Smith, E E 'Doc' - Skylark 4 - Skylark Duquesne

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-1-

SKYLARK DUQUESNE

By Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.

1. s.o.s.

APPEARANCES are deceiving. A polished chunk of metal that shines like a Christmas-

tree ornament may hold-and release-energy to destroy a city. A seed is quite another

order of being to the murderous majesty of a toppling tree. A match flame can become a

holocaust.

And the chain of events that can unseat the rulers of galaxies can begin in a cozy living

room, before a hearth ....

Outwardly, the comfortable (if somewhat splendidly furnished) living room of the home of

the Richard Ballinger Seatons of Earth presented a peaceful scene. Peaceful? It was

sheerly pastoral! Seaton and Dorothy, his spectacularly auburn-haired wife, sat on a

davenport, holding hands. A fire of pine logs burned slowly, crackling occasionally and

sending sparks against the fine bronze screen of the fireplace. Richard Ballinger Seaton

Junior lay on the rug, trying doggedly, silently, and manfully, if unsuccessfully, to wriggle

toward those entrancing flames.

Inwardly, however, it was very much otherwise. Dorothy's normally pleasant-as well as

beautiful-face wore a veritable scowl.

The dinner they had just eaten had been over two hours late; wherefore not one single

item of it had been fit to feed to a pig. Furthermore, and worse, Dick was not relaxed

and was not paying any attention to her at all. He was still wound up tight; was still

concentrating on the multitude of messages driving into his brain through the button in his

left ear-messages of such urgency of drive that she herself could actually read them,

even though she was wearing no apparatus whatever.

She reached up, twitched the button out of his ear, and tossed it onto a table. "Will you

please lay off of that stuff for a minute, Dick?" she demanded. "I'm fed up to the eyeballs

with this business of you killing yourself with all time work and no time sleep. You never

had any such horrible black circles under your eyes before and you're getting positively

scrawny. You've got to quit it: Can't you let somebody else carry some of the load?

Delegate some authority?"

"I'm delegating all I possibly can already, Red-Top." Seaton absently rubbed his ear.

-2-

Until Dorothy had flipped it away, the button had been carrying to him a transcription of

the taped reports of more than one hundred Planetary Observers from the planet of

Norlamin, each with the IQ of an Einstein and the sagacity of an owl. The last report had

had to do with plentiful supplies of X metal that had been turned up on a planet of

Omicron Eridani, and the decision to dispatch a fleet of cargo-carrying ships to fetch

them away.

But he admitted grudgingly to himself that that particular decision had already been

made. His wife was a nearer problem. Paying full attention to her now, he put his arm

around her and squeezed.

"Converting a whole planet practically all at once to use fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-order

stuff is a job of work, believe me. It's all so new and so tough that not too many people

can handle any part of it. It takes brains. And what makes it extra tough is that altogether

too many people who are smart enough to learn it are crooks. Shysters-hoodlers-sticky-

fingers generally. But I think we're just about over the hump. I wouldn't wonder if these

Norlaminian `Observers'-snoopers, really-from the Country of Youth will turn out to be the

answer to prayer."

"They'd better," she said, darkly. "At least, something had better."

"Besides, if you think I look like the wrath of God, take a good look at Mart sometime.

He's having more grief than I am."

"I already have; he looks like a refugee from a concentration camp. Peggy was

screaming about it this morning, and we're both going to just simply . . ."

What the girls intended to do was not revealed, for at. that moment there appeared in

the air before them the projected simulacra of eight green-skinned, more-or-less-human

men; the men with whom they had worked so long; the ablest thinkers of the Central

System.

There was majestic Fodan, the Chief of the Five of Norlamin; there was white-bearded

Orlon, the First of Astronomy; Rovol, the First of Rays; Astron, the First of Energy;

Drasnik, the First of Psychology; Satrazon and Castor, the Firsts of Chemistry and of

Mechanism, respectively; and-in some ways not the least-there was that powerhouse of

thought Sacner Carfon the two thousand three hundred forty-sixth: the hairless, almost

porpoise-like Chief of the Council of the watery planet Dasor. They were not present in

the flesh. But their energy projections were as seemingly solid as Seaton's own tall, lean

body.

"We come, Overlord of the System, upon a matter of-" the Chief of the Five began.

-3-

"Don't call me `Overlord'. Please." Seaton broke in, with grim foreboding in his eyes while

Dorothy stiffened rigidly in the circle of his arms. Both knew that those masters of

thought could scarcely be prevailed upon to leave their own worlds even via projection.

For all eight of them to come this far-almost halfway across the galaxy!-meant that

something was very wrong indeed.

"I've told you a dozen times, not only I ain't no Overlord but I don't want to be and won't

be. I don't like to play God-I simply have not got what it takes."

" `Coordinator', then, which is of course a far better term for all except the more primitive

races," Fodan went imperturbably on. "We have told you, youth, not a dozen times, but

once, which should have been sufficient, that your young and vigorous race possesses

qualities that our immensely older peoples no longer have. You, as the ablest individual of

your race, are uniquely qualified to serve total civilization. Thus, whenever your services

become necessary, you will so serve. Your services have again become necessary.

Orlon, in whose province the matter primarily lies, will explain."

Seaton nodded to himself. It was going to be bad, all right, he thought as the First of

Astronomy took over.

"You, friend Richard, with some help from us, succeeded in encapsulating a group of

malignant immaterial entities, including the disembodied personality of your fellow-

scientist Doctor Marc C. DuQuesne, in a stasis of time. This capsule, within which no

time whatever could or can elapse, was launched into space with a linear acceleration of

approximately three times ten to the twelfth centimeters per second squared. It was

designed and powered to' travel at that acceleration for something over one hundred

thousand million Tellurian years; at the end of which time it was to have been rotated

through the fourth dimension into an unknown and unknowable location in normal three-

dimensional space."

"That's right," Sexton said. "And it will. It'll do just exactly that. Those pure-intellectual

louses are gone for good; and so is Blackie DuQuesne."

"You err, youth," corrected the Norlaminian. "You did not allow us time sufficient to

consider and to evaluate all the many factors involved. Rigid analysis and extended

computation show that the probability approaches unity that the capsule of stasis will,

almost certainly within one Tellurian year of its launching and highly probably in much less

time, encounter celestial matter of sufficient density to volatilize its uranium power bars.

This event will of course allow the stasis of time to collapse and the imprisoned

immaterial entities will be liberated; in precisely the same condition as in the instant of

their encapsulation."

Dorothy Sexton gasped. Even her husband showed that he was shaken. DuQuesne and

-4-

the Immortals free? But

"But it can't!" he fairly yelled the protest. "It'll dodge-it's built to dodge anything that

dense!"

"At ordinary-or even extraordinary-velocities, yes," the ancient sage agreed, unmoved.

"Its speed of reaction is great, yes; a rather small fraction of a trillionth of a second. That

interval of time, however, while small, is very large indeed relative to zero. Compute for

yourself, please, what distance that capsule will in theory traverse during that space of

time at the end of only one third of one of your years."

Sexton strode across the room and uncovered a machine that resembled somewhat a

small, unpretentious desk calculator. *He picked up a helmet and thought into it briefly;

then stared. appalled at the figure that appeared on a tape.

[* Dorothy Sexton was highly averse to having the appearance of her living room ruined

by office equipment. Sexton, however, was living and working under such high tension

that he had to have almost instant access to the Valeron's Brain, at any time of the day

or night or wherever he might be. Hence this compromise-inconspicuous machines, each

direct-connected to the cubic mile of ultra-miniaturization that was the Brain. E. E. S.]

"My-aunt's-cat's-kitten's-pants-buttons," he said, slowly. "It'd've been smarter, maybe,

to've put 'em in orbit around a planetless sun .... And I don't suppose there's a

Chinaman's chance of catching 'em again that same way."

"No. Those minds are competent," agreed the Norlaminian. "Only one point is clear. You

must again activate the Skylark of Valeron and again wear its sixth-order controller,

since we know of no other entity who either-can wear it or should. We eight are here to

confer and, on the basis of the few data now available, to plan."

Sexton scowled in concentration for two long minutes.

It was a measure of the strain that had been working on him that it took that long. As he

had said, he was no God, and didn't want to be. He had not gone looking for either

conquest or glory. One thing at a time . . . but that "one thing" had successively led him

across a galaxy, into another dimension, through many a hard and desperate fight

against some of the most keen-honed killers of a universe.

His gray eyes hardened. Of all those killers, it was Blackie DuQuesne who posed the

greatest threat-to civilization, to Sexton himself, and above all to his wife, Dorothy.

DuQuesne at large was deadly.

"All right," he snapped at last. "If that's all that's in the wood, I suppose that's the way it'll

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-1-SKYLARKDUQUESNEByEdwardE.Smith,Ph.D.Copyright1965byGalaxyPublicationCorporation1.s.o.s.APPEARANCESaredeceiving.ApolishedchunkofmetalthatshineslikeaChristmas-treeornamentmayhold-andrelease-energytodestroyacity.Aseedisquiteanotherorderofbeingtothemurderousmajestyofatopplingtree.Amatchflamecanbecome...

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Smith, E E 'Doc' - Skylark 4 - Skylark Duquesne

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