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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  ‘What special instruction do we need to run it, if any?’ Seaton asked the First of Mechanism, who had lifted himself up into the projector.

  ‘Very little. This control governs the hour motion, that one the right ascension. The potentiometers regulate the degree of vernier action – any ratio is possible, from direct drive up to more than a hundred million complete revolutions of that graduated dial to give you one second of arc.’

  ‘Plenty fine, I’d say. Thanks a lot, ace. Whither away, Rovol – any choice?’

  ‘Anywhere you please, son, since this is merely a tryout.’

  ‘O.K. We’ll hop over and tell Dunark hello.’

  The tube swung around into line with that distant planet and Seaton stepped down, hard, upon a pedal. Instantly they seemed infinite myriads of miles out in space, the green system barely visible as a faint green star behind them.

  ‘Wow, that ray’s fast!’ exclaimed the pilot, ruefully. ‘I overshot about a hundred light years. I’ll try it again, with considerably less power,’ as he rearranged and reset the dials and meters before him. Adjustment after adjustment and many reductions in power had to be made before the projection ceased leaping millions of miles at a touch, but finally Seaton became familiar with the new technique and the thing became manageable. Soon they were hovering above what had been Mardonale, and saw that all signs of warfare had disappeared. Slowly turning the controls, Seaton flashed the projection over the girdling Osnomian sea and guided it through the supposedly impregnable metal walls of the palace into the throne room of Roban, where they saw the Emperor, Tarnan the Karbix, and Dunark in close conference.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ remarked Seaton. ‘Now we’ll put on a little visibility and give the natives a treat.’

  ‘Sh-sh,’ whispered Dorothy. ‘They’ll hear you, Dick – we’re intruding shamefully,’

  ‘No, they won’t hear us, because I haven’t heterodyned the audio in on the wave yet. And as for intruding, that’s exactly what we came over here for.’

  He imposed the audio system upon the inconceivably high frequency of their carrier wave and spoke in the Osnomian tongue.

  ‘Greetings, Roban, Dunark, and Tarnan, from Seaton.’ All three jumped to their feet, amazed, staring about the empty room as Seaton went on, ‘I am not here in person. I am simply sending you my projection. Just a moment and I will put on a little visibility.’

  He brought more forces into play, and solid images of force appeared in the great hall; images of the three occupants of the controller. Introductions and greetings over, Seaton spoke briefly and to the point.

  ‘We’ve got everything we came after – much more than I had any idea we could get. You need have no more fear of the Fenachrone – we have found a science superior to theirs. But much remains to be done, and we have none too much time; therefore I have come to you with certain requests.’

  ‘The Overlord has but to command,’ replied Roban.

  ‘Not command, since we are all working together for a common cause. In the name of that cause, Dunark, I ask you to come to me at once, accompanied by Tarnan and any others you may select. You will be piloted by a force which we shall set upon your controls. Upon your way here you will visit the First City of Dasor, another planet, where you will pick up Sacner Carfon, who will be awaiting you there.’

  ‘As you direct, so it shall be,’ and Seaton flashed the projector to the neighboring planet of Urvania. There he found that the gigantic space-cruiser he had ordered had been completed, and requested Urvan and his commander-in-chief to tow it to Norlamin. He then jumped to Dasor, there interviewing Carfon and being assured of the full cooperation of the porpoise-men.

  ‘Well, that’s that, folks,’ said Seaton as he shut off the power. ‘We can’t do much more for a few days, until they get here for the council of war. How’d it be, Rovol, for me to practice with this outfit while you are finishing up the odds and ends you want to clean up? You might suggest to Orlon, too, that it’d be a good deed for him to pilot our visitors over here.’

  As Rovol wafted himself to the ground from their lofty station, Crane and Margaret appeared and were lifted up to the place formerly occupied by the physicist.

  ‘How’s tricks, Mart? I hear you’re quite an astronomer?’

  ‘Yes, thanks to Orlon and the First of Psychology. He seemed quite interested in increasing our Earthly knowledge. I certainly know much more than I had ever hoped to know of anything.’

  ‘Me, too. You can pilot us to the Fenachrone system now without any trouble. You also absorbed some ethnology and kindred sciences. What d’you think – with Dunark and Urvan, do we know enough to go ahead or should we take a chance on holding things up while we get acquainted with some of the other peoples of these planets of the green system?’

  ‘Delay is dangerous, as our time is already short,’ Crane replied. ‘We know enough, I believe. Furthermore, any additional assistance is problematical; in fact, it is more than doubtful. The Norlaminians have surveyed the system rather thoroughly, and no other planet seems to have inhabitants who have even approached the development attained here.’

  ‘Right – that’s exactly the way I dope it. As soon as the gang assembles we’ll go over the top. In the meantime, I called you over to take a ride in this projector – it’s a darb. I’d like to shoot for the Fenachrone system first, but I don’t quite dare to.’

  ‘Don’t dare to? You?’ scoffed Margaret. ‘How come?’

  ‘Cancel the “dare” – make it “prefer not to”. Why? Because while they can’t work through a zone of force, some of their real scientists – and they have lots of them – not like the bull-headed soldier we captured – may well be able to detect fifth-order stuff – even if they can’t work with it intelligently – and if they detected us, it’d put them on guard.’

  ‘Sound reasoning, Dick,’ Crane agreed, ‘and there speaks the Norlaminian physicist, and not my old and reckless playmate, Richard Seaton.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know – I told you I was getting timid like a mouse. But let’s not sit here twiddling our thumbs – let’s go places and do things. Whither away? I want a destination a good ways off, not something in our own back yard.’

  ‘Go back home, of course, stupe,’ put in Dorothy. ‘Do you have to be told every little thing?’

  ‘Sure – never thought of that,’ and Seaton, after a moment’s rapid mental arithmetic, swung the great tube around, rapidly adjusted a few dials, and kicked in the energizing pedal. There was a fleeting instant of unthinkable velocity, then they found themselves poised somewhere in space.

  ‘Well, wonder how far I missed it on my first shot?’ Seaton’s crisp voice broke the stunned silence. ‘Guess that’s our sun, over to the left ain’t it, Mart?’

  ‘Yes. You were about right for distance, and within a few tenths of a light-year laterally. That is very close, I would say.’

  ‘Rotten, for these controls. Except for the effect of relative, proper, orbital, and other motions which I can’t evaluate exactly yet for lack of precise data, I should be able to hit the left eye of a gnat at this range; and the uncertainty in my data couldn’t have thrown me off more than a few hundred feet. Nope, I was too anxious – hurried too much on the settings of the slow verniers. I’ll snap back and try it again.’

  He did so, adjusting the verniers very carefully, and again threw on the power. There was again the sensation of the barest perceptible moment of unimaginable speed, and they were in the air some fifty feet above the ground of Crane Field, almost above the testing shed. Seaton rapidly adjusted the variable-speed motors until they were perfectly stationary relative to the surface of the Earth.

  ‘You are improving,’ commented Crane.

  ‘Yeah – that’s more like it. Guess maybe I can learn to shoot this gun, in time.’

  They dropped through the roof into the laboratory, where Maxwell, now in charge, was watching a reaction and occasionally taking notes.

  ‘Hi, Max! Seaton speaking,
on a television. Got your range?’

  ‘Exactly, chief, apparently. I can hear you perfectly, but can’t see anything.’ Maxwell stared about the empty laboratory.

  ‘You will in a minute. I knew I had you, but didn’t want to scare you out of a year’s growth,’ and Seaton thickened the image until they were plainly visible.

  ‘Please call Mr Vaneman on the phone and tell him you’re in touch with us,’ directed Seaton as soon as greetings had been exchanged. ‘Better yet, after you’ve broken it to them gently, Dot can talk to them, then we’ll go over and see ’em.’

  The connection established, Dorothy’s image floated up to the telephone and spoke.

  ‘Mother? This is the weirdest thing you ever imagined. We’re not really here at all, you know – we’re actually here in Norlamin – no, I mean Dick’s just sending a kind of talking picture of us to see you on Earth here … Oh, no, I don’t know anything about it – it’s something like television, but much more so – I’m saying this myself right now, without any rehearsal or anything … we didn’t want to burst in on you without warning, because you’d be sure to think you were seeing ghosts, and we’re all perfectly all right … we’re having the most perfectly gorgeous time you ever imagined … Oh, I’m so excited I can’t explain anything, even if I knew anything about it to explain. We’ll all four of us be over there in about a second, and tell you about it. ’Bye!’

  Indeed, it was even less than a second – Mrs Vaneman was still in the act of hanging up the receiver when the image materialized in the living-room of Dorothy’s girlhood home.

  ‘Hello, mother and dad,’ Seaton’s voice was cheerful, but matter-of-fact. ‘I’ll thicken this up so you can see us better in a minute. But don’t think that we are flesh and blood. You’ll see simply three-dimensional force-images of us.’

  For a long time Mr and Mrs Vaneman chatted with the four visitors from so far away in space, while Seaton gloried in the perfect working of that marvelous projector.

  ‘Well, our time’s about up,’ Seaton finally ended the visit. ‘The quitting-whistle’s going to blow in five minutes, and they don’t like overtime work over here where we are. We’ll drop in and see you again maybe, sometime before we come back.’

  ‘Do you know yet when you are coming back?’ asked Mrs Vaneman.

  ‘Not an idea in the world, mother, any more than we had when we started. But we’re getting along fine, having the time of our lives, and are learning a lot besides. So-long!’ and Seaton clicked off the power.

  As they descended from the projector and walked toward the waiting airboat Seaton fell in beside Rovol.

  ‘You know they’ve got our new cruiser built of dagal, and are bring it over here. Dagal’s good stuff, but it isn’t as good as your inoson, which is the theoretical ultimate in strength possible for any material possessing molecular structure. Why wouldn’t it be a sound idea to flash it over into inoson when it gets here?’

  ‘That would be an excellent idea, and we shall do so. It also has occurred to me that Caslor of Mechanism, Astron of Energy, Satrazon of Chemistry, myself, and one or two others should collaborate in installing a very complete fifth-order projector in the new Skylark, as well as any other equipment which may seem desirable. The security of the universe may depend upon the abilities and qualities of you Terrestrials and your vessel, and therefore nothing should be left undone which it is possible for us to do.’

  ‘That would help, and we’d appreciate it. Thanks. You might do that, while we attend to such preliminaries as wiping out the Fenachrone fleet.’

  In due time the reinforcements from the other planets arrived, and the mammoth space-cruiser attracted attention even before it was landed, so enormous was she in comparison with the tiny vessels having her in tow. Resting upon the ground, it seemed absurd that such a structure could possibly move under her own power. For two miles that enormous mass of metal extended over the countryside, and while it was very narrow – for its length, still its fifteen hundred feet of diameter dwarfed everything nearby. But Rovol and his aged co-workers smiled happily as they saw it, erected their keyboards, and set to work with a will.

  Meanwhile a group had gathered about a conference table – a group such as had never before been seen together upon any world. There was Fodan, the ancient Chief of the Five of Norlamin, huge-headed, with his leonine mane and flowing beard of white. There were Dunark and Tarnan of Osnome and Urvan of Urvania – smooth-faced and keen, utterly implacable and ruthless in war. There was Sacner Carfon Twenty Three Forty-Six, the immense, porpoise-like, hairless Dasorian. There were Seaton and Crane, representatives of our own Earthly civilization.

  Seaton opened the meeting by handing each man a headset and running a reel showing the plans of the Fenachrone; not only as he had secured them from the captain of the marauding vessel, but also everything the First of Psychology had deduced from his own study of that inhuman brain. He then removed the reel and gave them the tentative plans of battle. Headsets removed, he threw the meeting open for discussion – and discussion there was in plenty. Each man had ideas, which were thrown upon the table and studied, for the most part calmly and dispassionately. The conference continued until only one point was left, upon which argument waxed so hot that everyone seemed shouting at once.

  ‘Order!’ commanded Seaton, banging his fist upon the table. ‘Osnome and Urvania wish to strike without warning, Norlamin and Dasor insist upon a formal declaration of war. Earth has the deciding vote. Mart, how do we vote on this?’

  ‘I vote for formal warning, for two reasons, one of which I believe will convince even Dunark. First, because it is the fair thing to do – which reason is, of course, the one actuating the Norlaminians, but which would not be considered by Osnome, nor even remotely understood by the Fenachrone. Second, I am certain that the Fenachrone will merely be enraged by the warning and will defy us. Then what will they do? You have already said that you have been able to locate only a few of their exploring warships. As soon as we declare war upon them they will almost certainly send out torpedoes to every one of their ships of war. We can then trace the torpedoes, and thus will be enabled to find and to destroy their vessels.’

  ‘That settles that,’ declared the chairman as a shout of agreement arose. ‘We shall now adjourn to the projector and send the warning. I have a tracer upon the torpedo announcing the destruction by us of their vessel, and that torpedo will arrive at its destination very shortly. It seems to me that we should make our announcement immediately after their ruler has received the news of their first defeat.’

  In the projector, where they were joined by Rovol, Orlon, and several others of the various ‘Firsts’ of Norlamin, they flashed out to the flying torpedo, and Seaton grinned at Crane as their fifth-order carrier beam went through the far-flung screens of the Fenachrone without setting up the slightest reaction. In the wake of that speeding messenger they flew through a warm, foggy, dense atmosphere, through a receiving trap in the wall of a gigantic conical structure, and on into the telegraph room. They saw the operator remove spools of tape from the torpedo and attach them to a magnetic sender – heard him speak.

  ‘Pardon, your majesty – we have just received a first-degree-emergency torpedo from flagship Y427W of fleet 42. In readiness.’

  ‘Put it on, here in the council chamber,’ a deep voice snapped.

  ‘If he’s broadcasting it, we’re in for a spell of hunting,’ Seaton remarked. ‘Ah – he’s putting it on a tight beam. That’s fine; we can trace it,’ and with a narrow detector beam he traced the invisible transmission beam into the council room.

  ‘’Sfunny. This place seems awfully familiar – I’d swear I’d seen it before, lots of times – seems like I’ve been in it, more than once,’ Seaton remarked, puzzled, as he looked around the somber room, with its dull, paneled metal walls covered with charts, maps, screens, and speakers; and with its low, massive furniture. ‘Oh, sure, I’m familiar with it from studying the brain of that Fenachron
e captain. Well, while His Nibs is absorbing the bad news, we’ll go over this once more. You, Carfon, having the biggest voice any of us ever heard uttering intelligible language, are to give the speech. You know about what to say. When I say “go ahead” do your stuff. Now, everybody else, listen. While he’s talking I’ve got to have audio waves heterodyned both ways in the circuit, and they’ll be able to hear any noise any of us make – so all of us except Carfon want to keep absolutely quiet, no matter what happens or what we see. As soon as he’s done I’ll cut off our audio and say something to let you all know we’re off the air. Got it?’

  ‘One point has occurred to me about handling the warning,’ boomed Carfon. ‘If it should be delivered from apparently empty air, directly at those we wish to address, it would give the enemy an insight into our methods, which might be undesirable.’

  ‘Hm … m … m. Never thought of that … it sure would, and it would be undesirable,’ agreed Seaton. ‘Let’s see … we can get away from that by broadcasting it. They have a very complete system of speakers, but no matter how many private-band speakers a man may have, he always has one on the general wave, which is used for very important announcements of wide interest. I’ll broadcast you on that wave, so that every general-wave speaker on the planet will be energized. That way, it’ll look like we’re shooting from a distance. You might talk accordingly.’

  ‘If we have a minute more, there’s something I would like to ask,’ Dunark broke the ensuing silence. ‘Here we are, seeing everything that is happening there. Walls, planets, even suns, do not bar our vision, because of the fifth-order carrier wave. I understand that, partially, But how can we see anything there? I always thought that I knew something about communications and television hook-ups and techniques, but I see that I don’t. There must be a collector or receiver, close to the object viewed, with nothing opaque to light intervening. Light from that object must be heterodyned upon the fifth-order carrier and transmitted back to us. How can you do all that from here, with neither a receiver nor a transmitter at the other end?’