E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne (78 page)

‘Quite encouraging! This galaxy is certainly of the same order of magnitude as our own, and …’

‘Encouraging, huh?’ Seaton broke in. ‘If such a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist as you are can permit himself to use such a word as that, we’re practically landed on a planet right now!’

‘And shows the same types and varieties of stellar spectra,’ Crane went on, unperturbed. ‘I have identified with certainty no less than six white dwarf stars, and some forty yellow dwarfs of type G.’

‘Fine! What did I tell you?’ exulted Seaton.

‘Now go over that again, in English, so that Peggy and I can feel relieved about it, too,’ Dorothy directed. ‘What’s a type-G dwarf?’

‘A sun like our own Sol, back home,’ Seaton explained. ‘Since we are looking for a planet as much as possible like our own Earth, it is a distinctly cheerful fact to find so many suns similar to our own. And as for the white dwarfs, I’ve got to have one fairly close to the planet we land on, because to get in touch with Rovol I’ve got to have a sixth-order projector; to build which I’ve first got to have one of the fifth order; for the construction of which I’ve got to have neutronium; to get which I’ll have to be close to a white dwarf star. See?’

‘Uh-huh! Clear and lucid to the point of limpidity – not.’ Dorothy grimaced, then went on: ‘As for me, I’m certainly glad to see those stars. It seems that we’ve been out there in absolutely empty space for ages, and I’ve been scared a pale lavender all the time. Having all these nice stars around us again is the next-best thing to being on solid ground.’

At the edge of the strange galaxy though they were, many days were required to reduce the intergalactic pace of the vessel to a value at which maneuvering was possible, and many more days passed into time before Crane announced the discovery of a sun which not only possessed a family of planets, but was also within the specified distance of a white dwarf star.

To any Earthly astronomer, whose most powerful optical instruments fail to reveal even the closest star as anything save a dimensionless point of light, such a discovery would have been impossible, but Crane was not working with Earthly instruments. For the fourth-order projector, although utterly useless at the intergalactic distances with which
Seaton was principally concerned, was vastly more powerful than any conceivable telescope.

Driven by the full power of a disintegrating uranium bar, it could hold a projection so steadily at a distance of twenty light-years that a man could manipulate a welding arc as surely as though it was upon a bench before him – which, in effect, it was – and in cases in which delicacy of control was not an object, such as the present quest for such vast masses as planets, the projector was effective over distances of many hundreds of light-years.

Thus it came about that the search for a planetiferous sun near a white dwarf star was not unduly prolonged, and
Skylark Two
tore through the empty ether toward it.

Close enough so that the projector could reveal details, Seaton drove projections of all four voyagers down into the atmosphere of the first planet at hand. That atmosphere was heavy and of a pronounced greenish-yellow cast, and through it that fervent sun poured down a flood of lurid light upon a peculiarly dead and barren ground – but yet a ground upon which grew isolated clumps of a livid and monstrous vegetation.

‘Of course detailed analysis at this distance is impossible, but what do you make of it, Dick?’ asked Crane. ‘In all our travels, this is only the second time we have encountered such an atmosphere.’

‘Yes; and that’s exactly twice too many.’ Seaton, at the spectroscope, was scowling in thought. ‘Chlorin, all right, with some fluorin and strong traces of oxide of nitrogen, nitrosyl chloride, and so on – just about like that one we saw in our own galaxy that time. I thought then and have thought ever since that there was something decidedly fishy about that planet, and I think there’s something equally screwy about this one.’

‘Well, let’s not investigate it any further, then,’ put in Dorothy. ‘Let’s go somewhere else, quick.’

‘Yes, let’s,’ Margaret agreed, ‘particularly if, as you said about that other one, it has a form of life on it that would make our grandfathers’ whiskers curl up into a ball.’

‘We’ll do that little thing; we haven’t got
Three
’s equipment now, and without it I’m no keener on smelling around this planet than you are,’ and he flipped the projection across a few hundred million miles of space to the neighboring planet. Its air, while somewhat murky and smoky, was colorless and apparently normal, its oceans were composed of water, and its vegetation was green. ‘See, Mart? I told you something was fishy. It’s all wrong – a thing like that can’t happen even once, let alone twice.’

‘According to the accepted principles of cosmogony it is of course to be expected that all the planets of the same sun would have atmospheres of somewhat similar composition,’ Crane conceded, unmoved. ‘However, since we have observed two cases of this kind, it is quite evident that there are not only many more suns having planets than
has been supposed, but also that suns capture planets from each other, at least occasionally.’

‘Maybe – that would explain it, of course. But let’s see what this world looks like – see if we can find a place to sit down on. It’ll be nice to live on solid ground while I do my stuff.’

He swung the viewpoint slowly across the daylight side of the strange planet, whose surface, like that of Earth, was partially obscured by occasional masses of cloud. Much of that surface was covered by mighty oceans, and what little land there was seemed strangely flat and entirely devoid of topographical features.

The immaterial conveyance dropped straight down upon the largest visible mass of land, down through a towering jungle of fernlike and bamboo-like plants, halting only a few feet above the ground. Solid ground it certainly was not, nor did it resemble the watery muck of our Earthly swamps. The huge stems of the vegetation rose starkly from a black and seething field of viscous mud – mud unrelieved by any accumulation of humus or of debris – and in that mud there swam, crawled, and slithered teeming hordes of animals.

‘What funny-looking mud-puppies!’ Dorothy exclaimed. ‘And isn’t that the thickest, dirtiest, gooiest mud you ever saw?’

‘Just about,’ Seaton agreed, intensely interested. ‘But those things seem perfectly adapted to it. Flat, beaver tails; short, strong legs with webbed feet; long, narrow heads with rooting noses, like pigs; and heavy, sharp incisor teeth. Bet they live on those ferns and stuff – that’s why there’s no underbrush or dead stuff. Look at that bunch working on the roots of that big bamboo over there. They’ll have it down in a minute – there she goes!’

The great trunk fell with a crash as he spoke, and was almost instantly forced beneath the repellent surface by the weight of the massed ‘mud-puppies’ who flung themselves upon it.

‘Ah, I thought so!’ Crane remarked. ‘Their molar teeth do not match their incisors, being quite Titanotheric in type. Probably they can assimilate lignin and cellulose instead of requiring our usual nutrient carbohydrates. However, this terrain does not seem to be at all suitable for our purpose.’

‘I’ll say it doesn’t. I’ll scout around and see if we can’t find some high land somewhere, but I’ve got a hunch that we won’t care for that, either. This murky air and the strong absorption lines of SO
₂
, seem to whisper in my ear that we’ll find some plenty hot and plenty sulphurous volcanoes when we find the mountains.’

A few large islands or small continents of high and solid land were found at last, but they were without exception volcanic. Nor were those volcanoes quiescent. Each was in constant and furious eruption; not the sporadic and comparatively mild outbursts of violence which we of green Terra know, but the uninterrupted, world-shaking cataclysmic paroxysms of primeval forces embattled – an inexhaustible supply of cold water striving
to quench a world-filling core of incandescent magma. Each conical peak and rugged vent where once a cone had been spouted incredible columns of steam, of smoke, of dust, of molten and vaporized rock, and of noxious vapor. Each volcano was working steadily and industriously at its appointed task of building up a habitable world.

‘Well, I don’t see any place around here either fit to live in or solid enough to anchor an observatory onto,’ Seaton concluded, after he had surveyed the entire surface of the globe. ‘I think we’d better flit across to the next one, don’t you, folks?’

Suiting action to word, he shot the beam to the next nearest planet, which chanced to be the one whose orbit was nearest the blazing sun, and a mere glance showed that it would not serve the purposes of the Terrestrials. Small it was, and barren: waterless, practically airless, lifeless; a cratered, jagged, burned-out ember of what might once have been a fertile little world.

The viewpoint then leaped past the flaming inferno of the luminary and came to rest in the upper layers of an atmosphere.

‘Aha!’ Seaton exulted, after he had studied his instruments briefly. ‘This looks like home, sweet home to me. Nitrogen, oxygen, some CO
₂
, a little water vapor, and traces of the old familiar rare gases. And see them oceans, them clouds, and them there hills? Hot dog!’

As the projection dropped toward the new world’s surface, however, making possible a detailed study, it became evident that there was something abnormal about it. The mountains were cratered and torn; many of the valleys were simply desolate expanses of weathered lava, tuff, and breccia; and, while it seemed that climatic conditions were eminently suitable, of animal life there was none.

Everywhere there were signs of ravishment, as though that fair world had been torn and ravaged by cataclysmic storms of violence unthinkable; ravages which for centuries Nature had been trying to heal.

And it was not only the world itself that had been outraged. Near a large inland lake there spread the ruins of what once had been a great city; ruins so crumbled and razed as to be almost unrecognizable. What had been stone was dust, what had been metal was rust; and dust and rust alike were now almost completely overgrown by vegetation. For centuries Nature undisturbed had slowly but implacably been reducing to nought the once ordered and purposeful works of a high intelligence.

‘Hm-m-m!’ Seaton mused, subdued. ‘There
was
a near-collision of planet-bearing suns, Mart; and that chlorin planet
was
captured. This world was ruined by the strains set up – but surely they must have been scientific enough to have seen it coming? Surely they must have made plans so that
some
of them could have lived through it?’

He fell silent, driving the viewpoint hither and thither,
like a hound in quest of a scent. ‘I thought so!’ Another ruined city lay beneath them; a city whose building, works, and streets had been fused together into one vast agglomerate of glaringly glassy slag, through which could be seen unmelted fragments of strangely designed structural members. ‘Those ruins are fresh – that was done with heat beams, Mart. But who did it, and why? I’ve got a hunch – wonder if we’re too late – if they’ve killed them all off already?’

Hard-faced now and grim, Seaton combed the continent, finding at last what he sought.

‘Ah, I thought so!’ he exclaimed, his voice low but deadly. ‘I’ll bet my shirt that the chlorins are wiping out the civilization of that planet – probably people more or less like us. What d’you say, folks – do we declare ourselves in on this, or not?’

‘I’ll tell the cockeyed world … I believe that we should … By all means …’ came from Dorothy, Margaret, and Crane.

‘I knew you’d back me up. Humanity
über alles – Homo sapiens
against all the vermin of the universe! Let’s go,
Two
– do your stuff!’

As
Two
hurtled toward the unfortunate planet with her every iota of driving power, Seaton settled down to observe the strife and to see what he could do. That which lay beneath the viewpoint had not been a city, in the strict sense of the word. It had been an immense system of concentric fortifications, of which the outer circles had long since gone down under the irresistible attack of the two huge structures of metal which hung poised in the air above. Where those outer rings had been there was now an annular lake of boiling, seething lava. Lava from which arose gouts and slender pillars of smoke and fume; lava being volatilized by the terrific heat of the offensive beams and being hurled away in flaming cascades by the almost constant detonations of high-explosive shells; lava into which from time to time another portion of the immense fortress slagged down – put out of action, riddled, and finally fused by the awful forces of the invaders.

Even as the four Terrestrials stared in speechless awe, an intolerable blast of flame burst out above one of the flying forts and down it plunged into the raging pool, throwing molten slag far and wide as it disappeared beneath the raging surface.

‘Hurray!’ shrieked Dorothy, who had instinctively taken sides with the defenders. ‘One down, anyway!’

But her jubilation was premature. The squat and monstrous fabrication burst upward through that flaming surface and, white-hot lava streaming from it in incandescent torrents, it was again in action, apparently uninjured.

‘All fourth-order stuff, Mart,’ Seaton, who had been frantically busy at his keyboard and instruments, reported to Crane. ‘Can’t find a trace of anything on the fifth or sixth, and that gives us a break. I
don’t know what we can do yet, but we’ll do something, believe me!’

‘Fourth order? Are you sure?’ Crane doubted. ‘A fourth-order screen would be a zone of force, opaque and impervious to gravitation, whereas those screens are transparent and are not affecting gravity.’

‘Yeah, but they’re doing something that we never tried, since we never use the fourth-order stuff in fighting. They’ve both left the gravity band open – it’s probably too narrow for them to work through, at least with anything very heavy – and that gives us the edge.’

‘Why? Do you know more about it than they do?’ queried Dorothy.