The four Terrestrials had discussed at some length the subject of
Chlora and her outlandish population.
"It looks as though you were perched upon the horns of a first-class
dilemma," Dorothy remarked at last. "If you let them alone there is no
telling what harm they will do to these people here, and yet it would
be a perfect shame to kill them all--they can't help being what they
are. Do you suppose you can figure a way out of it, Dick?"
"Maybe--I've got a kind of a hunch, but it hasn't jelled into a
workable idea yet. It's tied in with the sixth-order projection that
we'll have to have, anyway, to find our way back home with. Until we
get that working I guess we'll just let the amœbuses stew in their own
juice."
"Well, and then what?" Dorothy prompted.
"I told you it's nebulous yet, with a lot of essential details yet to
be filled in--" Seaton paused, then went on, doubtfully: "It's pretty
wild--I don't know whether--"
"Now you _must_ tell us about it, Dick," Margaret urged.
"I'll say you've got to," Dorothy agreed. "You've had a lot of ideas
wild enough to make any sane creature's head spin around in circles
before this, but not one of them was so hair raising that you were
backward in talking about it. This one must be the prize brain storm of
the universe--spill it to us!"
"All right, but remember that it's only half baked and that you asked
for it. I'm doping out a way of sending them back to their own Solar
System, planet and all."
"What!" exclaimed Margaret.
Dorothy simply whistled--a long, low whistle highly eloquent of
incredulity.
"Maintenance of temperature? Time? Power? Control?" Crane, the
imperturbable, picked out unerringly the four key factors of the
stupendous feat.
"Your first three objections can be taken care of easily enough,"
Seaton replied positively. "No loss of temperature is possible through
a zone of force--our own discovery. We can stop time with a stasis--we
learned that from watching those four-dimensional folks work. The power
of cosmic radiation is practically infinite and eternal--we learned how
to use that from the pure intellectuals. Control is the sticker, since
it calls for computations and calculations at present impossible; but I
believe that when we get our mechanical brain done, it will be able to
work out even such a problem as that."
"What d'you mean, mechanical brain?" demanded Dorothy.
"The thing that is going to run our sixth-order projector," Seaton
explained. "You see, it'll be altogether too big and too complicated to
be controlled manually, and thought--human thought, at least--is on one
band of the sixth order. Therefore the logical thing to do is to build
an artificial brain capable of thinking on _all_ bands of the order
instead of only one, to handle the whole projector. See?"
"No," declared Dorothy promptly, "but maybe I will, though, when I see
it work. What's next on the program?"
"Well, it's going to be quite a job to build that brain and we'd better
be getting at it, since without it there'll be no _Skylark Four_--"
"Dick, I object!" Dorothy protested vigorously. "_The Skylark of Space_
was a nice name--"
"Sure, you'd think so, since you named her yourself," interrupted
Seaton in turn, with his disarming grin.
"Keep still a minute, Dickie, and let me finish. _Skylark Two_ was
pretty bad, but I stood it; and by gritting my teeth all out of shape
I did manage to keep from squawking about _Skylark Three_, but I
certainly am not going to stand for _Skylark Four_. Why, just think of
giving a name like that to such a wonderful thing as she is going to
be--as different as can be from anything that has ever been dreamed of
before--just as though she were going to be simply one more of a long
series of cup-challenging motor boats or something! Why, it's--it's
just too perfectly idiotic for words!"
"But she's _got_ to be some kind of a _Skylark_, Dot--you know that."
"Yes, but give her a name that means something--that sounds like
something. Name her after this planet, say--_Skylark of Valeron_--how's
that?"
"O.K. by me. How about it, Peg? Mart?"
The Cranes agreed to the suggestion with enthusiasm and Seaton went on:
"Well, an onion by any other name would smell as sweet, you know,
and it's going to be just as much of a job to build the _Skylark of
Valeron_ as it would have been to build _Skylark Four_. Therefore, as I
have said before and am about to say again, we'd better get at it."
The fifth-order projector was moved to the edge of the city, since
nowhere within its limits was there room for the structure to be built,
and the two men seated themselves at its twin consoles and their hands
flew over its massed banks of keyboards. For a few minutes nothing
happened; then on the vast, level plain before them--a plain which
had been a lake of fluid lava a few weeks before--there sprang into
being an immense foundation-structure of trussed and latticed girder
frames of inoson, the hardest, strongest, and toughest form of matter
possible to molecular structure. One square mile of ground it covered
and it was strong enough, apparently, to support a world.
* * * * *
When the foundation was finished, Seaton left the framework to Crane,
while he devoted himself to filling the interstices and compartments as
fast as they were formed. He first built one tiny structure of coils,
fields, and lenses of force--one cell of the gigantic mechanical brain
which was to be. He then made others, slightly different in tune, and
others, and others.
He then set forces to duplicating these cells, forces which
automatically increased in number until they were making and setting
five hundred thousand cells per second, all that his connecting forces
could handle. And everywhere, it seemed, there were projectors, fields
of force, receptors and converters of cosmic energy, zones of force,
and many various shaped lenses and geometric figures of neutronium
incased in sheaths of faidon.
From each cell led tiny insulated wires, so fine as to be almost
invisible, to the "nerve centers" and to one of the millions of
projectors. From these in turn ran other wires, joining together to
form larger and larger strands until finally several hundred enormous
cables, each larger than a man's body, reached and merged into an
enormous, glittering, hemispherical, mechano-electrical inner brain.
For forty long Valeronian days--more than a thousand of our Earthly
hours--the work went on ceaselessly, day and night. Then it ceased
of itself and there dangled from the center of the glowing, gleaming
hemisphere a something which is only very vaguely described by calling
it either a heavily wired helmet or an incredibly complex headset. It
was to be placed over Seaton's head, it is true--it _was_ a headset,
but one raised to the millionth power.
It was the energizer and controller of the inner brain, which was in
turn the activating agency of that entire cubic mile of as yet inert
substance, that assemblage of thousands of billions of cells, so soon
to become the most stupendous force for good ever to be conceived by
the mind of man.
When that headset appeared Seaton donned it and sat motionless. For
hour after hour he sat there, his eyes closed, his face white and
strained, his entire body eloquent of a concentration so intense as
to be a veritable trance. At the end of four hours Dorothy came up
resolutely, but Crane waved her back.
"This is far and away the most crucial point of the work, Dorothy," he
cautioned her gravely. "While I do not think that anything short of
physical violence could distract his attention now, it is best not to
run any risk of disturbing him. An interruption now would mean that
everything would have to be done over again from the beginning."
Something over an hour later Seaton opened his eyes, stretched
prodigiously, and got up. He was white and trembling, but tremendously
relieved and triumphant.
"Why, Dick, what have you been doing? You look like a ghost!" Dorothy
was now an all solicitous wife.
"I've been _thinking_, and if you don't believe that it's hard work
you'd better try it some time! 'Sall right, though, I won't have to do
it any more--got a machine to do my thinking for me now."
"Oh, is it all done?"
"Nowhere near, but it's far enough along so that it can finish itself.
I've just been telling it what to do."
"_Telling_ it! Why, you talk as though it were human!"
"Human? It's a lot more than that. It can outthink and outperform even
those pure intellectuals--'and that,' as the poet feelingly remarked,
'is going some'! And if you think that riding in that fifth-order
projector was a thrill, wait until you see what this one can do. Think
of it"--even the mind that had conceived the thing was awed--"it is an
extension of my own brain, using waves that traverse even intergalactic
distances practically instantaneously. With it I can see anything I
want to look at, anywhere; can hear anything I want to hear. It can
build, make, do, or perform anything that my brain can think of."
"That is all true, of course," Crane said slowly, his sober mien
dampening Dorothy's ardor instantly, "but still--I can not help
wondering--" He gazed at Seaton thoughtfully.
"I know it, Mart, and I'm working up my speed as fast as I possibly
can," Seaton answered the unspoken thought, rather than the words. "But
let them come--we'll take 'em. I'll have everything on the trips, ready
to spring."
"What _are_ you two talking about?" Dorothy demanded.
"Mart pointed out to me the regrettable fact that my mental processes
are in the same class as the proverbial molasses in January, or as a
troop of old and decrepit snails racing across a lawn. I agreed with
him, but added that I would have my thoughts all thunk up ahead of time
when the pure intellectuals tackle us--which they certainly will."
"_Slow!_" she exclaimed. "When you planned the whole _Skylark of
Valeron_ and nobody knows what else, in five hours?"
"Yes, dear, _slow_. Remember when we first met our dear departed
friend Eight, back in the original _Skylark_? You saw him materialize
exact duplicates of each of our bodies, clear down to the molecular
structures of our chemistry, in less than one second, from a cold,
standing start. Compared to that job, the one I have just done is
elementary. It took me over five hours--he could have done it in
nothing flat.
"However, don't let it bother you too much. I'll never be able to equal
their speed, since I'll not live enough millions of years to get the
required practice, but our being material gave us big advantages in
other respects that Mart isn't mentioning because, as usual, he is
primarily concerned with our weaknesses--yes? No?"
"Yes; I will concede that being material does yield advantages which
may perhaps make up for our slower rate of thinking," Crane at last
conceded.
"Hear that? If he admits that much, you know that we're as good as in,
right now," Seaton declared. "Well, while our new brain is finishing
itself up, we might as well go back to the hall and chase the Chlorans
back where they belong--the Brain worked out the equations for me this
morning."
* * * * *
From the ancient records of Valeron, Radnor and the Bardyle had
secured complete observational data of the cataclysm, which had made
the task of finding the present whereabouts of the Chlorans' original
sun a simple task. The calculations and computations involved in the
application of forces of precisely the required quantities to insure
the correct final orbit were complex in the extreme; but, as Seaton had
foretold, they had presented no insurmountable difficulties to the vast
resources of the Brain.
Therefore, everything in readiness, the two Terrestrial scientists
surrounded the inimical planet with a zone of force, so that it would
lose none of its heat during the long journey; and with a stasis of
time, so that its people would not know of anything that was happening
to them. They then erected force-control stations around it, adjusted
with such delicacy and precision that they would direct the planet into
the exact orbit it had formerly occupied around its parent sun. Then,
at the instant of correct velocity and position, the control stations
would go out of existence and the forces would disappear.
As the immense ball of dazzlingly opaque mirror which now hid the
unwanted world swung away with ever-increasing velocity, the Bardyle,
who had watched the proceedings in incredulous wonder, heaved a
profound sigh of relaxation.
"What a relief--what a relief!" he exclaimed.
"How long will it take?" asked Dorothy curiously.
"Quite a while--something over four hundred years of our time. But
don't let it gnaw on you--they won't know a thing about it. When the
forces let go they'll simply go right on, from exactly where they left
off, without realizing that any time at all has lapsed--in fact, for
them, no time at all shall have lapsed. All of a sudden they will find
themselves circling around a different sun, that's all.
"If their old records are clear enough they may be able to recognize
it as their original sun and they'll probably do a lot of wondering as
to how they got back there. One instant they were in a certain orbit
around this sun here, the next instant they will be in another orbit
around an entirely different sun! They'll know, of course, that we did
it, but they'll have a sweet job figuring out how and what we did--some
of it is really deep stuff. Also, they will be a few hundred years off
in their time, but since nobody in the world will know it, it won't
make any difference."
"How perfectly weird!" Dorothy exclaimed. "Just think of losing a
four-hundred-year chunk right out of the middle of your life and not
even knowing it!"
"I would rather think of the arrest of development," meditated Crane.
"Of the opportunity of comparing the evolution of the planets already
there with that of the returned wanderer."
"Yeah, it would be interesting--'sa shame we won't be alive then,"
Seaton responded, "but in the meantime we've got a lot of work to do
for ourselves. Now that we've got this mess straightened out I think
we had better tell these folks good-by, get into _Two_, and hop out to
where Dot's _Skylark of Valeron_ is going to materialize."
The farewell to the people of Valeron was brief, but sincere.
"This is in no sense good-by," Crane concluded. "By the aid of these
newly discovered forces of the sixth order there shall soon be worked
out a system of communication by means of which all the inhabited
planets of the Galaxies shall be linked as closely as are now the
cities of any one world."
_Skylark Two_ shot upward and outward, to settle into an orbit well
outside that of Valeron. Seaton then sent his projection back to the
capital city, fitted over his imaged head the controller of the inner
brain, and turned to Crane with a grin.
"That's timing it, old son--she finished herself up less than an hour
ago. Better cluster around and watch this, folks, it's going to be
good."
* * * * *
At Seaton's signal the structure which was to be the nucleus of the new
space traveler lifted effortlessly into the air its millions of tons of
dead weight and soared, as lightly as little _Two_ had done, out into
the airless void. Taking up a position a few hundred miles away from
the Terrestrial cruiser, it shot out a spherical screen of force to
clear the ether of chance bits of débris. Then inside that screen there
came into being a structure of gleaming inoson, so vast in size that to
the startled onlookers it appeared almost of planetary dimensions.
"Good heavens--it's stupendous!" Dorothy exclaimed. "What did you boys
make it so big for--just to show us you could, or what?"
"Hardly! She's just as small as she can be and still do the work.
You see, to find our own Galaxy we will have to project a beam to a
distance greater than any heretofore assigned diameter of the universe,
and to control it really accurately its working base and the diameter
of its hour and declination-circles would each have to be something
like four light-years long. Since a ship of that size is of course
impracticable, Mart and I did some figuring and decided that with
circles one thousand kilometers in diameter we could chart Galaxies
accurately enough to find the one we're looking for--if you think of
it, you'll realize that there are a lot of hundredth-millimeter marks
around the circumference of circles of that size--and that they would
probably be big enough to hold a broadcasting projection somewhere
near a volume of space as large as that occupied by the Green System.
Therefore we built the _Skylark of Valeron_ just large enough to
contain those thousand-kilometer circles."
As _Skylark Two_ approached the looming planetoid the doors of vast
airlocks opened. Fifty of those massive gates swung aside before her
and closed behind her before she swam free in the cool, sweet air and
bright artificial sunlight of the interior. She then floated along
above an immense, grassy park toward two well-remembered and beloved
buildings.
[Illustration: _As the tiny ship approached, the doors of vast airlocks
opened._]
"Oh, Dick!" Dorothy squealed. "There's our house--and Cranes! It's
funny though to see them side by side. Are they the same inside,
too--and what's that funny little low building between them?"
"They duplicate the originals exactly, except for some items of
equipment which would be useless here. The building between them is
the control room, in which are the master headsets of the Brain
and its lookouts. The Brain itself is what you would think of as
underground--inside the shell of the planetoid."
The small vessel came lightly to a landing and the wanderers
disembarked upon the close-clipped, springy turf of a perfect lawn.
Dorothy flexed her knees in surprise.
"How come we aren't weightless, Dick?" she demanded. "This gravity
isn't--_can't_ be--natural. I'll bet you did that, too!"
"Mart and I together did, sure. We learned a lot from the intellectuals
and a lot more in hyperspace, but we could neither derive the
fundamental equations nor apply what knowledge we already had until we
finished this sixth-order outfit. Now, though, we can give you all the
gravity you want--or as little--whenever and wherever you want it."
"Oh, marvelous--this is glorious, boys!" Dorothy breathed. "I have
always just simply despised weightlessness. Now, with these houses and
everything, we can have a perfectly wonderful time!"
"Here's the dining room," Seaton said briskly. "And here's the headset
you put on to order dinner or whatever is appropriate to the culinary
department. You will observe that the kitchen of this house is purely
ornamental--never to be used unless you want to."
"Just a minute, Dick," Dorothy's voice was tensely serious. "I have
been really scared ever since you told me about the power of that
Brain, and the more you tell me of it the worse scared I get. Think
of the awful damage a wild, chance thought would do--and the more an
ordinary mortal tries to avoid any thought the surer he is to think
it, you know that. Really, I'm not ready for that yet, dear--I'd much
rather not go near that headset."
"I know, sweetheart," his arm tightened around her. "But you didn't
let me finish. These sets around the house control forces which are
capable of nothing except duties pertaining to the part of the house in
which they are. This dining-room outfit, for instance, is exactly the
same as the Norlaminian one you used so much, except that it is much
simpler.
"Instead of using a lot of keyboards and force-tubes, you simply think
into that helmet what you want for dinner and it appears. Think that
you want the table cleared and it is cleared--dishes and all simply
vanish. Think of anything else you want done around this room and it's
done--that's all there is to it.
"To relieve your mind I'll explain some more. Mart and I both realized
that that Brain could very easily become the most terrible, the
most frightfully destructive thing that the universe has ever seen.
Therefore, with two exceptions, every controller on this planetoid
is of a strictly limited type. Of the two master controls, which are
unlimited and very highly reactive, one responds only to Crane's
thoughts, the other only to mine. As soon as we get some loose time
we are going to build a couple of auxiliaries, with automatic stops
against stray thoughts, to break you girls in on--we know as well as
you do, Red-Top, that you haven't had enough practice yet to take an
unlimited control."
"I'll say _I_ haven't!" she agreed feelingly. "I feel lots better
now--I'm sure I can handle the rest of these things very nicely."
"Sure you can. Well, let's call the Cranes and go into the control
room," Seaton suggested. "The quicker we get started the quicker we'll
get done."
* * * * *
Accustomed as she was to the banks and tiers of keyboards, switches,
dials, meters, and other operating paraphernalia of the control rooms
of the previous _Skylark_, Dorothy was taken aback when she passed
through the thick, heavily insulated door into that of the _Skylark of
Valeron_. For there were four gray walls, a gray ceiling, and a rugged
gray floor. There were low, broad double chairs and headsets. There was
nothing else.
"This is your seat, Dottie, here beside me, and this is your
headset--it's just a visiset, so you can see what is going on, not a
controller," he hastened to reassure her. "You have a better illusion
of seeing if your eyes are open, that's why everything is neutral in
color. But better still for you girls, we'll turn off the lights."
The illumination, which had seemed to pervade the entire room instead
of emanating from any definite sources, faded out; but in spite of the
fact that the room was in absolute darkness Dorothy saw with a clarity
and a depth of vision impossible to any Earthly eyes. She saw at one
and the same time, with infinite precision of detail, the houses and
their contents; the whole immense sphere of the planetoid, inside and
out; Valeron and her sister planets encircling their sun; and the
stupendous full sphere of the vaulted heavens.
She knew that her husband was motionless at her side, yet she saw him
materialize in the control room of _Skylark Two_. There he seized
the cabinet which contained the space chart of the Fenachrone--that
library of films portraying all the Galaxies visible to the wonderfully
powerful telescopes and projectors of that horrible race.
That cabinet became instantly a manifold scanner, all its reels
flashing through as one. Simultaneously there appeared in the air
above the machine a three-dimensional model of all the Galaxies there
listed. A model upon such a scale that the First Galaxy was but a tiny
lenticular pellet, although it was still disproportionately large;
upon such a scale that the whole vast sphere of space covered by the
hundreds of Fenachrone scrolls was compressed into a volume but little
larger than a basketball. And yet each tiny Galactic pellet bore its
own peculiarly individual identifying marks.
Then Dorothy felt as though she herself had been hurled out into the
unthinkable reaches of space. In a fleeting instant of time she passed
through thousands of star clusters, and not only knew the declination,
right ascension, and distance of each Galaxy, but saw it duplicated in
miniature in its exact place in an immense, three-dimensional model in
the hollow interior of the space-flyer in which she actually was.
The mapping went on. To human brains and hands the task would have
been one of countless years. Now, however, it was to prove only a
matter of hours, for this was no human brain. Not only was it reactive
and effective at distances to be expressed in light-years or parsecs:
because of the immeasurable sixth-order velocity of its carrier wave
it was equally effective at distances of thousands upon thousands of
light--millionia--reaches of space so incomprehensibly vast that the
rays of visible light emitted at the birth of a sun so far away would
reach the point of observation only after that sun had lived through
its entire cycle of life and had disappeared.
"Well, that's about enough of that for you, for a while," Seaton
remarked in a matter-of-fact voice. "A little of that stuff goes a long
ways at first--you have to get used to it."
"I'll say you do! Why--I--it--" Dorothy paused, even her ready tongue
at a loss for words.
"You can't describe it in words--don't try," Seaton advised. "Let's go
outdoors and watch the model grow."
To the awe, if not to the amazement of the observers, the model had
already begun to assume a lenticular pattern. Galaxies, then, really
_were_ arranged in general as were the stars composing them; there
really _were_ universes, and they really _were_ lenticular--the vague
speculations of the hardiest and most exploratory cosmic thinkers were
being confirmed.
For hour after hour the model continued to grow and Seaton's face began
to take on a look of grave concern. At last, however, when the chart
was three fourths done or more, a deep-toned bell clanged out the
signal for which he had been waiting--the news that there was now being
plotted a configuration of Galaxies identical with that portrayed by
the space chart of the Fenachrone.
"Gosh!" Seaton sighed hugely. "I was beginning to be afraid that
we had escaped clear out of our own universe, and that would have
been bad--very, very bad, believe me! The rest of the mapping can
wait--let's go!"
Followed by the others he dashed into the control room, threw on his
helmet, and hurled a projection into the now easily recognizable First
Galaxy. He found the Green System without difficulty, but he could
not hold it. So far away it was that even the highest amplification
and the greatest power of which the gigantic sixth-order installation
was capable could not keep the viewpoint from leaping erratically, in
fantastic bounds of hundreds of millions of miles, all through and
around its objective.
But Seaton had half expected this development and was prepared for it.
He had already sent out a broadcasting projection; and now, upon a band
of frequencies wide enough to affect every receiving instrument in use
throughout the Green System and using power sufficient to overwhelm any
transmitter, however strong, that might be in operation, he sent out in
a mighty voice his urgent message to the scientists of Norlamin.