The prisoner remained silent, analyzing every feature of the situation, and DuQuesne continued, coldly:
‘Here’s something else for you to think about. If you are unwilling to help us, what is to prevent me from killing you, and then hunting up Seaton and making peace with him for the duration of this forthcoming war? With the fragments of your vessel, which he has; with my knowledge of your mind, reinforced by your own dead brain; and with the vast resources of all the planets of the green system; I do not believe that you could ever conquer us. In fact, it is quite possible – even probable – that we would be able eventually to destroy your entire race. Understand, however, that I care nothing for the green system. You are welcome to it if you do as I ask. If you do not, I shall warn them and help them simply to protect my own world, which is now my own personal property.’
‘In return for our armament and equipment, you promise not to warn the green system against us? The death of your enemies takes first place in your mind?’ The stranger spoke thoughtfully. ‘In that I understand your viewpoint thoroughly. But, after I have remodeled your power plant into ours and have piloted you to our planet, what assurance have I that you will liberate me, as you have said?’
‘None whatever – I have made and am making no promises, since I cannot expect you to trust me, any more than I can trust you. Enough of this argument! I am master here, and I am dictating terms. We can get along without you. Therefore you must decide quickly whether you would rather die suddenly and surely, here in space and right now, or help us as I demand and live until you get back home – enjoying meanwhile your life and whatever chance you think you may have of being liberated within the atmosphere of your own planet.’
‘Just a minute, chief!’ Loring said, in English, his back to the prisoner. Wouldn’t we gain more by killing him and going back to Seaton and the green system, as you suggested?’
‘No.’ DuQuesne also turned away, to shield his features from the mind-reading gaze of the Fenachrone. ‘That was pure bluff. I don’t want to get within a million miles of Seaton until after we have the armament of this fellow’s ships. I couldn’t make peace with Seaton now, even if I wanted to – and I haven’t the slightest intention of trying. I intend killing him on sight. Here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’ll get what we came after. Then we’ll find the Skylark and blow her out of space, and take over the pieces of that Fenachrone ship. After that we’ll head for the green system, and with their own stuff and what we’ll give them they’ll be able to give the Fenachrone a hot reception. By the time they finally destroy the Osnomians – if they do – we’ll have the world ready for them.’ He turned to the captive. ‘What is your decision?’
‘I submit, in the hope that you will keep your promise, since there is no alternative but death.’
Then, still loosely held by the attractors and carefully watched by DuQuesne and Loring, the creature tore into the task of rebuilding the Osnomian power plant into the space-annihilating drive of the Fenachrone. Nor was he turning traitor, for he well knew one fact that DuQuesne’s hurried inspection had failed to glean from the labyrinthine intricacies of his brain; that once within the detector screens of that distant solar system these Earth-beings would be utterly helpless before the forces which would be turned upon them. And time was precious. For the good of his own race he must drive the Violet so unmercifully that she would overtake even that fleeing torpedo, now many hours upon its way – the torpedo bearing news, for the first time in Fenachrone history, of the overwhelming defeat and capture of one of its mighty engines of interstellar war.
In a very short time, considering the complexity of the undertaking, the conversion of the power plant was done and the repellors, already supposed the ultimate in protection, were reinforced by a ten-thousand-pound mass of activated copper, effective for untold millions of miles. Their monstrous pilot then set the bar and advanced both levers of the dual power control out to the extreme limit of their travel.
There was no sense of motion or of acceleration, since the new system of propulsion acted upon every molecule of matter within the radius of activity of the bar, which had been set to include the entire hull. The passengers felt only the utter lack of all weight and the other peculiar sensations with which they were already familiar. But in spite of the lack of apparent motion, the Violet was now leaping through the unfathomable depths of interstellar space with the unthinkable acceleration of five times the velocity of light!
8
The Porpoise-Men of Dasor
‘How long do you figure it’s going to take us to get there, Mart?’ Seaton asked from a corner, where he was bending over his apparatus-table.
‘About three days at this acceleration. I set it at what I thought the safe maximum for the girls. Should we increase it?’
‘Probably not – three days isn’t too bad. Anyway, to save even one day we’d have to double the acceleration, so we’d better let it ride. How’re you making it, Peg?’
‘I’m getting used to weighing a ton now. My knees buckled only once this morning from my forgetting to watch them when I tried to walk. Don’t let me interfere, though; if I am slowing us down I’ll go to bed and stay there!’
‘It’d hardly pay. We can use the time to good advantage. Look here, Mart – I’ve been looking over this stuff I got out of their ship, and here’s something I know you’ll eat up. They refer to it as a chart, but it’s three-dimensional and almost incredible. I can’t say that I understand it, but I get an awful kick out of looking at it. I’ve been studying it a couple of hours, and haven’t started yet. I haven’t found our solar system, the green one, or our own. It’s too heavy to move around now, because of the acceleration we’re using – come on over here and give it a look.’
The ‘chart’ was a strip of film, apparently miles in length, wound upon reels at each end of the machine. One section of the film was always under the viewing mechanism – an optical system projecting an undistorted image into a visiplate somewhat similar to their own – and at the touch of a lever a small motor moved the film through the projector.
It was not an ordinary star-chart: it was three-dimensional, ultra-stereoscopic. The eye did not perceive a flat surface, but beheld an actual, extremely narrow wedge of space as seen from the center of the galaxy. Each of the closer stars was seen in its true position in space and in its true perspective, and each was clearly identified by number. In the background were faint stars and nebulous masses of light, too distant to be resolved into separate stars – a true representation of the actual sky. As both men stared, fascinated, into the visiplate, Seaton touched the lever and they apparently traveled directly along the center line of that ever-widening wedge. As they proceeded the nearer stars grew brighter and larger, soon becoming suns, with their planets and then the satellites of the planets plainly visible, and finally passing out of the picture behind the observers. The fainter stars became bright, grew into suns and solar systems, and were passed in turn. The chart still unrolled. The nebulous masses of light were approached, became composed of faint stars, which developed as had the others, and were passed.
Finally, when the picture filled the entire visiplate, they arrived at the outermost edge of the galaxy. No more stars were visible: they saw empty space stretching for inconceivably vast distances before them. But beyond that indescribable and incomprehensible vacuum they saw faint lenses and dull spots of light, which were also named, and which each man knew to be other galaxies, charted by the almost unlimited power of the Fenachrone astronomers, but not as yet explored. As the magic scroll unrolled still farther they found themselves back in the center of the galaxy, starting outward in the wedge adjacent to the one which they had just traversed. Seaton cut off the motor and wiped his forehead.
Wouldn’t that break you off at the ankles, Mart? Did you ever conceive the possibility of such a thing?’
‘I did not. There are literally miles of film in each of those reels, and I see that that cabinet is practic
ally full of reels. There must be an index or a master-chart.’
‘Yes, there’s a book in this slot here, but we don’t know any of their names or numbers – wait a minute! How did he report our Earth on that torpedo? Planet number three of sun six four something Pilarone, wasn’t it? I’ll get the record.’
‘Six four seven three Pilarone, it was.’
‘Pilarone … let’s see …’ Seaton studied the index volume. ‘Reel twenty, scene fifty-one, I’d translate it.’
They found the reel, and ‘scene fifty-one’ did indeed show that section of space in which our solar system is. Seaton stopped the chart when star six four seven three was at its closest range, and there was our sun; with its nine planets and their many satellites accurately shown and correctly described.
‘They know their stuff, all right – you’ve got to hand it to ’em. I’ve been straightening out that brain record – cutting out the hazy stretches and getting his knowledge straightened out so we can use it, and there’s a lot of this kind of stuff in the record you can get. Suppose that you can figure out exactly where he comes from with this dope and with his brain record?’
‘Certainly. I may be able to get more complete information upon the green system than the Osnomians have, too, which will be very useful indeed. You are right – I am intensely interested in this material, and if you do not care particularly about studying it any more at the moment, I believe that I should begin to study it now.’
‘Take over. I’m going to study that record some more. Don’t know whether a human brain can take it all – especially all at once – but I’m going to sort of peck around the edges and get some dope that we need pretty badly. We got a lot of information from that wampus.’
About sixty hours out, Dorothy, who had been observing the planet through number six visiplate, called Seaton away from the Fenachrone brain-record, upon which he was still concentrating.
‘Come here a minute, Dickie! Haven’t you got that knowledge all packed away in your skull yet?’
‘I’ll say I haven’t. That bird’s brain was three or four sizes larger than mine, and loaded Plimsoll down. I’m just nibbling around the edges yet.’
‘I’ve always heard that the capacity of even the human brain was almost infinite. Isn’t that true?’ asked Margaret.
‘Maybe it is, if the knowledge were built up gradually over generations. I think maybe I can get most of this stuff stowed away so that I can use it, but it’s going to be an awful job.’
‘Is their brain really as far ahead of ours as I gathered from what I saw of it?’ asked Crane.
‘That’s a hard one to answer: they’re so different. I wouldn’t say that they are any more intelligent than we are. They know more about some things than we do; less about others. But they have very little in common with us. They don’t belong to the genus “homo” at all, really. Instead of having a common ancestor with the anthropoids, as we had, they evolved from a genus which combined the worst traits of the cat tribe and the carnivorous lizards – the two most savage and bloodthirsty branches of the animal kingdom – and instead of getting better as they went along, they got worse, in those respects at least. But they do not know a lot. When you get a month or so to spare you want to put on this harness and grab his knowledge, being very careful to steer clear of his mental traits and so on. Then when we get back to Earth we’ll simply tear it apart and rebuild it. You’ll know what I mean when you get this stuff transplanted into your own skull. But to cut out the lecture, what’s on your mind, Dottie Dimple?’
‘This planet Martin picked out is all wet, literally. The visibility is fine – very few clouds – but this whole half of it is solid ocean. If there are any islands, even, they’re mighty small.’
All four looked into the receiver. With the great magnification employed, the planet almost filled the visiplate. There were a few fleecy wisps of cloud, but the entire surface upon which they gazed was one sheet of the now familiar deep and glorious blue peculiar to the waters of that cuprous solar system, with no markings whatever.
‘What d’you make of it, Mart? That’s water, all right – copper sulphate solution, just like the Osnomian and Urvanian oceans – and nothing else visible. How big would an island have to be for us to see it from here?’
‘So much depends upon the contour and nature of the island that it is hard to say. If it were low and heavily covered with their green-blue vegetation, we might not be able to see a rather large one, whereas if it were hilly and bare, we could probably see one only a few miles in diameter.’
‘As it turns and as we get closer, we’ll see what we can see. Better take turns watching it, hadn’t we?’
It was so decided, and while the Skylark was still some distance away several small islands became visible, and the period of rotation of the planet was determined to be in the neighborhood of fifty hours. Margaret, then at the controls, picked out the largest island visible and directed the bar toward it. As they dropped down close to their objective, they found that the air was of the same composition as that of Osnome, but had a pressure of only seventy-eight centimeters of mercury, and that the surface gravity of the planet was ninety-five hundredths that of the Earth.
‘Fine business!’ exulted Seaton. ‘Just about like home, but I don’t see much of a place to land without getting wet, do you? Those reflectors are probably solar generators, and they cover the whole island except for that lagoon right under us.’
The island, perhaps ten miles long and half that in width, was entirely covered with great hyperbolic reflectors, arranged so closely together that little could be seen between them. Each reflector apparently focused upon an object in the center, a helix which seemed to writhe in that flaming focus, glowing with a nacreous, opalescent green light.
‘Well, nothing much to see there – let’s go down,’ remarked Seaton as he shot the Skylark over to the edge of the island and down to the surface of the water. But here again nothing was to be seen of the land itself. The wall was one vertical plate of seamless metal, supporting huge metal guides, between which floated metal pontoons. From these gigantic floats metal girders and trusses went through slots in the wall into the darkness of the interior. Close scrutiny revealed that the large floats were rising steadily, although very slowly; while smaller floats bobbed up and down upon each passing wave.
‘Solid generators, tide-motors, and wave-motors, all at once!’ ejaculated Seaton. ‘SOME power plant! Folks, I’m going to take a look at that if we have to blast our way in!’
They circumnavigated the island without finding any door or other opening – the entire thirty miles was one stupendous battery of the generators. Back at the starting point, the Skylark hopped over the structure and down to the surface of the small central lagoon previously noticed. Close to the water, it was seen that there was plenty of room for the vessel to move about beneath the roof of reflectors, and that the island was one solid stand of tide-motors. At one end of the lagoon was an open metal structure, the only building visible, and Seaton brought the space-cruiser up to it and through the huge opening – for door there was none. The interior of the room was lighted by long, tubular lights running around in front of the walls, which were veritable switchboards. Row after row and tier upon tier stood the instruments, plainly electrical meters of enormous capacity and equally plainly in full operation, but no wiring or bus-bar could be seen. Before each row of instruments there was a narrow walk, with steps leading down into the water of the lagoon. Every part of the great room was plainly visible, and not a living being was even watching that vast instrument board.
‘What do you make of it, Dick?’ asked Crane, slowly.
‘No wiring – tight beam transmission. The Fenachrone do it with two matched-frequency separable units. Millions and millions of kilowatts there, if I’m any judge. Absolutely automatic too, or else …’ His voice died away.
‘Or else what?’ asked Dorothy.
‘Just a hunch. I wouldn’t wonder if …�
��
‘Hold it, Dicky! Remember I had to put you to bed after that last hunch you had!’
‘Here it is, anyway. Mart, what would be the logical line of evolution when the planet has become so old that all the land has been eroded to a level below that of the ocean? You picked us out an old one, all right – so old that there’s almost no land left. Would a highly civilized people revert to fish? That seems like a backward move to me, but what other answer is possible?’
‘Probably not to true fishes – although they might easily develop some fish-like traits. I do not believe, however, that they would go back to gills or to cold blood.’
‘What are you two saying?’ interrupted Margaret. ‘Do you mean to say that you think fish live here instead of people, and that fish did all this?’ as she waved her hand at the complicated machinery about them.
‘Not fish exactly, no.’ Crane paused in thought. ‘Merely a people who have adjusted themselves to their environment through conscious or natural selection. We had a talk about this very thing during our first trip, shortly after I met you. Remember? I commented on the fact that there must be life throughout the universe, much of it that we could not understand; and you replied that there would be no reason to suppose them awful because incomprehensible. That may be the case here.’
‘Well, I’m going to find out,’ declared Seaton, as he appeared with a box full of coils, tubes, and other apparatus.
‘How?’ asked Dorothy, curiously.
‘Fix me up a detector and follow up one of those beams. Find its frequency and direction, first, you know, then pick it up outside and follow it to where it’s going. It’ll go through anything, of course, but I can trap off enough of it to follow it, even if it’s tight enough to choke itself. That’s one thing I got from that brain record.’
E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne Page 32