I.
Day after day a spherical space ship of arenak tore through the illimitable reaches of the interstellar void. She had once been a war vessel of Osnome; now, rechristened the Violet, she was bearing two Terrestrials and a Fenachrone—Dr. Marc C. DuQuesne of World Steel, "Baby Doll" Loring, his versatile and accomplished assistant, and the squat and monstrous engineer of the flagship Y427W—from the Green System toward the Solar System of the Fenachrone. The mid-point of the stupendous flight had long since been passed; the Violet had long been "braking down" with a negative acceleration of five times the velocity of light.
Much to the surprise of both DuQuesne and Loring, their prisoner had not made the slightest move against them. He had thrown all the strength of his supernaturally powerful body and all the resources of his gigantic brain into the task of converting the atomic motors of the Violet into the space-annihilating drive of his own race. This drive, affecting alike as it does every atom of substance within the radius of action of the power bar, entirely nullifies the effect of acceleration, so that the passengers feel no motion whatever, even when the craft is accelerating at maximum—and that maximum is almost three times as great as the absolutely unbearable full power of the Skylark of Space.
The engineer had not shirked a single task, however arduous. And, once under way, he had nursed those motors along with every artifice known to his knowing clan; he had performed such prodigies of adjustment and tuning as to raise by a full two per cent their already inconceivable maximum acceleration. And this was not all. After the first moment of rebellion, he did not even once attempt to bring to bear the almost irresistible hypnotic power of his eyes; the immense, cold, ruby-lighted projectors of mental energy which, both men knew, were awful weapons indeed. Nor did he even once protest against the attractors which were set upon his giant limbs.
Immaterial bands, these, whose slight force could not be felt unless the captor so willed. But let the prisoner make one false move, and those tiny beams of force would instantly become copper-driven tornadoes of pure energy, hurling the luckless body against the wall of the control room and holding him motionless there, in spite of the most terrific exertions of his mighty body.
DuQuesne lay at ease in his seat; rather, scarcely touching the seat, he floated at ease in the air above it. His black brows were drawn together, his black eyes were hard as he studied frowningly the Fenachrone engineer. As usual, that worthy was half inside the power plant, coaxing those mighty motors to do even better than their prodigious best.
Feeling his companion's eyes upon him, the doctor turned his inscrutable stare upon Loring, who had been studying his chief even as DuQuesne had been studying the outlander. Loring's cherubic countenance was as pinkly innocent as ever, his guileless blue eyes as calm and untroubled; but DuQuesne, knowing the man as he did, perceived an almost imperceptible tension and knew that the killer also was worried.
"What's the matter, Doll?" The saturnine scientist smiled mirthlessly. "Afraid I'm going to let that ape slip one over on us?"
"Not exactly." Loring's slight tenseness, however, disappeared. "It's your party, and anything that's all right with you tickles me half to death. I have known all along you knew that that bird there isn't working under compulsion. You know as well as I do that nobody works that way because they're made to. He's working for himself, not for us, and I had just begun to wonder if you weren't getting a little late in clamping down on him."
"Not at all—there are good and sufficient reasons for this apparent delay. I am going to clamp down on him in exactly"—DuQuesne glanced at his wrist watch—"fourteen minutes. But you're keen—you've got a brain that really works—maybe I'd better give you the whole picture."
DuQuesne, approving thoroughly of his iron-nerved, cold-blooded assistant, voiced again the thought he had expressed once before, a few hours out from Earth; and Loring answered as he had then, in almost the same words—words which revealed truly the nature of the man:
"Just as you like. Usually I don't want to know anything about anything, because what a man doesn't know he can't be accused of spilling. Out here, though, maybe I should know enough about things to act intelligently in case of a jam. But you're the doctor—if you'd rather keep it under your hat, that's all right with me, too. As I've said before, it's your party."
"Yes; he certainly is working for himself." DuQuesne scowled blackly. "Or, rather, he thinks he is. You know I read his mind back there, while he was unconscious. I didn't get all I wanted to, by any means—he woke up too soon—but I got a lot more than he thinks I did.
"They have detector zones, 'way out in space, all around their world, that nothing can get past without being spotted; and patrolling those zones there are scout ships, carrying armament to stagger the imagination. I intend to take over one of those patrol ships and by means of it to capture one of their first-class battleships. As a first step I'm going to hypnotize that ape and find out absolutely everything that he knows. When I get done with him, he'll do exactly what I tell him to, and nothing else."
"Hypnotize him?" Curiosity was awakened in even Loring's incurious mind at this unexpected development. "I didn't know that was one of your specialties."
"It wasn't until recently, but the Fenachrone are all past masters, and I learned about it from his brain. Hypnosis is a wonderful science. The only drawback is that his mind is a lot stronger than mine. However, I have in my kit, among other things, a tube of something that will cut him down to my size."
"Oh, I see—pentabarb." With this hint, Loring's agile mind grasped instantly the essentials of DuQuesne's plan. "That's why you had to wait so long, then, to take steps. Pentabarb kills in twenty-four hours, and he can't help us steal the ship after he's dead."
"Right! One milligram, you know, will make a gibbering idiot out of any human being; but I imagine that it will take three or four times that much to soften him down to the point where I can work on him the way I want to. As I don't know the effects of such heavy dosages, since he's not really human, and since he must be alive when we go through their screens, I decided to give him the works exactly six hours before we are due to hit their outermost detector. That's about all I can tell you right now; I'll have to work out the details of seizing the ship after I have studied his brain more thoroughly."
Precisely at the expiration of the fourteen allotted minutes, DuQuesne tightened the attractor beams, which had never been entirely released from their prisoner; thus pinning him helplessly, immovably, against the wall of the control room. He then filled a hypodermic syringe and moved the mechanical educator nearer the motionless, although violently struggling, creature. Then, avoiding carefully the baleful outpourings of those flame-shot volcanoes of hatred that were the eyes of the Fenachrone, he set the dials of the educator, placed the headsets, and drove home the needle's hollow point. One milligram of the diabolical compound was absorbed, without appreciable lessening of the blazing defiance being hurled along the educator's wires. One and one half—two milligrams—three—four—five—
That inhumanly powerful mind at last began to weaken, but it became entirely quiescent only after the administration of the seventh milligram of that direly potent drug.
"Just as well that I allowed only six hours." DuQuesne sighed in relief as he began to explore the labyrinthine intricacies of the frightful brain now open to his gaze. "I don't see how any possible form of life can hold together long under seven milligrams of that stuff."
He fell silent and for more than an hour he studied the brain of the engineer, concentrating upon the several small portions which contained knowledge of most immediate concern. Then he removed the headsets.
"His plans were all made," he informed Loring coldly, "and so are mine, now. Bring out two full outfits of clothing—one of yours and one of mine. Two guns, belts, and so on. Break out a bale of waste, the emergency candles, and all that sort of stuff you can find."
DuQuesne turned to the Fenachrone, who stood utterly lax, inanimate, and stared deep into those now dull and expressionless eyes.
"You," he directed crisply, "will build at once, as quickly as you can, two dummies which will look exactly like Loring and myself. They must be lifelike in every particular, with faces capable of expressing the emotions of surprise and of anger, and with right arms able to draw weapons upon signal—my signal. Also upon signal their heads and bodies will turn, they will leap toward the center of the room, and they will make certain noises and utter certain words, the records of which I shall prepare. Go to it!"
"Don't you need to control him through the headsets?" asked Loring curiously.
"I may have to control him in detail when we come to the really fine work, later on," DuQuesne replied absently. "This is more or less in the nature of an experiment, to find out whether I have him thoroughly under control. During the last act he'll have to do exactly what I shall have told him to do, without supervision, and I want to be absolutely certain that he will do it without a slip."
"What's the plan—or maybe it's something that is none of my business?"
"No; you ought to know it, and I've got time to tell you about it now. Nothing material can possibly approach the planet of the Fenachrone without being seen, as it is completely surrounded by never less than two full-sphere detector screens; and to make assurance doubly sure our engineer there has installed a mechanism which, at the first touch of the outer screen, will shoot a warning along at tight communicator beam, directly into the receiver of the nearest Fenachrone scout ship. As you already know, the smallest of those scouts can burn this ship out of the ether in less than a second."
"That's a cheerful picture. You still think we can get away?"
"I'm coming to that. We can't possibly get through the detectors without being challenged, even if I tear out all his apparatus, so we're going to use his whole plan, but for our benefit instead of his. Therefore his present hypnotic state and the dummies. When we touch that screen you and I are going to be hidden—well hidden. The dummies will be in sole charge, and our prisoner will be playing the part I have laid out for him.
"The scout ship that he calls will come up to investigate. They will bring apparatus and attractors to bear to liberate the prisoner, and the dummies will try to fight. They will be blown up or burned to cinders almost instantly, and our little playmate will put on his space suit and be taken across to the capturing vessel. Once there, he will report to the commander.
"That officer will think the affair sufficiently serious to report it directly to headquarters. If he doesn't, this ape here will insist upon reporting it to general headquarters himself. As soon as that report is in, we, working through our prisoner here, will proceed to wipe out the crew of the ship and take it over."
"And do you think he'll really do it?" Loring's guileless face showed doubt, his tone was faintly skeptical.
"I know he'll do it!" The chemist's voice was hard. "He won't take any active part—I'm not psychologist enough to know whether I could drive him that far, even drugged, against an unhypnotizable subconscious or not—but he'll be carrying something along that will enable me to do it, easily and safely. But that's about enough of this chin music—we'd better start doing something."
While Loring brought space clothing and weapons, and rummaged through the vessel in search of material suitable for the dummies' fabrication, the Fenachrone engineer worked rapidly at his task. And not only did he work rapidly, he worked skillfully and artistically as well. This artistry should not be surprising, for to such a mentality as must necessarily be possessed by the chief engineer of a first-line vessel of the Fenachrone, the faithful reproduction of anything capable of movement was not a question of art—it was merely an elementary matter of line, form, and mechanism.
Cotton waste was molded into shape, reënforced, and wrapped in leather under pressure. To the bodies thus formed were attached the heads, cunningly constructed of masticated fiber, plastic, and wax. Tiny motors and many small pieces of apparatus were installed, and the completed effigies were dressed and armed.
DuQuesne's keen eyes studied every detail of the startlingly lifelike, almost microscopically perfect, replicas of himself and his traveling companion.
"A good job," he commented briefly.
"Good?" exclaimed Loring. "It's perfect! Why, that dummy would fool my own wife, if I had one—it almost fools me!"
"At least, they're good enough to pass a more critical test than any they are apt to get during this coming incident."
Satisfied, DuQuesne turned from his scrutiny of the dummies and went to the closet in which had been stored the space suit of the captive. To the inside of its front protector flap he attached a small and inconspicuous flat-sided case. He then measured carefully, with a filar micrometer, the apparent diameter of the planet now looming so large beneath them.
"All right, Doll; our time's getting short. Break out our suits and test them, will you, while I give the big boy his final instructions?"
Rapidly those commands flowed over the wires of the mechanical educator, from DuQuesne's hard, keen brain into the now-docile mind of the captive. The Earthly scientist explained to the Fenachrone, coldly, precisely, and in minute detail, exactly what he was to do and exactly what he was to say from the moment of encountering the detector screens of his native planet until after he had reported to his superior officers.
Then the two Terrestrials donned their own armor of space and made their way into an adjoining room, a small armory in which were hung several similar suits and which was a veritable arsenal of weapons.
"We'll hang ourselves up on a couple of these hooks, like the rest of the suits," DuQuesne explained. "This is the only part of the performance that may be even slightly risky, but there is no real danger that they will spot us. That fellow's message to the scout ship will tell them that there are only two of us, and we'll be out there with him, right in plain sight.
"If by any chance they should send a party aboard us they would probably not bother to search the Violet at all carefully, since they will already know that we haven't got a thing worthy of attention; and they would of course suppose us to be empty space suits. Therefore keep your lens shields down, except perhaps for the merest crack to see through, and, above all, don't move a millimeter, no matter what happens."
"But how can you manipulate your controls without moving your hands?"
"I can't; but my hands will not be in the sleeves, but inside the body of the suit—shut up! Hold everything—there's the flash!"
The flying vessel had gone through the zone of feeble radiations which comprised the outer detector screen of the Fenachrone. But though tenuous, that screen was highly efficient, and at its touch there burst into frenzied activity the communicator built by the captive to be actuated by that very impulse. It had been built during the long flight through space, and its builder had thought that its presence would be unnoticed and would remain unsuspected by the Terrestrials.
Now automatically put into action, it laid a beam to the nearest scout ship of the Fenachrone and into that vessel's receptors it passed the entire story of the Violet and her occupants. But DuQuesne had not been caught napping. Reading the engineer's brain and absorbing knowledge from it, he had installed a relay which would flash to his eyes an inconspicuous but unmistakable warning of the first touch of the screen of the enemy. The flash had come—they had penetrated the outer lines of the monstrous civilization of the dread and dreaded Fenachrone.
In the armory DuQuesne's hands moved slightly inside his shielding armor, and out in the control room the dummy that was also, to all outward seeming, DuQuesne moved and spoke. It tightened the controls of the attractors, which had never been entirely released from their prisoner, thus again pinning the Fenachrone helplessly against the wall.
"Just to be sure you don't try to start anything," it explained coldly, in DuQuesne's own voice and tone. "You have done well so far, but I'll run things myself from now on, so that you can't steer us into a trap. Now tell me exactly how to go about getting one of your vessels. After we get it I'll see about letting you go."
"Fools, you are too late!" the prisoner roared exultantly. "You would have been too late, even had you killed me out there in space and had fled at your utmost acceleration. Did you but know it you are as dead, even now—our patrol is upon you!"
The dummy that was DuQuesne whirled, snarling, and its automatic pistol and that of its fellow dummy were leaping out when an awful acceleration threw them flat upon the floor, a magnetic force snatched away their weapons, and a heat ray of prodigious power reduced the effigies to two small piles of gray ash. Immediately thereafter a beam of force from the patrolling cruiser neutralized the attractors bearing upon the captive and, after donning his space suit, he was transferred to the Fenachrone vessel.
The dummy that was DuQuesne whirled, snarling, and its automatic pistol and that of its fellow dummy were leaping out when a magnetic force snatched away their weapons and a heat ray of prodigious power reduced the effigies to two small piles of gray ashes. And DuQuesne, motionless inside his space suit, waited—
Motionless inside his space suit, DuQuesne waited until the airlocks of the Fenachrone vessel had closed behind his erstwhile prisoner; waited until the engineer had told his story to Fenal, his emperor, and to Fenimal, his general in command; waited until the communicator circuit had been broken and the hypnotized, drugged, and already dying creature had turned as though to engage his fellows in conversation. Then only did the saturnine scientist act. His finger closed a circuit, and in the Fenachrone vessel, inside the front protector flap of the discarded space suit, the flat case fell apart noiselessly and from it there gushed forth volume upon volume of colorless and odorless, but intensely lethal, vapor.
"Just like killing goldfish in a bowl." Callous, hard, and cold, DuQuesne exhibited no emotion whatever; neither pity for the vanquished foe nor elation at the perfect working out of his plans. "Just in case some of them might have been wearing suits, for emergencies, I had some explosive copper ready to detonate, but this makes it much better—the explosion might have damaged something we want."
And aboard the vessel of the Fenachrone, DuQuesne's deadly gas diffused with extreme rapidity, and as it diffused, the hellish crew to the last man dropped in their tracks. They died not knowing what had happened to them; died with no thought of even attempting to send out an alarm; died not even knowing that they died.