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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  ‘It most certainly is a relief to get this load off our minds: I could do a little ladylike yowling myself,’ Margaret said; and Crane, lying completely at ease, a thin spiral of smoke curling up from his cigarette, nodded agreement.

  ‘Dick’s yowling is quite expressive at times. All of us feel the same way, but some of us are unable to express ourselves quite so vividly. However, it is past bedtime, and we should organize our crew. Shall we do it as we did before?’

  ‘No, it isn’t necessary. Everything is automatic. The bar is held parallel to the guiding compass, and signal bells ring whenever any of the instruments show a trace of abnormal behavior. Don’t forget that there is at least one meter registering and recording every factor of our flight. With this control system we can’t get into any such jam as we did last trip.’

  ‘Surely you are not suggesting that we run all night with no one at the controls?’

  ‘Exactly that. A man camping at this board is painting the lily and gilding fine gold. Awake or asleep, nobody need be closer to it than is necessary to hear a bell if one should ring, and you can hear them all over the ship. Furthermore, I’ll bet a hat we won’t hear a signal a week. Simply as added precaution, though, I’ve run lines so that any time one of these signals lets go it sounds a buzzer on the head of our bed; so I’m automatically taking the night shift. Remember, Mart, these instruments are thousands of times as sensitive as the keenest human senses – they’ll spot trouble long before we could, even if we were looking right at it.’

  ‘Of course, you understand these instruments much better than I do, as yet. If you trust them, I am perfectly willing to do the same. Goodnight.’

  Seaton sat down and Dorothy nestled beside him, her head snuggled into the curve of his shoulder.

  ‘Sleepy?’

  ‘Heavens, no! I couldn’t sleep now – could you?’

  ‘Not any. What’s the use?’

  His arm tightened around her. Apparently motionless to its passengers, the cruiser bored serenely on into space, with ever-mounting velocity. There was not the faintest sound, not the slightest vibration – only the peculiar violet glow surrounding the shining copper cylinder in its massive universal bearing gave any indication of the thousands of kilowatts being generated in that mighty atomic power plant. Seaton studied it thoughtfully.

  ‘You know, Dottie, if that violet aura and copper bar were a little different in hue and chroma, they’d be just like your eyes and hair,’ he remarked finally.

  ‘What a comparison!’ Dorothy’s entrancing low chuckle bubbled through her words. ‘You say the weirdest things at times! Possible they would – and if the moon were made of different stuff than it is and had a different color it might be green cheese, too! What say we go over and look at the stars?’

  ‘As you were, Rufus!’ he commanded sternly. ‘Don’t move a millimeter – you’re a perfect fit, right where you are. I’ll get you any stars you want, and bring them right in here to you. What constellation would you like? I’ll even get you the Southern Cross – we never see it in Washington.’

  ‘No, I want something familiar; the Pleiades or the Big Dipper – no, get me Canis Major – “where Sirius, brightest jewel in the diadem of the firmament, holds sway”,’ she quoted. ‘There! Thought I’d forgotten all the astronomy you ever taught me, didn’t you? Think you can find it?’

  ‘Sure. Declination about minus twenty, as I remember it, and right ascension between six and seven hours. Let’s see – where would that be from our course?’

  He thought for a moment, manipulated several levers and dials, snapped off the lights, and swung number one exterior visiplate around, directly before their eyes.

  ‘Oh … Oh … this is magnificent, Dick!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s stupendous. It seems as though we were right out there in space itself, and not in here at all. It’s … it’s perfectly wonderful!’

  Although neither of them was unacquainted with deep space, it presents a spectacle that never fails to awe even the most seasoned observer; and no human being had ever before viewed the wonders of space from such a coign of vantage. Thus the two fell silent and awed as they gazed out into the abysmal depths of the interstellar void. The darkness of Earthly night is ameliorated by light-rays scattered by the atmosphere; the stars twinkle and scintillate and their light is diffused, because of the same medium. But here, what a contrast! They saw the utter, absolute darkness of the complete absence of all light; and upon that indescribable blackness they beheld superimposed the almost unbearable brilliance of enormous suns concentrated into mathematical points, dimensionless. Sirius blazed in blue-white splendor, dominating the lesser members of his constellation, a minute but intensely brilliant diamond upon a field of black velvet – his refulgence unmarred by any trace of scintillation or distortion.

  As Seaton slowly shifted the field of vision, angling toward and across the celestial equator and the ecliptic, they beheld in turn mighty Rigel: the Belt, headed by dazzlingly brilliant-white Delta-Orionis; red Betelgause; storied Aldebaran, the friend of mariners; and the astronomically constant Pleiades.

  Seaton’s arm contracted, swinging Dorothy into his embrace; their lips met and held.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful, lover,’ she murmured, ‘to be out here in space this way, together, away from all our troubles and worries? Really wonderful … I’m so happy, Dick.’

  ‘So am I, sweetheart.’ The man’s arm tightened. I’m not going to try to say anything …’

  ‘I almost died, every time they shot at you.’ Dorothy’s mind went back to what they had gone through. ‘Suppose that your armor had cracked or something? I wouldn’t want to go on living. I would simply lie down and die.’

  ‘I’m glad it didn’t crack – and I’m twice as glad that they didn’t succeed in grabbing you away from me …’ His jaw set rigidly, his eyes became gray ice. ‘Blackie DuQuesne has got something coming to him. So far, I have always paid my debts; and I will settle with him … IN FULL.

  ‘That was an awfully quick change of subject,’ he went on, his voice changing markedly, ‘but that’s the penalty we pay for being human – if we lived at peak all the time, there could be no thrill in it, any time. And even though we have been married so long, I still get a tremendous kick out of those peaks.’

  ‘So long!’ Dorothy giggled. ‘Of course we do, we’re unique. I know that everybody thinks that they are, but you and I really are – and we know that we are. Also, Dick, I know that it’s thinking of that DuQuesne that keeps on dragging you down off of the high points. Why wouldn’t now be a good time to unload whatever it is that you’ve got on your mind besides that tangled mop of hair?’

  ‘Nothing much …’

  ‘Come on, ’fess up. Tell it to Red-Top.’

  ‘Let me finish, woman! I was going to. Nothing much to go on but a hunch, but I think that DuQuesne’s somewhere out here in the great open spaces, where men are sometimes schemers as well as men; and if so, I’m after him – foot, horse, and marines.’

  ‘That object compass?’

  ‘Yeah. You see, I built that thing myself, and I know darn well it isn’t out of order. It’s still on him, but doesn’t indicate. Therefore he is too far away to reach – and with his mass, I could find him anywhere up to about one and a half light-years. If he wants to go that far away from home, where is his logical destination? – It can’t be anywhere but Osnome, since that is the only place we stopped for any length of time – the only place where he could have learned anything. He’s learned something, or found something useful to him there, just as we did. That’s sure, since he is not the type of man to do anything without a purpose. Uncle Dudley is on his trail – and will be able to locate him pretty soon.’

  ‘When you get that new compass-case exhausted to a skillionth of a whillimeter or something, whatever it is? I thought Dunark said it took five hundred hours of pumping to get it where he wanted it?’

  ‘It did him – but while the Osnomians are wonders on some th
ings, they ain’t so hot on others. You see, I’ve got three pumps on that job, in series. First, a Rodebush-Michalek super-pump; then, backing that, an ordinary mercury-vapor pump; and last, backing both the others, a Cenco-Hyvac motor-driven oil pump. In less than fifty hours that case will be emptier than any Dunark ever pumped. Just to make sure of cleaning up the last infinitesimal traces, though – painting the lily, as it were – I’m going to flash a getter charge in it. After that, the atmosphere in that case will be tenuous – take my word for it.’

  ‘I’ll have to, most of that contribution to science being over my head like a circus tent. What say we let Skylark Two drift by herself for a while, and catch us some of Nature’s sweet restorer?’

  4

  The Zone of Force is Tested

  Seaton strode into the control room with a small oblong box in his hand. Crane was seated at the desk, poring over an abstruse mathematical treatise in Science. Margaret was working upon a bit of embroidery. Dorothy, seated upon a cushion on the floor with one foot tucked under her, was reading, her hand straying from time to time to a box of chocolates conveniently near.

  ‘Well, this is a peaceful, home-like scene – too bad to break it up. Just finished sealing off and flashing out this case, Mart. Going to see if she’ll read. Want to take a look?’

  He placed a compass upon the plane table, so that its final bearing could be read upon the master circles controlled by the gyroscopes; then simultaneously started his stop-watch and pressed the button which caused a minute couple to be applied to the needle. Instantly the needle began to revolve, and for many minutes there was no apparent change in its motion in either the primary or secondary bearings.

  ‘Do you suppose it is out of order, after all?’ asked Crane, regretfully.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Seaton pondered. ‘You see, they weren’t designed to indicate such distances on such small objects as men, so I threw a million ohms in series with the impulse. That cuts down the free rotation to less than half an hour, and increases the sensitivity to the limit. There, ain’t she trying to quit it?’

  ‘Yes, it is settling down. It must be on him still.’

  Finally the ultra-sensitive needle came to rest. When it had done so Seaton calculated the distance, read the direction, and made a reading upon Osnome.

  ‘He’s there, all right. Bearings agree, and distances check to within a few light-years, which is as close as we can hope to check on as small a mass as a man. Well, that’s that – nothing to do about it until after we get there. One sure thing, Mart – we ain’t coming straight back home from “X”. ’

  ‘No, an investigation is indicated.’

  ‘Well, that puts me out of a job. What to do? Don’t want to study, like you. Can’t crochet, like Peg. Darned if I’ll sit cross-legged on a pillow and eat candy, like that Titian blonde over there on the floor. I know what – I’ll build me a mechanical educator and teach Shiro to talk English instead of that mess of language he indulges in. How’d that be, Mart?’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ put in Dorothy, positively. ‘He’s just too perfect, the way he is. Especially don’t do it if he’d talk the way you do – or could you teach him to talk the way you write?’

  ‘Ouch! That’s a dirty dig. However, Mrs Seaton, I am able and willing to defend my customary mode of speech. You realize that the spoken word is ephemeral, whereas the thought whose nuances have once been expressed in imperishable print is not subject to revision – its crudities can never be remodeled into more subtle, more gracious shading. It is my contention that, due to these inescapable conditions, the mental effort necessitated by the employment of nice distinctions in sense and meaning of words and a slavish adherence to the dictates of the more precise grammarians should be reserved for the prin—’

  He broke off as Dorothy, in one lithe motion, rose and hurled her pillow at his head.

  ‘Choke him, somebody! Perhaps you had better build it, Dick, after all.’

  ‘I believe that he would like it, Dick. He is trying hard to learn, and the continuous use of a dictionary is undoubtedly a nuisance to him.’

  ‘I’ll ask him. Shiro!’

  ‘You have call, sir?’ Shiro entered the room from his galley, with his unfailing bow.

  ‘Yes. How’d you like to learn to talk English like Crane there does – without taking lessons?’

  Shiro smiled doubtfully, unable to take such a thought seriously.

  ‘Yes, it can be done,’ Crane assured him. ‘Dr Seaton can build a machine which will teach you all at once, if you like.’

  ‘I like, sir, enormously, yes, sir. I years study and pore, but honorable English extraordinary difference from Nipponese – no can do. Dictionary useful but …’ he flipped pages dexterously, ‘extremely cumbrous. If honorable Seaton can do, shall be extreme … gratification.’

  He bowed again, smiled, and went out.

  ‘I’ll do just that little thing. So-long, folks. I’m going up to the shop.’

  Day after day the Skylark plunged through the vast emptiness of the interstellar reaches. At the end of each second she was traveling exactly twenty-six feet per second faster than she had been at its beginning and as day after day passed, her velocity mounted into figures which became meaningless, even when expressed in thousands of miles per second. Still she seemed stationary to her occupants, and only different from a vessel motionless upon the surface of the Earth in that objects within her hull had lost three-sixteenths of their normal weight. Only the rapidity with which the closer suns and their planets were passed gave any indication of the frightful speed at which they were being hurried along by the inconceivable power of that disintegrating copper bar.

  When the vessel was nearly halfway to X, the bar was reversed in order to change the sign of their acceleration, and the hollow sphere spun through an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees around the motionless cage which housed the enormous gyroscopes. Still apparently motionless and exactly as she had been before, the Skylark was now actually traveling in a direction which seemed ‘down’, and with a velocity which was being constantly decreased by the amount of their acceleration.

  A few days after the bar had been reversed Seaton announced that the mechanical educator was complete, and brought it into the control room.

  In appearance it was not unlike a large radio set, but it was infinitely more complex. It possessed numerous tubes, kinolamps, and photo-electric cells, as well as many coils of peculiar design – there were dozens of dials and knobs, and a multiple set of head-harnesses.

  ‘How can a thing like that possibly work as it does?’ asked Crane. ‘I know that it does work, but I could scarcely believe it, even after it had educated me.’

  ‘That is nothing like the one Dunark used, Dick,’ objected Dorothy. ‘How come?’

  ‘I’ll answer you first, Dot. This is an improved model – it has quite a few gadgets of my own in it. Now, Mart, as to how it works – it isn’t so funny after you understand it – it’s a lot like radio in that respect. It operates on a band of frequencies lying between the longest light and heat waves and the shortest radio waves. This thing here is the generator of those waves and a very heavy power amplifier. The headsets are stereoscopic transmitters, taking or receiving a three-dimensional view. Nearly all matter is transparent to those waves; for instance bones, hair, and so on. However, cerebrin, a cerebroside peculiar to the thinking structure of the brain, is opaque to them. Dunark, not knowing chemistry, didn’t know why the educator worked or what it worked on – they found out by experiment that it did work; just as we found out about electricity. This three-dimensional model, or view, or whatever you want to call it, is converted into electricity in the headsets, and the resulting modulated wave goes back to the educator. There it is heterodyned with another wave – this second frequency was found after thousands of trials and is, I believe, the exact frequency existing in the optic nerves themselves – and sent to the receiving headset. Modulated as it is, and producing after rectifica
tion in the receiver a three-dimensional picture, it of course reproduces exactly what has been “viewed”, if due allowance has been made for the size and configuration of the different brains involved in the transfer. You remember a sort of flash – a sensation of seeing something – when the educator worked on you? Well, you did see it, just as though it had been transmitted to the brain by the optic nerve, but everything came at once, so the impression of sight was confused. The result in the brain, however, was clear and permanent. The only drawback is that you haven’t the visual memory of what you have learned, and that sometimes makes it hard to use your knowledge. You don’t know whether you know anything about a certain subject or not until after you go digging around in your brain looking for it.’

  ‘I see,’ said Crane, and Dorothy, the irrepressible, put in: ‘Just as clear as so much mud. What are the improvements you added to the original design?’

  ‘Well, you see, I had a big advantage in knowing that cerebrin was the substance involved, and with that knowledge I could carry matters considerably farther than Dunark could in his original model. I can transfer the thoughts of somebody else to a third party or onto a record. Dunark’s machine couldn’t work against resistance – if the subject wasn’t willing to give up his thoughts he couldn’t get ’em. This one can take ’em away by force. In fact, by increasing plate and grid voltages in the amplifier, I believe that I can burn out a man’s brain. Yesterday, I was playing with it, transferring a section of my own brain onto a magnetized tape – for a permanent record, you know – and found out that above certain rather low voltages it becomes a form of torture that would make the best efforts of the old Inquisition seem like a petting party.’

  ‘Did you succeed in the transfer?’ Crane was intensely interested.