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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  ‘I couldn’t? Don’t be naive, Charley. Nobody ever asks me where I got any diamonds I sell – I’d slap his silly face off. I can peddle your half, too, at almost wholesale. Not all at once, of course, but a few at a time, here and there.’

  ‘Half, Uh-uh,’ he objected. ‘I was acting as your agent on that deal. Ten per cent.’

  ‘Half,’ she insisted; then grinned suddenly. ‘But why argue about half of nothing? To get back onto the subject of cops – the lugs! – they brushed my report off as a stripper’s publicity gag and I didn’t get even one line in the papers. And if I report this weirdie they’ll give me a one-way, most-direct-route ticket to the nearest funny-farm.’

  ‘You’ve got a point there.’ He glowered at his drink. ‘I can see us babbling about instantaneous translation through the fourth dimension and an impossible spaceship on the moon manned by people exactly like us – except that the men all look like Green Bay Packers and all the girls without exception are stacked like … like …’ Words failed him.

  Madlyn nodded thoughtfully. ‘Uh-huh,’ she agreed. ‘They were certainly stacked. That Luloy … that biologist Sennlloy, who was studying all those worms and mice and things … all of ’em. And they swap hundred-carat perfect blue-white diamonds for books.’

  ‘Yeah. We start babbling that kind of stuff and we wind up in wrap-arounds.’

  ‘You said it. But we’ve got to do something!’

  ‘Well, we can report to an Observer—’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea. Let’s tie one really on.’

  Neither of them remembered very much of what happened after that, but at about three o’clock the following afternoon Charley van der Gleiss struggled upward through a million miles of foul-tasting molasses to consciousness. He was lying on the couch in his living room; fully dressed, even to his shoes. He worked himself up, very carefully, to a sitting position and shook his head as carefully. It didn’t quite explode. Good – he’d probably live.

  Walking as though on eggs, he made his cautious way to the bedroom. She was lying, also fully dressed, on his bed. On the coverlet. As he sat gingerly down on the side of the bed she opened one eye, then the other, put both hands to her head, and groaned; her features twisting in agony. ‘Stop shaking me, you … please,’ she begged. ‘Oh, my poor head! It’s coming clear off … right at the neck …’

  Then, becoming a little more conscious, she went on, ‘It didn’t go back into the woodwork, Charley, did it? I’ll see that horrible moonscape and that naked Luloy as long as I live.’

  ‘And I’ll see that nightmare of a spaceship. While you’re taking the first shot at the bathroom I’ll have ’em send up a gallon of black coffee, a couple of quarts of orange juice, and whatever the pill-roller downstairs says is good for what ails us. In the meantime, would you like a hair of the dog?’

  ‘My God, no!’ She shuddered visibly. ‘I never got drunk in my life before – I have to keep in shape, you know – and if I live through this I swear I’ll never take another drink as long as I live!’

  When they began to feel better Madlyn said, ‘Why don’t you peek into that drawer, Charley? There just might be something in it.’

  He did, and there was, and he gave her the honor of lifting the soft plastic bag out of the drawer.

  ‘My God!’ she gasped. ‘There’s four or five pounds of them!’ She opened the bag with trembling fingers and stood entranced for half a minute, then took out a few of the gems and examined them minutely.

  ‘Charley,’ she said then, ‘if I know anything about diamonds – and I admit that I know a lot – these are not only real, but the finest things I have ever seen. I’m almost afraid to try to sell even the littlest ones. Men just simply don’t give girls rocks like that. I’m not even sure that there are very many others like those around. If any.’

  ‘Well, we would probably have had to talk to an Observer anyway, and this makes it a forced putt. Let’s go, Maddy.’

  ‘In this wreckage?’ Expression highly scornful, she waved a hand at her rumpled and wrinkled green afternoon gown. ‘Are you completely out of your mind?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy. I’ll shave and put on a clean shirt and an intelligent look and then we’ll skip over to your place for you to slick up and then we’ll go down to the Observer’s office. Say, have you got a safe-deposit box?’

  ‘No, but don’t worry about that for a while, my friend. We haven’t got ’em past the Observer yet!’

  An hour later, looking and feeling almost human again, the two were ushered into the Observer’s heavily screened private office. They told him, as nearly as they could remember, every detail of everything that had happened.

  He listened attentively. He had been among the Tellurians only a few short months; in the cautious thoughtful way of Norlaminians, he was far from ready to claim that he understood them. These two in particular seemed quite non-scientific and un-logical in their attitudes … and yet, he thought, and yet there was that about them which seemed to deserve a hearing. So he heard. Then he put on a headset and saw. Visually he investigated the far side of the moon; then, frowning slightly, he increased his power to microscopic magnification and reexamined half a dozen tiny areas. He then conferred briefly with Rovol of Rays on distant Norlamin, who in turn called Seaton into a long-distance three-way.

  ‘No doubt whatever about it,’ Seaton said. ‘If they hadn’t been hiding from somebody or something they wouldn’t have ground up that many thousands of tons of inoson into moon-dust – that’s a project, you know – and I don’t need to tell you that inoson does not occur in nature. Yes, we definitely need to know more about this one. Coming in!’

  Seaton’s projection appeared in the Observer’s office and, after being introduced, handed thought-helmets to Madlyn and Charley. ‘Put these on, please, and go over the whole thing again, in as fine detail as you possibly can. It’s not that we doubt any of your statements; it’s just that we want to record and to study very carefully all the side-bands of thought that can be made to appear.’

  The two went over their stories again; this time being interrupted, every other second or two, by either Seaton or the Observer with sharply pertinent questions or suggestions. When, finally, both had been wrung completely dry, the Observer took off his helmet and said:

  ‘Although much of this material is not for public dissemination, I will tell you enough to relieve your minds of stress; especially since you have already seen some of it and I know that neither of you will talk.’ Being a very young Norlaminian, just graduated from the Country of Youth, he smiled at this, and the two smiled – somewhat wryly – back.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Seaton said. ‘I’m not sure we want their minds relieved of too much stress. They both ring bells – loud ones. I’d swear I know you both from somewhere, except I know darn well I’ve never met either of you before … it’s a cinch nobody could ever forget meeting Madlyn Mannis …’ He paused, then snapped a finger sharply. ‘Idiot! Of course! Where were you, both of you, at hours twenty-three fifty-nine on the eighteenth?’

  ‘Huh? What is this, a gag?’ van der Gleiss demanded.

  ‘Anything else but, believe me,’ Seaton assured him. ‘Madlyn?’

  ‘One minute of midnight? That would be the finale of my first show … Oh-oh! Was the eighteenth a Friday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s it!’ The girl was visibly excited now. ‘Something did happen. Don’t ask me what – all I know is I was just finishing my routine, and I got this feeling – this feeling of importance about something. Why, you were in it!’ She stared at Seaton’s projection incredulously. ‘Yes! But – you were different somehow. I don’t know how. Like a – like a reflection of you, or a bad photograph …’

  Through his headset Seaton thought a quick, private three-way conference with Rovol and the Norlaminian on Earth: ‘—clearly refers to our beacon message—’ ‘—yes, but holy cats, Rovol, what’s this about a “reflection”?—’ ‘—conceivably some sor
t of triggered response from another race—’

  It took less than a second, then Seaton continued with the girl and her companion, who were unaware that any interchange had taken place.

  ‘The “something important” you’re talking about, Madlyn, was a message that we broadcast. You might call it an SOS; we were looking for a response from some other race or civilization with a little more on the ball than we have. We’ve been hoping for an answer; it’s just possible that, through you, we’ve got one. What was that “reflection” like?’

  ‘I’d call it a psychic pull,’ said Madlyn promptly. ‘And now that you mention it, I felt it with these Jelmi too. And –’ Her eyes widened, and she turned to stare at Charley.

  Seaton snapped his fingers. ‘Look, Madlyn. Can you take time off to spend with us? I don’t know what you’ve got into – but I want you nearby if you get into it again!’

  Why, certainly, Mr Seaton. I mean – Dr Seaton. I’ll call Moe – that’s my agent – and cancel Vegas, and –’

  ‘Thanks,’ grinned Seaton. ‘You won’t lose anything by it.

  ‘I’m sure I won’t, judging by … but oh, yes, how about those diamonds –if they are?’

  ‘Oh, they are,’ the Norlaminian assured her, ‘and they’re of course yours. Would you like to have me sell them for you?’

  She glanced questioningly at van der Gleiss, who nodded and gave the jewels to the Observer. Then, ‘We’d like that very much, sir,’ Madlyn said, ‘and thanks a lot.’

  ‘Okay,’ Seaton said then. ‘Now, how about you, Charley. What kind of a jolt did you get at one minute of twelve that Friday night?’

  ‘Well, it was the first time I caught Madlyn’s act, and I admit it’s a sockeroo. She has the wallop of a piledriver, no question of that. But if you mean spirit-message flapdoodle or psychic poppycock, nothing. I’m not psychic myself – not a trace – and nobody can sell me that anybody else is, either. That stuff is purely bunk – it’s strictly for the birds.’

  ‘It isn’t either, Mister Charles K. van der Gleiss!’ Madlyn exclaimed. ‘And you are too psychic – very strongly so! How else would we be stumbling over each other everywhere we go? And how else would I possibly get drunk with you?’ She spread her hands out in appeal to the Observer. ‘Isn’t he psychic?’

  ‘My opinion is that he is unusually sensitive to certain forces, yes,’ the Norlaminian said. ‘Think carefully, youth. Wasn’t there something more than the mental or esthetic appreciation of, and the physical-sexual thrill at, the work of a superb exotic dancer?’

  ‘Of course there was!’ the man snapped. ‘But … but … oh, I don’t know. Now that Madlyn mentions it, there was a sort of a feeling of a message. But I haven’t got even the foggiest idea of what the goddam thing was!’

  ‘And that,’ Seaton said, ‘is about the best definition of it I’ve heard. We haven’t either.’

  12

  DuQuesne and the Jelmi

  DuQuesne, who had not seen enough of the Skylark of Valeron to realize that it was an intergalactic spacecraft, had supposed that Seaton and his party were still aboard Skylark Three, which was of the same size and power as DuQuesne’s own ship, the Capital D. Therefore, when it became clear just what it was with which the Capital D was making rendezvous, to say that DuQuesne was surprised is putting it very mildly indeed.

  He had supposed that his vessel was one of the three most powerful superdreadnoughts of space ever built – but this! This thing was not a spaceship at all! In every important respect it was a world. It was big enough to mount and to power offensive and defensive armament of full planetary capability … and if he knew Seaton and Crane half as well as he thought he did, that monstrosity could volatilize a world as easily as it could light a firecracker.

  He was second. Again. And such an insignificantly poor second as to be completely out of the competition.

  Something would have to be done about this intolerable situation … and finding out what could be done about it would take precedence over everything else until he did find out.

  He scowled in thought. That worldlet of a spaceship changed everything – radically. He’d been going to let eager-beaver Seaton grab the ball and run with it while he, DuQuesne, went on about his own business. But now – could he take the risk? Ten to one – or a hundred to one? – he couldn’t touch that planetoid’s safety screens with anything he had. But it was worth his while to try …

  Energizing the lightest possible fifth- and sixth-order webs, he reached out with his utmost delicacy of touch to feel out the huge globe’s equipment; to find out exactly what it had.

  He found out exactly nothing; and in zero time. At the first, almost imperceptible touch of DuQuesne’s web the mighty planetoid’s every defense flared instantaneously into being.

  DuQuesne cut his webbing, the defenses vanished, and Seaton said, ‘No peeking, DuQuesne. Come inside and you can look around all you please, but from outside it can’t be done.’

  ‘I see it can’t. How do I get inside?’

  ‘One of your shuttles or small boats. Go neutral as soon as you clear your outer skin and I’ll bring you in.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ and as DuQuesne in one of his vessel’s lifeboats traversed the long series of locks through the worldlet’s tremendously thick shell he kept on wrestling with his problem.

  No, the idea of letting Seaton be the Big Solo Hero was out like the well-known light. Seaton and his whole party would have to die. And the sooner the better.

  He’d know it all along, really; his thinking had slipped, back there, for sure. With that fireball of a ship – flying base, rather – by the time Seaton got the job done he would be so big that nothing could ever cut him down to size. For that matter, was there anything that could be done about Seaton and his planetoid, even at the size they already were? There was no vulnerability apparent … on the outside, at least. But there had to be something; some chink or opening; all he had to do was think of it – like the time he and ‘Baby Doll’ Loring had taken over a fully-manned superdreadnought of the Fenachrone.

  The smart thing to do, the best thing for Marc C. DuQuesne, would be to join Seaton and work hand in glove with him – for a while. Until he had a bigger, more powerful worldlet than Seaton did and knew more than all the Skylarkers put together. Then blow the Skylark of Valeron and everyone and everything in it into impalpable dust and go on about his own business; letting civilization worry about itself.

  To get away with that, he might have to give his word to act as one of the party, as before.

  He never had broken his word … so he wouldn’t give it, this time, unless he had to … but if he had to? If it came to a choice – breaking his word or being Emperor Marc the First of a galaxy, founder of a dynasty the like of which no civilization had ever seen before?

  Whatever happened, come hell or high water, Seaton and his crew must and would die. He, DuQuesne, must and would come out on top!

  As soon as DuQuesne’s lifeboat was inside the enormous hollow globe that was the Skylark of Valeron, Seaton brought it to a gentle landing in a dock behind his own home and walked out to the dock with a thought-helmet on his head and its mate in his hand.

  DuQuesne opened his lifeboat’s locks and Seaton joined him in the tiny craft’s main compartment.

  Face to face, neither man spoke in greeting or offered to shake hands; both knew that there was nothing of friendship between them or ever would be. Nor did DuQuesne wonder why Seaton was meeting him thus: outside and alone. He knew exactly what the women, especially Margaret, thought of him; but such trifles had no effect whatever upon the essence of Marc C. DuQuesne.

  Seaton handed DuQuesne the spare headset. DuQuesne put it on and Seaton said in thought, ‘This, you’ll notice, is no ordinary mechanical educator; not by seven thousand rows of Christmas trees. I suppose you know you’re in the Skylark of Valeron. Study it, and take your time. I’ll give you her prints before you go – if we’re going to have to be allies again you o
ught to have something better than your Capital D to work with.’

  Seaton thought that this surprise might make DuQuesne’s guard slip for an instant, but it didn’t. DuQuesne studied the worldlet intensively for over an hour, then took off his headset and said:

  ‘Nice job, Seaton. Beautiful; especially that tank-chart of the First Universe and that super-computer brain – some parts of which, I see, this headset enables me to operate. The rest of it, I suppose, is keyed to and in sync with your own mind? No others need apply?’

  ‘That’s right. So, with the prints, you’ll have everything you need, I think. But before you go into detail, I may know a thing that you don’t and that may have a lot of bearing, one place or another. Have you ever heard of any way of getting into or through the fourth dimension except by rotation?’

  ‘No. Not even in theory. How sure are you that there is or can be any other way of doing it?’

  ‘Positive. One that not even the Norlaminians know anything about,’ and Seaton gave DuQuesne the full picture and the full story and all the side-bands of thought of everything that had happened to Madlyn Mannis and Charles van der Gleiss.

  At the sight of Mergon and Luloy – two of the three Jelmi whom the monstrous alien Klazmon had been comparing with the Fenachrone and with the chlorine-breathing amoeboid Chlorans and with DuQuesne himself – it took every iota of DuQuesne’s iron control to make no sign of the astounding burst of interest he felt; for in one blinding flash of revealment his entire course of action became pellucidly clear. He knew exactly where and what Galaxy DW-427-LU was. He knew how to get Seaton headed toward that galaxy. He knew how to kill Seaton and all his crew and take over the Skylark of Valeron. And, best of all, he knew how to cover his tracks!

  Completely unsuspicious of any of these thoughts, Seaton went on, ‘Now we’re ready, I think, for the fine details of what you found out.’

  After giving a precisely detailed report that lasted for twenty minutes, DuQuesne said, ‘Now as to location. I have a cylindrical chart – a plug-chart, you might call it – of all the galaxies lying close to the line between the point in space where your stasis-capsule whiffed out and the First Galaxy. Those four reels there.’ He pointed. ‘But I have no idea whatever as to where that plug lies in the universe – its universal coordinates. But since you know where you are and I know how I got here, it can be computed – in time.’