E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne (87 page)

‘To relieve your mind I’ll explain some more. Mart and I both realized that that Brain could very easily become the most terrible, the most frightfully destructive thing that the universe has ever seen. Therefore, with two exceptions, every controller on this planetoid is of a strictly limited type. Of the two master controls, which are unlimited and very highly reactive, one responds only to Crane’s thoughts, the other only to mine. As soon as we get some loose time we are going to build a couple of auxiliaries, with automatic stops against stray thoughts, to break you girls in on – we know as well as you do, Red-Top, that you haven’t had enough practice yet to take an unlimited control.’

‘I’ll say I haven’t!’ she agreed feelingly. ‘I feel a lot better now – I’m sure I can handle the rest of these things very nicely.’

‘Sure you can, Well, let’s call the Cranes and go into the control room,’ Seaton suggested. ‘The quicker we get started the quicker we’ll get done.’

Accustomed as she was to the banks and tiers of keyboards, switches, dials, meters, and other operating paraphernalia of the control rooms of the previous
Skylarks
, Dorothy was taken aback when she passed through the thick, heavily insulated door into that of the
Skylark of Valeron
. For there were four gray walls, a gray ceiling, and a thick gray rug. There were low, broad double chairs and headsets. There was nothing else.

‘This is your seat, Dottie, here beside me, and this is your headset – it’s just a visiset, so you can see what is going on, not a controller,’ he hastened to reassure her. ‘You have a better illusion of seeing if your eyes are open, that’s why everything is neutral in color. But better still for you girls, we’ll turn off the lights.’

The illumination, which had seemed to pervade the entire room instead of emanating from any definite sources, faded out; but in spite of the fact that the room was in absolute darkness Dorothy saw with a clarity and a depth of vision impossible to any Earthly eyes. She saw at one and the same time, with infinite precision of detail, the houses and their contents; the whole immense sphere of the planetoid, inside and out; Valeron and her sister planets circling their sun; and the stupendous full sphere of the vaulted heavens.

She knew that her husband was motionless at her side, yet she saw him materialize in the control room of
Skylark Two
. There he seized the cabinet which contained the space chart of the Fenachrone – that library of films portraying all the galaxies visible to the wonderfully powerful telescopes and projectors of that horrible but highly scientific race.

That cabinet became instantly a manifold scanner, all its reels flashing through as one. Simultaneously there appeared in the air above the machine a three-dimensional model of all the galaxies there listed. A model upon such a scale that the First Galaxy was but a tiny lenticular pellet, although it was still disproportionately large; upon such a scale that the whole vast sphere of space covered by the hundreds of
Fenachrone scrolls was compressed into a volume but little larger than a basketball. And yet each tiny galactic pellet bore its own peculiarly individual identifying marks.

Then Dorothy felt as though she herself had been hurled out into the unthinkable reaches of space. In a fleeting instant of time she passed through thousands of star clusters, and not only knew the declination, right ascension, and distance of each galaxy, but saw it duplicated in miniature in its exact place in an immense, three-dimensional model in the hollow interior of the space-flyer in which she actually was.

The mapping went on. To human brains and hands the task would have been one of countless years. Now, however, it was to prove only a matter of hours, for this was no human brain. Not only was it reactive and effective at distances to be expressed intelligibly in light-years or parsecs; because of the immeasurable sixth-order velocity of its carrier wave it was equally effective across reaches of space so incomprehensibly vast that the rays of visible light emitted at the birth of a sun so far away would reach the point of observation only after that sun had lived through its entire cycle of life and had disappeared.

‘Well, that’s about enough of that for you, for a while,’ Seaton remarked in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘A little of that stuff goes a long ways at first – you have to get used to it.’

‘I’ll say you do I Why … I … it …’ Dorothy paused, even her ready tongue at a loss for words.

‘You can’t describe it in words – don’t try,’ Seaton advised. ‘Let’s go outdoors and watch the model grow.’

To the awe, if not to the amazement of the observers, the model had already begun to assume a lenticular pattern. Galaxies, then, really were arranged in general as were the stars composing them; there really
were
universes, and they really were lenticular – the vague speculations of the hardiest and most exploratory cosmic thinkers were being confirmed.

For hour after hour the model continued to grow and Seaton’s face began to take on a look of grave concern. At last, however, when the chart was three fourths done or more, a deep-toned bell clanged out the signal for which he had been waiting – the news that there was now being plotted a configuration of galaxies identical with that portrayed by the space chart of the Fenachrone.

‘Gosh!’ Seaton sighed hugely. ‘I was beginning to be afraid that we had escaped clear out of our own universe, and that would have been bad – very,
very
bad, believe me! The rest of the mapping can wait – let’s go!’

Followed by the others he dashed into the control room, threw on his helmet, and hurled a projection into the now easily recognizable First Galaxy. He found the Green System without difficulty, but he could not hold it. It was so far away that the utmost delicacy of control of
which the gigantic sixth-order installation was capable could not keep the viewpiont from leaping erratically, in fantastic bounds of hundreds of millions of miles, all through and around its objective.

But Seaton had half expected this development and was prepared for it. He had already sent out a broadcasting projection; and now, upon a band of frequencies wide enough to affect every receiving instrument in use throughout the Green System and using power sufficient to overwhelm any transmitter, however strong, that might be in operation, he sent out in a mighty voice his urgent message to the scientists of Norlamin.

In the throne room of Kondal, with its gorgeously resplendent jeweled ceiling and jeweled metallic-tapestry walls, there were seated in earnest consultation the three most powerful men of the planet Osnome – Roban, the Emperor; Dunark, the Crown Prince; and Tarnan, the Commander-in-Chief. Their ‘clothing’ was the ordinary Osnomian regalia of straps, chains, and metallic bands, all thickly bestudded with blazing gems and for the most part supporting the full assortment of devastatingly powerful hand weapons without which any man of that race would have felt stark naked. Their fierce green faces were keenly hawk-like; the hard, clean lines of their bare green bodies bespoke the rigid physical training that every Osnomian undergoes from birth until death.

‘Father, Tarnan may be right,’ Dunark was saying soberly. ‘We are too savage, too inherently bloodthirsty, too deeply interested in killing, not as a means to some really worthwhile end, but as an end in itself. Seaton the Overlord thinks so, the Norlaminians think so, the Dasorians think so, and I am beginning to think so myself. All really enlightened races look upon us as little better than barbarians, and in part I agree with them. I believe, however, that if we were really to devote ourselves to study and to productive effort we could soon equal or surpass any race in the system, except of course the Norlaminians.’

‘There may be something in what you say,’ the emperor admitted dubiously, ‘but it is against all our racial teachings. What, then, of an outlet for the energies of all manhood?’

‘Constructive effort instead of destructive,’ argued the karbix. ‘Let them build – study – learn – advance. It is all too true that we are
far behind other races of the system in all really important things.’

‘But what of Urvan and his people?’ Roban brought up his last and strongest argument. ‘They are as savage as we are, if not more so. As you say, the necessity for continuous warfare ceased with the destruction of Mardonale, but are we to leave our whole planet defenseless against an interplanetary attack from Urvania?’

‘They dare not attack us,’ declared Tarnan, ‘any more than we dare attack them. Seaton the Overlord decreed that the people of us two first to attack the other dies root and branch, and we all know that the word of the Overlord is no idle, passing breath.’

‘But he has not been seen for long. He may be far away and the Urvanians may decide at any time to launch their fleets against us. However, before we decide this momentous question I suggest that you two pay a visit of state to the court of Urvan. Talk to Urvan and his karbix as you have talked to me, of cooperation and of mutual advancement. If they will cooperate, we will.’

During the long voyage to Urvania, the third planet of the fourteenth sun, however, their new ardor cooled perceptibly – particularly that of the younger man – and in Urvan’s palace it became clear that the love of peaceful culture inculcated upon those fierce minds by contact with more humane peoples could not supplant immediately the spirit of strife bred into bone and fiber during thousands of generations of incessant warfare.

For when the two Osomians sat down with the two Urvanians the very air seemed charged with animosity. Like strange dogs meeting with bared fangs and bristling manes, Osnomian and Urvanian alike fairly radiated hostility. Therefore Tarnan’s suggestions as to cooperation and understanding were decidedly unconvincing, and were received with open scorn.

‘Your race may well wish to cooperate with ours,’ sneered the Emperor of Urvania, ‘since but for the threats of that self-styled Overlord, you would have ceased to exist long since. And how do we know where that one is, what he is doing, whether he is paying any attention to us? Probably you have learned that he has left this system entirely and have already planned an attack upon us. In self-defense we shall probably have to wipe out your race to keep you from destroying ours. At any rate your plea is very evidently some underhanded trick of your weak and cowardly race …’

‘Weak! Cowardly!
Us
? You conceited bloated toad!’ stormed Dunark, who had kept himself in check thus far only by sheer power of will. He sprang to his feet, his stool flying backward. ‘Here and now I demand a meeting of honor, if you know the meaning of the word honor.’

The four enraged men, all drawing weapons, were suddenly swept apart, then clutched and held immovably as a figure of force materialized among them – the form of an aged, white-bearded Norlaminian.

‘Peace, children, and silence!’ the image commanded sternly. ‘Rest assured that there shall be no more warfare in this system and that the decrees
of the Overlord shall be enforced to the letter. Calm yourselves and listen. I know well, mind you, that none of you really meant what has just been said. You of Osnome were so impressed by the benefits of mutual helpfulness that you made this journey to further its cause; you of Urvania are at heart also strongly in favor of it, but neither of you has strength enough to admit it.

‘For know, vain and self-willed children, that it is weakness, not strength, which you have been displaying. It may well be, however, that your physical bravery and your love of strife can now
be
employed for the general good of all humanity. Would you join hands, to fight side by side in such a cause?’

‘We would,’ chorused the four, as one.

Each was heartily ashamed of what had just happened, and was glad indeed of the opportunity to drop it without losing face.

‘Very well! We of Norlamin fear greatly that we have inadvertently given to one of the greatest foes of universal civilization weapons equal in power to the Overlord’s own, and that he is even now working to undo all that has been done. Will you of Osnome and you of Urvania help in conducting an expedition against that foe?’

‘We will!’ they exclaimed.

Dunark added: ‘Who is that enemy, and where is he to be found?’

‘He is Dr Marc C. DuQuesne, of Earth.’

‘DuQuesne!’ barked Dunark. ‘Why, I thought the Fenachrone killed him! But we shall attend to it at once – when
I
kill anyone he
stays
killed!’

‘Just a moment, son,’ the image cautioned. ‘He has surrounded Earth with defenses against which your every arm would be entirely impotent. Come you to Norlamin, bringing each of you one hundred of his best men. We shall have prepared for you certain equipment which, although it may not enable you to emerge victorious from the engagement, will at least insure your safe return. It might be well also to stop at Dasor, which is not now far from your course of flight, and bring along Sacner Carfon, who will be of great assistance, being a man both of action and learning.’

‘But
DuQuesne!
’ raved Dunark, who realized immediately what must have happened. ‘Why didn’t you ray him on sight? Didn’t you know what a liar and a thief he is, by instinct and training?’

‘We had no suspicion then who he was, thinking, as did you, that DuQuesne had passed. He came under another name, as Seaton’s friend. He came as one possessing knowledge, with fair and plausible words. But of that we shall inform you later. Come at once – we shall place upon your controls forces which shall pilot you accurately and with speed.’

Upon the aqueous world of Dasor they found its amphibious humanity reveling in an activity which, although dreamed of for centuries, had been impossible of realization until the
Skylark
had brought to them a supply of Rovolon, the metal of power. Now cities
of metal were arising here and there above her waves, airplanes and helicopters sped through and hovered in her atmosphere, barges and pleasure craft sailed the almost unbroken expanse of ocean which was her surface, immense submarine freighters bored their serenely stolid ways through her watery depths.