VII.
DuQuesne did not find Seaton, nor did he quite comb the Galaxy star by star, as he had declared that he would do in that event. He did, however, try; he prolonged the vain search to distances of so many light-years and through so many weeks of time that even the usually complacent Loring was moved to protest.
"Pretty much like hunting the proverbial needle in the haystack, isn't it, chief?" that worthy asked at last. "They could be clear back home by this time, whoever they are. It looks as though maybe we could do ourselves more good by doing something else."
"Yes; I probably am wasting time now, but I hate to give it up," the scientist replied. "We have pretty well covered this section of the Galaxy. I wonder if it really was Seaton, after all? If he could blow up that planet through those screens he must have a lot more stuff than I have ever thought possible—certainly a lot more than I have, even now—and I would like very much to know how he did it. I couldn't have done it, nor could the Fenachrone, and if he did it without coming closer to it than a thousand light-years—"
"He may have been a lot closer than that," Loring interrupted. "He has had lots of time to make his get-away, you know."
"Not so much as you think, unless he has an acceleration of the same order of magnitude as ours, which I doubt," DuQuesne countered. "Although it is of course possible, in the light of what we know must have happened, that he may have an acceleration as large as ours, or even larger. But the most vital question now is, where did he get his dope? We'll have to consider the probabilities and make our own plans accordingly."
"All right! That's your dish—you're the doctor."
"We shall have to assume that it was Seaton who did it, because if it was any one else, we have nothing whatever to work on. Assuming Seaton, we have four very definite leads. Our first lead is that it must have been Seaton in the Skylark and Dunark in the Kondal that destroyed the Fenachrone ship from the wreck of which he rescued the engineer. I couldn't learn anything about the actual battle from his brains, since he didn't know much except that it was a zone of force that did the real damage, and that the two strange ships were small and spherical.
"The Skylark and the Kondal answer that description and, while the evidence is far from conclusive, we shall assume as a working hypothesis that the Skylark and the Kondal did in fact attack and cut up a Fenachrone battleship fully as powerful as the one we are now in. That, as I do not have to tell you, is a disquieting thought.
"If it is true, however, Seaton must have left the Earth shortly after we did. That idea squares up, because he could very well have had an object-compass on me—whose tracer, by the way, would have been cut by the Fenachrone screens, so we needn't worry about it, even if he did have it once.
"Our second lead lies in the fact that he must have got the dope on the zone of force sometime between the time when we left the Earth and the time when he cut up the battleship. He either worked it out himself on Earth, got it en route, or else got it on Osnome, or at least somewhere in the Green System. If my theory is correct, he worked it out by himself, before he left the Earth. He certainly did not get it on Osnome, because they did not have it.
"The third lead is the shortness of the period of time that elapsed between his battle with the Fenachrone warship and the destruction of their planet.
"The fourth lead is the great advancement in ability shown; going as he did from the use of a zone of force as an offensive weapon, up to the use of some weapon as yet unknown to us that works through defensive screens fully as powerful as any possible zone of force.
"Now, from the above hypotheses, we are justified in concluding that Seaton succeeded in enlisting the help of some ultrapowerful allies in the Green System, on some planet other than Osnome—"
"Why? I don't quite follow you there," put in Loring.
"He didn't have this new stuff, whatever it is, when he met the battleship, or he would have used it instead of the dangerous, almost hand-to-hand fighting entailed by the use of a zone of force," DuQuesne declared flatly. "Therefore he got it some time after that, but before the big explosion; and you can take it from me that no one man worked out a thing that big in such a short space of time. It can't be done. He had help, and high-class help at that.
"The time factor is also an argument in favor of the idea that he got it somewhere in the Green System—he didn't have time to go anywhere else. Also, the logical thing for him to do would be to explore the Green System first, since it has a very large number of planets, many of which undoubtedly are inhabited by highly advanced races. Does that make it clearer?"
"I've got it straight so far," assented the aid.
"We must plan our course of action in detail before we leave this spot," DuQuesne decided. "Then we will be ready to start back for the Green System, to find out who Seaton's friends were and to persuade them to give us all the dope they gave him. Now pin your ears back and listen to this, every word of it.
"We are not nearly as ready nor as well equipped as I thought we were—Seaton is about three laps ahead of us yet. Also, there is a lot more to psychology than I ever thought there was before I read those brains back there. Both of us had better get in training mentally to meet Seaton's friends, whoever they may be, or else we probably will not be able to get away with a thing.
"Both of us, you especially, want to clear our minds of every thought inimical to Seaton in any way or in even the slightest degree. You and I are, and always have been, two of the best friends Seaton ever had on Earth—or anywhere else, for that matter. And of course I cannot be Marc DuQuesne, for reasons that are self-evident. From now on I am Stewart Vaneman, Dorothy's brother—No; forget all that—too dangerous. They may know all about Seaton's friends and Mrs. Seaton's family. Our best line is to be humble cogs in Seaton's great machine. We worship him from afar as the world's greatest hero, but we are not of sufficient importance for him to know personally."
"Isn't that carrying caution to extremes?"
"It is not. The only thing that we are certain of concerning these postulated beings is that they know immensely more than we do; therefore our story cannot have even the slightest flaw in it—it must be bottle-tight. So I will be Stewart Donovan—fortunately I haven't my name, initials, or monogram on anything I own—and I am one of the engineers of the Seaton-Crane Co., working on the power-plant installation.
"Seaton may have given them a mental picture of DuQuesne, but I will grow a mustache and beard, and with this story they will never think of connecting Donovan with DuQuesne. You can keep your own name, since neither Seaton nor any of his crowd ever saw or heard of you. You are also an engineer—my technical assistant at the works—and my buddy.
"We struck some highly technical stuff that nobody but Seaton could handle, and nobody had heard anything from him for a long time, so we came out to hunt him up and ask him some questions. You and I came together because we are just like Damon and Pythias. That story will hold water, I believe—do you see any flaws in it?"
"Perhaps not flaws, but one or two things you forgot to mention. How about this ship? I suppose you could call her an improved model, but suppose they are familiar with Fenachrone space-ship construction?"
"We shall not be in this ship. If, as we are assuming, Seaton and his new friends were the star actors in the late drama, those friends certainly have mentalities and apparatus of high caliber and they would equally certainly recognize this vessel. I had that in mind when I shoved the Violet off."
"Then you will have the Violet to explain—an Osnomian ship. However, the company could have imported a few of them, for runabout work, since Seaton left. It would be quicker than building them, at that, since they already have all the special tools and stuff on Osnome."
"You're getting the idea. Anything else?"
"All this is built around the supposition that he will not be there when we arrive. Suppose he is there?"
"The chances are a thousand to one that he will be gone somewhere, exploring—he never did like to stick around in any one place. And even in the remote possibility that he should be on the planet, he certainly will not be at the dock when we land, so the story is still good. If he should be there, we shall simply have to arrange matters so that our meeting him face to face is delayed until after we have got what we want; that's all."
"All right; I've got it down solid."
"Be sure that you have. Above all, remember the mental attitude toward Seaton—hero worship. He is not only the greatest man that Earth ever produced; he is the king-pin of the entire Galaxy, and we rate him just a hair below the Almighty. Think that thought with every cell of your brain. Concentrate on it with all your mind. Feel it—act it—really believe it until I tell you to quit."
"I'll do that. Now what?"
"Now we hunt up the Violet, transfer to her, and set this cruiser adrift on a course toward Earth. And while I think of it, we want to be sure not to use any more power than the Skylark could, anywhere near the Green System, and cover up anything that looks peculiar about the power plant. We're not supposed to know anything about the five-light drive of the Fenachrone, you know."
"But suppose that you can't find the Violet, or that she has been destroyed?"
"In that case we'll go to Osnome and steal another one just like her. But I'll find her—I know her exact course and velocity, we have ultrarange detectors, and her automatic instruments and machinery make her destructionproof."
DuQuesne's chronometers were accurate, his computations were sound, and his detectors were sensitive enough to have revealed the presence of a smaller body than the Violet at a distance vastly greater than the few millions of miles which constituted the unavoidable error. Therefore the Osnomian cruiser was found without trouble and the transfer was effected without untoward incident.
Then for days the Violet was hurled at full acceleration toward the center of the Galaxy. Long before the Green System was reached, however, the globular cruiser was swung off her course and, mad acceleration reversed, was put into a great circle, so that she would approach her destination from the direction of our own solar system. Slower and slower she drove onward, the bright green star about which she was circling resolving itself first into a group of bright-green points and finally into widely spaced, tiny green suns.
Although facing the completely unknown and about to do battle, with their wits certainly, and with their every weapon possibly, against overwhelming odds, neither man showed or felt either nervousness or disorganization. Loring was a fatalist. It was DuQuesne's party; he was merely the hired help. He would do his best when the time came to do something; until that time came there was nothing to worry about.
DuQuesne, on the other hand, was the repose of conscious power. He had laid his plans as best he could with the information then at hand. If conditions changed he would change those plans; otherwise he would drive through with them ruthlessly, as was his wont. In the meantime he awaited he knew not what, poised, cool, and confident.
Since both men were really expecting the unexpected, neither betrayed surprise when something that was apparently a man materialized before them in the air of the control room. His skin was green, as was that of all the inhabitants of the Green System. He was tall and well-proportioned, according to Earthly standards, except for his head, which was overlarge and particularly massive above the eyes and backward from the ears. He was evidently of advanced years, for his face was seamed and wrinkled, and both his long, heavy hair and his yard-long, square-cut beard were a snowy white, only faintly tinged with green.
The Norlaminian projection thickened instantly, with none of the oscillation and "hunting" which had been so noticeable in the one which had visited Skylark Two a few months earlier, for at that comparatively short range the fifth-order keyboard handling it could hold a point, however moving, as accurately as a Terrestrial photographic telescope holds a star. And in the moment of materialization of his projection the aged Norlaminian spoke.
"I welcome you to Norlamin, Terrestrials," spoke the projection. "I suppose that you are close friends of Seaton and Crane, and that you come to learn why they have not communicated with you?"
"I welcome you to Norlamin, Terrestrials," he greeted the two marauders with the untroubled serenity and calm courtesy of his race. "Since you are quite evidently of the same racial stock as our very good friends the doctors Seaton and Crane, and since you are traveling in a ship built by the Osnomians, I assume that you speak and understand the English language which I am employing. I suppose that you are close friends of Seaton and Crane and that you have come to learn why they have not communicated with you of late?"
Self-contained as DuQuesne was, this statement almost took his breath away, squaring almost perfectly as it did with the tale he had so carefully prepared. He did not show his amazed gratification, however, but spoke as gravely and as courteously as the other had done:
"We are very glad indeed to see you, sir; particularly since we know neither the name nor the location of the planet for which we are searching. Your assumptions are correct in every particular save one—"
Self-contained as DuQuesne was, this statement almost took his breath away, squaring almost perfectly as it did with the tale he had so carefully prepared.
"You do not know even the name of Norlamin?" the Green scientist interrupted. "How can that be? Did not Dr. Seaton send the projections of all his party to you upon Earth, and did he not discuss matters with you?"
"I was about to explain that." DuQuesne lied instantly, boldly, and convincingly. "We heard that he had sent a talking, three-dimensional picture of his group to Earth, but after it had vanished all the real information that any one seemed to have obtained was that they were here in the Green System somewhere, but not upon Osnome, and that they had been taught much of science. Mrs. Seaton did most of the talking, I gather, which may account for the dearth of pertinent details.
"Neither my friend Loring, here, nor I—I am Stewart Donovan, by the way—saw the picture, or rather, projection. You assumed that we are Seaton's close friends. We are engineers in his company, but we have not the honor of his personal acquaintance. His scientific knowledge was needed so urgently that it was decided that we should come out here after him, since the chief of construction had heard nothing from him for so long."
"I see." A shadow passed over the seamed green face. "I am very sorry indeed at what I have to tell you. We did not report anything of it to Earth because of the panic that would have ensued. We shall of course send the whole story as soon as we can learn what actually did take place and can deduce therefrom the probable sequence of events yet to occur."
"What's that—an accident? Something happened to Seaton?" DuQuesne snapped. His heart leaped in joy and relief, but his face showed only strained anxiety and deep concern. "He isn't here now? Surely nothing serious could have happened to him."
"Alas, young friend, none of us knows yet what really occurred. It is highly probable, however, that their vessel was destroyed in intergalactic space by forces about which we have as yet been able to learn nothing; forces directed by some intelligence as yet to us unknown. There is a possibility that Seaton and his companions escaped in the vessel you knew as Skylark Two, but so far we have not been able to find them.
"But enough of talking; you are strained and weary and you must rest. As soon as your vessel was detected the beam was transferred to me—the student Rovol, perhaps the closest to Seaton of any of my race—so that I could give you this assurance. With your permission I shall direct upon your controls certain forces which shall so govern your flight that you shall alight safely upon the grounds of my laboratory in a few minutes more than twelve hours of your time, without any further attention or effort upon your part.
"Further explanations can wait until we meet in the flesh. Until that time, my friends, do nothing save rest. Eat and sleep without care or fear, for your flight and your landing shall be controlled with precision. Farewell!"
The projection vanished instantaneously, and Loring expelled his pent-up breath in an explosive sigh.
"Whew! But what a break, chief, what a—"
He was interrupted by DuQuesne, who spoke calmly and quietly, yet insistently: "Yes, it is a singularly fortunate circumstance that the Norlaminians detected us and recognized us; it probably would have required weeks for us to have found their planet unaided." DuQuesne's lightning mind found a way of covering up his companion's betraying exclamation and sought some way of warning him that could not be overheard. "Our visitor was right in saying that we need food and rest badly, but before we eat let us put on the headsets and bring the record of our flight up to date—it will take only a minute or two."
"What's biting you, chief?" thought Loring as soon as the power was on. "We didn't have any—"
"Plenty!" DuQuesne interrupted him viciously. "Don't you realize that they can probably hear every word we say, and that they can see every move we make, even in the dark? In fact, they may be able to read thoughts, for all I know; so think straight from now on, if you never did before! Now let's finish up this record."
He then impressed upon a tape the record of everything that had just happened. They ate. Then they slept soundly—the first really untroubled sleep they had enjoyed for weeks. And at last, exactly as the projection had foretold, the Violet landed without a jar upon the spacious grounds beside the laboratory of Rovol, the foremost physicist of Norlamin.
When the door of the space ship opened, Rovol in person was standing before it, waiting to welcome the voyagers and to escort them to his dwelling. But DuQuesne, pretending a vast impatience, would not be dissuaded from the object of his search merely to satisfy the Norlaminian amenities of hospitality and courtesy. He poured forth his prepared story in a breath, concluding with a flat demand that Rovol tell him everything he knew about Seaton, and that he tell it at once.
"It would take far too long to tell you anything in words," the ancient scientist replied placidly. "In the laboratory, however, I can and will inform you fully in a few minutes concerning everything that has happened."
Utter stranger himself to deception in any form, as was his whole race, Rovol was easily and completely deceived by the consummate acting, both physical and mental, of DuQuesne and Loring. Therefore, as soon as the three had donned the headsets of the wonderfully efficient Norlaminian educator, Rovol gave to the Terrestrial adventurers without reserve his every mental image and his every stored fact concerning Seaton and his supposedly ill-fated last voyage.
Even more clearly than as if he himself had seen them all happen, DuQuesne beheld and understood Seaton's visit to Norlamin, the story of the Fenachrone peril, the building of the fifth-order projector, the demolition of Fenor's space fleet, the revenge-purposed flight of Ravindau the scientist, and the complete volatilization of the Fenachrone planet.
He saw Seaton's gigantic space cruiser Skylark Three come into being and, uranium-driven, speed out into the awesome void of intergalactic space in pursuit of the last survivors of the Fenachrone race. He watched the mighty Three overtake the fleeing vessel, and understood every detail of the epic engagement that ensued, clear to its cataclysmic end. He watched the victorious battleship speed on and on, deeper and deeper into the intergalactic void, until she began to approach the limiting range of even the stupendous fifty-order projector by means of which he knew the watching had been done.
Then, at the tantalizing limit of visibility, something began to happen; something at the very incomprehensibility of which DuQuesne strained both mind and eye, exactly as had Rovol when it had taken place so long before. The immense bulk of the Skylark disappeared behind zone after impenetrable zone of force, and it became increasingly evident that from behind those supposedly impervious and impregnable shields Seaton was waging a terrific battle against some unknown opponent, some foe invisible even to fifth-order vision.
For nothing was visible—nothing, that is, save the released energies which, leaping through level after level, reached at last even to the visible spectrum. Yet forces of such unthinkable magnitude were warring there that space itself was being deformed visibly, moment by moment. For a long time the space strains grew more and more intense, then they disappeared instantly. Simultaneously the Skylark's screens of force went down and she was for an instant starkly visible before she exploded into a vast ball of appallingly radiant, flaming vapor.
In that instant of clear visibility, however, Rovol's mighty mind had photographed every salient visible feature of the great cruiser of the void. Being almost at the limit of range of the projector, details were of course none too plain; but certain things were evident. The human beings were no longer aboard; the little lifeboat that was Skylark Two was no longer in her spherical berth; and there were unmistakable signs of a purposeful and deliberate departure.
"And," Rovol spoke aloud as he removed the headset, "although we searched minutely and most carefully all the surrounding space we could find nothing tangible. From these observations it is all too plain that Seaton was attacked by some intelligence wielding dirigible forces of the sixth order; that he was able to set up a defensive pattern; that his supply of power-uranium was insufficient to cope with the attacking forces; and that he took the last desperate means of escaping from his foes by rotating Skylark Two into the unknown region of the fourth dimension."
DuQuesne's stunned mind groped for a moment in an amazement akin to stupefaction, but he recovered quickly and decided upon his course.
"Well, what are you doing about it?" he snapped.
"We have done and are doing everything possible for us, in our present state of knowledge and advancement, to do," Rovol replied placidly. "We sent out forces, as I told you, which obtained and recorded all the phenomena to which they were sensitive. It is true that a great deal of data escaped them, because the primary impulses originated in a level beyond our present knowledge, but the fact that we cannot understand it has only intensified our interest in the problem. It shall be solved. After its solution we shall know what steps to take and those steps shall then be taken."
"Have you any idea how long it will take to solve the problem?"
"Not the slightest. Perhaps one lifetime, perhaps many—who knows? However, rest assured that it shall be solved, and that the condition shall be dealt with in the manner which shall best serve the interest of humanity as a whole."
"But good heavens!" exclaimed DuQuesne. "In the meantime, what of Seaton and Crane?" He was now speaking his true thoughts. Upon this, his first encounter, he could in nowise understand the deep, calm, timeless trend of mind of the Norlaminians; not even dimly could he grasp or appreciate the seemingly slow but inexorably certain method in which they pursued relentlessly any given line of research to its ultimate conclusion.
"If it should be graven upon the sphere that they shall pass they may—and will—pass in all tranquility, for they know full well that it was not in idle gesture that the massed intellect of Norlamin assured them that their passing should not be in vain. You, however, youths of an unusually youthful and turbulent race, could not be expected to view the passing of such a one as Seaton from our own mature viewpoint."
"I'll tell the universe that I don't look at things the way you do!" barked DuQuesne scathingly. "When I go back to Earth—if I go—I shall at least have tried. I've got a life-sized picture of myself standing idly by while some one else tries for seven hundred years to decipher the indecipherable!"
"There speaks the impetuousness of youth," the old man chided. "I have told you that we have proved that at present we can do nothing whatever for the occupants of Skylark Two. Be warned, my rash young friend; do not tamper with powers entirely beyond your comprehension."
"Warning be damned!" DuQuesne snorted. "We're shoving off. Come on, Loring—the quicker we get started the better our chance of getting something done. You'll be willing to give me the exact bearing and the distance, won't you, Rovol?"
"We shall do more than that, son," the Green patriarch replied, while a shadow came over his wrinkled visage. "Your life is your own, to do with as you see fit. You have chosen to go in search of your friends, scorning the odds against you. But before I tell you what I have in mind, I must try once more to make you see that the courage which dictates the useless sacrifice of a life ceases to be courage at all, but becomes sheerest folly.
"Since we have had sufficient power several of our youths have been studying the fourth dimension. They rotated many inanimate objects into that region, but could recover none of them. Instead of waiting until they had derived the fundamental equations governing such phenomena they rashly visited that region in person, in a vain attempt to achieve a short cut to knowledge. Not one of them has come back.
"Now I declare to you in all solemnity that the quest you wish to undertake, involving as it does not only that entirely unknown region but also the equally unknown sixth order of vibrations, is to you at present utterly impossible. Do you still insist upon going?"
"We certainly do. You may as well save your breath."
"Very well; so be it. Frankly, I had but little hope of swerving you from your purpose by reason. But before you go we shall supply you with every resource at our command which may in any way operate to increase your infinitesimal chance of success. We shall build for you a duplicate of Seaton's own Skylark Three, equipped with every device known to our science, and we shall instruct you fully in the use of those devices before you set out."
"But the time—" DuQuesne began to object.
"A matter of hours only," Rovol silenced him. "True, it took us some little time to build Skylark Three, but that was because it had not been done before. Every force employed in her construction was of course recorded, and to reproduce her in every detail, without attention or supervision, it is necessary only to thread this tape, thus, into the integrator of my master keyboard. The actual construction will of course take place in the area of experiment, but you may watch it, if you wish, in this visiplate. I must make a short series of observations at this time. I will return in ample time to instruct you in the operation of the vessel and of everything in it."
In stunned amazement the two men stared into the visiplate, so engrossed in what they saw there that they scarcely noticed the departure of the aged scientist. For before their eyes there had already sprung into being an enormous structure of laced and latticed members of purple metal, stretching over two miles of level plain. While it was very narrow for its length, yet its fifteen hundred feet of diameter dwarfed into insignificance the many outlandish structures near by, and under their staring eyes the vessel continued to take form with unbelievable rapidity. Gigantic girders appeared in place as though by magic; skin after skin of thick, purple inoson was welded on; all without the touch of a hand, without the thought of a brain, without the application of any visible force.
"Now you can say it, Doll; there's no spy ray on us here. What a break—what a break!" exulted DuQuesne. "The old fossil swallowed it bodily, hook, line, and sinker!"
"It may not be so good, though, at that, chief, in one way. He's going to watch us, to help us out if we get into a jam, and with that infernal telescope, or whatever it is, the Earth is right under his nose."
"Simpler than taking milk away from a blind kitten," the saturnine chemist gloated. "We'll go out to where Seaton went, only farther—out beyond the reach of his projector. There, completely out of touch with him, we'll circle around the Galaxy back to Earth and do our stuff. Easier than dynamiting fish in a bucket—the old sap's handing me everything I want, right on a silver platter!"
