Skylark DuQuesne s-4

by Edward E Smith

  “Oh,” Seaton said again. “And that’s why he isn’t going to resume hostilities with ordinary weapons, either? Thanks, you two, a million. We appreciate it. Okay; we’re ready, I guess.”

  The four projections appeared in front of the llanzlan’s desk. He was expecting them.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Mergon began to explain, but Seaton cut him off. Mergon could not possibly feel equal to Klazmon in a face-to-face; Seaton could and did.

  “I can explain us better than you can, friend Mergon,” he said. Then, to the Llurd, “We came here to visit the human beings whom you call the Jelmi. We did not have, have not now, and do not expect to have any interest whatever in you Llurdi or in anything Llurdan. Our purpose is to promote intergalactic commerce and interhuman friendship.

  The various human races have different abilities and different artifacts and different knowledges — many of each of which are of benefit to other human races.

  “You made an unprovoked attack on us. Know now, Llanzlan Klazmon, that I do not permit invasion, either mental or physical, by any entity — man, beast, god, devil or Llurd — of this or of any other galaxy. Although I can imagine few subjects upon which you and I could converse profitably, if you wish to talk to me as one intelligent and logical entity to another I will so converse. But I repeat — I will not permit invasion.

  “If you wish to resume battle on that account that is your right and your privilege. You will note, however, that our attack was metered precisely to a point just below your maximum capability of resistance. Know now that if you force us to destroy your city and perhaps your world it will not have been the first city or the first world we have been forced to destroy; nor, with a probability of point nine nine nine, will it have been the last. Do you want peace with us or war?”

  “Peace. Data sufficient,” Klazmon said immediately. “I have recorded the fact that there is at least one Jelmoid race other than the Jelmi themselves of which some representatives are both able and willing to employ almost Llurdan logic,” and he switched his attention from the projections to the tape he had been studying — cutting communications as effectively as though he had removed himself to another world.

  Back in the Mallidaxian, while Luloy stared at Seaton almost in awe, Mergon said, “That was a beautiful job, Doctor Seaton. Perfect! Much better than I could have done. You used flawless Llurdan logic.”

  “Thanks to the ace in the hole you gave me with your briefing, I could do it. I’d hate to have to run a bluff on that ape. What’s next on the agenda, Savant Mergon?”

  “Make it ‘Merg’, please; and I’ll call you ‘Dick’. Now that this is settled, why don’t you put your fortress-planetoid on automatic and let us bring you all here, so that our peoples may become friends in person and may begin work upon tasks of mutual interest?”

  “That’s a thought, friend; that really is a thought,” Seaton said, and it was done forthwith.

  Aboard the Mallidaxian, Seaton cut the social amenities as short as he courteously could; then went with inseparable Mergon and Luloy to Tammon’s laboratory. That fourth dimensional gizmo was what he was interested in. With his single-mindedness that was all he was interested in, at the moment, of the entire Jelman culture. All four donned Skylark thought-helmets and Seaton set out to learn everything there was to be known about that eight million cubic feet of esoteric apparatus. And Mergon, who didn’t know much of anything about recent developments, was eager to catch up.

  Seaton did not learn all about the fourth-dimensional device in one day, nor in one week; but when he had it all filed away in the Brain he asked, “Is that all you have of it?”

  He did not mean to be insulting; he was only greatly surprised.

  The old savant bristled and Seaton apologized hastily. “I didn’t mean to belittle your achievement in any sense, sir. It’s probably the greatest breakthrough ever made. But it doesn’t seem to be complete.”

  “Of course it isn’t complete!” Tammon snapped. “I’ve been working on it only—”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that,” Seaton broke in. “The concept is incomplete. In several ways. For instance, if fourth dimensional translation is used as a weapon, you have no defense against it.”

  “Of course there’s no defense against it!” Tammon defended his brain-child like a tigress defending her young. “By the very nature of things there can’t be any defense against it!”

  At that, politeness went by the board. “You’re wrong,” Seaton said, flatly. “By the very nature of things there has to be. All nature is built on a system of checks and balances.

  Doing a job so terrifically big and so brand new, I doubt if anybody could get the whole thing at once. Let’s go over the theory again, together, with a microscope, to see if we can’t add something to it somewhere?”

  Tammon agreed, but reluctantly. Deep down in his own mind he did not believe that any other mind could improve upon any particular of his work. As the review progressed, however, he became more and more enthusiastic. As well he might; for the mathematics section of Richard Seaton’s multi-compartmented mind contained, indexed and cross-index, all the work done by countless grand masters of the subject during half a million years.

  Luloy started to pull her helmet off, but Mergon stopped her with a direct thought. “I’m lost, too, sweet, but keep on listening. We can get bits here and there — and we’ll probably never have the chance again to watch two such minds at work.”

  “Hold it!” Seaton snapped, half an hour later. “Back up — there! This integral here. Limits zero to pi over two. You’re limiting the thing to a large but definitely limited volume of your generalized N-dimensional space. I think it should be between zero and infinity — and while we’re at it let’s scrap half of the third determinant in that no-space-no-time complex. Let’s see what happens if we substitute the gamma function here and the chi there and the xi there and the omicron down there in the corner.”

  “But why?” the old savant protested. “I don’t see any possible reason for any of it.”

  Seaton grinned. “There isn’t any — any more than there was for your original brainstorm. If there had been the Norlaminian would have worked this whole shebang out a hundred thousand years ago. It’s nothing but a hunch, but it’s strong enough so I want to follow it up — okay? Fine then, integrating that, we get…”

  Five hours later, Tammon took his helmet off and stared at Seaton with wonder in his eyes. “Do you realize just what you’ve done, young man? You have made a break through at least equal to my own. Opened up a whole vast new field — a field parallel to my own, perhaps, but in no sense the same.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Merely an enlargement. All I did was follow a hunch.”

  “An intuition,” Tammon corrected him. “What else, pray, makes breakthroughs?”

  And Luloy, on the way out of the laboratory hand in hand with Mergon, said, “I had no idea that Tellus ever did or ever could produce anybody like him. He is their god’s fair-haired child, for a fact. Sennlloy will have to know about this, Merg.”

  “She will indeed — I was sure you’d think of that.”

  And as soon as Dorothy could get Seaton alone that evening she stared at him with a variety of emotions playing over her face. As though she had never seen him before; or as though she were getting acquainted with him all over again. “I’ve been talking to Sennlloy,” she announced. “Or, rather, she’s been talking to me. She didn’t lose much time, did she?”

  Seaton blushed to the roots of his hair. “I’ll say she didn’t. Not any. She knocked me for a block-long row of ash cans.”

  “Uh-huh. Me, too — and how! She told me you said I’d blow my red top and I just about did, until she explained. She’s quite a gal, isn’t she? And what a shape! You know, I’m awfully glad I’m not too bad in that shape department myself, or I’d die of mortification looking at them? But Dick — don’t you suppose there are any people in this whole cockeyed universe except us and th
e Rayseenians who don’t run around naked all the time?”

  “I wouldn’t know; but what has all that got to do with the price of hasheesh in Istanbul?”

  “It ties in. She must have thought I was some kind of an idiot child, but she didn’t show it. She couldn’t really understand my taboos, she said, since they were not in her own heredity, but she could accept them as facts in mine and work within their limitations.”

  Dorothy blushed, but went on, “I’d be the only Prime Operator — and so forth. You know about the ‘and so forth’. Anyway, before she got done she actually made me feel ashamed of myself! They really need your genes, Dick. You didn’t let on, did you, that DuQuesne’s a Tellurian, too?”

  “I’ll say I didn’t! The less they think that ape and I came from the same world, the better I’ll like it.”

  “You and me both. Well, she didn’t actually say so, but when she found out what kind of genes you have she decided to pour every one of DuQuesne’s right down the drain.”

  “Could be.” Seaton didn’t agree with that conclusion at all, but he was too smart to argue the point.

  At breakfast the following morning Seaton said, “You chirped it, birdie, about their thinking us some kind of idiot children. Besides, the First Principle and Prime Tenet of all diplomacy has always been, ‘When in Rome be a Roman candle’. So I think we’d all better peel to the raw as of now. You and I had better, whether the rest do or not. Check?”

  “Check — but I think they will. We’re horribly conspicuous, dressed. People look at us as though we were things that had escaped from a zoo. And all the Green System people have always thought we were more than somewhat loco in the coco for covering up so much. We’ll get used to it easily enough — look at the nudists. So lead on, my bold and valiant — I follow thee to the bitter end of all my raiment.”

  “I knew you would, ace. Let’s go spread the gospel.”

  When they approached the Cranes and the Japanese on the subject, Margaret threw back her black-thatched head and laughed. “We must be psychic — we were going to spring the same thing on you. And after all, actually, how much do our bathing suits hide? Yours or mine either one? And we have it to show, too — so here goes! The last one undressed is Stinker of the Day!” She began to unzip, then paused and looked at Lotus.

  The Nisei girl shrugged. “We all should, of course, I won’t like it and I positively know I’ll never get used to it, but if you two do I will too if it kills me.”

  “’At-a-girl, Lambie!” Margaret put her arm around the beautifully formed little body and squeezed. “But you just wait — you’ll have it really made. None of them ever saw anything like you before, you gorgeous little doll, you. With your size and build you’ll be the absolute Queen of the May!”

  25. ROMAN CANDLES

  COUNTLESS parsecs away, Marc C. DuQuesne was carrying out his own plans — plans which would have been a most unpleasant surprise for the Skylarkers had they known about them.

  DuQuesne moved the surviving Fenachrone into his DQ easily enough and without incident. Housing was no problem. How could it be, with millions upon millions of cubic kilometers of space available and with automatic high-order constructors to do the work? Nor was atmosphere, nor food nor any other necessity or desideratum of Fenachronian life and/or well-being a problem.

  Fenachrone engineers did it all — by operating special keyboards and by thinking into carefully limited headsets but none of them had any idea whatever of what it was that did any given task or how it did it. None of this knowledge, of either practice or theory, was in their science; and DuQuesne took great pains to be sure that none of them got any chance to learn any iota of it. He taught them, and they learned, purely by rote.

  Like high-school girls learning to drive automobiles. They can become excellent drivers; but with only that type of instruction none of them will ever become able to design a hypoid gear or to understand in detail the operation of an automatic clutch.

  The Fenachrone did not like such treatment. Sleemet in particular, when he began to recover some of the normal pugnaciously prideful spirit of his race, did not like it at all and said so; but DuQuesne did not care a particle whether he liked it or not.

  DuQuesne’s snapping black eyes stared, contemptuously unaffected, into the furiously hypnotic, red-lighted black eyes of the Fenachrone. “You megalomaniacal cretin,” he sneered. “How can you possibly figure that it makes any difference whatever to me, what you like or don’t like? If you have any fraction of a brain you’d better start using it. If you haven’t or can’t or won’t, I’ll build you a duplicate of your original ship and turn you all loose today.”

  “You will? In that case—” Sleemet got that far and stopped cold in mid-sentence.

  “Yeah.” DuQuesne’s tone cut like a knife. “Exactly. We’re still within Klazmon’s range; we will be for quite a while yet. Do you want to be turned loose here?”

  “Well, no.” If the thought occurred to him that DuQuesne was lying, he didn’t show it.

  That was just as well for Sleemet and for the Fenachrone race. DuQuesne wasn’t.

  “Maybe you have a brain of sorts, at that. But if you don’t forget this Master Race flapdoodle, all of it and fast, you’ll last quick. Remember how easily that self-styled Overlord wiped out your navy and then volatilized your whole stinking world? And how easily Klazmon of Llurdiax smacked your whole fleet down? And what a fool I made and am still making of Klazmon? And I know of one race that is as much ahead of mine as I am ahead of you; and of another race that may be somewhat ahead of us Xyhnnians in some ways. As I said, you’re about eleven hundred thousand years behind. Have you got brains enough to realize that instead of being top dog you’re just low man on the totem pole?”

  “If you’re so high and we’re so low,” Sleemet snarled, “why did you take us away from the Llurd? Of what possible use can we be to you?”

  “You have certain mental and physical qualities that may perhaps be of use in a project I have in mind. You are not only able and willing to fight, you really like to fight. These qualities should, theoretically, make you better in some respects than automatics in operating the offensive weapons of a base as large as this one is.” DuQuesne studied the Fenachrone appraisingly. “I do not really need you, but I am willing to make the experiment on the terms I have stated. I will allow you two Xylmnian minutes in which to decide whether or not to cooperate with me in such an experiment.”

  “We will cooperate,” Sleemet said in less than one minute; whereupon DuQuesne told him in broad terms what he had in mind.

  And for many days thereafter the two, so unlike physically but so similar in so many respects mentally, devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the finer and ever finer refine-ment of the placing and tuning of mechanisms and of the training of already hard-trained personnel.

  But DuQuesne knew that, given the slightest opportunity, the Fenachrone would take high delight in killing him and taking the DQ. Wherefore he did not at any time trust any one of them as far as he could spit.

  Moreover, DuQuesne was not quite as sure of his own victory as he had given the Fenachrone to understand. DuQuesne was not easy in his mind about Galaxy DW-427-LU. He hadn’t been, not since some superpowered enemy in that galaxy had attacked Seaton’s Skylark of Valeron without warning and had burned her down to a core before she could get out of range. And she hadn’t been able to fight back. That one blast back at them couldn’t have done any damage.

  It had been that uneasiness that had been responsible for the DQ’s terrific armament and for DuQuesne’s wanting the Fenachrone for a crew. Wherefore, as soon as the Fenachrone were settled in their new quarters and before they had recovered enough of their normal combativeness to become completely unmanageable, DuQuesne got “on the com” with Sleemet.

  “… I don’t give a damn what happens to Earth or to Norlamin. I’m no longer interested in either,” he said in part. “But I don’t want it to happen to me and you don’t want it to h
appen to you. You agree with me, I’m sure, that a good strategist does not leave an enemy behind him without knowing, at very least, who that enemy is and what he can do.”

  “That is one of the basics, yes.”

  “All right. Somebody in this galaxy here has more muscle than I like.” DuQuesne pointed out Galaxy DW-427-LU in his tank and told Sleemet what had happened to the Skylark of Valeron, then went on, “On theoretical grounds, the degree of synchronization could make all the difference.” He had reached by theory the same point that Seaton had arrived at by experience. “Hence, the greater the number of operators — of equal skill, of course — the tighter the output. The efficiency will vary directly as the cube of the number of operators.”

  “I see.” Sleemet did see, and for the first time became really interested. “That will be to our advantage as well as yours. You will have to teach us much.”

  “I’ll teach you everything you have to know. Nothing else.”

  “That is assumed… But I see no possibility of assurance that you will keep your bargain… or will you go mind to mind that you will release us and build us a ship after this one expedition as your crew?”

  “Yes. Without reservation.”

  “In that case we will cooperate fully.”

  And they did — and so it was that the DQ became the most fantastically armed and powered and defended fortress that had ever moved its own mass through space.

  As the DQ approached Galaxy DW-427-LU, with everything she had either wide open or on the trips, DuQuesne braked her down and swung into what he called “the curve of fastest getaway” — and as he did so, in the instant, the mighty vessel’s every defense went blinding-white.

  And in that same instant two thousand nine hundred seventy-seven Fenachrone, males and females but superlatively expert technicians all, pressed activating switches and took command, each of a tightly clustered battery of micrometrically synchronized generators.