would, could find any evidence that any Oriental types then lived or ever had lived on

that world-to Shiro's lasting regret. He, at least, was eliminated as a spy.

 

"Well, Dottie?" Seaton asked.

 

She gnawed her lip. "Well . . . I suppose we'll have to do something-but hey!" she

exclaimed, voice and expression changing markedly. "How come you think you have to

go down there at all to find out what the score is? You've snatched people right and left

all over the place with ordinary beams and things, long before anybody ever heard of

that sixth-order, fourth-dimensional gizmo."

 

Seaton actually blushed. "That's right, my pet," he admitted. "Once again you've got a

point. I'll pick one out that's so far away from everybody else that he won't be missed for

a while. Maybe two'd be better."

 

Since it was an easy matter to find isolated specimens of the humanity of that world, it

was less than an hour later that two men-one from a town, one found wandering alone

in. the mountains-were being examined by the Brain.

 

And what an examination! Everything in their minds literally everything, down to the last-

least-tiniest coded "bit" of every long-chain proteinoid molecule of every convolution of

their brains-everything was being transferred to the Valeron's Great Brain; was being

filed away in its practically unfillable memory banks.

 

When the transfer was complete, Sitar drew her pistol, very evidently intending to do

away with the natives then and there. But Dorothy of course would not stand for that.

Instead, she herself put them back into a shell of force and ran them through the

Valeron's locks and down into a mountain cave, which she then half-filled with food. "I'd

advise you two," she told them then, in their own language, "to stay put here for a few

days and keep out of trouble. If you really. want to get yourselves killed, though, that's

all right with me. Go ahead any time."

 

When Dorothy brought her attention back into the control room, the Brain had finished

its analysis of the data it had just secured from the natives, had correlated it with all

their pertinent data it had in its banks, and was beginning to put out its synthesized

report.

 

That report came in thought; in diamond-sharp, diamond-clear thought that was not

only super-intelligible and super-audible, but also was more starkly visible than any

possible tri-di. It gave, as no possible other form of report could give, the entire history

of the race to which those two men belonged. It described in detail and at length the

Chlorans and the relationship between the two races, and went on to give, in equal

detail, the most probable course of near-term events. It told Seaton that he should

investigate this planet Ray-See-Nee in person. It told him in fine detail what to wear,

where to go, and practically every move to make for the ensuing twenty-four hours.

 

At that point the report stopped, and when Seaton demanded more information, the

Brain balked. "Data in sufficient," it thought, and everyone there would have sworn that

the Great Brain actually had a consciousness of self as it went on, "This construct –?' it

actually meant "I"='is not built to guess, but deals only in virtual certainties; that is, with

probabilities that approximate unity to twelve or more nines. With additional data, this

matter can be explored to a depth quite strictly proportional to the sufficiency of the

data. That is all."

 

"That's the package, Dottie," Seaton said then. "If we want to reach the Chlorans

without them reaching us first, there's how. That makes it a force, wouldn't you say?"

 

Dorothy wasn't sure. "For twenty-four hours, I guess," she agreed, dubiously. "After

which time I think I'll be screaming for you to come back here and feed that monster

some more data. So be mighty darn sure to get some."

 

"I'll try to, that's for sure. But the really smart thing to do might be to take this wreckage

half a dozen galaxies away and put the Brain to work rebuilding her while I'm down

there investigating."

 

"D'you think I'll sit still for that?" Dorothy blazed. "If you do, you're completely out of your

mind!"

 

And even Crane did not subscribe to the idea. "Why?" he asked, "lust to tear her down

again after you've found out what we'll have to have?" .

 

"That's so, too." Seaton thought for a moment, gray eyes narrowed and focused on

infinity, translating the imperatives of the Brain into practical measures. Then he

nodded. "All right. I admit I'll feel better about the deal with you people and the Brain

standing by."

 

And Seaton, now lean and hard and deeply tanned, sat down in his master controller

and began to manufacture the various items he would need; exactly as the Brain told

him to make them.

 

And next morning, as the sun began to peer over the crest of the high mountain ridge

directly below the Skylark of Valeron, Seaton came to ground, hid his tiny landing craft

in a cave at the eighteen-thousand-foot level, and hiked the fifteen miles down-

mountain to the nearest town.

 

He now looked very little indeed like the Doctor Richard B. Seaton of the Rare Metals

Laboratory. He was almost gaunt. His skin was burned to a shade consistent with years

of exposure to wind and weather. His hair had very evidently been cut--occasionally-

with shears by his own hand; his beard had been mowed-equally occasionally with

those same shears.

 

He wore crudely made, heavy, hobnailed, high-laced boots; a pair of baggy,

unsymmetrical breeches of untanned deerskin; and a shapeless, poor-grade-leather

coat that had been patched crudely and repeatedly at elbows and shoulders and across

the back. He also wore what was left of a hard hat.

 

As he strode into the town and along its main street, more than one pair of eyes looked

at him and then looked again, for the people of that town were not used to seeing

anyone walk purposefully. Nor was the sloppily uniformed guard at the entrance to City

Hall. This wight-who couldn't have been a day over fifteen-opened his eyes, almost

straightened up and said:

 

"Halt, you. Who'a you? Whatcha want?"

 

"Business," Seaton said, briskly. "To see the mayor, Ree-Toe Prenk."

 

"Awri'; g 'wan in," and the youth relapsed into semistuporous leaning on his ratty-looking

rusty rifle.

 

It was easy enough to find His Honor's office, since it was the only one in the building

doing any business at all. Seaton paused just inside the doorway and looked around.

Everything was shabby and neglected. The wall-to-wall carpet was stained and dirty,

worn through to the floor, in several places. The divider-rail leaned drunkenly, forward

here, backward there. The vacant receptionist's desk was as battered and scarred as

though it had been through a war. The place hadn't been cleaned for months, and not

very thoroughly then.

 

And the people in that office were in perfect sync with their surroundings. Half a dozen

melancholy-looking people, men and women, sat listlessly on hard, straight-backed

chairs; staring glumly, fixedly at nothing; completely disinterested, apparently, in

whether they were ever called into the inner office or not.

 

And the secretary! She, was dressed in what looked like a gunny-sack. She was

scrawny. Her unkempt, straight, lank hair was dirty-mouse brown in color. She didn't

look very bright. She was, however, the only secretary in sight, so Seaton strode up to

her desk.

 

"Miss What's-your-name!" he snapped. "Can you, without rupturing a blood-vessel,

come to life long enough to do half a minute's work?"

 

The girl jumped, started to rise to her feet at her desk, and blushed. "Why, yes . . . yes,

sir, I mean. What can we do for you, Mister-?"

 

"I'm Ky-El Mokak. I want to talk to Hizzonner about turning myself in."

 

That brought her to life fast. "About what?" she cried, and her half-scream was followed

instantly by a deeper, louder voice from the intercom.

 

His Honor had not been asleep after all. "You what? All right, Fy-Ly, send him in; but be

sure he hasn't got a gun first."

 

"Gun? What would I be doing with a gun?" Seaton

 

patted his pockets, shucked off his dilapidated coat, and made a full turn to show that

he was clean. Then, seeing no coat-rack or hangers, he pitched the coat and hat into a

corner and strode into the inner office.

 

It was, if possible, in even worse shape than the outer one. The man behind the desk

was fifty-odd years old; lean and bald. He looked worried, dyspeptic and nervous. He

held a hand-weapon-which was not the least bit rusty--in workmanlike fashion in a

competent-looking right hand. It was not pointed directly at Seaton's midsection. It

evidently did not have to be.

 

"What I'd ought to do right now," the man said quietly, "is blow your brains out without

letting you say a word. You're another damn rat. A fink-a spy-maybe a revver or an

undergrounder, even. You don't look like any wilder I ever saw brought in:"

 

The Brain had not dumped Seaton on a strange and dangerous new planet without

providing him with a full "knowledge" of its history, its mores and even its dialects.

Through the educators Seaton had received enough of RaySee-Nee's cultural patterns

to be able to carry off his role. He knew what His Honor was thinking about; he knew,

even, very accurately just how far the man could be pushed, where his real sympathies

lay, and what he could be counted upon to do about it.

 

Wherefore Seaton said easily: "Of course I don't. I've got a brain. Those lard-headed

chasseurs couldn't catch me in a thousand years. None of 'em can detect a smell on a

skunk. And you won't shoot me, not with the bind you're in. You aren't a damn enough

fool to. You wouldn't shoot a crippled kid on crutches, let alone a full-grown, able-

bodied man."

 

Prenk shivered a little, but that was all. "Who says I'm in a bind? What kind of a bind?"

 

"I say so," Seaton said, flatly. "You're hitting bottom right now. You're using half-grown

kids: girls, even. How many weeks is it going to be before you don't make quota and

your town and everything and everybody in it get turned into a lake of lava?"

 

Prenk trembled visibly and his face turned white. "You win," he said unsteadily, and put

his pistol back into the top right-hand drawer of his desk. "Whoever you are, you know

the score and aren't afraid to talk about it. You'd have no papers, of course-on you, at

least . . . Let's see your arm."

 

"No number." Seaton rolled up his left sleeve and held his forearm out for examination.

"Look close. Scars left by good surgery are fine, but they can't be made invisible."

 

"I know they can't." His Honor looked very closely indeed, then drew a tremendously

deep breath of relief. "You are a wilder! You mean to say you've been up in the hills

ever since the Conquest without getting caught?"

 

"That's right. I told you I'm smart, and the brains of a whole platoon of chasseurs, all

concentrated down into one, wouldn't equip a half-witted duck."

 

"But they've got dogs!"

 

"Yeah, but they aren't smart, either. Not very much smarter than the chasseurs are.

Hell, I've been living on those dogs half the time. Pretty tough, fried or roasted, but

boiled long enough they make mighty tasty stew."

 

"Mi-Ko-Ta's beard! Who are you, really, and what were you, before?"

 

"I told you, I'm Ky-El Mokak. I am-was, rather-a Class Twelve Fellow of the Institute of

Mining Engineers. Recognize the ring?" Seaton went to the desk and placed his left

hand flat on its surface.

 

Prenk studied the massive ornament. It had been fabricated, in strict external accord

with the Brain's visualization of what it should have been, from synthesized meteoric

metal metal that had actually never been in open space, to say nothing of ever having

been anywhere near the gray-lichened walls of the revered Institute that Seaton had

never seen.

 

Having examined the ring minutely, Prenk looked up and nodded; his whole manner

changed. "I recognize the ring and I can read the symbols. A Twelve! It's a shame to

register and brand you. If you say so I'll let it drop."

 

"I'll say so. I'm not committing myself that deep yet."

 

"All right, but why did you come in? Or is it true that whatever undergrounds spring up

are smashed flat in a week?"

 

"I don't know. I couldn't find any. Not one, - and I searched every square mile for a

thousand miles north, east, south, and west of here. And I didn't find anybody who

wasn't too dangerous to travel with, and I'm gregarious. Also, I don't like caves and I

don't like camp cooking and I don't like living off the land-and I do like music and books

and art and educated people and so on-in other words, I found out that I can't revert to

savagery. And, not least, I like women and there aren't any out there. What few ever

make it up there die fast."

 

"I'm beginning to believe you." A little of the worry and harassment left His Honor's face.

"One more question. Why, knowing the jam we're in, did you come here instead of

going somewhere where you'd be safe?"

 

"Because, on the basis of stuff I picked up here and there, you and I together can make

it safe here. I can fix your mining machinery easily enough so you can make quota

every week with no sweat; so the town won't get slagged down; not right away, anyway.

You aren't a quisling, and my best guess is that most of the spies and storm troopers

have sneaked out or have been pulled out because of what's supposed to be about to

happen here," Seaton said.

 

Prenk stared thoughtfully at Seaton. "You don't appear to be the suicidal type. But you

know as well as I do that just making quota won't be enough for very long. What have

you really got in mind, Ky-El Mokak?"

 

Seaton thought for a moment. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he dug down into his

baggy breeches and brought out two closely folded headsets.

 

"Put one of these on. It isn't a player or a recorder; just a kind of super-telephone. A fast

way of exchanging information."

 

Prenk wore it for a couple of minutes, then took it off, staring suspiciously in turn at it

and at Seaton. "Why didn't I ever hear of anything like that before?" he demanded.

Seaton didn't answer the question and Prenk went on, "Oh; secret. Okay. But what

makes you think you can set up an underground right out here in the open?"

 

"There's no reason in the world why we can't," Seaton declared. "Especially since we'd

just be reviving one that everybody, including the Premier and you yourself, thinks is

smashed flat and is about to be liquidated."

 

This was the second really severe test Seaton had made of the Brain's visualizations,

and it too stood solidly up. All Prenk said was, "You're doing the talking; keep it up," but

his hands, clenching tightly into fists, showed that Seaton's shot had struck the mark.

 

"I've talked enough," Seaton said then. "From here on rd be just guessing. It's your turn

to talk."

 

"All right. It's too late now, I'm afraid, for anything to make any difference. Yes, I was the

leader of a faction that believed in decent, humane, civilized government, but we

weren't here then, we were in the capital. Our coup failed. And those of us who were

caught were exiled here and arrangements were made for us to be the next wipe-out."

 

"Some of your party survived, then. Could you interest them again, do you think?"

 

"Without arms and equipment, no. That was why we failed."

 

"Equipment would be no problem."

 

"It wouldn't?" Prenk's eyes began to light up.

 

"No." Seaton did not elaborate, but went on, "The problem is people and morale. I can't

supply people and we have to start here, not over in the capital. Self-preservation.

We've got to make quota. Your people have been hammered down so flat that they

don't give a whoop whether they live or die. As I said, I can fix the machinery, but that of

itself won't be enough. We'll have to give 'em a shot in the arm of hope."

 

"Okay, and thanks."

 

And no one in the outer office, not even the secretary, so much as looked up as the two

men, talking busily, walked out.

 

DuQuesne, en route to Earth, knew just what a madhouse Earth was, and in just what

respects. He knew just how nearly impossible it was to buy machine tools of any kind.

He also knew just what an immense job it was going to be to build a duplicate of the

Skylark of Valeron. Or, rather, to build the tools that would build the machines that

would in turn build the planetoid. With his high-order constructors he could build most of

those primary machine tools himself; perhaps all of them in time; but time was exactly

what he did not have. Time was decidedly of the essence.

 

DuQuesne's ex-employer, The World Steel Corporation, had billions of dollars' worth of

exactly the kind of tooling he had to have. They not only used it, they manufactured it

and sold it. And what of it they did not manufacture they could buy. How they could buy!

As a result of many years of intensive, highly organized, and well directed snooping,

Brookings of Steel had over a thousand very effective handles upon over a thousand

very important men.

 

And he, DuQuesne, had a perfect handle on Brookings. He was much harder and more

ruthless than Brookings was, and Brookings knew it. He could make Brookings buy his

primary tooling for him-enough of it to stuff the Capital D to her outer skin. And he

would do just that.

 

Wherefore, as soon as he got within working range of Earth, he launched his projection

directly into Brookings' private office. This time, the tycoon was neither calm nor quiet.

Standing behind his desk, chair lying on its side behind him, he was leaning forward

with his left hand flat on the top of his desk. He was clutching a half-smoked, half

chewed cigar in his right hand and brandishing it furiously in the air. He was yelling at

his terrified secretary; who, partly standing in front of her chair and partly crouching into

it, was trying to muster up courage to run.

 

When DuQuesne's projection appeared Brookings fell silent for a moment and goggled.

Then he screamed. "Get out of here, you!" at the girl, who scuttled frantically away. He

hurled what was left of his cigar into his big bronze ashtray, where it disintegrated into a

shower of sparks and a slathery mess of soggy, sticky brown leaves. And finally,

exerting everything he had of self-control, he picked his chair up, sat down in it and

glared at DuQuesne.

 

"Careful of your apoplexy, Fat," DuQuesne sneered then. "I've told you-you'll rupture

your aorta some day and that will just about break my heart."

 

Brookings' reply to that was unprintable; after which he went on, even more bitterly,

"This is all it lacks to make this a perfect day."

 

"Yeah," DuQuesne agreed, callously. "Some days you can't lay up a cent. I suppose

you've been eager to know why I didn't return your goons to you."

 

"There's nothing in the world I'm less interested in."

 

"I'll tell you anyway, for the record." DuQuesne did not know what had actually

happened, but Brookings was never to know that. "They each got one free shot, as I

said they would. But they missed!"

 

"Skip that, Doctor," Brookings said, brusquely. "You didn't come here for that. What do

you want this time?"

 

DuQuesne reached over, took a ball-point out of Brookings' pocket, tore the top sheet

off of the memorandum pad on Brookings' desk, and wrote out an order for one hun-

 

dred twenty-five million dollars, payable to the World Steel Corporation, on a numbered

account in a Swiss bank. He slid the order across the glass top of the desk and said:

 

"You needn't worry about whether it's good or not. It is. I want machine tools and fast

deliveries."

 

Brookings glanced at the paper, but did not touch it. His every muscle tensed, but he

did not quite blow up again. "Machine tools," he grated. "You know damn well money's

no good on them."

 

"Money alone, no," DuQuesne agreed equably. "That's why I'm having you apply

pressure. You'll get the detailsorders, specs, times and places of delivery, and so forth

by registered mail tomorrow morning. Shall I spell out the 'or else' for you?"

 

Brookings was quivering with rage, but there wasn't a thing in the world he could do

about the situation and he knew it. "Not for me," he managed finally, "but I'd better

record it for certain people who will have to know."

 

"Okay. Any mistake in any detail of the transaction or one second more than twenty-

four hours' delay in any specified time of delivery will mean a one-hundred-kiloton

superatomic on North Africa Number Eleven. Good-by."

 

And DuQuesne cut his projection. To Brookings, he seemed to vanish; to DuQuesne

himself, he simply was back in his own Capital D, far out in space; and DuQuesne

allowed himself to smile.

 

Things were going rather well, he thought. Seaton was tangled up with whoever the

new enemy had turned out to be; might well be dead; at any rate, was not a factor he,

DuQuesne, needed currently to take into his calculations. By the time Seaton was back

in circulation DuQuesne should have his new ship and be ready to handle him. And

from then on . . .

 

From then on, thought DuQuesne, it was only a short step to his rightful, inevitable

destiny: His universe. No one able to contest his mastery.-So thought DuQuesne, who

at that point in time knew nearly every factor that bore upon his plans, and had carefully

and correctly evaluated them all. He knew about the Llurdi and the Jelmi; he knew that

Seaton and the Chlorans were, from his point of view, keeping each other neutralized;

he knew that the Norlaminians, even, were unlikely to cause him any trouble.

DuQuesne really knew all the relevant facts but one-or, you might say, two. These two

facts were a very long distance away. One was a young girl. The other was her mother.

 

Two individuals out of a universe! Why, even if DuQuesne had known of their

existence, he might have discounted their importance completely. In which he would

have been-completely-wrong.

 

18 HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT, NOT INC

 

SINCE Seaton as Ky-El Mokak was not the least bit fussy, he accepted the first house

that Prenk showed him. His honor offered also-with a more than somewhat suggestive

expression-to send him a housekeeper, but Seaton declined the offer with thanks;

explaining that that could wait until he got himself organized and could do a little looking

around for himself.

 

Prenk gave Seaton a handful of currency and a ground car-one of Prenk's own, this; a

beautifully streamlined, beautifully kept little three-wheeled jewel of a ground-car-told

him where the shopping-centers .were, and went back to City Hall.

 

Seaton bought a haircut and a shave, a couple of outfits of clothing, and some

household supplies, which he took out to his new home and stowed away.

 

By that time it was the local equivalent of half-past three, and the shifts changed at four

o'clock; wherefore he drove his spectacular little speedster six miles up-canyon to the

uraninite mine that was the sole reason for the town's existence. Since he did not want

to be shot out of hand, he did not dare to be late or to do anything unusual, either

during the five-mile train-ride along the main tunnel or during the skip-ride down to the

eighty-four-hundred-foot level where he was to work.

 

Once in the stope itself, however, he stopped-exactly thirteen feet short of the stiffly

erect young overseer-and stood still while his shift mates picked up their tools and

started for the banging wall-the something-more-than-vertical face of the cavernous

stope-to begin their day's work.

 

The overseer-was a well-fed young man, and the second native Seaton had seen who

looked more than half alive. His jacket, breeches and boots were as glossily black as

his crash-helmet was glossily white. He was a very proud young man, and arrogant. His

side-arm hung proudly at his hip. His bull-whip coiled arrogantly ready for instant use.

 

This wight stared haughtily at Seaton for a moment, and began to swell up like a pouter

pigeon. Then, as Seaton made an unmistakable gesture at him, he went into smoothly

violent action.

 

"Oh, you're the wilder!" he snarled, and swung the heavy blacksnake with practiced

ease.

 

But Seaton had known exactly what to expect and he was ready for it. He ducked and

sidestepped with the speed and control of the trained gymnast that he was; he handled

the short, thick club that had been in his sleeve as though it were the wand of the highly

skilled prestidigitator that he was. Thus, in the instant that the end of the lash curled

savagely around the hickory he swung it like a home-run hitter swings a bat-and caught

the blacksnake's heavy, shot-loaded butt on the fly in his right hand.

 

The minion went for his gun, of course, but Seaton's right arm was already swinging

around and back, and as gun cleared holster the bull-whip's vicious tip snapped around

both gun and hand with a pistol-sharp report. The trooper stared, for an instant stunned,

at the blood spurting from his paralyzed right hand; and that instant was enough.

Seaton stepped up to him and put his left fist deep into his midsection. Then, as the

half-conscious man began to double over, he sent his right fist against its preselected

target. Not the jaw he didn't want to break his hand the throat. Nor did he hit him hard;

he didn't want to kill the

guy, or even damage him permanently.

 

As the man fell to the hard-rock floor-writhing in agony, groaning, strangling and

gasping horribly for breath -the men and women and teen-agers looking on burst as

one into clamor. "Stomp 'im!" they shrieked and yelled. "Give 'im the boots! Stomp 'im!

Kill 'im! Stomp 'is head clean off! Stomp 'im right down into the rock!"

 

"Hold it!" Seaton rasped, and the miners fell silent; but they did not relapse into their

former apathy.

 

Seaton stood by, waiting coldly for his victim to be able to draw a breath. He picked the

overseer's pistol-like weapon up and looked it over. He had never seen anything like it

before, and casual inspection didn't tell him much about how it worked, but that could

wait. He didn't intend to use it. In fact, he wasn't really interested in it at all.

 

When the overseer had partially recovered his senses, Seaton jammed a headset onto

his head and thought viciously at him; as much to give him a taste of real punishment

as to find out what he knew and to impress upon his mind exactly what he had to do if

he hoped to keep on living. Then Seaton made what was for him a speech. First, to the

now completely deflated officer:

 

"You-you slimy traitor, you quisling! Know now that a new regime has taken over.

Maybe I'll let you live and maybe I'll turn you over to these boys and girls here-you know

what they'd do to you. That depends on how exactly you stick to what I just told you.

One thought of a squeal -if you ever get one mini-meter out of line, and you'll be under

surveillance every second of every day-you'll die a long, slow, tough death. And I mean

tough!"

 

He turned to the miners; studied them narrowly. His "shot in the arm" had done them a

lot of good. Excitement was still high; none of them had relapsed into the apathy that

had affected them all such a short time before. In fact, one close-clustered group of

men was eyeing Seaton and the overseer in a fashion that made it perfectly clear that,

had it not been for Seaton's mien and the gun and the whip, there would have been a

lynching then and there.

 

"Take it easy, people," Seaton told them. "I know you all want to tear this ape apart, but

what good would it do? None. Not a bit. So I won't let you do it, if I have to use the whip

and even .the gun to keep you from it. But I don't intend to use either whip or gun and I

don't think I'll have to, because this is the first bite of a fresh kettle of fish for every

civilized human being of this world. I won't go into much detail, but I represent a group

of human beings, as human as yourselves, called HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT. I'm a

fore-runner. I'm here to bring you a message; to tell you that humanity has never been

conquered permanently and never will be so conquered. Humanity has triumphed and

will continue to triumph over all the vermin infesting all the planets of all the solar

systems of all the galaxies of all surveyed space.

 

"HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT's plans have been made in full and are being put out into

effect. Humanity will win here, and in not too long a time. Every Chloran in every solar

system in this region of space will die. That's a promise.

 

"Nor do we need your help. All we ask you is that you produce the full quota of ore

every week, so that no Chloran warship will come here too soon. And that production

will be no problem very shortly, since I can repair your machinery and will have it all

back in working order by one week from today. So in a very few weeks you women can

go back to keeping house for your families; you youngsters can go back to school; and

half of you men will be able to make quota in half a shift and spend the other half of it

playing penny-ante. And you, Brother Rat--" he turned back to the deposed overseer-

"you can peel that pretty uniform. You're going to work, right now. You and I are going

to be partners-and if you so much as begin to drag your feet I'll slap your face clear

around onto the back of your neck. Let's go!"

 

They went. They picked up a drill-which weighed all of three hundred pounds-and

lugged it across the rough rock floor to the foot of the face; which, translated from the

vernacular, means the lower edge of the expanse of high-grade ore that was being

worked.

 

It was a beautiful thing, that. face; a startlingly high and wide expanse of the glossly,

lustrous, submetallic pitch black of uraninite; slashed and spattered and shot through at

random with the characteristic violent yellows of autunite and carnotite and the variant

greens of torbernite.

 

But Seaton was not particularly interested in beauty at the moment. What he hoped

was that he could keep from giving away the fact that this was the first time he * had

ever handled a mining machine of any kind or type. He thought he could, however, and

he did.

 

For, after all, there are only so many ways in which holes can be made in solid rock.

Second, since the hardrock men who operate the machinery to make those holes are

never the greatest intellects of any world, such machinery must be essentially simple.

And third, the Brain's visualizations had been very complete and Richard Seaton was,

as he had admitted to Prenk, an exceptionally smart man.

 

Wherefore, although Seaton unobtrusively let the exoverseer take the lead, the two

men worked very well together and the native did not once drag his feet. They set up

the heavy drill and locked it in place against the face. They slipped the shortest "twelve-

inch" steel into the chuck and rammed it home. They turned on the air and put their

shoulders to the stabilizing pads-and that monstrous machine, bellowing and thundering

under the. terrific urge of two hundred pounds to the square inch f compressed air,

drove that heavy bit resistlessly into the ore.

 

And the rest of the miners, fired by Seaton's example as well as by his "shot in the

arm," worked as they had not worked in months; to such good purpose that when the

shift ended at midnight the crew had sent out almost twice as much high-grade ore as

they had delivered the night before.

 

It need hardly be mentioned, perhaps, that Seaton was enjoying himself very much.

Although he was not, in truth, the "big, muscle-bound ape-especially between the ears"

he was wont to describe himself as, there was certainly a pleasure in being up against

the sort of problem that muscle and skill could settle. For a time he was concerned

about the fact that events elsewhere might be proceeding at a pace he could not

control; but there was not a minute spent on the surface of this planet that was not a

net gain in terms of the automatic repair of the Valeron. That great ship had been hurt.

Since there was at the moment very little that Seaton could do effectively about

DuQuesne, or directly about the Chlorans, or the Fenachrone-and was a great deal he

could do here on the surface of Ray-See-Nee -he put the other matters out of his mind

and did what had to be done.

 

And enjoyed it enormously!

 

Seaton went "home" to the empty and solitary house that was his temporary residence

and raised the oversize ring to his lips. "Dottie," he said.

 

"Oh, Dick!" a tiny scream came from the ring. "I wish you wouldn't take such horrible

chances! I thought I'd die! Won't you, tomorrow morning, just shoot the louse out of

hand? Please?"

 

"I wasn't taking any chances, Dot; a man with half my training could have done it. I had

to do something spectacular to snap these people out of it; they're dead from the belt-

buckle up, down, and back. But I've done enough, I think, so I won't have any more

trouble at all. It'll get around-and how!-and strictly on the Q and T. All those other apes

will need is a mere touch of fist."

 

"You hope. Me, too, for that matter. Just a sec, here's Martin. He wants to talk to you

about that machinery business," and Crane's voice replaced Dorothy's.

 

"I certainly do, Dick. You say you want two-hundred-fifty-pound Sullivan Sluggers,

complete with variable-height mounts and inch-and-a-quarter-that's English, remember

-bits. You want Ingersoll-Rand compressors and Westinghouse generators and Wilfley

tables and so on, each item by name and no item resembling any of their own

machinery in any particular. Since you are supposed to be repairing their own

machinery, wouldn't it be better to have the Brain do just that, while you look on, make

wise motions, and learn?"

 

`It might be better, at that," Seaton admitted, after a moment's thought. "My thought

was that since nobody now working in the mine knows anything much about either

mining or machinery it .wouldn't make any difference, as long as the stuff was good and

rusty on the outside, and I know how our stuff works. But I can learn theirs and it will

save a lot of handling and we'll have the time. They're working only two shifts in only

one stope, you know. Lack of people. But nine-tenths of their equipment is as dead as

King Tut and the rest of it starts falling apart every time anybody gives any of it a stern

look-1 was scared spitless all shift that we'd be running out of air or power, or both, any

minute. So we'll have to do one generator and at least one compressor tonight; so you

might as well start getting the stuff ready for me."

 

"It's ready. I'll send it down as soon as it gets good and dark. In the meantime, how

about Brother Rat? Have you anyone watching him?"

 

"No, I didn't think it was necessary. But it might be, at that. From up there, would you

say?"

 

"Definitely. And Shiro and Lotus haven't much to do at the moment. I'll make

arrangements."

 

"Do that, guy, and so long 'till dark."

 

"Just a sec, Dick," Dorothy said then. "I'm not done with you yet. You remembered the

no-neighbors bit, I think?"

 

"I sure did, Honey-Chile. No neighbors within half a mile, So, any dark of the moon, slip

down here in one of the fifteen-footers and all will be well."

 

"You big, nice man," Dorothy purred. "Comes dark, comes me! an' you can lay to that."

 

Countless parsecs away, DuQuesne made proper entry into the Solar System, put his

Capital D into a parking orbit around Earth, and began to pick up his tremendous order

of machine tools and supplies. It went well; Brookings had done his job. There was,

however, one job DuQuesne had to do for himself. During the loading, accordingly, he

went in person to Washington, D.C., to the Rare Metals Laboratory, and to Room 1631.

 

That room's door was open. He tapped lightly on it as he entered the room. He closed

the door gently behind him.

 

"Park it," a well-remembered contralto voice said. "Be with you in a moment."

 

"No rush." DuQuesne sat down, crossed his legs, lighted a cigarette, and gazed at the

woman seated at her electronics panel. Both her eyes were buried in the light-shield of

a binocular eyepiece; both her hands were manipulating vernier knobs in tiny arcs.

 

"Oh! Hi, Blackie! Be with you in half a moment."

 

"No sweat, Hunkie. Finish your obs."

 

"Natch." Her attention had not wavered for an instant from her instruments; it did not

waver then.

 

In a minute or so she pressed a button, her panel went dark, and she rose to her feet.

"It's been a long time, Blackie," she said, stepping toward him and extending her hand.

 

"It has indeed." He took her hand and began an encircling action with his left-a

maneuver which she countered, neatly but still smilingly, by grasping his left hand and

holding it firmly.

 

"Tsk, tsk," she tsked. "The merchandise is on display, Blackie, but it is not to be

handled. Remember?"

 

"I remember. Still untouchable," he said.

 

"That's right. You're a hard-nosed, possessive brute, Blackie-any man to interest me

very much would have to be, I suppose-but no man born is ever going to tell me what I

can or can't do. Selah. Butlet's skip that." She released his hands, waved him to a chair,

sat down, crossed her legs, accepted the lighted cigarette he handed her, and went on,

"Thanks. The gossip was that you were all washed up and had, as Ferdy put it, `taken it

on the lam.' I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now. I've been wanting to tell

you; you're a good enough man so that whatever you're really after, you'll get."

 

This woman could reach DuQuesne as no other woman ever had. "Thanks, Hunkie," he

said; and, reaching out, he pressed her right hand hard then dropped it. "What I came

up here for-have you a date for Thursday evening that you can't or won't break?"

 

Her smile widened; her two lovely dimples deepened. "Don't tell me; let me guess.

Louisa Vinciughi in Lucia."

 

"Nothing else but. You like?"

 

"I love. With the usual stipulation-we `Dutch' it."

 

"Listen, Hunkie!" he protested. "Aren't you ever going to get off of that `Dutch' thing?

Don't you think a man can take a girl out without having monkey-business primarily in

mind?"

 

She considered the question thoughtfully, then nodded.

 

"As stated, yes. Eliding the one word `primarily', no. I've heard you called a lot of things,

my friend, but `stupid' was never one of them. Not even once."

 

"I know." DuQuesne smiled, a trifle wryly. "You are not going to be obligated by any jot

or iota or tittle to any man living or yet to be born."

 

Her head went up a little and her smile became a little less warm. "That's precisely

right, Marc. But I've never made any secret of the fact that I enjoy your company a lot.

So, on that basis, okay and thanks."

 

"On that basis, then, if that's the way it has to be, and thanks to you, too," DuQuesne

said, and took his leave.

 

And Thursday evening came; and all during that long and thoroughly pleasant evening

the man was, to the girl's highly sensitive perception . . . well, different, although very

subtly so. He was not quite, by some very small fraction, his usual completely poised

and urbane self. Even Vinciughi's wonderful soprano voice did not bring him entirely

back from wherever it was he was. Wherefore, just before saying goodnight at the door

of her apartment, she said:

 

"You have something big on your mind, Blackie. Tremendously big. Would it help to

come in and talk a while?" This was the first time in all their long acquaintance that she

had ever invited him into her apartment. "Or-wouldn't it?"

 

He thought for a moment. "No," he decided. "There are so many maybes and ifs and

buts in the way that talking would be even more futile than thinking. But I'd like to ask

you this: how much longer will you be here in Washington, do you think?"

 

She caught her breath. "The Observer says it'll take me a year and a half to get what I

should have."

 

"That's fine," DuQuesne said. His thoughts were racing, but none of them showed.

What were those observers doing? And why? He knew the kind of mind Stephanie de

Marigny had-they were feeding with a teaspoon a mind fully capable of gulping it down

by the truckload . . . why? Why? So as not to play favorites, probably-that was the only

reason he could think of. DuQuesne was playing for very high stakes; he could not

afford to overlook any possibility, however remote. Had his interest in Hunkie de

Marigny been deduced by the Norlaminians? Was it, in fact, possible-even likely-that he

was under observation even now? Was their strange slowdown in her training

 

meaningful? He could not answer; but he decided on caution. He went on with scarcely

a noticeable pause, "I'll see you well before that-if I may?"

 

"Why, of course you may! I'd get an acute attack of the high dudgeons if you ever came

to Washington without seeing me!"

 

He took his leave then, and she went into her apartment and closed the door . . . and

stood there, motionless, listening to his receding footsteps with a far-away, brooding

look in her deep brown eyes.

 

19 THE COUP

 

As the days had passed, more and more of the Skylarkers had come to ground in

Seaton's temporary home on the planet Ray-See-Nee; until many of them, especially

Dorothy, were spending most of their nights there. On this particular evening they were

all there.

 

Since the personal gravity-controls had been perfected long since, Dunark and Sitar

were comfortable enough as far as gravity was concerned. The engineers, however,

had not yet succeeded in incorporating really good ambient atmosphere temperature-

controllers into them; wherefore he was swathed in wool and she wore her fabulous

mink coat. They each wore two Osnomian machine pistols instead of one, and they sat

a couple of feet apart-in instant readiness for any action that might become necessary.

 

Lotus and Shiro, a little closer together than the two Osnomians but not enough so to

get into each other's way, sat cross-legged on the floor. He was listening intently, while

she wasn't. Almost everything that was being said was going completely over her head.

 

Dorothy, Margaret, and Crane sat around a small table, fingering tall glasses in which

ice-cubes tinkled faintly.

 

Seaton paced the floor, with his right hand in his breeches pocket and his left holding

his pipe, which he brandished occasionally in the air to emphasize a point.

 

"Considering that we can't do anything at all on unmuffled high-order stuff except when

an ore-scow is here, masking our emanations," Seaton was saying, "we haven't done

too bad. However, I wouldn't wonder if we'd just about run out of time and we're right

between the devil and the deep blue sea. Mart, what's your synthesis?"

 

Crane sipped his drink and cleared his throat. "You're probably right in one respect,

Dick. They apparently make a spectacle of these destructions of cities; not for the

Chlorans' amusement-I doubt very much if they enjoy or abhor anything, as we

understand the term-but to keep the rest of the population of this world in line. Whether

or not the quisling dictator of this world arranged for this city to be the next sacrifice, it is

certain that we have interfered with the expected course of events to such an extent

that the powers-that-be will at least investigate. But I can't quite see the dilemma."

 

"I can," Dorothy said. "They have to have a grisly example, once every so often; and

since this one didn't develop on schedule maybe they'll go crying, to mama instead of

trying to handle us themselves. You see, they may know more about us than we think

they do."

 

"That's true, of course-" Crane began, but Seaton broke in.

 

"So I say it's time to let Ree-Toe Prenk in on the whole deal and add him to our Council

of War," he declared, and talk went on.

 

They were still discussing the situation twenty minutes later, when someone tapped

gently on the front door.

 

The Osnomians leaped to their feet, pistols in all four hands. The two Japanese leaped

to their feet and stood poised, knees and elbows slightly flexed, ready for action. Forty-

five-caliber automatics appeared in the hands of the three at the table, and Crane

flipped his remote control helmet onto his head. Seaton, magnum in hand, snapped on

the outside lights and peered out through the recently installed one-way glass of the

door.

 

"Speak of the devil," he said in relief. "It's Hizzoner." He opened the door wide and went

on, "Come in, Your Honor. We were just talking about you."

 

Prenk came in, his eyes bulging slightly at the sight of the arsenal of armament now

being put back into holsters. They bulged still more as he looked at the Japanese, and

he gulped as he stared fascinatedly at the green-skinned Osnomians.

 

"I knew, of course, within a couple of days," Prenk said then, quietly, "that you who call

yourself Ky-El Mokak were not confining your statements to the exact truth. No wilder

could possibly have done what you were doing; but by that time I knew that you,

whoever you were, were really on our side. I had no suspicion until this moment,

however, that you were actually from another world. I thought that your speech to the

miners was what you said it was going to be, 'a shot in the arm of hope' It now seems

more than slightly possible that you were talking about the very matters I came here

tonight to see you about. Certain supplies, you will remember!'

 

"I remember. I lied to you, yes. Wholesale and retail. But how else could I have made

the approach, the mood you were in, without blowing everything higher than up?"

 

"Your technique was probably the best possible, I admit."

 

"Okay. Yes, we're from a galaxy so far away from here that you could barely find it with

the biggest telescope this world ever had. Our business at the moment is to wipe out

every Chloran in this region of space, but we can't do it without-among other things-a lot

more data than we now have. And we'll need weeks of time, mostly elsewhere, for

preparation.

 

"But before we go too deeply into that you must meet my associates. People, this is His

Honor Ree-Toe Prenk; what you might call the Mayor of the City of Ty-Ko-Ma of the

Planet Ray-See-Nee. You know all about him. ReeToe, this is Hi-Fi Mokak, my wife-Lo-

Test and Hi-Test Crane, husband and wife-" and he went on with two more pairs of

coined names.

 

"Hi-Fi indeed!" Dorothy snorted, under her breath, in English. "Just you wait 'til I get you

alone tonight, you egregious clown!"

 

"Wha'd'ya mean `clown'?" he retorted. "Try your hand sometime at inventing seven

names on the spur of the moment!"

 

Seaton then put on a headset, slipped one over Prenk's head, and said in thought:

"This is what is left-the resi--you might say-of our mobile base the Skylark of Valeron,"

and went on to show him and to describe to him the Great Brain, the immense tank-

chart of the entire First Universe, the tremendous driving engines and even more

tremendous engines of offense and of defense.

 

Prenk was held spellbound and speechless, for this "residue," hundreds of kilometers in

diameter and hundreds of millions of tons in weight, was so utterly beyond any artificial

structure Prenk had ever imagined that he simply could not grasp its magnitude at all.

And when Seaton went on to show him a full mental picture of what that base had been

before the battle with the Chlorans and what it would have to be before they could

begin to move against the Chlorans-the one-thousand kilometer control-circles, the

thousands of cubic kilometers of solidly packed offensive and defensive gear, the

scores of fantastically braced and buttressed layers of inoson that composed the

worldlet's outer skin-he was so strongly affected as to be speechless in fact.

 

"I . . . I see. That is . . . a little, maybe . . . " he stammered, then subsided into silence.

 

"Yes, it is a bit big to get used to all at once," Seaton agreed. "It needs a lot of work.

Some we're doing; some of it can't be done anywhere near here; but we don't want to

leave without being reasonably sure that you and your people will be alive when we get

back. So we want a lot of information from you."

 

"I'll be glad to tell you everything I know or can find out.,,

 

"Thanks. Ideas, first. How much do you think the quisling Big Shots actually know?

What do you think they'll do about it? What do you think His Magnificence the Dictator

will do? And what should we do about what he thinks he's going to do? In a few days

we'll want all the information you can get-facts, names, dates, places, times, and

personnel. Also one sample copy of each and every item of equipment desired; with

numbers wanted and times and places of delivery. Brother Prenk, you have the floor."

 

"One advantage of a small town and a group like ours," Prenk said, slowly, "is that

everybody knows everybody else's business. Thus, we all knew who the spies were, but

the people were all so low in their minds that they simply did not care whether they lived

or died. We had done our best and had failed; most of us had given up hope

completely. Now, however, the few remaining spies have been locked up and are under

control. They and the overseers are still reporting, but-" he smiled wolfishly-"they are

saying precisely and only what I tell them to say. This condition can't last very long; but,

after what you just showed me, I'm pretty sure I can make it last long enough. We have

organized a really efficient force of guerrilla fighters and our plans for the capital are . .

."

 

A couple of weeks later, then, three hundred fifty-eight highly trained men and one

highly trained woman set out.

 

A woman? Yes. Dorothy had protested vigorously.

 

"But Sitar! You aren't going, surely? Surely you're staying home?"

 

"Staying home!" the green girl had blazed. "The First Wife of a prince of Osnome goes

with her prince wherever he goes. She fights beside him, at need she dies beside him.

Would you have him die fighting and me live an hour? I'd blow myself to bits!"

 

"My God!" Dorothy had gasped, and had stared, appalled.

 

`That's right," Seaton had told her. "Their ethics, mores and customs differ more than

somewhat from ours, you know." And nothing more had been said about Sitar being a

member of the Expeditionary Force.

 

Prenk's guerrillas had infiltrated the capital city by ones and twos; no group ever larger

than two. Each one wore the costume of an easily recognizable class of citizen. They

were apparently artisans and workmen, soldiers, sailors, clerks, businessmen, tycoons

of industry. Nor were the watches they all wore on their wrists any more alike than were

their costumes-except in one respect. They all told the same time, to the tenth of a split

second, and they all were kept in sync by pulses from a tiny power-pack that had been

hidden in a tree in the outskirts of the city.

 

At time zero minus thirty minutes, three hundred fifty-nine persons began to enter into

and to distribute themselves throughout an immense building that resembled a palace

or a cathedral much more than the capitol building even of a world.

 

At time zero minus four seconds all those persons, who bad in the meantime been

doing inconspicuous this and innocuous that, changed direction toward or began to

walk toward or kept on walking toward their objectives.

 

At time zero on the tick, three hundred fifty-nine knives came out of concealment and

that exact number of persons fell.

 

Some of the guerrillas remained on guard where their victims lay. Others went into

various offices on various businesses. On the top-most floor four innocent-looking

visitors blasted open the steel door of Communications and shot the four operators then

on duty. The leader of the four invaders stepped up to the master-control desk, shoved

a body aside, flipped three or four switches, and said:

 

"Your attention, please! These programs have been interrupted to announce that

former Premier Da-Bay Saien and his sycophants have been executed for high treason.

Premier Ree-Toe Prenk and his loyalists are now the government. Business is to go on

as usual; no new orders will be issued except as they become necessary. That is all.

Scheduled programs will now be resumed."

 

It was not as easy everywhere, however, as that announcement indicated. By the very

nature of things, the information secured by the counterspies was incomplete and

sometimes, especially in fine detail, was wrong. Thus, when Seaton took his post on the

fifteenth floor, standing before and admiring a heroic-size bronze statue of a woman

strangling a boa constrictor whose coils enveloped half her height, he saw that there

were four guards, instead of the two he had expected to find, at the door of the office

that was his objective. But he couldn't-wouldn't-call for help. They hadn't had man-

power enough to carry spares. He'd trip the S O S if necessary, but not until it became

absolutely necessary-but that office had to be put out of business by time zero plus

fifteen seconds. He'd just have to act twice as fast, was all.

 

Cursing silently the fact that his magnum was not to be used during the first few silent

seconds of the engagement, he watched the four men constantly out of the corners of

his eyes, planning every detail of his-campaign, altering those details constantly as the

guards changed ever so slightly their positions and postures. He could get three of

them, he was sure, before any one of them could fire; but he'd have to be lucky as well

as fast to get the fourth in time-and if the ape had time to take any kind of aim at all it

would be very ungood.

 

On the tick of zero time Seaton shed his businessman's cloak and took off. Literally. His

knife swept through the throat of the nearest guard before that luckless wight had

moved a muscle. He kicked the second, who was bending over at the moment, on and

through the temple with the steel-lined toe of one highly special sure-grip fighting shoe.

He stabbed the third, whose throat was protected at that instant by an upflung left arm,

through the left side of the rib-cage, twisting his blade as he pulled it out.

 

Ultra-fast as Seaton had been, the fourth guard had had time to lift his weapon, but he

had not had time to aim it, or even to point it properly. He fired in panic, before his gun

was pointed even waist-high. If Seaton had stayed upright the bullet would have missed

him completely. But he didn't. He ducked and sidestepped and twisted-and the heavy

slug tore a long and savage wound across the left side of his back.

 

One shot was all the fellow got, of course. Seaton kicked the door open and leaped into

the room, magnum high and ready. The noise of that one shot might have torn it, but

good.

 

"Freeze, everybody!" he rasped, and everyone in the big room froze. "One move of any

finger toward any button and I blast. This office is closed temporarily. Leave the

building, all of you; right now and fast. Just as you are. Come back in here after lunch

for business as usual. Scram!"

 

The office force-some nonchalantly, some wonderingly, some staring at Seaton in

surprise-"scrammed" obediently. All, that is, except one girl who came last; the girl who

had been sitting at an executive-type desk beside the door of the inner office. She was

a fairly tall girl; with hazel eyes and with dark brown hair arranged in up-to-the-second

"sunburst" style. Her close-fitting white nylon upper garment and her even tighter fire-

engine-red tights displayed a figure that could not be described as being merely

adequate.

 

Instead of passing him as the others had done she stopped, held out both hands in

indication of having nothing except peaceable intentions, and peered around his left

side. Then, bringing her eyes back to his, she said, "You're bleeding terribly, sir. It

doesn't seem to be very deepentrance and exit holes in your shirt are only four or five

inches apart-but you're losing an awful lot of blood. Won't you let me give you first aid?

I'm a quite competent nurse, sir."

 

"What?" Seaton demanded, but whatever he had intended to add to that one word was

forestalled by a bellow of wrath from behind the just-opening door of the inner office.

 

"Kay-Lee! You shirking slut! How much more of this do you think you can get away

with? When I buzz you you jump or I'll cut your bloody-" The man broke off sharply and

goggled at what he saw. He was a pasty-faced, paunchy man of forty; very evidently

self-indulgent and as evidently completely at a loss at the moment.

 

"Come in, Bay-Lay Boyn," Seaton said. "Slowly, if you don't want your brains to

decorate the ceiling. Did you ever see a man shot in the head with a magnum pistol?"

 

The man gulped and licked his lips. The girl broke the very short silence. "Whatever you

do to that poisonous slob, sir, I hope it's nothing- trivial. I'd love to see his brains

spattered all over the ceiling and I'd never let them be washed off. I'd look up at them

week after week and gloat."

 

"Kay-Lee dear, you don't mean that! You can t mean it!" the man implored. "Do

something! Please do something! I'll double your salary-I'll make you a First-I'll give you

a diamond necklace-I'll-"

 

"You'll shut your filthy lying mouth, Your Exalted," she said-quietly, but with an icily

venomous contempt that made Seaton stare. "I've taken all the raps for you I'm ever

going to." She turned to Seaton. "Please believe, sir, that no matter who your people

are or what you do, any possible change will be for the better. And I remind you-if you

don't want to fall flat on your face from weakness you'll let me dress that wound."

 

"I wouldn't wonder," Seaton admitted. "Blood's running down into my shoes already and

it's beginning to hurt like the devil. So get your kit. But before you start on me we'll use

some three-inch bandage to lash that ape's hands around that pillar there."

 

That done, Seaton peeled to the waist and the girl went expertly to work. She sprayed

the nasty-looking wound, which was almost but not quite a deep but open groove, with

antiseptic and with coagulant. She-cross-taped its ragged edges together with blood-

proof adhesive tape. She sponged most of the liquid blood off of his back. She

sprinkled half a can of curative-antispetic powder; she taped on thick pads of sterile

gauze. She wrapped-and taped into place-roll after roll of three-inch bandage around

his body and up over his shoulder and around his neck. Then she stood back and

examined her handiwork, eyes narrowed in concentration.

 

"That'll do it for a while," she decided. "I suppose you'll be too busy to take any time

today, but you'll have to get that sewed up not later than tomorrow forenoon."

 

"I'll do that. Thanks a million, lady; it feels a lot better already," and Seaton bent over to

pick up his shirt and undershirt. .

 

"But you can't wear those bloody rags!" she protested, then went on, "-But I don't know

of anything else around here that you can wear, at that."

 

Seaton grinned. "No quandary-I'll go the way I am. Costume or the lack of it isn't

important at the moment."

 

He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see how very few minutes had elapsed.

 

"Shall I go now, sir?"

 

"Not yet." Seaton was used to making fast decisions, and they were usually right. He

made one now. "I take it you were that ape's confidential secretary."

"Yes, sir, I was."

 

"So you know more about the actual workings of the department than he does and can

run it as well. To make a snap judgment, can run it better than he has been running it."

 

"Much better, sir," she said, flatly. "I've covered up for his drunken blunderings twice in

the last two months. He passed the buck to me and I took it. A few lashes are much

better than what he revels in doing to people; especially since he can't touch me now.

He knows that after taking his floggings I'd go under hypnosis and tell everything I know

about him if he tried to lay a finger on me."

 

"Lashes? Floggings? I see." Seaton's face hardened. "Okay, you're it." He took a badge

out of his pocket, slid its slip out of its holder, and handed the slip to Kay-Lee. "Type on

this your name and his rating and title and turn your recorder on."

 

She did so. He glanced at the slip, replaced it in its holder, and pinned the badge in

place just above the girl's boldly outstanding left breast. "I, Ky-El Mokak, acting for and

with the authority. of Premier Ree-Toe Prenk, hereby make you, Kay-Lee Barlo, an

Exalted of the Twenty-Sixth and appoint you Head of the Department of Public Works. I

hereby charge you, Your Exalted, to so operate your department as to prevent, not to

cause, the destruction of persons and of property by those enemies of all mankind the

Chlorans." He stepped to the desk; cut the recorder off.

 

For the first time, the girl's taut self-control was broken. "Do you mean I can actually

clean this pig-sty up?" she demanded, tears welling into her eyes. "That you actually

want me to clean it up?"

 

"Just that. You'll be briefed at a meeting of the new department heads late this

afternoon. In the meantime start your house-cleaning as soon as you like after your

people get back from lunch; and I don't have to tell you how to act. Have you got or can

you get a good hand-gun?"

 

"Yes, sir; there's a very good one-his-in his desk. I was trying to get up nerve enough to

ask for it."

 

"It's yours as of now. Can you use it? That's probably a foolish question."

 

"I'll say I can use it! I made Pistol Expert One when I was eleven and I've been

improving ever since."

 

"Fine!" He glanced again at his watch. "Go get it, be sure it's loaded, buckle it on and

wear it. Show your badge, play the recording and lay down the law. If there's any

argument, shoot to kill. We aren't fooling." He glanced at the prisoner. "He'll be out of

your way. I'm taking him downstairs pretty soon to answer some questions."

 

"I-I thank you, sir. I can't tell you how much. But you -I mean . . . well, I-" the girl was a

study in mixed emotions. Her nostrils flared and her whole body was tense with the

beyond-imagining thrill of what had just occurred;. but at the same time she was so

acutely embarrassed that she could scarcely talk. "I want to tell you, sir, that I wasn't

trying to curry . . ." She broke off in confusion and gulped twice.

 

"Curry? I know you weren't. You aren't the toadying type. That's one reason you got it-

but just a second."

 

He looked again at his watch and did not put it down; but in a few seconds raised the

ring to his lips and asked, "Are you there, Ree-Toe?"

 

"Here, Ky-El," the tiny ring-voice said.

 

"Mission accomplished, including selection and installation of department head."

 

"Splendid! Are you hurt?"

 

"Not badly. Scratch across my back. How're we doing?"

 

"Better even than expected. The Premier is dead, I don't know yet exactly how. All your

people are all right except for some not-too-serious wounds. Ours, only ten dead

reported so far. The army came over to a man. You have earned a world's thanks this

day, Ky-El, and its eternal gratitude."

 

Seaton blushed. "Skip it, chief. Any change in schedule?"

 

"None."

 

"Okay. Off." Seaton, lowering his hand to his side, turned to Kay-Lee.

 

She, who had not quite been able to believe all along that all this was actually

happening to her, was staring at him in wide-eyed awe. "You are a biggie!" she gasped.

"A great big biggie, Your Exalted, to talk to the Premier himself like that! So this

unbelievable appointment will stick!"

 

"It will stick. Definitely. So chin high and don't spare the horses, Your Exalted; and I'll

see you at the meeting. Until then, so-long."

 

Seaton cut his prisoner loose and half-led, half-dragged him, gibbering and begging, out

of the room. Almost Seaton regretted it was over; the work on Ray-See-Nee had been

pleasurable, as well as useful.

 

But-now he had his base of operations, unknown to the Chlorans, on a planet they

thought safely their own. Now he could go on with his campaign against them. Seaton

was well aware that the universe held other enemies than the Chlorans, but his motto

was one thing at a time.

 

However, it is instructive now to see just what two of those inimical forces were up to at

this one-one which knew it was in trouble . . . and one which did not!

 

20 DU QUESNE AND FENACHROME

 

BEFORE the world of the Fenachrone was destroyed by Civilization's superatomic

bombs it was a larger world than Earth, and a denser, and with a surface gravity very

much higher. It was a world of steaming jungle; of warm and reeking fog; of tepid,

sullenly steaming water; of fantastically lush vegetation unknown to Earthly botany.

Wind there was none, nor sunshine. Very seldom was the sun of that reeking world

visible at all through the omnipresent fog, and then only as a pale, wan disk; and what

of its atmosphere was not fog was hot and humid and sulphurously stinking air.

 

And as varied the worlds, so varied the people. The Fenachrone, while basically

humanoid, were repulsively and monstrously short, wide and thick. They were

immensely strong physically, and their mentalities were as monstrous as their

civilization was many thousands of years older than that of Earth; their science was

equal to ours in most respects and ahead of it in some.

 

Most monstrous of all the facets of Fenachrone existence, however, was their basic

philosophy of life. Might was right. Power was not only the greatest good; it was the only

good. The Fenachrone were the MASTER RACE, whose unquestionable destiny it was

to be the unquestionable masters of the entire space-time continuum-of the summated

totality of the Cosmic All.

 

For many thousands of years nothing had happened to shake any Fenachrone's rock-

solid conviction of the destiny of their race. Progress along the Master-Race line had

been uninterrupted. In fact, it had never been successfully opposed. The Fenachrone

had already wiped out, without really extending themselves, all the other civilizations

within a hundred parsecs or so of their solar system. But up to the time of Emperor

Fenor no ruler of the Fenachrone had become convinced that the time had come to set

the Day of Conquest-the day upon which the Big Push was to begin.

 

But rash, headstrong, egomaniacal Fenor insisted upon setting The Day in his own

reign-which was why First Scientist Fleet Admiral Sleemet had set up his underground

so long before. He was just as patriotic as any other member of his race; just as

thoroughly sold on the idea of the inevitable ultimate supremacy over all created thing

wherever situated; but his computations did not indicate that success was as yet quite

certain.

 

How right Sleemet was!

 

He knew that he was right after hearing the first few words of Sacner Carfon's

ultimatum to Emperor Fenor: that was why he had pushed the panic button for the

eighty-five-thousand-odd members of his faction to flee the planet right then.

 

He knew it still better when, after Fenor's foolhardly defiance of Sacner Carfon, of the

Overlord, and of the Forces of Universal Peace, his native planet became a minor sun

behind his flying fleet.

 

Even then, however, Sleemet had not learned very much -at least, nowhere nearly

enough.

 

At first glance it might seem incredible that, after such an experience, Sleemet could

have so lightly destroyed two such highly industrialized worlds about which he knew so

little. It might seem as though it must have been impressed upon his mind that the

Fenachrone were not the ablest, strongest, wisest, smartest, most highly advanced and

most powerful form of life ever created. Deeper study will show, however, that with his

heredity and conditioning he could not possibly have done anything else.

 

Sleemet probably did not begin really to realize the truth until the Llurd Klazmon so

effortlessly-apparently-wiped out sixteen of his seventeen superdreadnoughts, then

crippled his flagship beyond resistance or repair and sent it hurtling through space

toward some completely unknown destination.

 

His first impulse, like that of all his fellows, was to storm and to rage and to hurl things

and to fight. But there was no one to fight; and storming and raging and hurling and

smashing things did not do any good. In fact, nothing they could do elicited any

attention at all from their captors.

 

Wherefore, as days stretched out endlessly and monotonously into endless and

monotonous weeks, all those five thousand-odd Fenachrone-males and females, adults

and teen-agers and children and babies-were forced inexorably into a deep and very

un-Fenachronian apathy.

 

And when the hulk of the flagship arrived at the Llanzlanate on far Llurdiax, things went

immediately from bad to worse. The volume of space into which the Fenachrone were

moved had a climate exactly like that of their native city on their native world. All its

artifacts-its buildings, and its offices and its shops and its foods and its drinks and its

everything else-were precisely what they should have been.

 

Ostensibly, they were encouraged to live lives even more normal than ever before (if

such an expression is allowable); to breed and to develop and to evolve; and especially

to perform breakthroughs in science.

 

Actually, however, it was practically impossible for them to do anything of their own

volition; because they were being studied and analyzed and tested every minute of

every day. Studied coldly and logically and minutely; with an utterly callous ferocity

unknown to even such a ferocious race as the Fenachrone themselves were.

 

Hundreds upon hundreds of the completely helpless captives died-died without

affecting in any smallest respect the treatment received by the survivors-and as their

utter helplessness struck in deeper and deeper, the Fenachrone grew steadily weaker,

both physically and mentally.

 

This was no surprise to their captors, the Llurdi. Nor was it in any sense a

disappointment. To them the Fenachrone were tools; and they were being tempered

and shaped to their task . . .

 

On Earth, leaving Stephanie de Marigny's apartment, DuQuesne went back to the

Capital D and took off on course one hundred seventy-five Universal-that is, five

degrees east of Universal South. He went that way because in that direction lay the

most completely unexplored sector of the First Universe and he did not want company.

Earth and the First Galaxy lay on the edge of the First Quadrant. Llurdiax and its Realm

lay in the Second. So did the Empire of the Chlorans and his own imaginary planet

Xylmny. The second galaxy along that false line, which might also attract Seaton, lay in

the Third. He didn't want any part of Richard Ballinger and this course was

mathematically the best one to take to get out of and keep out of Seaton's way.

Therefore he would follow it clear out to the Fourth Quadrant rim of the First Universe.

 

As the Capital D bored a hole through the protesting ether DuQuesne took time out

from his thinkings to consider women. First, he considered Stephanie de Marigny; with

a new and not at all unpleasant thrill as he did so. He considered Sennlloy and Luloy

and some unattached women of the Jelmi. They all left him completely cold; and he

was intellectually honest enough to know why and to state that "why" to himself. The

Jelmi were so much older than the humanity of Earth that they were out of his class. He

could stand equality-definitely; in fact, that was what he wanted-but he could not live

with and would not try to live with any woman so demonstrably his superior.

 

But Hunkie-ah, there was a man's woman! His equal; his perfect equal in every respect;

with a brain to match one of the finest bodies ever built. She didn't play hard to get, she

was hard to get; but once got she'd stay got. She'd stand at a man's back 'till his belly

caved in.

 

Slowed to a crawl, as Universal speed goes, the Capital D entered the outermost galaxy

of the Rim of the Universe and DuQuesne energized his highest-powered projector. He

studied the Tellus-type planets of hundreds of solar systems. Many of these planets

were inhabited, but he did not reveal himself to the humanity of any of them.

 

He landed on an uninhabited planet and went methodically to work. He bulldozed out

an Area of Work. He set up his batteries of machine tools; coupling an automatic

operator of pure force to each tool as it was set up. Then he started work on the Brain;

which took longer than all the rest of the construction put together. It was an exact

duplicate of that of the Skylark of Valeron; one cubic mile of tightly packed ultra-

miniaturized components; the most tremendous and most tremendously capable super-

computer known to man.

 

While the structure of the two brains was identical, their fillings were not. As has been

said, there were certain volumes-blocks of cells-in the Valeron's brain that DuQuesne

had not been able to understand. These blocks he left inoperative-for the time being.

Conversely, DuQuesne either had or wanted powers and qualities and abilities that

Seaton neither had nor wanted; hence certain blocks that were as yet inoperative in

Seaton's vast fabrication were fully operative in DuQuesne's.

 

It is a well-known fact that white-collar men, who sit at desks and whose fellowship with

machines is limited to week-end drives in automobiles, scoff heartily at the idea that any

two machines of the same make and model do or can act differently from each other

except by reason of wear. With increasing knowledge of an acquaintance with

machines, however-especially with mechanisms of the more complex and sophisticated

sorts-this attitude changes markedly. The men and women who operate such machines

swear unanimously that those machines do unquestionably have personalities; each its

unique and peculiar own.

 

Thus, while the fact can not be explained in logical or "common" sense terms, those

two giants brains were as different in personality as were the two men who built them.

 

Nor was DuQuesne's worldlet, which he named the DQ, very much like the Skylark of

Valeron except in shape. It was bigger. Its skin was much thicker and much denser and

much more heavily armed. The individual mechanisms were no larger-the Valeron's

were the biggest and most powerful that DuQuesne knew how to build-but there were

so many of them that he was pretty sure of being safe from anyone. Even from whoever

it was that had mauled the Valeron so unmercifully-whom he, DuQuesne, did not intend

to approach. Ever.

 

It was, in fact, his prayerful hope that both mauler and maulee-Seaton himself-would

ultimately emerge from that scufe whittled down to a size where he would not have to

consider them again.

 

He did not in fact, consider them; nor did he consider the captive Fenachrone in the

pens of Llurdiax; nor the Jelmi; nor-and this, perhaps, was his greatest mistake did he

consider, because he did not know about, a mother and daughter of whose existence

neither he nor any other Tellus-type human being had yet heard.

 

He simply built himself the most power space vessel he could imagine, armed it,

launched it . . . and set out to recapture the Universe Seaton had once taken away from

him.

 

The revolution on the planet Ray-See-Nee was over and Richard Seaton, disguised

under the identity of Ky-El Mokak, was ready to take the one tactical move for which all

the effort and struggle on the planet had been only the preliminaries. But first he

needed to know what had happened to his shipmates and friends; he had been busy

enough fighting his own fights and taking his own prisoners to have temporarily lost

sight of them.

 

Wherefore, in Ray-See-Nee's palatial Capitol Building, in the Room of State-which,

except` for the absence of an actual throne, was in effect a throne-room-Seaton turned

his prisoner over to a guard and rounded up his own crew, so that they could look each

other over and compare notes.

 

Sitar, limping badly but with fur coat still glossily immaculate, proudly displayed a left leg

bandaged from the knee all the way up. "A slash from here, clear down to there." The

Osnomian princess ran a fore-finger along a line six or seven inches long. "And a bullet

right through there. That was the gaudiest fight I was ever in in my whole life!"

 

Dunark, whose right arm was in a sling, spoke up. "She got that slash saving my life. I'd

just taken this one through the shoulder-" he pointed-"and was paralyzed for a second.

So she kicked her leg up in the way-while she was flipping a gun around to blow this

guy apart, you know so his knife went into her leg instead of my neck."

 

"Yes, but go on and tell them about how many times you-" Sitar began.

 

"Sh-h-h-h," Dunark said, and she subsided. "Maybe some day we'll write a book. How

about you, Mart? I notice you've been standing up all the time."

 

"I'll be standing up or lying on my face for a while, I guess."

 

But that wouldn't account for the cane," Seaton objected. "Come clean, guy."

 

"One through the hip-thigh, rather, low down-no bones broken."

 

Shiro, who had a broken arm, would not talk at first, but they finally got the story out of

him. His last opponent had been just too big and too strong and too well trained to be

easy meat, but Shiro had finally got him with a leg-lock around the neck. "But how

about you, Dick?" Shiro asked. "Whoever wrapped you up must get hospital supplies at

wholesale."

 

Seaton grinned. "She had only one patient." He told his own story, then went on, "Since

we can all walk, let's go over and see what they're finding out."

 

Ree-Toe Prenk had said that he wanted all thirty-one of the department heads taken

alive if possible; but he had known that it would not be possible. He was surprised and

highly pleased, in fact, that only six of the High Exalteds had been killed or had taken

their own lives.

 

There is no need to go into the details of that questioning. Seaton took no part in any of

it; nor did any of his group. He did not offer to help and Prenk did not ask him.

 

Nor is it necessary to describe the operation outside the palace. The rebels had learned

much from their previous failure, and they now had all the arms, ammunition and

supplies they needed. Thus, before sunset that day every known quisling had been shot

and every suspect was under surveillance. Premier Ree-Toe Prenk sat firmly in the

Capitol City's saddle; and whoever controlled that city always controlled the world.

 

Hours before control was assured, however, Prenk called Seaton. "About the daily

report to Chloran headquarters that is due in half an hour," the new Premier said. "I am

wondering if you have any ideas. Our ordinary reports are not dangerous to make,

since they are made to underlings whose only interest in the human race is to encode

and file our reports properly. But, since their automatic instruments have recorded

much of this change of government, it will have to be reported in detail. And a Great

One, or even a Greater Great One, may become interested, in which case the

reporter's mind may be searched." Prenk looked thoughtful, then shook his head.

"There's no use trying to gloss it over. In an event like this the Greatest Great One

himself will very probably become interested and the reporter will die on the spot. In any

case, even with an ordinary Great One, his mind will be shattered for life."

 

"I see," Seaton said. "I didn't think of it, but I'm not surprised. We've tangled with

Chlorans before. But cheer up. I locked eyes with their Supreme Great One . . ."

 

"You didn't!" Prenk broke in, - in amazement. "You actually did?"

 

"I actually did, and I knocked him-it?-loose from his teeth." Regretfully Seaton added,

"But we can't make a. battle out of this." He scowled in concentration for a minute, then

went on, "Okay, there's more than one way to stuff a goose. I'll make the report. Let's

go."

 

Wherefore, twenty-five minutes later, Seaton sat at an ultra-communicator panel in

Communications, ready to flip a switch.

 

The reporter whose shift it was stood off to one side, out of the cone of vision of the

screen. Crane sat-gingerly, sidewise, and on a soft pillow-well within the cone of

visibility of the screen, at what looked like an ordinary communications panel, but was in

fact a battery of all the analytical instruments known to the science of Norlamin.

 

"But, Your Exalted," said the highly nervous reporter. "I'm very glad indeed that you're

doing this instead of me, but won't they notice that it isn't me? And probably do

something about it?"

 

"I'm sure they won't." Seaton had already considered the point. "I doubt very much, in

view of their contempt for other races, if they ever bother to differentiate between any

one human being and any other one. Like us and beetles."

 

The reporter breathed relief. "They probably don't, sir, at that. They don't seem to pay

any attention to us as individuals."

 

Seaton braced himself and, exactly on the tick of time, flipped the switch. Knowing that

the amoeboids could assume any physical form they pleased and as a matter of course

assumed the form most suitable for the job, he was not surprised to see that the filing

clerk looked like an overgrown centipede with a hundred or so long, flexible tentacles

ending in three-fingered "hands"-a dozen or so of which were manipulating the gadgetry

of a weirdly complex instrument-panel. He was somewhat surprised, however, in spite

of what he had been told, that the thing did not develop an eye and look at him; did not

even direct a thought at him. Instead:

 

"I am ready, slave," a deep bass voice rolled from the speaker, in the language of

Prenk's planet Ray-See-Nee. "Start the tape."

 

Seaton pressed a button; the tape began to travel through the sender. For perhaps five

minutes nothing happened. Then the sender stopped and a deeper, heavier voice came

from the speaker: a voice directed at the filing clerk, but using Rayseenese . . .

 

Why? Seaton wondered to himself. Oh, I see. Soften 'em up. Scare the pants off of 'em,

then put on the screws.

 

"Yield, clerk," the new voice said.

 

"I yield with pleasure O Great One," the clerk replied, and went rigidly motionless; not

moving a finger or a foot.

 

"It pleases me to study this matter myself," the giant voice went on as though the clerk

had not spoken. "While slight, the possibility does exist that some of these verminous

creatures have dared to plot against the Race Supreme. If this is merely another

squabble among themselves for place it is of no interest; but if there is any trace of

nonsubmission, vermin and city will cease to exist. I shall learn the deepest truth. They

can make lying tapes, but no entity of this or of any other galaxy can lie to a Great One

mind to mind."

 

While the Great One talked, the picture on the screen began to change. The clerk

began to fade out and something else began to thicken in. And Seaton, knowing what

was coming, set himself in earnest and brought into play that part of his multi-

compartmented mind that was the contribution of Drasnik, the First of Psychology of

Norlamin.

 

This coming interview, he knew, must be vastly different from his meeting with the

Supreme Great One of Chlora One. That had been a wide-open, hammer-and-tongs

battle; a battle of sheer power of mind. Here it would have to be a matter of delicacy of

control; of precision and of nicety and of skill as well as of power. He would have to play

his mind as exactly and as subtly as Dorothy played her Stradivarius, for if the monster

came to suspect any iota of the truth all hell would be out for noon with no pitch hot.

 

The screen cleared and Seaton saw what he had known he would see; a large, flatly

ellipsoidal mass of something that was not quite a jelly not quite a solid; a monstrosity

through whose transparent outer membrane there was visible a large, intricately

convoluted brain. As Seaton looked at the thing it developed an immense eye, from

which there poured directly into Seaton's brain a beam of mental energy so incredibly

powerful as to be almost tangible physically.

 

Braced as he was, every element of the man's mind quivered under the impact of that

callously hard-driven probe; but by exerting all his tremendous mental might he took it.

More, he was able to hold his Drasnik-taught defenses so tightly as to reveal only and

precisely what the Great One expected to find-utter helplessness and abject

submission.

 

That probe was not designed to kill. Or rather, the Great One did not care in the least

whether it killed or not. It was intended to elicit the complete truth; and from any

ordinary human mind it did.

 

"Can you lie to me, slave?" That tremendous voice resounded throughout every

chamber of Seaton's mind. "Or withhold from me any iota of the truth?"

 

"I cannot lie to you, O Great One; nor withhold from you any iota, however small, of the

truth." This took everything of camouflage and of defensive screen Seaton had; but he

managed to reveal no sign at all of any of it.

 

"How much do you personally know, not of the details of the coup d'etat itself, but of the

motivation underlying it?"'

 

"Everything, O Great One, since I was Premier Ree-Toe Prenk's right-hand man," and

Seaton reported the exact truth of Prenk's motivation and planning.

 

The Great One's probe vanished, the screen went dark, and the sender resumed its

sending.

 

"Huh!" Seaton wiped his sweating face with his handkerchief. " `This dope isn't of any

interest, clerk old boy, so just file it away and forget it,' His Nibs says. It's a good thing

he was after Prenk's motivation, not mine. If he'd really bored in after mine I don't know

whether I could have kept things all nice and peaceful or not. I knew I'd been nudged,

believe you me."

 

"I believe you," Crane said, looking into his friend's eyes. "Are you sure you're all right?"

And:

 

The reporter goggled in awe: "And you can still talk intelligently, sir?"

 

"Yeah." Seaton answered both questions at once, but did not elaborate. "What did you

get, Mart? Anything?"

 

"I learned where it is," said Crane. Nothing else.

 

Small reward for weeks of effort and risk of life . . . and yet it was for that the entire

campaign on the planet RaySee-Nee had been waged! The whole operation had been

designed to get that one fact. A people had been given new hope; some hundreds had

lost their lives; many thousands had received scars they would bear a long time; a

regime had been deposed and a new one put in power.

 

But these were only by-products, only the small change of a victory which justified all of

Seaton's efforts . . . and would have its consequences in every part of the Universe, for

incalculable times to come!

 

21 LLAMZLAM MERGON

 

RAY-SEE-NEE's new department heads, in their meeting with Premier Ree-Toe Prenk

in the Room of State, were in unanimous agreement that everything was under control.

Some quislings and recalcitrants had been shot and a few more would probably have to

be. That was only to be expected. Yes, since all of the new incumbents had been

jumped many grades in status and in authority and in salary, there was and would

continue to be a certain amount of jealousy; but that was not of very much importance.

The jealous ones would either accept the facts of life or be shot. Period.

 

After the meeting was over Kay-Lee Barlo came up to Seaton. She now bore herself as

though she had been born an Exalted; her ex-boss' pistol swung jauntily at one very

female hip as she walked. As she came up to him and took both his hands in hers,

standing so close to him that her upstanding, outstanding hair-do almost tickled his

nose, it became evident that her weapon had been fired quite recently. She wore no

perfume, and the faint but unmistakable acrid odor of burned smokeless powder still

clung to her hair.

 

"Oh, Ky-El!" she exclaimed, equal to equal now. "I'll simply never be able to thank you

enough. Nor will all Ray-See-Nee. This world will be an entirely different place to live on

hereafter."

 

"I sincerely hope so, Kay-Lee." Seaton smiled into the girl's eager, expressive face.

"Ray-See-Nee is lucky to have had as strong, able and just a man as Ree-Toe Prenk to

take over."

 

"As you said a while back, `You can say that again.' He's all of that. What he's done

already is marvelous. But everyone knows-he does, too, he's put you up on a pedestal

a mile high-that it's you who put him in the saddle. That's what I wanted mostly to tell

you. Also, I wanted to ask you-" she paused and flushed slightly-"you'll forget, won't you

please, what I said about that louse's brains? I didn't mean that, really; I'm not the type

to cherish a grudge like that. I was a little . . . well, I'd been a little put out with him, just

before you came in." With which masterpiece of understatement she gave his hands

another vigorous, friendly squeeze and, swinging around, walked hip-wiggling out of the

room.

 

She thereupon took certain steps and performed certain actions which would have

astonished Seaton very much, had he known about them. But he did not-until much

later.

 

Prenk came up to the Skylarkers a few minutes later. He shook hands with each of the

off-worlders; thanked them in rounded phrases. "I would like very much to have you

stay here indefinitely, friends," he concluded, "but I know of course that that is

impossible. If all the resources of the world could be devoted to the project and if all our

technical men could work on it undetected for a year, we could not build anything able

to withstand those Chlorans' beams."

 

"We can't either. Not here," Seaton said. "That's why we have to go; but we'll be back. I

don't know when; but we'll be back some day."

 

"I'm sure you will: and may Great My-Ko-Ta ward you and cherish you as you build."

 

Back on what was left of their worldlet, now reconditioned to the extent that it was not

likely to fall apart on the spot, and out in deep space once more, the Skylarkers began

efficiently and expertly to put the pieces of their victory together.

 

They had located the Enemy. They even had an operating covert base in Chloran

territory, to which they could return at any time. They had weapons which, in theory at

least, could cope with anything the Chlorans were likely to own.

 

Yet Seaton fretted. The weapons were there, but his control was not adequate; the

weapons had outgrown the control. Dealing with Chlorans was touchy business. You

wanted all the space you could get between you and them. Yet, at any operating range

which even Seaton, to say nothing of Crane and the others, considered safe, their

striking power was simply too erratic to depend on.

 

"It's a bust," Seaton said gloomily. "Course, if worst came to worst I could go back to

undercover methods. Smuggle in a bomb, maybe-just to throw their main centers off

balance while the rest of you hit them with all we've got. I could stow away aboard one

of those ore-scows taking the booty off Ray-See-Nee easily enough-"

 

"You talk like a man with a paper nose," Dorothy scoffed. "I have a picture of that

expedition-of you in armor, with air-tanks strapped on your back and lugging an

underwater camera or projector around. Un-noticed . . . I don't think."

 

And Dunark added, "And since you haven't got any idea of what to look for, you'd have

to lug around a full analsynth set-up. A couple of tons of stuff. Uh-uh."

 

Seaton grinned, unperturbed. "That's what I was coming to. Getting in would be easy,

but doing anything wouldn't. And neither would getting out. But Mart, we've chopped

one horn off of the dilemma, but we haven't even touched the other. We've got to

master that fourth-dimension rig; and we're not even close. It's a matter of kind, not

merely of degree."

 

"I can't see that. If so, we could not have warded off their attack at all."

 

"Oh, I didn't mean the energies themselves; it's the control of that much stuff.

Synchronization, phasing in, combination, and so forth. Getting such stuff as that

closely enough together. Look, Mart. This bit that we've got left of the Valeron is stuffed

with machinery practically to the skin. She's so small, relatively, that you wouldn't think

there'd be any trouble meshing in machines from various parts of her. But there is.

Plenty. It never showed up before because we never had to use a fraction of our total

power before, but it showed up plenty back there. My beam was loose as ashes, and

I've figured out why.

 

"Sixth-order stuff moves as many times faster than light as light does faster than a

snail-maybe more. But it still takes a little time to get from one machine to another,

inside even as small a globe as this is. See?"

 

Crane frowned in thought. "I see. I also see what the difficulties would be in anything

large enough and strong enough to attack the Chlorans. It would mean timing each

generator and each element of each projector; and each with a permissible variation of

an infinitesimal fraction of a microsecond. That, of course, means Rovol and Caslor." "I

suppose it does . . . unless we can figure out an easier, faster way . . . I don't know

whether the Chlorans have got anything like that or not, but they've got something.

There ought to be some way of snitching it off of them."

 

"Why must they have?" Dunark demanded. "It's probably just a matter of size. They

have a whole planet to fortify. Dozens of 'em if they want to. So it doesn't have to be a

matter of refinement at all. Just brutal, piled up, overwhelming power."

 

"Could be," Seaton agreed. "If so, we can't match it, since the Valeron was as big as

she could be and still have a factor of safety of two point two." He paused in thought,

then went on, "But with such refinement, we could take a planet no matter how loaded it

was . . . I think. So maybe we'd better take off for Norlamin, at that."

 

"One thing we should do first, perhaps," Dorothy suggested. "Find out what that

DuQuesne really did. He has me worried."

 

"Maybe we should at that," Seaton agreed. "I'd forgotten all about the big black ape."

 

It was easy enough to find the line along which DuQuesne had traveled; the plug-chart

was proof that he had not lied about that. They reached without incident the

neighborhood of the point DuQuesne had marked on the chart. Seaton sent out a

working projection of the device that, by intercepting and amplifying light-waves

traversing open space, enabled him actually to see events that had happened in the

not-too distant past.

 

He found the scene he wanted. He studied it, analyzed and recorded it. Then:

 

"He lied to me almost a hundred and eighty degrees," Seaton said. "That beam came

from that galaxy over there." He jerked a thumb. "The alien who bothered him was in

that galaxy. That much I'll buy. But it doesn't make sense that he'd go there. That alien

was nobody he wanted to monkey with, that's for dead sure. So where did he meet the

Jelmi, if not in that galaxy?"

 

"On the moon, perhaps," Margaret said.

 

"Possibly. I'll compute it . . . no, the timing isn't right--2' Seaton thought for a moment-

"but there's no use guessing. That galaxy may be the first place to look for sign; but I'll

bet my case buck it'll be a long, cold hunt. I'd like awfully well to have that gizmo---flip

bombs past the Chlorans' screens and walls with it . . ."

 

"From a distance greater than their working range?" Crane asked.

 

"That's so, too . . . or maybe so, at that, chum. Who knows what you can do through the

fourth? But it looks as though our best bet is to beat it to Norlamin, rebuild this wreck,

and tear into that business of refinement of synchronization. So say you all?"

 

So said they all and Seaton, flipping on full-power sixth order drive, set course for

Norlamin.

 

As the student will be aware, the events in this climactic struggle .between the arch-

enemies, Seaton and DuQuesne, were at this point reaching an area of maximum

tension. It is curious to reflect that the outer symptom of this internal disruptive stress

was, in the case of nearly every major component of the events to come, a

psychological state of either satisfied achievement, or contented decision, or calm

resignation. It is as though each of the major operatives were suffering from a universe-

wide sense of false tranquility. On Ray-See-Nee, the new government felt its problems

were behind it and only a period of solid, rewarding rebuilding lay ahead. (Although

Kay-Lee Barlo had taken certain prudent precautions against this hope being illusory -

as we shall see.) The Chlorans, proud and scornful in their absolute supremacy, had no

hint that Seaton or anyone else was making or even proposed to make any effective

moves against them. The Fenachrone, such few weary survivors as remained of them,

had given themselves over to-not despair, no; but a proud acceptance of the fact that

they were doomed.

 

There was in fact no tranquility in store for any of them! But they had not yet found that

out.

 

Meanwhile the Jelmi, for example were just beginning to feel the first itch of new

challenges. In their big new space rover, the Mallidaxian, Savant Tammon was as

nearly perfectly happy as it is possible for a human or humanoid to be. He had made

the greatest breakthrough of his career;

 

perhaps the greatest breakthrough of all history. Exploring its many ramifications and

determining its many as yet unsuspected possibilities would keep him busy for the rest

of his life. Wherefore he was working fourteen or fifteen hours every day and reveling in

every minute of it. He hummed happily to himself; occasionally he burst into song -in a

voice that was decidedly not of grand-operatic quality.

 

He had enlarged his private laboratory by tearing out four storerooms adjoining it; and

the whole immense room was stacked to the ceiling with new apparatus and

equipment. He was standing on a narrow catwalk, rubbing his bristly chin with the back

of his hand as he wondered where he could put another two-ton tool, when Mergon and

Luloy came swinging in; hand in hand as usual. Vastly different from Tammon, Mergon

was not at all happy about the status quo.

 

"Listen, Tamm!" he burst out. "I've been yapping at you for a week and a half for a

decision and your time is up as of right now. If you don't pull your head out of the fourth

dimension and make it right now I'll do it myself and to hell with you and your authority

as Captain-Commander."

 

"Huh? What? Time? Decision? What decision?" It was plain that the old savant had no

idea at all of what his first assistant was so wrought up about.

 

"You set course for Mallidax and said we were going back to Mallidax. That's sheer

idiocy and you know it. Of all places in the charted universe we should not go to,

Mallidax is top and prime. We're too close for comfort already. Even though Klazmon

must have lost us back there in Sol's system, he certainly picked us up again long ago

and he'd give both wings and all his teeth for half the stuff you have here," and Mergon

waved both arms indicatively around the jam-packed room.

 

"Oh?" Tammon gazed owlishly at the pair. "There was some talk . . . but why should I

care where we go? This is the merest trifle, Mergon. Do not bother me with trivia any

more," and Tammon cut communications with them as definitely as though he had

thrown a switch.

 

Mergon shrugged his shoulders and Luloy giggled. "You're it, boy. That's what you get

for sticking your neck out. All hail our new Captain-Commander!"

 

"Well, somebody had to. All our necks would have been in slings in another week. So

pass the word, will you, and I'll skip up to the control room and change course."

 

Luloy spread the word; which was received with acclaim. Practically everybody aboard

who was anybody agreed with Sennlloy when she said, "It's high time somebody took

over and Merg's undoubtedly the best man for the job. Tammy's a nice old dear, but

ever since he got bitten by that fourth dimension germ he hasn't known what month it is

or which way is up or within forty million parsecs of where he it in space."

 

"You see, Merg?" Luloy crowed, when it became evident that the shift in command was

heartily approved. "I wouldn't even dream of ever saying 'I told you so', but I said at the

first meeting that you should be Captain commander, and now everybody thinks so,

almost."

 

"Yeah, almost," he agreed; not at all enthusiastically. "Everybody except the half-wits.

Pass the buck. Let George do it. Nobody with a brain firing on three barrels wants the

job."

 

"Why, that isn't so, Merg. You know it isn't!" she protested, indignantly.

 

"Well, I don't want it," he broke in, "but since Tamm wished it onto me I'll take a crack at

it."

 

The Mallidaxian, swinging wide and braking down, hard, skirted the outermost edge of

the Realm; the edge farthest away from Llurdiax. Mergon did not approach or signal to

any planet of the Jelmi. Instead, he picked out an uninhabited Tellus-type planet four

solar systems away from the Border and landed on it. And there, under cover of the

superdreadnaught's mighty defensive screens and with Captain-Commander Mergon

tensely, on watch, the engineers and scientists disembarked, set up their high-order

projectors, and went furiously to work building an enormous and enormously powerful

dome.

 

The work went on uninterruptedly, day after day; for so many days that both Mergon

and Luloy became concerned -the girl very highly so. "Do you suppose we've figured

wrong?" she asked.

 

Mergon frowned. "I can't be sure, of course, but I don't think so. Pure logic, remember.

Everything we've done has been designed to keep Klazmon guessing. Off balance.

He's fortified Llurdiax, that's sure, but we don't know how heavily and we can't find out."

He paused.

 

"Without using the gizmo, which of course is out," said Luloy.

 

"Check. We haven't sent any spy-rays or anything else. They wouldn't have got us

anything. But he certainly expected us to try. He'll think we don't care . . . which as a

matter of fact, we don't . . . too much. It's almost a mathematical certainty that we can

handle anything he can throw at us as of now. But if we give him time enough to build

more really big stuff it'll be just too bad."

 

"And the horrible old monster is probably doing just exactly that," Luloy said.

 

"I wouldn't wonder. But we can finish the dome before he can build enough stuff, and

he can't let that happen. Especially since we're not interfering with his prying and

spying, but are treating him with the same contempt he used to treat us. That'll bother

him no end. Burn him up! Also . . . remember that stuff in the dome that no Llurd can

possibly understand."

 

Luloy laughed. "Because it isn't anything whatever, really, except Llurd-bait? I'm scared

that maybe they will understand it yet-even though I'm sure they won't."

 

"They can't. Their minds won't stretch that far in that direction," Mergon said postively.

"They knew we made a breakthrough, so they'll know that what they see is only a

fraction of what the thing really is; and that'll scare 'em. As much as Llurdi can be

scared, that is. Which isn't very much. So Klazmon will do something before our dome

is finished. As I read the tea-leaves, he'll have to."

 

"But just suppose he doesn't take the bait?"

 

"Then we'll have to take the initiative. I don't want toit'd weaken our bargaining position

tremendously-but I will if I have to."

 

He did not have to. His analysis of the Llurdan mentality and temperament had been

accurate.

 

Four full days before the scheduled date of completion of the dome, Klazmon's full

working projection appeared in the Mallidaxian's control room. Mergon had detected its

coming, but had done nothing to interfere with it. The Llurd quite obviously intended

parley, not violence.

 

"Hail, brother Ilanzlan, Klazmon of the Llurdi," Mergon greeted his visitor quietly, but in

the phraseology of one ruler greeting another on the basis of unquestionable equality.

"Is there perhaps some service that 1, Llanzlan Mergon of the Realm of the Jelmi, may

perform for you and thus place you in my debt?"

 

This, to a human dictator, would have been effrontery intolerable; but Mergon had been

pretty sure that it would have little or no effect, emotionally, upon Klazmon. Nor did it; to

all seeming it had no effect at all. The Llurd merely said, "You wish me to believe that

you Jelmi have made a breakthrough sufficiently important to justify the establishment

of an independent but coexistent Realm of the Jelmi."

 

This was in no sense a question; it was a flat statement. Mergon had been eminently

correct in his assumption that he would not have to draw the Llurd a blueprint. Mergon

quirked an eyebrow at Luloy, who pressed the button that signaled all the savants in the

dome to drop their tools and dash back into the ship.

 

"That- is correct," Mergon said.

 

Klazmon's projection remained motionless and silent; both Jelmi could almost perceive

the Llurd's thoughts. And Mergon, who had tracked the Llurd's thoughts so unerringly

so far, was practically 'certain that he was still on track.

 

Klazmon did not actually know whether the Jelmi had made a breakthrough or not. The

Jelmi intended to make him believe that they had, and that breakthrough was

something that made them either invulnerable or invincible, or both. Any of those

matters or assumptions could be either true or false. One of them, the question of

invulnerability, could be and should be tested without delay. If they were in fact

invulnerable, no possible attack could harm them. If they were not invulnerable they

were bluffing and lying and should therefore be eliminated.

 

Wherefore Mergon was not surprised when Klazmon's projection vanished without

having said another word-nor when, an instant after that vanishment, the Mallidaxian's

mighty defensive screens flared white.

 

They did not even pause at the yellow or the yellow white, but went directly to the

blinding white; to the degree of radiance at which the vessel's spare began

automatically to cut in-spare after spare after spare.

 

After staring in silence for two long minutes, Mergon said, "We figured their most

probable maximum offense and applied a factor of safety of three-and look at 'em!"

 

White-faced, Luloy licked her lips. "Mighty Llenderllon!" she cried. "How can they

possibly deliver such an attack 'way out here?"

 

Then Mergon picked up his microphone and said, "Our screens are still holding and

they're protecting the dome; but we're going to need a lot more defense. So go back out

there, please, and give me everything you can."

 

He then sat back -and stared tight-jawed at the everclimbing needles of his meters and

at the unchanging blinding-white brilliance of his vessel's screens.

 

 22 THE GEAS

 

As the Llurd's attack mounted to higher and ever higher plateaus of fury, Mergon slid

along his bench to his fourth dimensional controls and there appeared on the floor

beside him a lithium-hydride fusion bomb, armed and ready.

 

He stared at it, his jaw-muscles tightening into lumps. Luloy stared at the thing, too, and

her face became even paler than it had been.

 

"But could you, Merg?" she asked, through stiff lips. "I . . . I mean, you couldn't possibly

. . . could you?"

 

"I don't know," he said harshly, scarcely separating locked teeth. "I may have to whether

I can or not. We had a factor of safety of three. Two point nine of them are in now and

the last tenth is starting up. The dome can't put out more than that."

 

"I know! But if we blow the llanzlanate up, won't they kill all the Jelmi of all our worlds

and start breeding a more tractable race of slaves?"

 

"That's the way I read it. In that case we eight hundred could get away clean and start a

better civilization somewhere out of range."

 

She shuddered. "In that case would life be worth living?"

 

"It's a tough decision to make . . . since the alternative could be for us to kill all the

Llurdi."

 

"Oh, no!" she cried. "But don't you think, Merg, that he'll cooperate? They're absolutely

logical, you know."

 

"Maybe. In one way I think so, but I simply can't see any absolute ruler making such an

abject surrender. However, we've got to decide right now and we'll have to stick to our

decision-we both know that he can't be bluffed. If it comes right down to it we can do

one of three things. First, commit suicide for our whole eight hundred by not touching

the bomb off. Second, wipe them out. Third, let them wipe out all Jelmi except us.

What's your vote?"

 

"Llenderllon help me! Put that way, there's-oh, look!" she screamed, in a miraculously

changed tone of voice.

 

"The master-meter! It's slowing down! It's going to stop!' She uttered an ear-splitting

shriek of pure joy and hurled herself into her husband's arms.

 

"It's stabilized, for a fact," Mergon said, after their emotions had subsided to something

approaching normal "He's throwing everything he's got at us. We're holding him, but

just barely, so the question is-'

 

"One thing first," she broke in. "My vote. I hate to say it, but we can't let them kill our

race."

 

He put his arm around her and squeezed. "That's what I was sure you'd say. The

question now is, how long do we let him stew in his own juice before we skip over there

and talk peace terms?"

 

"Not long enough to let him build more generators than we can to fry us with," she

replied, promptly if a bit unclearly. "One day? Half a day? A quarter?"

 

"But long enough to let him know he's licked," Mergon said. "I'd say one full day would

be just about right So let's go get us some sleep."

 

"Sleep! Llenderllon's eyeballs! Can you even think of such a thing as sleep after all

this?"

 

"Certainly I can. So can you-you're all frazzled out, Come on girl, we're hitting the

sheets."

 

"Why, I won't be able to sleep a wink until this is all over!"

 

But she was wrong; in ten minutes they were both sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.

 

Twelve hours later she came suddenly awake, rolled over toward him, and shook him

vigorously by the shoulder. "Wake up, you!"

 

He grumbled something and tried to pull away from her grip.

 

She shook him again. "Wake up, you great big oaf! Suppose that beast Klazmon has

got more generators built and our screens are all failing?"

 

He opened one eye. "If they fail, sweet, we won't know a thing about it." He opened the

other eye and, three-quarter awake now, went on, "Do you think I'm running this ship

single-handed? What do you think the other officers are for?"

 

"But they aren't you," she declared, with completely feminine illogic where her husband

was concerned. "So hurry up and get up and we'll go see for ourselves."

 

"Okay, but not 'til after breakfast, if I have to smack you down. So punch us up a gallon

of coffee, huh? And a couple slabs of ham and six or eight eggs? Then we'll go see."

 

They ate and went and saw. The screens still flared at the same blinding white, but

there were no signs of overloading or of failure. They could, the Third Officer bragged,

keep it up for years. Everything was under control.

 

"You hope," Mergon said-but not to the officer. He said that under his breath as he and

Luloy turned away toward their own station.

 

Much to Mergon's relief, nothing happened during the rest of the day, and at the end of

the twenty-fourth hour he sent the actual bomb and working projections of himself and

Luloy into the llanzlanate. Into the llanzlan's private study, where Klazmon was hard at

work.

 

It was an immense room, and one in which a good anthropologist could have worked

delightedly for weeks. The floor was bare, hard, smooth-polished; fantastically inlaid in

metal and colored quartz and turquoise and jade. The pictures-framed mostly in

extruded stainless steel portrayed scenes (?) and things (?) and events (?) never

perceived by any Earthly sense and starkly incomprehensible to any Earthly mind. The

furniture was . . . "weird" is the only possible one-word description. Every detail of the

room proclaimed that here was the private retreat of a highly talented and very eminent

member of a culture that was old, wide and high.

 

"Hail, Llanzlan Klazmon," Mergon said quietly, conversationally. "You will examine this

bomb, please, to make sure that, unlike us two, it is actual and practical."

 

The Llurd's eyes had bulged a little and the tip of his tail had twitched slightly at the

apparition. That was all. He picked up an instrument with a binocular eyepiece, peered

through it for a couple of seconds, and put it down. "It is actual and practical," he

agreed.

 

Whatever emotions may have been surging through the llanzlan's mind, his control was

superb. He did not ask them how they had done it, or why, or any other question. After

the event he knew much and could guess more-and he was perhaps the starkest realist

of the most starkly realistic race of intelligent beings yet known to live.

 

"You realize, of course, that we do not intend to fire it except as the ultimately last

resort."

 

"I do now."

 

"Ah, yes. Our conduct throughout has surprised you; especially that we did not

counterattack."

 

"If not exactly surprised at least did not anticipate that Jelmi would or could act with

practically Llurdan logic," the Llurd conceded

 

"We can. And when we think it best, we do We suggest that you cut off your attack. We

will then put on air-suits and return here in person, to discuss recent developments as

reasoning and logical entities should."

 

The Llurd was fast on the uptake. He knew that, given time, he could crush this threat;

but he knew that he would not have the time. He could see ahead as well as Mergon

could to the total destruction of two hundred forty more planets. Wherefore he barked a

couple of syllables at a com and the furiously incandescent screens of the Mallidaxian

went cold and dark.

 

Jelmi and bomb disappeared. Mergon and Luloy donned gas-tight, self-contained,

plastic-helmeted coveralls and reappeared in the Llanzlan's study. Klazmon seated

them courteously in two Jelman easy-chairs-which looked atrociously out of place in

that room-and the peace conference, which was to last for days, began.

 

"First," the llanzlan said, "this breakthrough that you have accomplished. At what stage

in the negotiations do you propose to give me the complete technical specifications of

it?"

 

"Now," Mergon said, and a yard-high stack of tapes appeared on the floor beside the

Llurd's desk. It was the entire specs and description of the fourth-dimensional

translator. Nothing was omitted or obscured.

 

"Oh? I see. There is, then, much work yet to be done on it. Work that only you Jelmi

can do."

 

"That is true, as you will learn from those tapes. Now," said Mergon, settling down to

the bargaining session, "first, we have shown you that Jelmi capable of doing genius-

type work cannot be coerced into doing it. Second, the fact is that` it is psychologically

impossible for us to do such work under coercion. Third, we believe firmly that free and

in dependent Jelmi can coexist with the Llurdi. Fourth, we believe equally firmly that for

the best good of both races they should so coexist . . ."

 

And at that first day's end, after supper, Luloy said, "Merg, I simply would not have

believed it. Ever. I'm not sure I really believe it now. But you know I almost like - I

actually admire that horrible monster in some ways!"

 

Seaton called Rovol of Rays, on Norlamin, as soon as he could reach him. He told him

the story of what he had done on Ray-See-Nee, and what he hoped to gain by it, in

detail, then went on to ask his help on the control of the fourth-dimensional translator.

"You see, Rovol, at perfect sync . it would-theoretically-take zero power. I don't expect

the unattainable ideal, of course-" he winked at Dorothy-"just close enough so we can

pack enough stuff into the Valeron to handle everything they can throw at us and still

have enough left over to fight back with."

 

"Ah, youth, a fascinating problem indeed. I will begin work on it at once, and will call in

certain others in whose provinces some aspects of it lie. By the time you arrive here we

will perhaps have determined whether or not any solution is at present possible."

 

"What?" Seaton yelped. "Why-I thought-surely-" he almost stuttered. "I thought you'd

have it done by then-. maybe be sending it out to meet us, even."

 

The old Norlaminian's paternally forbearing sigh was highly expressive. "Still the

heedless, thoughtless youth, in spite of all our teachings. You have not studied the

problem yourself at all."

 

"Well, not very much, I admit."

 

"I advise you to do so. If you devote to it every period of labor between now and your

arrival here you may perhaps be able to talk about it intelligently," and Rovol cut com.

 

Dorothy whistled. She didn't whistle very often, but she could do it very expressively.

 

"Yeah," Seaton said, ruefully. "And the old boy wasn't kidding, either."

 

"Not having a sense of humor, he can't kid. He really slapped you on the wrist, friend.

But why would it be such a horrible job to sync a few generators in?"

 

"I don't know, but I'll find out." He went, worked for four solid hours with the Brain, and

came back wearing a sheepish grin. "It's true," he reported. "I knew it'd be tricky, but I

had no idea. You have to work intelligently, manipulably and reproducibly in time units

of three times ten to the minus twenty-eighth of a second-the time it takes light to travel

a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter."

 

"Hush. You don't expect me to understand that, do you?"

 

"I'll say I don't. I don't expect to even really understand it myself."

 

Seaton did not work on the problem every day until arrival, but he worked on it for over

a hundred hours enough so that be began to realize how difficult it was.

 

The Skylark of Valeron entered the Green System, approached Norlamin, and went into

orbit around it. The travelers boarded a shuttle, which thereupon began to slide down a

landing-beam toward Rovol's private dock.

 

The little craft settled gently into a neoprene-lined cup. The visitors disembarked and

walked down a short flight of metallic steps, at the foot of which the ancient,

whitebearded sage was waiting for them. He greeted them warmly-for a Norlaminian-

and led them through the "garden" toward the metal-and-quartz palace that was his

home.

 

"Oh, Dick, isn't it wonderful!" Dorothy pressed his arm against her side. "It's so much

like Orlon's and yet so different . . . "

 

And it was both. The acreage of velvet-short, springy grass was about the same as that

upon which they had landed so long before. The imperishable-metal statuary was

similar. Here also were the beds of spectacular flowers and the hedges and sculptured

masses of gorgeously vari-colored plant life. The tapestry wall, however-composed of

millions upon millions of independently moving, flashing, selfluminous jewels of all the

colors of the rainbow-ran for a good three hundred yards beside the walk. It was evident

that the women of the Rovol had been working on it for hundreds of centuries instead of

for mere hundreds of years. Instead of being only form and color, as was the wall of the

Orlon it was well along toward portraying the entire history of the Family Rovol.

 

Rovol wanted to entertain his guests instead of work, but Seaton objected. "Shame on

you, Rovol. The Period of Labor is just starting, and remember how you fellows used to

bat my ears down about there being definite and noninterchangeable times for work

and for play and so forth?"

 

"That is of course true, youth," Rovol agreed, equably enough. "I should not have

entertained the idea for a moment. My companion will welcome the ladies and show

them to your apartments. We will proceed at once to the Area of Experiment," and he

called an aircar by fingering a stud at his belt.

 

"I've been studying, as you suggested," Seaton said then. "Can the thing be solved?

The more I worked on it the more dubious I got."

 

"Yes, but the application of its solution will be neither easy nor simple." The aircar

settled gently to the walk a few yards ahead of the party and Rovol and Seaton boarded

it; Rovol still talking. "But you will be delighted to know that, thanks to your gift of the

metal of power, what would have been a work of lifetimes can very probably be

accomplished in a few mere years."

 

Seaton was not delighted. Knowing what Rovol could mean by the word "few," he was

appalled; but there was nothing whatever he could do to speed things up.

 

He spent a couple of weeks rebuilding the Skylark of Valeron-with batteries of offensive

and defensive weaponry where single machines had been-then stood around and

watched the Norlaminians work. And as day followed day without anything being

accomplished he became more and more tense and impatient. He concealed his

feelings perfectly, he thought; but he should have known that he could hide nothing

from the extremely percipient mind of the girl who was in every respect his other half.

 

"Dick, you've been jittering like a witch," she said one evening, "about something I can't

see any reason for. But you have a reason, or you wouldn't be doing it. So break down

and tell me."

 

"I can't, confound it. I know I'm always in a rush to get a thing done, but not like this. I'm

all of a twitter inside. I can't sleep . . ."

 

Dorothy snickered. "You can't? If what you were doing last night wasn't sleeping it was

the most reasonable facsimile thereof I've ever seen. Or heard."

 

"Not like I ought to, I mean. Nightmares. Devils all the time sticking me with pitchforks.

Do you believe in hunches?"

 

"No," she said, promptly. "I never had any. Not a one."

 

"I never did, either, and if this is one I never want to have another. But it could be a

hunch that we ought to be investigating that alien galaxy of DuQuesne's. Whatever it is,

I want to go somewhere and I haven't the faintest idea where."

 

"Oh? Listen!" Dorothy's eyes widened. "I'll bet you're getting an answer to that message

we sent out!"

 

He shook his head. "Uh-uh. Can't be. Telepathy has got to be something you can

understand."

 

"Who besides you ever said it would have to be telepathy? And who knows what

telepathy would have to be like? Come on, let's go tell Martin and Peggy!"

 

"Huh?" he yelped. "Tell M. Reynolds Crane, the hardest boiled skeptic that event went

unhung, that I want to go skyshooting to hellangone off into the wild blue yonder just

because I've got an itch that I can't scratch?"

 

"Why not?" She looked him steadily in the eye. "We're exploring terra incognita, Dick.

How much do you really know about that mind of yours, the way it is now?"

 

"Okay. Maybe they'll buy it; you did. Let's go."

 

They went; and, a little to Seaton's surprise, Crane agreed with Dorothy. So did

Margaret. Hence three hours later, the big sky-rover was on her way.

 

Four days out, however, Seaton said, "This isn't the answer, I don't think. The itch is still

there. So what?"

 

There was silence for a couple of minutes, then Dorothy chuckled suddenly. Sobering

quickly, she said, with a perfectly straight face, "I'll bet it's that new department head

girl-friend of yours, Dick; the pistol-packing mama with the wiggle. She wants to see the

big, bold, handsome Earthman again. And if it is, I'll scratch . . ."

 

Seaton jumped almost out of his chair. "You're not kidding half as much as you think

you are, pet. That crack took a good scratch at exactly where it itches." He put on his

remote-control helmet and changed course. "And that helps still more." He thought for

minutes, then shrugged his shoulders and said, "I'm not getting a thing . . . not anything

more at all. How many of you remember either ReeToe Prenk or the girl well enough to

picture either of them accurately in your minds?"

 

They all remembered one or both of the Rayseenians.

 

"Okay. This'll sound silly. It is silly, for all the tea in China, but let's try something. All join

hands, picture either or both of them, and think at them as hard as we can. The thought

is simply `we're coming.' Okay?"

 

More than half sheepishly, they tried it-and it worked. At least Seaton said, "Well, it

worked, I guess. Anyway, for the first time in weeks, it's gone. But I didn't get a thing.

Nothing whatever. Not even a hint either that we were being paged or that our reply was

being received. Did any of you?"

 

None of them had.

 

"Huh!" Seaton snorted. "If this is telepathy they can keep it-I'll take Morse's original

telegraph!"

 

A week or so after the Skylark of Valeron left the neighborhood of Ray-See-Nee, that

planet's new government began to have trouble. Ree-Toe Prenk had said and had

believed that whoever controlled the capital controlled the world, but that was not true in

his case. It had always been true previously because the incoming powers had always

been of the same corrupt-to-the-core stripe as those who were ousted-and when

corruption has been the way of life for generations it is deep-rooted indeed.

 

There were, of course, other factors behind the unrest. But neither Prenk nor any other

human knew about them -then:

 

All the district bosses had always gone along with the Big Boss as a matter of course.

Not one of them cared a whit who ran the world, as long as his own privileges and

perquisites and powers and takes were not affected. Prenk, however, was strictly

honest and strictly just. If he should succeed in taking over Ray-See-Nee's government

in full, every crook and boodler on the planet would lose everything he had; possibly

even his life. Thus, while the new Premier held the capital-in a rapidly deteriorating grip-

his influence outside that city's limits varied inversely as about the fourth power of the

distance.

 

This resistance, while actual enough, was in no sense overt. Every order was ostensibly

obeyed to the letter; but everything deteriorated at an accelerating rate and Prenk could

do nothing whatever about it. Whenever and wherever Prenk was not looking, business

went on as usual gambling, drugs, prostitution, crime and protection-but he could not

prove any of it. Neither uniformed police nor detectives could find anything much amiss.

They made arrests, but no suspect was ever convicted: The prosecution's cases were

weak. The juries brought in verdicts of "innocent", usually, without leaving the box.

 

Even when, in desperation, Prenk went-supposedly top secretly-to an outlying city, fully

prepared to stage a questioning that would have made Torquemada blush, he did

nothing and he learned nothing. Every person on his list had vanished tracelessly and

every present incumbent had abundant proof of innocence. Nor did any of them know

why they had been promoted so suddenly. They were just lucky, they guessed.

 

It was indeed baffling. It would have been less so if Prenk had had any notion of the

universe-wide stir of mighty events just beginning to bubble-if he had been able, as we

are now able, to fit together all these patchwork stories into one nearly Norlaminian

fabric of universal history.

 

But he wasn't-and, for his peace of mind, perhaps that was just as well!

 

Premier Ree-Toe Prenk sat at his desk in the Room of State. Kay-Lee Barlo, shapely

legs crossed and pistol at hip, sat at his left. Sy-By Takeel, the new Captain-General of

the Guard, stood at ease at his right.

 

"Whoever is doing this is a smooth, shrewd operator," Prenk said. "So much so that you

two are the only people I can trust. And I don't suppose either of you will ever be

approached. Probably neither of you would be bought even if you offered yourselves

ever so deftly for sale."

 

"I wouldn't be, certainly," Takeel said. "Captains general of mercenaries don't sell out. I

wouldn't answer for any of my lieutenants, though, if there's loot to be had. There is

here, I take it?"

 

"Unlimited quantities, apparently. So you, too, are subject to assassination?" '

 

The soldier shrugged. "Oh, yes, it's an occupational hazard. How about you, Exalted

Barlo? No chance either, I'd say?"

 

"None at all. My stand is too well known. Half my people would stab me in the back if

they dared to and they all look me in the eye and lie in their Mi-Ko-Ta-cursed teeth. I

wish Ky-El Mokak and his people would get back here quick," Kay-Lee said wistfully.

 

"So do I," Prenk said, glumly. "But even if we had a sixth-order tightbeamer and could

use it, we haven't the slightest idea of where he came from or where he went to."

 

"That's true." She nibbled at her lip. "But listen. I'm a psychic. It runs in the women of

some families, you know, being . . . well, what most people call witches, kind of. My

talent isn't fully developed yet, but mother and I together could witch-wish at him to

come back here as fast as he can and I'm sure he would."

 

The soldier's face showed quite plainly what he thought of the idea, but Prenk nodded-if

more than somewhat dubiously. "I've heard of that `witch-wishing' business, and that it

sometimes works. So go home right now and get at it, Kay-Lee, and give it everything

you and your mother both can put out."

 

Kay-Lee went home forthwith and went into executive session with her mother; a

handsome, black-haired woman of forty-odd. "And I have positive identification," the girl

concluded. "His blood was all over the place-positively quarts of it-and I saved some

just in case." And, of course, she had-prudently, wisely and, as it turned out, luckily for

all concerned!

 

The older woman's face cleared. "That's good. Without a positive, I'm afraid it would be

hopeless at what the distance probably is by this time. Run and get the witch-holly,

dear, while I fix the incense."

 

They each ate seven ritually preserved witch-holly berries and inhaled seven deep

drafts of aromatic smoke. While they were waiting for the powerful drugs to take effect,

Kay-Lee asked, "How much of this rigamarole is chemistry, do you suppose, mother,

and how much is just hocus-pocus?"