed for a year’s journey into space.’

  ‘Dot, what is that zone of force, anyway?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘Oh, it’s something Dick got into his head during that awful fight they had on Osnome. He hasn’t thought of anything else since we got back. You know how the attractors and repellors work? Well, he found out something funny about the way everything acted while the Mardonalians were bombarding them with a certain kind of a wave-length. He finally figured out the exact vibration that did it, and found out that if it is made strong enough, it acts as if a repellor and attractor were working together – only so much stronger that nothing can get through the boundary, either way – in fact, it’s so strong that it cuts anything in two that’s in the way. And the funny thing is that there’s nothing there at all, really; but Dick says that the forces meeting there, or something, make it act as though something really important were there. See?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ assented Margaret, doubtfully, just as Crane finished the final adjustments and moved toward them. A safe distance away from Seaton, he turned and waved his hand.

  Instantly Seaton disappeared from view, and around the place where he had stood there appeared a shimmering globe some twenty feet in diameter – a globe apparently a perfect spherical mirror, which darted upward and toward the south. After a moment the globe disappeared and Seaton was again seen. He was now standing upon a hemispherical mass of earth. He darted back toward the group upon the ground, while the mass of earth fell with a crash a quarter of a mile away. High above their heads the mirror again encompassed Seaton, and again shot upward and southward. Five times this maneuver was repeated before Seaton came down, landing easily in front of them and opening his helmet.

  ‘It’s just what we thought it was, only worse,’ he reported tersely. ‘Can’t do a thing with it. Gravitation won’t work through it – bars won’t – nothing will. And dark? DARK! Folks, you never saw real darkness, nor heard real silence. It scared me stiff!’

  ‘Poor little boy – afraid of the dark!’ exclaimed Dorothy. ‘We saw absolute blackness in space.’

  ‘Not like this, you didn’t. I just saw absolute darkness and heard absolute silence for the first time in my life. I never imagined anything like it – come on up with me and I’ll show it to you.’

  ‘No you won’t!’ his wife shrieked as she retreated toward Crane. ‘Some other time, perhaps.’

  Seaton removed the harness and glanced at the spot from which he had taken off, where now appeared a hemispherical hole in the ground.

  ‘Let’s see what kind of tracks I left, Mart,’ and the two men bent over the depression. They saw with astonishment that the cut surface was perfectly smooth, with not even the slightest roughness or irregularity visible. Even the smallest grains of sand had been sheared in two along a mathematically exact hemispherical surface by the inconceivable force of the disintegrating copper bar.

  ‘Well, that sure wins the—’

  An alarm bell sounded. Without a glance around, Seaton seized Dorothy and leaped into the testing shed. Dropping her unceremoniously to the floor he stared through the telescope sight of an enormous projector which had automatically aligned itself upon the distant point of liberation of atomic energy which had caused the alarm to sound. One hand upon the switch, his face was hard and merciless as he waited to make sure of the identity of the approaching spaceship before he released the frightful power of his generators upon it.

  ‘I’ve been expecting DuQuesne to try it again,’ he gritted, striving to make out the visitor, yet more than two hundred miles distant. ‘He’s out to get you, Dot – and this time I’m not just going to warm him up and scare him away, like I did last time. I’m going to give him the works … I can’t locate him with this small telescope, Mart. Line him up in the big one and give me the word, will you?’

  ‘I see him, Dick, but it is not DuQuesne’s ship. It is built of transparent arenak, like the Kondal. Even though it seems impossible, I believe it is the Kondal.’

  ‘Maybe so, and again maybe DuQuesne built it – or stole it. On second thought, though, I don’t believe that DuQuesne would be fool enough to tackle us again in the same way – but I’m taking no chances … O.K., it is the Kondal, I can see Dunark and Sitar myself, now.’

  The transparent vessel soon neared the field and the four Terrestrials walked out to greet their Osnomian friends. Through the arenak walls they recognized Dunark, Kofedix of Kondal, at the controls, and saw Sitar, his beautiful young queen, lying in one of the seats near the wall. She attempted a friendly greeting, but her face was strained as though she were laboring under a tremendous burden.

  As they watched, Dunark slipped a helmet over his head and one over Sitar’s, pressed a button to open one of the doors, and supported her toward the opening.

  ‘They mustn’t come out, Dick!’ exclaimed Dorothy in dismay. ‘They’ll freeze to death in five minutes without any clothes on!’

  ‘Yes, and Sitar can’t stand up under our gravitation, either – I doubt if Dunark can, for long,’ and Seaton dashed toward the vessel, motioning the visitors back.

  But misunderstanding the signal, Dunark came on. As he clambered heavily through the door he staggered, and Sitar collapsed upon the frozen ground. Trying to help her, half-kneeling over her, Dunark struggled, his green skin paling to a yellowish tinge at the touch of the bitter and unexpected cold. Seaton leaped forward and gathered Sitar up as though she were a child.

  ‘Help Dunark back in, Mart,’ he directed crisply. ‘Hop in, girls – we’ve got to take these folks back up where they can live.’

  Seaton shut the door, and as everyone lay flat in the seats Crane, who had taken the controls, applied one notch of power and the huge vessel leaped upward. Many hundreds of miles of altitude were gained before he brought the cruiser to a stop and locked her in place with an anchoring attractor.

  ‘There,’ he remarked calmly. ‘Gravitation here is approximately the same as upon Osnome.’

  ‘Yeah,’ put in Seaton, standing up and shedding clothes in all directions, ‘and I rise to remark that we’d better undress as far as the law allows – perhaps farther. I never did like Osnomian ideas of comfortable warmth, but we can endure it by peeling down to bedrock – they can’t stand our temperatures at all.’

  Sitar jumped up happily, completely restored, and the three women threw their arms around each other.

  ‘What a horrible, terrible, frightful world!’ exclaimed Sitar, her eyes widening as she thought of her first experience with our Earth. ‘Much as I love you, I shall never dare to try to visit you again. I have never been able to understand why you Terrestrials wear what you call “clothes”, nor why you are so terribly, brutally strong. Now I really know – I will feel the utterly cold and savage embrace of this awful world of yours as l
ong as I live!’

  ‘Oh, it ain’t so bad, Sitar.’ Seaton, who was shaking both of Dunark’s hands vigorously, assured her over his shoulder. ‘All depends on where you were raised. We like it that way, and Osnome gives us the pip. But you poor fish,’ turning again to Dunark, ‘with all my brains inside your skull you should’ve known what you were letting yourself in for.’

  ‘That’s true, after a fashion,’ Dunark admitted, ‘but your brain told me that Washington was hot. If I’d’ve thought to recalculate your actual Fahrenheit degrees into our loro … but that figures only forty-seven and, while very cold, we could have endured it – wait a minute, I’m getting it. You have what you call ‘seasons’. This, then, must be your “winter”. Right?’

  ‘Right the first time. That’s the way your brain works in my skull, too. I could figure anything out all right after it happened, but hardly ever beforehand – so I guess I can’t blame you much, at that. But what I want to know is, how’d you get here? It’d take more than my brains – you can’t see our sun from anywhere near Osnome, even if you knew exactly where to look for it.’

  ‘Easy. Remember those wrecked instruments you threw out of the Skylark when we built Skylark Two?’ Having every minute detail of the configuration of Seaton’s brain engraved upon his own, Dunark spoke English in Seaton’s own characteristic careless fashion. Only when thinking deeply or discussing abstruse matters did Seaton employ the carefully selected and precise phrasing which he knew so well how to use. ‘Well, none of them were beyond repair and the juice was still on most of them. One was an object-compass bearing on the Earth. We simply fixed the bearings, put on some minor improvements, and here we are.

  ‘Let us all sit down and be comfortable,’ he continued, changing into the Kondalian tongue without a break, ‘and I will explain why we have come. We are in most desperate need of two things which you alone can supply – salt, and that strange metal, X. Salt I know you have in great abundance, but I know that you have very little of the metal. You have only the one compass upon that planet?’

  ‘That’s all – one is all we set on it. However, we’ve got close to half a ton of it on hand – you can have all you want.’

  ‘Even if I took it all, which I would not like to do, that would be less than half enough. We must have at least one of your tons, and two tons would be better.’

  ‘Two tons! Holy cat! Are you going to plate a fleet of battle cruisers?’

  ‘More than that. We must plate an area of copper of some ten thousand square miles – in fact, the very life of our entire race depends upon it.

  ‘It’s this way,’ he continued, as the four human beings stared at him in wonder. ‘Shortly after you left Osnome we were invaded by the inhabitants of the third planet of our fourteenth sun. Luckily for us they landed upon Mardonale, and in less than two days there was not a single Osnomian left alive upon that half of the planet. They wiped out our grand fleet in one brief engagement, and it was only the Kondal and a few more like her that enabled us to keep them from crossing the ocean. Even with our full force of these vessels, we cannot defeat them. Our regular Kondalian weapons were useless. We shot explosive copper charges against them of such size as to cause earthquakes all over Osnome, without seriously crippling their defenses. Their offensive weapons are almost irresistible – they have generators that burn arenak as though it were so much paper, and a series of deadly frequencies against which only a copper-driven screen is effective, and even that does not stand up long.’

  ‘How come you lasted till now, then?’ asked Seaton.

  ‘They have nothing like the Skylark, and no knowledge of atomic energy. Therefore their spaceships are of the rocket type, and for that reason they can cross only at the exact time of conjunction, or whatever you call it – no, not conjunction, exactly, either, since the two planets do not revolve around the same sun: but when they are closest together. Our solar system is so complex, you know, that unless the trips are timed exactly, to the hour, the vessels will not be able to land upon Osnome, but will be drawn aside and be lost, if not drawn into the vast central sun. Although it may not have occurred to you, a little reflection will show you that the inhabitants of all the central planets, such as Osnome, must perforce be absolutely ignorant of astronomy, and of all the wonders of outer space. Before your coming we knew nothing beyond our own solar system, and very little of that. We knew of the existence of only such of the closest planets as were brilliant enough to be seen in our continuous sunlight, and they were few. Immediately after your coming I gave your knowledge of astronomy to a group of our foremost physicists and mathematicians, and they have been working ceaselessly from spaceships – close enough so that observations could be recalculated to Osnome, and yet far enough away to afford perfect “seeing”, as you call it.’

  ‘But I don’t know any more about astronomy than a pig does about Sunday,’ protested Seaton.

  ‘Your knowledge of details is, of course, incomplete,’ conceded Dunark, ‘but the detailed knowledge of the best of your Earthly astronomers would not help us a great deal, since we are so far removed from you in space. You, however, have a very clear and solid knowledge of the fundamentals of the science, and that is what we needed, above all things.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right, at that. I do know the general theory of the motions, and I’ve been exposed to celestial mechanics. I’m awfully weak on advanced theory, though, as you’ll find out when you get that far.’

  ‘Perhaps – but since our enemies have no knowledge of astronomy whatever, it is not surprising that their rocket-ships can be launched only at one particularly favorable time; for there are many planets and satellites, of which they can know nothing, to throw their vessels off the course.

  ‘Some material essential to the operation of their war machinery apparently must come from their own planet, for they have ceased attacking, have dug in, and are simply holding their ground. It may be that they had not anticipated as much resistance as we could offer with spaceships and atomic energy. At any rate, they have apparently saved enough of that material to enable them to hold out until the next conjunction – I cannot think of a better word for it – shall occur. Our forces are attacking constantly, with all the armament at our command, but it is certain that if the next conjunction is allowed to occur, it means the end of the entire Kondalian nation.’

  ‘What d’you mean “if the next conjunction is allowed to occur”?’ interjected Seaton. ‘Nobody can stop it.’

  ‘I am stopping it,’ Dunark stated quietly, grim purpose in every lineament. ‘That conjunction shall never occur. That is why I must have the vast quantities of salt and X. We are building abutments of arenak upon the first satellite of our seventh planet, and upon our sixth planet itself. We shall cover them with plated active copper, and install chronometers to throw the switches at precisely the right moment. We have calculated the exact times, places, and magnitudes of the forces to be used. We shall throw the sixth planet some distance out of its orbit, and force the first satellite of the seventh planet clear out of that planet’s influence. The two bodies whose motions we have thus changed will collide in such a way that the resultant body will meet the planet of our enemies in head-on collision, long before the next conjunction. The two bodies will be of almost equal masses, and will have opposite and approximately equal velocities; hence the resultant fused or gaseous mass will be practically without velocity and will fall directly into the fourteenth sun.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to destroy it with an explosive copper bomb?’

  ‘Easier, yes, but much more dangerous to the rest of our solar system. We cannot calculate exactly the effect of the collisions we are planning – but it is almost certain that an explosion of sufficient violence to destroy all life upon the planet would disturb its motion sufficiently to endanger the entire system. The way we have in mind will simply allow the planet and one satellite to drop out quietly – the other planets of the same sun will soon adjust themselves to
the new conditions, and the system at large will be practically unaffected – at least, so we believe.’

  Seaton’s eyes narrowed as his thoughts turned to the quantities of copper and X8217 required and to the engineering features of the project; Crane’s first thought was of the mathematics involved in a computation of that magnitude and character; Dorothy’s quick reaction was one of pure horror.

  ‘He can’t, Dick! He mustn’t! It would be too ghastly! It’s outrageous – it’s unthinkable – it’s – it’s – it’s just simply too perfectly damned horrible!’ Her violet eyes flamed, and Margaret joined in:

  ‘That would be awful, Martin. Think of the destruction of a whole planet – of an entire world – with all its inhabitants! It makes me shudder, even to think of it.’

  Dunark leaped to his feet, ablaze. But before he could say a word, Seaton silenced him.

  ‘Shut up, Dunark! Pipe down! Don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for – let me tell ’em! Close your pan, I tell you!’ as Dunark still tried to get a word in, ‘I tell you I’ll tell ’em, and when I tell ’em they stay told! Now listen, you two girls – you’re going off half-cocked and you’re both full of little red ants. What do you think Dunark is up against? Sherman chirped it when he described war – and this is a brand of war totally unknown on our Earth. It isn’t a question of whether or not to destroy a population – the only question is which population is to be destroyed. One of ’em’s got to go. Remember those folks go into a war thoroughly, and there isn’t a thought in any of their minds even remotely resembling our conception of mercy, on either side. If Dunark’s plans go through, the enemy nation will be wiped out. That is horrible, of course. But on the other hand, if we block him off from salt and X, the entire Kondalian nation will be destroyed just as thoroughly and efficiently, and even more horribly – not one man, woman, or child would be spared. Which nation do you want saved? Play that over a couple of times on your fiddle, Dot, and don’t jump at conclusions.’