"I think I'll come along with you and bodyguard you, Lola," Belle said,
the following morning after breakfast. "Clee's going to be seven
thousand miles deep in mathematics and Jim's doing his stuff at the
observatory, and I can't help either of 'em at the moment. You'd do a
better job, wouldn't you, if you could concentrate on it?"
"Of course. Thanks, Belle. But remember, it's already been announced--no
death. Just hands. I can't really believe that I'll be attacked, but
they seem pretty sure of it."
"I'd like to separate anyone like that from his head instead of his
hands, but as it is published so it will be performed."
"How about wearing some kind of half-way-comfortable shoes instead of
those slippers?" Garlock asked. "That could turn out to be a long, tough
brawl, and your dogs'll be begging for mercy before you get back here."
"Uh-uh. Very comfortable and a perfect fit. Besides, if I have to suffer
just a little bit for good appearance's sake in a matter of
intergalactic amity...."
"A matter of showing off, you mean."
"Why, Clee!" Belle widened her eyes at him. "How you talk! But they're
ready, Lola--let's go."
The two girls disappeared from the Main, to appear on the speakers'
stand in front of the Capitol Building. President Benton was there, with
his cabinet and certain other personages. General Cordeen and his staff.
And many others.
"Oh, Miss Bellamy, too? I'm _very_ glad you are here," Benton said, as
he shook hands cordially with both.
"Thank you. I came along as bodyguard. May I meet your Secret Service
Chief, please?"
"Why, of course. Miss Bellamy, may I present Mr. Avengord?"
"You have the hospital room ready?... Where is it, please?"
"Back of us, in the wing...."
"Just think of it, please, and I will follow your thought.... Ah, yes,
there it is. I hope it will not be used. You agree with General Cordeen
that there will be one or more attempts at assassination?"
"I'm very much afraid so. This town is literally riddled with enemy
agents, and of course we don't know all of them--especially the best
ones. They know that if these meetings go through, they're sunk; so
they're desperate. We've got this whole area covered like dew--we've
arrested sixteen suspects already this morning--but all the advantage is
theirs," Avengord finished glumly.
"Not all of it, sir," Belle smiled at him cheerfully. "You have me, and
I am a Prime Operator. That is, a wielder of power of no small ability.
Oh, you are right. There is an attempt now being prepared."
* * *
While Belle had been greeting and conversing, she had also been
scanning. Her range, her sensitivity, and her power were immensely
greater than Lola's; were probably equal to Garlock's own. She scanned
by miles against the scant yards covered by the Secret Service.
"Where?"
"Give me your thought." The Secret Service man did not know what she
meant--telepathy was of course new to him--so she seized his attention
and directed it to a certain window in a building a couple of miles away
on a hill.
"But they couldn't, from there!"
"But they can. They have a quite efficient engine of destruction--a
'rifle' is their thought. Large, and long, with a very good telescope on
it--with crosshairs. If I scan their minds more precisely you may know
the weapon.... Ah, they think of it as a 'Buford Mark Forty
Anti-Aircraft Rifle'."
"A Buford! My God, they can hit any button on her clothes--get her away,
quick!" He tried to jump, but could not move.
"As you were," she directed. "There was another Buford there, and
another over there." She guided his thought. "Two men to each Buford.
There are now six handless men in your hospital room. If you will send
men to those three places you will find the Bufords and the hands. Your
surgeon will have no difficulty in matching the hands to the men. If any
seek to remove either Bufords or hands before your men get there, I will
de-hand them, also."
* * *
To say that the Secret Service man was flabbergasted is to put it very
mildly indeed. Cordeen had told him, with much pounding on his desk and
in searing, air-blueing language, what to expect-or, rather, to expect
_anything_, no matter what and with no limits whatever--but he hadn't
believed it then and simply could not believe it now. Goddamn it, such
things _couldn't_ happen. And this beautiful, beautifully-stacked,
half-naked woman--girl, rather, she couldn't be a day over
twenty-five--even if it had been their black-browed, toplofty leader,
Captain Garlock himself....
"I am twenty-three of your years old, not twenty-five," she informed
him, coldly, "and I will permit no distinction of sex. In your primitive
culture the women may still be allowing you men to believe in the
fallacy of the superiority of the male, but know right now that I can do
anything any man ever born can do and do it better."
"Oh, I'm ... I'm sure ... certainly...." Avengord's thought was
incoherent.
"If you want me to work with you you had better start believing right
now that there are a lot of things you don't know," Belle went on
relentlessly. "Stop believing that just because a thing has not already
happened on this primitive, backward, mudball planet of yours, it can't
happen anywhere or anywhen. You do believe, however, whether you want to
or not, things you see with your own eyes?"
"Yes. I can _not_ be hypnotized."
"I'm very glad you believe that much." Avengord did not notice that she
neither confirmed nor denied the truth of his statement. "To that end
you will go now into the hospital room and see the bandaging going on.
You will see and hear the news broadcast going out as I prepared it."
He went, and came back a badly shaken man.
"But they're sending it out exactly as it happened!" he protested.
"They'll all scatter out so fast and so far we'll _never_ catch them!"
"By no means. You see, the amputees didn't believe that they would lose
their hands. Their superiors didn't believe it, either; they assured
each other and their underlings that it was just capitalistic bluff and
nonsense. And since they are all even more materialistic and hidebound
and unbelieving than you are, they all are now highly confused--at a
complete loss."
"You can say _that_ again. If I, working with you and having you
pounding it into my head, couldn't more than half believe it...."
"So they are now very frightened, as well as confused, and the director
of their whole spy system is now violating rule and precedent by sending
out messengers to summon certain high agents to confer with him in his
secret place."
"If you'll tell me where, I'll get over to my office...."
"No. We'll both be in your office in plenty of time. We'll watch Lola
get started. It will be highly instructive for you to watch a really
capable Operator at work."
* * *
President Benton had been introduced; had in turn finished introducing
Lola. The crowd, many thousands strong, was cheering. Lola was stepping
into the carefully marked speaker's place.
"You may disconnect these," she waved a hand at the battery of
microphones, "since I do not use speech. Not only do I not know any of
your various languages, but no one language would suffice. My thought
will go to every person on this, your world."
"World?" the President asked in surprise. "Surely not behind the
Curtains? They will jam you, I'm afraid."
"My thought, as I shall drive it, will not be stopped," Lola assured
him. "Since this world has no telepathy, it has no mind-blocks and I can
cover the planet as easily as one mind. Nor does it matter whether it be
day or night, or whether anyone is awake or asleep. All will receive my
message. Since you wish a record, the cameras may run, although they are
neither necessary nor desirable for me. Everyone will see me in his
mind, much better than on the surface of any teevee tube."
"And I was going to have her address _Congress_!" the President
whispered, aside, to General Cordeen.
Then Lola put her whole fine personality into a smile, directed
apparently not only at each separate individual within sight, but also
individually at every person on the globe; and when Brownie Montandon
set out to make a production of a smile, it had the impact of a
pile-driver. Then came her smooth, gently-flowing, friendly thought:
"My name, friends of this world Ormolan, is Lola Montandon. Those of you
who are now looking at teevee screens can see my imaged likeness. All of
you can see me very much better within your own minds.
"I am not here as an invader in any sense, but only as a citizen of the
First Galaxy of this, our common universe. I have attuned my mind to
each of yours in order to give you a message from the United Galaxian
Societies.
"There are four of us Galaxians in this Exploration Team. As Galaxians
it is our purpose here and our duty here to open your minds to certain
basic truths, to be of help to you in clearing your minds of fallacies,
of lies, and of undefensible prejudices; to the end that you will more
rapidly become Galaxians yourselves...."
"Okay. This will go on and on. That's enough to give you an idea of what
a trained and polished performer can do. What do you think of _them_
comfits, Chief?" Belle deliberately knocked the Secret Service man out
of his Lola-induced mood.
"Huh? Oh, yes." Avengord was still groggy. "She's phenomenal--good--I
don't mean goody-goody, but sincere and really...."
"Yeah, but don't fall in love with her. Everybody does and it doesn't do
any of them a bit of good. That's her specialty and she's _very_ good at
it. I told you she's a smooth, smooth worker."
"You can say _that_ again." Avengord did not know that he was repeating
himself. "But it isn't an act. She means it and it's true."
"Of course she means it and of course it's true. Otherwise even she,
with all her training, couldn't sell such a big bill of goods." Then, in
answer to the man's unspoken question, "Yes, we're all different. She's
the contactor, the spreader of the good old oil, the shining example of
purity and sweetness and light--in short, the Greaser of the Ways. I'm a
fighter, myself. Do you think she could actually have de-handed those
men? Uh-uh. At the last minute she would have weakened and brought them
in whole. My job in this operation is to knock hell out of the ones Lola
can't convince, such as those spies you and I are going to interview
pretty quick."
"Even they ought to be convinced. I don't see how anybody could help but
be."
"Uh-uh. It'll bounce off like hailstones off of a tin roof. The only
thing to do to that kind of scum is kill them. If you'll give me a
thought as to where your office is we'll hop over and...."
* * *
Belle and Avengord disappeared from the stand; and, such was Lola's
hold, no one on the platform or in the throng even noticed that they
were gone. They materialized in Avengord's private office; he sitting as
usual at his desk, she reclining in legs-crossed ease in a big leather
chair.
"... get to work." Belle's thought had not been interrupted by any
passage of time whatever. "What do you want to do first?"
"But I thought you were covering Miss Montandon?"
"I am. Like a blanket. Just as well here as anywhere. I will be, until
she gets back to the _Pleiades_. What first?"
"Oh. Well, since I don't know what your limits are--if you have any--you
might as well do whatever you think best and I'll watch you do it."
"That's the way to talk. You're going to get a shock when you see who
the Head Man is. George T. Basil."
"_Basil_! I'll say it's a shock!" Avengord steadied, frowned in
concentration. "Could be, though. _He_ would _never_ be suspected--but
they're very good at that."
"Yeah. His name used to be Baslovkowitz. He was trained for years, then
planted. None of this can be proved, as his record is perfect. Born
citizen, highest standing in business and social circles. Unlimited
entry and top security clearance. Right?"
"Right ... and getting enough evidence, in such cases as that, is pure,
unadulterated hell."
"I suppose I could kill him, after we've recorded everything he knows,"
Belle suggested.
"No!" He snapped. "Too many people think of us as a strong-arm squad
now. Anyway, I'd rather kill him myself than wish the job off onto--you
don't _like_ killing, do you?"
"That's the understatement of the century. No civilized person does. In
a hot fight, yes; but killing anyone who is helpless to fight back--in
cold blood--ugh! It makes me sick in my stomach even to think of it."
"With the way you can read minds, we can get evidence enough to send
them all to jail, and that we'll have to do."
"How about this?" Belle grinned as another solution came to mind. "From
those first eight top men, we'll find out a lot of others lower down,
and so on, until we have 'em all locked up here. We'll announce that
exactly so many spies and agents--giving names, addresses, and facts, of
course--got panicky after Lola's address. They fired up their hidden
planes and flew back behind the Curtain. Then, when we've scanned their
minds and recorded everything you want, I'll pack them all, very snugly
and carefully, into Sovig's private office. With the world situation
what it then will be, he won't dare kill them--he simply won't know what
to do when faced with it."
* * *
Avengord agreed happily. He reached out and flipped the switch of his
intercom. "Miss Kimling, come in, please."
The door burst open. "Why, it _is_ you! But you were on the rostrum just
a minute.... Oh!" She saw Belle, and backed, eyes wide, toward the door
she had just entered. "_She_ was there, too, and it's fifteen
_miles_...."
"Steady, Fram. I'd like to present you to Prime Operator Belle Bellamy,
who is cleaning out the entire Curtain organization for us."
"But how did you...."
"Never mind that. Teleportation. It took her half an hour to pound it
into me, and we can't take time to explain anything now. I'll tell
everybody everything I know as soon as I can. In the meantime, don't be
surprised at anything that happens, and by that I mean _anything_. Such
as solid people appearing on this carpet--on that spot right
there--instantaneously. I want you to pay close attention to everything
your mind receives, put your phenomenal memory into high gear, listen to
everything I record, stop me any time I'm wrong, and be _sure_ I get
everything we need."
"I don't know exactly what you're talking about, sir, but I'll try."
"Frankly, I don't, either--we'll just have to roll it as we go along.
We're ready for George T. Basil now, Miss Bellamy--I hope. Don't jump,
Fram."
* * *
Basil appeared and Fram jumped. She did not scream, however, and did not
run out of the office. The master spy was a big, self-assured, affluent
type. He had not the slightest idea of how he had been spirited out of
his ultra-secret sub-basement and into this room; but he knew where he
was and, after one glance at Belle, he knew why. He decided instantly
what to do about it.
"This is an outrage!" he bellowed, hammering with his fist on Avengord's
desk. "A stupid, high-handed violation of the rights...."
Belle silenced him and straightened him up.
"High-handed? Yes," she admitted quite seriously. "However, from the
Galaxian standpoint, you have no rights at all and you are going to be
extremely surprised at just how high-handed I am going to be. I am going
to read your mind to its very bottom--layer by layer, like peeling an
onion--and everything you know and everything you think is going down in
Mr. Avengord's Big Black Book."
Belle linked all four minds together and directed the search, making
sure that no item, however small, was missed. Avengord recorded every
pertinent item. Fram Kimling memorized and correlated and
double-checked.
Soon it was done, and Basil, shouting even louder about this last and
worst violation of his rights--those of his own private mind--was led
away by two men and "put away where he would keep."
"But this _is_ a flagrant violation of law...." Miss Kimling began.
"You can say _that_ again!" her boss gloated. "And if you only knew how
tickled I am to do it, after the way they've been kicking _me_ around!
"But I wonder ... are you sure we can get away with it?"
"Certainly," Belle put in. "We Galaxians are doing it, not your
government or your Secret Service. We'll start you clean--but it'll be
up to you to keep it clean, and that will be no easy job."
"No, it won't; but we'll do it. Come around again, say in five or six
years, and see."
"You know, I might take you up on that? Maybe not this same team, but
I've got a notion to tape a recommendation for a re-visit, just to see
how you get along. It'd be interesting."
"I wish you would. It might help, too, if everybody thought you'd come
back to check. Suppose you could?"
"I've no idea, really. I'd like to, though, and I'll see what I can do.
But let's get on with the job. They're all in what you call the 'tank'
now. Which one do you want next?"
The work went on. That evening there was of course a reception; and then
a ball. And Belle's feet did hurt when she got back to the _Pleiades_,
but of course she would not admit the fact--most especially not to
Garlock.
Exactly at the expiration of the stipulated seventy-two hours, the
Galaxians began to destroy military atomic plants; and, shortly
thereafter, the starship's crew was again ready to go.
And James rammed home the red button that would send them--all four
wondered--_where_?
It turned out to be another Hodell-type world; and, even with the
high-speed comparator, it took longer to check the charts than it did to
make them.
* * *
The next planet was similar. So was the next, and the next. The time
required for checking grew longer and longer.
"How about cutting out this checking entirely, Clee?" James asked then.
"What good does it do? Even if we find a similarity, what could we do
about it? We've got enough stuff now to keep a crew of astronomers busy
for five years making a tank of it."
"Okay. We probably are so far away now, anyway, that the chance of
finding a similarity is vanishingly small. Keep on taking the shots,
though; they'll prove, I think, that the universe is one whole hell of a
lot bigger than anybody has ever thought it was. That reminds me--are
you getting anywhere on that N-problem? I'm not."
"I'm getting nowhere, fast. You should have been a math prof in a grad
school, Clee. You could flunk every advanced student you had with that
one. Belle and I together can't feed it to Compy in such shape as to get
a definite answer. We think, though, that your guess was right--if we
ever stabilize anywhere it will probably be relative to Hodell, not to
Tellus. But the cold fact of how far away we must be by this time just
scares the pants off of me."
"You and me both, my ripe and old. We're a _long_ ways from home."
* * *
Jumping went on; and, two or three planets later, they encountered an
Arpalone Inspector who did not test them for compatibility with the
humanity of his world.
"Do not land," the creature said, mournfully. "This world is dying, and
if you leave the protection of your ship, you too will die."
"But _worlds_ don't die, surely?" Garlock protested. "People, yes--but
worlds?"
"Worlds die. It is the Dilipic. The humans die, too, of course, but it
is the world itself that is attacked, not the people. Some of them, in
fact, will live through it."
Garlock drove his attention downward and scanned.
"You Arpalones are doing what looks like a mighty good job of fighting.
Can't you win?"
"No, it is too late. It was already too late when they first appeared,
two days ago. When the Dilipics strike in such small force that none of
their--agents?--devices?--whatever they are?--can land against our
beaming, a world can be saved; but such cases are very few."
"But this thought, 'Dilipic'?" Garlock asked, impatiently. "It is merely
a symbol--it doesn't _mean_ anything--to me, at least. What are they?
Where do they come from?"
"No one knows anything about them," came the surprising answer. "Not
even their physical shape--if they have any. Nor where they come from,
or how they do what they do."
"They can't be very common," Garlock pondered. "We have never heard of
them before."
"Fortunately, they are not," the Inspector agreed. "Scarcely one world
in five hundred is ever attacked by them--this is the first Dilipic
invasion I have seen."
"Oh, you Arpalones don't die with your worlds, then?" Lola asked. She
was badly shaken. "But I suppose the Arpales do, of course."
"Practically all of the Arpales will die, of course. Most of us
Arpalones will also die, in the battles now going on. Those of us who
survive, however, will stay aloft until the rehabilitation fleet
arrives, then we will continue our regular work."
"Rehab?" Belle exclaimed. "You mean you can _restore_ planets so badly
ruined that all the people die?"
"Oh, yes. It is a long and difficult work, but the planet is always
re-peopled."
"Let's go down," Garlock said. "I want to get all of this on tape."
They went down, over what had been one of that world's largest cities.
The air, the stratosphere, and all nearby space were full of battling
vessels of all shapes and sizes; ranging from the tremendous globular
spaceships of the invaders down to the tiny, one-man jet-fighters of the
Arpalones.
* * *
The Dilipics were using projectile weapons only--ranging in size,
with the size of the vessels, from heavy machine guns up to
seventy-five-millimeter quick-firing rifles. They were also launching
thousands of guided missiles of fantastic speed and of tremendous
explosive power.
The Arpalones were not using anything solid at all. Each defending
vessel, depending upon its type and class, carried from four up to a
hundred or so burnished-metal reflectors some four feet in diameter;
each with a small black device at its optical center and each pouring
out a tight beam of highly effective energy. It was at these reflectors,
and particularly at these tiny devices, that the small-arms fire was
directed, and the marksmanship of the Dilipics was very good indeed.
However, each projector was oscillating irregularly and each
fighter-plane was taking evasive action; and, since a few bullet-holes
in any reflector did not reduce its efficiency very much, and since the
central mechanisms were so small and were moving so erratically, a good
three-quarters of the Arpalonian beams were still in action.
* * *
There was no doubt at all that those beams were highly effective.
Invisible for the most part, whenever one struck a Dilipic ship or plane
everything in its path flared almost instantly into vapor and the beam
glared incandescently, blindingly white or violet or high blue--never
anything lower than blue. Almost everything material, that is; for guns,
ammunition, and missiles were not affected. They did not even explode.
When whatever fabric it was that supported them was blasted away, all
such things simply dropped; simply fell through thousands or hundreds of
thousands of feet of air to crash unheeded upon whatever happened to be
below.
The invading task force was arranged in a whirling, swirling, almost
cylindrical cone, more or less like an Earthly tornado. The largest
vessels were high above the stratosphere; the smallest fighters were
hedge-hoppingly close to ground. Each Dilipic unit seemed madly,
suicidally determined that nothing would get through that furious wall
to interfere with whatever it was that was coming down from space to the
ground through--along?--the relatively quiet "eye" of the
pseudo-hurricane.
On the other hand, the Arpalones were madly, suicidally determined to
break through that vortex wall, to get into the "eye," to wreak all
possible damage there. Group after group after group of five
jet-fighters each came driving in; and, occasionally, the combined
blasts of all five made enough of opening in the wall so that the center
fighter could get through. Once inside, each pilot stood his little,
stubby-winged craft squarely on her tail, opened his projectors to
absolute maximum of power and of spread, and climbed straight up the
spout until he was shot down.
And the Arpalones were winning the battle. Larger and larger gaps were
being opened in the vortex wall; gaps which it became increasingly
difficult for the Dilipics to fill. More and more Arpalone fighters were
getting inside. They were lasting longer and doing more damage all the
time. The tube was growing narrower and narrower.
All four Galaxians perceived all this in seconds. Garlock weighed out
and detonated a terrific matter-conversion bomb in the exact center of
one of the largest vessels of the attacking fleet. It had no effect.
Then a larger one. Then another, still heavier. Finally, at over a
hundred megatons equivalent, he did get results--of a sort. The
invaders' guns, ammunition, and missiles were blown out of the ship and
scattered outward for miles in all directions; but the structure of the
Dilipic ship itself was not harmed.
Belle had been studying, analyzing, probing the things that were coming
down through that hellish tube.
"Clee!" She drove a thought. "Cut out the monkey-business with those
damn firecrackers of yours and look here--pure, solid force, like ball
lightning or our Op field, but entirely different--see if you can
analyze the stuff!"
"Alive?" Garlock asked, as he drove a probe into one of the things--they
were furiously-radiating spheres some seven feet in diameter--and began
to tune to it.
"I don't know--don't think so--if they are, they're a form of life that
no sane human being could even imagine!"
"Let's see what they actually do," Garlock suggested, still trying to
tune in with the thing, whatever it was, and still following it down.
This particular force-ball happened to hit the top of a six-story
building. It was not going very fast--fifteen or twenty miles an
hour--but when it struck the roof it did not even slow down. Without any
effort at all, apparently, it continued downward through the concrete
and steel and glass of the building; and everything in its path became
monstrously, sickeningly, revoltingly changed.
"I simply can't stand any more of this," Lola gasped. "If you don't
mind, I'm going to my room, set all the Gunther blocks it has, and bury
my head under a pillow."
"Go ahead, Brownie," James said. "This is too tough for _anybody_ to
watch. I'd do the same, except I've got to run these cameras."
Lola disappeared.
* * *
Garlock and Belle kept on studying. Neither had paid any attention at
all to either Lola or James.
Instead of the structural material it had once been, the bore that the
thing had traversed was now full of a sparkling, bubbling, writhing,
partly-fluid-partly-viscous, obscenely repulsive mass of something
unknown and unknowable on Earth; a something which, Garlock now
recalled, had been thought of by the Arpalone Inspector as "golop."
As that unstoppable globe descended through office after office, it
neither sought out people nor avoided them. Walls, doors, windows,
ceilings, floors and rugs, office furniture and office personnel; all
alike were absorbed into and made a part of that indescribably horrid
brew.
Nor did the track of that hellishly wanton globe remain a bore. Instead,
it spread. That devil's brew ate into and dissolved everything it
touched like a stream of boiling water being poured into a
loosely-heaped pile of granulated sugar. By the time the ravening sphere
had reached the second floor, the entire roof of the building was gone
and the writhing, racing flood of corruption had flowed down the outer
walls and across the street, engulfing and transforming sidewalks,
people, pavement, poles, wires, automobiles, people-anything and
everything it touched.
* * *
The globe went on down, through basement and sub-basement, until it
reached solid, natural ground. Then, with its top a few inches below the
level of natural ground, it came to a full stop and--apparently--did
nothing at all. By this time, the ravening flood outside had eaten far
into the lower floors of the buildings across the street, as well as
along all four sides of the block, and tremendous masses of masonry and
steel, their supporting structures devoured, were subsiding, crumbling,
and crashing down into the noisome flood of golop--and were being
transformed almost as fast as they could fall.
One tremendous mass, weighing hundreds or perhaps thousands of tons,
toppled almost as a whole; splashing the stuff in all directions for
hundreds of yards. Wherever each splash struck, however, a new center of
attack came into being, and the peculiarly disgusting, abhorrent
liquidation went on.
"Can you do anything with it, Clee?" Belle demanded.
"Not too much--it's a mess," Garlock replied. "Besides, it wouldn't get
us far, I don't think. It'll be more productive to analyze the beams the
Arpalones are using to break them up, don't you think?"
Then, for twenty solid minutes, the two Prime Operators worked on those
enigmatic beams.
"We can't assemble _that_ kind of stuff with our minds," Belle decided
then.
"I'll say we can't," Garlock agreed. "Ten megacycles, and cycling only
twenty per second." He whistled raucously through his teeth. "My guess
is it'd take four months to design and build a generator to put out that
kind of stuff. It's worse than our Op field."
"I'm not sure I could _ever_ design one," Belle said, thoughtfully, "but
of course I'm not the engineer you are...." Then, she could not help
adding, "... yet."
"No, and you never will be," he said, flatly.
"No? That's what _you_ think!" Even in such circumstances as those,
Belle Bellamy was eager to carry on her warfare with her Project Chief.
"That's _exactly_ what I think--and I'm so close to knowing it for a
fact that the difference is indetectible."
Belle almost--but not quite--blew up. "Well, what _are_ you going to
do?"
"Unless and until I can figure out something effective to do, I'm not
going to try to do anything. If you, with your vaunted and flaunted
belief in the inherent superiority of the female over the male, can dope
out something useful before I do, I'll eat crow and help you do it. As
for arguing with you, I'm all done for the moment."
Belle gritted her teeth, flounced away, and plumped herself down into a
chair. She shut her eyes and put every iota of her mind to work on the
problem of finding something--_anything_--that could be done to help
this doomed world and to show that big, overbearing jerk of a Garlock
that she was a better man than he was. Which of the two objectives
loomed more important, she herself could not have told, to save her
life.
And Garlock looked around. The air and the sky over the now-vanished
city were both clear of Dilipic craft. The surviving Arpalone fighters
and other small craft were making no attempt to land, anywhere on the
world's surface. Instead, they were flying upward toward, and were being
drawn one by one into the bowels of, huge Arpalonian space-freighters.
When each such vessel was filled to capacity, it flew upward and set
itself into a more-or-less-circular orbit around the planet.
Around and around and around the ruined world the _Pleiades_ went;
recording, observing, charting. Fifty-eight of those atrocious Dilipic
vortices had been driven to ground. Every large land-mass surrounded by
large bodies of water had been struck once, and only once; from the
tremendous area of the largest continent down to the relatively tiny
expanses of the largest islands. One land-mass, one vortex. One only.
"What d'you suppose _that_ means?" James asked. "Afraid of water?"
"Damfino. Could be. Let's check ... mountains, too. Skip us back to
where we started--oceans and mountains both fairly close there."
The city had disappeared long since; for hundreds of almost-level square
miles there extended a sparkling, seething, writhing expanse of--of
what? The edge of that devouring flood had almost reached the
foot-hills, and over that gnawing, dissolving edge the _Pleiades_
paused.
* * *
Small lakes and ordinary rivers bothered the golop very little if at
all. There was perhaps a slightly increased sparkling, a slight
stiffening, a little darkening, some freezing and breaking off of solid
blocks; but the thing's forward motion was not noticeably slowed down.
It drank a fairly large river and a lake one mile wide by ten miles long
while the two men watched.
The golop made no attempt to climb either foot-hills or mountains. It
leveled them. It ate into their bases at its own level; the undermined
masses, small and large, collapsed into the foul, corrosive semi-liquid
and were consumed. Nor was there much raising of the golop's level, even
when the highest mountains were reached and miles-high masses of solid
rock broke off and toppled. There was some raising, of course; but the
stuff was fluid enough so that its slope was not apparent to the eye.
* * *
Then the _Pleiades_ went back, over the place where the city had been
and on to what had once been an ocean beach. The original wave of
degradation had reached that shore long since, had attacked its sands
out into deep water, and there it had been stopped. The corrupt flood
was now being reinforced, however, by an ever-rising tide of material
that had once been mountains. And the slope, which had not been even
noticeable at the mountains or over the plain, was here very evident.
As the rapidly-flowing golop struck water, the water shivered, came to a
weirdly unforgettable cold boil, and exploded into drops and streamers
and jagged-edged chunks of something that was neither water nor land; or
rock or soil or sand or Satan's unholy brew. Nevertheless, the water
won. There was _so_ much of it! Each barrel of water that was destroyed
was replaced instantly and enthusiastically; with no lowering of level
or of pressure.
And when water struck the golop, the golop also shivered violently, then
sparkled even more violently, then stopped sparkling and turned dark,
then froze solid. The frozen surface, however, was neither thick enough
nor strong enough to form an effective wall.
Again and again the wave of golop built up high enough to crack and to
shatter that feeble wall; again and again golop and water met in
ultimately furious, if insensate, battle. Inch by inch the ocean's
shoreline was driven backward toward ocean's depths; but every inch the
ocean lost was to its tactical advantage, since the advancing front was
by now practically filled with hard, solid, dead blocks of its own
substance which it could neither assimilate nor remove from the scene of
conflict.
Hence the wall grew ever thicker and solider; the advance became slower
and slower.
Then, finally, ocean waves of ever-increasing height and violence rolled
in against the new-formed shore. What caused those tremendous
waves--earthquakes, perhaps, due to the shifting of the mountains'
masses?--no Tellurian ever surely knew. Whatever the cause, however,
those waves operated to pin the golop down. Whenever and wherever one of
those monstrous waves whitecapped in, hurling hundreds of thousands of
tons of water inland for hundreds of yards, the battle-front stabilized
then and there.
All over that world the story was the same. Wherever there was water
enough, the water won. And the total quantity of water in that world's
oceans remained practically unchanged.
"Good. A lot of people escaped," James said, expelling a long-held
breath. "Everybody who lives on or could be flown to all the islands
smaller than the biggest ones ... if they can find enough to eat and if
the air isn't poisoned."
"Air's okay--so's the water--and they'll get food," Garlock said. "The
Arpalones will handle things, including distribution. What I'm thinking
about is how they're going to rehabilitate it. That, as an engineering
project, is a feat to end all feats."
"_Brother!_ You can play _that_ in spades!" James agreed. "Except that
it'll take too many months before they can even start the job, I'd like
to stick around and see how they go about it. How does this kind of
stuff fit into that theory you're not admitting is a theory?"
"Not worth a damn. However, it's a datum--and, as I've said before and
may say again, if we can get _enough_ data we can build a theory out of
it."
Then it began to rain. For many minutes the clouds had been piling
up--black, far-flung, thick and high. Immense bolts of lightning flashed
and snapped and crackled; thunder crashed and rolled and rumbled; rain
fell, and continued to fall, like a cloud-burst in Colorado. And shortly
thereafter--first by square feet and then by acres and then by square
miles--the surface of the golop began to die. To die, that is, if it had
ever been even partially alive. At least it stopped sparkling, darkened,
and froze into thick skins; which broke up into blocks; which in turn
sank--thus exposing an ever-renewed surface to the driving, pelting,
relentlessly cascading rain.
"Well, I don't know that there's anything to hold us here any longer,"
Garlock said, finally. "Shall we go?"
They went; but it was several days before any of the wanderers really
felt like smiling; and Lola did not recover from her depression for over
a week.