ROGER CARRIES ON
As has been intimated, gray Roger did not perish in the floods of Nevian
energy which destroyed his planetoid. While those terrific streamers of
force emanating from the crimson obscurity surrounding the amphibians'
space-ship were driving into his defensive screens he sat impassive and
immobile at his desk, his hard gray eyes moving methodically over his
instruments and recorders.
When the clinging mantle of force changed from deep red into shorter and
even shorter wave-lengths, however:
"Baxter, Hartkopf, Chatelier, Anandrusung, Penrose, Nishimura, Mirsky
..." he called off a list of names. "Report to me here at once!"
"The planetoid is lost," he informed his select group of scientists when
they had assembled, "and we must abandon it in exactly fifteen minutes,
which will be the time required for the robots to fill this first
section with our most necessary machinery and instruments. Pack each of
you one box of the things he most wishes to take with him, and report
back here in not more than thirteen minutes. Say nothing to anyone
else."
They filed out calmly, and as they passed out into the hall Baxter,
perhaps a trifle less case-hardened than his fellows, at least voiced a
thought for those they were so brutally deserting.
"I say, it seems a bit thick to dash off this way and leave the rest of
them; but still, I suppose...."
"You suppose correctly." Bland and heartless Nishimura filled in the
pause. "A small part of the planetoid may be able to escape; which, to
me at least, is pleasantly surprising news. It cannot carry all our men
and mechanisms, therefore only the most important of both are saved.
What would you? For the rest it is simply what you call 'the fortune of
war,' no?"
"But the beautiful ..." began the amorous Chatelier.
"Hush, fool!" snorted Hartkopf. "One word of that to the ear of Roger
and you too left behind are. Of such non-essentials the Universe full
is, to be collected in times of ease, but in times hard to be
disregarded. Und this is a time of _schrecklichkeit_ indeed!"
The group broke up, each man going to his own quarters; to meet again in
the First Section a minute or so before the zero time. Roger's "office"
was now packed so tightly with machinery and supplies that but little
room was left for the scientists. The gray monstrosity still sat unmoved
behind his dials.
"But of what use is it, Roger?" the Russian physicist demanded. "Those
waves are of some ultra-band, of a frequency immensely higher than
anything heretofore known. Our screens should not have stopped them for
an instant. It is a mystery that they have held so long, and certainly
this single section will not be permitted to leave the planetoid without
being destroyed."
"There are many things you do not know, Mirsky," came the cold and level
answer. "Our screens, which you think are of your own devising, have
several improvements of my own in the formulae, and would hold forever
had I the power to drive them. The screens of this section, being
smaller, can be held as long as will be found necessary."
"Power!" the dumbfounded Russian exclaimed. "Why, we have almost
infinite power--unlimited--sufficient for a lifetime of high
expenditure!"
But Roger made no reply, for the time of departure was at hand. He
pressed down a tiny lever, and a mechanism in the power room threw in
the gigantic plunger switches which launched against the Nevians the
stupendous beam which so upset the complacence of Nerado the
amphibian--the beam into which was poured recklessly every resource of
power afforded by the planetoid, careless alike of burnout and of
exhaustion. Then, while all of the attention of the Nevians and
practically all of their maximum possible power output was being devoted
to the neutralization of that last desperate thrust, the metal wall of
the planetoid opened and the First Section shot out into space.
Full-driven as they were, Roger's screens flared white as he drove
through the temporarily lessened attack of the Nevians; but in their
preoccupation the amphibians did not notice the additional disturbance
and the section tore on, unobserved and undetected.
Far out in space, Roger raised his eyes from the instrument panel and
continued the conversation as though it had not been interrupted.
"Everything is relative, Mirsky, and you have misused gravely the term
'unlimited.' Our power was, and is, very definitely limited. True, it
then seemed ample for our needs, and is far superior to that possessed
by the inhabitants of any solar system with which I am familiar; but the
beings behind that red screen, whoever they are, have sources of power
as far above ours as ours are above those of the Solarians."
"How do you know?"
"That power, what is it?"
"We have, then, the analyses of those fields recorded!" came
simultaneous questions and exclamations.
"Their source of power is the intra-atomic energy of iron. Complete; not
the partial liberation incidental to the nuclear fission of such
unstable isotopes as those of thorium, uranium, plutonium, and so on.
Therefore much remains to be done before I can proceed with my plan--I
must have the most powerful structure in the macrocosmic universe."
Roger thought for minutes, nor did any one of his minions break the
silence. Gharlane of Eddore did not have to wonder why such incredible
advancement could have been made without his knowledge: after the fact,
he knew. He had been and was still being hampered by a mind of power; a
mind with which, in due time, he would come to grips.
"I now know what to do," he went on presently. "In the light of what I
have learned, the losses of time, life, and treasure--even the loss of
the planetoid--are completely insignificant."
"But what can you do about it?" growled the Russian.
"Many things. From the charts of the recorders we can compute their
fields of force, and from that point it is only a step to their method
of liberating the energy. We shall build robots. They shall build other
robots, who shall in turn construct another planetoid; one this time
that, wielding the theoretical maximum of power, will be suited to my
needs."
"And where will you build it? We are marked. Invisibility now is
useless. Triplanetary will find us, even if we take up an orbit beyond
that of Pluto!"
"We have already left your Solarian system far behind. We are going to
another system; one far enough removed so that the spy-rays of
Triplanetary will never find us, and yet one that we can reach in a
reasonable length of time with the energies at our command. Some five
days will be required for the journey, however, and our quarters are
cramped. Therefore make places for yourselves wherever you can, and
lessen the tedium of those days by working upon whatever problems are
most pressing in your respective researches."
The gray monster fell silent, immersed in what thoughts no one knew, and
the scientists set out to obey his orders. Baxter, the British chemist,
followed Penrose, the lantern-jawed, saturnine American engineer and
inventor, as he made his way to the furthermost cubicle of the section.
"I say, Penrose, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don't
mind?"
"Go ahead. Ordinarily it's dangerous to be a cackling hen anywhere
around _him_, but I don't imagine that he can hear anything here now.
His system must be pretty well shot to pieces. You want to know all I
know about Roger?"
"Exactly so. You have been with him so much longer than I have, you
know. In some ways he impresses one as being scarcely human, if you know
what I mean. Ridiculous, of course, but of late I have been wondering
whether he really _is_ human. He knows too much, about too many things.
He seems to be acquainted with many solar systems, to visit which would
require lifetimes. Then, too, he has dropped remarks which would imply
that he actually saw things that happened long before any living man
could possibly have been born. Finally, he looks--well, peculiar--and
certainly does not act human. I have been wondering, and have been able
to learn nothing about him; as you have said, such talk as this aboard
the planetoid was not advisable."
"You needn't worry about being paid your price; that's one thing. If we
live--and that was part of the agreement, you know--we will get what we
sold out for. You will become a belted earl. I have already made
millions, and shall make many more. Similarly, Chatelier has had and
will have his women, Anandrusung and Nishimura their cherished revenges,
Hartkopf his power, and so on." He eyed the other speculatively, then
went on:
"I might as well spill it all, since I'll never have a better chance and
since you should know as much as the rest of us do. You're in the same
boat with us and tarred with the same brush. There's a lot of gossip,
that may or may not be true, but I know one very startling fact. Here it
is. My great-great-grandfather left some notes which, taken in
connection with certain things I myself saw on the planetoid, prove
beyond question that our Roger went to Harvard University at the same
time he did. Roger was a grown man then, and the elder Penrose noted
that he was marked, like this," and the American sketched a cabalistic
design.
"What!" Baxter exclaimed. "An adept of North Polar Jupiter--_then_?"
"Yes. That was before the First Jovian War, you know, and it was those
medicine-men--really high-caliber scientists--that prolonged that war
so...."
"But I say, Penrose, that's really a bit thick. When they were wiped out
it was proved a lot of hocus-pocus...."
"_If_ they were wiped out," Penrose interrupted in turn. "Some of it may
have been hocus-pocus, but most of it certainly was not. I'm not asking
you to believe anything except that one fact; I'm just telling you the
rest of it. But it is also a fact that those adepts knew things and did
things that take a lot of explaining. Now for the gossip, none of which
is guaranteed. Roger is supposed to be of Tellurian parentage, and the
story is that his father was a moon-pirate, his mother a Greek
adventuress. When the pirates were chased off the moon they went to
Ganymede, you know, and some of them were captured by the Jovians. It
seems that Roger was born at an instant of time sacred to the adepts, so
they took him on. He worked his way up through the Forbidden Society as
all adepts did, by various kinds of murder and job lots of assorted
deviltries, until he got clear to the top--the seventy-seventh
mystery...."
"The secret of eternal youth!" gasped Baxter, awed in spite of himself.
"Right, and he stayed Chief Devil, in spite of all the efforts of all
his ambitious sub-devils to kill him, until the turning-point of the
First Jovian War. He cut away then in a space-ship, and ever since then
he has been working--and working hard--on some stupendous plan of his
own that nobody else has ever got even an inkling of. That's the story.
True or not, it explains a lot of things that no other theory can touch.
And now I think you'd better shuffle along; enough of this is a great
plenty!"
Baxter went to his own cubby, and each man of gray Roger's cold-blooded
crew methodically took up his task. True to prediction, in five days a
planet loomed beneath them and their vessel settled through a reeking
atmosphere toward a rocky and forbidding plain. Then for hours they
plunged along, a few thousand feet above the surface of that strange
world, while Roger with his analytical detectors sought the most
favorable location from which to wrest the materials necessary for his
program of construction.
It was a world of cold; its sun was distant, pale, and wan. It had
monstrous forms of vegetation, of which each branch and member writhed
and fought with a grotesque and horrible individual activity. Ever and
anon a struggling part broke from its parent plant and darted away in
independent existence; leaping upon and consuming or being consumed by a
fellow creature equally monstrous. This flora was of a uniform color, a
lurid, sickly yellow. In form some of it was fern-like, some
cactus-like, some vaguely tree-like; but it was all outrageous,
inherently repulsive to all Solarian senses. And no less hideous were
the animal-like forms of life which slithered and slunk rapaciously
through that fantastic pseudo-vegetation. Snake-like, reptile-like,
bat-like, the creatures squirmed, crawled, and flew; each covered with a
dankly oozing yellow hide and each motivated by twin common impulses--to
kill and insatiably and indiscriminately to devour. Over this reeking
wilderness Roger drove his vessel, untouched by its disgusting, its
appalling ferocity and horror.
"There should be intelligence, of a kind," he mused, and swept the
surface of the planet with an exploring beam. "Ah, yes, there is a city,
of sorts," and in a few minutes the outlaws were looking down upon a
metal-walled city of roundly conical buildings.
Inside these structures and between and around them there scuttled
formless blobs of matter, one of which Roger brought up into his vessel
by means of a tractor. Held immovable by the beam it lay upon the floor,
a strangely extensile, amoeba-like, metal-studded mass of leathery
substance. Of eyes, ears, limbs, or organs it apparently had none, yet
it radiated an intensely hostile aura; a mental effluvium concentrated
of rage and of hatred.
"Apparently the ruling intelligence of the planet," Roger commented.
"Such creatures are useless to us; we can build machines in half the
time that would be required for their subjugation and training. Still,
it should not be permitted to carry back what it may have learned of
us." As he spoke the adept threw the peculiar being out into the air and
dispassionately rayed it out of existence.
"That thing reminds me of a man I used to know, back in Penobscot."
Penrose was as coldly callous as his unfeeling master. "The
evenest-tempered man in town--mad all the time!"
Eventually Roger found a location which satisfied his requirements of
raw materials, and made a landing upon that unfriendly soil. Sweeping
beams denuded a great circle of life, and into that circle leaped
robots. Robots requiring neither rest nor food, but only lubricants and
power; robots insensible alike to that bitter cold and to that noxious
atmosphere.
But the outlaws were not to win a foothold upon that inimical planet
easily, nor were they to hold it without effort. Through the weird
vegetation of the circle's bare edge there scuttled and poured along a
horde of the metal-studded men--if "men" they might be called--who,
ferocity incarnate, rushed the robot line. Mowed down by hundreds, still
they came on; willing, it seemed to spend any number of lives in order
that one living creature might once touch a robot with one outthrust
metallic stud. Whenever that happened there was a flash of lightning,
the heavy smoke of burning insulation, grease, and metal, and the robot
went down out of control. Recalling his remaining automatons, Roger sent
out a shielding screen, against which the defenders of their planet
raged in impotent fury. For days they hurled themselves and their every
force against that impenetrable barrier, then withdrew: temporarily
stopped, but by no means acknowledging defeat.
Then while Roger and his cohorts directed affairs from within their
comfortable and now sufficiently roomy vessel, there came into being
around it an industrial city of metal peopled by metallic and insensate
mechanisms. Mines were sunk, furnaces were blown in, smelters belched
forth into the already unbearable air their sulphurous fumes, rolling
mills and machine shops were built and were equipped; and as fast as new
enterprises were completed additional robots were ready to man them. In
record time the heavy work of girders, members, and plates was well
under way; and shortly thereafter light, deft, multi-fingered mechanisms
began to build and to install the prodigious amount of precise machinery
required by the vastness of the structure.
As soon as he was sure that he would be completely free for a
sufficient length of time, Roger-Gharlane assembled, boiled down and
concentrated, his every mental force. He probed then, very gently, for
whatever it was that had been and was still blocking him. He found
it--synchronized with it--and in the instant hurled against it the
fiercest thrust possible for his Eddorian mind to generate: a bolt whose
twin had slain more than one member of Eddore's Innermost Circle; a bolt
whose energies, he had previously felt sure, would slay any living thing
save only His Ultimate Supremacy, the All-Highest of Eddore.
Now, however, and not completely to his surprise, that blast of force
was ineffective; and the instantaneous riposte was of such intensity as
to require for its parrying everything that Gharlane had. He parried it,
however barely, and directed a thought at his unknown opponent.
"You, whoever you may be, have found out that you cannot kill me. No
more can I kill you. So be it. Do you still believe that you can keep me
from remembering whatever it was that my ancestor was compelled to
forget?"
"Now that you have obtained a focal point we cannot prevent you from
remembering; and merely to hinder you would be pointless. You may
remember in peace."
Back and back went Gharlane's mind. Centuries ... millenia ... cycles
... eons. The trace grew dim, almost imperceptible, deeply buried
beneath layer upon layer of accretions of knowledge, experience, and
sensation which no one of many hundreds of his ancestors had even so
much as disturbed. But every iota of knowledge that any of his
progenitors had ever had was still his. However dim, however deeply
buried, however suppressed and camouflaged by inimical force, he could
now find it.
He found it, and in the instant of its finding it was as though
Enphilistor the Arisian spoke directly to him; as though the fused
Elders of Arisia tried--vainly now--to erase from his own mind all
knowledge of Arisia's existence. The fact that such a race as the
Arisians had existed so long ago was bad enough. That the Arisians had
been aware throughout all those ages of the Eddorians, and had been able
to keep their own existence secret, was worse. The crowning fact that
the Arisians had had all this time in which to work unopposed against
his own race made even Gharlane's indomitable ego quail.
This was _important_. Such minor matters as the wiping out of
non-conforming cultures--the extraordinarily rapid growth of which was
now explained--must wait. Eddore must revise its thinking completely;
the pooled and integrated mind of the Innermost Circle must scrutinize
every fact, every implication and connotation, of this new-old
knowledge. Should he flash back to Eddore, or should he wait and take
the planetoid, with its highly varied and extremely valuable contents?
He would wait; a few moments more would be a completely negligible
addition to the eons of time which had already elapsed since action
should have been begun.
The rebuilding of the planetoid, then, went on. Roger had no reason to
suspect that there was anything physically dangerous within hundreds of
millions of miles. Nevertheless, since he knew that he could no longer
depend upon his own mental powers to keep him informed as to all that
was going on around him, it was his custom to scan, from time to time,
all nearby space by means of ether-borne detectors. Thus it came about
that one day, as he sent out his beam, his hard gray eyes grew even
harder.
"Mirsky! Nishimura! Penrose! Come here!" he ordered, and showed them
upon his plate an enormous sphere of steel, its offensive beams flaming
viciously. "Is there any doubt whatever in your minds as to the System
to which that ship belongs?"
"None at all--Solarian," replied the Russian. "To narrow it still
further, Triplanetarian. While larger than any I have ever seen before,
its construction is unmistakable. They managed to trace us, and are
testing out their weapons before attacking. Do we attack or do we run
away?"
"If Triplanetarian, and it surely is, we attack," coldly. "This one
section is armed and powered to defeat Triplanetary's entire navy. We
shall take that ship, and shall add its slight resources to our own. And
it may even be that they have picked up the three who escaped me ... I
have never been balked for long. Yes, we shall take that vessel. And
those three sooner or later. Except for the fact that their escape from
me is a matter which should be corrected, I care nothing whatever about
either Bradley or the woman. Costigan, however, is in a different
category ... Costigan _handled_ me...." Diamond-hard eyes glared
balefully at the urge of thoughts to a clean and normal mind
unthinkable.
"To your posts," he ordered. "The machines will continue to function
under their automatic controls during the short time it will require to
abate this nuisance."
"One moment!" A strange voice roared from the speakers. "Consider
yourselves under arrest, by order of the Triplanetary Council! Surrender
and you shall receive impartial hearing; fight us and you shall never
come to trial. From what we have learned of Roger, we do not expect him
to surrender, but if any of you other men wish to avoid immediate death,
leave your vessel at once. We will come back for you later."
"Any of you wishing to leave this vessel have my full permission to do
so," Roger announced, disdaining any reply to the challenge of the
_Boise_. "Any such, however, will not be allowed inside the planetoid
area after the rest of us return from wiping out that patrol. We attack
in one minute."
"Would not one do better by stopping on?" Baxter, in the quarters of the
American, was in doubt as to the most profitable course to pursue. "I
should leave immediately if I thought that that ship could win; but I do
not fancy that it can, do you?"
"That ship? _One_ Triplanetary ship against _us_?" Penrose laughed
raucously. "Do as you please. I'd go in a minute if I thought that there
was any chance of us losing; but there isn't, so I'm staying. I know
which side _my_ bread's buttered on. Those cops are bluffing, that's
all. Not bluffing exactly, either, because they'll go through with it as
long as they last. Foolish, but it's a way they have--they'll die trying
every time instead of running away, even when they know they're licked
before they start. They don't use good judgment."
"None of you are leaving? Very well, you each know what to do," came
Roger's emotionless voice. The stipulated minute having elapsed, he
advanced a lever and the outlaw cruiser slid quietly into the air.
Toward the poised _Boise_ Roger steered. Within range, he flung out a
weapon new-learned and supposedly irresistible to any ferrous thing or
creature, the red converter-field of the Nevians. For Roger's analytical
detector had stood him in good stead during those frightful minutes in
the course of which the planetoid had borne the brunt of Nerado's
super-human attack; in such good stead that from the records of those
ingenious instruments he and his scientists had been able to reconstruct
not only the generators of the attacking forces, but also the screens
employed by the amphibians in the neutralization of similar beams. With
a vastly inferior armament the smallest of Roger's vessels had defeated
the most powerful battleships of Triplanetary; what had he to fear in
such a heavy craft as the one he now was driving, one so superlatively
armed and powered? It was just as well for his peace of mind that he had
no inkling that the harmless-looking sphere he was so blithely attacking
was in reality the much-discussed, half-mythical super-ship upon which
the Triplanetary Service had been at work so long; nor that its already
unprecedented armament had been reenforced, thanks to that hated
Costigan, with Roger's own every worthwhile idea, as well as with every
weapon and defense known to that arch-Nevian, Nerado!
Unknowing and contemptuous, Roger launched his converter field, and
instantly found himself fighting for his very life. For from Rodebush at
the controls down, the men of the _Boise_ countered with wave after wave
and with salvo after salvo of vibratory and material destruction. No
thought of mercy for the men of the pirate ship could enter their minds.
The outlaws had each been given a chance to surrender, and each had
refused it. Refusing, they knew, as the Triplanetarians knew and as all
modern readers know, meant that they were staking their lives upon
victory. For with modern armaments few indeed are the men who live
through the defeat in battle of a war-vessel of space.
Roger launched his field of red opacity, but it did not reach even the
_Boise's_ screens. All space seemed to explode into violet splendor as
Rodebush neutralized it, drove it back with his obliterating zone of
force; but even that all-devouring zone could not touch Roger's
peculiarly efficient screen. The outlaw vessel stood out, unharmed.
Ultra-violet, infra-red, pure heat, infra-sound, solid beams of
high-tension, high-frequency stuff in whose paths the most stubborn
metals would be volatilized instantly, all iron-driven; every deadly and
torturing vibration known was hurled against that screen: but it, too,
was iron-driven, and it held. Even the awful force of the macro-beam was
dissipated by it--reflected, hurled away on all sides in coruscating
torrents of blinding, dazzling energy. Cooper, Adlington, Spencer, and
Dutton hurled against it their bombs and torpedoes--and still it held.
But Roger's fiercest blasts and heaviest projectiles were equally
impotent against the force-shields of the super-ship. The adept, having
no liking for a battle upon equal terms, then sought safety in flight,
only to be brought to a crashing, stunning halt by a massive tractor
beam.
"That must be that polycyclic screen that Conway reported on." Cleveland
frowned in thought. "I've been doing a lot of work on that, and I think
I've calculated an opener for it, Fred, but I'll have to have number ten
projector and the whole output of number ten power room. Can you let me
play with that much juice for a while? All right, Blake, tune her up to
fifty-five thousand--there, hold it! Now, you other fellows, listen! I'm
going to try to drill a hole through that screen with a hollow,
quasi-solid beam; like a diamond drill cutting out a core. You won't be
able to shove anything into the hole from outside the beam, so you'll
have to steer your cans out through the central orifice of number ten
projector--that'll be cold, since I'm going to use only the outer ring.
I don't know how long I'll be able to hold the hole open, though, so
shoot them along as fast as you can. Ready? Here goes!"
He pressed a series of contacts. Far below, in number ten converter
room, massive switches drove home and the enormous mass of the vessel
quivered under the terrific reaction of the newly-calculated,
semi-material beam of energy that was hurled out, backed by the
mightiest of all the mighty converters and generators of Triplanetary's
super-dreadnaught. That beam, a pipe-like hollow cylinder of intolerable
energy, flashed out, and there was a rending, tearing crash as it struck
Roger's hitherto impenetrable wall. Struck and clung, grinding, boring
in, while from the raging inferno that marked the circle of contact of
cylinder and shield the pirate's screen radiated scintillating torrents
of crackling, streaming sparks, lightning like in length and in
intensity.
Deeper and deeper the gigantic drill was driven. It was through! Pierced
Roger's polycyclic screen; exposed the bare metal of Roger's walls! And
now, concentrated upon one point, flamed out in seemingly redoubled fury
Triplanetary's raging beams--in vain. For even as they could not
penetrate the screen, neither could they penetrate the wall of
Cleveland's drill, but rebounded from it in the cascaded brilliance of
thwarted lightning.
"Oh, what a dumb-bell I am!" groaned Cleveland. "Why, oh _why_ didn't I
have somebody rig up a secondary SX7 beam on Ten's inner rings? Hop to
it, will you, Blake, so that we'll have it in case they are able to stop
the cans?"
But the pirates could not stop all of Triplanetary's projectiles, now
hurrying along inside the pipe as fast as they could be driven. In fact,
for a few minutes gray Roger, knowing that he faced the first real
defeat of his long life, paid no attention to them at all, nor to any of
his useless offensive weapons: he struggled only to break away from the
savage grip of the _Boise's_ tractor rod. Futile. He could neither cut
nor stretch that inexorably anchoring beam. Then he devoted his every
resource to the closing of that unbelievable breach in his shield.
Equally futile. His most desperate efforts resulted only in more
frenzied displays of incandescence along the curved surface of contact
of that penetrant cylinder. And through that terrific conduit came
speeding package after package of destruction. Bombs, armor-piercing
shells, gas shells of poisonous and corrosive fluids followed each other
in close succession. The surviving scientists of the planetoid, expert
gunners and ray-men all, destroyed many of the projectiles, but it was
not humanly possible to cope with them all. And the breach could not be
forced shut against the all but irresistible force of Cleveland's
"opener". And with all his power Roger could not shift his vessel's
position in the grip of Triplanetary's tractors sufficiently to bring a
projector to bear upon the super-ship along the now unprotected axis of
that narrow, but deadly tube.
Thus it was that the end came soon. A war-head touched steel plating and
there ensued a space-wracking explosion of atomic iron. Gaping wide,
helpless, with all defenses down, other torpedoes entered the stricken
hulk and completed its destruction even before they could be recalled.
Atomic bombs literally volatilized most of the pirate vessel; vials of
pure corrosion began to dissolve the solid fragments of her substance
into dripping corruption. Reeking gasses filled every cranny of
circumambient space as what was left of Roger's battle cruiser began the
long plunge to the ground. The super-ship followed the wreckage down,
and Rodebush sent out an exploring spy-ray.
"... resistance was such that it was necessary to employ corrosive, and
ship and contents were completely disintegrated," he dictated, a little
later, into his vessel's log. "While there were of course no remains
recognizable as human, it is certain that Roger and his last eleven men
died; since it is clear that the circumstances and conditions were such
that no life could possibly have survived."
* * * * *
It is true that the form of flesh which had been known as Roger was
destroyed. The solids and liquids of its substance were resolved into
their component molecules or atoms. That which had energized that form
of flesh, however, could not be harmed by any physical force, however
applied. Therefore that which made Roger what he was; the essence which
was Gharlane of Eddore; was actually back upon his native planet even
before Rodebush completed his study of what was left of the pirates'
vessel.
The Innermost Circle met, and for a space of time which would have been
very long indeed for any Earthly mind those monstrous being considered
as one multi-ply intelligence every newly-exposed phase and facet of the
truth. At the end, they knew the Arisians as well as the Arisians knew
them. The All-Highest then called a meeting of all the minds of Eddore.
"... hence it is clear that these Arisians, while possessing minds of
tremendous latent capability, are basically soft, and therefore
inefficient," he concluded. "Not weak, mind you, but scrupulous and
unrealistic; and it is by taking advantage of these characteristics that
we shall ultimately triumph."
"A few details, All-Highest, if Your Ultimate Supremacy would deign," a
lesser Eddorian requested. "Some of us have not been able to perceive at
all clearly the optimum lines of action."
"While detailed plans of campaign have not yet been worked out, there
will be several main lines of attack. A purely military undertaking will
of course be one, but it will not be the most important. Political
action, by means of subversive elements and obstructive minorities, will
prove much more useful. Most productive of all, however, will be the
operations of relatively small but highly organized groups whose
functions will be to negate, to tear down and destroy, every bulwark of
what the weak and spineless adherents of Civilization consider the
finest things in life--love, truth, honor, loyalty, purity, altruism,
decency, and so on."
"Ah, love ... extremely interesting. Supremacy, this thing they call
sex," Gharlane offered. "What a silly, what a meaningless thing it is! I
have studied it intensively, but am not yet fully enough informed to
submit a complete and conclusive report. I do know, however, that we can
and will use it. In our hands, vice will become a potent weapon indeed.
Vice ... drugs ... greed ... gambling ... extortion ... blackmail ...
lust ... abduction ... assassination ... ah-h-h!"
"Exactly. There will be room, and need, for the fullest powers of every
Eddorian. Let me caution you all, however, that little or none of this
work is to be done by any of us in person. We must work through echelon
upon echelon of higher and lower executives and supervisors if we are to
control efficiently the activities of the thousands of billions of
operators which we must and will have at work. Each echelon of control
will be vastly greater in number than the one immediately above it, but
correspondingly lower in the individual power of its component
personnel. The sphere of activity of each supervisor, however small or
great, will be clearly and sharply defined. Rank, from the operators at
planetary-population levels up to and including the Eddorian
Directorate, will be a linear function of ability. Absolute authority
will be delegated. Full responsibility will be assumed. Those who
succeed will receive advancement and satisfaction of desire; those who
fail will die.
"Since the personnel of the lower echelons will be of small value and
easy of replacement, it is of little moment whether or not they become
involved in reverses affecting the still lower echelons whose activities
they direct. The echelon immediately below us of Eddore, however--and
incidentally, it is my thought that the Ploorans will best serve as our
immediate underlings--must never, under any conditions, allow any hint
of any of its real business to become known either to any member of any
lower echelon or to any adherent of Civilization. This point is vital;
everyone here must realize that only in that way can our own safety
remain assured, and must take pains to see to it that any violator of
this rule is put instantly to death.
"Those of you who are engineers will design ever more powerful
mechanisms to use against the Arisians. Psychologists will devise and
put into practice new methods and techniques, both to use against the
able minds of the Arisians and to control the activities of mentally
weaker entities. Each Eddorian, whatever his field or his ability, will
be given the task he is best fitted to perform. That is all."
* * * * *
And upon Arisia, too, while there was no surprise, a general conference
was held. While some of the young Watchmen may have been glad that the
open conflict for which they had been preparing so long was now about to
break, Arisia as a whole was neither glad nor sorry. In the Great Scheme
of Things which was the Cosmic All, this whole affair was an
infinitesimal incident. It had been foreseen. It had come. Each Arisian
would do to the fullest extent of his ability that which the very fact
of his being an Arisian would compel him to do. It would pass.
"In effect, then, our situation has not really changed," Eukonidor
stated, rather than asked, after the Elders had again spread their
Visualization for public inspection and discussion. "This killing, it
seems, must go on. This stumbling, falling, and rising; this blind
groping; this futility; this frustration; this welter of crime,
disaster, and bloodshed. Why? It seems to me that it would be much
better--cleaner, simpler, faster, more efficient, and involving
infinitely less bloodshed and suffering--for us to take now a direct and
active part, as the Eddorians have done and will continue to do."
"Cleaner, youth, yes; and simpler. Easier; less bloody. It would not,
however, be better; or even good; because no end-point would ever be
attained. Young civilizations advance only by overcoming obstacles. Each
obstacle surmounted, each step of progress made, carries its suffering
as well as its reward. We could negate the efforts of any echelon below
the Eddorians themselves, it is true. We could so protect and shield
each one of our protege races that not a war would be waged and not a
law would be broken. But to what end? Further contemplation will show
you immature thinkers that in such a case not one of our races would
develop into what the presence of the Eddorians has made it necessary
for them to become.
"From this it follows that we would never be able to overcome Eddore;
nor would our conflict with that race remain indefinitely at stalemate.
Given sufficient time during which to work against us, they will be able
to win. However, if every Arisian follows his line of action as it is
laid out in this Visualization, all will be well. Are there any more
questions?"
"None. The blanks which you may have left can be filled in by a mind of
very moderate power."
* * * * *
"Look here, Fred." Cleveland called attention to the plate, upon which
was pictured a horde of the peculiar inhabitants of that ghastly planet,
wreaking their frenzied electrical wrath upon everything within the
circle bared of native life by Roger's destructive beams. "I was just
going to suggest that we clean up the planetoid that Roger started to
build, but I see that the local boys and girls are attending to it."
"Just as well, perhaps. I would like to stay and study these people a
little while, but we must get back onto the trail of the Nevians," and
the _Boise_ leaped away into space, toward the line of flight of the
amphibians.
They reached that line and along it they traveled at full normal blast.
As they traveled their detecting receivers and amplifiers were reaching
out with their utmost power; ultra-instruments capable of rendering
audible any signal originating within many light-years of them, upon any
possible communications band. And constantly at least two men, with
every sense concentrated in their ears, were listening to those
instruments.
Listening--straining to distinguish in the deafening roar of background
noise from the over-driven tubes any sign of voice or of signal:
Listening--while, millions upon millions of miles beyond even the
prodigious reach of those ultra-instruments, three human beings were
even then sending out into empty space an almost hopeless appeal for the
help so desperately needed!