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

by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

  Cursing silently the fact that his magnum was not to be used during the first few silent seconds of the engagement, he watched the four men constantly out of the corners of his eyes, planning every detail of his campaign, altering those details constantly as the guards changed ever so slightly their positions and postures. He could get three of them, he was sure, before any one of them could fire; but he’d have to be lucky as well as fast to get the fourth in time – and if the ape had time to take any kind of aim at all it would be very ungood.

  On the tick of zero time Seaton shed his businessman’s cloak and took off. Literally. His knife swept through the throat of the nearest guard before that luckless wight had moved a muscle. He kicked the second, who was bending over at the moment, on and through the temple with the steel-lined toe of one highly special sure-grip fighting shoe. He stabbed the third, whose throat was protected at that instant by an upflung left arm, through the left side of the rib-cage, twisting his blade as he pulled it out.

  Ultra-fast as Seaton had been, the fourth guard had had time to lift his weapon, but he had not had time to aim it, or even to point it properly. He fired in panic, before his gun was pointed even waist-high. If Seaton had stayed upright the bullet would have missed him completely. But he didn’t. He ducked and sidestepped and twisted – and the heavy slug tore a long and savage wound across the left side of his back.

  One shot was all the fellow got, of course. Seaton kicked the door open and leaped into the room, magnum high and ready. The noise of that one shot might have torn it, but good.

  ‘Freeze, everybody!’ he rasped, and everyone in the big room froze. ‘One move of any finger toward any button and I blast. This office is closed temporarily. Leave the building, all of you; right now and fast. Just as you are. Come back in here after lunch for business as usual. Scram!’

  The office force – some nonchalantly, some wonderingly, some staring at Seaton in surprise – ‘scrammed’ obediently. All, that is, except one girl who came last; the girl who had been sitting at an executive-type desk beside the door of the inner office. She was a fairly tall girl; with hazel eyes and with dark brown hair arranged in up-to-the-second ‘sunburst’ style. Her close-fitting white nylon upper garment and her even tighter fire-engine-red tights displayed a figure that could not be described as being merely adequate.

  Instead of passing him as the others had done she stopped, held out both hands in indication of having nothing except peaceable intentions, and peered around his left side. Then, bringing her eyes back to his, she said, ‘You’re bleeding terribly, sir. It doesn’t seem to be very deep – entrance and exit holes in your shirt are only four or five inches apart – but you’re losing an awful lot of blood. Won’t you let me give you first aid? I’m a quite competent nurse, sir.’

  ‘What?’ Seaton demanded, but whatever he had intended to add to that one word was forestalled by a bellow of wrath from behind the just-opening door of the inner office.

  ‘Kay-Lee! You shirking slut! How much more of this do you think you can get away with? When I buzz you you jump or I’ll cut your bloody –’ The man broke off sharply and goggled at what he saw. He was a pasty-faced, paunchy man of forty; very evidently self-indulgent and as evidently completely at a loss at the moment.

  ‘Come in, Bay-Lay Boyn,’ Seaton said. ‘Slowly, if you don’t want your brains to decorate the ceiling. Did you ever see a man shot in the head with a magnum pistol?’

  The man gulped and licked his lips. The girl broke the very short silence. ‘Whatever you do to that poisonous slob, sir, I hope it’s nothing trivial. I’d love to see his brains spattered all over the ceiling and I’d never let them be washed off. I’d look up at them week after week and gloat.’

  ‘Kay-Lee dear, you don’t mean that! You can’t mean it!’ the man implored. ‘Do something! Please do something! I’ll double your salary – I’ll make you a First – I’ll give you a diamond necklace – I’ll—’

  ‘You’ll shut your filthy lying mouth, Your Exalted,’ she said – quietly, but with an icily venomous contempt that made Seaton stare. ‘I’ve taken all the raps for you I’m ever going to.’ She turned to Seaton. ‘Please believe, sir, that no matter who your people are or what you do, any possible change will be for the better. And I remind you – if you don’t want to fall flat on your face from weakness you’ll let me dress that wound.’

  ‘I wouldn’t wonder,’ Seaton admitted. ‘Blood’s running down into my shoes already and it’s beginning to hurt like the devil. So get your kit. But before you start on me we’ll use some three-inch bandage to lash that ape’s hands around that pillar there.’

  That done, Seaton peeled to the waist and the girl went expertly to work. She sprayed the nasty-looking wound, which was almost but not quite a deep but open groove, with antiseptic and with coagulant. She cross-taped its ragged edges together with blood-proof adhesive tape. She sponged most of the liquid blood off his back. She sprinkled half a can of curative-antiseptic powder; she taped on thick pads of sterile gauze. She wrapped – and taped into place – roll after roll of three-inch bandage around his body and up over his shoulder and around his neck. Then she stood back and examined her handiwork, eyes narrowed in concentration.

  ‘That’ll do it for a while,’ she decided. ‘I suppose you’ll be too busy to take any time today, but you’ll have to get that sewed up not later than tomorrow forenoon.’

  ‘I’ll do that. Thanks a million, lady; it feels a lot better already,’ and Seaton bent over to pick up his shirt and undershirt.

  ‘But you can’t wear those bloody rags!’ she protested, then went on, ‘But I don’t know of anything else around here that you can wear, at that.’

  Seaton grinned. ‘No quandary – I’ll go the way I am. Costume or the lack of it isn’t important at the moment.’ He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see how very few minutes had elapsed.

  ‘Shall I go now, sir?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Seaton was used to making fast decisions, and they were usually right. He made one now. ‘I take it you were that ape’s confidential secretary.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I was.’

  ‘So you know more about the actual workings of the department than he does and can run it as well. To make a snap judgment, can run it better than he has been running it.’

  ‘Much better, sir,’ she said, flatly. ‘I’ve covered up for his drunken blunderings twice in the last two months. He passed the buck to me and I took it. A few lashes are much better than what he revels in doing to people; especially since he can’t touch me now. He knows that after taking his floggings I’d go under hypnosis and tell everything I know about him if he tried to lay a finger on me.’

  ‘Lashes? Floggings? I see.’ Seaton’s face hardened. ‘Okay, you’re it.’ He took a badge out of his pocket, slid its slip out of its holder, and handed the slip to Kay-Lee. ‘Type on this your name and his rating and title and turn your recorder on.’

  She did so. He glanced at the slip, replaced it in its holder, and pinned the badge in place just above the girl’s boldly outstanding left breast. ‘I, Ky-El Mokak, acting for and with the authority of Premier Ree-Toe Prenk, hereby make you, Kay-Lee Barlo, an Exalted of the Twenty-Sixth and appoint you Head of the Department of Public Works. I hereby charge you, Your Exalted, to so operate your department as to prevent, not to cause, the destruction of persons and of property by those enemies of all mankind the Chlorans.’ He stepped to the desk; cut the recorder off.

  For the first time, the girl’s taut self-control was broken. ‘Do you mean I can actually clean this pig-sty up?’ she demanded, tears welling into her eyes. ‘That you actually want me to clean it up?’

  ‘Just that. You’ll be briefed at a meeting of the new department heads late this afternoon. In the meantime start your house-cleaning as soon as you like after your people get back from lunch; and I don’t have to tell you now to act. Have you got or can you get a good hand-gun?’

  ‘Yes, sir, there’s a very
good one – his – in his desk. I was trying to get up nerve enough to ask for it.’

  ‘It’s yours as of now. Can you use it? That’s probably a foolish question.’

  ‘I’ll say I can use it! I made Pistol Expert One when I was eleven and I’ve been improving ever since.’

  ‘Fine!’ He glanced again at his watch. ‘Go get it, be sure it’s loaded, buckle it on and wear it. Show your badge, play the recording and lay down the law. If there’s any argument, shoot to kill. We aren’t fooling.’ He glanced at the prisoner. ‘He’ll be out of your way. I’m taking him downstairs pretty soon to answer some questions.’

  ‘I – I thank you, sir. I can’t tell you how much. But you – I mean … well, I –’ The girl was a study in mixed emotions. Her nostrils flared and her whole body was tense with the beyond-imagining thrill of what had just occurred; but at the same time she was so acutely embarrassed that she could scarcely talk. ‘I want to tell you, sir, that I wasn’t trying to curry …’ She broke off in confusion and gulped twice.

  ‘Curry? I know you weren’t. You aren’t the toadying type. That’s one reason you got it – but just a second.’

  He looked again at his watch and did not put it down; but in a few seconds raised the ring to his lips and asked, ‘Are you there, Ree-Toe?’

  ‘Here, Ky-El,’ the tiny ring-voice said.

  ‘Mission accomplished, including selection and installation of department head.’

  ‘Splendid! Are you hurt?’

  ‘Not badly. Scratch across my back. How’re we doing?’

  ‘Better even than expected. The Premier is dead, I don’t know yet exactly how. All your people are all right except for some not-too-serious wounds. Ours, only ten dead reported so far. The army came over to a man. You have earned a world’s thanks this day, Ky-El, and its eternal gratitude.’

  Seaton blushed. ‘Skip it, chief. Any change in schedule?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Okay. Off.’ Seaton, lowering his hand to his side, turned to Kay-Lee.

  She, who had not quite been able to believe all along that all this was actually happening to her, was staring at him in wide-eyed awe. ‘You are a biggie!’ she gasped. ‘A great big biggie, Your Exalted, to talk to the Premier himself like that! So this unbelievable appointment will stick!’

  ‘It will stick. Definitely. So chin high and don’t spare the horses, Your Exalted; and I’ll see you at the meeting. Until then, so-long.’

  Seaton cut his prisoner loose and half-led, half-dragged him, gibbering and begging, out of the room. Almost Seaton regretted it was over; the work on Ray-See-Nee had been pleasurable, as well as useful.

  But – now he had his base of operations, unknown to the Chlorans, on a planet they thought safely their own. Now he could go on with his campaign against them. Seaton was well aware that the universe held other enemies than the Chlorans, but his motto was one thing at a time.

  However, it is instructive now to see just what two of those inimical forces were up to at this one – one which knew it was in trouble … and one which did not!

  20

  DuQuesne and Fenachrone

  Before the world of the Fenachrone was destroyed by Civilization’s superatomic bombs it was a larger world than Earth, and a denser, and with a surface gravity very much higher. It was a world of steaming jungle; of warm and reeking fog; of tepid, sullenly steaming water; of fantastically lush vegetation unknown to Earthly botany. Wind there was none, nor sunshine. Very seldom was the sun of that reeking world visible at all through the omnipresent fog, and then only as a pale, wan disk; and what of its atmosphere was not fog was hot and humid and sulphurously stinking air.

  And as varied the world, so varied the people. The Fenachrone, while basically humanoid, were repulsively and monstrously short, wide and thick. They were immensely strong physically, and their mentalities were as monstrous as their civilization was many thousands of years older than that of Earth; their science was equal to ours in most respects and ahead of it in some.

  Most monstrous of all the facets of Fenachrone existence, however, was their basic philosophy of life. Might was right. Power was not only the greatest good; it was the only good. The Fenachrone were the MASTER RACE, whose unquestionable destiny it was to be the unquestionable masters of the entire space-time continuum – of the summated totality of the Cosmic All.

  For many thousands of years nothing had happened to shake any Fenachrone’s rock-solid conviction of the destiny of their race. Progress along the Master-Race line had been uninterrupted. In fact, it had never been successfully opposed. The Fenachrone had already wiped out, without really extending themselves, all the other civilizations within a hundred parsecs or so of their solar system. But up to the time of Emperor Fenor no ruler of the Fenachrone had become convinced that the time had come to set the Day of Conquest – the day upon which the Big Push was to begin.

  But rash, headstrong, egomaniacal Fenor insisted upon setting the Day in his own reign – which was why First Scientist Fleet Admiral Sleemet had set up his underground so long before. He was just as patriotic as any other member of his race; just as thoroughly sold on the idea of the inevitable ultimate supremacy over all created things wherever situated; but his computations did not indicate that success was as yet quite certain.

  How right Sleemet was!

  He knew that he was right after hearing the first few words of Sacner Carfon’s ultimatum to Emperor Fenor: that was why he had pushed the panic button for the eighty-five-thousand-odd members of his faction to flee the planet right then.

  He knew it still better when, after Fenor’s foolhardy defiance of Sacner Carfon, of the Overlord, and of the Forces of Universal Peace, his native planet became a minor sun behind his flying fleet.

  Even then, however, Sleemet had not learned very much – at least, nowhere nearly enough.

  At first glance it might seem incredible that, after such an experience, Sleemet could have so lightly destroyed two such highly industrialized worlds about which he knew so little. It might seem as though it must have been impressed upon his mind that the Fenachrone were not the ablest, strongest, wisest, smartest, most highly advanced and most powerful form of life ever created. Deeper study will show, however, that with his heredity and conditioning he could not possibly have done anything else.

  Sleemet probably did not begin to realize the truth until the Llurd Klazmon so effortlessly – apparently – wiped out sixteen of his seventeen superdreadnoughts, then crippled his flagship beyond resistance or repair and sent it hurtling through space toward some completely unknown destination.

  His first impulse, like that of all his fellows, was to storm and to rage and to hurl things and to fight. But there was no one to fight; and storming and raging and hurling and smashing things did not do any good. In fact, nothing they could do elicited any attention at all from their captors.

  Wherefore, as days stretched out endlessly and monotonously into endless and monotonous weeks, all those five-thousand-odd Fenachrone – males and females, adults and teenagers and children and babies – were forced inexorably into a deep and very un-Fenachronian apathy.

  And when the hulk of the flagship arrived at the Llanzlanate on far Llurdiax, things went immediately from bad to worse. The volume of space into which the Fenachrone were moved had a climate exactly like that of their native city on their native world. All its artifacts – its buildings, and its offices and its shops and its foods and its drinks and its everything else – were precisely what they should have been.

  Ostensibly, they were encouraged to live lives even more normal than ever before (if such an expression is allowable); to breed and to develop and to evolve; and especially to perform breakthroughs in science.

  Actually, however, it was practically impossible for them to do anything of their own volition; because they were being studied and analyzed and tested every minute of every day. Studied coldly and logically and minutely; with an utterly callous ferocity unknown t
o even such a ferocious race as the Fenachrone themselves were.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of the completely helpless captives died – died without affecting in any smallest respect the treatment received by the survivors – and as their utter helplessness struck in deeper and deeper, the Fenachrone grew steadily weaker, both physically and mentally.

  This was no surprise to their captors, the Llurdi. Nor was it in any sense a disappointment. To them the Fenachrone were tools; and they were being tempered and shaped to their task …

  On Earth, leaving Stephanie de Marigny’s apartment, DuQuesne went back to the Capital D and took off on course one hundred seventy-five Universal – that is, five degrees east of Universal South. He went that way because in that direction lay the most completely unexplored sector of the First Universe and he did not want company. Earth and the First Galaxy lay on the edge of the First Quadrant. Llurdiax and its Realm lay in the Second. So did the Empire of the Chlorans and his own imaginary planet Xylmny. The second galaxy along that false line, which might also attract Seaton, lay in the Third. He didn’t want any part of Richard Ballinger Seaton – yet – and this course was mathematically the best one to take to get out of and keep out of Seaton’s way. Therefore he would follow it clear out to the Fourth Quadrant rim of the First Universe.

  As the Capital D bored a hole through the protesting ether DuQuesne took time out from his thinkings to consider women. First, he considered Stephanie de Marigny; with a new and not at all unpleasant thrill as he did so. He considered Sennlloy and Luloy and some unattached women of the Jelmi. They all left him completely cold; and he was intellectually honest enough to know why and to state that ‘why’ to himself. The Jelmi were so much older than the humanity of Earth that they were out of his class. He could stand equality – definitely; in fact, that was what he wanted – but he could not live with and would not try to live with any woman so demonstrably his superior.