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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  ‘A good many straws pointing this way and that,’ Seaton commented. However, we know that the “postponers” are just as rabid on the idea of conquering the universe as the others are, only they are a lot more cautious and won’t take even a gambler’s chance of defeat. But you’ve formed a theory – what is it?’

  ‘From my analysis of these facts and conjectures, in conjunction with certain purely psychological indices which we need not take time to go into now, I am certain that they have left their solar system, probably in an immense vessel built a long time ago and held in readiness for just such an emergency. I am not certain of their destination, but it is my opinion that they left this galaxy, and are planning upon starting anew upon some suitable planet in some other galaxy, from which, at some future date, the conquest of the universe shall proceed as it was originally planned.’

  ‘Great balls of fire!’ blurted Seaton. ‘They couldn’t – not in a million years!’ He thought a moment, then continued more slowly: ‘But they could – and, with their dispositions, they probably would. You’re one hundred percent right, Drasnik. We’ve got a real job of hunting on our hands now. So long, and thanks a lot.’

  Back in the projector Seaton prowled about in brown abstraction, his villainous pipe poisoning the circumambient air, while Crane sat, quiet and self-possessed as always, waiting for the nimble brain of his friend to find a way over, around, or through the obstacle confronting them.

  ‘Got it, Mart!’ Seaton yelled, darting to the board and setting up one integral after another. ‘If they did leave the planet in a ship, we’ll be able to watch them go – and we’ll see what they did, anyway, no matter what it was!’

  ‘How? They’ve been gone almost a month already,’ protested Crane.

  ‘We know within half an hour the exact time of their departure. We’ll simply go out the distance light has traveled since that time, gather in the rays given off, amplify them a few billion times, and take a look at whatever went on.’

  ‘But we have no idea of what region of the planet to study, or whether it was night or day at the point of departure when they left.’

  ‘We’ll get the council room, and trace events from there. Day or night makes no difference – we’ll have to use infra-red anyway, because of the fog, and that’s as good at night as in the daytime. There is no such thing as absolute darkness upon any planet, anyway, and we’ve got power enough to make anything visible that happened there, night or day. Mart, I’ve got power enough here to see and to photograph the actual construction of the pyramids of Egypt in that same way – and they were built thousands of years ago!’

  ‘Heavens, what astounding possibilities!’ breathed Crane. ‘Why, you could—’

  ‘Yeah, I could do a lot of things,’ Seaton interrupted him rudely, ‘but right now we’ve got other fish to fry. I’ve just got the city we visited, at about the time we were there. General Fenimol, who disappeared, must be in the council room down there right now. I’ll retard our projection, so that time will apparently pass quicker, and we’ll duck down there and see what actually did happen. I can heterodyne, combine, and recombine just as though we were watching the actual scene – it’s more complicated, of course, since I have to follow it and amplify it too, but it works out all right.’

  ‘This is unbelievable, Dick. Think of actually seeing something that actually happened in the past!’

  ‘Yeah, it’s pretty stiff stuff. As Dot would say, it’s just too perfectly darn outrageous. But we’re doing it, ain’t we? I know just how, and why. When we get some time I’ll shoot the method into your brain. Here we are!’

  Peering into the visiplates, the two men were poised above the immense central cone of the capital city of the Fenachrone. Viewing with infra-red light as they were, the fog presented no obstacle and the indescribable beauty of the city of concentric rings and the wonderfully luxuriant jungle growth were clearly visible. They plunged down into the council chamber, and saw Fenor, Ravindau, and Fenimol deep in conversation.

  ‘With all the other feats of skill and sorcery you have accomplished, why don’t you reconstruct their speech, also?’ asked Crane, with a challenging glance.

  ‘Well, old Doubting Thomas, it might not be absolutely impossible, at that. It would mean two projectors, however, due to the difference in speed of sound-waves and light-waves. Theoretically, sound-waves also continue indefinitely in air, but I don’t believe that any possible detector and amplifier could reconstruct a voice more than an hour or so after it had spoken. It might though – we’ll have to try it sometime, and see. You’re fairly good at lip-reading, as I remember it. Get as much of it as you can, will you?’

  As though they were watching the scene itself as it happened – which, in a sense, they were – they saw everything that had occurred. They saw Fenor die, saw the general’s family board the airboat, saw the orderly embarkation of Ravindau’s organization. Finally they saw the stupendous take-off of the first inter-galactic cruiser, and with that take-off Seaton went into action. Faster and faster he drove that fifth-order beam along the track of the fugitive, until a speed was attained beyond which his detecting converters could not hold the ether-rays they were following. For many minutes Seaton stared intently into the visiplate, plotting lines and calculating forces, then he swung around to Crane.

  ‘Well, Mart, noble old bean, solving the disappearances was easier than I thought it would be; but the situation as regards wiping out the last of the Fenachrone is getting no better, fast.’

  ‘I glean from the instruments that they are heading straight out into space away from the galaxy, and I assume that they are using their utmost acceleration?’

  ‘It looks that way. They’re out in absolute space, you know, with nothing in the way and with no intention of reversing their power or slowing down – they must’ve had absolute top acceleration on every minute since they left. Anyway, they’re so far out already that I couldn’t hold even a detector on them, let alone a force that I can control. Well, let’s snap into it, fellow – on our way!’

  ‘Just a minute, Dick. Take it easy. What are your plans?’

  ‘Plans – hell! Why worry about plans? Blow up that planet before any more of ’em get away, and then chase ’em – chase ’em clear to Andromeda if necessary. Let’s go!’

  ‘Calm down and be reasonable – you are getting hysterical again. They have a maximum acceleration of five times the velocity of light. So have we, exactly, since we adopted their own drive. Now if our acceleration is the same as theirs, and they have a month’s start, how long will it take us to catch them?’

  ‘Right again, Mart – I was going off half-cocked again,’ Seaton conceded ruefully, after a moment’s thought. ‘They’d always be going a million or so times as fast as we would be, and getting further ahead of us in geometrical ratio. What’s your idea?’

  ‘I agree with you that the time has come to destroy their planet. As for pursuing that vessel through inter-galactic space, that is your problem. You must figure out some method of increasing our acceleration. Highly efficient as is this system of propulsion, it seems to me that the knowledge of the Norlaminians should be able to improve it in some detail. Even a slight increase in acceleration would enable us to overtake them eventually.’

  ‘Hm … m … m.’ Seaton, no longer impetuous, was thinking deeply. ‘How far are we apt to have to go?’

  ‘Until we get close enough to them to use your projector – say half a million light-years.’

  ‘But surely they’ll stop, sometime?’

  ‘Of course, but not necessarily for many years. They are powered and provisioned for a hundred years, you remember, and are going to “a distant galaxy”. Such a one as Ravindau would not have specified a “distant” galaxy idly, and the very closest galaxies are distant indeed.’

  ‘But our astronomers believe … or are they wrong?’

  ‘Their estimates are, without exception, far below the true values. They are scarcely of the correct ord
er of magnitude.’

  ‘Well, then, let’s mop up on that planet and get going.’

  Seaton had already located the magazines in which the power-bars of the Fenachrone war-vessels were stored, and it was a short task to erect a secondary projector of force in the Fenachrone atmosphere. Working out of that projector, beams of force seized one of the immense cylinders of plated copper and at Seaton’s direction transported it rapidly to one of the poles of the planet, where electrodes of force were clamped upon it. In a similar fashion seventeen more of the frightful bombs were placed, equal-distant over the surface of the world of the Fenachrone, so that when they were simultaneously exploded the downward forces would be certain to meet sufficient resistance to secure complete demolition of the entire globe. Everything in readiness, Seaton’s hand went to the plunger switch and closed upon it. Then, his face white and wet, he dropped his hand.

  ‘No use, Mart – I can’t do it. It pulls my cork. I know that you can’t either – I’ll yell for help.’

  ‘Have you got it on the infra-red?’ asked Dunark calmly, as he shot up into the projector in reply to Seaton’s call. ‘I want to see this, all of it.’

  ‘It’s on – you’re welcome to it,’ and, as the Terrestrials turned away, the whole projector base was illuminated by a flare of intense, though subdued light. For several minutes Dunark stared into the visiplate, savage satisfaction in every line of his fierce green face as he surveyed the havoc wrought by those eighteen enormous charges of incredible explosive.

  ‘A nice job of clean-up, Dick,’ the Osnomian prince reported, turning away from the visiplate. ‘It made a sun of it – the original sun is now quite a splendid double star. Everything was volatilized, clear out, far beyond their outermost screen.’

  ‘It had to be done, of course – it was either them or else all the rest of the universe,’ Seaton said, jerkily. ‘However, even that fact doesn’t make it go down easy. Well, we’re done with this projector. From now on it’s strictly up to us and Skylark Three. Let’s beat it over there and see if they’ve got her done yet – they were due to finish up today, you know.’

  It was a silent group who embarked in the little airboat. Halfway to their destination, however, Seaton came out of his blue mood with a yell.

  ‘Mart, I’ve got it! We can give the Lark a lot more acceleration than they are getting – and won’t need the assistance of all the minds of Norlamin, either.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By using one of the very heavy metals for fuel. The intensity of the power liberated is a function of atomic weight, atomic number, and density; but the fact of liberation depends upon atomic configuration – a fact which you and I figured out long ago. However, our figuring didn’t go far enough – it couldn’t we didn’t know anything then. Copper happens to be the most efficient of the few metals which can be decomposed at all under ordinary excitation. But by using special exciters, sending out all the orders of force necessary to initiate the disruptive processes, we can use any metal we want to. Osnome has unlimited quantities of the heaviest metals, including radium and uranium. Of course we can’t use radium and live – but we can and will use uranium, and that will give us something like four times the acceleration possible with copper. Dunark, what say you snap over there and smelt us a cubic mile of uranium? No – hold it – I’ll put a flock of forces on the job. They’ll do it quicker, and I’ll make ’em deliver the goods. They’ll deliver ’em fast, too, believe me – we’ll see to that with a ten-ton bar. The uranium bars’ll be ready to load tomorrow, and we’ll have enough power to chase those birds all the rest of our lives!’

  Returning to the projector, Seaton actuated the complex system of forces required for the smelting and transportation of the enormous amount of metal necessary, and as the three men again boarded their aerial conveyance the power-bar in the projector behind them flared into violet incandescence under the load already put upon it by the new uranium mine in distant Osnome.

  The Skylark lay stretched out over two miles of country, exactly as they had last seen her, but now, instead of being water-white, the ten-thousand-foot cruiser of the void was one joint-less, seamless structure of sparkling, transparent, purple inoson. Entering one of the open doors they stepped into an elevator and were whisked upward into the control room, in which a dozen of the aged, white-bearded students of Norlamin were grouped about a banked and tiered mass of keyboards which Seaton knew must be the operating mechanism of the extraordinarily complete fifth-order projector he had been promised. ‘Ah, youngsters, you are just in time. Everything is complete, and we are just about to begin loading.’

  ‘Sorry, Rovol, but we’ll have to make a couple of changes – have to rebuild the exciter or build another one,’ and Seaton rapidly related what they had learned, and what they had decided to do.

  ‘Of course, uranium is a much more efficient source of power,’ agreed Rovol, ‘and you are to be congratulated for thinking of it. It perhaps would not have occurred to one of us, since the heavy metals of that highly efficient group are very rare here. Building a new exciter for uranium is a simple task, and the converters for the corona-loss will of course require no change, since their action depends only upon the frequency of the emitted losses, not upon their magnitude.’

  ‘Hadn’t you suspected that some of the Fenachrone might be going to lead us a life-long chase?’ asked Dunark seriously.

  ‘We have not given the matter a thought, my son,’ the Chief of the Five made answer. ‘As your years increase, you will learn not to anticipate trouble and worry. Had we thought and worried over the matter before the time had arrived, you will note that it would have been pain wasted, for our young friend Seaton has avoided that difficulty in a truly scholarly fashion.’

  ‘All set, then, Rovol?’ asked Seaton, when the forces flying from the projector had built the compound exciter which would make possible the disruption of the atoms of uranium. ‘The metal, enough of it to fill all the spare space in the hull, will be here tomorrow. You might give Crane and me the method of operating this projector, which I see is vastly more complex even than the one in the Area of Experiment.’

  ‘It is the most complete thing ever seen upon Norlamin,’ replied Rovol with a smile. ‘Each of us installed everything in it that he could conceive of ever being of the slightest use, and since our combined knowledge covers a large field, the projector is accordingly quite comprehensive.’

  Multiple headsets were donned, and from each of the Norlaminian brains there poured into the minds of the two Terrestrials a complete and minute knowledge of every possible application of the stupendous force-control banked in all its massed intricacy before them.

  ‘Well, that’s SOME outfit!’ exulted Seaton in pleased astonishment as the instructions were concluded. ‘It can do anything but lay an egg – and I’m not a darn bit sure that we couldn’t make it do that! Well, let’s call the girls and show them around – this ship is going to be their home for quite a while.’

  While they were waiting Dunark led Seaton aside.

  ‘Dick, will you need me on this trip?’ he asked. ‘Of course I knew that there was something on your mind when you didn’t send me home when you let Urvan, Carfon, and the others go back.’

  ‘No, we’re going it alone – unless you want to come along. I did want you to stick around until I got a good chance to talk to you alone – now will be as good a time as any. You and I have traded brains, and besides, we’ve been through quite a lot of grief together, here and there – I want to apologize to you for not passing along to you all this stuff I’ve been getting here. In fact, I really wish I didn’t have to have it myself. Get me?’

  ‘Get you? I’m way ahead of you! Don’t want it, nor any part of it – that’s why I’ve stayed away from any chance of learning any of it, and the one reason why I am going back home instead of going with you. I have just brains enough to realize that neither I nor any other man of my race should have it. By the time we grow up to it naturally
we may be able to handle it, but not until then.’

  The two brain brothers grasped hands strongly, and Dunark continued in a lighter vein: ‘It takes all kinds of people to make a world, you know – and all kinds of races, except the Fenachrone, to make a universe. With Mardonale gone, the evolution of Osnome shall progress rapidly, and while we may not reach the Ultimate Goal, I have learned enough from you already to speed up our progress considerably.’

  ‘I was sure you’d understand, but I had to get it off my chest. Here’re the girls – Sitar too. We’ll show ’em around.’

  Seaton’s first thought was for the very brain of the ship – the precious lens of neutronium in its thin envelope of the eternal jewel – without which the beam of fifth-order rays could not be directed. He found it a quarter-mile back from the needle-sharp prow, exactly in the longitudinal axis of the hull, protected from any possible damage by bulkhead after bulkhead of impregnable inoson. Satisfied upon that point, he went in search of the others, who were exploring their vast new spaceship.

  Huge as she was, there was no waste space – her design was as compact as that of a fine watch. The living quarters were grouped closely about the central compartment, which housed the power plants, the many generators and projectors, and the myriads of controls of the mechanisms for the projection and handling of fifth-order forces. Several large compartments were devoted to the machinery which automatically serviced the vessel – refrigerators, heaters, generators and purifiers for water and air, and the numberless other mechanisms which would make of the cruiser a comfortable and secure home, as well as an invincible battleship, in the heatless, lightless, airless, matterless waste of inter-galactic space. Many compartments were for the storage of food supplies, and these were even then being filled by forces under the able direction of the First of Chemistry.