"Oh, no. He was just like a mad animal. He had to kill him. But the doctor, as they call him, is just as bad. He's so utterly heartless and ruthless, so cold and scientific, it gives me the compound shivers, just to think about him."
"And yet Dorothy said he saved her life?"
"He did, from Perkins; but that was just as strictly pragmatic as everything else he has ever done. He wanted her alive: dead, she wouldn't have been any use to him. He's as nearly a robot as any human being can be, that's what I think."
"I'm inclined to agree with you... . Nothing would please Dick better than a good excuse for killing him." - "He isn't the only one. And the way he ignores what we all feel shows what a machine he is... . What's that?" The Skylark had lurched slightly.
"Just a swing around a star, probably." He looked at the board, then led her to a lower port. "We are passing the star Dick was heading for, far too fast to stop. DuQuesne will pick out another. See that planet over there"-he pointed-"and that smaller one, there?"
She saw the two planets-one like a small moon, the other much smaller-and watched the sun increase rapidly in size as the Skylark flew on at such a pace that any earthly distance would have been covered as soon as it was begun. So appalling was their velocity that the ship was bathed in the light of that strange sun only for moments, then was surrounded again by darkness.
Their seventy-two-hour flight without a pilot had seemed a miracle; now it seemed entirely possible that they could fly- in a straight line for weeks without encountering any obstacle, so vast was the emptiness in comparison with the points of light scattered about in it. Now and then they passed closely enough to a star so that it seemed to move fairly rapidly; but for the most part the stars stood, like distant mountain peaks to travelers in a train, in the same position for many minutes.
Awed by the immensity of the universe, the two at the window were silent, not with the silence of embarrassment but with that of two friends in the presence of a thing far beyond the reach of words. As they stared out into infinity, each felt as never before the pitiful smallness of the whole world they had known, and the insignificance of human beings and their works. Silently their minds reached out to each other in understanding.
Unconsciously Margaret half shuddered and moved closer to Crane; and a tender look came over Crane's face as he looked down -at the beautiful young woman at his side. For she was beautiful. Rest and food had erased the marks of her imprisonment. Dorothy's deep and unassumed faith in the ability of Seaton and Crane had quieted her fears. And finally, a costume of Dorothy's well-made-and exceedingly expensive!-clothes, which fitted her very well and in which she looked her best and knew it, had completely restored her self-possession.
He looked up quickly and again studied the stars; but now, in addition to the wonders of space, he saw a mass of wavy black hair, high-piled upon a queenly head; deep brown eyes veiled by long, black lashes; sweet, sensitive lips; a firmly rounded, dimpled chin; and a beautifully formed young body.
"How stupendous ... how unbelievably great this is . . :' Margaret whispered. "How vastly greater than any perception one could possibly get on Earth ... and yet ..."
She paused, with her lip caught under two white teeth, then went on, hesitatingly, "But doesn't it seem to you, Mr. Crane, that there is something in man as great as even all this? That there must be, or Dorothy and I could not be sailing out here in such a wonderful thing as this Skylark, which you and Dick Seaton have made?"
Days passed. Dorothy timed her waking hours with those of Seaton-preparing his meals and lightening the tedium of his long vigils at the board-and Margaret did the same thing for Crane. But often they assembled in the saloon, while DuQuesne was on watch, and there was much fun and laughter, as well as serious discussion, among the four. Margaret, already adopted as a friend, proved a delightful companion. Her ready tongue, her quick, delicate wit, and her facility of expression delighted all three.
One day Crane suggested to Seaton that they should take notes, in addition to the photographs they had been taking. "I know comparatively little of astronomy, but, with the instruments we have, we should be able to get data, especially on planetary systems, which would be of interest to astronomers. Miss Spencer, being a secretary, could help us?"
"Sure," Seaton said. "That's an idea-nobody else ever had a chance to do it before."
"I'll be glad to-taking notes is the best thing I do!" Margaret cried, and called for pad and pencils.
After that, the two worked together for several hours on each of Martin's off shifts.
The Skylark passed one solar system after another, with a velocity so great that it was impossible to land. Margaret's association with Crane, begun as a duty, became a very real pleasure for them both. Working together in research, sitting together at the board in easy conversation or in equally easy silence, they compressed into days more real companionship than is usually possible in months.
Oftener and oftener, as time went on, Crane found the vision of his dream home floating in his mind as he steered the Skylark in her meteoric flight or as he lay strapped into his narrow bunk. Now, however, the central figure of the vision, instead of being a blur, was clear and sharply defined. And for her part, Margaret was drawn more and more to the quiet and unassuming, but steadfast young inventor, with his wide knowledge and his keen, incisive mind.
The Skylark finally slowed down enough to make a landing possible, and course was laid toward the nearest planet of a copper-bearing sun_ As vessel neared planet a wave of excitement swept through four of the five. They watched the globe grow larger, glowing white, its outline softened by the atmosphere surrounding it. It had two satellites; its sun, a great, blazing orb, looked so big and so hot that Margaret became uneasy.
"Isn't it dangerous to get so close, Dick?"
"Uh-uh. Watching the pyrometers is part of the pilot's job. Any overheating and he'd snatch us away in a hurry." They dropped into the atmosphere and on down, almost to the surface. The air was breathable, its composition being very similar to that of Earth's air, except that the carbon dioxide was substantially higher. Its pressure was somewhat high, but not too much; its temperature, while high, was endurable. The planet's gravitational pull was about ten per cent higher than Earth's. The ground was almost hidden by a rank growth of vegetation, but here and there appeared glade-like openings.
Landing upon one of the open spaces, they found the ground solid and stepped out. What appeared to be a glade was in reality a rock; or rather a ledge of apparently solid metal, with scarcely a loose fragment to be seen. At one end of the ledge rose a giant tree, wonderfully symmetrical, but of a peculiar form, its branches being longer at the top than at the bottom, and having broad, dark-green leaves, long thorns, and odd, flexible, shoot-like tendrils. It stood as an outpost of the dense vegetation beyond. The fern-trees, towering two hundred feet or more into the air were totally unlike the forests of Earth. They were an intensely vivid green and stood motionless in the still, hot air. Not a sign of animal life was to be seen; the whole landscape seemed to be asleep.
"A younger planet than ours," DuQuesne said. "In the Carboniferous, or about. Aren't those fern-trees like those in the coal measures, Seaton?"
"Check-I was just trying to think what they reminded me of. But it's this ledge that interests me no end. Who ever heard of a chunk of noble metal this big?"
"How do you know it's noble?" Dorothy asked.
"No corrosion, and its probably been sitting here for a million years." Seaton, who had walked over to one of the loose lumps, kicked it with his heavy shoe. It did not move.
He bent over to pick it up, with one hand. It still did not move. With both hands and all the strength of his back he could lift it, but that was all.
"What do you make of this, DuQuesne?"
DuQuesne lifted the mass, then took out his knife and scraped. He studied the freshly-exposed metal and the scrapings, then scraped and studied again.
"Hmm. Platinum group, almost c
ertainly ... and the only known member of that group with that peculiar bluish sheen is your X."
"But didn't we agree that free X and copper couldn't exist on the same planet, and that planets of copper bearing suns carry copper?"
"Yes, but that doesn't make it true. If this stuff is X, it'll give the cosmologists something to fight about for the next twenty years. I'll take these scrapings and run a couple of quickies."
"Do that, and I'll gather in these loose nuggets. If it's X-and I'm pretty sure it mostly is-that'll be enough to run all the power-plants of Earth for ten thousand years."
Crane and Seaton, accompanied by the two girls, rolled the nearest pieces of metal up to the ship. Then, as the quest led them farther and farther afield, Crane protested. "This is none too safe, Dick."
"It looks perfectly safe to me. Quiet as a-"
Margaret screamed. Her head was turned, looking backward at the Skylark; her face was a mask of horror. Seaton drew his pistol as he whirled, only to check his finger on the trigger and lower his hand. "Nothing but X-plosive bullets," he said, and the four watched a thing come out slowly from behind their ship.
Its four huge, squat legs supported a body at least a hundred feet long, pursy and ungainly; at the end of a long, sinuous neck a small head seemed composed entirely of cavernous mouth armed with row upon row of carnivorous teeth. Dorothy gasped with terror; both girls shrank closer to the two men, who maintained a baffled silence as the huge beast slid its hideous head along the hull of the vessel.
"I can't shoot, Mart-it'd wreck the boat and if I had any solids they wouldn't be any good."
"No. We had better hide until it goes away. You two take that ledge, we'll take this one."
"Or gets far enough away from the Skylark so we can blow him apart," Seaton added as, with Dorothy close beside him, he dropped behind the low bulwark.
Margaret, her staring eyes fixed upon the monster, remained motionless until Crane touched her gently and drew her down to his side. "Don't be frightened, Peggy. It will go away soon."
"I'm not, now-much." She drew a deep breath. "If you weren't here, though, Martin, I'd be dead of pure fright." His arm tightened around her; then he forced it to relax. This was neither the time nor the place....
A roll of gunfire came from the Skylark. The creature roared in pain and rage, but was quickly silenced by the stream of .50-caliber machine-gun bullets.
"DuQuesue's on the job-let's go!" Seaton cried, and the four rushed up the slope. Making a detour to avoid the writhing body, they plunged through the opening door. DuQuesne closed the lock. They huddled together in overwhelming relief as an appalling tumult arose outside.
The scene, so quiet a few moments before, was horribly changed. The air seemed filled with hideous monsters. Winged lizards of prodigious size hurtled through the air to crash against the Skylark's armored hull. Flying monstrosities, with the fangs of tigers, attacked viciously. Dorothy screamed and started back as a scorpion-like thing ten feet in length leaped at the window in front of her, its terrible sting spraying the quartz with venom. As it fell to the ground a spider-if an eight-legged creature with spines instead of hair, faceted eyes, and a bloated globular body weighing hundreds of pounds may be called a spider leaped upon it; and, mighty mandibles against the terrible sting, a furious battle raged. Twelve-foot cockroaches climbed nimbly across the fallen timber of the morass and began feeding voraciously on the carcass of the creature DuQuesne had killed. They were promptly driven away by another animal, a living nightmare of that reptilian age which apparently combined the nature and disposition of tyrannosaurus rex with a physical shape approximating that of the sabertooth tiger. This newcomer towered fifteen feet high at the shoulders and had a mouth disproportionate even to his great size; a mouth armed with sharp fangs three feet in length. He had barely begun his meal, however, when he was challenged by another nightmare, a thing shaped more or less like a crocodile.
The crocodile charged. The tiger met him head on, fangs front and rending claws outstretched. Clawing, striking, tearing savagely, an avalanche of bloodthirsty rage, the combatants stormed up and down the little island.
Suddenly the great tree bent over and lashed out against both animals. It transfixed them with its thorns, which the watchers now saw were both needle-pointed and barbed. It ripped at them with its long branches, which were in fact highly lethal spears. The broad leaves, equipped with sucking discs, wrapped themselves around the hopelessly impaled victims. The long, slender twigs or tendrils, each of which now had an eye at its extremity, waved about at a safe distance.
After absorbing all of the two gladiators that was absorbable, the tree resumed its former position, motionless in all its strange, outlandish beauty.
Dorothy licked her lips, which were almost as white as her face. "I think I'm going to be sick," she remarked, conversationally.
"No you aren't." Seaton tightened his arm. "Chin up, ace."
"Okay, chief. Maybe not-this time." Color began to reappear on her cheeks. "But Dick, will you please blow up that horrible tree? It wouldn't be so bad if it were ugly, like the rest of the things, but it's so beautiful!"
"I sure will. I think we'd better get out of here. This is no place to start a copper mine, even if there's any copper here, which there probably isn't... . It is X, DuQuesne, isn't it?"
"Yes. Ninety-nine plus per cent, at least."
"That reminds me." Seaton turned to DuQuesne, band outstretched. "You squared it, Blackie. Say the word the war's all off."
DuQuesne ignored the hand. "Not on my side," he said evenly. "I act as one of the party as long as I'm with you. When we get back, however, I still intend to take both of you out of circulation." He went to his room.
"Well, I'll be a ... " Seaton bit off a word. "He ain't a man-he's a cold-blooded fish!"
"He's a machine--a robot," Margaret declared. "I always thought so, and now I know it!"
"We'll pull his cork when we get back," Seaton said. "He asked for it-we'll give him both barrels!"
Crane went to the board, and soon they were approaching another planet, which was surrounded by a dense fog. Descending slowly, they found it to be a mass of boiling hot steam and rank vapor, under enormous pressure.
The next planet looked barren and dead. Its atmosphere was clear, but of a peculiar yellowish-green color. Analysis showed over ninety per cent chlorine. No life of any Earthly type could exist naturally upon such a world and a search for copper, even in space-suits, would be extremely difficult if not impossible.
"Well," Seaton said, as they were once more in space, "We've got copper enough to visit quite a few more solar systems if we have to. But there's a nice, hopeful-looking planet right over there. It may be the one we're looking for."
Arriving in the belt of atmosphere, they tested it as before and found it satisfactory.
They descended rapidly, over a large city set in the middle of a vast, level, beautifully planted plain. As they watched, the city vanished and became a mountain summit, with valleys falling away on all sides as far as the eye could reach.
"Huh! I never saw a mirage like that before!" Seaton exclaimed. "But we'll land, if we finally have to swim!" The ship landed gently upon the summit, its occupants more than half expecting the mountain to disappear beneath them. Nothing happened, however, and the five clustered in the lock, wondering whether or not to disembark. They could see no sign of life; but each felt the presence of a vast, invisible something.
Suddenly a man materialized in the air before them; a man identical with Seaton in every detail, down to the smudge of grease under one eye and the exact design of his Hawaiian sport shirt.
"Hello, folks," he said, in Seaton's tone and style. "S'prised that I know your language-huh, you would be. Don't even understand telepathy, or the ether, or the relationship between time and space. Not even the fourth dimension."
Changing instantaneously from Seaton's form to Dorothy's, the stranger went on without a break. "Electrons and neutrons a
nd things-nothing here, either."
The form became DuQuesne's. "Ah, a freer type, but blind, dull, stupid; another nothing. As Martin Crane; the same. As Peggy, still the same, as was of course to be expected. Since you are all nothings in essence, of a race so low in the scale that it will be millions of years before it will rise even above death and death's clumsy attendant necessity, sex, it is of course necessary for me to make of you nothings in fact; to dematerialize you."
In Seaton's form the being stared at Seaton, who felt his senses reel under the impact of an awful, if insubstantial, blow. Seaton fought back with all his mind and remained standing.
"What's this?" the stranger exclaimed in surprise. "This is the first time in millions of cycles that mere matter, which is only a manifestation of mind, has refused to obey a mind of power. There's something screwy somewhere." He switched to Crane's shape.
"Ah, I am not a perfect reproduction-there is some subtle difference. The external form is the same; the internal structure likewise. The molecules of substance are arranged properly, as are the atoms in the molecules. The electrons, neutrons, protons, positrons, neutrinos, mesons ... nothing amiss on that level. On the third level ..."
"Let's go!" Seaton exclaimed, drawing Dorothy backward and reaching for the airlock switch. "This dematerialization stuff may be pie for him, but believe me, it's none of my dish."
"No, no!" the stranger remonstrated. "You really must stay and be dematerialized-alive or dead."
He drew his pistol. Being in Crane's form, he drew slowly, as Crane did; and Seaton's Mark I shell struck him before the pistol cleared his pocket. The pseudo-body was votalized; but, just to make sure, Crane fired a Mark V into the ground through the last open chink of the closing lock.
Seaton leaped to the board. As he did so, a creature materialized in the air in front of him-and crashed to the floor as he threw on the power. It was a frightful thing-outrageous teeth, long claws, and an automatic pistol held in a human hand. Forced flat by the fierce acceleration, it was unable to lift either itself or the weapon.
The Best of E E 'Doc' Smith Page 5