E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne (29 page)

Dorothy, taken aback, opened and closed her mouth twice before she found her voice.

‘But, Dick, they couldn’t possibly. Would they kill them
all
, Dick? Surely they wouldn’t – they
couldn’t
.’

‘Surely they would – and could. They do – it’s good technique in those parts of the galaxy. Dunark has just told us of how they killed every member of the entire race of Mardonalians, in forty hours. Kondal would go the same way. Don’t kid yourself, Dimples – don’t be a simp. War up there is
no
species of pink tea, believe me – half of my brain has been through thirty years of Osnomian warfare, and I know precisely what I’m talking about. Let’s take a vote. Personally I’m in favor of Osnome. Mart?’

‘Osnome.’

‘Dottie? Peggy?’ Both remained silent for some time, then Dorothy turned to Margaret.

‘You tell him, Peggy – we both feel the same way.’

‘Dick, you know that we wouldn’t want the Kondalians destroyed – but the other is so – such a – well, such an utter
Schrecklichkeit
– isn’t there some other way out?’

‘I’m afraid not – but if there is any other possible way
out, I’ll do my da— I’ll try to find it,’ he promised. ‘The ayes have it. Dunark, we’ll skip over to that X planet and load you up.’

Dunark grasped Seaton’s hand. ‘Thanks, Dick,’ he said, simply. ‘But before you help me farther, and lest I might be in some degree sailing under false colors, I must tell you that, wearer of the seven disks though you are, Overlord of Osnome though you are, my brain brother though you are; had you decided against me, nothing but my death could have kept me away from that salt and your X compass.’

‘Why sure,’ assented Seaton, in surprise. ‘Why not? Fair enough! Anybody would do the same – don’t let that gnaw on you.’

‘How is your supply of platinum?’

‘Mighty low. We had about decided to hop over there after some. I want some of your textbooks on electricity and so on, too. I see you brought a load of platinum with you.’

‘Yes, a few hundred tons. We also brought along an assortment of books I knew you would be interested in, a box of radium, a few small bags of gems of various kinds, and some of our fabrics Sitar thought your karfediro would like to have. While we are here, I would like to get some books on chemistry and some other things.’

‘We’ll get you the Congressional Library, if you want it, and anything else you think you’d like. Well, gang, let’s go places and do things! What first, Mart?’

‘We had better drop back to Earth, have the laborers unload the platinum, and load on the salt, books, and other things. Then both ships will go to the X planet, as we will each want compasses on it, for future use. While we are loading, I should like to begin remodeling our instruments; to make them something like these; with Dunark’s permission. These instruments are wonders, Dick – vastly ahead of anything I have ever seen. Come and look at them, if you want to see something really beautiful.’

‘Coming up. But say, Mart, while I think of it, we mustn’t forget to install a zone-of-force apparatus on this ship, too. Even though we can’t use it intelligently, it certainly would be the cat’s whiskers as a defense. We couldn’t hurt anybody through it, of course, but if we should happen to be getting licked anywhere all we’d have to do would be to wrap ourselves up in it. They couldn’t touch us. Nothing that I know of is corkscrewy enough to get through it.’

‘That’s the second idea you’ve had since I’ve known you, Dicky,’ Dorothy smiled at Crane. ‘Do you think he should be allowed to run at large, Martin?’

‘That is a real idea. We may need it – you never can tell. Even if we never find any other use for the zone of force, that one is amply sufficient to justify its installation.’

‘Yeah, it would be, for you – and I’m getting to be a regular Safety-First Simon myself, since they opened up on us. What about those instruments?’

The three men gathered around the instrument
board and Dunark explained the changes he had made – and to such men as Seaton and Crane it was soon evident that they were examining an installation embodying sheer perfection of instrumental control – a system which only those wonder instrument-makers, the Osnomians, could have devised. The new object-compasses were housed in arenak cases after setting, and the housings were then exhausted to the highest attainable vacuum. Oscillation was set up by means of one carefully standardized electrical impulse, instead of by the clumsy finger-touch Seaton had used. The bearings, built of arenak and Osnomian jewels, were as strong as the axles of a truck, and yet were almost perfectly motionless.

‘I like them myself,’ admitted Dunark. ‘Without a load the needles will rotate freely more than a thousand hours on the primary impulse, as against a few minutes in the old type; and under load they are many thousands of times as sensitive.’

‘You’re a blinding flash and a deafening report, ace!’ declared Seaton, enthusiastically. ‘That compass is as far ahead of my model as the
Skylark
is ahead of Wright’s first glider.’

The other instruments were no less noteworthy. Dunark had adopted the Perkins telephone system, but had improved it until it was scarcely recognizable, and had made it capable of almost unlimited range. Even the guns – heavy rapid-firers, mounted in spherical bearings in the walls – were aimed and fired by remote control, from the board. He had devised full automatic steering controls; and acceleration, velocity, distance, and flight-angle meters and recorders. He had perfected a system of periscopic vision which enabled the pilot to see the entire outside surface of the shell, and to look toward any point of the heavens without interference.

‘This kind of takes my eye, too, prince,’ Seaton said, as he seated himself, swung a large, concave disk in front of him, and experimented with levers and dials. ‘You certainly can’t call this thing a periscope – it’s no more a periscope than I am a polyp. When you look through this plate it’s better than looking out of a window – it subtends more than the angle of vision, so that you can’t see anything but out-of-doors – I thought for a second I was going to fall out. What do you call ’em, Dunark?’

‘Kraloto. That would be in English … Seeing-plate? Or rather, exactly transliterated, “visiplate”.’

‘That’s a good word – we’ll adopt it. Mart, take a look if you want to see a set of perfect lenses and prisms.’

Crane looked into the visiplate and gasped. The vessel had disappeared – he was looking directly down upon the Earth below him!

‘No trace of chromatic, spherical, or astigmatic aberration,’ he reported in surprise. ‘The refracting system is invisible – it seems as though nothing intervenes between the eye and the object. You perfected
all these things since we left Osnome, Dunark? You are in a class by yourself. I could not even copy them in less than a month, and I never could have invented them.’

‘I did not do it alone, by any means. The Society of Instrument-Makers, of which I am only one member, installed and tested more than a hundred systems. This one represents the best features of all the systems tried. It will not be necessary for you to copy them. I brought along two complete duplicate sets, for the
Skylark
, as well as a dozen or so of the compasses. I thought that perhaps these particular improvements might not have occurred to you, since you Terrestrials are not as familiar as we are with complex instrumental work.’

Crane and Seaton spoke together.

‘That was thoughtful of you, Dunark, and we appreciate it fully.’

‘That puts four more palms on your
croix de guerre
, ace. Thanks a lot.’

‘Say, Dick,’ called Dorothy, from her seat near the wall. ‘If we’re going down to the ground, how about Sitar?’

‘By lying down and not doing anything, and by staying in the vessel, where it is warm, she will be all right for the short time we must stay here,’ Dunark answered for his wife. ‘I will help all I can, but I do not know how much that will be.’

‘It isn’t so bad lying down,’ Sitar agreed. ‘I don’t like your Earth a bit, but I can stand it a little while. Anyway, I
must
stand it, so why worry about it?’

‘’At-a-girl!’ cheered Seaton. ‘And as for you, Dunark, you’ll pass the time just like Sitar does – lying down. If you do much chasing around down there where we live you’re apt to get your lights and liver twisted all out of shape – so you’ll stay put, horizontal. We’ve got men enough around the shop to eat this cargo in three hours, let alone unload it. While they unload and load you up we’ll install the zone apparatus, put a compass on you, put one of yours on us, and then you can hop back up here where you’re comfortable. Then as soon as we can get the
Lark
ready for the trip we’ll jump up here and be on our way. Everything clear? Cut the rope, Mart – let the bucket drop!’

‘Say, Mart, I just got conscious! It never occurred to me until just now, as Dunark left, that I’m just as good an instrument-maker as Dunark is – the same one, in fact – and I’ve got a hunch. You know that needle on DuQuesne hasn’t been working for quite a while? Well, I don’t believe it’s out of commission at all. I think he’s gone somewhere, so far away that it can’t read on him. I’m going to house it in, re-jewel it, and find out where he is.’

‘An excellent idea. He has even you worrying,
and as for myself …’

‘Worrying! That bird is simply pulling my cork! I’m so scared he’ll get Dottie that I’m running around in circles and biting myself in the small of the back. He’s working on something, you can bet your shirt on that, and what gripes me is he’s aiming at the girls, not at us or the job.’

‘I should say that someone had aimed at you fairly accurately, judging by the number of bullets stopped lately by that arenak armor of yours. I wish that I could take some of the strain, but they are centering all their attacks upon you.’

‘Yeah – I can’t stick my nose outside our yard without somebody throwing lead at it. ’Sfunny, too. You’re more important to the power plant than I am.’

‘You should know why. They are not afraid of me. While my spirit is willing enough, it was your skill and rapidity with a pistol that frustrated four attempts at abduction in as many days. It is positively uncanny, the way you explode into action. With all my practice, I didn’t even have my pistol out until it was all over, yesterday. And besides Prescott’s guards, we had four policemen with us – detailed to “guard” us because of the number of gunmen you had had to kill before that!’

‘It ain’t practice so much, Mart – it’s a gift I’ve always been fast, and I react automatically. You think first, that’s why you’re so slow. Those cops were funny. They didn’t know what it was all about until it was all over but calling the wagon. That was the worst yet. One of their slugs struck directly in front of my left eye – it was kinda funny, at that, seeing it splash – and I thought I was inside a boiler in a rivet-shop when those machine-guns cut loose. It was hectic, all right, while it lasted. But one thing I’ll tell the attentive world – we ain’t doing all the worrying. Very few, if any, of the gangsters they send after us are getting back – wonder what they think when they shoot at us and we don’t drop?

‘But I’m afraid I’m beginning to crack, Mart,’ Seaton went on, his voice becoming grimly earnest. ‘I don’t like anything about this whole mess. I don’t like all four of us wearing armor all the time. I don’t like living constantly under guard. I don’t like all this killing, and this constant menace of losing Dorothy if I let her out of my sight for five seconds is driving me mad. Also, to tell you the truth, I’m devilishly afraid that they’ll figure out something that will work. I could grab off two women, or kill two men, if they had armor and guns enough to fight a war. I believe that DuQuesne could, too – and the rest of that bunch aren’t imbeciles, either, by any means. I won’t feel safe until all four of us are in the
Skylark
and a long ways from here. I’m glad we’re pulling out, and I don’t intend to come back until I find DuQuesne. He’s the bird I’m going to get – and when I get him I’ll tell the cock-eyed world that he’ll
stay
got. There won’t be any two atoms of his entire carcass left
in the same township. I meant that promise when I gave it to him – and I didn’t mean maybe.’

‘He realizes that fully. He knows that it is now definitely either his life or our own, and he is really dangerous. When he took Steel over and opened war upon us, he did it with his eyes wide open. With his ideas, he must have a monopoly of X or nothing; and he knows the only possible way of getting it. However, you and I both know that he would not let either one of us live, even though we surrendered.’

‘You chirped it! But that guy’s going to find out that he’s started something. But how about turning up a few RPM’s? We don’t want to keep Dunark waiting too long.’

‘There is very little to do beyond installing the new instruments; and that is nearly done. We can finish pumping out the compass en route. You have already installed every weapon of offense and defense known to either Earthly or Osnomian warfare, including those generators and screens you moaned so about not having during the battle over Kondal. I believe that we have on board every article for which either of us has been able to imagine even the slightest use.’

‘Yeah, we’ve got her so full of plunder that there’s hardly room left for quarters. You ain’t figuring on taking anybody but Shiro along, are you?’

‘No. I suppose there is no real necessity for taking even him, but he wants very much to go, and may prove himself useful.’

‘I’ll say he’ll be useful. None of us really enjoys polishing brass or washing dishes – and besides, he’s one star cook and an A-1 housekeeper.’

The installation of the new instruments was soon completed, and while Dorothy and Margaret made last-minute preparations for departure the men called a meeting of the managing directors and department heads of the Seaton-Crane Co., Engineers. The chiefs gave brief reports in turn. Units Number One and Number Two of the immense new central super-power plant were in continuous operation. Number Three was almost ready to cut in. Number Four was being rushed to completion. Number Five was well under way. The research laboratory was keeping well up on its problems. Troubles were less than had been anticipated. Financially, it was a gold-mine. With no expense for boilers or fuel and thus with a relatively small investment in plant and a very small operating cost, they were selling power at one-sixth of prevailing rates, and still profits were almost paying for all new construction. With the completion of Number Five, rates would be reduced still further.