I.

Day after day a spherical space ship of arenak tore through the

illimitable reaches of the interstellar void. She had once been a war

vessel of Osnome; now, rechristened the _Violet_, she was bearing two

Terrestrials and a Fenachrone--Dr. Marc C. DuQuesne of World Steel,

"Baby Doll" Loring, his versatile and accomplished assistant, and the

squat and monstrous engineer of the flagship _Y427W_--from the Green

System toward the Solar System of the Fenachrone. The mid-point of the

stupendous flight had long since been passed; the _Violet_ had long

been "braking down" with a negative acceleration of five times the

velocity of light.

Much to the surprise of both DuQuesne and Loring, their prisoner

had not made the slightest move against them. He had thrown all the

strength of his supernaturally powerful body and all the resources of

his gigantic brain into the task of converting the atomic motors of the

_Violet_ into the space-annihilating drive of his own race. This drive,

affecting alike as it does every atom of substance within the radius of

action of the power bar, entirely nullifies the effect of acceleration,

so that the passengers feel no motion whatever, even when the craft

is accelerating at maximum--and that maximum is almost three times as

great as the absolutely unbearable full power of the _Skylark of Space_.

The engineer had not shirked a single task, however arduous. And,

once under way, he had nursed those motors along with every artifice

known to his knowing clan; he had performed such prodigies of

adjustment and tuning as to raise by a full two per cent their already

inconceivable maximum acceleration. And this was not all. After the

first moment of rebellion, he did not even once attempt to bring to

bear the almost irresistible hypnotic power of his eyes; the immense,

cold, ruby-lighted projectors of mental energy which, both men knew,

were awful weapons indeed. Nor did he even once protest against the

attractors which were set upon his giant limbs.

Immaterial bands, these, whose slight force could not be felt unless

the captor so willed. But let the prisoner make one false move,

and those tiny beams of force would instantly become copper-driven

tornadoes of pure energy, hurling the luckless body against the wall of

the control room and holding him motionless there, in spite of the most

terrific exertions of his mighty body.

DuQuesne lay at ease in his seat; rather, scarcely touching the

seat, he floated at ease in the air above it. His black brows were

drawn together, his black eyes were hard as he studied frowningly

the Fenachrone engineer. As usual, that worthy was half inside the

power plant, coaxing those mighty motors to do even better than their

prodigious best.

Feeling his companion's eyes upon him, the doctor turned his

inscrutable stare upon Loring, who had been studying his chief even as

DuQuesne had been studying the outlander. Loring's cherubic countenance

was as pinkly innocent as ever, his guileless blue eyes as calm and

untroubled; but DuQuesne, knowing the man as he did, perceived an

almost imperceptible tension and knew that the killer also was worried.

"What's the matter, Doll?" The saturnine scientist smiled mirthlessly.

"Afraid I'm going to let that ape slip one over on us?"

"Not exactly." Loring's slight tenseness, however, disappeared. "It's

your party, and anything that's all right with you tickles me half

to death. I have known all along you knew that that bird there isn't

working under compulsion. You know as well as I do that nobody works

that way because they're made to. He's working for himself, not for us,

and I had just begun to wonder if you weren't getting a little late in

clamping down on him."

"Not at all--there are good and sufficient reasons for this apparent

delay. I am going to clamp down on him in exactly"--DuQuesne glanced

at his wrist watch--"fourteen minutes. But you're keen--you've got a

brain that really works--maybe I'd better give you the whole picture."

DuQuesne, approving thoroughly of his iron-nerved, cold-blooded

assistant, voiced again the thought he had expressed once before, a few

hours out from Earth; and Loring answered as he had then, in almost the

same words--words which revealed truly the nature of the man:

"Just as you like. Usually I don't want to know anything about

anything, because what a man doesn't know he can't be accused of

spilling. Out here, though, maybe I should know enough about things to

act intelligently in case of a jam. But you're the doctor--if you'd

rather keep it under your hat, that's all right with me, too. As I've

said before, it's your party."

"Yes; he certainly is working for himself." DuQuesne scowled blackly.

"Or, rather, he thinks he is. You know I read his mind back there,

while he was unconscious. I didn't get all I wanted to, by any

means--he woke up too soon--but I got a lot more than he thinks I did.

"They have detector zones, 'way out in space, all around their world,

that nothing can get past without being spotted; and patrolling

those zones there are scout ships, carrying armament to stagger the

imagination. I intend to take over one of those patrol ships and by

means of it to capture one of their first-class battleships. As a first

step I'm going to hypnotize that ape and find out absolutely everything

that he knows. When I get done with him, he'll do exactly what I tell

him to, and nothing else."

"Hypnotize him?" Curiosity was awakened in even Loring's incurious mind

at this unexpected development. "I didn't know that was one of your

specialties."

"It wasn't until recently, but the Fenachrone are all past masters,

and I learned about it from his brain. Hypnosis is a wonderful science.

The only drawback is that his mind is a lot stronger than mine.

However, I have in my kit, among other things, a tube of something that

will cut him down to my size."

"Oh, I see--pentabarb." With this hint, Loring's agile mind grasped

instantly the essentials of DuQuesne's plan. "That's why you had to

wait so long, then, to take steps. Pentabarb kills in twenty-four

hours, and he can't help us steal the ship after he's dead."

"Right! One milligram, you know, will make a gibbering idiot out of any

human being; but I imagine that it will take three or four times that

much to soften _him_ down to the point where I can work on him the way

I want to. As I don't know the effects of such heavy dosages, since

he's not really human, and since he must be alive when we go through

their screens, I decided to give him the works exactly six hours before

we are due to hit their outermost detector. That's about all I can tell

you right now; I'll have to work out the details of seizing the ship

after I have studied his brain more thoroughly."

* * * * *

Precisely at the expiration of the fourteen allotted minutes, DuQuesne

tightened the attractor beams, which had never been entirely released

from their prisoner; thus pinning him helplessly, immovably, against

the wall of the control room. He then filled a hypodermic syringe and

moved the mechanical educator nearer the motionless, although violently

struggling, creature. Then, avoiding carefully the baleful outpourings

of those flame-shot volcanoes of hatred that were the eyes of the

Fenachrone, he set the dials of the educator, placed the headsets, and

drove home the needle's hollow point. One milligram of the diabolical

compound was absorbed, without appreciable lessening of the blazing

defiance being hurled along the educator's wires. One and one half--two

milligrams--three--four--five--

That inhumanly powerful mind at last began to weaken, but it became

entirely quiescent only after the administration of the seventh

milligram of that direly potent drug.

"Just as well that I allowed only six hours." DuQuesne sighed in relief

as he began to explore the labyrinthine intricacies of the frightful

brain now open to his gaze. "I don't see how any possible form of life

can hold together long under seven milligrams of that stuff."

He fell silent and for more than an hour he studied the brain of the

engineer, concentrating upon the several small portions which contained

knowledge of most immediate concern. Then he removed the headsets.

"His plans were all made," he informed Loring coldly, "and so are mine,

now. Bring out two full outfits of clothing--one of yours and one

of mine. Two guns, belts, and so on. Break out a bale of waste, the

emergency candles, and all that sort of stuff you can find."

DuQuesne turned to the Fenachrone, who stood utterly lax, inanimate,

and stared deep into those now dull and expressionless eyes.

"You," he directed crisply, "will build at once, as quickly as you can,

two dummies which will look exactly like Loring and myself. They must

be lifelike in every particular, with faces capable of expressing the

emotions of surprise and of anger, and with right arms able to draw

weapons upon signal--_my_ signal. Also upon signal their heads and

bodies will turn, they will leap toward the center of the room, and

they will make certain noises and utter certain words, the records of

which I shall prepare. Go to it!"

"Don't you need to control him through the headsets?" asked Loring

curiously.

"I may have to control him in detail when we come to the really fine

work, later on," DuQuesne replied absently. "This is more or less in

the nature of an experiment, to find out whether I have him thoroughly

under control. During the last act he'll have to do exactly what I

shall have told him to do, without supervision, and I want to be

absolutely certain that he will do it without a slip."

"What's the plan--or maybe it's something that is none of my business?"

"No; you ought to know it, and I've got time to tell you about it now.

Nothing material can possibly approach the planet of the Fenachrone

without being seen, as it is completely surrounded by never less than

two full-sphere detector screens; and to make assurance doubly sure

our engineer there has installed a mechanism which, at the first touch

of the outer screen, will shoot a warning along at tight communicator

beam, directly into the receiver of the nearest Fenachrone scout ship.

As you already know, the smallest of those scouts can burn this ship

out of the ether in less than a second."

"That's a cheerful picture. You still think we can get away?"

"I'm coming to that. We can't possibly get through the detectors

without being challenged, even if I tear out all his apparatus, so

we're going to use his whole plan, but for our benefit instead of his.

Therefore his present hypnotic state and the dummies. When we touch

that screen you and I are going to be hidden--well hidden. The dummies

will be in sole charge, and our prisoner will be playing the part I

have laid out for him.

"The scout ship that he calls will come up to investigate. They will

bring apparatus and attractors to bear to liberate the prisoner, and

the dummies will try to fight. They will be blown up or burned to

cinders almost instantly, and our little playmate will put on his space

suit and be taken across to the capturing vessel. Once there, he will

report to the commander.

"That officer will think the affair sufficiently serious to report it

directly to headquarters. If he doesn't, this ape here will insist upon

reporting it to general headquarters himself. As soon as that report is

in, we, working through our prisoner here, will proceed to wipe out the

crew of the ship and take it over."

"And do you think he'll really do it?" Loring's guileless face showed

doubt, his tone was faintly skeptical.

"I _know_ he'll do it!" The chemist's voice was hard. "He won't

take any active part--I'm not psychologist enough to know whether I

could drive him that far, even drugged, against an unhypnotizable

subconscious or not--but he'll be carrying something along that will

enable me to do it, easily and safely. But that's about enough of this

chin music--we'd better start doing something."

* * * * *

While Loring brought space clothing and weapons, and rummaged through

the vessel in search of material suitable for the dummies' fabrication,

the Fenachrone engineer worked rapidly at his task. And not only did

he work rapidly, he worked skillfully and artistically as well. This

artistry should not be surprising, for to such a mentality as must

necessarily be possessed by the chief engineer of a first-line vessel

of the Fenachrone, the faithful reproduction of anything capable of

movement was not a question of art--it was merely an elementary matter

of line, form, and mechanism.

Cotton waste was molded into shape, reënforced, and wrapped in leather

under pressure. To the bodies thus formed were attached the heads,

cunningly constructed of masticated fiber, plastic, and wax. Tiny

motors and many small pieces of apparatus were installed, and the

completed effigies were dressed and armed.

DuQuesne's keen eyes studied every detail of the startlingly lifelike,

almost microscopically perfect, replicas of himself and his traveling

companion.

"A good job," he commented briefly.

"Good?" exclaimed Loring. "It's perfect! Why, that dummy would fool my

own wife, if I had one--it almost fools me!"

"At least, they're good enough to pass a more critical test than any

they are apt to get during this coming incident."

Satisfied, DuQuesne turned from his scrutiny of the dummies and went

to the closet in which had been stored the space suit of the captive.

To the inside of its front protector flap he attached a small and

inconspicuous flat-sided case. He then measured carefully, with a filar

micrometer, the apparent diameter of the planet now looming so large

beneath them.

"All right, Doll; our time's getting short. Break out our suits and

test them, will you, while I give the big boy his final instructions?"

Rapidly those commands flowed over the wires of the mechanical

educator, from DuQuesne's hard, keen brain into the now-docile mind of

the captive. The Earthly scientist explained to the Fenachrone, coldly,

precisely, and in minute detail, exactly what he was to do and exactly

what he was to say from the moment of encountering the detector screens

of his native planet until after he had reported to his superior

officers.

Then the two Terrestrials donned their own armor of space and made

their way into an adjoining room, a small armory in which were hung

several similar suits and which was a veritable arsenal of weapons.

"We'll hang ourselves up on a couple of these hooks, like the rest

of the suits," DuQuesne explained. "This is the only part of the

performance that may be even slightly risky, but there is no real

danger that they will spot us. That fellow's message to the scout ship

will tell them that there are only two of us, and we'll be out there

with him, right in plain sight.

"If by any chance they should send a party aboard us they would

probably not bother to search the _Violet_ at all carefully, since they

will already know that we haven't got a thing worthy of attention; and

they would of course suppose us to be empty space suits. Therefore

keep your lens shields down, except perhaps for the merest crack to

see through, and, above all, don't move a millimeter, no matter what

happens."

"But how can you manipulate your controls without moving your hands?"

"I can't; but my hands will not be in the sleeves, but inside the body

of the suit--shut up! Hold everything--there's the flash!"

* * * * *

The flying vessel had gone through the zone of feeble radiations which

comprised the outer detector screen of the Fenachrone. But though

tenuous, that screen was highly efficient, and at its touch there burst

into frenzied activity the communicator built by the captive to be

actuated by that very impulse. It had been built during the long flight

through space, and its builder had thought that its presence would be

unnoticed and would remain unsuspected by the Terrestrials.

Now automatically put into action, it laid a beam to the nearest scout

ship of the Fenachrone and into that vessel's receptors it passed

the entire story of the _Violet_ and her occupants. But DuQuesne had

not been caught napping. Reading the engineer's brain and absorbing

knowledge from it, he had installed a relay which would flash to his

eyes an inconspicuous but unmistakable warning of the first touch of

the screen of the enemy. The flash had come--they had penetrated the

outer lines of the monstrous civilization of the dread and dreaded

Fenachrone.

In the armory DuQuesne's hands moved slightly inside his shielding

armor, and out in the control room the dummy that was also, to all

outward seeming, DuQuesne moved and spoke. It tightened the controls

of the attractors, which had never been entirely released from their

prisoner, thus again pinning the Fenachrone helplessly against the wall.

"Just to be sure you don't try to start anything," it explained coldly,

in DuQuesne's own voice and tone. "You have done well so far, but I'll

run things myself from now on, so that you can't steer us into a trap.

Now tell me exactly how to go about getting one of your vessels. After

we get it I'll see about letting you go."

"Fools, you are too late!" the prisoner roared exultantly. "You would

have been too late, even had you killed me out there in space and had

fled at your utmost acceleration. Did you but know it you are as dead,

even now--our patrol is upon you!"

The dummy that was DuQuesne whirled, snarling, and its automatic

pistol and that of its fellow dummy were leaping out when an awful

acceleration threw them flat upon the floor, a magnetic force snatched

away their weapons, and a heat ray of prodigious power reduced the

effigies to two small piles of gray ash. Immediately thereafter a beam

of force from the patrolling cruiser neutralized the attractors bearing

upon the captive and, after donning his space suit, he was transferred

to the Fenachrone vessel.

[Illustration: _The dummy that was DuQuesne whirled, snarling, and its

automatic pistol and that of its fellow dummy were leaping out when a

magnetic force snatched away their weapons and a heat ray of prodigious

power reduced the effigies to two small piles of gray ashes. And

DuQuesne, motionless inside his space suit, waited_--]

Motionless inside his space suit, DuQuesne waited until the airlocks

of the Fenachrone vessel had closed behind his erstwhile prisoner;

waited until the engineer had told his story to Fenal, his emperor,

and to Fenimal, his general in command; waited until the communicator

circuit had been broken and the hypnotized, drugged, and already dying

creature had turned as though to engage his fellows in conversation.

Then only did the saturnine scientist act. His finger closed a circuit,

and in the Fenachrone vessel, inside the front protector flap of the

discarded space suit, the flat case fell apart noiselessly and from it

there gushed forth volume upon volume of colorless and odorless, but

intensely lethal, vapor.

"Just like killing goldfish in a bowl." Callous, hard, and cold,

DuQuesne exhibited no emotion whatever; neither pity for the vanquished

foe nor elation at the perfect working out of his plans. "Just in case

some of them might have been wearing suits, for emergencies, I had some

explosive copper ready to detonate, but this makes it much better--the

explosion might have damaged something we want."

And aboard the vessel of the Fenachrone, DuQuesne's deadly gas diffused

with extreme rapidity, and as it diffused, the hellish crew to the last

man dropped in their tracks. They died not knowing what had happened

to them; died with no thought of even attempting to send out an alarm;

died not even knowing that they died.