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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘I have a vessel twice as large as the largest warship Fenor boasted; completely provisioned, armed, and powered for a cruise of one hundred years at high acceleration. It is hidden in a remote fastness of the jungle. I am placing in that vessel a group of the finest, brainiest, most highly advanced and intelligent of our men and women, with their children. We shall journey at our highest speed to a certain distant galaxy, where we shall seek out a planet similar in atmosphere, temperature, and mass to the one upon which we now dwell. There we shall multiply and continue our studies; and from that planet, on the day when we shall have attained sufficient knowledge, there shall descend upon the Central System of this galaxy the vengeance of the Fenachrone. That vengeance will be all the sweeter for the fact that it shall have been delayed.’

  ‘But how about libraries, apparatus, and equipment? Suppose that we do not live long enough to perfect that knowledge? And with only one vessel and a handful of men we could not cope with that accursed Overlord and his navies of the void.’

  ‘Libraries are aboard, so are much apparatus and equipment. What we cannot take with us we can build. As for the knowledge I mentioned, it may not be attained in your lifetime or in mine. But the racial memory of the Fenachrone is long, as you know; and even if the necessary problems are not solved until our descendants are sufficiently numerous to populate an entire planet, yet will those descendants wreak the vengeance of the Fenachrone upon the races of that hated one, the Overlord, before they go on with the Conquest of the Universe. Many problems will arise, of course; but they shall be solved. Enough! Time passes rapidly, and all too long have I talked. I am using this time upon you because in my organization there is no soldier, and the Fenachrone of the future will need your great knowledge of warfare. Are you going with us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well.’ Ravindau led the general through a door and into an airboat lying upon the terrace outside the laboratory. ‘Drive us at speed to your home, where we shall pick up your family.’

  Fenimol took the controls and laid a pencil of force to his home – a beam serving a double purpose. It held the vessel upon its predetermined course through that thick and sticky fog and also rendered collision impossible, since any two of these controllers repelled each other to such a degree that no two vessels could take paths which would bring them together. Some such provision had long since been found necessary, for all Fenachrone craft were provided with the same space-annihilating drive, to which any comprehensible distance was but a journey of a few moments, and at that frightful velocity collision meant annihilation.

  ‘I understand that you could not take one of the military into your confidence until you were ready to put your plans into effect,’ the general conceded. ‘How long will it take you to get ready to leave? You have said that haste is imperative, and I therefore assume that you have already warned the other numbers of the expedition.’

  ‘I flashed the emergency signal before I joined you and Fenor in the council room. Every man of the organization has received that signal, wherever he may have been, and by this time most of them, with their families, are on the way to the hidden cruiser. We shall leave this planet in fifteen minutes from now at the most – I dare not stay an instant longer than is absolutely necessary.’

  The members of the general’s family were bundled, amazed, into the airboat, which immediately set out toward the secret rendezvous.

  In a remote and desolate part of the planet, concealed in the depths of the towering jungle growth, a mammoth space-cruiser was receiving her complement of passengers. Airboats, flying at their terrific velocity through the heavy, steaming fog as closely-spaced as their controller rays would permit, flashed signals along their guiding beams, dove into the apparently impenetrable jungle, and added their passengers to the throng pouring into the great vessel.

  As the minute of departure drew near the feeling of tension aboard the cruiser increased and vigilance was raised to the maximum. The doors were shut, no one was allowed outside, and everything was held in readiness for instant flight at the least alarm. Finally a scientist and his family arrived from the opposite side of the planet – the last members of the organization – and, twenty-seven minutes after Ravindau had flashed his signal, the prow of that mighty spaceship reared toward the perpendicular, posing its massive length at the predetermined angle. There it halted momentarily, then disappeared utterly, only a vast column of tortured and shattered vegetation, torn from the ground and carried for miles upward into the air by the vacuum of its wake, remaining to indicate the path taken by the flying projectile.

  Hour after hour the Fenachrone vessel bored on, with its frightful and ever-increasing velocity, through the ever-thinning stars, but it was not until the last star had been passed, until everything before them was entirely devoid of light, and until the galaxy behind them began to take on a well-defined lenticular aspect, that Ravindau would consent to leave the controls and to seek his hard-earned rest.

  Day after day and week after week went by, and the Fenachrone vessel still held the acceleration with which she had started out. Ravindau and Fenimol sat in the control cabin, staring out through the visiplates, abstracted. There was no need of staring, and they were not really looking, for there was practically nothing at which to look. The galaxy of which our Earth is an infinitesimal mote, the galaxy which former astronomers considered the universe, was so far behind that even its immense expanse had become a tiny, dull, hazy spot of light. In all directions other galaxies – spots of light so small and so dull as to be distinguished only with difficulty from the absolute black of the void – seemed equally remote. The galaxy toward which they were making their stupendous flight was as yet so distant that it could not be seen by the unaided eye. For thousands of light-years around them there was stark emptiness. No stars, no meteoric matter, not even the smallest particle of cosmic dust – absolutely empty space. Absolute vacuum: absolute zero. Absolute nothingness – a concept intrinsically impossible for the most highly trained human mind to grasp.

  Conscienceless and heartless monstrosities though they both were, by heredity and training, the immensity of the appalling lack of anything tangible oppressed them. Ravindau was stern and serious, Fenimol moody. Finally the latter spoke.

  ‘It would be endurable if we knew what had happened, or if we ever could know definitely, one way or the other, whether all this was necessary.’

  ‘We shall know, General, definitely. I am certain in my own mind, but after a time, when we have settled upon our new home and when the Overlord shall have relaxed his vigilance, you shall come back to the solar system of the Fenachrone in this vessel or a similar one. I know what you shall find – but the trip shall be made, and you shall yourself see what was once our home planet a seething sun, second only in brilliance to the parent sun about which she shall still be revolving.’

  ‘Are we safe, even now – what of possible pursuit?’ asked Fenimol, and the monstrous, flame-shot wells of black that were Ravindau’s eyes almost emitted tangible fires as he made reply:

  ‘We are far from safe, but we grow stronger minute by minute. Fifty of the greatest minds our world has ever known have been working from the moment of our departure upon a line of investigation suggested to me by certain things my instruments recorded during the visit of the self-styled Overlord. I cannot say anything yet, even to you – except that the Day of Conquest may not be so far in the future as we have supposed.’

  14

  Interstellar Extermination

  ‘I hate to leave this meeting – it’s great stuff,’ Seaton remarked, as he flashed down to the torpedo room when Fenor decided to recall all outlying vessels, ‘but this machine isn’t designed to let me be in more than two places at once. Wish it was – maybe after this fracas is over we’ll be able to incorporate something like that into it.’

  The Fenachrone operator touched a lever and the chair upon which he sat, with all its co
ntrol panels, slid rapidly across the floor toward an apparently blank wall. As he reached it a port opened, a metal scroll appeared, containing the numbers and last reported positions of all Fenachrone vessels outside the detector zone. A vast magazine of torpedoes came up through the floor, with an automatic loader to place a torpedo under the operator’s hand the instant its predecessor had been launched.

  ‘Get Peg here quick, Mart – we need a stenographer bad. Until she gets here, see what you can do in getting those first numbers before they roll off the end of the scroll. No, hold it – as you were! I’ve got controls enough to put the whole thing on a recorder, so we can study it at our leisure.’

  Haste was indeed necessary, for the operator worked with uncanny quickness of hand. One fleeting glance at the scroll, a lightning adjustment of dials in the torpedo, a touch upon a tiny button, and a messenger was upon its way. But quick as he was, Seaton’s flying fingers kept up with him, and before each torpedo disappeared through the ether gate there was fastened upon it a fifth-order tracer that would never leave it until the force had been disconnected at the gigantic control board of the Norlaminian projector. One flying minute passed, during which seventy torpedoes had been launched, before Seaton spoke.

  ‘Wonder how many ships they’ve got out, anyway? Didn’t get any idea from the brain-record. Anyway, Rovol, it might be a sound idea for you to install me some tracers on this board. I’ve got only a couple of hundred, and that may not be enough – and I’ve got both hands full.’

  Rovol seated himself beside the younger man, like one organist joining another at the console of a tremendous organ. Seaton’s nimble fingers would flash here and there, depressing keys and manipulating controls until he had exactly the required combination of forces centered upon the torpedo next to issue. He then would press a tiny switch and upon a panel full of red-topped, numbered plungers the one next in series would drive home, transferring to itself the assembled beam and releasing the keys for the assembly of other forces. Rovol’s fingers were also flying, but the forces he directed were seizing and shaping materials, as well as other forces. The Norlaminian physicist set up one integral, stepped upon a pedal, and a new red-topped stop precisely like the others, and numbered in order, appeared as though by magic upon the panel at Seaton’s left hand. Rovol then leaned back in his seat – but the red-topped stops continued to appear, at the rate of exactly seventy per minute, upon the panel, which increased in width sufficiently to accommodate another row as soon as a row was completed.

  Rovol bent a quizzical glance upon the younger scientist, who blushed a fiery red, rapidly set up another integral, then also leaned back in his place, while his face burned deeper than before.

  ‘That is better, son. Never forget that it is a waste of energy to do the same thing twice, and that if you know precisely what is to be done, you need not do it personally at all. Forces are faster than human hands, they are tireless, and they neither slip nor make mistakes.’

  ‘Thanks, Rovol – I’ll bet this lesson will make it stick in my mind, too.’

  ‘You are not thoroughly accustomed to using all your knowledges as yet. That will come with practice, however, and in a few weeks you will be as thoroughly at home with forces as I am.’

  ‘Hope so, chief, but it looks like a tall order to me.’

  Finally the last torpedo was despatched. The tube closed. Seaton moved the projection back up into the council chamber, finding it empty.

  ‘Well, the conference is over – besides, we’ve got more important fish to fry. War has been declared, on both sides, and we’ve got to get busy. They’ve got nine hundred and six vessels out, and every one of them has got to go to Davy Jones’s locker before we can sleep sound of nights. My first job’ll have to be untangling those nine oh six forces, getting lines on each one of them, and seeing if I can project straight enough to find the ships before the torpedoes overtake them. Mart, you and Orlon, our astronomers, had better figure out the last reported positions of each of those vessels, so we’ll know about where to hunt for them, Rovol, you might send out a detector screen a few light-years in diameter, to be sure none of them slip a fast one over on us. By starting it right here and expanding it gradually, you can be sure that no Fenachrone is inside it. Then we’ll find a hunk of copper on that planet somewhere, plate it with some of their own X metal, and blow them into Kingdom Come.’

  ‘May I venture a suggestion?’ asked Drasnik, the First of Psychology.

  ‘Absolutely – nothing you’ve said so far has been idle chatter.’

  ‘You know, of course, that there are real scientists among the Fenachrone; and you yourself have suggested that while they cannot penetrate the zone of force nor use fifth-order rays, yet they might know about them in theory, might even be able to know when they were being used – detect them in other words. Let us assume that such a scientist did detect your forces while you were there a short time ago. What should he do?’

  ‘Search me … What would he do?’

  ‘He might do any one of several things, but if I read their nature aright, such a one would gather up a few men and women – as many as he could – and migrate to another planet. For he would of course grasp instantly the fact that you had used fifth-order rays as carrier waves, and would be able to deduce your ability to destroy. He would also realize that in the brief time allowed him, he could not hope to learn to control those unknown forces; and with his terribly savage and vengeful nature and intense pride of race, he would take every possible step both to perpetuate his race and to obtain revenge. Am I right?’

  Seaton swung his controls savagely, and manipulated dials and keys.

  ‘Right as rain, Drasnik. There – I’ve thrown a fifth-order detector screen, that they can’t possibly neutralize, around them. Anything that goes out through it will have a tracer slapped onto it. But say, it’s been half an hour or so since war was declared – suppose we’re too late? Maybe some of ’em have got away already, and if one couple escapes we’ll have the whole thing to do over again a thousand years or so from now. You’ve got the massive intellect, Drasnik. What can we do about it? We can’t throw a detector screen around the whole galaxy.’

  ‘I would suggest that since you have now guarded against further exodus, it is not necessary to destroy the planet for a time. Rovol and his co-workers have the other projector nearly done. Let them project me to the world of the Fenachrone, where I shall conduct a thorough mental investigation. By the time you have taken care of the raiding vessels, I believe that I shall have learned everything we need to know.’

  ‘Fine – hop to it, and may there be lots of bubbles in your think-tank. Anybody else know of any other loop-holes I’ve left open?’

  No other suggestions were made, and each man bent to his particular task. Crane at the star-chart of the galaxy and Orlon at the Fenachrone operator’s despatching scroll rapidly worked out the approximate positions of the Fenachrone vessels, and marked them with tiny green lights in a vast model of the galaxy which they had already caused forces to erect in the air of the projector’s base. It was soon learned that a few of the ships were exploring quite close to their home system; so close that the torpedoes, with their unthinkable acceleration, would reach them within a few hours.

  Ascertaining the stop-number of the tracer upon the torpedo which should first reach its destination, Seaton followed it from his panel out to the flying messenger. Now moving with a velocity many times that of light, it of course was invisible to direct vision; but to the light waves heterodyned upon the fifth-order forces it was as plainly visible as though it were stationary. Lining up the path of the projectile accurately, he then projected himself forward in that exact line, with a flat detector-screen thrown out for half a light-year upon each side of him. Setting the controls, he flashed ahead, the detector stopping him instantaneously upon encountering the power plant of the exploring raider. An oscillator sounded a shrill and rising note, and Seaton slowly shifted his controls until he stood
in the control room of the enemy vessel.

  The Fenachrone ship, a thousand feet long and more than a hundred feet in diameter, was tearing through space toward a brilliant blue-white star. Her crew were at battle stations, her navigating officers peering intently into the operating visiplates, all oblivious to the fact that a stranger stood in their very midst.

  ‘Well, here’s the first one. I hate like the devil to do this – it’s altogether too much like pushing baby chickens into a creek – but it’s a dirty job that’s got to be done.’

  As one man, Orlon and the other remaining Norlaminians leaped out of the projector and floated to the ground below.

  ‘I expected that,’ Seaton said. ‘They can’t even think of a thing like this without getting the blue willies – I don’t blame them much, at that. How about you, Carfon? You can be excused if you like.’

  ‘I want to watch those forces at work. I do not enjoy destruction, but like you, I can make myself endure it.’

  Dunark, the fierce and bloodthirsty Osnomian prince, leaped to his feet, his eyes flashing.

  ‘That’s one thing I never could get about you, Dick!’ he exclaimed in English. ‘How a man with your brains can be so soft – so sloppily sentimental, gets clear past me. You remind me of a bowl of mush – you wade around in slush clear to your ears. Faugh! It’s their lives or ours! Tell me what button to push and I’ll be only too glad to push it. Cut out the sob-sister act and for Cat’s sake, let’s get busy!’

  ‘’At-a-boy, Dunark! That’s tellin’ ’em! But it’s all right with me – I’ll be glad to let you do it. When I say “shoot” throw in that plunger there – number sixty-three.’