Immense as the Norlaminian vessel was, getting her inside the planetoid
was a simple matter to the Brain. Inside the _Skylark_ a dome bulged
up, driving back the air; a circular section of the multilayered
wall disappeared; Rovol's space-torpedo floated in; the wall was
again intact; the dome vanished; the visitor settled lightly into the
embrace of a mighty landing cradle which fitted exactly her slenderly
stupendous bulk.
The Osnomian prince was the first to disembark, appearing unarmed; for
the first time in his warlike life he had of his own volition laid
aside his every weapon.
"Glad to see you, Dick," he said simply, but seizing Seaton's hand in
both his own, with a pressure that said far more than his words. "We
thought they got you, but you're bigger and better than ever--the worse
jams you get into, the stronger you come out."
Seaton shook the hands enthusiastically. "Yeah, 'lucky' is my middle
name--I could fall into a vat of glue and climb out covered with talcum
powder and smelling like a bouquet of violets. But you've advanced more
than I have," glancing significantly at the other's waist, bare now
of its wonted assortment of lethal weapons. "You're going good, old
son--we're all behind you!"
He turned and greeted the other new-comers in cordial and appropriate
fashion, then all went into the control room.
During the long flight from Valeron to the First Galaxy no one paid
any attention to course or velocity--a handful of cells in the Brain
piloted the _Skylark_ better than any human intelligence could have
done it. Each Norlaminian scientist studied rapturously new vistas of
his specialty: Orlon the charted Galaxies of the First Universe, Rovol
the minutely small particles and waves of the sixth order, Astron the
illimitable energies of cosmic radiation, and so on.
Seaton spent day after day with the Brain, computing, calculating,
thinking with a clarity and a cogency hitherto impossible, all to one
end. What should he do, what _could_ he do, with those confounded
Intellectuals? Crane, Fodan, and Drasnik spent their time in planning
the perfect government--planetary, systemic, galactic, universal--for
all intelligent races, wherever situated.
Sacner Carfon studied quietly but profoundly with Caslor of Mechanism,
adapting many of the new concepts to the needs of his aqueous planet.
Dunark and Urvan, their fiery spirits now subdued and strangely awed,
devoted themselves as sedulously to the arts and industries of peace as
they formerly had to those of war.
Time thus passed quickly, so quickly that, almost before the travelers
were aware, the vast planetoid slowed down abruptly to feel her
cautious way among the crowded stars of our Galaxy. Though a mere
crawl in comparison with her inconceivable intergalactic speed, her
present pace was such that the stars sped past in flaming lines of
light. Past the double sun, one luminary of which had been the planet
of the Fenachrone, she flew; past the Central System; past the Dark
Mass, whose awful attraction scarcely affected her cosmic-energy
drive--hurtling toward Earth and toward Earth's now hated master,
DuQuesne.
DuQuesne had perceived the planetoid long since, and his robot-manned
ships rushed out into space to do battle with Seaton's new and peculiar
craft. But of battle there was none; Seaton was in no mood to trifle.
Far below the level of DuQuesne's screens, the cosmic energies directed
by the Brain drove unopposed upon the power bars of the space fleet
of Steel and that entire fleet exploded in one space-filling flash of
blinding brilliance. Then the _Skylark_, approaching the defensive
screens, halted.
"I know that you're watching me, DuQuesne, and I know what you're
thinking about, but you can't do it." Seaton, at the Brain's control,
spoke aloud. "You realize, don't you, that if you clamp on a zone of
force it'll throw the Earth out of its orbit?"
"Yes; but I'll do it if I have to," came back DuQuesne's cold accents.
"I can put it back after I get done with you."
"You don't know it yet, big shot, but you are going to do exactly
nothing at all!" Seaton snapped. "You see, I've got a lot of stuff here
that you don't know anything about because you haven't had a chance
to steal it yet, and I've got you stopped cold. I'm just two jumps
ahead of you, all the time. I could hypnotize you right now and make
you do anything I say, but I'm not going to--I want you to be wide
awake and aware of everything that goes on. Snap on your zone if you
want to--I'll see to it that the Earth stays in its orbit. Well, start
something, you big, black ape!"
* * * * *
The screens of the _Skylark_ glowed redly as a beam carrying the
full power of DuQuesne's installations was hurled against them--a
beam behind which there was the entire massed output of Steel's
world-girdling network of superpower stations. But Seaton's screens
merely glowed; they did not radiate even under that Titanic thrust.
For, as has been said, this new _Skylark_ was powered, not by
intra-atomic energy, but by the cosmic energy liberated by all the
disrupting atoms in all the suns of all the Galaxies of all the
universes. Therefore her screens did not radiate; in fact, the furious
blasts of DuQuesne's projectors only increased the stream of power
being fed to her receptors and converters.
The mighty shields of the planetoid took every force that DuQuesne
could send, then Seaton began to compress his zones, leaving open
only the narrow band in the fourth order through which the force of
gravitation makes itself manifest. Not only did he leave that band
open, he so blocked it open that not even DuQuesne's zones of force,
full-driven though they were, could close it.
In their closing those zones brought down over all Earth a pall of
darkness of an intensity theretofore unknown. It was not the darkness
of any possible night, but the appalling, absolute blackness of the
utter absence of every visible wave from every heavenly body. As that
unrelieved and unheralded blackness descended, millions of Earth's
humanity went mad in unspeakable orgies of fright, of violence, and of
crime.
But that brief hour of terror, horrible as it was, can be passed
over lightly, for it ended forever any hope of world domination by
any self-interested man or group, paving the way as it did for the
heartiest possible reception of the government of right instead of by
might so soon to be given to Earth's peoples by the sages of Norlamin.
Through the barriers both of mighty space ship and of embattled planet
Seaton drove his sixth-order projection. Although built to be effective
at universal distances the installation was equally efficient at only
miles, since its control was purely mental. Therefore Seaton's image,
solid and visible, materialized in DuQuesne's inner sanctum--to see
DuQuesne standing behind Dorothy's father and mother, a heavy automatic
pistol pressed into Mrs. Vaneman's back.
"That'll be all from you, I think," he sneered. "You can't touch
me without hurting your beloved parents-in-law and you're too
tender-hearted to do that. If you make the slightest move toward me all
I've got to do is to touch the trigger. And I shall do that, anyway,
right now, if you don't get out of this System and stay out. I am still
master of the situation, you see."
"You are master of nothing, you murderous baboon!"
Even before Seaton spoke the first word his projection had acted.
DuQuesne was fast, as has been said, but how fast are the fastest of
human nervous and muscular reactions when compared with the speed
of thought? DuQuesne's retina had not yet registered the fact that
Seaton's image had moved when his pistol was hurled aside and he was
pinioned by forces as irresistible as the cosmic might from which they
sprang.
DuQuesne was snatched into the air of the room--was surrounded by
a globe of energy--was jerked out of the building through a welter
of crushed and broken masonry and concrete and of flailing, flying
structural steel--was whipped through atmosphere, stratosphere, and
empty space into the control room of the _Skylark of Valeron_. The
inclosing shell of force disappeared and Seaton hurled aside his
controlling helmet, for he knew that his iron self-control was fast
giving way. He knew that wave upon wave of passion, of sheer hate,
was rising, battering at the very gates of his mind; knew that if he
wore that headset one second longer the Brain, actuated by his own
uncontrollable thoughts, would passionlessly but mercilessly exert its
awful power and blast his foe into nothingness before his eyes.
Thus at long last the two men, physically so like, so unlike mentally,
stood face to face; hard gray eyes staring relentlessly into unyielding
eyes of midnight black. Seaton was in a towering rage; DuQuesne, cold
and self-contained as ever, was calmly alert to seize any possible
chance of escape from his present predicament.
"DuQuesne, I'm telling you something," Seaton gritted through clenched
teeth. "Prop back your ears and listen. You and I are going out in
that projector. You are going to issue 'cease firing' orders to all
your stations and tell them that you're all washed up--that a humane
government is taking things over."
"Or else?"
"Or else I'll do, here and now, what I've been wanting to do to you
ever since you shot up Crane's place that night--I will scatter your
component atoms all the way from here to Valeron."
"But, Dick--" Dorothy began to protest.
"Don't butt in, Dot!"
Stern and cold, Seaton's voice was one his wife had never before heard.
Never had she seen his face so hard, so bitterly implacable.
"Sympathy is all right in its place," Seaton went on, "but this is the
showdown. The time for dealing tenderly with this piece of mechanism in
human form is past. He has needed killing for a long time, and unless
he toes the mark quick and careful he'll get it, right here and right
now.
"And as for you, DuQuesne," turning again to the prisoner, "for your
own good I'd advise you to believe that I'm not talking just to make a
noise. This isn't a threat, it's a promise--get me?"
"You couldn't do it, Seaton, you're too--" Their eyes were still
locked, but into DuQuesne's there had crept a doubt. "Why, I believe
you _would_!" he exclaimed.
"I'll tell the cockeyed universe I will!" Seaton barked. "Last chance!
Yes or no?"
"Yes." DuQuesne knew when to back down. "You win--temporarily at
least," he could not help adding.
* * * * *
The projection went out and the required orders were given. Sunlight,
moonlight, and starlight again bathed the world in wonted fashion.
DuQuesne sat at ease in a cushioned chair, smoking Crane's cigarettes;
Seaton stood scowling blackly, hands jammed deep into pockets,
addressing the jury of Norlaminians.
"You see what a jam I'm in?" he complained. "I could be arrested for
what I think of that bird. He ought to be killed, but I can't do it
unless he gives me about half an excuse, and he's darn careful not to
do that. So what?"
"The man has a really excellent brain, but it is slightly warped,"
Drasnik offered. "I do not believe, however, that it is beyond repair.
It may well be that a series of mental operations might make of him a
worth-while member of society."
"I doubt it." Seaton still scowled. "He'd never be satisfied unless he
was all three rings of the circus. Being a big shot isn't enough--he's
got to be the whole works, a regular Poo-Bah. He's naturally
antisocial--he would always be making trouble and would never fit
into a really civilized world. He _has_ got a wonderful brain; but he
isn't human--Say, that gives me an idea!" His corrugated brow smoothed
magically, his boiling rage was forgotten.
"DuQuesne, how would you like to become a pure intellect? A bodiless
intelligence, immaterial and immortal, pursuing pure knowledge and pure
power throughout all cosmos and all time, in company with seven other
such entities?"
"What are you trying to do, kid me?" DuQuesne sneered. "I don't need
any sugar coating on my pills. You are going to take me on a one-way
ride--all right, go to it, but don't lie about it!"
"No; I mean it. Remember the one we met in the first _Skylark_? Well,
we captured him and six others, and it's a very simple matter to
dematerialize you so that you can join them. I'll bring them in, so
that you can talk to them yourself."
The Intellectuals were brought into the control room, the stasis
of time was released, and DuQuesne--via projection--had a long
conversation with One.
"That's the life!" he exulted finally. "Better a million times over
than any possible life in the flesh--the ideal existence! Think you can
do it without killing me, Seaton?"
"Sure I can--I know both the words and the music."
DuQuesne and the caged Intellectuals poised in the air, Seaton threw
a zone around cage and man, the inner zone of course disappearing as
the outer one went on. DuQuesne's body disappeared--but not so his
intellect.
"That was the first really bad mistake you ever made, Seaton," the same
sneering, domineering, icily cold DuQuesne informed Seaton's projection
in level thought. "It was bad because you can't ever remedy it--you
_can't_ kill me now! And now I _will_ get you--what's to hinder me from
doing anything I please?"
"I am, bucko," Seaton informed him cheerfully. "I told you quite a
while ago that you'd be surprised at what I could do, and that still
goes as it lays. But I'm surprised at your rancor and at the survival
of your naughty little passions. What d'you make of it, Drasnik? Is it
simply a hangover, or may it be permanent in his case?"
"Not permanent, no," Drasnik decided. "It is only that he has not yet
become accustomed to his changed state of being. Such emotions are
definitely incompatible with pure mentality and will disappear in a
short time."
"Well, I'm not going to let him think even for a minute that I slipped
up on his case," Seaton declared. "Listen, you. If I hadn't been dead
sure of being able to handle you I would have killed you instead of
dematerializing you. And don't get too cocky about my not being able to
kill you yet, either, if it comes to that. It shouldn't be impossible
to calculate a zone in which there would be no free energy whatever, so
that you would starve to death. But don't worry, I'm not going to do it
unless I have to."
"Just what do you think you _are_ going to do?"
"See that miniature space ship there? I am going to compress you and
your new playmates into this spherical capsule and surround you with
a stasis of time. Then I am going to send you on a trip. As soon as
you are out of the Galaxy this bar here will throw in a cosmic-energy
drive--not using the power of the bar itself, you understand, but only
employing its normal radiation of energy to direct and to control
the energy of space--and you will depart for scenes unknown with an
acceleration equal to the sixth power of the velocity of light. You
will travel at that acceleration until this small bar is gone. It will
last approximately ninety thousand million years, which, as One will
assure you, is but a moment.
"Then these large bars, which will still be big enough to do the work,
will rotate your capsule into the fourth dimension. This is desirable,
not only to give you additional distance, but also to destroy any
orientation you may have remaining, in spite of the stasis of time
and the not inconsiderable distance already covered. When and if you
get back into three-dimensional space you will be so far away from
here that you will certainly need most of what is left of eternity to
find your way back here." Then, turning to the ancient physicist of
Norlamin: "O.K., Rovol?"
"An exceedingly scholarly bit of work," Rovol applauded.
"It is well done, son," majestic Fodan gravely added. "Not only is it
a terrible thing indeed to take away a life, but it is certain that
the unknowable force is directing these disembodied mentalities in
the engraving upon the sphere of a pattern which must forever remain
hidden from our more limited senses."
Seaton thought into the headset for a few seconds, then again projected
his mind into the capsule.
"All set to go, folks?" he asked. "Don't take it too hard--no matter
how many millions of years the trip lasts, you won't know anything
about it. Happy landings!"
The tiny space-ship prison shot away, to transport its contained
bodiless intelligences into the indescribable immensities of the
super-universe; of the cosmic all; of that ultimately infinite space
which can be knowable, if at all, only to such immortal and immaterial,
to such incomprehensibly gigantic, mentalities as were theirs.