E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne (7 page)

‘I said it would be undignified,’ said Seaton, somewhat short of breath, but laughing, too, ‘but I didn’t think it would end up like this.’

Dorothy seized his hand. ‘Are you hurt anywhere, Dick?’

‘Uh-uh. Not a bit.’

‘I was scared green until you told Martin to lay off, but it
was
funny then. How about doing it again and I’ll shoot it in full color?’

‘Dorothy!’ her father chided. ‘Next time it might not be funny at all.’

‘There’ll be no next time for this rig,’ Seaton declared. ‘From here we ought to be able to go to a full-scale ship.’

Dorothy and Seaton set out toward the house and Vaneman turned to Crane.

‘What are you going to do with it commercially? Dick, of course, hasn’t thought of anything except his spaceship. Equally of course, you have.’

Crane frowned. ‘Yes. I’ve had a crew of designers working for weeks. In units of half-million to a million kilowatts we could sell power for a small fraction of a mil. However, the deeper we go into it the more likely it appears that it will make all big central power plants obsolete.’

‘How could that be?’

‘Individual units on individual spots – but it will be some time yet before we have enough data for the machines to work on.’

The evening passed rapidly. As the guests were getting ready to leave, Dorothy asked, ‘What are you going to call it? You both have called it forty different things this evening, and none of them were right.’

‘Why, “spaceship,” of course,’ Seaton said.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean the class, I meant this particular one. There’s only one possible name for her: the
Skylark.
’

‘Exactly right, Dorothy,’ Crane said.

‘Perfect!’ Seaton applauded. ‘And you’ll christen it, Dottie, with a fifty-liter flask full of hard vacuum. “I christen thee the
Skylark – bang
!”’

As an afterthought, Vaneman pulled a newspaper out of his pocket.

‘Oh yes, I bought a
Clarion
on our way out here. It tells about an extraordinary explosion – at least, the story is extraordinary. It may not be true, but it may make interesting reading for you two scientific sharps. Goodnight.’

Seaton walked Dorothy to the car. When he came back Crane handed him the paper without a word. Seaton read.

‘It’s X, all right. Not even a
Clarion
reporter could dream that up. Some poor devil tried it without my
rabbit’s foot in his pocket.’

‘But think, Dick! Something is very seriously wrong. Two people did
not
discover X at the same time. Someone stole your idea, but the idea is worthless without the metal. Where did he get it?’

‘That’s right. The stuff is extremely rare. In fact, it isn’t supposed even to exist. I’d bet my case buck that we had every microgram of it known to science.’

‘Well, then,’ said the practical Crane, ‘We’d better find out if we have all we started with.’

The storage bottle was still almost full, its seal unbroken; the vial was apparently exactly as Seaton had left it. ‘It seems to be all here,’ Crane said.

‘It can’t be,’ Seaton declared. It’s too rare – coincidence
can’t
go that far … I can tell by taking the densities.’

He did so, finding that the solution in the vial was only half as strong as that in the reserve bottle.

‘That’s it, Mart. Somebody stole half of this vial. But he’s gone where the … say, do you suppose …?’

‘I do indeed. Just that.’

‘And the difficulty will lie in finding out which one, among the dozens of outfits who would want the stuff, is the one that actually got it?’

‘Check. The idea was – must have been – taken from your demonstration. Or, rather, one man knew, from the wreckage of your laboratory, that your demonstration would not have failed had all the factors then operative been present. Who was there?’

‘Oh, a lot of people came around at one time or another, but your specifications narrow the field to five men – Scott, Smith, Penfield, DuQuesne, and Roberts. Hmmm, let’s see – if Scott’s brain was solid cyclonite, the detonation wouldn’t crack his skull; Smith is a pure theoretician; Penfield wouldn’t dare quote an authority without asking permission; DuQuesne
is …
umm … that is, DuQuesne isn’t … I mean, Du—’

‘DuQuesne, then, is suspect number one.’

‘But wait a minute! I didn’t say …’

‘Exactly. That makes him suspect number one. How about the fifth man, Roberts?’

‘Not the type – definitely. He’s a career man. If he got blasted out of the Civil Service all the clocks in the city would stop.

Crane picked up his telephone and dialed.

‘This is Crane. Please give me a complete report on Dr Marc C. DuQuesne of the Rare Metals Laboratory as soon as possible … Yes, full coverage … no limit … and please send two or three guards out here right now, men you can trust … Thanks.’

Seaton and Crane spent some time in
developing the ‘object-compass.’ They made several of them, mounted in gymbals on super-shock-proof jeweled bearings. Strictly according to Seaton’s Theory, the instruments were of extreme sensitivity; the one set on the smallest object at the greatest distance – a tiny glass bead at three thousand miles – registering a true line in less than one second.

Having solved the problem of navigation, they made up graduated series of ‘X-plosive’ bullets, each one matching perfectly its standard .45-caliber counterpart. They placed their blueprints and working notes in the safe as usual, taking with them only those dealing with the object-compass and the X-plosive bullet, on which they were still working. They cautioned Shiro and the three guards to watch everything closely until they got back. Then they set out in the helicopter, to try out the new weapon in a place where the explosions could do no damage.

It came fully up to expectations. A Mark One charge, fired by Crane at a stump over a hundred yards from the flat-topped knoll that had afforded them a landing-place, tore it bodily from the ground and reduced it to splinters. The force of the explosion made the two men stagger.

‘Wow!’ Seaton exclaimed. ‘Wonder what a Mark Five will do?’

‘Careful, Dick. What are you going to shoot at?’

‘That rock across the valley. Range-finder says nine hundred yards. Bet me a buck I can’t hit it?’

‘The pistol champion of the District? Hardly!’

The pistol cracked, and when the bullet reached its destination the boulder was obliterated in a vast ball of … of
something.
It was not exactly – nor all – flame. It had none of the searing, killing, unbearable radiance of an atomic bomb. It did not look much, if any, hotter than the sphere of primary action of a massive charge of high explosive. It did not look, even remotely, like anything either man had ever seen before.

Their observations were interrupted by the arrival of the shock wave. They were hurled violently backward, stumbling and falling flat. When they could again keep their feet, both stared silently at the tremendous mushroom-shaped cloud which was hurling itself upward at an appalling pace and spreading itself outward almost as fast.

Crane examined Geiger and scintillometer, reporting that both had continued to register only background radiation throughout the test. Seaton made observations and used his slide rule.

‘Can’t do much from here, right under it, but the probable minimum is ninety-seven thousand feet
and it’s still boiling upward. I … will … be … tee … totally … jiggered.’

Both men stood for minutes awed into silence by the incredible forces they had loosed. Then Seaton made the understatement of his long life.

‘I don’t think I’ll shoot a Mark Ten around here.’

‘Haven’t you done anything yet?’ Brookings demanded.

‘I can’t help it, Mr Brookings,’ Perkins replied. ‘Prescott’s men are hard to do business with.’

‘I know that, but surely
one
of them can be reached.’

‘Not at ten, and that was your limit. Twenty-five or no dice.’

Brookings drummed fingers on desk. ‘Well … if we have to …’ and wrote out an order on the cashier for twenty-five thousand dollars in small-to-medium bills. ‘I’ll see you at the cafe, tomorrow at four o’clock.’

The place referred to was the Perkins Café, a restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was the favorite eating-place of the diplomatic, political, financial, and social élite of Washington, none of whom even suspected that it had been designed and was being maintained by the world-girdling World Steel Corporation as the hub and center of its world-girdling nefarious activities.

At four o’clock on the following day Brookings was ushered into Perkins’ private office.

‘Blast it, Perkins, can’t you do
anything
?’ he demanded.

‘It just couldn’t be helped,’ Perkins replied doggedly. ‘Everything was figured to the second, but the Jap smelled a rat or something and jumped us. I managed to get away, but he laid Tony out cold. But don’t worry – I sent Silk Humphrey and a couple of the boys out to get him. Told him to report at four oh eight. Any second now.’

In less than a minute Perkins’ communicator buzzed.

‘This is the dick, not Silk,’ it said, in its tiny, tinny voice. ‘He’s dead. So are the two goons. That Jap, he’s chain lightning on greased wheels, got all three of them. Anything else I can do for you?’

‘No. Your job’s done.’ Perkins closed the switch, fusing the spy’s communicator into a blob of metal; and Brookings called DuQuesne.

‘Can you come to my office, or are you bugged?’

‘Yes, to both. Bugged from stem to gudgeon, Prescott men in front, back, on the sides, and up in the trees. I’ll be right over.’

‘But wait …!’

‘Relax. D’you think they can outsmart
me?
I know more about bugging – and de-bugging – than Prescott and his dicks ever will learn.’

In Brookings’ office DuQuesne told, with saturnine amusement, of the devices he had rigged to misinform the private eyes. He listened to Brookings’ recital of failure.

Then he said, ‘I knew you’d louse it up, so I’ve been making some plans of my own. One thing, though, I want limpidly clear. From now
on I give the orders. Right?

‘Get me a helicopter just like Crane’s. Get a hophead six feet tall that weighs about a hundred and sixty pounds. Give him a three-hour jolt. Have them at the field two hours from now.’

‘Can do.’

DuQuesne was at the field on time. So were the flying machine and the unconscious man. Both were exactly what he had ordered. He took off, climbed swiftly, made a wide circle to the west and north.

Shiro and the two guards, hearing the roar of engines, looked up and saw what they supposed to be Crane’s helicopter coming down in a vertical drop. Slowing at the last possible second, it taxied up the field toward them. A man, recognizable as Seaton by his suit and physique, stood up, shouted hoarsely, pointed to the lean, still form beside him, beckoned frantically with both arms, then slumped down, completely inert.

All three rushed up to help.

There were three silenced reports and three men dropped.

DuQuesne leaped lightly out of the ’copter and scanned the three bodies. The two guards were dead, but Shiro, to his chagrin, showed faint signs of life. But very faint – he wouldn’t live long.

He put on gloves, went into the house, blew the safe and rifled it. He found the vial of solution, but could find neither the larger bottle nor any reference to it. He then searched the house, from attic to basement. He found the vault, carefully concealed though its steel door was; but even he could do nothing about that. Nor was there any need, he decided, as he stood staring at it, the only change in his expression being a slight narrowing of the eyes in concentrated thought. The bulk of that solution was probably in the heaviest, deepest, safest vault in the country.

He returned to the helicopter. In a short time he was back in his own room, poring over blueprints and notebooks.

Coming in in the dusk, Crane and Seaton both began to worry when they saw that their landing lights were not burning. They made a bumpy landing and hurried toward the house. They heard a faint moan and turned, Seaton whipping out his flashlight with one hand his automatic with the other. He hastily replaced the weapon and bent over Shiro, a touch having assured him that the other two were beyond help. They picked Shiro up and carried him into his own room. While Seaton applied first-aid treatment to the ghastly wound in Shiro’s head, Crane called a surgeon, the coroner, the police, and finally Prescott, with whom he held a long conversation.

Having done all they could for the injured man, they stood by his bedside, their anger all the more deadly for being
silent. Seaton stood with every muscle tense. His right hand, white-knuckled, gripped the butt of his pistol, while under his left the heavy brass rail of the bed began slowly to bend. Crane stood impassive, but his face white and every feature hard as marble. Seaton was the first to speak.

‘Mart,’ he gritted, husky with fury, ‘a man who could leave another man dying like that ain’t a man at all – he’s a thing. I’ll shoot him with the biggest charge we’ve got … No, I won’t, either, I’ll take him apart with my bare hands.’

‘We’ll find him, Dick.’ Crane’s voice was low, level, deadly. ‘That is one thing money can do.’

The tension was relieved by the arrival of the surgeon and nurses, who set to work with the deftness and precision of their highly-specialized crafts. After a time the doctor turned to Crane.

‘Merely a scalp wound, Mr Crane. He should be up in a few days.’

The police, Prescott, and the coroner arrived in that order. There was a great deal of bustling, stirring about, and investigating, some of which was profitable. There were many guesses and a few sound deductions.

And Crane offered a reward of one million tax-paid dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer.

Prescott, after a sleepless night, joined Crane and Seaton at breakfast.

‘What do you make of it?’ Crane asked.

‘Very little, at present. Whoever did it had exactly detailed knowledge of your movements.’