E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne (53 page)

‘But he spoke of a calculated time necessary before our answer could be received. They must, then, be using vibrations in the ether.’

‘Not necessarily – not even probably. Would we ourselves reveal unnecessarily to an enemy the possession of such forces? Do not be childish. No, Fenimol, and you, Fenor of the Fenachrone, instant and headlong flight is our only hope of present salvation and of ultimate triumph – flight to a far-distant galaxy, since upon no point in this one shall we be safe from the infra-beams of that self-styled Overlord.’

‘You snivelling coward! You pusillanimous bookworm!’ Fenor had regained his customary spirit as the scientist explained upon what grounds his fears were based. ‘Upon such a tenuous fabric of evidence would you have such a people as ours turn tail like beaten hounds? Because, forsooth, you detect a peculiar vibration, will you have it that we are to be invaded and destroyed forthwith by a race of supernatural ability? Bah! Your calamity-howling clan has delayed the Day of Conquest from year to year – I more than half believe that you yourself or some other treacherous poltroon of your ignominious breed prepared and sent that warning, in a weak and rat-brained attempt to frighten us into again postponing the Day of Conquest! Know now, spineless weakling, that the time is ripe, and that the Fenachrone in their might are about to strike. But you, traducer of your emperor, shall die the death of the cur you are!’ The hand within his tunic moved and a vibrator burst into operation.

‘Coward I may be, and pusillanimous, and other things as well,’ the scientist replied stonily, ‘but, unlike you, I am not a fool. These walls, this very atmosphere, are fields of force that will transmit no forces directed by you. You weak-minded scion of a depraved and obscene house – arrogant, over-bearing, rapacious, ignorant – your brain is too feeble to realize that you are clutching at the universe hundreds of years before the time has come. You by your overweening pride and folly have doomed our beloved planet – the most perfect planet in the galaxy in its grateful warmth and wonderful dampness and fogginess – and our entire race to certain destruction. Therefore you, fool and dolt that you are, shall die – far too long already have you ruled.’ He flicked a finger and the body of the monarch shuddered as though an intolerable current of electricity had traversed it, collapsed, and lay still.

‘It was necessary to destroy this that was our ruler,’ Ravindau explained to the general. ‘I have long known that you are not in favor of such precipitate action in the Conquest; hence all this talking upon my part. You know that I hold the honor of the Fenachrone dear, and that all my
plans are for the ultimate triumph of our race?’

‘Yes, and I begin to suspect that those plans have not been made since the warning was received.’

‘My plans have been made for many years; and ever since an immediate Conquest was decided upon I have been assembling and organizing the means to put them into effect. I would have left this planet in any event shortly after the departure of the grand fleet upon its final expedition – Fenor’s senseless defiance of the Overlord has only made it necessary for me to expedite my leave-taking.’

‘What do you intend to do?’

‘I have a vessel twice as large as the largest warship Fenor boasted; completely provisioned, armed, and powered for a cruise of one hundred years at high acceleration. It is hidden in a remote fastness of the jungle. I am placing in that vessel a group of the finest, brainiest, most highly advanced and intelligent of our men and women, with their children. We shall journey at our highest speed to a certain distant galaxy, where we shall seek out a planet similar in atmosphere, temperature, and mass to the one upon which we now dwell. There we shall multiply and continue our studies; and from that planet, on the day when we shall have attained sufficient knowledge, there shall descend upon the Central System of this galaxy the vengeance of the Fenachrone. That vengeance will be all the sweeter for the fact that it shall have been delayed.’

‘But how about libraries, apparatus, and equipment? Suppose that we do not live long enough to perfect that knowledge? And with only one vessel and a handful of men we could not cope with that accursed Overlord and his navies of the void.’

‘Libraries are aboard, so are much apparatus and equipment. What we cannot take with us we can build. As for the knowledge I mentioned, it may not be attained in your lifetime or in mine. But the racial memory of the Fenachrone is long, as you know; and even if the necessary problems are not solved until our descendants are sufficiently numerous to populate an entire planet, yet will those descendants wreak the vengeance of the Fenachrone upon the races of that hated one, the Overlord, before they go on with the Conquest of the Universe. Many problems will arise, of course; but they shall be solved. Enough! Time passes rapidly, and all too long have I talked. I am using this time upon you because in my organization there is no soldier, and the Fenachrone of the future will need your great knowledge of warfare. Are you going with us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very well.’ Ravindau led the general through a door and into an airboat lying upon the terrace outside the laboratory. ‘Drive us at speed to your home, where we shall pick up your family.’

Fenimol took the controls and laid a pencil of force to his
home – a beam serving a double purpose. It held the vessel upon its predetermined course through that thick and sticky fog and also rendered collision impossible, since any two of these controllers repelled each other to such a degree that no two vessels could take paths which would bring them together. Some such provision had long since been found necessary, for all Fenachrone craft were provided with the same space-annihilating drive, to which any comprehensible distance was but a journey of a few moments, and at that frightful velocity collision meant annihilation.

‘I understand that you could not take one of the military into your confidence until you were ready to put your plans into effect,’ the general conceded. ‘How long will it take you to get ready to leave? You have said that haste is imperative, and I therefore assume that you have already warned the other numbers of the expedition.’

‘I flashed the emergency signal before I joined you and Fenor in the council room. Every man of the organization has received that signal, wherever he may have been, and by this time most of them, with their families, are on the way to the hidden cruiser. We shall leave this planet in fifteen minutes from now at the most – I dare not stay an instant longer than is absolutely necessary.’

The members of the general’s family were bundled, amazed, into the airboat, which immediately set out toward the secret rendezvous.

In a remote and desolate part of the planet, concealed in the depths of the towering jungle growth, a mammoth space-cruiser was receiving her complement of passengers. Airboats, flying at their terrific velocity through the heavy, steaming fog as closely-spaced as their controller rays would permit, flashed signals along their guiding beams, dove into the apparently impenetrable jungle, and added their passengers to the throng pouring into the great vessel.

As the minute of departure drew near the feeling of tension aboard the cruiser increased and vigilance was raised to the maximum. The doors were shut, no one was allowed outside, and everything was held in readiness for instant flight at the least alarm. Finally a scientist and his family arrived from the opposite side of the planet – the last members of the organization – and, twenty-seven minutes after Ravindau had flashed his signal, the prow of that mighty spaceship reared toward the perpendicular, posing its massive length at the predetermined angle. There it halted momentarily, then disappeared utterly, only a vast column of tortured and shattered vegetation, torn from the ground and carried for miles upward into the air by the vacuum of its wake, remaining to indicate the path taken by the flying projectile.

Hour after hour the Fenachrone vessel bored on, with its frightful and ever-increasing velocity, through the ever-thinning stars, but it was not until the last star had been passed, until everything before them
was entirely devoid of light, and until the galaxy behind them began to take on a well-defined lenticular aspect, that Ravindau would consent to leave the controls and to seek his hard-earned rest.

Day after day and week after week went by, and the Fenachrone vessel still held the acceleration with which she had started out. Ravindau and Fenimol sat in the control cabin, staring out through the visiplates, abstracted. There was no need of staring, and they were not really looking, for there was practically nothing at which to look. The galaxy of which our Earth is an infinitesimal mote, the galaxy which former astronomers considered the universe, was so far behind that even its immense expanse had become a tiny, dull, hazy spot of light. In all directions other galaxies – spots of light so small and so dull as to be distinguished only with difficulty from the absolute black of the void – seemed equally remote. The galaxy toward which they were making their stupendous flight was as yet so distant that it could not be seen by the unaided eye. For thousands of light-years around them there was stark emptiness. No stars, no meteoric matter, not even the smallest particle of cosmic dust – absolutely empty space. Absolute vacuum: absolute zero. Absolute nothingness – a concept intrinsically impossible for the most highly trained human mind to grasp.

Conscienceless and heartless monstrosities though they both were, by heredity and training, the immensity of the appalling lack of anything tangible oppressed them. Ravindau was stern and serious, Fenimol moody. Finally the latter spoke.

‘It would be endurable if we knew what had happened, or if we ever could know definitely, one way or the other, whether all this was necessary.’

‘We shall know, General, definitely. I am certain in my own mind, but after a time, when we have settled upon our new home and when the Overlord shall have relaxed his vigilance, you shall come back to the solar system of the Fenachrone in this vessel or a similar one. I know what you shall find – but the trip shall be made, and you shall yourself see what was once our home planet a seething sun, second only in brilliance to the parent sun about which she shall still be revolving.’

‘Are we safe, even now – what of possible pursuit?’ asked Fenimol, and the monstrous, flame-shot wells of black that were Ravindau’s eyes almost emitted tangible fires as he made reply:

‘We are far from safe, but we grow stronger minute by minute. Fifty of the greatest minds our world has ever known have been working from the moment of our departure upon a line of investigation suggested to me by certain things my instruments recorded during the visit of the self-styled Overlord. I cannot say anything yet, even to you – except that the Day of Conquest may not be so far in the future as we have supposed.’

‘I hate to leave this meeting – it’s great stuff,’ Seaton remarked, as he flashed down to the torpedo room when Fenor decided to recall all outlying
vessels, ‘but this machine isn’t designed to let me be in more than two places at once. Wish it was – maybe after this fracas is over we’ll be able to incorporate something like that into it.’

The Fenachrone operator touched a lever and the chair upon which he sat, with all its control panels, slid rapidly across the floor toward an apparently blank wall. As he reached it a port opened, a metal scroll appeared, containing the numbers and last reported positions of all Fenachrone vessels outside the detector zone. A vast magazine of torpedoes came up through the floor, with an automatic loader to place a torpedo under the operator’s hand the instant its predecessor had been launched.

‘Get Peg here quick, Mart – we need a stenographer bad. Until she gets here, see what you can do in getting those first numbers before they roll off the end of the scroll. No, hold it – as you were! I’ve got controls enough to put the whole thing on a recorder, so we can study it at our leisure.’

Haste was indeed necessary, for the operator worked with uncanny quickness of hand. One fleeting glance at the scroll, a lightning adjustment of dials in the torpedo, a touch upon a tiny button, and a messenger was upon its way. But quick as he was, Seaton’s flying fingers kept up with him, and before each torpedo disappeared through the ether gate there was fastened upon it a fifth-order tracer that would never leave it until the force had been disconnected at the gigantic control board of the Norlaminian projector. One flying minute passed, during which seventy torpedoes had been launched, before Seaton spoke.

‘Wonder how many ships they’ve got out, anyway? Didn’t get any idea from the brain-record. Anyway, Rovol, it might be a sound idea for you to install me some tracers on this board. I’ve got only a couple of hundred, and that may not be enough – and I’ve got both hands full.’

Rovol seated himself beside the younger man, like one organist joining another at the console of a tremendous organ. Seaton’s nimble fingers would flash here and there, depressing keys and manipulating controls until he had exactly the required combination of forces centered upon the torpedo next to issue. He then would press a tiny switch and upon a panel full of red-topped, numbered plungers the one next in series would drive home, transferring to itself the assembled beam and releasing the keys for the assembly of other forces. Rovol’s fingers were also flying, but the forces
he directed were seizing and shaping materials, as well as other forces. The Norlaminian physicist set up one integral, stepped upon a pedal, and a new red-topped stop precisely like the others, and numbered in order, appeared as though by magic upon the panel at Seaton’s left hand. Rovol then leaned back in his seat – but the red-topped stops continued to appear, at the rate of exactly seventy per minute, upon the panel, which increased in width sufficiently to accommodate another row as soon as a row was completed.

Rovol bent a quizzical glance upon the younger scientist, who blushed a fiery red, rapidly set up another integral, then also leaned back in his place, while his face burned deeper than before.