Smith, E E 'Doc' - Skylark 3 - Skylark Of Valeron

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SKYLARK OF VALERON

By Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.

1 DOCTOR DUQUESNE'S RUSE

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 Tellurians and a Fenachrone-Dr. Marc C. DuQuesne

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.

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. Nor was this 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 rods of pure energy, hurling the luckless wight 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; or 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

-1-

as he studied frowningly the Fenachrone engineer. As usual, that worthy was

half inside

the power plant, coaxing those mighty engines 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

-2-

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 be 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

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

name-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.

Onemilligram

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,

-3-

concentrating upon the several small portions which contained knowledge of

most

immediate concern. Finally 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, and stared deep into

those

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 a 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 a 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. The dummies will

be in sole

charge, and our prisoner will be playing the part I've laid out for him.

-4-

"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 hell 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 spare 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

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SKYLARKOFVALERONByEdwardE.Smith,Ph.D.Copyright,1934,1935,byStreet&SmithPublications,Inc.Copyright,1949,byEdwardE.Smith,Ph.D.1DOCTORDUQUESNE'SRUSEDayafterdayasphericalspace-shipofArenaktorethroughtheillimitablereachesoftheinterstellarvoid.ShehadoncebeenawarvesselofOsnome;now,rechristenedtheViolet,she...

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Smith, E E 'Doc' - Skylark 3 - Skylark Of Valeron

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