SKYLARKDUQUESNE

SKYLARK DUQUESNE

By Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.

1. s.o.s.

APPEARANCES are deceiving. A polished chunk of metal that shines like a Christmas-

tree ornament may hold-and release-energy to destroy a city. A seed is quite another

order of being to the murderous majesty of a toppling tree. A match flame can become

a holocaust.

And the chain of events that can unseat the rulers of galaxies can begin in a cozy living

room, before a hearth ....

Outwardly, the comfortable (if somewhat splendidly furnished) living room of the home

of the Richard Ballinger Seatons of Earth presented a peaceful scene. Peaceful? It was

sheerly pastoral! Seaton and Dorothy, his spectacularly auburn-haired wife, sat on a

davenport, holding hands. A fire of pine logs burned slowly, crackling occasionally and

sending sparks against the fine bronze screen of the fireplace. Richard Ballinger

Seaton Junior lay on the rug, trying doggedly, silently, and manfully, if unsuccessfully,

to wriggle toward those entrancing flames.

Inwardly, however, it was very much otherwise. Dorothy's normally pleasant-as well as

beautiful-face wore a veritable scowl.

The dinner they had just eaten had been over two hours late; wherefore not one single

item of it had been fit to feed to a pig. Furthermore, and worse, Dick was not relaxed

and was not paying any attention to her at all. He was still wound up tight; was still

concentrating on the multitude of messages driving into his brain through the button in

his left ear-messages of such urgency of drive that she herself could actually read

them, even though she was wearing no apparatus whatever.

She reached up, twitched the button out of his ear, and tossed it onto a table. "Will you

please lay off of that stuff for a minute, Dick?" she demanded. "I'm fed up to the

eyeballs with this business of you killing yourself with all time work and no time sleep.

You never had any such horrible black circles under your eyes before and you're getting

positively scrawny. You've got to quit it: Can't you let somebody else carry some of the

load? Delegate some authority?"

"I'm delegating all I possibly can already, Red-Top." Seaton absently rubbed his ear.

Until Dorothy had flipped it away, the button had been carrying to him a transcription of

the taped reports of more than one hundred Planetary Observers from the planet of

Norlamin, each with the IQ of an Einstein and the sagacity of an owl. The last report

had had to do with plentiful supplies of X metal that had been turned up on a planet of

Omicron Eridani, and the decision to dispatch a fleet of cargo-carrying ships to fetch

them away.

But he admitted grudgingly to himself that that particular decision had already been

made. His wife was a nearer problem. Paying full attention to her now, he put his arm

around her and squeezed.

"Converting a whole planet practically all at once to use fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-order

stuff is a job of work, believe me. It's all so new and so tough that not too many people

can handle any part of it. It takes brains. And what makes it extra tough is that

altogether too many people who are smart enough to learn it are crooks. Shysters-

hoodlers-sticky-fingers generally. But I think we're just about over the hump. I wouldn't

wonder if these Norlaminian `Observers'-snoopers, really-from the Country of Youth will

turn out to be the answer to prayer."

"They'd better," she said, darkly. "At least, something had better."

"Besides, if you think I look like the wrath of God, take a good look at Mart sometime.

He's having more grief than I am."

"I already have; he looks like a refugee from a concentration camp. Peggy was

screaming about it this morning, and we're both going to just simply . . ."

What the girls intended to do was not revealed, for at. that moment there appeared in

the air before them the projected simulacra of eight green-skinned, more-or-less-human

men; the men with whom they had worked so long; the ablest thinkers of the Central

System.

There was majestic Fodan, the Chief of the Five of Norlamin; there was white-bearded

Orlon, the First of Astronomy; Rovol, the First of Rays; Astron, the First of Energy;

Drasnik, the First of Psychology; Satrazon and Castor, the Firsts of Chemistry and of

Mechanism, respectively; and-in some ways not the least-there was that powerhouse of

thought Sacner Carfon the two thousand three hundred forty-sixth: the hairless, almost

porpoise-like Chief of the Council of the watery planet Dasor. They were not present in

the flesh. But their energy projections were as seemingly solid as Seaton's own tall,

lean body.

"We come, Overlord of the System, upon a matter of-" the Chief of the Five began.

"Don't call me `Overlord'. Please." Seaton broke in, with grim foreboding in his eyes

while Dorothy stiffened rigidly in the circle of his arms. Both knew that those masters of

thought could scarcely be prevailed upon to leave their own worlds even via projection.

For all eight of them to come this far-almost halfway across the galaxy!-meant that

something was very wrong indeed.

"I've told you a dozen times, not only I ain't no Overlord but I don't want to be and won't

be. I don't like to play God-I simply have not got what it takes."

" `Coordinator', then, which is of course a far better term for all except the more

primitive races," Fodan went imperturbably on. "We have told you, youth, not a dozen

times, but once, which should have been sufficient, that your young and vigorous race

possesses qualities that our immensely older peoples no longer have. You, as the

ablest individual of your race, are uniquely qualified to serve total civilization. Thus,

whenever your services become necessary, you will so serve. Your services have again

become necessary. Orlon, in whose province the matter primarily lies, will explain."

Seaton nodded to himself. It was going to be bad, all right, he thought as the First of

Astronomy took over.

"You, friend Richard, with some help from us, succeeded in encapsulating a group of

malignant immaterial entities, including the disembodied personality of your fellow-

scientist Doctor Marc C. DuQuesne, in a stasis of time. This capsule, within which no

time whatever could or can elapse, was launched into space with a linear acceleration

of approximately three times ten to the twelfth centimeters per second squared. It was

designed and powered to' travel at that acceleration for something over one hundred

thousand million Tellurian years; at the end of which time it was to have been rotated

through the fourth dimension into an unknown and unknowable location in normal

three-dimensional space."

"That's right," Sexton said. "And it will. It'll do just exactly that. Those pure-intellectual

louses are gone for good; and so is Blackie DuQuesne."

"You err, youth," corrected the Norlaminian. "You did not allow us time sufficient to

consider and to evaluate all the many factors involved. Rigid analysis and extended

computation show that the probability approaches unity that the capsule of stasis will,

almost certainly within one Tellurian year of its launching and highly probably in much

less time, encounter celestial matter of sufficient density to volatilize its uranium power

bars. This event will of course allow the stasis of time to collapse and the imprisoned

immaterial entities will be liberated; in precisely the same condition as in the instant of

their encapsulation."

Dorothy Sexton gasped. Even her husband showed that he was shaken. DuQuesne

and the Immortals free? But

"But it can't!" he fairly yelled the protest. "It'll dodge-it's built to dodge anything that

dense!"

"At ordinary-or even extraordinary-velocities, yes," the ancient sage agreed, unmoved.

"Its speed of reaction is great, yes; a rather small fraction of a trillionth of a second.

That interval of time, however, while small, is very large indeed relative to zero.

Compute for yourself, please, what distance that capsule will in theory traverse during

that space of time at the end of only one third of one of your years."

Sexton strode across the room and uncovered a machine that resembled somewhat a

small, unpretentious desk calculator. *He picked up a helmet and thought into it briefly;

then stared. appalled at the figure that appeared on a tape.

[* Dorothy Sexton was highly averse to having the appearance of her living room ruined

by office equipment. Sexton, however, was living and working under such high tension

that he had to have almost instant access to the Valeron's Brain, at any time of the day

or night or wherever he might be. Hence this compromise-inconspicuous machines,

each direct-connected to the cubic mile of ultra-miniaturization that was the Brain. E. E.

S.]

"My-aunt's-cat's-kitten's-pants-buttons," he said, slowly. "It'd've been smarter, maybe,

to've put 'em in orbit around a planetless sun .... And I don't suppose there's a

Chinaman's chance of catching 'em again that same way."

"No. Those minds are competent," agreed the Norlaminian. "Only one point is clear.

You must again activate the Skylark of Valeron and again wear its sixth-order controller,

since we know of no other entity who either-can wear it or should. We eight are here to

confer and, on the basis of the few data now available, to plan."

Sexton scowled in concentration for two long minutes.

It was a measure of the strain that had been working on him that it took that long. As he

had said, he was no God, and didn't want to be. He had not gone looking for either

conquest or glory. One thing at a time . . . but that "one thing" had successively led him

across a galaxy, into another dimension, through many a hard and desperate fight

against some of the most keen-honed killers of a universe.

His gray eyes hardened. Of all those killers, it was Blackie DuQuesne who posed the

greatest threat-to civilization, to Sexton himself, and above all to his wife, Dorothy.

DuQuesne at large was deadly.

"All right," he snapped at last. "If that's all that's in the wood, I suppose that's the way

it'll have to be carved."

The Norlaminian merely nodded. He, at least, had had no doubts of how Sexton would

react to the challenge. Typically, once Sexton had decided speed became of the

essence. "We'll start moving now," be barked. "The parameters give us up to a year-

maybe-but from this minute we act as though DuQuesne and the Intellectuals are back

in circulation right now. So if one of you-Rovol?-will put beams on Mart and Peg and

project them over here, we'll get right at it."

And Dorothy, her face turning so white that a line of freckles stood boldly out across the

bridge of her nose, picked the baby up and clasped him fiercely, protectively to her

breast.

M. Reynolds ("Martin" or "Mart") Crane was tall, slender, imperturbable; his black-

haired, ivory-skinned wife Margaret was tall and whistle stacked-she and Dorothy were

just about of a size and a shape. In a second or two their full working projections

appeared, standing in the middle of the room facing the Sextons-projections so exactly

true to life and so solid-seeming as to give no indication whatever that they were not

composed of fabric and of flesh and bone and blood.

Sexton stood up and half-bowed to Margaret, but wasted no time in getting down to

business. "Hi, Peg-Mart. He briefed you?"

"Up to the moment, yes," Crane replied.

"You know, then, that some time in the indeterminate but not too distant future all hell is

going to be out for noon. Any way I scan it, it looks to me as though, more or less

shortly, we're going to be spurlos versenkt-sunk without a trace."

"You err, youth." Drasnik, the First of Psychology of Norlamin, spoke quite sharply, for

him. "Your thinking is loose, turbid, confused; inexcusably superficial; completely..."

"But you know what their top man said!" Seaton snapped. "The one they called `One'-

and he wasn't kidding, either, believe me!"

"I do, youth. I know more than that, since they visited us long since. They were not

exactly `kidding' you, perhaps, but your several various interpretations of One's actual

words and actions were inconsistent with any and every aspect of the truth. Those

words and actions were in all probability designed to elicit such responses and

reactions as would enable him to analyze and classify your race. Having done so, the

probability approaches unity that you will not again encounter him or any of his group."

"My-God!" Dorothy, drawing a tremendously deep breath, put Dick the Small back down

on the rug and left him to his own devices. "That makes sense . . . I was scared simply

witless."

"Maybe," Seaton admitted, "as far as One and the rest of his original gang are

concerned. But there's still DuQuesne. And if Blackie DuQuesne, even as an immaterial

pattern of pure sixth-order force, thinks that way about me I'm a Digger Indian."

"Ah, yes; DuQuesne. One question, please, to clarify my thinking. Can you, do you

think, even with the fullest use of all the resources of your Skylark of Valeron, release

the intact mind from any body?"

"Of course I . . . oh, I see what you mean. Just a minute; I think probably I can find out

from here." He went over to his calculator-like instrument, put on a helmet, and stood

motionless for a couple of minutes while the great brain of the machine made its

computation. Then, wearing a sheepish grin:

"A flat bust. I not only couldn't, I didn't," he reported. cheerfully. "So One not only did the

business, but he was good enough to make me know that I was doing it. What an

operator!" He sobered, thought intensely, then went on, "So they sucked us in. Played

with us."

"You are now beginning to think clearly, youth," Drasnik said. "We come now, then, to

lesser probabilities. DuQuesne's mind, of itself, is a mind of power."

"You can broadcast that to the all-attentive universe," Seaton said. "Question: how

much stuff has he got now? We know he's got the fifth order down solid. Incarnate, he

didn't know any more than that. However, mind is a pattern of sixth-order force.

Knowing what we went through to get the sixth, and that we haven't got it all yet by

seven thousand rows of Christmas trees, the first sub-question asks itself: Can a free

mind analyze itself- completely enough to work out and to handle the entire order of

force in which it lies?

"We may assume I think, that One could have given DuQuesne full knowledge of the

sixth if he felt like it. The second sub-question, then, is; did he? If those questions aren't

enough to start with I can think of plenty more."

"They are enough, youth," Fodan said. "You have pointed out the crux. We will now

discuss the matter. Since this first phase lies largely in your province, Drasnik, you will

now take over."

The discussion mounted, and grew, and went on and on. Silently Dorothy slipped away,

and the projection of force that was Margaret Crane followed her into the kitchen.

There was no need for Dorothy to prepare coffee and sandwiches for her husband, not

by hand; one thought into a controller would have produced any desired amount of any

desired comestibles. But she wanted something to do. Both girls knew from experience

that a conference of this sort might go on for hours; and Dorothy knew that with food

placed before him, Seaton would eat; without it, he would never notice the lack.

She did not, of course, prepare anything for the others.

They were not there. Their bodies were at varying distances-a few miles for Crane and

his wife, an unthinkable number of parsecs for the Norlaminians and Sacner Carfon.

The distance between Earth and the Green System was so unthinkably vast that there

was no point in trying to express it in numbers of miles, or even parsecs. The central

green sun of the cluster that held Norlamin Osnome and Dasor was visible from Earth,

all right-in Earth's hugest optical telescopes, as a tiny, 20th-magnitude point-but the

light that reached Earth had been on its way for tens of thousand of years before

Seaton's ancestors had turned from hunting to agriculture, had taken off their crude

skins and begun to build houses, cities, machines and, ultimately, spaceships.

To all of this Dorothy and Peggy Crane were no strangers; they had been themselves in

such projections countless times. If they were more than usually silent, it was not

because of the astonishing quality of the meeting that was taking place in the Seatons'

living room, but because of the subject of that meeting. Both Dorothy and Peg knew

Marc DuQuesne well. Both of them had experienced his cold, impersonal deadliness.

Neither wanted to come close to it again.

Back in the living room, Seaton was saying: "If One gave DuQuesne all of the sixth-

order force patterns, he can be anywhere and can do practically anything. So he

probably didn't. On the other hand if One didn't give him any of it DuQuesne couldn't

get back here in forty lifetimes. So he probably gave him some of it. The drive and the

projector, at least. Maybe as much as we have, to equalize us. Maybe One figured he

owed the ape that mach. Whatever the truth may be, we've got to assume that

DuQuesne knows as much as we do about sixth-order forces." He paused, then

corrected himself. "If we're smart we'll assume that he knows more than we do. So we'll

have to find somebody else who knows more than we do to learn from. Question how

do we go about doing that? Not by just wandering around the galaxy at random,

looking; that's one certain damn sure thing."

"It is indeed," the moderator agreed. "Sacner Carfon, you have, I think, a contribution to

make at this point?"

"I have?" The Dasorian was surprised at first, but caught on quickly. "Oh-perhaps I

have, at that. By using Seaton's power and that of the Brain on the Fodan-Carfon band

of the sixth, it will undoubtedly be possible to broadcast a thought that would affect

selected mentalities wherever situate in any galaxy of this universe."

"But listen!" protested Seaton. "We don't want to advertise how dumb we are all over

space!"

"Of course not. The thought would be very carefully built and highly selective. It would

tell who we are, what we have done, and what we intend and hope to. do. It would state

our abilities and-by inference, and only to those we seek-our lacks; and would invite all

qualified persons and entities to get in touch with us."

Seaton looked abstracted for a moment. He was thinking. The notion of sending out a

beacon of thought was probably a good one-had to be a good one-after all, the

Norlaminians and Sacner Carfon knew what they were doing. Yet he could see

complications. The Fodan-Carfon band of the sixth order was still very new and very

experimental. "Can you make it selective?" he demanded. "I don't mind telling our

prospective friends we need help-I don't want to holler it to our enemies."

The Dasorian's deep voice chuckled. "It can not be made selective," he said. "The

message would of necessity be on such a carrier as to be receivable by any intelligent

brain. Yet it can be hedged about with such safeguards, limitations and compulsions

that no one could or would pay attention to it except those who possess at least some

ability, overt or latent, to handle the Fodan-Carfon band."

Seaton whistled through his teeth. "Wow! And just how are you going to clamp on such

controls as those? I don't see how anything but magic-sheer, unadulterated, pure black

magic!-could swing that load."

"Precisely. Or, rather, imprecisely. It is unfortunate that your term `magic' is so

inexcusably loose and carries so many and so deplorable connotations and

implications. Shall we design and build the thought we wish to send out?"

The thought was designed and was built; and was launched into space with the

inconceivable, the utterly immeasurable velocity of its order of being.

A red-haired stripper called Madlyn Mannis, strutting her stuff in Tampa in Peninsula

Florida, felt it and almost got it; but, not being very strongly psychic, shrugged it off and

went on about the business of removing the last sequin bedecked trifle of her costume.

And, as close to the dancer as plenteous baksheesh could arrange for, a husky, good-

looking young petrochemical engineer named Charles K. van der Gleiss felt a thrill like

nothing he had ever felt before-but ascribed it, naturally enough, to the fact that this

was the first time he had ever seen Madlyn Mannis dance. And in Washington, D.C.

one Doctor Stephanie de Marigny, a nuclear physicist, pricked up her ears, tightened

the muscles of her scalp, and tried for. two full minutes to think of something she ought

to think of but couldn't.

Out past the Green System the message sped, and past the dust and the incandescent

gas that had once been the noisome planet of the Fenachrone. Past worlds where

amphibians roared and bellowed; past planets of methane ice where crystalline life

brooded sluggishly on its destiny.

In the same infinitesimal instant it reached and passed the Rim Worlds of our galaxy;

touching many minds but really affecting none. Farther and farther out, with no

decrease whatever in speed, it flew; past the inconceivably tiny, inconceivably fast-

moving point that housed the seven greatest, most fearsome minds that the

Macrocosmic All had ever spawned-minds that, knowing all about that thought already,

ignored it completely.

Immensely farther out, it flashed through the galaxy in which was the solar system of

Ray-See-Nee-where, for the first time, it made solid contact with a mind in a body

human to the limit of classification. Kay-Lee Barlo, confidential secretary of Department

Head Bay-Lay Boyn, stiffened so suddenly that she stuttered into her microphone and

had to erase three words from a tape-and in that same instant her mother at home went

into deep trance.

And still farther out, in a galaxy lying almost on the universe's Arbitrary Rim, in the

Realm of the Llurdi, the message found a much larger group of receivers. While none

of the practically enslaved Jelmi could do much of anything about that weirdly peculiar

and inexplicably guarded thought, many of them were very much interested m it;

particularly Valkyrie-like Sennlloy, a native of the planet Allondax and the master

biologist of all known space; ancient Tammon, the greatest genius of the entire Jelman

race; and newlyweds Mergon and Luloy, the Mallidaxian savants.

None of the monstrous Llurdi-not even their most monstrous "director", Klazmon the

Fifteenth-being monstrous-could receive the message in any part. And how well that

was! For if those tremendously able aliens could have received that message, could

have understood it and acted upon it, how vastly different the history of all humanity

would have been!

2 LLURDI AND JELMI

THE distance from Earth to the Realm of the Llurdi is such that it is worth while to take

a moment to locate it in space.

It has been known for a long time that solar systems occur in lenticular aggregations

galled galaxies; each galaxy consisting of one or more thousands of millions of solar

systems. And for almost as long a time, since no definite or systematic arrangement of

the galaxies could be demonstrated, the terms "Universe" and "Cosmic All" were

interchangeable; each meaning the absolute totality of all matter and all space in

existence anywhere and everywhere.

There had been speculations, of course, that galaxies were arranged in lenticular

universes incomprehensibly vast in size, so that the term "Cosmic All" should be

reserved for a plurality of universes and a hyper-space of more than three spatial

dimensions.

Seaton and Crane in the Skylark of Valeron proved that our galaxy, the Milky Way, lies

in a lenticular universe by charting every galaxy in that universe. And they suggested to

the various learned societies that the two celestial aggregates should be named,

respectively, the First Galaxy and the First Universe.

Many millions of parsecs distant from Tellus and its First Galaxy, then, out near the

Arbitrary Rim of the First Universe, there lay the Realm of the Llurdi. This Realm, which

had existed for over seventy thousand Tellurian years, was made up of four hundred

eighty-two planets in exactly half that many solar systems.

Two planets in each populated system were necessary because the population of the

Realm was composed of two entirely different forms of highly intelligent life. Of these

two races the Jelmi-the subject race, living practically in vassalage-were strictly human

beings and lived on strictly Tellus-type worlds.

The master race, the Llurdi, had originated upon the harsh and hostile planet Llurdiax-

Llurdiaxorb Five-with its distant, wan, almost-never-seen sun and its incessant gales of

frigid, ice-laden, ammonia- and methane-impregnated, forty-pounds-to-the-square-inch

air. Like mankind, they wore clothing against the rigors of their environment. Unlike

mankind, however, they wore clothes only for protection, and only when protection was

actually necessary. Nor was Llurdiax harsh or forbidding-to them.

It was the best of all possible worlds. They would not colonize any planet that was not

as nearly as possible like the mother world of their race.

Llurdi, although they are erect, bifurcate, bi-laterally symmetrical, bi-sexual,

mammalian, and have a large crania and six-digited hands each having two opposed

thumbs, are not humanoids. Nor, despite their tremendous, insensitive, unfreezable

wings, are they either birds or bats. Nor flying cats, although they have huge, vertically-

slitted eyes and needle-sharp canine teeth that protrude well below and above their

upper and lower lips. Also, they have immensely strong and highly versatile tails; but

there is nothing simian about them or in their ancestry.

The Realm was not exactly an empire. Nor was Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth exactly

an emperor. The title "Llanzlan" translates, as nearly as possible, into "Director"; and

that was what Klazmon regarded himself as being.

It is true that what he said, went; and that if he didn't like any existing law he expunged

it from all existence. But that was exactly the way things should be. How else could

optimum conditions be achieved and maintained in an everexpanding, ever-changing,

ever-rising economy? He ruled, he said and thoroughly believed, with complete reason

and perfect fairness and strictly in accordance with the findings of the universe's largest

and most competent computers as to what was for the best good of all.

Wherefore everyone who did not agree with him was automatically, obviously, and

unquestionably-wrong.

Llurdias, the capital city of the world Llurdiax and of the Realm, had a population of just

over ten million and covered more than nine hundred square miles of ground. At its

geometrical center towered the mile-square, half-mile-high office-residence-palace (the

Llurdian word "llanzlanate" has no Tellurian equivalent) of Llanzlan Klazmon the

Fifteenth of the Realm of the Llurdi. And in that building's fifth sub-basement, in Hall

Prime of Computation, Klazmon and his Board of Advisors were hard at work.

That vast room, the first receptor of all the reports of the Realm, was three-quarters full

of receivers, recorders, analyzers-bewilderingly complex instrumentation of all kinds.

From most of these devices tapes were issuing-tapes that, en route to semi-permanent

storage, were being monitored by specialists in the hundreds of different fields of the

Llurdan-Jelmi economy.

Klazmon the Fifteenth and his Board, seated at a long conference table in hard-

upholstered "chairs" shaped to fit the Llurdan anatomy, were paying no attention to

routine affairs.

"I have called this meeting," the ruler said, "to decide what can be done to alleviate an

intolerable situation. As you all know, we live in what could be called symbiosis with the

Jelmi; who are so unstable, so illogical, so birdbrained generally that they would destroy

themselves in a century were it not for our gentle but firm insistence that they conduct

themselves in all matters for their own best good. This very instability of their illogical

minds, however, enables them to arrive occasionally at valid conclusions from

insufficient data; a thing that no logical mind can do. These conclusions-they are

intuitions, really-account for practically all the advancement we Llurdi have made and

explain why we have put up with the Jelmi-yes, cherished them-so long."

He paused, contemplating the justice of the arrangement he had just described. It did

not occur to him that it could in any way be described as "wrong."

He went on: "What most of you do not know is that intuitions of any large worth have

become less and less frequent, decade by decade, over the last few centuries. It was

twelve years ago that the Jelm Jarxon elucidated the Jarxon' band of the sixth order,

and no worth-while intuition has been achieved since that time. Beeloy, has your more

rigorous analysis revealed any new fact of interest?"

A young female stood up, preened the short fur back of her left ear with the tip of her

tail, and said, "No, sir. Logic can not be applied to illogic. Statistical analysis is still the

only possible tool and it cannot be made to apply to the. point in question, since it is

incapable of certainty and since the genius-type mind occurs in only one out of

thousands of millions of Jelmi. I found a very high probability, however-point nine nine

nine plus-that the techniques set up by our ancestors are wrong. In breeding for

contentment by destroying the discontented we are very probably breeding out the very

characteristics we wish to encourage."

"Thank you, Beeloy. That finding was not unanticipated. Kalton, your report on Project

University, please."

"Yes, sir." An old male, so old that his fur was almost white, stood up. "Four hundred

males and the same number of females, the most intelligent and most capable Jelmi

alive, were selected and were brought here to the Llanzlanate. They were put into

quarters that were Jelm-type in every respect, even to gravity. They were given every

inducement and every facility to work-study and to breed.

"First, as to work-study. They have done practically nothing except waste time. They

seem to devote their every effort to what they call `escape' by means of already-well

known constructions of the fifth and sixth orders-all of which are of course promptly

negated. See for yourselves what these insanely illogical malcontents are doing and

know for yourselves that, in its present form, Project University is a failure as far as

producing intuitions is concerned."

Kalton picked up a fist-sized instrument between the thumbs of his left hand and a tri-di

"tank" appeared on the table's top, in plain sight of every member of the Board. Then,

as he began to finger controls, a three-dimensional scene in true color appeared in the

tank; a smoothly-flowing, ever-shifting scene that moved from room to room and from

place to place as the point of view traversed the vast volume of the prison.

It did not look like a prison. The apartments, of which there were as many as the Jelmi

wanted, were furnished as luxuriously as the various occupants desired; with furniture

and equipment every item of which had been selected by each occupant himself or

herself. There were wonderful rugs and hangings; masterpieces of painting and of

sculpture; triumphs of design in fireplaces and tables and chairs and couches. Each

room or suite could be set up for individual control of gravity, temperature, pressure,

and humidity. Any imaginable item of food or drink was available on fifteen seconds'

notice at any hour of- the day or night.

In the magnificent laboratories evey known or conceivable piece of apparatus could be

had for the asking; the memory banks of the library would furnish in seconds any item

of information that had been stored in any one of them during all seventy thousand

years of the Realm's existence.

And there were fully-equipped game and exercise rooms, ranging in size from tiny card-

rooms up to a full-sized football field, to suit every Jelman need or desire for play or for

exercise.

But not one of the hundreds of Jelmi observed-each one a perfect specimen physically,

as was plainly revealed by the complete absence of clothing-appreciated any one of

these advantages! Most of the laboratories were vacant and dark. The few scientists

who were apparently at work were not doing anything that made sense. The library was

not in use at all; the Jelmi who were reading anything were reading works of purely

Jelman authorship-mostly love stories, murder mysteries, and science fiction. Many

Jelmi seemed to be busy but their activities were as pointless as cutting out paper dolls.

"The pale, frail, practically hairless, repulsive, incomplete, illogical, and insane animals

refuse steadfastly to cooperate with us on any level."

Any Earthman so frustrated would have snarled the sentence, but the Llurd merely

stated it as a fact. "You can all see for yourselves that as far as productive work is . . .

but hold!"

The viewpoint stopped moving and focussed sharply on a young man and a young

woman who, bending over a table, were working on two lengths of smooth yellow

material that looked something like varnished cambric. "Mergon and Luloy of planet

Mallidax," Kalton said into the microphone. "What are you doing? Why are you so far

away from your own laboratories?"

Mergon straightened up and glared at what he thought was the point of origin of the

voice. "If it's any of your business, funnyface, which it isn't," he said savagely, "I'm

building a shortlong whatsit, and Luloy has nothing to do with it. When I get it done I'm

personally going to tear your left leg off and beat you to death with the bloody end of it."

"You see?" Kalton dispassionately addressed the other members of the Board. "That

reaction is typical."

He manipulated controls and both Jelmi leaped to their feet, with all four hands pressed

to their buttocks. The fact that Luloy was a woman-scarcely more than a girl, in fact-was

of no consequence at all to Kalton. Even Llurdan sex meant very little to the Llurdi.

Jelman sex meant nothing whatever.

"Nerve-whip," Kalton explained to his fellows. He dropped his controller into his lap and

the tri-di tank vanished. "Nothing serious-only sightly painful and producing only a little

ecchymosis and extravasation. Neither of those two beasts, however, will be at all

comfortable until they get back where they belong. Now, to continue my report:

"So much for failure to work-study. Failure-refusal to breed, while not possible of such

simple and easy demonstration, is no less actual, effective, and determined. A purely

emotional, non-logical, and ridiculous factor they call `love' seems to be involved, as

does their incomprehensibly exaggerated, inexplicable craving for `liberty' or `freedom'."

The Llanzlan said thoughtfully, "But surely, unwillingness to breed cannot possibly

affect the results of artificial insemination?"

"It seems to, sir. Definitely. There is some non-physical and non-logical, but

nevertheless powerful operator involved. My assistants and I have not been able to

develop any techniques that result in any except the most ephemeral pregnancies."

"You apparently wish to comment, Velloy?" Klazmon asked.

"I certainly do!" a middle-aged female snapped, giving one tautly-outstretched wing a

resounding whack with her tail. "Of course they haven't! As Prime Sociologist I said five

years ago and I repeat now that no mind of the quality of those of the Jelmi here in the

llanzlanate can be coerced by any such gross physical means. Kalton talks of them and

thinks of them as animals-meaning lower animals. I said five years ago and still say that

they are not. Their minds, while unstable and completely illogical and in many instances

unsane to the point of insanity, are nevertheless minds of tremendous power. I told this

Board five years ago that the only way to make that project work-to cause selected

Jelmi to produce either ideas or young or both was to give the selectees a perfect

illusion of complete freedom, and I recommended that course of action. Since I could

not prove my statement mathematically, my recommendation was rejected. While I still

cannot prove that statement, it is still my considered opinion that it is true; and I now

repeat both statement and recommendation. I will keep on repeating them at every

opportunity as long as this Board wastes time by not accepting them. I remind you that

you have already wasted-lost-over five years."

"Your statement becomes more probable year by year," the Llanzlan admitted. "Kalton,

have you anything more to say?"

"Very little. Only that, since Project University has admittedly failed, we should of course

adopt-'

Kalton was silenced in mid-sentence by a terrific explosion which was followed by a

rumbling crash as half of one wall of the Hall collapsed inward.

A volume of Jelman air rushed in, enveloping a purposeful company of Jelmi in yellow

coveralls and wearing gasmasks. Some of these invaders were shooting pistols; some

were using or throwing knives; but all were covering and protecting eight Jelmi who

were launching bombs at one great installation of sixth-order gear-the computer

complex that was the very nerve center of the entire Realm.

For the Jelmi-who, as has been said, were human to the last decimal of classification-

had been working on fifth- and sixth-order devices purely as a blind; their real effort had

been on first-order effects so old that their use had been all but forgotten.

The Jelman plan was simple: Thirty men and thirty women would destroy the central

complex of the computer system of the entire Realm. Then, if possible, the survivors of

the sixty would join their fellows in taking over an already-selected Llurdan scout cruiser

and taking off at max.

It was quite probable that many or even most of the attacking sixty would die. It was

distinctly possible that they all would. All sixty, however, were perfectly willing to trade

their lives for that particular bank of sixth-order apparatus, in order that seven hundred

forty other Jelmi could escape from Llurdiax and, before control could be re-

established, be beyond their masters' reach.

Theoretically, the first phase of the operation should have been successful; the Realm's

nerve center should have been blown to unrecognizable bits. The Jelmi knew exactly

what they were going to do, exactly how they were going to do it and exactly how long it

would take. They knew that they would have the advantage of complete surprise. There

would be, they were sure, half a second or so of the paralysis of shock, followed by at

least one second of utter confusion; which would give them plenty of time.

They were sure it would be as though, during a full formal session of the Supreme

Court, a gang of hoodlums should blast down a wall and come leaping into the

courtroom with Tommy-guns ablaze and with long knives flying and stabbing and

slashing. Grave, stately, and thoughtful, the justices could not possibly react fast

enough to save their lives or their records or whatever else it was that the gangsters

were after.

The Jelmi, however, had never seen any Llurd in emergency action; did not know or

suspect how nearly instantaneous the Llurdan speed of reaction was; did not realize

that a perfectly logical mind can not be surprised by any happening, however unusual

or however outrageous.

Thus:

Yelling, shooting, throwing, stabbing, slashing, the men and women of the Jelmi rushed

into battle; to be met with no paralysis and no confusion and no loss of time whatever-

by buffeting wings, flailing tails, tearing teeth, and hard, highly skilled hands and fists

and feet.

Many machine operators, as agile in the air as bats, met the bombs in midair and

hurled them out into and along the corridor through the already-breached wall, where

they exploded harmlessly. Harmlessly, that is, except for a considerable increase in the

relatively unimportant structural damage already wrought.

Two knives were buried to their hilts in the huge flying muscles of the Llanzlan's chest.

His left wing hung useless, its bones shattered by bullets. So did his right arm.

Nevertheless, he made it at speed to his consoles-and the battle was over.

Beams of force lashed out, immobilizing the human beings where they stood. Curtains

of force closed in, pressing the Jelmi together into a tightly packed group. An

impermeable membrane of force confined all the Jelman air and whatever Llurdan

atmosphere had been mixed with it.

The Llanzlan, after glancing at his own wounds and at the corps of surgeons already

ministering to his more seriously wounded fellows, resumed his place at the conference

table.

He said, "This meeting will resume. The places of those department heads who died

will be - taken by their first assistants. All department heads are hereby directed to

listen, to note, and to act. Since Project University has failed, it is to be closed out

immediately. All Jelmi-I perceive that none of those present is dead, or even seriously

wounded-will be put aboard the ship in which they intended to leave Llurdiax. They will

be given all the supplies, apparatus, and equipment that they care to requisition and will

be allowed to take off for any destination they please."

He glanced at the captured Jelmi, imprisoned in their force-bubble of atmosphere. To

them it reeked of methane and halogens, but they stood proudly and coldly listening to

what he said.

He dismissed them from his mind and said. "A recess will now be taken so that those of

us who are wounded may have our wounds dressed. After that we will consider in detail

means of inducing the Jelmi to resume the production of breakthroughs in science."

3 FREE [?]

SOME hours later, far out in deep space, the ex-Llurdan scout cruiser-now named the

Mallidax, after the most populous Jelman planet of the Realm-bored savagely through

the ether. Its crew of late revolutionaries, still dazed by the fact that they were still alive,

recuperated in their various ways.

In one of the larger, more luxurious cabins Luloy of Mallidax lay prone on a three-

quarter-size-bed, sobbing convulsively, uncontrollably. Her left eye was swollen shut.

The left side of her face and most of her naked body bore livid black and blue bruises-

bruises so brutally severe that the marks of Kalton's sense-whip punishment, incurred

earlier for insubordination, were almost invisible. A dozen bandages showed white

against the bronzed skin of her neck and shoulders and torso and arms and legs.

"Oh, snap out of it, Lu, please!" Mergon ordered, almost brusquely. He was a burly

youth with crew-cut straw-colored hair; and he, too, showed plenty of evidence of

having been to the wars. He had even more bruises and bandages than she did. "Don't

claim that you wanted to be a martyr any more than I did. And they can engrave it on a

platinum plaque that I'm damned glad to get out of that fracas alive."

Stopping her crying by main strength, the girl hauled herself up into a half-sitting

position and glared at the man out of her one good eye.

"You . . . you clod!" she stormed. "It isn't that at all! And you know it as well as I do. It's

just that we . . . they . . . he . . . not a single one of them so much as . . . why, we might

just as well have been merely that many mosquitoes-midges-worse, exactly that many

perfectly innocuous saprophytic bacilli."

"Exactly," he agreed, sourly, and her glare changed to a look almost of surprise. "That's

precisely what we were. It's humiliating, yes. It's devastating and it's frustrating. We

tried to hit the Llurdi where it hurt, and they ignored us. Agreed. I don't like it a bit better

than you do; but caterwauling and being sorry for yourself isn't going to help matters a-"

"Caterwauling! Being sorry fob myself! If that's what you think, you can . . ."

"Stop it, Lu!" he broke in sharply, "before I have to spank your fanny to a rosy blister!"

She threw up her head in defiance; then what was almost a smile began to quirk at the

corners of her battered mouth. "You can't, Merg," she said, much more quietly than she

had said anything so far. "Look-it's all red, green, blue, yellow, and black already. That

last panel I bounced off of was no pillow, friend."

"Llenderllon's favor, sweetheart!" Bending over, he kissed her gingerly, then drew a

deep breath of relief. "You scared me like I don't know when I've been scared before,"

he admitted. "We need you too much-and I love you too much-to have you go off the

deep end now. Especially now, when for the first time in our lives we're in position to do

something."

"Such as what?" Luloy's tone was more lifeless than skeptical. "How many of our whole

race are worth saving, do you think? How many Jelmi of all our worlds can be made to

believe that their present way of life is anything short of perfection?"

"Very few, probably," Mergon conceded. "As of now. But—?'

He paused, looking around their surroundings. The spaceship, which had once been

one of the Llurdi's best, might have a few surprises for them. It was a matter for debate

whether the Llurdi might not have put concealed spy devices in the rooms. On balance,

however, Mergon thought not. The Llurdi operated on grander scales than that.

He said, "Luloy, listen. We tried to fight our way to freedom by attacking the Llurdi right

where it hurts, in center of their power. We lost the battle. But we have what we were

fighting for, don't we? Why do you think they let us go, perfectly free?"

Luloy's eye brightened a little, but not too much. "That's plain enough. Since they

couldn't make us produce either new theories or children in captivity, they're giving us

what they say is complete freedom, so that we'll produce both. How stupid do they think

we are? How stupid can they get? If we could have wrecked their long eyes, yes, we

could have got away clean to a planet in some other galaxy, `way out of their range; but

now? If I know anything at all, it's that they'll hold a tracer beam-so weak as to be-

practically indetectable, of course-on us forever."

"I think you're right," Mergon said, and paused. Luloy looked at him questioningly and

he went on, "I'm sure you are, but I don't think it's us they are aiming at. They're

probably taking the long view-betting that, with a life-long illusion of freedom, we'll have

children of our own free will...

Luloy nodded thoughtfully. "And we would," she said, definitely. "All of us would. For,

after all, if we on this ship all die childless what chance is there that any other Jelmi will

try it again for thousands of years? And our children would have a chance, even if we

never have another.".

"True. But on the other hand, how many generations will it take for things now known to

be facts to degenerate into myths? To be discredited completely, in spite of the solidest

records we can make as to the truth and the danger?"

Luloy started to gnaw her lip, but winced sharply and stopped the motion. "I see what

you mean. Inevitable. But you don't seem very downcast about it, so you have an idea.

Tell me, quick!"

"Yes, but I'm just hatching it; I haven't mentioned it even to Tammon yet, so I don't

know whether it will work or not. At present a sixth-order breakthrough can't be hidden

from even a very loose surveillance. Right?"

By now Luloy's aches and pains were forgotten. Eyes bright, she nodded. "You're so

right. Do you think one can be? Possibly?, How?"

"By finding a solar system somewhere whose inhabitants know so much more than we

do that the emanations of their sixth-order installations continuously or' regularly at work

will mask those of any full-scale tests we want to make. There must be some such race,

somewhere in this universe. The Llurdi charted this universe long ago-they call it U-

Prime-and I requisitioned copies of all the tapes. Second: the Llurdi are all strictly

logical. Right?"

"That's right," the girl agreed. "Strictly. Insanely, almost, you might say."

"So my idea is to do something as illogical as possible. They think we'll head for a new

planet of our own; either in this galaxy or one not too far away. So we won't. We'll drive

at absolute max for the center of the universe, with the most sensitive feelers we have

full out for very strong sixth-order emanations. En route, we'll use every iota of brain-

power aboard this heap in developing some new band of the sixth, being mighty careful

to use so little power that the ship's emanations will mask it. Having found the hiding

place we want, we'll tear into developing and building something, not only that the Llurdi

haven't got, but a thing that by use of which we can bust Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth

loose from his wings and tail-and through which he can't fight back. So, being

absolutely-stupidly-logical about everything, what would His Supreme Omnipotence do

about it?"

Luloy thought in silence for a few seconds, then tried unsuccessfully to whistle through

battered, swollen lips. "Oh, boy!" she exclaimed, delightedly. "Slug him with a thing like

that-demonstrate superiority-and the battle is over. He'll concede us everything we

want, full equality, independence, you name it, without a fight-without even an

argument!"

Grinning, Mergon caught her arm and led her out of the room. Throughout the great

hulk of the Llurd spaceship the other battered Jelmi veterans were beginning to stir. To

each of them, Mergon explained his plan and from each came the same response. "Oh,

boy!"

They began at once setting up their work plans.

The first project was to find-somewhere!-a planet generating sufficient sixth-order forces

to screen what they were going to do. In the great vastnesses of the Over universe

there were many such planets. They could have chosen that which was inhabited by

Norlaminian or Dasorian peoples. They could have chosen one of a score which were

comparatively nearby. They, in fact, ultimately chose and set course for the third planet

of a comparatively small G-type star known to its people as Tellus, or Earth.

They could have given many reasons why this particular planet had been selected.

None of these reasons would have included the receipt of the brief pulse of telepathic

communication which none of them, any longer, consciously remembered.

And back on Llurdiax the Llanzlan followed the progress of the fleeing ship of Jelm

rebels with calm perception.

His great bat wings were already mending, even as the scars of the late assault on his

headquarters were already nearly repaired by a host of servo-mechanisms. Deaf to the

noise and commotion of the repairs, heedless of the healing wounds which any human

would have devoted a month in bed to curing, the Llanzlan once again summoned his

department heads and issued his pronouncement:

"War, being purely destructive, is a product of unsanity. The Jelmi are, however,

unsane; many of them are insane. Thus, if allowed to do so, they commit warfare at

unpredictable times and for incomprehensible, indefensible, and/or whimsical reasons.

Nevertheless, since the techniques we have been employing have been proven

ineffective and therefore wrong, they will now be changed. During the tenure of this

directive no more Jelmi will be executed or castrated: in fact, a certain amount of

unsane thinking will not merely be tolerated but encouraged, even though it lead to the

unsanity termed `war'. It should not, however, be permitted to exceed that quantity of

`war' which would result in the destruction of, let us say, three of their own planets.

"'This course will entail a risk that we, as the `oppressors' of the Jelmi, will be attacked

by them. The magnitude of this risk-the probability of such an attack-cannot be

calculated with the data now available. Also, these data are rendered even less

meaningful by the complete unpredictability of the actions of the group of Jelmi

released from study here.

"It is therefore directed that all necessary steps be taken particularly in fifth and sixth-

order devices, that no even theoretically possible-attack on this planet will succeed.

"This meeting will now adjourn."

It did; and within fifteen minutes heavy construction began--construction that was to go

on at a pace and on a scale and with an intensity of drive theretofore unknown

throughout the Realm's long history. Whole worldlets were destroyed, scavenged for

their minerals, their ores smelted in giant atomic space-borne foundries and cast and

shaped into complex machines of offense and defense. Delicate networks of radiation

surrounded every Jelm and Llurd world, ready to detect, trace, report and home on any

artifact whatsoever which might approach them. Weapons capable of blasting moons

out of orbit slipped into position in great latticework spheres of defensive

emplacements.

The Llurdi were preparing for anything.

Llurdan computations were never wrong. 'Computers, however, even Llurdan

computers, are not really smart they can't rally think. Unlike the human brain, they. can

not arrive at valid conclusions from insufficient data. In fact, they don't even try to. They

stop working and say in words or by printing or typing or by flashing a light or by ringing

a bell-"DATA INSUFFICIENT": and then continue to do nothing until they are fed

additional information.

Thus, while the Llanzlan and his mathematicians and logicians fed enough data into

their machines to obtain valid conclusions, there were many facts that no Llurd then

knew. And thus those conclusions, while valid, were woefully incomplete; they did not

cover all of actuality by far.

For, in actuality, there had already begun a chain of events that was to render those

mighty fortresses precisely as efficacious against one certain type of attack as that

many cubic miles of sheerest vacuum.

4, LLURDI AND FENACHRONE

THE type of attack which was about to challenge the Llurdi was from a source no

civilized human would have believed still existed.

If Richard Seaton, laboring at Earth's own defenses uncountable parsecs away, had

been told of it, he would flatly have declared the story a lie. He ought to know, he would

have said. That particular danger to the harmony of the worlds had long since been

destroyed . . . and he was the man who had destroyed it!

When the noisome planet of the Fenachrone was destroyed it was taken for granted

that Ravindau and his faction of the Party of Postponement of Universal Conquest, who

had fled from the planet just before its destruction, were the last surviving members of

their monstrous race. When they in turn were destroyed it was assumed that no

Fenachrone remained alive.

That assumption was wrong. There was another faction of the Party of Postponement

much larger than Ravindau's, much more secretive, and much better organized.

Its leader, one Sleemet, while an extremely able scientist, had taken lifelong pains that

neither his name nor his ability should become known to any except a select few. He

was as patriotic as was any other member of his race; he believed as implicitly as did

any other that the Fenachrone should and one day would rule not only this one

universe, but the entire Cosmic All. However, he believed, and as firmly, that The Day

should not be set until the probability of success of the project should begin to approach

unity as a limit.

According to Sleemet's exceedingly rigorous analysis, the time at which success would

become virtually certain would not arrive for at least three hundred Fenachronian years.

From the day of Fenor's accession to the throne Sleemet had been grimly certain that

this Emperor Fenor-head-strong, basically ignorant, and inordinately prideful even for

an absolute monarch of the Fenachrone-would set The Day during his own reign;

centuries before its proper time.

Therefore, for over fifty years, Sleemet had been preparing for exactly the eventuality

that came about, and:

Therefore, after listening to only a few phrases of the ultimatum given to Emperor Fenor

by Sacner Carfon of Dasor, speaking for the Overlord Seaton and his Forces of

Universal Peace, Sleemet sent out his signal and:

Therefore, even before Ravindau's forces began to board their single vessel Sleemet's

fleet of seventeen superdreadnoughts was out in deep space, blasting at full-

emergency fifth-order cosmic-energy drive away from the planet so surely doomed.

Surely doomed? Yes. Knowing vastly more about the sixth order than did any other of

his race, he was the only one of his race who knew anything about the Overlord of the

Central System; of who and what that Overlord was and of what that Overlord had

done. He, Sleemet, did not want any part of Richard Ballinger Seaton. Not then or ever.

Curse Fenor's abysmal stupidity! Since a whole new Fenachrone planet would now

have to be developed, the Conquest could not be begun for more than three hundred

years!

While Sleemet knew much more about the sixth order than Ravindau did, he did not

have the sixth-order drive and it took him and his scientists and engineers several

months to develop and to perfect it. Thus their fleet was still inside the First Galaxy

when they finally changed drives and began really to travel-on a course that, since it

was laid out to reach the most distant galaxies of the First Universe, would of necessity

lie within two and a quarter hundreds of thousands of light-years of the galaxy in which

the Realm of the Llurdi lay.

As has been intimated, the Llurdi were literal folk. When any llanzlan issued a directive

he meant it literally, and it was always as literally carried out.

Thus, when Llanzlan Klazmon ordered the construction of an installation of such a

nature that "no even theoretically possible attack on this planet will succeed" he meant

precisely that-and that was precisely what was built. Nor, since the Llurdi had full

command of the fourth and fifth orders, and some sixth-order apparatus as well, was

the task overlong in the doing.

The entire one-hundred-six-mile circumference of Llurdias and a wide annulus outside

the city proper were filled with tremendous fortresses; each of which was armed and

powered against any contingency to which Computer Prime -almost half a cubic mile of

miniaturization packed with the accumulated knowledges and happenings of some

seventy thousand years-could assign a probability greater than point zero zero zero

one.

Each of those fortresses covered five acres of ground; was low and flat. Each was built

of super-hard, super-tough, super-refractory synthetic. Each had twenty-seven

highrising, lightning-rodlike spikes of the same material. Fortress-shell and spikes

through closely spaced cast-in tubes; and the entire periphery of each fortress, as well

as dozens of interior relief-points, went deep into constantly water-soaked, heavily

salted ground. Each fortress sprouted scores of antennae-parabolic, box, flat, and

straight-and scores of heavily insulated projectors of shapes to be defined only by a

professional mathematician of solid geometry.

And how the Llurdan detectors could now cover space! The Jelm Mergon, long before

his abortive attempt to break jail, had developed a miniaturized monitor station that

could detect, amplify, and retransmit on an aimed tight beam any fifth- or sixth-order

signal from and to a distance of many kiloparsecs.

Hundreds of these "mergons" were already out in deep space. Now mergons were

being manufactured in lots of a thousand, and in their thousands they were being

hurled outward from Llurdiax, to cover-by relays en cascadenot only the Llurdan galaxy

and a great deal of intergalactic space, but also a good big chunk of inter-universal

space as well.

The Fenachrone fleet bored on through inter-galactic space at its distance-devouring

sixth-order pace. Its fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-order detector webs fanned out far-"far" in

the astronomical sense of the word-ahead of it. They were set to detect, not only the

most tenuous cloud of gas, but also any manifestation whatever upon any of the known

bands of any of those orders. Similar detectors reached out to an equal distance above

and below and to the left of and to the right of the line of flight; so that the entire forward

hemisphere was on continuous web of ultra-tenuous but ultra-sensitive detection.

And, as that fleet approached a galaxy lying well to "starboard"-the term was still in use

aboard ship except for matters of record, since the direction of action of artificial gravity,

whatever its actual direction, was always "down"-two sets of detectors tripped at once.

The squat and monstrous officer on watch reported this happening instantly, of course,

to Sleemet himself; and of course Sleemet himself went instantly into action. He

energized his flagship's immense fifth-order projector.

Those detections could have only one meaning. There was at least one solar system in

that galaxy peopled by entities advanced enough to work with forces of at least the fifth

order. They should be destroyed-that is, he corrected himself warily, unless they were

allied with or belonged to that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Overlord of the Central

System of the First Galaxy . . . But no, at this immense distance the probability of that

was vanishingly small.

They might, however, have weapons of the sixth. The fact that there were no such

devices in operation at the moment did not preclude that possibility.

Very unlike the late unlamented Fenor he, First Scientist Sleemet, was not stupidly and

arrogantly sure that the Fenachrone were in fact the ablest, most intelligent, and most

powerful race of beings in existence. He would investigate, of course. But he would do it

cautiously.

The working projections of the Fenachrone were tight patterns of force mounted on tight

beams. Thus, until they began to perform exterior work, they were virtually indetectable

except by direct interception and hard-driven specific taps. Sleemet knew this to be a

fact; whether the projection was on, above, or below the target planet's surface and

even though that planet was so far away that it would take light hundreds of centuries to

make the oneway trip.

The emanations of his vessels' sixth-order cosmic-energy drive, however, were very

distinctly something else. They could not be damped out or masked and they could be

detected very easily by whoever or whatever it was that was out there . . . Yes, an

exploration would not change matters at all...

As a matter of fact, the Fenachrone Fleet's emanations had been detected a full two

seconds since.

A far-outpost mergon had picked it up and passed it along to a second, which in turn

had relayed it inward to its Number Three, which finally had delivered it to Computer

Prime on incredibly distant Llurdiax.

There, in Hall Prime of Computation, a section supervisor had flicked the switch that

had transferred the unusual bit of information to his immediate superior, Head

Supervisor Klarton-who had at sight of it gone into a tizzy (for a Llurd) of worrying his

left ear with the tip of his tail. He stared at the motionless bit of tape as though it were

very apt indeed to bite him in the eye.

What to do? Should he disturb the llanzlan with this or not?

This was a nose-twitching borderline case if there ever was one. If he didn't, and it

turned out to be something important, he'd get his tail singed-he'd be reduced to section

supervisor. But if he did, and it didn't, he'd get exactly the same treatment . . However,

the thing, whatever it might be, was so terrifically far away . . .

Yes, that was it! The smart thing to do would be to watch it for a few seconds-determine

exact distance, direction of flight, velocity, and so forth-before reporting to the Big Boss.

That would protect him either way.

Wherefore Sleemet had time to launch an analsynth projection along the indicated line.

He found a solar system containing two highly industrialized planets; one of which was

cool, the other cold. One was peopled by those never-to-be-sufficiently-damned human

beings; the other by a race of creatures even more monstrous and therefore even less

entitled to exist.

He studied those planets and their inhabitants quickly but thoroughly, and the more he

studied them the more derisive and contemptuous he became. They had no warships,

.no fortresses either above or below ground, no missiles, even! Their every effort and all

their energies were devoted to affairs of peace!

Therefore, every detail having been recorded, including the gibberish being broadcast

and tight beamed by various communications satellites, Sleemet pulled in his analsynth

and sent out a full working projection.

He had already located great stores of prepared power uranium bars and blocks on

both planets. Careless of detection now and working at his usual fantastic speed and

with his usual perfect control, he built in seconds six tremendous pyramids upon each

of the two doomed worlds-pyramids of now one-hundred-percent-convertible

superatomic explosive. He assembled twenty-four exceedingly complex, carefully aimed

forces and put them on trip. Then, glaring balefully into an almost opaque visiplate, he

reached out without looking and rammed a plunger home-and in an instant those two

distant planets became two tremendous fireballs of hellishly intolerable, mostly invisible,

energies.

And almost eight thousand million highly intelligent creatures-eating, sleeping, loving,

fighting, reading, thinking, working, playing-died in that utterly cataclysmic rending of

two entire worlds.

Practically all of them died not knowing even that they had been hurt. A few-a very few-

watch officers in interplanetary spaceships observed one or the other of those frightful

catastrophes in time to have an instant's warning of what was coming; but only three

such officers, it became known later, had enough time to throw on their faster-than-light

drives and thus outrun the ravening front of annihilation.

Cosmically, however, the thing didn't amount to much. Its duration was very short

indeed. While a little of each planet's substance was volatilized, practically all of it was

scarcely more than melted. When equilibrium was restored they did not shine like little

suns. They scarcely glowed.

Hands quietly poised, Sleemet again paused in thought.

The fact that he had murdered almost eight billion people did not bother him at all. In

fact, he did not think of the action at all, as murder or as killing or as anything else. If he

had, the thought would have been the Fenachrone equivalent of "pesticide." All space

comprising the Cosmic All and every planet therein should and would belong to the

Master Race; no competing race had any right whatever to live.

Should he, or should he not, explore the lines of those communications beams and

destroy the other planets of this group? He should not, he decided. He would have to

slow down, perhaps even change course; and it was quite possible that he was still

within range of the sixth-order stuff of that self-styled Overlord. Besides, this group of

queerly mixed entities would keep. After he had found a really distant Fenatype planet

and had developed it, he would come back here and finish this minor chore.

But very shortly after making this decision Sleemet was given cause to know starkly that

he had not investigated this civilization thoroughly enough by far; for his vessel was

being assailed by forces of such incredible magnitude that his instantaneously reactive

outer screen was already radiating in the high violet!

And, before he could do much more than put a hand to his construction panel, that

outer screen began to show black spots of failure!

In Hall of Prime Computation, on Llurdiax, one entire panel of instrumentation went

suddenly dead. The supervisor of that section flicked two testing switches, then

scanned the last couple of inches of each of two tapes. Then he paused, for a moment

stunned: knocked completely out of any Llurd's calm poise. Then, licking his lips, he

spoke; apparently to empty air:

"Llanzlan Klazmon, sir, Blaydaxorb Three and Blaydaxorb Five stopped reporting,

simultaneously, eleven seconds ago. Orbiting pyrometers of both planets reported

theretonuclear temperatures at the end-points of their respective transmissions. End of

report, sir."

The supervisor did not elaborate.

While he was appalled and terribly shocked-he had never imagined such disasters

possible-it was not his job to comment or to deduce or to theorize. His business-his only

business-was to report to a higher echelon the pertinent facts of any and all unusual

events or conditions; the height of the echelon to which he reported being directly

proportional to the unusualness and/or magnitude of the event or condition.

Since this event was unprecedented and of very great magnitude indeed, his report

went straight to the top-thus overtaking and passing the report of Head Supervisor

Marton, which was not yet ready for delivery.

Having reported the pertinent facts to the proper echelon. the section supervisor went

calmly, almost unconcernedly, back to his job of supervising his section. He paid no

more attention to the incident even when the llanzlan-fully recovered now from his

wounds-who had been asleep in his penthouse apartment came into the Hall from the

down flyway. (Everyone rode a force-beam up, but came down on his own wings.)

While Klazmon was not hurrying any more than usual, his usual technique was to drop

a full half mile with folded wings before beginning to put on his brakes. Hence his

tremendous wings and stabilizing surfaces sent blasts of cold, dense air throughout the

whole end of the Hall as he slowed down for a high-G landing in his seat at his master

control console. Fingers, thumbs, and tail-tip flashed over the banked and tiered

keyboards of that console; and, all around the periphery of Llurdias, that miles-wide

girdle of mighty fortresses came instantly to life.

A mufti-layered umbrella of full-coverage screens flashed into being over the whole city

and Klazmon, engineering his fifth-order projector, sent his simulacrum of pure force

out to see what had happened in or to the solar system of Blaydaxorb.

He was now, to all intents and purposes, in two places at once.

He could see, hear, feel, taste, and smell exactly as well with one self as with the other.

He was, however, thoroughly accustomed to the peculiar sensations of having a

complete personality; he could block out at will any perceptions of either self. And his

immaterial self had two tremendous advantages over his material one. It could traverse

incredibly immense distances in no measurable time; and, no matter where it went or

what it encountered, his physical self would remain entirely unaffected.

In a mere flick of time, then, Klazmon was in the solar system of Blaydaxorb. The sun

itself was unchanged, but in orbits three and five, where the two inhabited planets had

been, there were two still-wildly-disturbed masses of liquids and gases.

He threw out a light, fast detector web, which located the marauding Fenachrone fleet

in less than a second. Then, returning most of his attention to his console, he

assembled seventeen exceedingly complex forces and hurled them, one at each vessel

of the invading fleet.

Actually, Klazmon was little if any more affected than was Sleemet the Fenachrone

about either that utterly frightful loss of life as such or the loss of those two planets as

such. The Realm was big enough so that the total destruction of those two planets-of

any two planets except of course Llurdiax itself-was unimportant to the economy of the

Realm as a whole. No; what burned the llanzlan up made it mandatory that that fleet

and the entire race whose people manned it should, after thorough study, be wiped

completely out-was the brazenness, the uncivilized and illogical savagery, the incredible

effrontery of this completely intolerable insult to the realm of the Llurdi and to imperial

Klazmon its llanzlan.

Klazmon knew of only one race who made a habit of performing such atrocities; such

wanton, illogical, insane offenses against all sense and all reason: those

chlorinebreathing, amoeboid monstrosities inhabiting Galaxy DW427-LU. Those

creatures, however, as far as any Llurd had ever learned, had always confined their

activities to their own galaxy. If, Klazmon thought grimly to himself, those insanely

murderous amoeboids had decided to extend their operations into the Galaxy of the

Llurdi, they would find such extension a very expensive one indeed.

Wherefore, hunched now over a black-filtered visiplate, with slitted eyes narrow and

cat-whiskers stiffly outthrust; with both hands manipulating high-ratio vernier knobs in

infinitesimal arcs; Klazmon shoveled on the coal.

5 COMBAT!

As has been said; the Llurdi were a literal folk. Klazmon's directive had specified ". . .

that no even theoretically possible attack on this planet will succeed."

Hence that was precisely what had been built. No conceivable force or combination of

forces, however applied and even at pointblank range, could crack Llurdiax's utterly

impenetrable shields.

Nor was that all; for Llurdan engineers, as well as Llurdan philosophers, were

thoroughly familiar with the concept that "The best defense is a powerful offense."

Wherefore Llurdiax's offensive projectors were designed to smash down any

theoretically possible threat originating anywhere within a distance that light would

require one and three-quarters millions of Tellurian years to traverse.

Under the thrustings and the stabbings, the twistings and the tearings, the wrenchings

and the bludgeonings of those frightful fields of force, seventeen sets of Fenachrone

defensive screens-outer, intermediate, and inner-went successively upward through the

visible spectrum, through the ultra-violet, and into the black of failure; baring the

individual vessel's last lines of defense, the wall-shields themselves.

Then Klazmon increased the power, gouging and raving at those ultra-stubborn

defenses until those defenses were just barely holding; at which point he relaxed a little,

read his verniers, leaned back in his bucket seat, and took stock.

The marauding spaceships were tremendous things; cigarshaped; flying in hollow-globe

formation with one vessel the flagship, of course-at the exact center; spaced so closely

that their screens had overlapped-overlapped in such fashion that unless and until that

shell of force was broken no attack could be made upon that central ship.

So far, so good. With the overwhelming superiority of ultimate-planetary over any at-all-

probable mobile installations he, Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth, had smashed that

shell completely. He could, he was sure, destroy all those vessels as completely.

But it would not do at all to destroy even one of them without examining both it and its

crew. Klazmon had to know the who and the what arid the wherefore and the how and

the why. Therefore, leaving all of his attacking beams exactly as they were, Klazmon

assembled another gigantic beam-the entire output of one Llurdiaxian fortress-and

hurled it against the tail-section of the flagship.

Wall-shield and tail-section vanished in a few nanoseconds of time; and not only the

tail-section, but also a few hundreds of yards of the flagship's prodigious length as well,

became a furiously raging fireball; a sphere of violence incredible.

Klazmon drove his projection forward then, through the now unresisting steel wall and

into the control room; where it was met by blasts of force from the hand-weapons of the

Fenachrone officers.

This demonstration, however, lasted for only a second or two. Then those officers,

knowing what it was that was standing there so unconcernedly, abandoned their

physical assault and attacked the invading projection with the full power of the huge,

black, flame-shot wells of hypnotic force that were their eyes. When the mental attack

also failed they merely stood there; glaring a hatred that was actually tangible.

Klazmon immobilized each one of the officers individually with pencils of force and

began to study them intensively. While much shorter and thicker and wider and

immensely stronger than the Jelmi of the Realm, they were definitely Jelmoid in every

important respect . . . yes, the two races had certainly had a common ancestry, and not

too far back. Also, their thinking and conduct were precisely as was to be expected of

any Jelman or Jelmoid race that had been allowed to develop in its unsane and illogical

way for many thousands of years without the many benefits of Llurdan control!

They would of course have thought-exchange gear; any race of their evident

advancement must have . . . ah, yes; over there.

Now-which of these wights would be the admiral? That one wearing the multiplex

scanner would be the pilot; that one facing the banks of dials and gages would be the

prime engineer; those six panels had to be battle panels, so those six monsters had to

be gunnery officers . . . ah!

That one there-off by himself; seated (in spite of the fact that with their short, blocky

legs no Fenachrone had any need, ever, to sit) at a desk that was practically a throne;

facing no gadgetry and wearing consciously an aura of power and authority-that one

would be the one Klazmon wanted.

Klazmon's projection flashed up to the motionlessly straining admiral. The helmets of

the "mechanical educator" snapped onto the Llurd's quietly studious head and onto the

head with the contemptuously sneering face-the head of First Scientist Fleet Admiral

Sleemet of the Fenachrone.

That face, however, lost its sneer instantly, for Sleemet-even more overweeningly and

brutally and vaingloriously prideful now than were the lower echelons of his race-had

never imagined the possibility of the existence of such a mind as this monstrous invader

had.

Klazmon's mind, the product of seventy thousand years of coldly logical evolution, tore

ruthlessly into the mind of the Fenachrone. It bored into and twisted at that straining

mind's hard-held blocks; it battered and shattered them; it knocked them down flat.

Then Klazmon, omnivorous scholar that he was, set about transferring to his own brain

practically everything that the Fenachrone had ever learned. Klazmon learned, as

Richard Seaton had learned previously, that all Fenachrone have authority and

responsibility were meticulous record-keeper. He learned what had happened to the

civilization of the Fenachrone and to its world, and who had done it and how; he learned

that each and every captain knew exactly the same and had exactly the same records

as did First Scientist Fleet Admiral Sleemet himself; he learned that each vessel, alone

by itself, was thoroughly capable of re-creating the entire Fenachrone civilization and

culture.

A few of the many other thousands of things that Klazmon learned were: That there

were many Jelman and Jelmoid-human and humanoid, that is-races living in what they

called the First Galaxy. That all these races were alike in destructiveness, belligerence

to the point of war-lust, savagery, implacability, vengefulness, intolerance, and

frightfulness generally. Not one of them (by Klazmon's light!) had any redeeming

features or qualities whatever. That all these races must be destroyed if any worthwhile

civilization were ever to thrive and spread.

There was no word in any language of the Realm of the Llurdi corresponding even

remotely to "genocide." If there had been, Klazmon would have regarded it an an

etymological curiosity. All those surviving Fenachrone would have to die: no such race

as that had any right whatever to live.

Before being destroyed, however, they would have to be studied with Llurdan

thoroughness; and any and all worthwhile ideas and devices and other artifacts should

be and would be incorporated into the Llurdan-Jelman way of life.

One vessel would be enough, however, to preserve temporarily for the purpose of

study. In fact, what was left of the flagship would be enough.

The now-vanished tail-section had contained nothing new to Llurdan science, the

encyclopedic records were intact, and the flagship's personnel-males and females,

adults and adolescents and children and babies-were alive and well.

Wherefore sixteen sets of multiplex projectors doubled their drain of power from

Llurdias' mighty defensive girdle, and all the Fenachrone aboard sixteen

superdreadnoughts died in situ, wherever they happened to be, as those sixteen

vessels became tiny sunlets.

And the Ilanzlan issued orders:

1) The bulk of the Fenachrone flagship was to be brought in to the llanzlanate at full

sixth-order drive.

2) A test section of the llanzlanate was to be converted at once to a completely

authentic Fenachrone environment.

3) Every possible precaution was to be taken that no Fenachrone suffered any ill effects

on the way, during transfer to their new quarters, or while in their new quarters.

Dropping the Fenachrone flagship and its personnel from his mind, Klazmon immersed

himself in thought.

He had learned much. There was much more of menace than he had supposed, in

many galaxies other than Galaxy DW-427-LU . . . especially that so-called First Galaxy .

. . and particularly the Green System or Central System of that galaxy? The green-

skinned Norlaminians-how of them? And how of that system's overlord, Seaton of

Tellus? That one was, very evidently, a Jelm . . . and, even after making all due

allowance for Sleemet's bias, he was of a completely uncontrolled and therefore

extremely dangerous type.

And as, evidently, his was a mind of exceeding power, he could very well be a very

dangerous and quite immediate threat.

The mergons must be wider-spread even than originally planned and they must be on

the lookout for this Overlord Seaton. In fact, he might be worth interviewing personally.

It might be well worth while, some of these years, to take some time off and go to that

distant galaxy, purposely to make that Jelm Seaton's acquaintance . . .

Shrugging his shoulders and shaking both wings, Klazmon cut off his projection and

called another meeting of his Board of Advisors.

He briefed them on what had happened; then went on:

"We must protect all our planets in the same way and to the same extent that this

planet Llurdiax is protected now: a course of action now necessary because of these

many Jelman and Jelmoid races that have been developing for untold millenia in their

unsane and illogical ways, with no semblance of or attempt at either guidance or

control.

"Second: any force of any such race that attacks us will be destroyed before it or they

can do us any harm.

"Third: the manufacture and distribution of mergons will continue indefinitely at the

present rate.

"Fourth: No chance or casual vessel or fleet traversing any part of the vast volume of

space to be covered by our mergons is to be destroyed, or even hailed, until I myself

decide what action, if any,. is to be taken."

So saying, the Llanzlan Klazmon dismissed his advisors.

His great wings fanned idly as he contemplated what he had done. He was well pleased

with it. He had, he reflected, scratching his head contentedly with the tip of his tail,

provided for every possible contingency. Whatever this Jelm, or Jelmlike creature,

named Seaton might be or do, he would pose no real threat to the Ilanzlanate.

Of that Klazmon was one hundred per cent sure . . .

And wrong!

6 OF DISEMBODIED INTELLIGENCES

WE have now seen how the ripple of thought that began with the conference between

Seaton and his advisors from the Green System had spread throughout all of recorded

space, and how it had affected the lives and destinies of countless millions of persons

who had never heard of him.

Yet a few threads remain to be drawn into our net. And one of these threads represents

the strangest entities Seaton had encountered, ever . . . as well as the most deadly.

To understand what these entities are like, it is necessary to look back to their

beginnings.

These are most remote, both in space and in time. In a solar system so distant from

that of Sol as to be forever unknowable to anyone of Earth, and at a time an

inconceivably vast number of millennia in the past, there once existed a lusty and fertile

Tellus-type planet named Marghol. Over the usual millions of years mankind evolved on

Marghol and thrived as usual. And finally, also as usual and according to the scheduled

fate of all created material things, the planet Marghol grew old.

Whether or not a Tellus-type planet ordinarily becomes unfit to support human life

before its sun goes nova is not surely known. Nor does it matter very much; for, long

before either event occurs, the human race involved has developed a faster-than-light

drive and has at its disposal dozens or hundreds of Earth-like planets upon which even

subhuman life has not yet developed. The planet Marghol, however, while following the

usual pattern in general, developed a specific thing that was, as far as is known, unique

throughout all the reaches of total space and throughout all time up to the present.

On Marghol, during many, many millions of years of its prime, there had continued to

exist a small, tightly-inbred, self-perpetuating cult of thinkers-of men and women who

devoted their every effort and their total power to thought.

They themselves did not know what freak of mind or quirk of physical environment

made the ultimate outcome possible; but after those many millions of years, during

which the perpetually inbreeding group grew stronger and stronger mentally and weaker

and weaker physically, the seven survivors of the group succeeded finally in liberating

their minds-minds perfectly intact and perfectly functioning-from the gross and

perishable flesh of their physical bodies.

Then, able to travel at the unmeasurable speed of thought and with all future time in

which to work, they set out to learn everything there was to know. They would learn,

they declared, not only all about space and time and zero and infinity and animals and

people and life and death, but also everything else comprising or having anything to do

with the totality of existence that is the Cosmic All.

This quest for knowledge has been going on, through universe after universe and

through dimension after dimension, for a stretch of time that, given as a number in

Tellurian years, would be a number utterly incomprehensible to the human mind. For-

what perceptible or tangible difference is there, to the human mind, between a

googolplex of seconds and the same number of centuries? And, since these free minds

ordinarily kept track of time only by the life-cycles of suns, the period of time during

which they had already traveled and studied could have been either shorter or longer

than either of the two exact figures mentioned.

Seven free minds had left the planet Marghol. They called themselves, in lieu of names,

"One" to "Seven" in order of their liberation.

For a brief time-a mere cosmic eye-wink; a few hundreds of millions of years-there had

been eight, since One had consented to dematerialize one applicant for immortality.

The applicant Eight, however, sick and tired of eternal life, had committed suicide by

smashing his sixth-order being out of existence against Richard Seaton's sixth-order

screens.

Now those seven free minds, accompanied by the free mind of Immortality Candidate

Doctor Marc C. DuQuesne, were flying through ultra-deep space in a time-stasis

capsule. This capsule, as has been said, was designed and powered to travel almost to

infinity in both space and time. But, as the Norlaminians pointed out to Seaton, his

basic assumptions were invalid.

Nothing happened, however, for week after week. Then, so immensely far out in

intergalactic space that even the vast bulk of a galaxy lying there would have been

invisible even to Palomar's "Long Eye," the hurtling, capsule struck a cloud of hydrogen

gas.

That gas was, by Earthly standards, a hard vacuum; but the capsule's velocity by that

time was so immensely great that that cloud might just as well have been a mountain of

solid rock. The capsule's directors tried, with all their prodigious might and speed to

avoid the obstruction, but even with fullest power they did not have time enough.

Eight mufti-ton power-bars of activated uranium flared practically instantaneously into

ragingly incandescent gas; into molecular, atomic, and subatomic vapor and debris. A -

fireball brighter than a sun glared briefly; then nothing whatever was visible where that

massive structure had been.

And out of that sheer emptiness came a cold, clear thought: the thought of Doctor Marc

C. DuQuesne.

"One, are you familiar enough with this region of space to estimate at all closely how

long we were in that stasis of time and where we now are with reference to the First

Galaxy?"

Freemind One did not exactly answer the question. "What matters it?" he asked. If the

thought of an immortal and already incredibly old and incredibly knowledgeful mind can

be said to show surprise, that thought did. "It should be clear, even to you of

infinitesimally short life, that any length of time expressible in any finite number of

definite time periods is actually but a moment. Also, the Cosmic All is vast indeed;

larger by many orders of magnitude than any that the boldest of your thinkers has as

yet dared to imagine.

"Whether or not space is infinite I do not know. Whether or not my life span will be

infinite I do not know. I do not as yet completely understand infinity. I do know, however,

that both infinite time and infinite space are requisite for the acquisition of infinite

knowledge, which is my goal; wherefore I am well content. You have no valid reason

whatever for wishing to return to your Earth. Instead, you should be as eager as I am to

explore and to study the as yet unknown."

"I have unfinished business there." DuQuesne's thought was icy cold. "I'm going back

there whether you do or not."

"To kill beings who have at best but an instant to live? To rule an ultra-microscopic

speck of cosmic dust? A speck whose fleeting existence is of but infinitesimal

importance to the Great Scheme of Things? Are you still infantile enough, despite your

recent transformation, to regard as valid such indefensible reasons as those?"

"They're valid enough to me. And you'd have to go back, too, I should think. Or isn't it

still true that science demands the dematerialization of the whole Skylark party?"

"Truth is variable," One said. "Thus, while certain of our remarks were not true in the

smaller aspect, each of them was designed to elicit a larger truth. They aided in the

initiation of chains of events by observation of which I will be able to fit many more

constituent parts of this you call the First Universe precisely into place in the Great

Scheme.

"Now as to you, DuQuesne. The probability was small that you were sufficiently

advanced to become a worthy member of our group; but I decided to give you your

chance and permitted Richard Seaton to do what he did. As a matter of fact I, not

Seaton, did it. You have failed; and I now know that no member of your race can ever

become a true Scholar. In a very few millions of your years you would not be thinking of

knowledge at all, but merely of self-destruction. I erred, one-tenth of a cycle since, in

admitting Freemind Eight to our study group; ate entity who was then at approximately

the same stage of development as you now are. I will not repeat that error. You will be

rematerialized and will be allowed to do whatever you please:"

The mind of DuQuesne almost gasped.

"Out here? Even if you re-create my ship I'd never get back!"

"You should and will have precisely the same chance as before of living out your normal

instant of life 'in normal fashion. To that end I will construct for you a vessel that will be

the replica of your former one except in that it will have a. sixth-order drive-what your

fellow-human Seaton called the `Cosmic Energy' drive-so that you will be able to make

the journey in comparatively few of your days. I will instruct you in this drive and in

certain other matters that will be required to implement what I have said. I will set your

vessel's controls upon your home galaxy at the correct acceleration.

"I compute . . . I construct."

And faster by far than even an electronic eye could follow, a pattern of incredibly

complex stresses formed in the empty other.

Elemental particles, combining instantaneously, built practically instantaneously upward

through electrons and protons and atoms and molecules beams and weaponry up to a

million tons or more of perfectly-operating superdreadnought-and at the same time built

the vastly more complex structure of the two hundred pounds or so of meat and so forth

that were to enclothe Freemind DuQuesne-and did the whole job in much less time

than the blink of an eye.

" . . I instruct . . . It is done," and all seven freeminds vanished.

And DuQuesne, seated at a thoroughly familar control board and feeling normal gravity

on the seat of his pants, stared at that board's instruments, for a moment stunned.

According to those instruments the ship was actually traveling at an acceleration of one

hundred twenty-seven lights; its internal gravity was actually nine hundred eighty-one

point zero six centimeters per second squared.

He stared around the entire room, examining minutely each familiar object. Activating a

visiplate, he scanned the immense skyrover, inside and out, from stem to stern: finding

that it was in fact, except for the stated improvements, an exact duplicate of the mighty

ship of war he had formerly owned: which, he still thought, had been one of the most

powerful battleships ever built by man.

Then, and only then, did he examine the hands resting, quiescent but instantly ready,

upon the board's flat, bare table. They were big tanned, powerful hands; with long,

strong, tapering, highly competent fingers. They were his hands-his own hands in every

particular, clear down to the tiny scar on the side of his left index finger; where, years

before, a bit of flying glass from an exploding flask had left its mark.

Shaking his head, he got up and went to his private cabin, where he strode up to a full-

length mirror.

The man who stared back at him out of it was tall and powerfully built; with thick, slightly

wavy hair of an intense, glossy black. The eyes, only a trifle lighter in shade, were

surmounted by heavy black eyebrows growing together above his finely-chiseled

aquiline beak of a nose. His saturnine face, while actually tanned, looked almost pale

because of the blackness of the heavy beard always showing through, even after the

closest possible shave.

"He could rematerialize me perfectly-and did," he said aloud to himself, "and the whole

ship-exactly!"

Scowling in concentration, he went into his bathroom and stepped upon the platform of

his weight-and-height Fairbanks. Six feet and seven-eighths of an inch. Precisely right.

Two hundred two and three-quarters pounds. Ditto.

He examined the various items of equipment and of every-day use. There was his

cutthroat razor, Osnomian-made of arenak-vastly sharper than any Earthly razor could

possibly be honed and so incredibly hard that it could shave generation after generation

of men with no loss whatever of edge.

Comb, brush, toothbrush, lotion-inside the drawers and out-every item was exactly as

he had left it . . . clear down to the correctly-printed, peculiarly-distorted tubes of tooth-

paste and of shaving cream; each of which, when he picked it up, fitted perfectly into

the grip of his left hand.

"I'll . . . be . . . totally . . . damned," DuQuesne said then, aloud.

7 DU QUESNE AND KLAZMON

THE Skylark of Valeron swung in orbit around the sun of Earth. She was much more of

worldlet than a spaceship, being a perfect sphere over a thousand kilometers in

diameter. She had to be big. She had to house, among other things, the one-thousand-

kilometers-diameter graduated circles of declination and of right ascension required to

chart the thousands of millions of galaxies making up any given universe of the Cosmic

All.

She was for the most part cold and dark. Even the master-control helmets, sprouting

masses and mazes of thigh-thick bundles of hair-thin silver wire, hung inactivated in the

neutral gray, featureless master-control room. The giant computer, however-the cubic

mile of ultra-miniaturization that everyone called the "Brain"-was still in operation; and in

the worldlet's miles-wide chart-room, called the "tank," there still glowed the enormous

lenticular aggregation of points of light that was the chart of the First Universe-each tiny

pool of light representing a galaxy composed of thousands of millions of solar systems.

A precisely coded thought impinged upon a receptor.

A relay clicked, whereupon a neighboring instrument, noting the passage of current

through its vitals, went busily but silently to work, and an entire panel of instrumentation

came to life.

Switch after switch snapped home. Field after field of time-stasis collapsed. The

planetoid's artificial sun resumed its shining; breezes began again to stir the leaves of

trees and of shrubbery; insects resumed their flitting from bloom to once-more-scented

bloom. Worms resumed their gnawings and borings beneath the green velvet carpets

that were the lawns. Brooks began again to flow; gurglingly. Birds took up their caroling

and chirping and twittering precisely where they had left off so long before; and three

houses there was a house now for Shiro and his bride of a month -became comfortably

warm and softly, invitingly livable.

All that activity meant, of course, that the Seaton-Crane party would soon becoming

aboard.

They were in fact already on the way, in Skylark Two; the forty-foot globe which, made

originally of Osnomian arenak and the only spaceship they owned, had been "flashed

over" into ultra-refractory inoson and now served as Captain's gig, pinnace, dinghy,

lifeboat, landing craft, and so forth-whatever any of the party wanted her to do. There

were many other craft aboard the Skylark of Valeron, of course, of various shapes and

sizes; but Two had always been the Seatons' favorite "small boat."

As Two approached the Valeron, directly in line with one of her huge main ports,

Seaton slowed down to a dawdling crawl-a mere handful of miles per second-and

thought into a helmet already on his head; and the massive gates of locks-of a miles-

long succession of locks through the immensely thick skin of the planetoid-opened in

front of flying Two and closed behind her. Clearing the last gate, Seaton put on a gee

and a half of deceleration and brought the little flying sphere down to a soft and easy

landing in her berth in the back yard of the Seatons' house.

Eight people disembarked; five of whom were the three Seatons and Martin and

Margaret Crane. (Infant Lucile Crane rode joyously on her mother's left hip.) Seventh

was short, chunky, lightning-fast Shiro, whose place in these Skylark annals has not

been small. Originally Crane's "man," he had long since become Crane's firm friend;

and he was now as much of a Skylarker as was any of the others.

Eighth was Lotus Blossom, Shiro's small, finely wrought, San Francisco-born and

western-dressed bride, whom the others had met only that morning, just before leaving

Earth. She looked like a living doll-but appearances can be so deceiving! She was in

fact one of the most proficient female experts in unarmed combat then alive.

"Our house first, please, all of you," Dorothy said. "We'll eat before we do one single

solitary thing else. I could eat that fabled missionary from the plains of Timbuctoo."

Margaret laughed. "Hat and gown and hymnbook too," she finished. "Me, too, Dick."

"Okay by me; I could toy with a couple of morsels myself," Seaton said, and pencils of

force wafted the eight into the roomy kitchen of the house that was in almost every

detail an exact duplicate of the Seatons' home on Earth. "You're the chief kitchen

mechanic, Red-Top; strut your stuff."

Dorothy looked at and thought into the controller-she no longer had to wear any of the

limited-control headsets to operate them-and a damask-clothed table, set for six, laden

with a wide variety of food and equipped with six carved oak chairs and two high-chairs,

came instantly into being in the middle of the room.

The Nisei girl jumped violently; then smiled apologetically. "Shiro told me about such

things, but . . . well,. maybe I'll get used to them sometimes I hope."

"Sure you will, Lotus," Seaton assured her. "It's pretty weird at first, but you get used to

it fast."

"I sincerely hope so," Lotus said, and eyed the six dinner places dubiously. She had

thought that she was thoroughly American, but she wasn't quite. Traditions are strong.

With an IQ that a Heidelberg student might envy, part of the crew of the most powerful

vehicle man had ever seen, fully educated and trained . . . it was evident that Shiro's

dainty little bride was more than a little doubtful about sitting at that table.

Until Dorothy took her by the hand and sat her down. "This is where I like my friends to

sit," she announced. "Where I can see them."

A flush dyed the porcelain-like perfection of Lotus's skin. "I thank you, Mrs.-'

"Friends, remember?" Seaton broke in. "Call her Dot. Now let's eat!"

Whereafter, they worked.

It may be wondered, among those historians not familiar with the saga of the Skylarks,

why so much consternation and trouble should come from so small an event as the

probabilistic speculation of a single Norlaminian sage that one mere human body, lately

cast into the energy forms of the disembodied intelligences, might soon return into the

universe in a viable form.

Such historians do not, of course, know Blackie DuQuesne.

While Seaton, Crane and the others were eating their meal, across distances to be

measured in gigaparsecs, countless millions of persons were in one way or another

busy at work on projects central to their own central concern. Seaton and Crane were

not idle. They were waiting for further information . . . and at the same time, refurbishing

the inner man with food, with rest and with pleasant company; but an hour later, after

dinner, after the table and its appurtenances had vanished and the three couples were

seated in the living room, more or less facing the fire, Seaton stoked up his battered

black briar and Crane lighted one of his specially made cigarettes.

"Well?" Seaton demanded then. "Have you thank up anything you think is worth two

tinker's whoops in Hades?"

Crane smiled ruefully. "Not more than one, I'd say-if that many. Let's consider that

thought or message that Carfon is sending out. It will be received, he says, only by

persons or entities who not only know more than we do about one or more specific

things, but also are friendly enough to be willing to share their knowledge with us. And

to make the matter murkier, we have no idea either of what it is that we lack or what it,

whatever it is, is supposed to be able to do. Therefore Point One would, be: how are

they going to get in touch with us? By what you called magic?"

Sexton did not answer at first, then only nodded. "Magic" was still a much less than real

concept to him. He said, "If you say so-but remember the Peruvian Indian medicinemen

and the cinchona bark that just happened to be full of quinine. So, whatever you want to

call it-magic or extrasensory perception or an unknown band of the sixth or what-have-

you-I'll bet my last shirt it'll be bio. And whoever pitches it at us will be good enough at it

to know that they can hit us with it, so all we have to do about that is wait for it to

happen. However, what I'm mostly interested in right now is nothing that far out, but

what we know that a reincarnated Blackie DuQuesne could and probably would do."

"Such as?"

"The first thing he'll do, for all the tea in China, will be to design and set up some gadget

or gizmo or technique to kill me with. Certainly me, and probably you, and quite possibly

all of us."

Dorothy and Margaret both gasped; but Crane nodded and said, "Check. I check you to

your proverbial nineteen decimals. Also, and quite possibly along with that operation, an

all-out attempt to reconquer Earth. He wouldn't set out to destroy Earth, at this time, at

least . . . would he, do you think?"

Sexton thought for seconds, then said, "My best guess would be no. He wants to boss

it, not wipe it out. However, there are a few other things that might come . . ."

"Wait up, presh!" Dorothy snapped. "Those two will hold us for a while; especially the

first one. I wish to go on record at this point to the effect that I want my husband alive,

not dead."

Sexton grinned. "You and me both, pet," he said. "I'm in favor of it. Definitely. However,

as long as I stay inside the Valeron here he doesn't stand the chance of a snowflake in

you-know-where of getting at me . . ."

How wrong Sexton was!

" . . so the second point is the one that's really of overriding importance. The rub is that

we can't make even a wild guess at when he's going to get loose . . . He could be

building his ship right now . . . so, Engineer Martin Crane, what's your thought as to

defending Earth; as adequately as possible but in the shortest possible time?"

Crane inhaled-slowly-a deep lungful of smoke, exhaled it even more slowly, and

stubbed out the butt. "That's a tall order, Dick," he said, finally, "but I don't think it's

hopeless. Since we know DuQuesne's exact line of departure, we know at least

approximately the line of his return. As a first-approximation idea we should, I think,

cover that line thoroughly with hair-triggered automation. We should occupy the fourth

and the fifth completely; thus taking care of everything we know that he knows . . . but

as for the sixth . . ." Crane paused in thought.

"Yeah," Sexton agreed. "That sixth order's an entirely different breed of cats. It's a

pistol-a question with a capital Q. About all we can do on it, I'd say, is cover everything

we know of it and then set up supersensitive analsynths coupled to all the automatic

constructors and such-like gizmos we can dream up-with as big a gaggle of ground-

and-lofty dreamers as we can round up. The Norlaminians, certainly; and Sacner

Carfon for sure. If what he and Drasnik pulled off wasn't magic it certainly was a

remarkably reasonable facsimile thereof. All six of us; of course, and . . ."

"But what can you possibly want of us?" Shiro asked, and Dorothy said, "That goes

double for Peggy and me, Dick. Of what good could we two possibly be, thinking about

such stuff as that?"

Sexton flushed. "'Scuse, please; my error. I switched thinking without announcing the

switch. I do know, though, that our minds all work differently-especially Shiro's and

double-especially Lotus's=and that when you don't have the faintest glimmering of what

you're getting into you don't know what you're going to have to have to cope with it." He

grinned.

"If you can untangle that, I mean," he said.

"I think so," said Crane, unruffled; he had had long practice in following Sexton's

lightning leaps past syntax. "And you think that this will enable us to deal with

DuQuesne?"

"It'll have to," Sexton said positively. "One thing we know, something has to. He's not

going to send us a polite message asking to be friends-he's going to hit with all he's got.

So," he finished, "let's hop to it. The Norlaminian observers' reports are piling up on the

tapes right now. And we'd all better keep our eyes peeled-as well as all the rest of our

senses and instrumental-for Doctor Mare C. Blackie DuQuesne!"

And DuQuesne, so immensely far out in intergalactic space, at control board and

computer, explored for ten solid hours the vastnesses of his new knowledge.

Then he donned a thought-helmet and thought himself up a snack; after eating which-

scarcely tasting any part of it-he put in another ten solid hours of work. Then, leaning

back in his form-fitting seat, he immersed himself in thought-and, being corporeal, no

longer a pattern of pure force, went sound asleep.

He woke up a couple of hours later; stiff, groggy, and ravenous. He thought himself up

a supper of steak and mushrooms, hashed browns, spinach, coffee, and apple pie a la

mode. He ate it-with zest, this time-then sought his long-overdue bed.

In the morning, after a shower and a shave and a breakfast of crisp bacon and over-

easy eggs, toast and butter and marmalade, and four cups of strong, black coffee, he

sat down at his board and again went deep into thought. This time, he thought in words

and sentences, the better to nail down his conclusions.

"One said I'd have precisely the same chance as before of living out my normal lifetime.

Before what? Before the dematerialization or before Seaton got all that extra stuff?

Since he gave me sixth order drive, offense, defense, and communications, he could

have-probably did-put me on a basis of equality with Seaton as of now. Would he have

given me any more than that?"

DuQuesne paused and worked for ten busy minutes at computer and control board

again. What he learned was in the form of curves and quantities, not words; he did not

attempt to speak them aloud, but sat staring into space.

Then, satisfied that the probabilities were adequate to base a plan on, he spoke out

loud again: "No. Why should he give me everything that Seaton's got? He didn't owe

me anything." To Blackie DuQuesne that was not a rueful complaint but a statement of

fact. He went on. "Assume we both now have a relatively small part of the spectrum of

the sixth-order forces, if I keep using this drive-Ouch! What the living hell was that?"

DuQuesne leaped to his feet. "That" had been a sixthorder probe, at the touch of which

his vessel's every course of defensive screen had flared into action.

DuQuesne was-not shaken, no. But he was surprised, and he didn't like to be surprised.

There should have been no probes out here!

The probe had been cut off almost instantaneously; but "almost" instantaneously is not

quite zero time, and sixth-order forces operate at the speed of thought. Hence, in that

not-quite-zero instant of time during which the intruding mind had been in contact with

his own, DuQuesne learned a little. The creature was undoubtedly highly intelligent and,

as undoubtedly, unhuman to the point of monstrosity . . . and DuQuesne had no doubt

whatever in his own mind that the alien would think the same of any Tellurian.

DuQuesne studied his board and saw, much to his surprise, that only one instrument

showed any drain at all above maintenance level, and that one was a milliammeter -the

needle of which was steady on the scale at a reading of one point three seven mils! He

was not being attacked at all-merely being observed -and by an observation system

that was using practically no power at all!

Donning a helmet, so as to be able himself to operate at the speed of thought,

DuQuesne began-very skittishly and very gingerly indeed-to soften down his spheres

and zones and shells and solid fields of defensive force. He softened and softened

them down; down to the point at which a working projection could come through and

work.

And a working projection came through.

No one of Marc C. DuQuesne's acquaintances, friend or enemy, had ever said that he

was any part of either a weakling or a coward. The consensus was that he was harder

than the ultra-refractory hubs of hell itself. Nevertheless, when the simulacrum of

Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth of the Realm of the Llurdi came up to within three feet

of him and waggled one gnarled forefinger at the helmets of a mechanical educator,

even DuQuesne's burly spirit began to quail a little-but he was strong enough and hard

enough not let any sign show.

With every mind-block he owned set hard, DuQuesne donned a headset and handed

its mate to his visitor. He engaged that monstrous alien mind to mind. Then, releasing

his blocks, he sent the Llurdi a hard, cold, sharp, diamond-clear-and lying!-thought:

"Yes? Who are you, pray, and what, to obtrude your uninvited presence upon me,

Foalang Kassi a' Doompf, the Highest Imperial of the Drailsen Quadrant?"

This approach was, of course, the natural one for DuQuesne to make; he did not

believe in giving away truth when lies might be so much cheaper-and less dangerous. It

was equally of course the worst possible approach to Klazmon: reenforcing as it did

every unfavorable idea the Llurd had already formed from his lightning-fast preliminary

once-over-lightly of the man and of the man's tremendous spaceship.

Klazmon did not think back at DuQuesne directly. Instead, he thought to himself and, as

DuQuesne knew, for the record; thoughts that the Earthman could read like print.

To the Llurd, DuQuesne was a peculiarly and repulsively obnoxious monstrosity.

Physically a Jelin, he belonged to a race of Jelmi that had never been subjected to any

kind of logical, sensible, or even intelligent control.

Klazmon then thought at DuQuesne; comparing him with Mergon and Luloy on the one

hand and with Sleemet of the Fenachrone on the other-and deciding that all three races

were basically the same. The Llurd showed neither hatred nor detestation; he was

merely contemptuous, intolerant, and utterly logical. "Like the few remaining

Fenachrone and the rebel faction of our own Jelmi and the people you think of as the

Chlorans, your race is, definitely, surplus population; a nuisance that must be and shall

be abated. Where-" Klazmon suddenly drove a thought"is the Drailsen Quadrant?"

DuQuesne, however, was not to be caught napping. His blocks held. "You'll never

know," he sneered. "Any taskforce of yours that ever comes anywhere near us will not

last long enough to energize a sixth-order communicator."

"That's an idle boast," Klazmon stated thoughtfully. "It is true that you and your vessel

are far out of range of any possible Llurdiaxian attacking beam. Even this projection of

me is being relayed through four mergons. Nevertheless we can and we will find you

easily when this becomes desirable. This point will be reached as soon as we have

computed the most logical course to take in exterminating all such surplus races as

yours."

And Klazmon's projection vanished; and the helmet he had been wearing fell toward the

floor.

DuQuesne was shocked as he had never been shocked before; and when he learned

from his analsynths just what the range of one of those incredible "mergons" was, he

was starkly appalled.

One thing was crystal-clear: He was up against some truly first-class opposition here.

And it had just stated, calmly and definitely, that its intention was to exterminate him,

Blackie DuQuesne.

The master of lies had learned to assess the value of a truth very precisely. He knew

this one to be 22-karat, crystal-clear, pure quill. Whereupon Blackie DuQuesne turned

to some very intensive thought indeed, compared with which his' previous efforts might

have been no more than a summer afternoon's reverie.

We know now, of coarse, that Blackie DuQuesne lacked major elements of information,

and that his constructions could not therefore be complete. They lacked Norlaminian

rigor, or the total visualization of his late companions, the disembodied intellectuals.

And they lacked information.

DuQuesne knew nothing of Mergon and Luloy, now inward bound on Earth in a hideout

orbit. He could not guess how his late visitor had ever heard of the Fenachrone. Nor

knew he anything of that strange band of the sixth order to which Seaton referred, with

more than half a worried frown, as "magic." In short, DuQuesne was attempting to

reach the greatest conclusion of his life through less than perfect means, with only

fragmentary facts to go on.

Nevertheless, Blackie C. DuQuesne, as Seaton was wont to declare, was no slouch at

figuring; and so he did in time come to a plan which was perhaps the most brilliant-and

also was perhaps the most witless!-of his career.

Lips curled into something much more sneer than grin, DuQuesne sat down at his

construction board. He had come to the conclusion that what he needed was help, and

he knew exactly where to go to get it. His ship wasn't big enough by far to hold a sixth-

order projection across any important distance . . . but he could build, in less than an

hour, a sixth-order broadcaster. It wouldn't be selective. It would be enormously

wasteful of power. But it would carry a signal across half a universe.

Whereupon, in less than an hour, a signal began to pour out, into and through space:

"DuQuesne calling Seaton! Reply on tight beam of the sixth. DuQuesne calling Seaton!

Reply on tight beam of the sixth. DuQuesne calling Seaton . . ."

8 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

WHEN Seaton and Crane had begun to supply the Earth with ridiculously cheap power,

they had expected an economic boom and a significant improvement in the standard of

living. Neither of them had any idea, however, of the effect upon the world's economy

that their space-flights would have; but many tycoons of industry did.

They were shrewd operators, those tycoons. As one man they licked their chops at the

idea of interstellar passages made in days. They gloated over thoughts of the multifold

increase in productive capacity that would have to be made so soon; as soon as

commerce was opened up with dozens and then with hundreds of Tellus-type worlds,

inhabited by human beings as human as those of Earth. And when they envisioned

hundreds and hundreds of uninhabited Tellustype worlds, each begging to be grabbed

and exploited by whoever got to it first with enough stuff to hold it and to develop it . . .

they positively drooled.

These men did not think of money as money, but as their most effective and most

important tool: a tool to be used as knowledgeably as the old-time lumberjack used his

axe.

Thus, Earth was going through convulsions of change more revolutionary by far than

any it had experienced throughout all previous history. All those pressures building up

at once had blown the lid completely off. Seaton and Crane and their associates had

been working fifteen hours a day for months training people in previously unimagined

skills; trying to keep the literally exploding economy from degenerating into complete

chaos.

They could not have done it alone, of course. In fact, it was all that a thousand

Norlaminian "Observers" could do to keep the situation even approximately in hand.

And even the Congress-mirabile dictu!-welcomed those aliens with open arms; for it

was so hopelessly deadlocked in trying to work out any workable or enforceable laws

that it was accomplishing nothing at all.

All steel mills were working at one hundred ten per cent of capacity. So were almost all

other kinds of plants. Machine tools were in such demand that no estimated time of

delivery could be obtained. Arenak, dagal, and inoson, those wonder-materials of the

construction industry, would be in general supply some day; but that day would not be

allowed to come until the changeover could be made without disrupting the entire

economy. Inoson especially was confined to the spaceship builders; and, while every

pretense was being made that production was being increased as fast as possible, the

demand for spaceships was so insatiable that every hulk that could leave atmosphere

was out in deep space.

Multi-billion-dollar corporations were springing up all over Earth. Each sought out and

began to develop a Tellustype planet of its own, to bring up as a civilized planet or

merely to exploit as it saw fit. Each was clamoring for and using every possible artifice

of persuasion, lobbying, horse-trading, and out-and-out bribery and corruption to obtain-

spaceships, personnel, machinery light and heavy, office equipment, and supplies. All

the employables of Earth, and many theretofore considered unemployable, were at

work.

Earth was a celestial madhouse . . .

It is no wonder, then, that Seaton and Crane were haggard and worn when they had to

turn their jobs over to two upper-bracket Norlaminians and leave Earth.

Their situation thereafter was not much better.

The first steps were easy-anyway, the decisions involved were easy; the actual work

involved was roughly equivalent to the energy budget of several Sol-type suns. It is an

enormous project to set up a line of defense hundreds of thousands of miles long;

especially when the setters-up do not know exactly what to expect in the way of attack.

They knew, in fact, only one thing: that the Norlaminians had made a probabilistic

statement that Marc C. DuQuesne was likely to be present among them before long.

That was excuse, reason and compulsion enough to demand the largest and most

protracted effort they could make. The mere preliminaries involved laying out axes of

action that embraced many solar systems, locating and developing sources of materials

and energies that were enough to smother a hundred suns. As that work began to

shape up, Seaton and Crane came face to face with the secondary line of problems . . .

and at that point Seaton suddenly smote himself on the forehead and cried: "Dunark!"

Crane looked up. "Dunark? Why, yes, Dick. Quite right. Not only is he probably the

universe's greatest strategist, but he knows the enemy almost as well as you and I do."

"And besides," Seaton added, "he doesn't think like us. Not at all. And that's what we

want; so I'll call him now and we'll compute a rendezvous."

Wherefore, a few days later, Dunark's Osnomian cruiser matched velocities with the

hurtling worldlet and began to negotiate its locks. Seaton shoved up the Valeron's

airpressure, cut down its gravity, and reached for the master thermostat.

"Not too hot, Dick," Dorothy said. "Light gravity is all right, but make them wear some

clothes any time they're outside their special quarters. I simply won't run around naked

in my own house. And I won't have them doing it, either."

Seaton laughed. "The usual eighty-three degrees and twenty-five per cent humidity.

They'll wear clothes, all right. She'll be tickled to death to wear that fur coat you gave

her-she doesn't get a chance to, very often-and we can stand it easily enough," and the

four Tellurians went out to the dock to greet their green-skinned friends of old: Crown

Prince Dunark and Crown Princess Sitar of Osnome, one of the planets of the

enormous central sun of the Central System.

Warlike, bloodthirsty, supremely able Dunark; and Sitar, his lovely, vivacious-and

equally warlike-wife. He was wearing ski-pants (Osnome's temperature, at every point

on its surface and during every minute of every day of the year, is one hundred degrees

Fahrenheit), a heavy sweater, wool socks, and fur-lined moccasins. She wore a sweater

and slacks under her usual fantastic array of Osnomian jewelry; and over it, as Seaton

had predicted, the full-length mink coat. Each was wearing only one Osnomian machine

pistol instead of the arsenal that had been their customary garb such a short time

before.

The three men greeted each other warmly and executed a six-hand handshake; the

while the two white women and the green one went into an arms-wrapped group; each

talking two hundred words to the minute.

A couple of days later, the Norlaminian task-force arrived and a council of war was held

that lasted for one full working day. Then, the defense planned in length and in depth,

construction began. Seaton and Crane sat in the two master-control helmets of the

Brain. Rovol worked with the brain of the Norlaminian spaceship. Dozens of other

operators, men and women, worked at and with other, less powerful devices.

On the surface of a nearby planet, ten thousand square miles of land were leveled and

paved to form the Area of Work. Stacks and piles and rows and assortments of

hundreds of kinds of structural members appeared as though by magic. Gigantic beams

of force, made visible by a thin and dusty pseudo-mist, flashed here and there; seizing

this member and that and these and them and those and joining them together with

fantastic speed to form enormous towers and platforms and telescope-like things and

dirigible tubes and projectors.

Some of these projectors took containers of pure force out to white dwarf stars after

neutronium. Others took faidons-those indestructible jewels that are the sine qua non of

higher-order operation-out to the cores of stars to be worked into lenses of various

shapes and sizes. Out into the environment of scores of millions of degrees of

temperature and of scores of millions of tons per square inch of pressure that is the

only environment in which the faidon can be worked by any force known to the science

of man.

The base-line, which was to be built of enormous, absolutely rigid beams of force, could

not be of planetary, or even of orbital dimensions. It had to extend, a precisely

measured length, from the core of a star to that of another, having as nearly as possible

the same proper motion, over a hundred parsecs away. Thus it took over a week to

build and to calibrate that base-line; but, once that was done, the work went fast.

The most probable lines of approach were blocked by fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-order

installations of tremendous range and of planetary power; less probable ones by

defenses of somewhat lesser might; supersensitive detector webs fanned out

everywhere. And this work, which would have required years a short time before, was

only a matter of a couple of weeks for the gigantic constructor-projectors now filling the

entire Area of Work.

When everything that anyone could think of doing had been done, Seaton lit his pipe,

jammed both hands into his pockets, and turned to his wife. "Well, we've got it made

now what are we going to do with it? Sit on our hands until Blackie DuQuesne trips a

trigger or some Good Samaritan answers our call? I'd give three nickels to know

whether he's loose yet or not, and if he is loose, just where he is at this moment."

"I'd raise you a dime," she said; and then, since Dorothy Seaton concealed an

extremely useful brain under her red curls, she added slowly, "And maybe . . . you know

what the Norlaminians deduced: that, upon liberation, he'd be rematerialized? That he'd

have a very good spaceship. That, before attacking us, he would recruit personnel, both

men and women, both from need of their help and from loneliness . . . wait up-

loneliness! Whoa girl, probably would he get loneliest for?"

Seaton snapped his fingers. "I can make an awfully good guess. Hunkie de Marigny."

"Hunkie de Who? Oh, I remember. That big moose with the black hair and the shape."

Seaton laughed. "Funny, isn't it, that such an accurate description can be so

misleading? But my guess is, if he's back she knows it . . . I think it'd be smart to flip

myself over to the Bureau and see what I can find out. Want to come along?"

"Uh-uh; she isn't my dish of tea."

Seaton projected his solid-seeming simulacrum of pure force to distant Tellus, to

Washington, and to the sidewalk in front of the Bureau. He mounted the steps, entered

the building, said "Hi, Gorgeous" to the shapely blonde receptionist, and took an

elevator to the sixteenth floor; where he paused briefly in thought.

He hadn't better see Hunkie first, or only; Ferdinand Scott, the world's worst gossip,

would talk about it, and Hunkie would draw her own conclusions. He'd pull Scotty's

teeth first.

Wherefore he turned into the laboratory beside the one that once had been his own.

"Hi, Scotty," he said, holding out his hand, "Don't tell me they've actually got you

working for a change."

Scott, a chunky youth with straw-colored hair that needed cutting, jumped off of his

stool and shook hands vigorously. "Hi, Dickie, old top! Alla time work. `Slavey' Scott;

that's me. But boy oh boy, did I goof on that `Nobody Holme' bit! You and that bottle of

waste solution, that you stirred the whole world up with like goulash! Why can't anything

like that ever happen, to me? But I s'pose I'd've blown the whole world to hellangone up

instead of just putting it into the God-awful shape it's in now, like you and Blackie

DuQuesne did. Wow, what a mess!"

"Yeah. Speaking of DuQuesne-seen him lately?"

"Not since the big bust. The Norlaminians, probably know all about him."

"They don't. I asked. They lost him."

"Well, you might ask Hunkie de Marigny. She'll know if anybody does."

"Oh-she still here?"

"Yeah. Most of us are, and will be."

Seaton chatted for another minute, then, "Take it easy, guy," he said; and went up the

corridor to Room 1631. The door was wide open, so he went in without knocking.

"Park it. Be with you in a moment," a smooth contralto voice said, and Seaton sat down

on a chair near the door.

The woman-Doctor Stephanie de Marigny, nuclear physicist and good at her trade-kept

both eyes fastened on a four-needle meter about eighteen inches in front of her nose.

Her well-kept hands and red-nailed fingers, working blind with the sure precision of

those of a world-champion typist, opened and closed switches, moved sliders and

levers, and manipulated a dozen or so vernier knobs in tiny arcs.

There was nothing to show any uninformed observer what she was doing. Whatever it

was that she was working on could have been behind that instrument-filled panelor

down in some sub-basement-or at the Proving Grounds down the Potomac-or a million

miles or parsecs out in space. Whatever it was or wherever, as she worked the four

needles of the master-meter closer and closer together as each needle approached the

center-zero mark of the meter's scale

Until finally the four hair-thin flat needles were exactly in line with each other and with

the hair-thin zero mark. Whereupon four heavy plungers drove home and every light on

the panel flashed green and went out.

"On the button," she said then, aloud. She rose to her feet, stretched as gracefully and

luxuriously and unselfconsciously as does a cat, and turned toward her visitor.

"Hi, Hunkie," Seaton said. "Can you spare me a minute?"

"Nice to see you again, Dick." She, came toward him, hand outstretched. "I could

probably be talked into making it two minutes."

The word "big," while true, was both inadequate and misleading. Stephanie de Marigny

was tall-five feet ten in her nylons-and looked even taller because of her threeinch

heels, her erect posture, and because of the mass of jet-black hair piled high on her

head.

Her breasts jutted; her abdomen was flat and hard; her wide, flat hips flared out from a

startlingly narrow waist; and her legs would have made any professional glamour

photographer drool. And her face, if not as beautiful as her body, wag fully as striking.

Her unplucked eyebrows, as black as her hair, were too long and too thick and too

bushy and grew too nearly together above a nose that was as much of a beak as

DuQuesne's own. The lashes over her deep brown eyes were simply incredible. Her

cheekbones were too large and too prominent. Her fire-engine-red mouth was too big.

Her square chin and her hard, clean line of jaw were too outstanding; demanded too

much notice. Her warm, friendly, dimple-displaying smile, however, revealed the charm

that was actually hers.

Seaton said, "As always, you're really a treat for the optic nerve."

She ignored the compliment. "You aren't; you look like a catastrophe looking for a place

to happen. You ought to take better care of yourself, Dick. Get some sleep once in a

while."

"I'm going to, as soon as I can. But what I came in for -have you heard anything of

Blackie lately?"

"No. Not since he got delusions of grandeur. Why? Should I have?"

"Not that I know of. I just thought maybe you two had enough of a thing on so you'd

keep in touch."

"Uh-uh. I ran around with him a little, is all. Nothing serious. Of all the men I know who

understand and appreciate good music, he's the youngest, the best-looking, and the

most fun. Also the biggest. I can wear high heels and not tower over him, which I can't

do with most men . . : " She paused, nibbling at her lower lip, then went on, "My best

guess is that he's out on one of the new planets some where, making several hundred

thousand tax-free dollars per year. That's what I'm going to be doing as soon as I finish

Observers' School here."

"You're the gal who can do it, too. Luck, Hunkie."

"Same to you, Dick. Drop in again, any time you're around."

And aboard the Skylark of Valeron, Seaton turned to Dorothy with a scowl. "Nobody's

seen him or heard anything of him, so he probably isn't loose yet. I hate this waiting.

Confound it, I wish the big black ape would get loose and start something!"

Although Seaton did not know it, DuQuesne had, and was about to.

It happened that night, after Seaton had gone to bed.

The message came in loud and clear on Seaton's private all-hours receiver, monitored

and directed by the unsleeping Brain:

". . . Seaton reply on tight beam of the sixth stop DuQuesne calling Seaton reply on

tight beam of the sixth stop DuQuesne calling . . ."

Coming instantly awake at the sound of his name, Seaton kicked off the covers, thought

a light on, and, setting hands and feet, made a gymnast's twisting, turning leap over

Dorothy without touching her. There was plenty of room on his own side of the bed, but

the direct route was quicker. He landed on his feet, took two quick steps, and slapped

the remote-control helmet on his head.

"Trace this call. Hit its source with a tight beam of the sixth," he thought into the helmet;

then took it off and said aloud, "You're coming in loud and clear. What gives?"

"Loud and clear here. All hell's out for noon. I just met the damndest alien any science-

fiction fan ever imagined teeth, wings, tail-the works. Klazmon by name; boss of two

hundred forty-one planets full of monsters just like him. He's decided that all humanity

everywhere should be liquidated; and it looks as though he may have enough stuff to

do just that."

Dorothy had sat up in bed, sleepily. She made a gorgeously beautiful picture, Seaton

thought; wearing a wisp of practically nothing and her hair a tousled auburn riot. As the

sense of DuQuesne's words struck home, however, a look of horror spread over her

face and she started to say something; but Seaton touched his lips with a forefinger and

she, wide awake now, nodded.