XX.

Valeron was making her last stand. Her back was against the wall. The

steadily contracting ring of Chloran force had been driven inward until

only one thin line of fortified works lay between it and the great dome

covering the city itself. Within a week at most, perhaps within days,

that voracious flood of lava would lick into and would dissolve that

last line of defense. Then what of Valeron?

All the scientists of the planet had toiled and had studied, day and

night, but to no avail. Each new device developed to halt the march of

the encroaching constricting band of destruction had been nullified in

the instant of its first trial.

"They must know every move we make, to block us so promptly," Quedrin

Radnor had mused one day. "Since they certainly have no visiray

viewpoints of material substance within our dome, they must be able to

operate a spy ray using only the narrow gravity band, a thing we have

never been able to accomplish. If they can project such viewpoints

of pure force through such a narrow band, may they not be able to

project a full materialization and thus destroy us? But, no, that band

is--_must_ be--altogether too narrow for that."

Stirred by these thoughts he had built detectors to announce the

appearance of any nongravitational forces in the gravity band and

had learned that his fears were only too well founded. While the

enemy could not project through the open band any forces sufficiently

powerful to do any material damage, they were thus in position to

forestall any move which the men of Valeron made to ward off their

inexorably approaching doom.

Far beneath the surface of the ground, in a room which was not only

sealed but was surrounded with every possible safeguard, nine men sat

at a long table, the Bardyle at its head.

"--and nothing can be done?" the coördinator was asking. "There is no

possible way of protecting the edges of the screens?"

"None." Radnor's voice was flat, his face and body alike were eloquent

of utter fatigue. He had driven himself to the point of collapse, and

all his labor had proved useless. "Without solid anchorages we cannot

hold them--as the ground is fused they give way. When the fused area

reaches the dome the end will come. The outlets of our absorbers will

also be fused, and with no possible method of dissipating the energy

being continuously radiated into the dome we shall all die, practically

instantaneously."

"But I judge you are trying something new, from the sudden cutting off

of nearly all our weight," stated another.

"Yes. I have closed the gravity band until only enough force can get

through to keep us in place on the planet, in a last attempt to block

their spy rays so that we can try one last resort--" He broke off as

an intense red light suddenly flared into being upon a panel. "No;

even that is useless. See that red light? That is the pilot light of

a detector upon the gravity band. The Chlorans are still watching us.

We can do nothing more, for if we close that band any tighter we shall

leave Valeron entirely and shall float away, to die in space."

As that bleak announcement was uttered the councilors sat back limply

in their seats. Nothing was said--what was there to say? After all, the

now seemingly unavoidable end was not unexpected. Not a man at that

table had really in his heart thought it possible for peaceful Valeron

to triumph against the superior war craftiness of Chlora.

They sat there, staring unseeing into empty air, when suddenly in that

air there materialized Seaton's projection. Since its reception has

already been related, nothing need be said of it except that it was the

Bardyle himself who was the recipient of that terrific wave of mental

force. As soon as the Terrestrial had made clear his intentions and his

desires, Radnor leaped to his feet, a man transformed.

"A laboratory of radiation!" he exclaimed, his really profound

exhaustion forgotten in a blaze of new hope. "Not only shall I lead him

to such a laboratory, but my associates and I shall be only too glad to

do his bidding in every possible way."

* * * * *

Followed closely by the visitor, Radnor hurried buoyantly along a

narrow hall and into a large room in which, stacked upon shelves, lying

upon benches and tables, and even piled indiscriminately upon the

floor, there was every conceivable type and kind of apparatus for the

generation and projection of etheric forces.

Seaton's flashing glance swept once around the room, cataloguing and

classifying the heterogeneous collection. Then, while Radnor looked on

in a daze of incredulous astonishment, that quasi-solid figure of force

made tangible wrought what was to the Valeronian a scientific miracle.

It darted here and there with a speed almost impossible for the eye to

follow, seizing tubes, transformers, coils, condensers, and other items

of equipment, connecting them together with unbelievable rapidity into

a mechanism at whose use the bewildered Radnor, able physicist though

he was, could not even guess.

The mechanical educator finished, Seaton's image donned one of its sets

of multiple headphones and placed another upon the unresisting head

of his host. Then into Radnor's already reeling mind there surged an

insistent demand for his language, and almost immediately the headsets

were tossed aside.

"There, that's better!" Seaton--for the image was, to all intents

and purposes, Seaton himself--exclaimed. "Now that we can talk to

each other we'll make those jelly brains hard to catch. They'll think

they've got hold of a wild cat by the tail pretty quick now, and

they'll be yelling for help to let go."

"But the Chlorans are watching everything you do," protested Radnor,

"and we cannot block them out without cutting off our gravity entirely.

They will therefore be familiar with any mechanism we may construct and

will be able to protect themselves against it."

"They just think they will," was the grim response. "I can't close the

gravity band without disaster, any more than you could, but I can find

any spy ray they can use and send back along it a jolt that'll burn

their eyes out. You see, there's a lot of stuff down on the edge of the

fourth order that neither you folks nor the Chlorans know anything

about yet, because you haven't had enough thousands of years to study

it."

While he was talking, Seaton had been furiously at work upon a small

generator, and now he turned it on.

"If they can see through _that_," he said, "they're a lot smarter

than I think they are. Even if they're bright enough to have figured

out what I was doing while I was doing it, it won't do them any good,

because this outfit will scramble any beam they can send through that

band."

"I must bow to your superior knowledge, of course," Radnor said

gravely, "but I should like to ask one question. You are working

a full materialization through less than a quarter of the gravity

band--something that has always been considered impossible. Is there no

danger that the Chlorans may analyze your patterns and thus duplicate

your feat?"

"Not a chance," Seaton assured him positively. "This stuff I am using

is on a tight beam, so tight that it is absolute proof against analysis

or interference. It took the Norlaminians--and they're a race of real

thinkers--over eight thousand years to go from the beams you and the

Chlorans are using down to what I'm showing you. Therefore I'm not

afraid that the opposition will pick it up in the next week or two. But

we'd better get busy in a big way. Your most urgent need, I take it, is

for something--anything--that will stop that surface of force before it

reaches the skirt of your defensive dome and blocks your dissipators?"

"Exactly!"

"All right. We'll build you a four-way fourth-order projector to handle

full materializations--four way to handle four attackers in case

they get desperate and double their program. With it you will send

working images of yourselves into the power rooms of the Chloran ships

and clamp a short circuiting field across the secondaries of their

converters. Of course they can bar you out with a zone of force if they

detect you before you can kill the generators of their zones, but that

will be just as good, as far as we're concerned--they can't do a thing

as long as they're on, you know. Now put on the headset again and I'll

give you the dope on the projector. Better get a recorder, too, as

there'll be some stuff that you won't be able to carry in your head."

The recorder was brought in and from Seaton's brain there flowed

into it and into the mind of Radnor the fundamental concepts and

complete equations and working details of the new instrument. Upon

the Valeronian's face was first blank amazement, then dawning

comprehension, and lastly sheer, wondering awe as, the plan completed,

he removed the headset. He began a confused panegyric of thanks, but

Seaton interrupted him briskly.

"'Sall right, Radnor, you'd do the same thing for us if things were

reversed. Humanity has got to stick together against all the vermin of

all the universes. But, say, I'm getting a yen to see this mess all

cleaned up, myself--think I'll stick around and help you build it.

You're all in, clear to the neck, but you won't rest until the Chlorans

are whipped--I can't blame you for that, I wouldn't either--and I'm

fresh as a daisy. Let's go!"

* * * * *

In a few hours the complex machine was done. Radnor and Siblin were

seated at two of the sets of controls, associate physicists at the

others.

"Since I don't know any more about their system of conversion than

you do, I can't tell you in detail what to do," Seaton was issuing

final instructions. "But whatever you do, don't monkey with their

primaries--shortening them would overload their liberators and blow

this whole Solar System over into the next Galaxy. Take time to be dead

sure that you've got the secondaries of their main converters, and

slap a short circuit on as many of them as you can before they cut you

off with a zone. You'll probably find a lot of liberator-converter sets

on vessels of that size, but if you can kill the ones that feed the

zone generators they're our meat."

"You are much more familiar with such things than we are," Radnor

remarked. "Would you not like to come along?"

"I'll say I would, but I can't," Seaton replied instantly. "This isn't

me at all, you know. But let's see--"

"Oh, of course," Radnor apologized. "In working with you so long and so

cordially I forgot for the moment that you are not here in person."

"Nope, can't be done." Seaton frowned, still immersed in

the hitherto unstudied problem of the reprojection of a

projected image. "Need over two hundred thousand relays

and--um--synchronization--neuro-muscular--not on this outfit. Wonder if

it can be done at all? Have to look into it sometime--but excuse me,

Radnor, I was thinking and got lost. Ready to go? I'll watch you on

the plate here and be ready to offer advice--not that you'll need it.

Shoot!"

Radnor snapped on the power and he and his aid shot their projections

into one of the opposing fortresses, Siblin and his associate going

into the other. Through compartment after compartment of the immense

structures the as yet invisible projections went, searching for the

power rooms. They were not hard to find, extending as they did nearly

the full length of the stupendous structures; vaulted caverns filled

with linked pairs of mastodonic fabrications, the liberator-converters.

Springing in graceful arcs from heavily insulated posts in the

ends of one machine of each pair were five great bus-bars, which

Radnor and Siblin recognized instantly as secondary leads from the

converters--the gigantic mechanisms which, taking the raw intra-atomic

energy from the liberators, converted it into a form in which it could

be controlled and utilized.

Neither Radnor nor Siblin had ever heard of five-phase energy of any

kind, but those secondaries were unmistakable. Therefore all four

images drove against the fivefold bars their perfectly conducting

fields of force. Four converters shrieked wildly, trying to wrench

themselves from their foundations; insulation smoked and burst wildly

into yellow flame; the stubs of the bars grew white-hot and began to

fuse; and in a matter of seconds a full half of each prodigious machine

subsided to the floor, a semimolten, utterly useless mass.

[Illustration: _They drove their fields of force against the fivefold

bars._]

Similarly went the next two in each fortress, and the next--then

Radnor's two projections were cut off sharply as the Chloran's

impenetrable zone of force went on, and that fortress, all its beams

and forces inoperative, floated off into space.

Siblin and his partner were more fortunate. When the amœbus commanding

their prey threw in his zone switch nothing happened. Its source of

power had already been destroyed, and the two Valeronian images went

steadily down the line of converters, in spite of everything the

ragingly frantic monstrosities could do to hinder their progress.

The terrible beam of destruction held steadily upon that fortress by

the beamers in Valeron's mighty dome had never slackened its herculean

efforts to pierce the Chloran screens. Now, as more and more of the

converters of that floating citadel were burned out those screens began

to radiate higher and higher into the ultra-violet. Soon they went

down, exposing defenseless metal to the blasting, annihilating fury

of the beam, to which any conceivable substance is but little more

resistant than so much vacuum.

There was one gigantic, exploding flash, whose unbearable brilliance

darkened even the incandescent radiance of the failing screen, and

Valeron's mighty beam bored on, unimpeded. And where that mastodonic

creation had floated an instant before there were only a few curling

wisps of vapor.

"Nice job of clean-up, boys--fine!" Seaton clapped a friendly hand upon

Radnor's shoulder. "Anybody can handle them now. Better you take a week

off and catch up on sleep. I could do with a little shut-eye myself,

and you've been on the job a lot longer than I have."

"But hold on--don't go yet!" Radnor exclaimed in consternation. "Why,

our whole race owes its very existence to you--wait at least until our

Bardyle can have a word with you!"

"That isn't necessary, Radnor. Thanks just the same, but I don't go in

for that sort of thing, any more than you would. Besides, we'll be here

in the flesh in a few days and I'll talk to him then. So long!" and the

projection disappeared.

* * * * *

In due time _Skylark Two_ came lightly to a landing in a parkway near

the council hall, to be examined curiously by an excited group of

Valeronians who wondered audibly that such a tiny space ship should

have borne their salvation. The four Terrestrials, sure of their

welcome, stepped out and were greeted by Siblin, Radnor, and the

Bardyle.

"I must apologize, sir, for my cavalier treatment of you at our

previous meeting." Seaton's first words to the coördinator were

in sincere apology. "I trust that you will pardon it, realizing

that something of the kind was necessary in order to establish

communication."

"Speak not of it, Richard Seaton. I suffered only a temporary

inconvenience, a small thing indeed compared to the experience of

encountering a mind of such stupendous power as yours. Neither words

nor deeds can express to you the profound gratitude of our entire race

for what you have done for Valeron.

"I am informed that you personally do not care for extravagant praise,

but please believe me to be voicing the single thought of a world's

people when I say that no words coined by brain of man could be just,

to say nothing of being extravagant, when applied to you. I do not

suppose that we can do anything, however slight, for you in return, in

token that these are not entirely empty words?"

"You certainly can, sir," Seaton made surprising answer. "We are so

completely lost in space that without a great deal of material and of

mechanical aid we shall never be able to return to, nor even to locate

in space, our native Galaxy, to say nothing of our native planet."

A concerted gasp of astonishment was his reply, then he was assured in

no uncertain terms that the resources of Valeron were at his disposal.

A certain amount of public attention had of course to be endured; but

Seaton and Crane, pleading a press of work upon their new projectors,

buried themselves in Radnor's laboratory, leaving it to their wives to

bear the brunt of Valeronian adulation.

"How do you like being a heroine, Dot?" Seaton asked one evening, as

the two women returned from an unusually demonstrative reception in

another city.

"We just revel in it, since we didn't do any of the real work--it's

just too perfectly gorgeous for words," Dorothy replied shamelessly.

"Especially Peggy." She eyed Margaret mischievously and winked

furtively at Seaton. "Why, you ought to see her--she could just simply

roll that stuff up on a fork and eat it, as though it were that much

soft fudge!"

Since the scientific and mechanical details of the construction of a

fifth-order projector have been given in full elsewhere there is no

need to repeat them here. Seaton built his neutronium lens in the core

of the near-by white dwarf star, precisely as Rovol had done it from

distant Norlamin. He brought it to Valeron and around it there began

to come into being a duplicate of the immense projector which the

Terrestrials had been obliged to leave behind them when they abandoned

gigantic _Skylark Three_ to plunge through the fourth dimension in tiny

_Two_.

"Maybe it's none of my business, Radnor," Seaton turned to the

Valeronian curiously during a lull in their work, "but how come you're

still simply shooting away those Chloran vessels by making them put out

their zones of force? Why didn't you hop over there on your projector

and blow their whole planet over into the next Solar System? I would

have done that long ago if it had been me, I think."

"We did visit Chlora once, with something like that in mind, but our

attempt failed lamentably," Radnor admitted sheepishly. "You remember

that peculiar special sense, that mental force that Siblin tried to

describe to you? Well, it was altogether too strong for us. My father,

possessing one of the strongest minds of Valeron, was in the chair, but

they mastered him so completely that we had to recall the projection

by cutting off the power to prevent them from taking from his mind by

force the methods of transmission which you taught us and which we were

then using."

"Hmm! So that's it, huh?" Seaton was greatly interested. "Maybe I'll

take one on the chin, but I'm going to lock horns with that bunch of

squidges myself, one of these days. When this projector gets itself

done I'll skip over there and try them a whirl--with this fifth-order

outfit I think maybe I'll be able to make big medicine on them."

* * * * *

True to his word, Seaton's first use of the new mechanism was to

assume the offensive. He first sought out and destroyed the Chloran

structure then in space--now an easy task, since zones of force, while

impenetrable to any ether-borne phenomena, offer no resistance whatever

to forces of the fifth order, propagated as they are in that inner

medium, the sub-ether. Then, with the Quedrins standing by, to cut off

the power in case he should be overpowered, he invaded the sanctum

sanctorum of all Chlora--the private office of the Supreme Great One

himself--and stared unabashed and unaffected into the enormous "eye" of

the monstrous ruler of the planet.

There ensued a battle royal. Had mental forces been visible, it would

have been a spectacular meeting indeed! Larger and larger grew the

"eye" until it was transmitting all the terrific power generated by

that frightful, visibly palpitating brain. But Seaton was not of

Valeron, nor was he handicapped by the limitations of a fourth-order

projector. He was now being projected upon a full beam of the fifth, by

a mechanism able to do full justice to his stupendously composite brain.

The part of that brain he was now employing was largely the

contribution of Drasnik, the First of Psychology of ancient Norlamin;

and from it he was hurling along that beam the irresistible sum total

of mental power accumulated by ten thousand generations of the most

profound students of the mind that our Galaxy has ever known.

The creature, realizing that at long last it had met its mental master,

must have emitted radiations of distress, for into the room came

crowding hordes of the monstrosities, each of whom sought to add his

own mind to those already opposing the intruder. In vain--all their

power could not turn Seaton's penetrating glare aside, nor could it

wrest from that glare's unbreakable grip the mind of the tortured

Great One.

And now, mental waves failing, they resorted to the purely physical.

Hand rays of highest power blasted at that figure uselessly; fiercely

driven bars, spears, axes, and all other weapons rebounded from

it without leaving a mark upon it, rebounded bent, broken, and

twisted. For that figure was in no sense matter as we understand the

term. It was pure force--force made palpable and coherent by the

incomprehensible power of disintegrating matter; force against which

any possible application of mechanical power would be precisely as

effective as would wafted thistledown against Gibraltar.

Thus the struggle was brief. Paying no attention to anything, mental

or physical, that the other monstrosities could bring to bear, Seaton

compelled his victim to assume the shape of the heretofore-despised

human being. Then, staring straight into that quivering brain through

those hate-filled, flaming eyes, he spoke aloud, the better to drive

home his thought:

"Learn, so-called Great One, once and for all, that when you attack any

race of humanity anywhere, you attack not only that one race, but all

the massed humanity of all the planets of all the Galaxies! As you have

already observed, I am not of the planet Valeron, nor of this Solar

System, nor even of this Galaxy; but I and my fellows have come to the

aid of this race of humanity whom you were bold enough to attack.

"I have proved that we are your masters, mentally as well as

scientifically and mechanically. Those of you who have been attacking

Valeron have been destroyed, ships and crews alike. Those en route

there have been destroyed in space. So also shall be destroyed any

and all expeditions you may launch beyond the limits of your own foul

atmosphere.

"Since even such a repellent civilization as yours must have its place

in the great scheme of things, we do not intend to destroy your planet

nor such of your people as remain upon it or near it, unless such

destruction shall become necessary for the welfare of the human race.

While we are considering what we shall do about you, I advise you to

heed well this warning!"