"Nice summary, DuQuesne," Seaton said then. "Now break it down into smaller pieces,

huh?" and DuQuesne went on to give a verbatim report of his interview with Llanzlan

Klazmon of the Realm of the Llurdi.

 

"So much for facts," DuQuesne said. "Now for inferences and deductions. You know

how, when you're thinking with anyone, other information, more or less relevant and

more or less clear, comes along? A sort of side-band effect?"

 

"Yeah, always. I can see how you picked up the business about the stranger ships that

way. But how sure are you that those seventeen ships were Fenachrone?"

 

"Positive. That thought was clear. And for that matter, there must be others running

around loose somewhere. How possible is it, do you think, to wipe out completely a

race that has had spaceships as long as they have?"

 

"Could be," agreed Seaton. "And this ape Klazmon figured it that we were the same

race, basically, both mentally-savage, egocentric, homicidal-and physically. How could

he arrive at any such bobbled-up, cockeyed conclusions as that?"

 

"For him, easily enough. Klazmon is just about as much like us as we are like those X-

planet cockroaches. Imagine a man-sized bat, with a super-able tail, cat's eyes and

teeth, humanoid arms and hands, a breastbone like the prow of a battleship, pectoral

muscles the size of forty-pound hams, and-"

 

"Wait up a sec-this size thing. His projection?"

 

"That's right. Six feet tall. He wasn't the type to shrink or expand it."

 

"I'll buy that. And strictly logical-with their own idea of what logic is."

 

"Check. According to which logic we're surplus population and are to be done away

with. So I decided to warn you as to what the human race is up against and to suggest

a meeting with you that we know can't be listened in on. Check?"

 

"Definitely. We'll lock our sixths on and instruct our computers to compute and effect

rendezvous at null relative velocity in minimum time. Can do?"

 

"Can do-am doing," DuQuesne said; and Seaton, donning his helmet, perceived that

the only fifth- or sixth-order stuff anywhere near the Skylark of Valeron—except what

she was putting out herself, of course-was the thin, tight beam that was the base-line.

 

Seaton thought into his helmet for a few seconds; then, discarding it, he went around

the bed, got into it on his own side, and started to kiss Dorothy a second good night.

 

"But, Dick," she protested. "That DuQuesne! Do you think it's safe to let him come

actually aboard?"

 

"Yes. Not only safe, but necessary-we don't want to be blabbing that kind of stuff all

over a billion parsecs of space. And safe because I still say we're better than he is at

anything he want to start, for fun, money, chalk, or marbles. So good night again, ace of

my bosom-."

 

"Hadn't you better notify somebody else first? Especially the Norlaminians?"

 

"You said it, presh; I sure should." Seaton put on his helmet; and it was a long time

before either of the Seatons got back to sleep. Long for Dorothy, heroically keeping

eyes closed and breathing regularly so that her husband would not know how shaken

and terrified she really was; long for Seaton himself, who lay hour upon endless hour,

hands linked behind his head, gray eyes staring fiercely up into the darkness.

 

It had been a long time since Richard Ballinger Seaton and Marc C. DuQuesne had

locked horns last. This galaxy -this cluster-this whole First Universe was not large

enough for the two of them. When they met again one of them would dispose of the

other.

 

It was as simple as that. Yet Seaton had accepted a call for help. The whole enormous

complex of defenses that he had labored so hard and long to erect again DuQuesne

would now be diverted to another, perhaps even a greater, threat to the safety of

civilization. It was right and proper that this should be so.

 

But Seaton knew that whatever the best interests of civilization in this matter, there

could and would never be any greater personal threat to himself than was incarnate in

the cold, hard, transcendentally logical person of Blackie DuQuesne.

 

9 AMONG THE JELMI

 

AND half a universe away other events were moving to fruition.

 

As has been said, the eight hundred Jelmi aboard the ship that had once been a

Llurdan cruiser were the selected pick of the teeming billions of their race inhabiting two

hundred forty-one planets. The younger ones had been selected for brains, ability, and

physical perfection; the older ones for a hundred years or more of outstanding scientific

achievement. And of the older group, Tammon stood out head and shoulders above all

the rest. He was the Einstein of his race.

 

He looked a vigorous, bushily gray-haired sixty; but was in fact two hundred eleven

Mallidaxian years old.

 

Tammon was poring over a computed graph, measuring its various characteristics with

vernier calipers, a filar microscope, and an integrating planimeter, when Mergon and

Luloy came swinging hand in hand into his laboratory. Both were now fully recovered

from the wounds they had suffered in that hand-to-hand battle with the Llurdi on now

far-distant Llurdiax. Muscles moved smoothly under the unblemished bronze of

Mergon's skin; Luloy's swirling shoulder-length mop of gleaming chestnut hair was a

turbulent glory.

 

"Hail, Tamm," the two said in unison, and Mergon went on: "Have you unscrewed the

inscrutability of that anomalous peak yet?"

 

Tammon picked up another chart and scowled at a sharp spike going up almost to the

top of the scale. "This? I'm not exactly sure yet, but I may have. At least, by

recomputing with an entirely new and more-than-somewhat weird set of determinors, I

got this," and he ran his fingertip along the smooth curve on the chart he had been

studying.

 

Mergon whistled through his teeth and Luloy, after staring for a moment said,

"Wonderful! Expound, oh sage, and elucidate."

 

"It had to have at least one component in the sixth, on the level of thought, but no

known determinors would affect it. Therefore I applied the mathematics of symbolic

logic to a wide variety of hunches, dreams, I've-been-here-or-done-this-befores,

premonitions, intuitions . . ."

 

"Llenderllon's eyeballs!" Luloy broke in. "So that was what you ran us all through the

wringer for, a while back."

 

"Precisely. Using these new determinors in various configurations---dictated not by

mathematical reasoning, but by luck and by hunch and by perseverance--I finally

obtained a set of uniquely manipulable determinants that yielded this final smooth

curve, the exactly fitting equation of which reduces beautifully to . . ."

 

"Hold it, Tamm," Mergon said, "you're losing me," and Luloy added,

 

"You lost me long ago. What does it mean?"

 

"It will take years to explore its ramifications, but one fact is clear: the fourth dimension

of space does actually exist. Therefore the conclusion seems inescapable that . . ."

 

"Stop it!" Luloy snapped. "This is terribly dangerous stuff to be talking about. That

terrific kind of a breakthrough is just exactly what Klazmon-the beast!-has been after for

years. And you know very well that we're not really free; that he has us under constant

surveillance."

 

"But by detector only," Mergon said. "A full working projection at this distance? Uh-uh. It

might be smart, though, to be a little on the careful side, at that."

 

Days lengthened into weeks. The ex-Llurdan cruiser, renamed the Mallidax and

converted into a Jelman worldlet, still hurtled along a right-line course toward the center

of the First Universe, at a positive-and-negative acceleration that would keep her-just

barely!-safe against collision with intergalactic clouds of gas or dust.

 

The objective of their flight was a small sun, among whose quite undistinguished family

of planets were a moderate-sized oxygen-bearing world and its rather large, but

otherwise uninteresting companion moon.

 

Tammon, hot on the trail of his breakthrough in science, kept his First Assistant Mergon

busy fourteen or sixteen hours per day designing and building-and sometimes

inventing-new and extremely special gear; and Mergon in turn drove Luloy, his wife and

Girl Friday, as hard as he drove himself.

 

Tammon, half the time, wore armor and billion-volt gloves against the terribly lethal

forces he was tossing so nonchalantly from point to point. Mergon, only slightly less

powerfully insulated, had to keep his variable-density goggles practically opaque

against the eye-tearing frequencies of his welding arcs. And even Luloy, much as she

detested the feel of clothing against her skin, was as armored and as insulated as was

either of the men as she tested and checked and double-checked and operated, with

heavily gloved flying fingers, the maze of unguarded controls that was her constructor

station.

 

And all the other Jelmi were working just as hard; even -or especially?-Master Biologist

Sennlloy: who, with her long, thick braids of Norse-goddess hair piled high on her head

and held in place by a platinum-filigree net, was delving deeper and ever deeper into

the mystery of life.

 

Any research man worth his salt must not be the type to give up: he must be able to

keep on butting his head against a stone wall indefinitely without hoisting the white flag.

Thus, Tammon developed theory after theory after theory for, and Mergon and Luloy

built model after model after model of, mechanisms to transport material objects from

one place to another in normal space by moving them through the fourth dimension-and

model after model after model failed to work.

 

They failed unfailingly. Unanimously. Wherefore Mergon had run somewhat low on

enthusiasm when he and Luloy carried the forty-ninth model of the series into

Tammon's laboratory to be put to the test. While the old savant hooked the device up

into a breadboard layout of gadgetry some fifteen feet long, Mergon somewhat boredly

picked up an empty steel box, dropped six large ball-bearings into it, closed and hasped

its cover, grasped it firmly in his left hand, and placed an empty steel bowl on the

bench.

 

"Now," Tammon said, and flipped a switch-and six heavy steel balls clanged into the

bowl out of nowhere.

 

"Huh?" Mergon's left hand had jumped upward of its own accord; and, fumbling in his

haste, he opened the box in that hand and stared, jaw actually agape, at its empty

interior.

 

"Llenderllon's eyeballs!" Luloy shrieked. "This one works!"

 

"It does indeed," a technician agreed, and turned anxiously to Tammon. "But sir,

doesn't that fact put us into a highly dangerous position? Even though Klazmon can't

operate a full working projection at this distance, he undoubtedly has had all his

analytical detectors out all this time and this successful demonstration must have

tripped at least some of them."

 

"Not a chance," Mergon said. "He'll never find these bands-it'd be exactly like trying to

analyze a pattern of fifth- or sixth-order force with a visible-light spectroscope."

 

"It probably would be, at that," the technician agreed, and Luloy said, "But what I've

been wondering about all along is, what good is it? What's it for? Except robbing a bank

or something, maybe."

 

"It reduces theory to practice," Tammon told her. "It gives us priceless data, by the

application of which to already-known concepts we will be able to build mechanisms

and devices to perform operations hitherto deemed impossible. Operations unthought-

of, in fact."

 

"Maybe we should be pretty careful about it, though, at that," Mergon said. "To do very

much real development work, we'll have to be using a lot of fairly unusual sixth order

stuff that he can detect and analyze. That will make him wonder what we're up to and

he won't stop at wondering. He'll take steps."

 

"Big steps," Luloy agreed.

 

Tammon nodded. "That is true . . . and we must land somewhere to do any worthwhile

development work, since this ship is not large enough to house the projectors we will

have to have. Also, we are short of certain necessities for such work, notably

neutronium and faidons . . . and the projectors of these ultra-bands will have to be of

tremendous power, range, and scope . . . you are right. We must find a solar system

emanating sixth-order energies. Enough of them, if possible, to mask completely our

own unavoidable emanations. We now have enough new data so that we can increase

tremendously the range, delicacy, and accuracy of our own detectors. See to it,

Mergon, and find a good landing place."

 

"Yes, sir!" and Mergon went, with enthusiasm again soaring high, to work.

 

Rebuilding and re-powering their detector systems did not take very long; but finding

the kind of landing place they needed proved to be something entirely else.

 

They had more or less assumed that many galaxies would show as much sixth-order

activity as did their own, but that assumption was wrong. In three weeks they found only

three galaxies showing any at all; and not one of the three was emanating as much

sixth-order stuff as their own small vessel was putting out.

 

After another week or so, however, the savant on watch asked Mergon to come to his

station. "There's something tremendous up ahead and off to starboard, Merg. That spot

there." He pointed. "It's been there for almost half an hour and it hasn't increased by a

thousandth of what I expected it to. I would have said that at that distance nothing could

possibly register that high."

 

"Did you check your circuits?" Mergon asked.

 

"Of course; everything's on the green."

 

"Main Control!" Mergon snapped into a microphone. "Mergon speaking. Flip one eighty

immediately. Decel max."

 

"Flip one eighty," the speaker said, and the vessel turned rapidly end for end. ". . . ON

the mark and decelerating at max."

 

Mergon whirled around and sprinted for Tammon's laboratory. He yanked the door and

reported, concluding, "It's apparently emanating thousands of times as much as our

whole galaxy does, so we'd better sneak up on it with care."

 

"Can we stop in time or will we have to overshoot and come back to it from the other

side? That may affect course, you know."

 

Mergon hadn't thought of that point, but he soon found out. They couldn't stop quite in

time, but the overshoot would be a matter of less than a day.

 

"See to it, Mergon," Tammon said, and resumed his interrupted studies.

 

The approach was made. Surprise turned to consternation when it was learned that

practically all of that emanation was coming from one planet instead of a thousand; but

since that condition was even better than any that had been hoped for, they shielded

everything that could be shielded and sneaked up on that extraordinary world-the third

planet of a Type G sun. It had an unusually large satellite . . . and ideal location for their

proposed operation . . . there were two small clusters of dome-shaped structures . . .

abandoned . . . quite recently . . . with advanced technology all such things and

procedures would of course be abandoned . . . and there were bits and pieces of what

looked like wreckage.

 

Seaton-who had not yet seen at close up any part of the moon!-would have recognized

at a glance the American and the Russian Lunar outposts, and also what was left of

Ranger Seven and of several other American and Russian moon-rockets.

 

As a matter of fact, the Jelmi could deduce, within fairly narrow limits, what had

happened on Earth's moon.

 

But all they cared about was that, since the moon was not inhabited at that time, they

would probably not attract undue attention if they landed on it and, thoroughly and

properly screened, went to work. And Klazmon could not possibly detect them there.

 

Luna's mountains are high and steep. Therefore, after the Mallidax had come easily to

ground at the foot of one such mountain, it took only a day for the Mallidan's mighty

construction-projectors to hollow out and finish off a subLunar base in that mountain's

depths.

 

And next day, early, work was begun upon the tremendous new superdreadnought of

the void that was going to be named the Mallidaxian.

 

10 JELMI ON THE MOON

 

Miss Madlyn Mannis---nee Gretchen Schneider-stood in the shade of a huge beach

umbrella (perish forbid that any single square inch of that petal-smooth, creamily

flawless epidermis should be exposed to Florida's fervent sun!) on Clearwater Beach.

She was digging first one set of rednailed toes and then the other, into the soft white

sand, and was gazing pensively out over the wavelets of the Gulf.

 

She was a tall girl, and beautifully built, with artistically waved artistically red hair; and

every motion she made was made with the lithe grace of the highly trained professional

dancer that she in fact was. She was one of the best exotic dancers in the business. As

a matter of box-office fact, she was actually almost as good as she thought she was.

 

She was wearing the skimpiest neo-bikini ever seen on Clearwater Beach and was

paying no attention whatever, either to the outraged glares of all the other women in

sight or to the distinctly unoutraged glances of the well built, deeply tanned, and highly

appreciative young man who was standing some twenty feet away.

 

She was wondering, however, and quite intensely, about the guy. He'd been following

her around for a couple of weeks. Or had he? She'd seen him somewhere every day

but he couldn't possibly have followed her here. Not only she hadn't known she was

coming here until just before she started, but she had come by speedboat and had

found him on the beach when she arrived!

 

And the man was wondering, too. He knew that he hadn't been following her. Without

hiring an eye, he wouldn't know how to. And the idea that Madlyn Mannis would be

following him around was ridiculous-it really stunk. But how many times in a row could

heads turn up by pure chance alone?

 

He didn't dare move any closer, but he kept on looking and he kept on wondering.

Would she slug him or just slap him or maybe even accept it, he wondered, if he should

offer to buy the Miss Mannis a drink . . .

 

Miss Mannis was also being studied, much more intensively and from much closer

viewpoints, by two Jelmi in an immense new spaceship, the Mallidaxian, on the moon;

and the more they studied the Mannis costume the more baffled they became.

 

As had been said, the Jelmi had had to build this immense new spaceship because the

comparatively tiny Mallidax, in which they had escaped from the Realm of the Llurdi,

had proved too small by far to house the outsized gear necessary for accurately

controlled intergalactic work of any kind. The Mallidaxian, however-built as she was of

inoson and sister-ship as she was to the largest, heaviest, and most powerful space-

sluggers of the Realm was not only big enough to carry any instrumentation known to

the science of the ago, but also powerful enough to cope with any foreseeable

development or contingency.

 

The Jarman sub-Lunar base had been dismantled and collapsed. Its every

distinguishing feature had been reduced to moon-dust. The Mallidaxian's slimly

powerful length now extended for a distance of two and one half miles from the

mountain's foot out into the level-floored crater: in less than an hour she would take off

for Mallidax, the home world of Tammon, Mergon, Luloy, and several other top bracket

Jelmi of the fugitive eight hundred.

 

The vessel's officers and crew were giving their instruments and mechanisms one last

pre-flight check. Tammon was still studying the offensive and defensive capabilities of

Cape Kennedy; Mergon and Luloy-among others-had been studying the human beings

of this hitherto unknown world. Everyone aboard, of course, had long since mastered

the principal languages of Earth.

 

That Madlyn Mannis should have been selected for observation was not very

astonishing. Some thousands of Earthmen-and Earthwomen, Earthchildren, even

Earthdogs and cats-had been. There was that about Madlyn Mannis, however, and to a

lesser degree about the male with whom she seemed in some way associated, that

seemed to deserve special study. For one thing, the Jelmi had been totally unable to

deduce any shred of evidence that might indicate her profession-not so surprising,

since the work of a stripper must seem pure fantasy to a world which habitually wears

no clothes at all! Madlyn, although used to being talked about, would have been quite

astonished to learn how interestedly she was being discussed on the far side of the

moon.

 

"Oh, let's bring her up here, Meru," Luloy said in disgust. "I want to talk to her-find out

what this idiocy means. We'd better bring that fellow along, too: she'd probably be

scared out of her wits-if any-alone."

 

"Check," Mergon said, and the two Tellurians appeared, standing close together, in the

middle of the room.

 

The girl screamed once; then, her eyes caught by the awesome moonscape so starkly

visible through the transparent wall, she froze and stared in terror. Then, finding that

she was not being hurt, she fought her terror down. She took one fleeting glance at

Mergon, blushed to the waist, and concentrated on Luloy. "Why, you must . . . you do

go naked!" she gasped. "All the time! How utterly, utterly shameless!"

 

"Shameless?" Luloy wrinkled her nose in perplexity. "That's what I want to talk to you

about, this `shame' concept. I can't understand it and its dictionary definition is

senseless to the point of unsanity. I never heard of a concept before that so utterly

lacked sense, reason, and logic. What significant difference can there possibly be

between nakedness and one ribbon and two bits of gauze? And why in the name of All-

Seeing Llenderllon wear any clothing at all when you don't have to? Against cold or

thorns or whatever? And especially when you swim? And you take o$ your clothes too .

. ."

 

"I do no such thing!" The dancer drew herself up haughtily. "I am an artiste. An exotic

dancer's disrobing is a fine art, and I am Madlyn Mannis, the exotic dancer."

 

"Be that as it may, just answer one question and we'll put you back where you were, on

the beach. What possible logical, reasonable, or even comprehensible relationship can

there be between clothing and sex?"

 

While the girl was groping for an answer, the man took one step forward and said, "She

can't answer that question. Neither can I, fully, but I can state as a fact that such a

relationship is a fact of our lives; of the lives of all the peoples--even the least civilized

peoples-of our world. It's an inbred, ages-old, world-wide sexual taboo. Based, possibly

or even probably, upon the idea `out of sight, out of mind'. "

 

"A sexual taboo?". Luloy shook her head in complete, bafflement. "Why, I never heard

of anything so completely idiotic in my whole life! Will you wear these thought-caps with

me for a moment, please, so that we may explore this weird concept in depth?"

 The girl flinched away from the helmet at first, but the man reached out for his, saying,

"I've always claimed to have an open mind, but this I've got to see."

 

Since complete non-comprehension of motivation on one side met fundamental

ignorance on the other, however, thoughts were no more illuminating than words had

been.

 

"Neither she nor I know enough about the basics of that branch of anthropology," the

man said, handing the helmet back to Luloy. "You'd better get a book. Mores and

Customs of Tellus, by David Lisser, in five volumes, is the most complete work I know

of. You can find it in any big bookstore. It's expensive, though-it costs seventy-five

dollars."

 

"Oh? And we haven't any American money and we don't steal . . . but I've noticed that

highly refractive bits of crystalline carbon of certain shades of color are of value here."

 

Turning her back on the two Tellurians, Luloy went to the laboratory bench, opened a

drawer, glanced into it, and shook her head. She picked up a helmet, thought into it,

and there appeared upon the palm of her hand a perfectly cut, perfectly polished, blue-

white diamond half the size of an egg.

 

She turned back toward the two and held out her hand so that the man could inspect

the gem, saying, "I have not given any attention at all to your monetary system, but this

should be worth enough, I think, to leave in the place of the book of five volumes. Or

should if be bigger?"

 

Close up, the man .goggled at blue-white fire. "Bigger! Than that rock? Lady! Are you

kidding? If that thing will stand inspection it'll buy you a library, buildings and all!"

 

"That's all I wanted to know. Thank you." Luloy turned to Mergon. "They don't know any

more than . . ."

 

"Just a minute; please," the man broke in. "If diamonds don't mean any more than that

to you, why wouldn't it be a good idea for you to make her some? To alleviate the shock

she has just had? Not as big, of course; none bigger than the end of my thumb."

 

Luloy nodded. "I know. Various sizes, for full-formal array. She's just about my size, so

eleven of your quarts will do it."

 

"My God, no. . . :' Madlyn began, but the man took smoothly over.

 

"Not quite, Miss Luloy. Our ladies don't decorate their formats as lavishly as you

apparently do. One quart, or maybe a quart and a half, will do very nicely."

 

"Very well," Luloy looked directly at the man. "But you won't want to be lugging them

around with you all the rest of the day-they're heavy-so I'll put them in the righthand top

drawer of the bureau in your bedroom. Good-by," and Mergon's hands began to move

toward his controls.

 

"Wait a minute!" the man exclaimed. "You can't just dump us back where we were

without a word of explanation! While spaceships aren't my specialty-I'm a petrochemical

engineer tee eight-I've never imagined anything as big as this vessel actually flying, and

I'm just about as much interested in that as I am in the way we got here which has to be

fourth-dimensional translation; it can't be anything else. So if everything isn't top secret,

how about showing us around a little?"

 

"The fourth-dimension device is top secret; so much so that only three or four of us

know anything about it. You may study anything else you please. Bearing in mind that

we have only a few seconds over three of your minutes left where would you like to

begin?"

 

"The engines first, please, and the drives."

 

"And you, Miss Mannis? Arts? Crafts? Sciences? There is no dancing going on at the

moment."

 

The dancer's right hand flashed out, seized her fellow Earthman's forearm and clung to

it. "Wherever he goes I go along!" she said, very positively.

 

Since neither of the two Earthpeople had even been projected before, they were both

very much surprised at how much can be learned via projection, and in how short a

time. They saw tremendous receptors and generators and propulsors; they saw the

massed and banked and tiered keyboards and instrumentation of the control stations;

they saw how the incredibly huge vessel's inoson structural members were trussed and

latticed and braced and buttressed to make it possible for such a titanic structure to fly.

 

Since everything aboard the original Jelman vessel had been moved aboard this vastly

larger one before the original had been reduced to moon-dust, the dancer and her

companion also saw beautiful, splendid, and magnificent-if peculiarly unearthly-

paintings and statues and tapestries and rugs. They heard music, ranging from vast

orchestral recordings down to the squeakings and tootlings of beginners learning to

play musical instruments unknown to the humanity of Earth.

 

And above all they saw people. Hundreds and hundreds of people; each one

completely naked and each one of a physical perfection almost never to be found on

Earth.

 

At time zero minus twenty seconds Mergon cut off the projectors and the Earthman

looked at Luloy.

 

She not only had swapped the diamond for the five-volume set of books; she had

already read over a hundred pages of Volume One. She was flipping pages almost as

fast as her thumb and forefinger could move, and she was absorbing the full content of

the work at the rate of one glance per page.

 

"You people seem to be as human as we are," Madlyn said, worriedly, "but outside of

that you're nothing like us at all in any way. Where did you come from anyway?"

 

"I can't tell you," Mergon said, flatly. "Not that I don't want to, I can't. We're what you call

human, yes; but our world Mallidax is a myriad of galaxies away from here -so far away

that the distance is completely incomprehensible to the mind. Good-by."

 

And Madlyn Mannis found herself-with no lapse of time and with no sensation whatever

of motion-standing in her former tracks under the big umbrella on the beach. The only

difference was that she was now standing still instead of digging her toes into the sand.

 

She looked at her fellow moon-traveler. He, too, was standing in the same place as

before, but he now looked as though he had been struck by lightning. She swallowed

twice, then said, "Well, I'm awfully glad I wasn't alone when that hap . . ." she broke off

abruptly, licked her lips, and went on in a strangely altered tone, "Or am I nuttier than a

fruit-cake? Vas you dere, Shar-lee?"

 

"I vas dere, Madlyn." He walked toward her. He was trying to grin, but was not having

much success with it. "And my name is Charley-Charles K. van der Gleiss."

 

"My God! That makes it even worse=or does it?"

 

"I don't see how anything could; very well or very much . . . but I need a drink. How

about you?"

 

"Brother! Do I! But we'll have to dress. You can't get anything on the beach here that's

strong enough to cope with anything like that!"

 

"I know. City owned. Teetotal. I'll see you out in front in a couple of minutes. In a taxi."

 

"Make it five minutes, or maybe a bit more. And if you run out on me, Charles K. van

der Gleiss, I'll . . . I'll hunt you up and kill you absolutely dead, so help me!"

 

"Okay, I'll wait, but make it snappy. I need that drink."

 

She had snatched up her robe and had taken off across the sand like a startled doe;

her reply came back over one shoulder. "You need a drink? Oh, brother!"

 

11 BLOTTO

 

THE world had come a long way from the insular, mudbound globe of rock and sea of

the 1950s and 1970s; Seaton and Crane had seen to that. Norlaminian observers were

a familiar sight to most humans-if not in person, then surely through the medium of TV

or tapefax. A thousand worlds had been photographed by Tellurian cameramen and

reporters; the stories of the Osnomians, the Fenachrone, the Valeronians, even the

Chlorans and the other weirdly non-human races of the outer void were a matter of

public record.

 

Nevertheless, it is a far different thing from knowing that other races exist to find

yourself a guest of one of them, a quarter of a million miles from home; wherefore

Madlyn and Charles's expressed intentions took immediate and tangible form.

 

Madlyn Mannis and Charles K. van der Gleiss were facing each other across a small

table in a curtained booth; a table upon which a waiter was placing a pint of bonded

hundred-proof- bourbon and the various items properly accessory thereto. As soon as

the curtain fell into place behind the departing waiter the girl seized the bottle, raised it

to her mouth, and belted down a good two fingers-as much as she could force down

before her coughing, choking, and strangling made her stop.

 

"Hey! Take it easy!" the man protested, taking the bottle from her hand and putting it

gently down on the table. "You're not used to guzzling it like that; that's for plain damn

sure."

 

She gulped and coughed a few times; wiped her streaming eyes. "I'll tell the world I'm

not; two little ones is always my limit, ordinarily. But I needed that jolt, Charley, to keep

from flipping my lid completely. Don't you need one, too?"

 

"I certainly do. A triple, at least, with a couple of snowflakes of ice and about five drops

of water." He built the drink substantially as specified, took it down in three swallows,

and drew a profoundly deep breath. "You heard me tell them I'm a petrochemical

engineer, tee eight. So maybe that didn't hit me quite as hard as it did you, but bottled

courage helps, believe me." He mixed another drink-a single---and cocked an eyebrow

at the girl. "That'll you have as a chaser for that God-awful belt?"

 

"A scant jigger-three-quarters, about-in a water glass," she said, promptly. "Two ice-

cubes and fill it up with acceptor." He mixed the drink and she took a sip. "Thanks,

Charley. This is much better for drinking purposes. Now maybe I can talk about what

happened without blowing my top. I was going to wonder why we've been running into

each other all the time lately, but that doesn't amount to anything compared to . . . I

actually thought . . . in fact, I know very well . . . we were on . . . weren't we? Both of

us?"

 

"We were both on the moon," he said flatly. "To make things worse, we were inside a

spaceship that I still don't believe can be built. Those are facts."

 

"Uh-uh; that's what I mean. Positively nobody ever went to the moon or anywhere else

off-Earth without being in something, and we didn't have even the famous paddle. And

posi-damn-tively nobody-but nobody!-ever got into and out of a tightly closed, vacuum-

tight spaceship without anybody opening any doors or ports or anything. How do you

play them tunes on your piccolo, friend?"

 

"I don't; and the ship itself was almost as bad. Not only was it impossibly big; it was full

of stuff that makes the equipment of the General Hoyt S. Vandenberg look like picks

and shovels." She raised an eyebrow questioningly and he went on, "One of the

missile-tracking vessels-the hairiest hunks of electronic gadgetry ever built by man.

What it all adds up to is a race of people somewhere who know as much more than

even the Norlaminians do as we do than grasshoppers. So I think we had better report

to the cops."

 

"The cops!" she spat the word out like an oath. "Me? Madlyn Mannis? Squeal to the

fuzz? When a great big gorilla slugs me in the brisket and heists fifteen Brands' worth of

diamonds off of me and I don't get . . ."

 

She broke off suddenly. Both had avoided mentioning the diamonds, but now the word

was accidentally out. She shook her head vigorously, then said, "Uh-uh. They aren't

there. Who ever heard of diamonds by the quart? Anyway, even if that Luloy could have

done it and did, I'll bet they evaporated or something."

 

"Or they'll turn out to be glass," he agreed. "No use looking, hardly, I don't think. Even if

they are there and are real, you couldn't sell 'em without telling where they came from-

and you can't do that."

 

"I couldn't? Don't be naive, Charley. Nobody ever asks me where I got any diamonds I

sell-I'd slap his silly face off. I can peddle your half, too, at almost wholesale. Not all at

once, of course, but a few at a time, here and there."

 

"Half, Uh-uh," he objected. "I was acting as your agent on that deal. Ten per cent."

 

"Half," she insisted; then grinned suddenly. "But why argue about half of nothing? To

get back onto the subject of cops-the lugs!-they brushed my report off as a stripper's

publicity gag and I didn't get even one line in the papers. And if I report this weirdie

they'll give me a oneway, most-direct-route ticket to the nearest funny-farm."

 

"You've got a point there." He glowered at his drink. "I can see us babbling about

instantaneous translation through the fourth dimension and an impossible spaceship on

the moon manned by people exactly like us-except that the men all look like Green Bay

Packers and all the girls without exception are stacked like . . . like . . ." Words failed

him.

 

Madlyn nodded thoughtfully. "Uh-huh," she agreed. "They were certainly stacked. That

Luloy . . . that biologist Sennlloy, who was studying all those worms and mice and

things . . . all of 'em. And they swap hundred-carat perfect blue-white diamonds for

books."

 

"Yeah. We start babbling that kind of stuff and we wind up in wrap-arounds."

 

"You said it. But we've got to do something!"

 

"Well, we can report to an Observer-"

 

"I've got a better idea. Let's tie one really on."

 

Neither of them remembered very much of what happened after that, but at about three

o'clock the following afternoon Charley van der Gleiss struggled upward through 4

million miles of foul-tasting molasses to consciousness. He was lying on the couch in

his living room; fully dressed, even to his shoes. He worked himself up, very carefully, to

a sitting position and shook his head as carefully. It didn't quite explode. Good-he'd

probably live.

 

Walking as though on eggs, he made cautious way to the bedroom. She was lying, also

fully dressed, on his bed. On the coverlet. As he sat gingerly down on the side of the

bed she opened one eye, then the other, put both hands to her head, and groaned; her

features twisting in agony. "Stop shaking me, you . . . please," she begged. "Oh, my

poor head! It's coming clear off . . . right at the neck . . ."

 

Then, becoming a little more conscious, she went on, "It didn't go back into the

woodwork, Charley, did it? I'll see that horrible moonscape and that naked Luloy as long

as I live."

 

"And I'll see that nightmare of a spaceship. While you're taking the first shot at the

bathroom I'll have 'em send up a gallon of black coffee, a couple of quarts of orange

juice, and whatever the pill-roller downstairs says is good for what ails us. In the

meantime, would you like a hair of the dog?"

 

"My God, no!" She shuddered visibly. "I never got drunk in my life before-I have to keep

in shape, you know-and if I live through this I swear I'll never take another drink as long

as I live!"

 

When they began to feel better Madlyn said, "Why don't you peek into that drawer,

Charley? There just might be something in it."

 

He did, and there was, and he gave her the honor of lifting the soft plastic bag out of the

drawer.

 

"My God!" she gasped. "There's four or five pounds of them!" She opened the bag with

trembling fingers and stood entranced for half a minute, then took out a few of the gems

and examined them minutely.

 

"Charley," she said then, "if I know anything about diamonds-and I admit that I know a

lot-these are not only real, but the finest things I have ever seen. I'm almost afraid to try

to sell even the littlest ones. Men just simply don't give girls rocks like that. I'm not even

sure that there are very many others like those around. If any."

 

"Well, we would probably have had to talk to an Observer anyway, and this makes it a

forced putt. Let's go, Maddy."

 

"In this wreckage?" Expression highly scornful, she waved a hand at her rumpled and

wrinkled green afternoon gown. "Are you completely out of your mind?"

 

"Oh, that's easy. I'll shave and put on a clean shirt and an intelligent, look and then we'll

skip over to your place for you to slick up and then we'll go down to the Observer's

office. Say, have you got a safe-deposit box?"

 

"No, but don't worry about that for awhile, my friend. We haven't got 'em past the

Observer yet!"

 

An hour later, looking and feeling almost human again, the two were ushered into the

Observer's heavily screened private office. They told him, as nearly as they could

remember, every detail of everything that had happened.

 

He listened attentively. He had been among the Tellurians only a few short months; in

the cautious thoughtful way of Norlaminians, he was far from ready to claim that he

understood them. These two in particular seemed quite non-scientific and un-logical in

their attitudes . . . and yet, he thought, and yet there was that about them which

seemed to deserve a hearing. So he heard. Then he put on a headset and saw.

Visually he investigated the far side of the moon; then, frowning slightly, he increased

his power to microscopic magnification and re-examined half a dozen tiny areas. He

then conferred briefly with Rovol of Rays on distant Norlamin, who in turn called Seaton

into a long-distance three-way.

 

"No doubt whatever about it," Seaton said. "If they hadn't been hiding from somebody

or something they wouldn't have ground up that many thousands of tons of inoson into

moon-dust-that's a project, you know-and I don't need to tell you that inoson does not

occur in nature. Yes, we definitely need to know more about this one. Coming in!"

 

Seaton's projection appeared in the Observer's office and, after being introduced,

handed thought-helmets to Madlyn and Charley. "Put these on, please, and go over the

whole thing again, in as fine detail as you possibly can. It's not that we doubt any of

your statements; it's just that we want to record and to study very carefully all the side-

bands of thought that can be made to appear."

 

The two went over their stories again; this time being interrupted, every other second or

two, by either Seaton or the Observer with sharply pertinent questions or suggestions.

When, finally, both had been wrung completely dry, the Observer took off his helmet

and said:

 

"Although much of this material is not for. public dissemination, I will tell you enough to

relieve your minds of stress; especially since you have already seen some of it and I

know that neither of you will talk." Being a very young Norlaminian, just graduated from

the Country of Youth, he smiled at this, and the two smiled-somewhat wryly-back.

 

"Wait a minute," Seaton said. "I'm not sure we want their minds relieved of too much

stress. They both ring bells-loud ones. I'd swear I know you both from somewhere,

except I know darn well I've never met either of you before . . . it's a cinch nobody could

ever forge: meeting Madlyn Mannis . . ." He paused, then snapped a finger sharply.

"Idiot! Of course! Where were you, both of you, at hours twenty-three fifty-nine on the

eighteenth?"

 

"Huh? What is this, a gag?" van der Gleiss demanded.

 

"Anything else but, believe me," Seaton assured him. "Madlyn?"

 

"One minute of midnight? That would be the finale of my first show . . . Oh-oh! Was the

eighteenth a Friday?"

 

"Yes."

 

"That's it!" The girl was visibly excited now. "Something did happen. Don't ask me what-

all I know is I was just finishing my routine, and I got this feeling--this feeling of

importance about something. Why, you were in it!" She stared at Seaton's projection

incredulously. "Yes! But-you were different somehow. I don't know how. Like a-like a

reflection of you, or a bad photograph . . ."

 

Through his headset Seaton thought a quick, private three-way conference with Rovol

and the Norlaminian on Earth: "-clearly refers to our beacon message-" "-yes, but holy

cats, Rovol, what's this about a `reflection'?=' "-conceivably some sort of triggered

response from another race-"

 

It took less than a second, then Seaton continued with the girl and her companion, who

were unaware that any interchange had taken place.

 

"The `something important' you're talking about, Madlyn, was a message that we

broadcast. You might call it an SOS; we were looking for a response from some other

race or civilization with a little more on the ball than we have. We've been hoping for an

answer; it's just possible that, through you, we've got one. What was that `reflection'

like?"

 

"I'd call it a psychic pull," said Madlyn promptly. "And now that you mention it, I felt it

with these Jelmi too. And-" Her eyes widened, and she turned to stare at Charley.

 

Seaton snapped his fingers. "Look, Madlyn. Can you take time off to spend with us? I

don't know what you've got into-but I want you nearby if you get into it again!"

 

"Why, certainly, Mr. Seaton. I mean-Doctor Seaton. I'll call Moe-that's my agent-and

cancel Vegas, and-"

 

"Thanks," grinned Seaton. "You won't lose anything by it."

 

"I'm sure I won't, judging by . . . but oh, yes, how about those diamonds-if they are?"

 

"Oh, they are," the Norlaminian assured her, "and they're of course yours. Would you

like to have me sell them for you?"

 

She glanced questioningly at van der Gleiss, who nodded and gave the jewels to the

Observer. Then, "We'd like that very much, sir," Madlyn said, "and thanks a lot."

 

"Okay," Seaton said then. "Now, how about you, Charley. What kind of a jolt did you get

at one minute of twelve that Friday night?"

 

"Well, it was the first time I caught Madlyn's act, and I admit it's a sockeroo. She has

the wallop of a piledriver, no question of that. But if you mean spirit-message flapdoodle

or psychic poppycock, nothing. I'm not psychic myself-not a trace-and nobody can sell

me that anybody else is, either. That stuff is purely the bunk-it's strictly for the birds."

 

"It isn't either, Mister Charles K. van der Gleiss!" Madlyn exclaimed. "And you are too

psychic-very strongly so! How else would we be stumbling over each other everywhere

we go? And how else would I possibly get drunk with you?" She spread her hands out

in appeal to the Observer. "Isn't he psychic?"

 

"My opinion is that he is unusually sensitive to certain forces, yes," the Norlaminian

said. "Think carefully, youth. Wasn't there something more than the mental or esthetic

appreciation of, and the physical-sexual thrill at, the work of a superb exotic dancer?"

 

"Of course there was!" the man snapped. "But . . but . . . oh, I

don't know. Now that Madlyn mentions it, there was a sort of a feeling of a message.

But I haven't got even the foggiest idea of what the goddam thing was!"

 

"And that," Seaton said, "is about the best definition of it I've ever heard. We haven't

either."

 

12 DU QUESNE AND THE JELMI

 

DUQUESNE, who had not seen enough of the Skylark of Valeron to realize that it was

an intergalactic spacecraft, had supposed that Seaton and his party were still aboard

Skylark Three, which was of the same size and power as DuQuesne's own ship, the

Capital D. Therefore, when it became clear just what it was with which the Capital D

was making rendezvous, to say that DuQuesne was surprised is putting it very mildly

indeed.

 

He had supposed that his vessel was one of the three most powerful

superdreadnoughts of space ever built-but this! This thing was not a spaceship at all! In

every important respect it was a world. It was big enough 4o mount and to power

offensive and defensive armament of full planetary capability . . . and if he knew Seaton

and Crane half as well as he thought he did, that monstrosity could volatilize a world as

easily as it could light a firecracker.

 

He was second. Again. And such an insignificantly poor second as to he completely out

of the competition.

 

Something would have to be done about this intolerable situation . . . and finding out

what could be done about it would take precedence over everything else until he did

find out.

 

He scowled in thought. That worldlet of a spaceship changed everything-radically. He'd

been going to let eager-beaver Seaton grab the ball and run with it while he,

DuQuesne, went on about his own business. But now could he take the risk? Ten to

one-or a hundred to one? =he couldn't touch that planetoid's safety screens with

anything he had. But it was worth his while to try . . .

 

Energizing the lightest possible fifth- and sixth-order webs, he reached out with his

utmost delicacy of touch to feel out the huge globe's equipment; to find out exactly what

it had.

 

He found out exactly nothing; and in zero time. At the first, almost imperceptible touch

of DuQuesne's web the mighty planetoid's every defense flared instantaneously into

being.

 

DuQuesne cut his webbing, the defenses vanished, and Seaton said, "No peeking,

DuQuesne. Come inside and you can look around all you please, but from outside it

can't be done."

 

"I see it can't. How do I get inside?"

 

"One of your shuttles or small boats. Go neutral as soon as you clear your outer skin

and I'll bring you in."

 

"I'll do that,"-and as DuQuesne in one of his vessel's lifeboats traversed the long series

of locks through the worldlet's tremendously thick shell he kept on wrestling with his

problem.

 

No, the idea of letting Seaton be the Big Solo Hero was out like the well-known light.

Seaton and his whole party would have to die. And the sooner the better.

 

He'd known it all along, really; his thinking had slipped, back there, for sure. With that

fireball of a ship-flying base, rather-by the time Seaton got the job done he would be so

big that nothing could ever cut him down to size. For that matter, was there anything

that could be done about Seaton and his planetoid, even at the size they already were?

There was no- vulnerability apparent . . . on the outside, at least. But there had to be

something; some chink or opening; all he had to do was think of it-like the time he and

"Baby Doll" Loring had taken over a fully-manned superdreadnought of the

Fenachrone.

 

The smart thing to do, the best thing for Marc C. DuQuesne, would be to join Seaton

and work hand in glove with him-for a while. Until he had a bigger, more powerful

worldlet than Seaton did and knew more than all the Skylarkers put together. Then blow

the Skylark of Valeron and everyone and everything in it into impalpable dust and go on

about his own business; letting Civilization worry about itself.

 

To get away with that, he might have to give his word to act as one of the party, as

before.

 

He never had broken his word . . . so he wouldn't give it, this time, unless he had to . . .

but if he had to? If it came to a choice-breaking his word or being Emperor Marc the

First of a galaxy, founder of a dynasty the like of which no civilization had ever seen

before?

 

Whatever happened, come hell or high water, Seaton and his crew must and would die.

He, DuQuesne, must and would come out on top!

 

As soon as DuQuesne's lifeboat was inside the enormous hollow globe that was the

Skylark of Valeron, Seaton brought it to a gentle landing in a dock behind his own home

and walked out to the dock with a thought-helmet on his head and its mate in his hand.

 

DuQuesne opened his lifeboat's locks and Seaton joined him in the tiny craft's main

compartment.

 

Face to face, neither man spoke in greeting or offered to shake hands; both knew that

there was nothing of friendship between them or ever would be. Nor did DuQuesne

wonder why Seaton was meeting him thus: outside and alone. He knew exactly what

the women, especially Margaret, thought of him; but such trifles had no effect whatever

upon the essence of Marc C. DuQuesne.

 

Seaton handed DuQuesne the spare headset. DuQuesne put it on and Seaton said in

thought, "This, you'll notice, is no ordinary mechanical educator; not by seven thousand

rows of Christmas trees. I suppose you know you're in the Skylark of Valeron. Study it,

and take your time. I'll give you her prints before you go-if we're going to have to be

allies again you ought to have something better than your Capital D to work with."

 

Seaton thought that this surprise might make DuQuesne's guard slip for an instant, but

it didn't. DuQuesne studied the worldlet intensively for over an hour, then took off his

headset and said:

 

"Nice job, Seaton. Beautiful; especially that tank-chart of the First Universe and that

super-computer brain-some parts of which, I see, this headset enables me to operate.

The rest of it, I suppose, is keyed to and in sync with your own mind? No others need

apply?"

 

"That's right. So, with the prints, you'll have everything you need, I think. But before you

go into detail, I may know a thing that you don't and that many have a lot of bearing,

one place or another. Have you ever heard of any way of getting into or through the

fourth dimension except by rotation?"

 

"No. Not even in theory. How sure are you that there is or can be any other way of

doing it?"

 

"Positive. One that not even the Norlaminians know anything about," and Seaton gave

DuQuesne the full picture and the full story and all the side-bands of thought of

everything that had happened to Madlyn Mannis and Charles van der Gleiss.

 

At the sight of Mergon and Luloy-two of the three Jelmi whom the monstrous alien

Klazmon had been comparing with the Fenachrone and with the chlorine-breathing

amoeboid Chlorans and with DuQuesne himself-it took every iota of DuQuesne's iron

control to make no sign of the astounding burst of interest he felt; for in one blinding

flash of revealment his entire course of action became pellucidly clear. He knew exactly

where and -what Galaxy DW-427-LU was. He knew how to get Seaton headed toward

that galaxy. He knew how to kill Seaton and all his crew and take over the Skylark of

Valeron. And, best of all, he knew how to cover his tracks!

 

Completely unsuspicious of any of these thoughts, Seaton went on, "Now we're ready, I

think, for the fine details of what you found out."

 

After giving a precisely detailed report that lasted for twenty minutes, DuQuesne said,

"Now as to location. I have a cylindrical chart-a plug-chart, you might call it of all the

galaxies lying close to the line between the point in space where your stasis-capsule

whiffed out and the First Galaxy. Those four reels there." He pointed. "But I have no

idea whatever as to where that plug lies in the universe -its universal coordinates. But

since you know where you are and I know how I got here, it can be computed-in time."

 

"In practically nothing fiat," Seaton said. "As fast as you can run your tapes through

your scanner there." Seaton put his headset back on; DuQuesne followed suit. "They

don't even have to be in order. When the end of the last tape clears the scanner your

plug will be in our tank."

 

And it was: a long, narrow cylinder of yellowish-green haze.

 

"Nice; very nice indeed." DuQuesne paid tribute to performance. "I started my trip right

there." He marked the spot with a tiny purple light. It was a weird sensation, this;

working, with that gigantic brain, in that super-gigantic tank-chart, with only a headset

and at a distance of miles!

 

"With my artificial gravity set to exact universal north as straight up," DuQuesne went

on, "I moved along a course as close as possible to the axis of that cylinder to this point

here." The purple point extended itself into a long line of purple light and stopped.

"Klazmon's tight beam hit me at that point there, coming in from eighty-seven point four

one eight degrees starboard and three point nine two six degrees universal south."

 

DuQuesne's mind, terrifically hard held for that particular statement, revealed not the

faintest side-band or other indication of what a monstrous lie that was. The figures

themselves were very nearly right; but the fact that the beam had actually come in from

the port and the north made a tremendous difference. The purple line darted off at

almost a right angle to itself and DuQuesne went on without a break:

 

"You'll note that there are two galaxies on that line; one about half way out to the rim of

the universe-" this galaxy actually was, in Klazmon's nomenclature, Galaxy DW-427-

LU-"the other one clear out; right on the rim itself. Under those conditions no reliable

estimate of distance was possible, but if we assume that Klazmon's power is of the

same order of magnitude as ours it would have to be the first one. However, I'm making

no attempt to defend that assumption."

 

"Sure not; but it's safe enough, I'd say, for a first approximation. So, making that

assumption, that galaxy is where the Realm of the Llurdi is-where the Llurdi and the

Jelmi are. Where the folks that built that big battlewagon on the moon came from."

 

"While the data do not prove it, by any means, that would be my best-educated guess.

But my next one-that that's where they're going back to--isn't based on anything

anywhere near that solid. Side-bands only. and not too many or too strong."

 

"Yeah, I got some, too. But you're having first cut at this; go ahead," Seaton said.

 

"Okay. First, you have to dig up some kind of an answer to the question of why those

Jelmi came such an ungodly long distance away from home to do what was, after all, a

small job of work. We know that they didn't do it just for fun. We know that the whole

race of Jelmi is oppressed; we know that those eight hundred rebelled. We're fairly sure

that Earth alone is, right now, putting out more sixthorder emanation than all the rest of

the First Universe put together.

 

"Okay. There were some indications that Tammon worked out the theory of that fourth-

dimensional gizmo quite a while back; but they had to come this tremendous distance

to find enough high-order emanation to mask their research and development work

from His Nibs Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth.

 

"Now. My argument gets pretty tenuous at this point, but isn't it a fairly safe bet that,

having reduced the theory of said gizmo to practice and having built a ship big enough

to handle it like toothpicks, they'd beat it right back home as fast as they could leg it,

knock the living hell out of the Llurdi-they could, you know, like shooting fish in a well -

and issue a star-spangled Declaration of Independence? It does to me."

 

"Check. While I didn't get there by exactly the same route you did, I arrived at the same

destination. So it's not only got to be investigated; it's got to be Number One on the

agenda. Question; who operates? Your baby or mine?"

 

"You know the answer to that. I'll have other fish to fry; quite possibly until after you

have the Jelman angle solved."

 

"My thought exactly." Seaton assumed that DuQuesne's first, most urgent job would be

to build a worldlet of his own; DuQuesne did not correct this thought. Seaton went on,

"The other question, then, is -clo we join forces again. or work independently . . . or

maybe table the question temporarily, until you get yourself organized and we will have

made at least a stab at evaluating what this Llurdan menace actually amounts to?"

 

"The last . . . I think." DuQuesne scowled in thought, then his face cleared but at no

time was there the slightest seepage of side-bands to the effect that he, DuQuesne,

would see to it that Seaton would be dead long before that. Or that he, DuQuesne, did

not give a tinker's damn whether anything was ever done about the Llurdan menace or

not.

 

The two men discussed less important details for perhaps ten minutes longer; then

DuQuesne took his leave. And, out in deep space again, with his mighty Capital D

again boring a hole through the protesting ether, DuQuesne allowed himself a

contemptuous and highly satisfactory sneer.

 

Back in their own living room, Seaton asked his wife, "Dottie, did you smell anything the

least bit fishy about that?"

 

"Not a thing, Dick. I gave it everything I had, and everything about it rang as true as a

silver bell. Did you detect anything?"

 

"Not a thing-curse it! Even helmet to helmet-as deep as I could go without putting the

screws on and blowing everything higher than up-it was flawless. But you've got to

remember the guy's case-hardened and diamond finished . . . But you've also got to

remember that I came to exactly the same conclusions he did-and completely

independently."

 

"So every indication is that he is acting decently. He's been known to, you know."

 

"Yeah. It's possible." Seaton did not sound at all sold on the possibility. "But I wouldn't

trust that big black ape as far as I could drop-kick him . . . . I'd like awfully well to know

whether he's pitching us a curve or not . . . and if he is, what the barb-tailed devil it can

possibly be . . . so what we'll have to do, pet, is keep our eyes peeled and look a little

bit out all the time."

 

And, still scowling and still scanning and re-scanning every tiniest bit of data for flaws,

Seaton set course for Galaxy DW-427-LU, having every reason to believe it the galaxy

in which the Realm of the Llurdi lay. Also, although he did not mention this fact even to

Dorothy, that course "felt right" to some deeply buried, unknown, and impossible sense

in which he did not, could not, and would not believe.

 

For Seaton did not know that Galaxy DW-427-LU was in fact going to be highly

important to him in a way that he could not foresee; if he had known, would not have

believed; if he had believed, would not have understood.

 

For at that moment in time, not even Richard Ballinger Seaton knew what forces he had

unleashed with his "cosmic beacon."

 

13 DU QUESNE AND SENNLLOY

 

IN the eyes of Blackie Duquesne, Seaton was forever and helplessly trapped in the

philosophy of the "good guy." It was difficult for DuQuesne to comprehend why a mind

of as high an order of excellence as Seaton's-fully the equal of DuQuesne's own in

many respects, as DuQuesne himself was prepared to concede-should subscribe to the

philosophy of lending a helping hand, accepting the defeat of an enemy without rancor,

refraining from personal aggrandizement when the way was so easily and temptingly

clear to take over the best part of a universe.

 

Nevertheless, DuQuesne knew that these traits were part of Seaton's makeup. He had

counted on them. He had not been disappointed. It would, have been child's play for

Seaton to have tricked and destroyed him as he entered that monster spaceship

Seaton had somehow acquired. Instead of that, Seaton had made him a free gift of its

equal!

 

That, however, was not good enough for Blackie DuQuesne. Seeing how far Seaton

had progressed had changed things. He could not accept the status of co-belligerent.

He had to be the victor.

 

And the one portentous hint he had gleaned from Seaton of the existence of a true

fourth-dimensional system could be the tool that would make him the victor; wherefore

he set out at once to get it.

 

Since he had misdirected Seaton as to the vector of the course of the Jelmi, sending

him off on what, DuQuesne congratulated himself, was the wildest of wild-goose

chases, DuQuesne need only proceed in the right direction and somehow-anyhow;

DuQuesne was superbly confident that he would find a means-get from them the secret

of what he needed to know. His vessel had power to spare. Therefore he cut in

everything his mighty drives could take, computed a tremendous asymptotic curve into

the line that the Jelmi must have taken, and took out after the intergalactic flyer that had

left Earth's moon such a short time before.

 

DuQuesne was aware that force would be an improbably successful means of getting

what he wanted. Guile was equally satisfactory. Accordingly he took off his clothes and

examined himself, front and back and sides, in a full-length mirror.

 

He would do, he concluded. There would be nothing about his physical person which

would cause him any trouble in his dealings with the Jelmi. Since he always took his

sun-lamp treatments in the raw, his color gradation was right. He was too dark for a

typical Caucasian Tellurian; but that was all right-he wasn't going to be a Tellurian. He

would, he decided, be a native of some planet whose people went naked . . . the planet

Xylmny, in a galaxy 'way out on the Rim somewhere . . . yes, he had self-control

enough not to give himself away.

 

But his cabin wouldn't stand inspection on a usually naked basis, nor would any other

private room of the ship. All had closets designed unmistakably for clothing and it

wasn't worth while to rebuild them.

 

Okay, he'd be a researcher who had visited dozens of planets, and everybody had to

wear some kind of clothing or trappings at some time or other. Protectively at least. And

probably for formality or for decoration.

 

Wherefore DuQuesne, with a helmet on his head and a half-smile, half-sneer on his

face, let his imagination run riot in filling closet after closet with the utilitarian and the

decorative garmenture of world after purely imaginative world. Then, after transferring

his own Tellurian clothing to an empty closet, he devoted a couple of hours to designing

and constructing the apparel of his equally imaginary native world Xylmny.

 

In due time a call came in from the spaceship up ahead. "You who are following us

from the direction of the world Tellus: do you speak English?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Why are you following us, Tellurian?"

 

"I am not a Tellurian. I am from the planet Xylmny; which, while very similar to Tellus,

lies in a distant galaxy." He told the caller, as well as he could in words, where Xylmny

was. "I am a Seeker, Sevance by name. I have visited many planets very similar to

yours and to Tellus and to my own in my Seeking. Tellus itself had nothing worthy of my

time, but I learned there that you have a certain knowledge as yet unknown to me; that

of operating through the fourth dimension of space instantaneously, without becoming

lost hopelessly therein, as is practically always the case when rotation is employed.

Therefore I of course followed you."

 

"Naturally. I would have done the same. I am Savant Tammon of the planet Mallidax-

Llurdiaxorb Three which is our destination. You, then, have had one or more successes

in rotation? Our rotational tests all failed."

 

"We had only one success. As a Seeker I will be glad to give you the specifications of

the structures, computers, and forces required for any possibility of success-which is

very slight at best."

 

"This meeting is fortunate indeed. Have I your permission to come aboard your vessel,

as such time as we approach each other nearly enough to make the fourth dimensional

transfer feasible?"

 

"You certainly may, sir. I'll be very glad indeed to greet you in the flesh. And until that

hour, Savant Tammon, so long and thanks."

 

Since Mergon braked the Mallidaxian down hard to help make the approach, and since

the two vessels did not have to be close together even in astronomical terms, it was not

long until Tammon stood facing DuQuesne in the Capital D's control room.

 

The aged savant inhaled deeply, flexed his knees, and said, "As I expected, our

environments are very similar. We greet new friends with a four-hand clasp. Is that form

satisfactory?"

 

"Perfectly; it's very much like our own," DuQuesne said; and four hands clasped briefly.

 

"Would you like to come aboard our vessel now?" Tammon asked.

 

"The sooner the better," and they were both in Tammon's laboratory, where Mergon

and Luloy looked DuQuesne over with interest.

 

"Seeker Sevance," Tammon said then, "these are Savant Mergon, my first assistant,

and Savant Luloy, his . . . well, `wife' would be, I think, the closest possible English

equivalent. You three are to become friends."

 

The hand-clasp was six-fold this time, and the two Jelmi said in unison. "I'm happy that

we are to become friends."

 

"May our friendship ripen and deepen," DuQuesne improvised the formula and bowed

over the cluster of hands.

 

"But Seeker," Luloy said, as the cluster fell apart, "must all Seekers do their Seeking

alone? I'd go stark raving mad if I had to be alone as long as you must have been."

 

"True Seekers, yes. While it is true that any normal man misses the companionship of

his kind, especially that of the opposite sex-" DuQuesne gave Luloy a cool, contained

smile as his glance traversed her superb figure-"even such a master of concentration

as a true Seeker must be can concentrate better, more productively, when absolutely

alone."

 

Tammon nodded thoughtfully. "That may well be true. Perhaps I shall try it myself. Now-

we have some little time before dinner. Is there any other matter you would like to

discuss?"

 

For that question DuQuesne was well prepared. A Seeker, after all, needs something to

be Sought; and as he did not want to appear exclusively interested in something which

even the unsuspicious Jelmi would be aware was a weapon of war, he had selected

another subject about which to inquire. So he said at once:

 

"A minor one, yes. While I am scarcely even a tyro in biology, I have pondered the

matter of many hundreds probably many millions-of apparently identical and quite

possibly inter-fertile human races spaced so immensely far apart in space that any

possibility of a common ancestry is precluded."

 

"Ah!" Tammon's eyes lit up. "One of my favorite subjects; one upon which I have done

much work. We Jelmi and the Tellurians are very far apart indeed in space, yet cross-

breeding is successful. In vitro, that is, and as far as I could carry the experiment. I can

not synthesize a living placenta. No in vitro trial was made, since we of course could not

abduct a Tellurian woman and not one of our young women cared to bear a child

fathered by any Tellurian male we saw."

 

"From what I saw there I don't blame them," agreed DuQuesne. It was only the truth of

his feelings about Tellurians-with one important exception. "But doesn't your success in

vitro necessitate a common ancestry?"

 

"In a sense, yes; but not in the ordinary sense. It goes back to the unthinkably remote

origin of all life. You can, I suppose, synthesize any non-living substance you please?

Perfectly, down to what is apparently its ultimately fine structure?"

 

"I see what you mean." DuQuesne, who had never thought really deeply about that fact,

was hit hard. "Steak, for instance. Perfect in every respect except in that it never has

been alive. No. We can synthesize DNA-RNA complexes, the building blocks of life, but

they are not alive and we can not bring them to life. And, conversely, we cannot

dematerialize living flesh."

 

"Precisely. Life may be an extra-dimensional attribute. Its basis may lie in some order

deeper than any now known. Whatever the truth may be, it seems to be known at

present only to the omnipotence Who we of Mallidax call Llenderllon. All we know about

life is that it is an immensely strong binding force and that its source-proximate, I mean,

of course, not its ultimate origin-is the living spores that are drifting about in open

space."

 

"Wait a minute," DuQuesne said. "We had a theory like that long ago. So did Tellus-a

scientist named Arrhenius -but all such theories were finally held to be untenable.

Wishful thinking."

 

"I know. Less than one year ago, however, after twenty years of search. I found one

such spore. Its descendants have been living and evolving ever since."

 

DuQuesne's jaw dropped. "You don't say! That I want to see!"

 

Tammon nodded. "I have rigorous proof of authenticity. While it is entirely unlike any

other form of life with which I am familiar, it is very interesting."

 

"It would be, but there's one other objection. What is the chance that on any two worlds

humanity would have reached exactly the same stage of evolution at any given time?"

 

"Ali! That is the crux of my theory, which I hope some day to prove; that when man's

brain becomes large enough and complex enough to employ his hands efficiently

enough, the optimum form of fife for that environment has been reached and evolution

stops. Thenceforth all mutants and sports are unable to compete with Homo Sapiens

and do not survive."

 

DuQuesne thought for a long minute. Norlamin was very decidedly not a Tellus-type

planet. "Some Xylmnians have it, `Man is the ultimate creation of God.' On Tellus it's

`God created man in his own image.' And of course the fact that. I've never believed it-

and I still think it's unjustifiable racial self-glorification-does not invalidate it."

 

"Of course it doesn't. But to revert to the main topic, would you be willing to cooperate

in an in vivo experiment?"

 

DuQuesne smiled at that, then chuckled deeply. "I certainly would, sir; and not for

purely scientific reasons, either."

 

"Oh, that would be no problem. Nor is your present quest-it will take only a short time to

install the various mechanisms in your vessel and to instruct you in their use. If my snap

judgment is sound, however, this other may very well become of paramount importance

and require a few days of time." He touched a button on an intercom and said, "Senny."

 

"Yes?" came in a deep contralto from the speaker.

 

"Will you come in here, please? It concerns the in vivo experiment we have been

discussing."

 

"Oh? Right away, Tamm," and in about half a minute $ young woman came striding in.

 

DuQuesne stared, for she was a living shield-maiden-a veritable Valkyrie of flesh and

blood. If she had had wings and if her pale blonde hair had been flying loose instead of

being piled high on her head in thick, heavy braids, DuQuesne thought, she could have

stepped right out of Wagenhorst's immortal painting Ragnarok.

 

Tammon introduced them. `Seeker Sevance of Xylmny, Savant Sennlloy of Allondax,

you two are to become friends."

 

"I'm happy that we are to become friends," the girl said, in English, extending her

hands. DuQuesne took them, bowed over them; and said, "May our friendship ripen

and deepen."

 

She examined him minutely, from the top of his head down to his toenails, in silence;

then, turning to Tammon, she uttered a long sentence of which DuQuesne could not

understand a word.

 

"You should speak English, my dear," Tammon said. "It is inurbane to exclude a guest

from a conversation concerning him."

 

"It is twice as inurbane," she countered in English, "to insult a guest, even by

implication, who does not deserve it."

 

'That is true," Tammon agreed, "but I have studied him to some little depth and it is

virtually certain that the matter lies in your province rather than mine. The decision is, of

course, yours. Caps-on with him, please, and decide:"

 

She donned a helmet and handed its mate to DuQuesne. Expecting a full-scale mental

assault, he put up every block he had; but she did not think at him at all. Instead, she

bored deep down into the most abysmal recesses of his flesh; down and down and

down to depths where heexpert though he was at synthesizing perfectly any tangible

article of matter--could not follow.

 

Eyes sparkling, she tossed both helmets onto a bench and seized both his hands in a

grip very different from the casual clasp she had used a few minutes before. "I am glad-

very, very glad, friend Seeker Sevance, that we are friends!"

 

Although DuQuesne was amazed at this remarkable change, he played up. He bowed

over her hands and, this time, kissed each of them. "I think you, Lady Sennlloy. My

pleasure is immeasurable." He smiled warmly and went on, "Since I am a stranger and

thus ignorant of your conventions and in particular of your taboos, may I without offense

request the pleasure of your company at dinner? And my friends call me Vance."

 

She returned his smile as warmly. Neither of them was paying any attention at all to

anyone else in the room. "And I accept your invitation with joyous thanks. We go out

that mine call me Senny. You may indeed, friend Vance, and archway there and turn

left."

 

They walked slowly toward the indicated exit; side by side and so close together that hip

touched hip at almost every step. In the corridor, however, Sennlloy put her hand on

DuQuesne's arm and stopped. "But hold, friend Vance," she said. "We should, don't

you think, make this, our first meal together, ono of full formality?"

 

"I do indeed. I would not have suggested it but I'm very much in favor of it."

 

"Splendid! We'll go to my room first, then. This way," and she steered him into and

along, a corridor whose blankly featureless walls were opaque instead of transparent.

 

Was this his cue? DuQuesne wondered. No, he decided. She wasn't the type to rush

things. She was civilized . . . more so than he was. If he didn't play it just about right

with this girl, who was very evidently a big wheel, she could and very probably would

queer his whole deal.

 

As they strolled along DuQuesne saw that the walls were not quite featureless. At about

head height, every twentyfive feet or so, there was inset a disk of optical plastic perhaps

an inch in diameter. Stopping, and turning to face one of these disks, Sennlloy pressed

her right forefinger against it, explaining as she did so, "It opens to my fingerprints only."

 

There was an almost inaudible hiss of compressed air and a micrometrically fitted door-

a good seven feet high and three feet wide-moved an inch out into the hall and slid

smoothly aside upon tracks that certainly had not been there an instant before.

DuQuesne never did find out how the thing worked. He was too busy staring into the

room and watching and hearing what the girl was doing and saying.

 

She stepped back a half-step, bowed gracefully from the waist, and with a sweeping

gesture of both hands invited him to precede her into the room. She started to say

something in her own language-Allondaxian-but after a couple of words changed

effortlessly to English. "Friend Seeker Sevance, it is in earnest of our friendship that I

welcome you into the privacy of my home"-and her manner made it perfectly clear that,

while the phraseology was conventionally formal, in this case it was really meant.

 

And DuQuesne felt it; felt it so strongly that he did not bluff or coin a responsive phrase.

Instead: "Thank you, Lady Sennlloy. We of Xylmny do not have anything comparable,

but I appreciate your welcome and thank you immensely."

 

Inside the room, DuQuesne stared. He had wondered what this girl's private quarters

would be like. She was a master scientist, true. But she was warmly human, not

bookishly aloof. And what would seventy thousand years of evolution do to feminine

vanity? Especially to a vanity that apparently had sever been afflicted by false

modesty? Or by any sexual taboos?

 

The furniture-heavy, solid, plain, and built of what looked like golden oak-looked

ordinary and utilitarian enough. Much of it was designed for, and was completely filled

with and devoted to, the tools and equipment and tapes and scanners of the top-

bracket biologist Senalloy of Allondax in fact was. The floor was of mathematically

figured, vari-colored, plastic tile. The ceiling was one vast sheet of softly glowing white

light.

 

Three of the walls were ordinary enough. DuQuesne scarcely glanced at them because

of the fourth, which was a single canvas eight feet high and over thirty feet long. One

painting. What a painting! A painting of life itself; a painting that seemed actually to

writhe and to crawl and to vibrate with the very essence of life itself!

 

One-celled life, striving fiercely upward in the primordial sea toward the light. Fiercely

striving young fishes, walking determinedly ashore on their fins. Striving young

mammals developing tails and climbing up into trees.-losing tails, with the development

of true thumbs, and coming down to earth again out of the trees--the ever-enlarging

brain resulting in the appearance of true man. And finally, the development and the

progress and the history of man himself.

 

And every being, from unicell to man, was striving with all its might upward; toward THE

LIGHT. Upward! Upward!! UPWARD!!!

 

At almost the end of that heart-stopping painting there was a portrait of Sennlloy herself

in the arms of a man; a yellow-haired, smooth-shaven Hercules so fantastically

welldrawn, so incredibly alive-seeming, that DuQuesne stared in awe.

 

     Beyond those two climactic figures the painting became a pure abstract of form

and of line and color; an abstract, however, that was crammed full of invisible but very

apparent question marks. It asked more, it demanded and it yelled-"What is coming

next?"

 

DuQuesne, who had been holding his breath, let it out and breathed deeply. "And you

painted that yourself," he marveled. "Milady Sennlloy, if you never do anything else as

long as you live, you will have achieved immortality."

 

She blushed to the breasts. "Thanks, friend Vance. I'm very glad you like it: I was sure

you would."

 

"It's so terrific that words fail," he said, and meant. Then, nodding at the portrait, he

went on, "Your husband?"

 

She shook her head. "Not yet. He has not the genes the Llurdi wish to propagate, so we

could not marry and he had to stay on Allondax instead of becoming one of this group.

But he and I love each other more than life. When we Jelmi aboard this Mallidaxian

have taught those accursed Llurdi their lesson, we will marry and we'll never be parted

again. But time presses, friend Vance; we must consider our formalities."

 

Walking around the foot of her bed-the satin coverlet of which bore, in red and gold, a

motif that almost made even DuQuesne blush-she went to a bureau-like piece of

furniture and began to pull open its bottom drawer. Then, changing her mind, she

closed it sharply; but not before the man got a glimpse of its contents that made him

catch his breath. That drawer contained at least two bushels of the most fantastic

jewelry DuQuesne had ever seen!

 

Shaking her head, Sennlloy went on, "No. My formality should not influence yours. The

fact that you appreciate and employ formality implies, does it not, that you do not

materialize and dematerialize its material symbols, but cherish them?"

 

"Yes; you and I think very much alike on that," DuQuesne agreed. He was still feeling

his way. This hadn't been a cue; that was now abundantly certain. In fact, with Sennlloy

so deeply in love with one man, she probably wouldn't be in the business herself at all .

. . or would she? Were these people advanced enough-if you could call it advancement-

different enough, anyway-to regard sex for-love and sex-for-improvement-of-race as

two entirely different matters; so completely unrelated as not to affect each other? He

simply didn't know. Data insufficient. However the thing was to go, he'd played along so

far; he'd still play along. Wherefore, without any noticeable pause, he went on:

 

"I intended to comply with your conventions, but I'll be glad to use my own if you prefer.

So I'll ask Tammon to flip me over to my own ship to put on my high-formal gear."

 

"Oh, no; I'll do it." Donning the helmet that had been lying on the beautifully grained

oak-like top of the bureau, she took his left hand and compared his wristwatch briefly

with the timepiece on the wall. "I'll bring you back here in . . . in how many of your

minutes?"

 

"Ten minutes will be time enough."

 

"In exactly ten minutes from--*." She waited until the sweep hand of his watch was

exactly at the dot of twelve o'clock. "Mark," she said then, and DuQuesne found himself

standing in his own private cabin aboard the Capital D.

 

He picked up shaving cream and brush; then, asking aloud, "How stupid can you get,

fool?" he tossed them back onto the shelf, put on his helmet, and thought his whiskers

off flush with the surface of his skin. Then, partly from habit but mostly by design-its

richly masculine, heady scent was supposed to "wow the women"-he rubbed on a

couple of squirts of after-shave lotion.

 

Opening closet doors, he looked at the just-nicely-broken-in trappings he had made

such a short time before. How should he do it, jeweled or plain? She was going to be

gussied up like a Christmas tree, so he'd better go plain. Showy, plenty; but no jewels.

And, judging by that spectacular coverlet and other items in her room, she liked fire-

engine red and gold. Okay.

 

Taking off his watch and donning one exactly like it except for the fact that it kept purely

imaginary Xylmnian time-that had been a slip; if she'd noticed it, she'd have wondered

why he was running on Tellurian time-he dressed himself in full panoply of Xylmnian

finery and examined himself carefully in a full-length mirror.

 

He now wore a winged and crested headpiece of interlaced platinum strips; the front of

the crest ridging up into a three-inch platinum disk emblazoned with an intricate heraldic

design in deeply inlaid massive gold. A heavy collar, two armbands, and two wristlets,

all made of woven and braided platinum strands, each bore the same symbolic disk. He

wore a sleeveless shirt and legless shorts of gleaming, glaringly-red silk, with knee-

length hose to match-and red-leather-lined buskins of solid-gold chain mail. And lastly,

a crossed-strap belt, also of massive but supple gold link, with three platinum comets

on each shoulder, supported a solid-platinum scabbard containing an extremely

practical knife.

 

He drew the blade. Basket-hilted and with fifteen inches of heavy, wickedly curved,

peculiarly shaped, razor-edged and needle-pointed stainless-steel blade, it was in fact

an atrocious weapon indeed-and completely unlike any item of formal dress that

DuQuesne had ever heard of.

 

All this had taken nine and one half minutes by his watch-by his Earth-watch, lying now

upon his dresser. The time was now zero minus exactly twenty-eight seconds.

 

14 SEEKER SEVANCE OF XYLMNY

 

PRECISELY On the tick of time DuQuesne stood again in Sennlloy's room. He glanced

at her; then stood flat-footed and simply goggled. He had expected a display, but this

was something that had to be seen to be believed-and then but barely. She was literally

ablaze with every kind of gem he had ever seen and a dozen kinds completely new to

him. Just as she stood, she could have supplied Tiffany and Carrier both for five years.

 

Yet she did not look barbaric. Blue-eyed, with an incredible cascade of pale blonde hair

cut squarely across well below her hips, she looked both regal and virginal.

 

"Wow!" he exclaimed finally. "The English has-not a word for it, but a sound," and he

executed a long-drawn-out wolf-whistle.

 

She laughed delightedly. "Oh? I did not hear that on Tellus; but it sounds . . .

appreciative."

 

"It is, Milady. Very." He took her hands and bowed over them. "May I say, Lady Senny,

that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen?"

 

" `Milady.' `Lady.' I have not told you how much I like those terms, friend Vance. I'm

wonderfully pleased that you find me so. You're magnificently handsome yourself . . .

and you smell nice, too." She came squarely up to him and sniffed approvingly. "But the

. . . the blade of formality. May I look at it, please?"

 

She examined it closely, then went on, "Tell me, Vance, how old is your recorded

history? Just roughly, in Tellurian years?"

 

This could be a crucial question, DuQuesne realized; but, since he didn't know the

score yet, he hadn't better lie too much. "Before I answer that; you're a biologist, aren't

you, and in the top bracket?"

 

"Yes. In English it would have to be `anthropological biologist' and yes, I know my

specialty very well."

 

"Okay. For better or for worse, here it is. Xylmny's recorded history goes back a little

over six thousand Tellurian years."

 

"Oh, wonderful!" she breathed. "Perfect! That's what I read, but I could scarcely believe

it. A young race. Mature, but still possessing the fire and the power and the genius that

those accursed Llurdi have been breeding out of all us Jelmi for many thousands of

years. They want us to produce geniuses for them, but they kill or sterilize all our

aggressive, combative, rebellious young men. A few of us women carry all the

necessary female genes, but without their male complements, dominant in heredity, we

all might exactly as well have none of them."

 

"I see . . . but how about Tammon?"

 

"He's sterile, since he was a genius before he became a rebel. And he kept on being a

genius; one of the very few exceptions to the rule. But since the Llurdi are insanely

logical, one exception to any rule invalidates that rule." She glanced at the clock. "It's

time to go now."

 

Walking slowly along the corridor, DuQuesne said, " `Insanely logical' is right. I knew

that there was a lot more to this than just an experiment, but I had no idea it was to put

new and younger blood into an entire race. But with mothers such as you have in mind-

"

 

"Mothers?" She broke in. "You already know, then?"

 

"Of course. I am sufficiently familiar with your specialty to know what a top-bracket

biologist can do and how you intend to do it. With mothers of your class some of our

sons may make genius grade, but what's to keep them alive?"

 

"We will." Sennlloy's voice and mien became of a sudden grim. "This fourth-dimension

device that Tammon is going to give you was developed only a few weeks ago, since

we left Llurdiax. The Llurdi know nothing whatever of it. When we get back to our own

galaxy with it, either the Llurdi will grant us our full freedom or we will kill every Llurdi

alive. And being insanely logical, they'll grant it without a fight: without even an

argument, Sancil burn their teeth, wings, and tails!"

 

DuQuesne did not tell the girl how interested he was in the Llurdi; especially in Llanzlan

Klazmon the Fifteenth. Instead, "That makes a weird kind of sense, at that," he said.

"Tell me more about these Llurdi," and she told him about them all the rest of the way to

the dining hall.

 

They went through an archway, stepped aside, and looked around. Three or four

hundred people were in the hall already, and more were streaming in from all sides.

Some were eating, in couples or in groups of various numbers, at tables of various

sizes. Dress varied from nothing at all up to several spectaculars as flamboyant as

Sennlloy's own. Informal, semi-formal, and formal; and the people themselves were

alike in only one respect-that of physical perfection. DuQuesne had never seen

anything like it and said so; and Sennlloy explained, concluding:

 

"So, you see, we eight hundred are the very pick of two hundred forty-one planets;

which makes this an ideal primary situation. The reason I wanted you to look around

carefully is that perhaps I should not be the only Prime Operative." She paused: it was

quite evident that she was not at all in favor of the idea.

 

"Why not?" DuQuesne wasn't in favor of it, either; even though he couldn't begin to

understand either her attitude or her behavior. How could any woman possibly be as

deeply in love with one man as Sennlloy very evidently was, and yet act as she was

acting toward such a complete stranger as himself? It baffled him completely, but he'd

still play along-especially since he was suffering no pain at all. "It won't make any

difference in the long run, will it?"

 

"Of course not. I just thought maybe you would relish diversity," Senalloy said.

 

"You can unthink it. I wouldn't. There's no tomcat blood in me-and remember what I

said?"

 

"Do you think I don't? But you've seen some really beautiful women now. Much prettier

than I am."

 

"You know what they call that technique in English? `Fishing'," grinned DuQuesne.

"Prettier or not, Milady,. you top them all by a country mile."

 

"I know about fishing. I was fishing a little, perhaps." She laughed happily and hugged

his arm against her firm breast. "But it did get you to say it again, and it means ever so

much more, now that you've seen the competition."

 

She steered him to a table for two against a wall, where he seated her meticulously-a

gesture that, while evidently new to her, was evidently liked.

 

"You order," she said, handing him the helmet. "You invited me, you know."

 

"But I don't know what you like to eat."

 

"Oh, I like almost everything, really; and if there should be anything I don't like I won't

eat it. Okay?"

 

"Okay," and DuQuesne proceeded to set the table with fine linen and translucent china

and sterling silver and sparkling cut glass.

 

The first course was a thin, clear soup; which Sennlloy liked. She also liked the crisp

lettuce with Roquefort dressing; the medium rare roast beef with mushroom sauce and

the asparagus in butter and the baked Idaho potato stuffed with sour cream; and she

especially enjoyed the fruits-and-nuts-filled Nesselrode ice cream. She did not,

however, like his corrosively strong, black, unsweetened coffee at all. Wrinkling her

nose, she sniffed at it, then took a tiny sip, which she let flow back into the cup.

 

"How can you possibly drink such vile stuff as that?" she demanded, and replaced it

with a tall glass of fizzy, viscous concoction that looked like eggnog and reeked of

something that was halfway between almond and lemon.

 

After dinner-DuQuesne wanted to smoke, but since no one else was doing anything of

the kind he could and would get along without it as long as he was aboard the

Mallidaxian-they milled about with the milling .throng. She introduced him right and left

and showed him off generally; especially to over a hundred stunning young women,

with whom she discussed the "project" in American English with a completely

uninhibited frankness that made DuQuesne blush more than once.

 

After something over an hour of this the crowd broke up; and as the two left the hall

Sennlloy said, "Ha! We're free now, my Vance, to go about our business!"

 

Arms tightly around each other, savoring each contact and each motion, they walked

slowly and in silence to Sennlloy's room.

 

Three Mallidaxian days later, DuQuesne took his leave. Of Senalloy last, of course. She

put her arms around him and rubbed her cheek against his. "Good-by, friend Vance. I

have enjoyed our association tremendously. Scarcely ever before has work been such

pleasure. So much so that I feel guilty of selfishness."

 

"You needn't, Milady. That was exactly the way I wanted it, remember?"

 

"I remember with joy; and I have wondered why."

 

"Because you are the only one of your class aboard this ship," DuQuesne said.

 

"You said that, but still-well, I am the only Allondaxian aboard, which may account for

our great compatibility. And there should be, as there has been, something more than

the purely physical involved."

 

DuQuesne was very glad she had said that; it gave him one last chance to explore.

"Definitely," he agreed. "Liking, respect, appreciation, admiration-you're a tremendous

lot of woman, Milady Sennlloy. But not love. Naturally."

 

"Of course not. I have my love and my work and my planet; you have yours; it would be

terrible for either of us or any of ours to be hurt.

 

"Our rememberings of each other should be and will be most pleasant. Good-by, friend

Vance; may All Powerful Llenderllon guard you and aid you as you Seek."

 

15 DU QUESNE'S ASSASSINS

 

Not even Marc DuQuesne was able-quite!-to put his rather astonishing, and totally

pleasurable, experiences with the Jelmi-and with one Jelin in particular!-out of his mind

without a second's hesitation. In another man, his mood as he set a minimum-time

course and began to speed back to Earth, might have been called nostalgic . . . even

sentimental.

 

But as the parsecs fled by his thoughts hardened. And just in time; for some very hard

things indeed had to be done.

 

First and foremost, his deal with Seaton was utterly, irrevocably and permanently o$.

He no longer needed it. With the information he had received from the Jelmi, he had no

further reason to worry about Seaton's offensive capabilities.

 

Of course, there was no reason for Seaton to know that. Or not until it was entirely too

late to do Seaton any good. Let Seaton go on dawdling toward this Galaxy DW-427LU.

Seaton would be traveling at only normal max; DuQuesne would have time to make his

arrangements, transact his business and act while Seaton was still on the way.

 

He did not intend to go to Earth, only to within working distance of it. Even so, he had a

certain amount of time to spend. He spent it, all of it, in studying and operating the new

device, which was called by the Jehn a name which Sennlloy had told him

corresponded roughly to "quad."

 

And immediately he ran headlong into trouble.

 

To DuQuesne's keen disappointment, the confounded thing was both more and less

useful than he had hoped. More: Its range was enormous, much more than he had

expected. Less:-well, it simply didn't do any of the normal things that any machine could

be made to do. And he could not tell why. He had received too much knowledge too

fast; it took time to nail down all the details.

 

He could send himself anywhere, but he could not bring himself back. He had to be at

the controls. Remote control wouldn't work and he couldn't find out why not. The thing -

in its present state of development, at least-couldn't handle a working projection; and he

couldn't explain that fact, either. There was no way at all, apparently, of coupling the

two transmitters together or of automating the controls-which was absurd on the face of

it. There were job lots of things it couldn't do; and in no case at all could he understand

why not.

 

That condition was, however, perfectly natural. In fact, it was inevitable. For, as has

been pointed out, the laws of the fourth-dimensional region are completely inexplicable

in three-dimensional terms. Obvious impossibilities become commonplace events;

many things that are inevitable in our ordinary continuum become starkly impossible

there.

 

Tammon had told DuQuesne just that; Seaton had told him the same, and much more

strongly for having been there in person; but DuQuesne could not help but boggle at

such information. Of the three men, he was far and away the least able to accept an

obvious impossibility as a fact and go on from there.

 

So Blackie DuQuesne, his face like a steel-black thundercloud, methodically and

untiringly worked with his new device until he was quite sure that of all the things he

could make it do, he could make it do all of them very well.

 

And that would be enough. Never mind the things it wouldn't do. What it would do would

be plenty to get rid of Richard Ballinger Seaton once and for all.

 

Within range of Earth at last, DuQuesne set about the first step in that program.

 

The simplest and crudest methods would work-backed by the weird fourth-dimensional

powers of the quad. And DuQuesne knew exactly how to go about recruiting the

assistance he needed in those methods.

 

He launched a working projection of himself to the Safe Deposit Department of the First

National Bank. He signed a name and counted out a sheaf of currency from a box. He

then took a taxi to the World Steel Building and an elevator up to the office of the

president.

 

Brushing aside private secretaries, vice presidents, and other small fry, he strode

through a succession of private offices into the sanctum sanctorum of President

Brookings himself.

 

The tycoon was, as usual, alone. If he was surprised at the intrusion he did not show it.

He took the big cigar from his mouth, little-fingered half an inch of ash from the end of it

into a bronze tray, put it back between his teeth, and waited.

 

"Still thinking your usual devious, petty-larceny, half-vest thoughts, eh, Brookings?"

DuQuesne sneered.

 

"Still thinking your usual devious, petty-larceny, half-vast sublime gall to show up

around here again," Brookings said, evenly. "Even via projection, after the raw stuff you

pulled and the ungodly flop you made of everything. Especially after the way your pal

Seaton dragged you out of here with your tail between your legs. Incidentally, it .took

everything you had coming to repair the damage you did to the building on your way

out."

 

"Stupid as ever, I see. And the galaxy's tightest pennypincher. But back pay and the law

of contracts and so forth are of no importance at the moment. What I'm here about is:

with all these Norlaminian so-called `observers' looking down the back of your neck all

the time, Perkins' successor and his goon squads must be eating mighty low on the

hog."

 

"We haven't any-" At DuQuesne's sardonically contemptuous smile Brookings changed

instantly the sense of what he had been going to say-"work for them, to speak of, at

that. Why?"

 

"So six of your best and fastest gunnies would be interested in ten grand apiece for a

month's loaf and a minute's work."

 

"Don't say mine, Doctor. Please! You know very well that I never have anything to do

with anything like that."

 

"No? But you know who took over the Perkins Café and the top-mobster job after I

killed Perkins. So I want six off the top downstairs in the lobby at sixteen hours Eastern

Daylight time today."

 

"You know I never handle-"

 

"Shut up! I'm not asking you-I'm telling you. You'll handle this, or else."

 

Brookings shrugged his shoulders and sighed. He knew DuQuesne. "If you want good

men they'll have to know what the job is."

 

"Naturally. Dick and Dorothy Seaton, Martin and Margaret Crane, and their Jap Shiro

and his wife-Apple Blossom or whatever her name is. Seaton's fast, for an amateur, but

he's no pro. Crane is slow-he thinks and aims. And the others don't count. I'll guarantee

complete surprise enough for one clear shot at Seaton. Anybody who is apt to need two

shots I don't want. So-no problem:"

 

"I'll see what I can do."

 

Since DuQuesne knew that was as close as Brookings ever came to saying "yes", he

accepted it. "In advance, of course." Brookings held out his hand.

 

"Naturally." DuQuesne took a rubber-banded sheaf of thousand-dollar bills out of his

inside coat pocket and tossed it across the desk. "Count 'em."

 

"Naturally." Brookings picked the sheaf up and riffled through it. "Correct. Good-by,

Doctor."

 

"Good-by," DuQuesne said, and the projection vanished.

 

At four o'clock that afternoon DuQuesne picked up his goons-through the fourth

dimension, which surprised them tremendously and scared them no little, although

none of them would admit that fact-and headed for the galaxy toward which the Skylark

of Valeron had been flying so long. The Capital D was of course much faster than the

gigantic planetoid; and the actual difference in speed between the two intergalactic

flyers was much greater than the rated one because DuQuesne was driving with all his

engines at absolute max-risking burn-out, tear-out, and unavoidable collision at or near

the frightful velocity of turnover-which Seaton of course was not doing. He didn't want to

endanger the Valeron.

 

In the target galaxy-Galaxy DW-427-LU, according to Klazmon's chart-there was only

one solar system showing really intense sixth-order activity. Almost all of that activity

would be occurring on one planet; a planet whose inhabitants were highly inimical to

(probably) all other forms of intelligent life.

 

Klazmon's side-bands of thought had been very informative on those points.

 

Thus it was by neither accident nor coincidence that DuQuesne came up to within long

working range of the Skylark of Valeron well before that flying worldlet came within what

DuQuesne thought was extreme range of a planet that DuQuesne knew to be a very

dangerous planet indeed.

 

He had wanted it that way; -he had risked his ship and his life to make it come out that

way. When the Valeron came within range of the target planet she would be

DuQuesne's not Seaton's. And DuQuesne was calmly confident that he and a Valeron

re-tuned to his own mind could cope with any possible situation.

 

As a matter of fact, they couldn't. It was not, however, DuQuesne's error or fault that

made it so; it was merely the way Fate's mop flopped. Neither he nor Seaton had any

idea whatever of the appalling magnitude of the forces so soon to be hurled against

Seaton's supposedly invulnerable flying fortress, the Skylark of Valeron.

 

Operating strictly according to plan, then, DuQuesne called his goons to attention.

"You've been briefed and you've had plenty of practice, but I'll recap the essential

points.

 

"Guns in hands. They'll be eating dinner, with their legs under the table. Sitting ducks

for one shot. But for one shot only. Especially Seaton-for an amateur he's fast. So work

fast-land and shoot. I'll give you the usual three-second countdown, beginning, now--

Seconds! Three! Two! One! Mark!" and the six men 'Vanished.

 

And in the dining room of the Seatons' home in the Skylark of Valeron six forty-five-

caliber automatics barked viciously, practically as one.

 

16 THE CHLORANS

 

While much work had been done on a personal gravity control, to provide for the

comfort of such visitors as Dunark and Sitar, it was still in the design stage when the

Skylark of Valeron neared Galaxy DW-427-LU. Wherefore, when the Skylarkers sat

down to dinner that evening in the Seatons' dining room that room was almost forty per

cent undergrav. And wherefore, when DuQuesne's six hired killers fired practically as

one, all six bullets went harmlessly high.

 

For, at low gravity, two facts of marksmanship-unknown to or not considered by either

DuQuesne or any of his men-became dominant. First, a pistol expert compensates

automatically for the weight of his weapon. Second, the more expert the marksman, the

more automatic this compensation is.

 

And one shot each was all those would-be killers had. Dunark and Sitar as has been

said, went armed even to bed; and Osnomian reflexes were and are the fastest

possessed by any known race of man. Each of their machine pistols clicked twice and

four American hoodlums died, liquescent brains and comminuted skulls spattering

abroad, before they could do anything more than begin to bring their guns back down

into line for their second shots.

 

The other two gangsters also died; if not as quickly or as messily, just as dead. For

Shiro and his bride were, for Earthmen, very fast indeed. Their chairs, too, flew away

from the table the merest instant after the invaders appeared and both took off in low,

flat dives.

 

Lotus struck her man with her left shoulder; and, using flawlessly the momentum of her

mass and speed, swung him around and put her small but very hard knee exactly

where it would do the most good. Then, as he doubled over in agony, she put her left

arm around his head, seized her left wrist with her right hand, and twisted with all the

strength of arms, shoulders, torso and legs-and the man's neck broke with a snap

audible throughout the room.

 

And Shiro took care of his man with equal dexterity, precision, and speed; and of the

invaders, then there were none.

 

Seaton was a microsecond slower than either the Osnomians or the two Japanese; but

he was fast enough to see what was happening, take in the fact that the forces already

engaged were enough to handle the six hoodlums and, in mid-flight, divert his leap

toward the remote-control headset. He was blindingly certain of one thing: It was Marc

DuQuesne who had unleashed these killers on them. And he was equally certain of that

fact's consequence: The truce was off. DuQuesne was to be destroyed.

 

Wherefore what happened next astonished him even more than if it had occurred at

another time.

 

A strident roar of klaxons filled the room. It was the loudest sound any human had ever

heard-without permanent damage; it was calculated to come right up to the threshold of

destruction. There was to be no chance that anyone would fail to hear this particular

signal.

 

His hand on the headset, Seaton paused. The bodies of the six gunmen had not yet all

reached the floor, but the other Skylarkers were staring too. They had never expected

to hear that sound except in test.

 

It was the dire warning that they were under attack massive attack-attack on a scale

and of a persistence that they had never expected to encounter in real combat, with

whatever forces.

 

For that klaxon warning meant that under the fierce. impact of the enemy weapons now

so suddenly and mercilessly beating down on them the life of the Valeron's defensive

screens was to be measured only in seconds-and very few of them!

 

"Yipe!" he yelled then. "Control-room fast!" His voice of course went unheard in the

clamor of the horns; but his yelling had been purely reflexive, anyway. While uttering

the first syllable he was energizing beams of force that hurtled all eight of the party

through ultra-high-speed locks that snapped open in front of them and crashed shut

behind them-down into the neutral-gray chamber at the base of the giant Brain.

 

Seaton rammed his head into his master controller and began furiously but accurately

to think . . . and as he sat there, face harsh and white and strained, a vast structure of

inoson, interlaced with the heaviest fields of force generable by the Valeron's mighty

engines, came into being around the Brain and the other absolutely vital components of

the worldlet's core.

 

After a few minutes of fantastic effort Seaton sighed gustily and tried to grin. "We're

holding 'em and we're getting away," he said. "But I bad to let 'em whittle us down to

just about a nub before I could spare power enough to grab a lunch off of them while

they were getting a square meal off of us."

 

He spoke the exact truth. The attack had been so incredibly violent that in order to

counter it he had had to apply the full power of the, Valeron, designed to protect a

surface of over three million square kilometers, to an area of less than thirty thousand.

 

"But what was it, Dick?" Dorothy shrieked. "What could it have been-possibly?"

 

"I don't know. But you realize, don't you, that it was two separate, unrelated attacks?

Not one?"

 

"Why, I . . . I don't think I realize anything yet."

 

"Those guns were Colts," Seaton said, flatly. "Forty-fives. Made in the U.S.A. So that

part of it was DuQuesne's doing. He wanted-still wants-the Valeron. Bad. But those

super-energy super-weapons were definitely something else -as sure as God made

apples. No possible ship could put that much stuff out, let alone DuQuesne's Capital D.

So the question rises and asks itself-"

 

"Just a minute, Dick!" Crane broke in. "Even granting so extraordinary a coincidence as

two separate attacks-"

 

"Coincidence, hell!" Seaton snarled. "There is no such thing. And why postulate an

impossibility when you've got Blackie DuQuesne? He sucked me in, as sure as hell's a

mantrap-you can bet your case buck on that. And he outfoxed himself doing it, for all

the tea in China!"

 

"What do you mean, Dick?" Dorothy demanded. "How could he have?"

 

"Plain as the nose on . . . plainer! He got it from somewhere, the son of a-" Seaton bit

the noun savagely off--probably from Klazmon, that Galaxy DW-427-LU up ahead there

that we were heading for is full of bad Indians. So he honeyed up to the Jelmi, got that

fourth-dimensional gadget off of them and tried to kill us with it. And he would have

succeeded, except for the pure luck of our having lowered our gravity so drastically on

account of Dunark and Sitar."

 

"I see," Crane said. "And the Indians jumped us when he pulled the trigger-perhaps

attracted by his use of the ,gadget'."

 

"That's my guess, anyway," Seaton admitted. "DuQuesne thought he was allowing

plenty of leeway in both time and space for his operation. But he wasn't. He had no

more idea than we did, Mart, that any such forces as those could possibly be delivered

at such extreme range. And one simple, easy lie-the coordinates of the Llurdan galaxy-

was all he had to tell me and defend against my probe."

 

DuQuesne's attention was wrenched from his timer by a glare of light from a visiplate.

He glanced at it, his jaw dropping in surprise; then his hands flashed to the controls of

his fourth-dimensional transmitter and his six men appeared-four of them gruesomely

headless. For a moment all six stood stiffly upright; then, as the supporting forces

vanished, all six bodies slumped bonelessly to the floor.

 

DuQuesne, after making quickly sure that the two were in fact as dead as were the four,

shrugged his shoulders and flipped the bodies out into deep space. Then, donning

practically opaque goggles, he studied the incandescently glaring plate-to see that the

Skylark of Yaleron now looked like a minor sun.

 

Involuntarily he caught his breath. The Valeron's screens were failing-failing fast.

Course after course, including her mighty zones of force, her every defensive layer was

flaring into and through the violet and going black.

 

DuQuesne clenched his fists; set his teeth so hard that his jaw-muscles stood out in

bands and lumps. Anything to put out that much of that kind of stuff would have to be

vast indeed. Incredibly vast. Nothing could be that big-nothing even pertaining, as far as

DuQuesne knew, to any civilization or culture of the known universe.

 

Relaxing a little, he assembled a working projection, but before sending it out he

paused in thought.

 

Seaton hadn't attacked; he wasn't the type to. He wouldn't have, even if he could have

done so at that range. So the strangers, whoever or whatever they might be, were the

aggressors, with a capital "A." Guilty of unprovoked and reasonless aggression;

aggression in the first degree. So what Tammon had told him about that galaxy being

dominated by "inimical life-forms" was the understatement of the year. And he,

DuQuesne himself, had triggered the attack; the fact that it had followed his own attack

so nearly instantly made that a certainty. How had he triggered it? Almost certainly by

the use of the fourth-dimensional transmitter . . .

 

But how? He didn't know and he couldn't guess . . . and at the moment it didn't make a

lick of difference. He hadn't used any sixth-order stuff since then and he sure wouldn't

use any now for a good while. If he did anything at all, he'd pussyfoot it, but good. He

didn't want any part of anything that could manhandle the Skylark of Valeron like that.

His Capital D was small enough and far enough back-he hoped!-to avoid detection. No

he wouldn't do a single damn thing except look on.

 

Fascinated, DuQuesne stared into the brilliance of his plate. All the Valeron's screens

were down now. Even the ultra-powerful innermost zone-the wall shield itself, the last

line of defense of the bare synthetic of the worldlet's outer skin-was going fast. Huge

black areas appeared, but they were black only momentarily. Such was the power of

that incredible assault that thousands of tons of inoson flared in an instant into ragingly

incandescent vapor; literally exploding; exploding with such inconceivable violence as to

blast huge masses of solid inoson out of the Valeron's thick skin and hurl them at

frightful speed out into space.

 

And the Valeron was not fighting back. She couldn't:

 

This fact, more than anything else, rocked DuQuesne to the core and gave him the

measure of the power at the disposal of the "inimical" entities of that galaxy. For he,

knowing the Valeron's strength, now knew starkly that she was being attacked by forces

of a magnitude never even approximated by the wildest imaginings of man.

 

Scowling in concentration, he kept on watching the disaster. Watched while those

utterly unbelievable forces peeled the Valeron down like an onion, layer after kilometer-

thick layer. Watched until that for which he had almost ceased to hope finally took

place. The Valeron, down now to the merest fraction of her original size burned and

blasted down to the veriest core-struck back. And that counterstroke was no love-tap.

The ether and all the subethers seethed and roiled under the vehemence of that

devastating bolt of energy.

 

The Skylark of Valeron vanished from DuQuesne's plate; that plate went black; and

DuQuesne stood up and stretched the kinks out of his muscles. Seaton could of course

flit away on the sixth; but he, DuQuesne, couldn't. Not without being detected and

getting burned to a crisp. Against the forces that he had just seen in action against the

Skylark of Valeron, DuQuesne's own Capital D didn't stand the proverbial chance of the

nitrocellulose dog chasing the asbestos cat in hell.

 

If the Skylark of Valeron had been hurt, half-demolished and reduced to an irreducible

core of fighting muscle before it could mount one successful counter-blow against this

new and unexpected enemy, then the Capital D would be reduced to its primitive gases.

DuQuesne rapidly, soberly and accurately came to the conclusion that he simply did not

own ship enough to play in this league. Not yet . . .

 

Wherefore he pussyfooted it away from there at an acceleration of only a few lights;

and he put many parsecs of distance between himself and the scene of recent

hostilities before he cut in his space-annihilating sixth-order drive and began really to

travel. He did not know whether Seaton and his party were surviving; he did not care.

He did not know the identity of the race which had hurt them so badly, so fast.

 

What DuQuesne knew was that, as a bare minimum, he needed something as big as

the Valeron, plus the fourth dimensional tricks he had learned from the Jelmi, plus a

highly developed element of caution based on the scene he had just witnessed. And he

knew what to do about it, and where to go to do it; wherefore his course was laid for the

First Galaxy and Earth.

 

Hundreds of thousands of parsecs away from the scene of disaster, Seaton cut his

drive and began gingerly to relax the terrific power of his defensive screens.

 

No young turtle, tentatively poking his head out of his shell to see if the marauding gulls

had left, was more careful than Seaton. He had been caught off base twice. He did not

propose to let it happen again.

 

Another man might have raged and sworn at DuQuesne for his treachery; or panicked

at the fear inspired by the fourth-dimensional transmitter DuQuesne had come up with,

or the massive blow that had fallen from nowhere. Seaton did not. The possibility-no,

the virtual certainty of treachery from DuQuesne he had accepted and discounted in the

first second of receiving DuQuesne's distress call. He had accepted the risks, and

grimly calculated that in any encounter, however treacherous, DuQuesne would fail;

and he had been right. The sudden attack from out of nowhere, however, was

something else again. What made it worse was not that Seaton had no idea of its

source or reason. The thing that caused his eyes to narrow, his face to wear a hard,

thoughtful scowl was that he in fact had a very good idea indeed-and he didn't like it.

 

But for the moment they were free. Seaton checked and double-checked every gauge

and warning device and nodded at last.

 

"Good," he said then, "I was more than half expecting a kick in the pants, even way out

here. The next item on our agenda is a council of war; so cluster 'round, everybody, and

get comfortable." He turned control over to the Brain, sat down beside Dorothy, stoked

his pipe, and went on:

 

"Point one; DuQuesne. He got stuff somewhere-virtually certainly from the Jelmi-at

least the fourth-dimensional transmitter and we don't know what else, that he didn't put

out anything about. Naturally. And he sucked me in like Mary's little lamb. Also

naturally. At hindsight I'm a blinding flash and a deafening report. I've got a few

glimmerings, but you're the brain, Mart; so give out with analysis and synthesis."

 

Crane did so; covering the essential points and concluding: "Since the plug-chart was

accurate, the course was accurate. Therefore, besides holding back vital information,

DuQuesne lied about one or both of two things: the point at which the signal was

received and the direction from which it came."

 

"Well, you can find out about that easily enough," Dorothy said. "You know, that dingus

you catch light-waves with, so as to see exactly what went on years and years ago. Or

wouldn't it work, this far away?"

 

Seaton nodded. "Worth a try. Dunark?"

 

"I say go after DuQuesne!" the Osnomian said viciously. "Catch him and blow him and

his Captial D to hellangone up!"

 

Seaton shook his head. "I can't buy that-at the moment. Now that he's flopped again at

murder, I don't think he's of first importance any more. You see, I haven't mentioned

Point Two yet, which is a datum I didn't put into the pot because I wanted to thrash

Point One out first. It's about who the enemy really are. When I finally got organized to

slug them a good one back, I followed the shot. They knew they'd been nudged, believe

me. So much so that in the confusion I got quite a lot of information. They're Chlorans.

Or, if not exactly like the Chlorans of Chlora, that we had all the trouble with, as nearly

identical as makes no difference."

 

"Chlorans!" Dorothy and Margaret shrieked as one, and five minds dwelt briefly upon

that hideous and ultimately terrible race of amoeboid monstrosities who, living in an

atmosphere of gaseous chlorine, made it a point to enslave or to destroy all the

humanity of all the planets they could reach.

 

All five remembered, very vividly, the starkly unalloyed ferocity with which one race of

Chlorans had attacked the planet Valeron; near which the Skylark of Valeron had been

built and after which she had been named. They remembered the horrifyingly narrow

margin by which those Chlorans had been defeated. They also remembered that the

Chlorans had not even then been slaughtered. The Skylarkers had merely enclosed the

planet Chlora in a stasis of time and sent it back-on a trip that would last, for everyone

and everything outside that stasis, some four hundred years-to its own native solar

system, from which it had been torn by a near-collision of suns in the longgone past.

The Skylarkers should have blown Chlora into impalpable and invisible debris, and the

men of the party had wanted to do just that, but Dorothy and Margaret and the

essentially gentle Valeronians had been dead set against genocide.

 

Dorothy broke the short silence. "But how could they be, Dick?" she asked. "'Way out

here? But of course, if we human beings could do it–?' She paused.

 

"But of course," Seaton agreed sourly. "Why not? Why shouldn't they be as widespread

as humanity is? Or even more so, if they have killed enough of us off? And why

shouldn't they be smarter than those others were? Look at how much we've learned in

just months, not millennia, of time."

 

Another and longer silence fell; which was broken by Seaton. "Well, two things are

certain. They're rabidly antisocial and they've got-at the moment-a lot more stuff than

we have. They've got it to sell, like farmers have hay. It's also a dead-sure cinch that we

can't do a thing-not anything-without a lot more data than we have now. It'll take all the

science of Norlamin and maybe a nickel's worth besides to design and build what we'll

have to have. And they can't go it blind. Nobody can. And we all know enough about

Chlorans to know that we won't get one iota or one of Peg's smidgeons of information

out of them by remote control. At the first touch of any kind of a highorder feeler they'll

bat our ears down . . . to a fare-thee-well. However, other means are available."

 

And he glanced at a monitor where for some minutes a display had shown a planet of

the galaxy from which their recent attacker had come.

 

During this fairly long-for Seaton-speech, and during the silence that had preceded it,

two things had been happening.

 

First the controlling Brain of the ship had been carrying out a program of Seaton's. Star

by star, system by system, it had been scanning the components of the nearest galaxy

to the scene of their encounter. It had in fact verified Seaton's conclusions: the galaxy

was dominated by Chlorans. Their works were everywhere. But it had also supported a-

not a conclusion; a hope, more accurately-that Seaton had hardly dared put in words.

Although the Chlorans ruled this galaxy, there were oxygen-breathing, warm-blooded

races in it too-serfs of the Chlorans of course, but nevertheless occupying their own

planets-and it was one such planet that the Brain had finally selected and was now

displaying on its monitor.

 

The other thing was that the auburn-haired beauty who was Mrs. Richard Ballinger

Seaton had been eyeing her husband steadily. At first she had merely looked at him

thoughtfully. Then look and mien had become heavily tinged, first with surprise and

then with doubt and then with wonder; a wonder that turned into an incredulity that

became more and more incredulous. Until finally, unable to hold herself in any longer,

she broke in on him.

 

"Dick!" she cried. "You wouldn't! You know you wouldn't!"

 

"I wouldn't? If not, who . . . ?" Changing his mind between two words, Seaton cut the

rest of the sentence sharply off; shrugged his shoulders; and grinned, somewhat

shamefacedly, back at her.

 

At this point Crane, who had been looking first at one of them and then at the other, put

in: "I realize, Dorothy, that you and Dick don't need either language or headsets to

communicate with each other, but how about the rest of us? What, exactly, is it that

you're not as sure as you'd like to be that he wouldn't do?"

 

Dorothy opened her mouth to reply, but Seaton beat her to it. "What I would do-and will

because I'll have to; because it's my oyster and nobody else's-is, after we sneak up as

close as we can without touching off any alarms, take a landing craft and go get the

data we absolutely have to have in absolutely the only way it can be gotten."

 

"And that's what I most emphatically do not like!" Dorothy blazed. "Dick Seaton, you are

not going to land on an enslaved planet, alone and unarmed and afoot, as an

investigating Committee of One! For one thing, we simply don't have the time! Do we? I

mean, poor old Valeron is simply a wreck! We've got to go somewhere and-"

 

But Seaton was shaking his head. "The Brain can handle that by itself," he said. "All it

needs is time. As a matter of fact, you've put your finger on a first-rate reason for my

going in, alone. There's simply not much else we can do until the Valeron is back in

shape again."

 

"Not your going in." Dorothy blazed. "Flatly, positively no."

 

Again Seaton shrugged his shoulders. "I can't say I'm madly in love with the idea

myself, but who's any better qualified? Or as well? Because I know that you, Dottie,

aren't the type to advocate us sitting on our hands and letting them have all the races of

humanity, wherever situate. So who?"

 

"Me," Shiro said, promptly if ungrammatically. "Not as good, but good enough. You can

tell me what data you want and I can and will get it, just as well as . . . "

 

"Bounce back, both of you, you've struck a rubber fence!" Dunark snapped. "That job's

for Sitar and me." The green-skinned princess waved her pistol in the air and nodded

her head enthusiastically and her warlord went on, "You and I being brain-brothers,

Dick, I'd know exactly what you want. And she and I would blast-"

 

"Yeah, that's what I know damn well you'd do." Seaton broke in, only to be interrupted

in turn by Crane-who was not in the habit of interrupting anyone even once, to say

nothing of twice.

 

"Excuse me, everyone," he said, "but you're all wrong, I think. My thought at the

moment, Dick, is that your life is altogether too important to the project as a whole to be

risked as you propose risking it. As to you others, with all due respect for your abilities, I

do not believe that either of you is as well qualified for this kind of an investigation as I

am-"

 

Margaret leaped to her feet in protest, but Crane went quietly on: "-in either experience

or training. However, we should not decide that point yet-or at all, for that matter. We

are all too biased. I therefore suggest, Dick, that we feed the Brain everything, we have

and keep on feeding it everything pertinent we can get hold of, until it has enough data

to make that decision for us."

 

"That makes sense," Seaton said, and both Dorothy and Margaret nodded-but both with

very evident reservations. "The first time anything has made sense today!"

 

17 Ky-El MOKAK THE WILDER

 

THE first thing Seaton and Crane had to do, of course, was to figure out how to get

back somewhere near Galaxy DW-427-LU, within fourth-order range of that one

particular extremely powerful Chloran system, without using enough sixth-order stuff to

touch off any alarms-but still enough to make the trip in days instead of in months.

Some sixth-order emanations could be neutralized by properly phased and properly

placed counter-generators; the big question being, how much?

 

The answer turned out to be, according to Crane, "Not enough"-but, according to

Seaton, "Satisfactory". At least, it did make the trip not only possible, but feasible. And

during the days of that trip each Skylarker worked-with the Brain or with a computer or

with pencil and paper or with paint or India ink and a brush, each according to his bent-

on the problem of what could be done about the Chlorans.

 

They made little headway, if any at all. They did not have enough data. Inescapably,

the attitude of each was very strongly affected by what he or she knew about the

Chlorans they had already encountered. They were all smart enough to know that this

was as indefensible as it was inevitable.

 

Thus, while each of them developed a picture completely unlike anyone else's as to

what the truth probably was, none of them was convinced enough of the validity of his

theory to defend it vigorously. Thus it was discussion, not argument, that went on

throughout the cautious approach to the forbidden territory and the ultra-cautious

investigation of the Tellus-type planet the Brain had selected through powerful optical

telescopes and by means of third and fourth-order apparatus. Then they fell silent,

appalled; for that world was inhabited by highly intelligent human beings and what had

been done to it was shocking indeed.

 

They had seen what had been done to the planet Valeron. This was worse; much

worse. On Valeron the ruins had been recognizable as having once been cities. Even

those that had been blown up or slagged down by nuclear energies had shown traces

of what they had once been. There had been remnants and fragments of structural

members, unfused portions of the largest buildings, recognizable outlines and traces of

thoroughfares and so on. But here, where all of the big cities and three-fourths or more

of the medium-sized ones had been, there were now only huge sheets of glass.

 

Sheets of glass ranging in area from ten or fifteen square miles up to several thousands

of square miles, and variously from dozens up to hundreds of feet thick: level sheets of

cracked and shattered, almost transparent, vari-colored glass. The people of the

remaining cities and towns and villages were human. In fact, they were white

Caucasiansas white and as Caucasian as the citizens of Tampa or of Chicago or of

Portland, Oregon or of Portland, Maine. Neither Seaton nor Shiro, search as they