E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne (43 page)

‘You have a little girl, too?’ Dorothy asked the woman.

‘Yes – would you like to see her? She is asleep now,’ and without waiting for an answer the proud Dasorian mother led the way into a bedroom. Of beds there were none, for Dasorians sleep floating in thermostatically-controlled tanks, buoyed up in the water of the temperature they like best, in a fashion that no Earthly springs and mattresses can approach. In a small tank in a corner reposed a baby, apparently about a year old, over whom Dorothy and Margaret made the usual feminine ceremony of delight and approbation.

Back in the living room, after an animated conversation in which much information was exchanged concerning the two planets and their races of peoples, Carfon drew six metal goblets of distilled water and passed them around. Standing in a circle, the six touched goblets and drank.

They then embarked, and while Crane steered the
Skylark
slowly along the channel toward the offices of the Council, and while Dorothy and Margaret showed the eager Seven all over the vessel, Seaton explained to Carfon the danger that threatened the universe, what he had done, and what he was attempting to do.

‘Dr Seaton, I wish to apologize to you,’ the Dasorian said when Seaton had done. ‘Since you are evidently still land animals, I had supposed you of inferior intelligence. It is true that your younger civilization is deficient in certain respects, but you have shown a depth of vision, a sheer power of imagination and grasp, that no member of our older civilization could approach. I believe that you are right in your conclusions. We have no such forces or screens upon this planet, and never have had; but the sixth planet of our own sun has. About fifty of your years ago, when I was a boy, such a projection visited my father. It offered to “rescue” us from our watery planet, and to show us how to build rocket-ships to move us to Three, which is half land, and which is inhabited only by lower animals.’

‘And he didn’t accept?’

‘Certainly not. Then as now our sole lack was power, and the strangers did not show us how to increase our supply.
Perhaps they had no more power than we, perhaps because of the difficulty of communication our want was not made clear to them. But of course we did not want to move to Three, and we had already had rocket-ships for hundreds of generations. We have never been able to reach Six with them, but we visited Three long ago; and everyone who went there came back as soon as he could. We detest land. It is hard, barren, unfriendly. We have everything, here upon Dasor. Food is plentiful, synthetic or natural, as we prefer. Our watery planet supplies our every need and wish, with one exception; and now that we are assured of power, even that one exception vanishes, and Dasor becomes a very Paradise. We can now lead our natural lives, work and play to our fullest capacity – we would not trade our world for all the rest of the universe.’

‘I never thought of it in that way, but you’re right, at that,’ Seaton conceded. ‘You are ideally suited to your environment. But how do I get to planet Six? Its distance is terrific, even as planetary distances go. You won’t have any night until Dasor swings outside the orbit of your sun, and until then Six will be invisible, even to our most powerful telescope.’

‘I do not know, myself, but I will send out a call for the Chief Astronomer. He will meet us at the office, and will give you a chart and the exact course.’

At the office the Earthly visitors were welcomed formally by the Council – the nine men in control of the entire planet. The ceremony over and their course carefully plotted, Carfon stood at the door of the
Skylark
a moment before it closed.

‘We thank you with all force, Earthmen, for what you have done for us this day. Please remember, and believe that this is no idle word – if we can assist you in any way in this conflict which is to come, the resources of this planet are at your disposal. We join Osnome and the other planets of this system in declaring you, Dr Seaton, our Overlord.’

The
Skylark
days upon her way toward the sixth planet, Seaton gave the visiplate and the instrument board his customary careful scrutiny and rejoined the others.

‘Still talking about the human fish, Dottie Dimple?’ he asked, as he stoked his villainous pipe. ‘Peculiar tribe of porpoises, but they made a hit with me. They’re the most like our own kind of people, in everything that counts, of anybody we’ve seen yet – in fact, they’re more like us than a lot of human
beings we all know.’

‘I like them immensely …’

‘You couldn’t like ’em any other way, the size …’

‘Terrible, Dick, terrible! Easy as I am, I can’t stand for any such pun as that. But really, I think they’re just perfectly fine, in spite of their being so funny-looking. Mrs Carfon is just simply sweet, even if she does look like a walrus, and that cute little seal of a baby was just too perfectly darn cunning for words. That boy Seven is keen as mustard, too.’

‘He should be,’ put in Crane, dryly. ‘He probably has as much intelligence now as any one of us.’

‘Do you think so?’ asked Margaret. ‘He acted like any other boy, but he did seem to understand things remarkably well.’

‘He would – they’re way ahead of us in most things.’ Seaton glanced at the two women quizzically and turned to Crane. ‘And as for their being bald, this was one time, Mart, when those two phenomenal heads of hair our two little girl-friends are so proud of didn’t make any kind of a hit at all. They probably regard that black thatch of Peg’s and Dot’s auburn mop as relics of a barbarous and prehistoric age – about like we would regard the hirsute hide of a Neanderthal.’

‘That may be so, too,’ Dorothy replied, unconcernedly, ‘but we aren’t planning on living there, so why worry about it? I like them, anyway, and I believe that they like us.’

‘They acted that way, anyway. But say, Mart, if that planet is so old that all their land area has been eroded away, how come they’ve got so much water left? And they’ve got quite an atmosphere, too.’

‘The air-pressure, while greater than that now obtaining upon Earth, was probably of the order of magnitude of three meters of mercury, originally. As to the erosion, they might have had more water to begin with than our Earth had.’

‘That’d probably account for it.’

‘There’s one thing I want to ask you two scientists,’ Margaret said. ‘Everywhere we’ve gone, except on that one world that Dick thinks is a wandering planet, we’ve found the intelligent life quite remarkably like human beings. How do you account for that?’

‘There, Mart, is one for the massive intellect to concentrate on,’ challenged Seaton: then, as Crane considered the question in silence for some time he went on: ‘I’ll answer it myself, then, by asking another. Why not? Why shouldn’t they be? Remember, man is the highest form of Earthly life – at least, in our own opinion and as far as we know. In our wanderings, we have picked out planets quite similar to our own in point of atmosphere and temperature and, within narrow limits, of mass as well. It stands to reason that under such similarity of conditions there would be certain
similarity of results. How about it, Mart? Reasonable?’

‘It seems plausible, in a way,’ conceded Crane, ‘but it probably is not universally true.’

‘Sure not – couldn’t be, hardly. No doubt we could find a lot of worlds inhabited by all kinds of intelligent things – freaks that we can’t even begin to imagine now – but they probably would be occupying planets entirely different from ours in some essential feature of atmosphere, temperature, or mass.’

‘But the Fenachrone world is entirely different,’ Dorothy argued, ‘and they’re more or less human – they’re bipeds, anyway, with recognizable features. I’ve been studying that record with you, you know, and their world has so many times more mass than ours that their gravitation is simply frightful!’

‘That much difference is comparatively slight, not a real fundamental difference. I meant a hundred or so times either way – greater or less. And even their gravitation has modified their structure a lot – suppose it had been fifty times as great as it is? What would they have been like? Also, their atmosphere is very similar to ours in composition, and their temperature is bearable. It is my opinion that atmosphere and temperature have more to do with evolution than anything else, and that the mass of the planet runs a poor third.’

‘You may be right,’ admitted Crane, ‘but it seems to me that you are arguing from insufficient premises.’

‘Sure I am – almost no premises at all. I would be just about as well justified in deducting the structure of a range of mountains from a superficial study of three pebbles picked up in a creek. However, we can get an idea some time, when we have a lot of time.’

‘How?’

‘Remember that planet we struck on the first trip, that had an atmosphere composed mostly of gaseous chlorin? In our ignorance we assumed that life there was impossible, and didn’t stop. Well, it may be just as well that we didn’t. If we go back there, protected as we are with our screens and stuff, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find life there, and lots of it – and I’ve got a hunch that it’ll be a form of life that’d make your grandfather’s whiskers curl right up into a ball!’

‘You get the weirdest ideas, Dick!’ protested Dorothy. ‘I hope you aren’t planning on exploring it, just to prove your point?’

‘Never thought of it before. Can’t do it now, anyway – got our hands full. However, after we get this Fenachrone mess cleaned up we’ll have to do just that little thing, won’t we, Mart? As that intellectual guy said while he was insisting upon dematerializing us, “Science demands it.”’

‘By all means. We should be in a position to make contributions to science in fields as yet untouched. Most assuredly we shall investigate those points.’

‘Then they’ll go alone, won’t they, Peggy?’

‘Absolutely! We’ve seen some pretty middling horrible things
already, and if these two men of ours call the frightful things we have seen normal, and are planning on deliberately hunting up things that even they will consider monstrous, you and I most certainly shall stay at home!’

‘Yeah? You say it easy. Bounce back, Peg, you’ve struck a rubber fence! Rufus, you red-haired little fraud, you know you wouldn’t let me go to the corner store after a can of tobacco without insisting on tagging along!’

‘You’re a cockeyed …’ began Dorothy hotly, but broke off in amazement and gasped, ‘For Heaven’s sake, what was that?’

‘What was what? It missed me.’

‘It went right through you! It was a kind of a funny little cloud, like smoke or something. It came right through the ceiling like a flash – went right through you and on down through the floor. There it comes back again!’

Before their startled eyes a vague, nebulous something moved rapidly upward through the floor and passed upward through the ceiling. Dorothy leaped to Seaton’s side and he put his arm around her reassuringly.

‘’Sall right, folks – I know what that thing is.’

‘Well, shoot it, quick!’ Dorothy implored.

‘It’s one of those projections from where we’re heading for, trying to get our range; and it’s the most welcome sight these weary old eyes have rested upon for full many a long and dreary moon. They’ve probably located us from our power-plant emission. We’re an awful long ways off yet, though, and going like a streak of greased lightning, so they’re having trouble in holding us. They’re friendly, we already know that – they probably want to talk to us. It’d make it easier for them if we’d shut off our power and drift at constant velocity, but that’d use up valuable time and throw our calculations all out. We’ll let them try to match our acceleration. If they can do that, they’re good.’

The apparition reappeared, oscillating back and forth irregularly – passing through the arenak walls, through the furniture and the instrument boards, and even through the mighty power plant itself, as though nothing were there. Eventually, however, it remained stationary a foot or so above the floor of the control room. Then it began to increase in density until apparently a man stood before them. His skin, like that of all the inhabitants of the planets of the green suns, was green. He was tall and well-proportioned when judged by Earthly standards except for his head, which was overly large, and which was particularly massive above the eyes and backward from the ears. He was evidently of great age, for what little of his face was visible was seamed and wrinkled, and his long, thick mane of hair and his square-cut, yard-long beard were a dazzling white, only faintly tinged with green.

While in no sense transparent, nor even translucent, it was evident that the apparition before them was not composed of flesh and blood. He looked at each of the four Earthbeings intently for a moment,
then pointed toward the table upon which stood the mechanical educator, and Seaton placed it in front of the peculiar visitor. As Seaton donned a headset and handed one to the stranger, the latter stared at him, impressing upon his consciousness that he was to be given a knowledge of English. Seaton pressed the lever, receiving as he did so a sensation of an unbroken calm, a serenity profound and untroubled, and the projection spoke.

‘Dr Seaton, Mr Crane, and ladies – welcome to Norlamin, the planet toward which you are now flying. We have been awaiting you for more than five thousand years of your time. It has been a mathematical certainty – it has been graven upon the very Sphere itself – that in time someone would come to us from without this system, bringing a portion, however small, of Rovolon – of the metal of power. For more than five thousand years our instruments have been set to detect the vibrations which would herald the advent of the user of that metal. Now you have come, and I perceive that you have vast stores of it. Being yourselves seekers after truth, you will share it with us gladly as we will instruct you in many things you wish to know. Allow me to operate the educator – I would gaze into your minds and reveal my own to your sight. But first I must tell you that your machine is too rudimentary to function properly, and with your permission I shall make certain minor alterations.’