Smith, E E 'Doc' - The Galaxy Primes

VIP免费

2024-12-03 0 0 658.25KB 82 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

BATTLE RAGES ACROSS SPACE!

The Primes went down, over what had been one of that world's largest cities. The air, the stratosphere, and all

nearby space was full of battling vessels of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the tremendous globular

spaceships of the invading Dilipics down to the tiny, one-man jet-fighters of the Arpalones.

The Dilipics were using projectile weapons only - ranging in size from heavy machine guns up to 75-millimetre

quick-firing rifles. They were also launching thousands of guided missiles of fantastic speed and of tremendous

explosive power.

Each defending Arpalone vessel, depending upon its type and class, carried from four up to a hundred

burnished-metal reflectors some four feet in diameter, each with a small black device at its optical centre and

each pouring out a tight beam of highly effective energy. Whenever one struck a Dilipic ship or plane

everything in its path flared almost instantly into vapour and the beam glared incandescently.

The invading task-force was arranged hi a whirling, swirling, almost cylindrical cone, like a tornado. Each

Dilipic unit seemed madly, suicidally determined that nothing would get through that furious wall to interfere

with whatever it was that was coming down from space to the ground through the relatively quiet 'eye' of the

pseudo-hurricane.

On the other hand, the Arpalones were madly, suicidally determined to break through that vortex wall. Group

after group of jet-fighters came diving in. Occasionally, their combined blasts made enough of an opening for

the centre fighter to get through. Once inside, the pilot stood his little stubby-winged craft squarely on her tail,

opened his projectors to absolute maximum power and spread, and climbed straight up ...

THE GALAXY PRIMES - a superb novel of conflict and high adventure in the depths of space by E. E. 'Doc' Smith,

world-famous creator of the epic LENSMAN and SKYLARK series (both avail' able in Panther Science Fiction).

Also by E. E. 'Doc' Smith in Panther Science Fiction

Spacehounds oflPC Subspace Explorers*

The LENSMAN series

Triplanetary First Lensman Galactic Patrol Grey Lensman Second Stage Lensmen Children of the Lens Masters of

the Vortex

The SKYLARK series

The Skylark of Space Skylark Three Skylark of Valeron Skylark DuQuesne

*Forthcoming

E. E. 'Doc' Smith

The Galaxy Primes

Panther

Granada Publishing Limited

First published in Great Britain in 1975 by

Panther Books Ltd

Frogmore, St Albans, Herts AL2 2NF

Chaucer Press) Ltd Bungay, Suffolk Set in Linotype Times

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired

out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that

in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the

subsequent purchaser. This book is published at a net price and is supplied subject to the Publishers Association

Standard Conditions of Sale registered under the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1956.

THE GALAXY PRIMES

ONE

Her hair was a brilliant green. So was her spectacularly filled halter. So were her tight short-shorts, her lipstick, and

the lacquer on her finger- and toe-nails. As she strolled into the Main of the starship, followed hesitantly by the other

girl, she drove a mental probe at the black-haired, powerfully-built man seated at the instrument-banked console.

Blocked.

Then at the other, slenderer man who was rising to his feet from the pilot's bucket seat. His guard was partially down;

he was telepathing a pleasant if somewhat reserved greeting to both newcomers.

She turned to her companion and spoke aloud. 'So these are the system's best.' The emphasis was somewhere

between condescension and sneer. 'Not much to choose between, I'd say ... 'port me a tenth-piece, Clee? Heads, I take

the tow-head.'

She flipped the coin dexterously. 'Heads it is, Lola, so I get Jim - James James James the Ninth himself. You have

the honor of pairing with Clee - or should I say His Learnedness Right the Honorable Director Doctor Cleander

Simmsworth Garlock, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Science, Prime Operator, President and First Fellow of the

Galaxian Society, First Fellow of the Gunther Society, Fellow of the Institute of Paraphysics, of the Institute of

Nuclear Physics, of the College of Mathematics, of the Congress of Psiontists, and of all the other top-bracket brain-

gangs you ever heard of. Also, for your information, his men have given him a couple of informal degrees - P.D.Q.

and S.O.B.'

The big psiontist's expression of saturnine, almost contemptuous amusement had not changed; his voice came flat

and cold. 'The less you say, Doctor Bellamy, the better. Bitchy, swellheaded women give me an acute rectal pain.

Pitching your curves over all the vizzies in space got you aboard, but it won't get you a thing from here on. And for

your information, Doctor Bellamy, one more crack like that and I take you over my knee and blister your backside.'

'Try it, you clumsy ape!' she jeered. 'That I want to see -

any time you want to get both arms broken at the elbows!'

'Now's as good a time as any. I like your spirit, but I can't say a thing for your judgment.' He got up and started

purposefully toward her, but both noncombatants came between.

'Hold it, Clee!' James protested, both hands against the heavier man's chest. 'What the hell kind of show is that to put

on?' And simultaneously:

'Belle! For godsake - picking a fight already, and with nobody knows how many million people looking onl You

know as well as I do that we may have to spend the rest of our lives together, so act like civilized beings - please -

both of you! And don't...'

'Nobody's watching this but us,' Garlock interrupted. 'When pussy there started using her claws I cut the gun.'

'That's what you think,' James said sharply, 'but Fatso and his number one girl friend are coming in on the tight

beam.'

'Oh?' Garlock whirled toward the hitherto dark and silent three-dimensional communications instrument. The face of

a bossy-looking woman was already bright.

'Garlock! How dare you try to cut Chancellor Ferber off?' she demanded. Her voice was deep-pitched, blatant with

authority. 'Here you are, sir.'

The woman's face shifted to one side and a man's appeared - a face to justify in full his nickname.

'"Fatso," eh?' Chancellor Ferber snarled. Pale eyes glared from the fat face. That costs you exactly one thousand

credits, James."

'How much will this cost me, Fatso?' Garlock asked.

'Five thousand - and, since nobody can call me that deliberately, demotion three grades and probation for three years.

Make a note, Miss Foster.'

'Noted sir.'

'Still sure we aren't going anywhere,' Garlock said. What a brain!'

'Sure I'm sure!' Ferber gloated. 'In a couple of hours I'm going to buy your precious starship in as junk. In the

meantime, whether you like it or not, I'm going to watch your expression while you push all those pretty buttons and

nothing happens.'

'The trouble with you, Fatso,' Garlock said dispassionately, as he opened a drawer and took out a pair of cutting

pliers, 'is

that all your strength is in your glands and none in your brain. There are a lot of things - including a lot of tests - you

know nothing about. How much will you see after I've cut one wire?' 'You wouldn't dare!' the fat man shouted. 'I'd

fire you -blacklist you all over the sys —'

Voice and images died away and Garlock turned to the two women in the Main. He began to smile, but his mental

shield did not weaken.

'You've got a point there, Lola,' he said, going on as though Feber's interruption had not occurred. 'Not that I blame

either Belle or myself. If anything was ever calculated to drive a man nuts, this farce was. As the only female Prime

in the system, Belle should have been in automatically - she had no competition. And to anybody with three brain

cells working the other place lay between you, Lola, and the other three female Ops in the age group.

'But no, Ferber and the rest of the Board - stupidity iiber alles\ - think all us Ops and Primes are psycho and that the

ship will never even lift. So they made a Grand Circus of it. But they succeeded in one thing - with such abysmal

stupidity so rampant I'm getting more and more reconciled to the idea of our not getting back ... at least, not for a

long, long time.' 'Why, they said we had a very good chance...' Lola began. 'Yeah, and they said a lot of even bigger

damn lies than that one. Have you read any of my papers?' 'I'm sorry. I'm not a mathematician.'

'Our motion will be purely at random. If it isn't, 111 eat this whole ship. We won't get back until Jim and I work out

something to steer us with. But they must be wondering no end, outside, what the score is, so I'm willing to call it a

draw -temporarily - and let 'em in again. How about it, Belle?'

'A draw it is - temporarily.' Neither, however, even offered to shake hands.

'Smile pretty, everybody,' Garlock said, and pressed a stud, '...the matter? What's the matter? Oh ... the worried voice

of the System's ace newscaster came in. 'Power failure already1)'

'No.' Garlock replied. 'I figured we had a couple of minutes of privacy coming, if you can understand the meaning of

the word. Now all four of us tell everybody who is watching or

listening au revoir or goodbye, whichever it may turn out to be.' He reached for the switch.

'Wait a minute!' the newscaster demanded. 'Leave it on until the last poss —' His voice broke off sharply.

Turn it back on!' Belle ordered. . 'No.' 'Scared?'

'Exactly. I'm scared purple. So would you be, if you had three brain cells working in that gloryhound's head of yours.

Get set, everybody, and we'll take off.'

'Stop it, both of you!' Lola exclaimed. 'Where do you want us to sit, and do we strap down?'

'You sit here; Belle at that plate beside Jim. Yes, strap down. There probably won't be any shock, and we should land

right side up, but there's no sense in taking chances. Sure your stuff's all aboard?' 'Yes, it's in our rooms.'

The four secured themselves; the two men checked their instruments for the dozenth time. The pilot donned his

scanner. The ship lifted effortlessly, noiselessly. Through the atmosphere; through and far beyond the stratosphere. It

stopped. 'Ready, Clee?' James licked his lips. 'As ready as I ever will be, I guess. Shoot." The pilots's right hand

moved unenthusiastically toward a red button on his panel ... slowed ... stopped. He stared into his scanner at Earth

far below.

'Hit it, Jim!' Oarlock snapped. 'Hit it, for godsake, before we all lose our nerve!'

James stabbed convulsively at the button, and in the very instant of contact - instantaneously, without a fractional

microsecond of time-lapse - their familiar surroundings disappeared. Without any sensation of motion, of

displacement, or of the passage of any time whatsoever, the planet beneath them was no longer their familiar Earth.

The plates showed no familiar stars nor patterns of heavenly bodies. The brightly-shining sun was very evidently not

Sol.

'Well, we went somewhere ... but not to Alpha Centauri, not much to our surprise.' James gulped twice; then went on,

speaking almost jauntily now that the attempt had been made and had failed. 'So now it's up to you, Clee, as Director

of 10

Project Gunther and captain of the good ship Pleiades, to boss the more-or-less simple - more, I hope - job of getting

us back to Tellus.'

Science, both physical and paraphysical, had done its best. Gunther's Theorems, which defined the electromagnetic

and electrogravitic parameters pertaining to the annihilation of distance, had been studied, tested, and applied to the

full. So had the Psionic Corollaries - which, while not having the status of paraphysical laws, did allow computation

of the qualities and magnitudes of the stresses required for any given application of the Gunther Effect.

The planning of the starship Pleiades had been difficult in the extreme, its construction almost impossible. While it

was practically a foregone conclusion that any man of the requisite caliber would already be a member of the

Galaxian Society, the three planets and eight satellites were screened, psiontist by psiontist, to select the two

strongest and most versatile of their breed.

These two, Garlock and James, were heads of departments of, and under iron-clad contract to, vast Solar System

Enterprises, Inc., the only concern able and willing to attempt the building of the first starship.

However, Alonzo P. Ferber, Chancellor of S.S.E., would not risk a tenth-piece of the company's money on such a

bird-brained scheme. Himself a Gunther First, he believed implicity that Firsts were in fact tops in Gunther ability;

that these few self-styled 'Operators' and 'Prime Operators' were either charlatans or self-deluded crackpots. Since he

could not feel that so-called 'Operator Field', no such thing did or could exist. No Gunther starship could ever,

possibly, work.

He did loan Garlock and James to the Galaxians, but that was as far as he would go. For salaries and labor, for

research and materials, for trials and for errors; the Society paid and paid and paid.

Thus the starship Pleiades had cost the Galaxian Society almost a thousand million credits.

Garlock and James had worked on the ship since its inception. They were to be of the crew; for over a year it had

been taken for granted that they would be its only crew.

As the Pleiades neared completion, however, it became clearer and clearer that the displacement-control presented

an unsolved, and quite possibly an insoluble, problem. It was mathematically certain that, when the Gunther field

went on, the ship would be displaced instantaneously to some location in space having precisely the Gunther

coordinates required by that particular field. One impeccably rigorous analysis showed that the ship would shift into

the nearest solar system possessing an Earth-type planet - which was believed to be Alpha Centauri and which was

close enough to Sol so that orientation would be automatic and the return to Earth a simple matter.

Since the Gunther Effect did in fact annihilate distance, however, another group of mathematicians, led by Garlock

and James, proved with equal rigor that the point of destination was no more likely to be any one given Gunther

point than any other one of the myriads of billions of equiguntherial points undoubtedly existing throughout our

entire normal space-time continuum.

The two men would go anyway, of course. Carefully-calculated pressures would make them go. It was neither

necesary nor desirable, however, for them to go alone.

Wherefore the planets and satellites were combed again this time to select two women - the two most highly-gifted

psioni-cists in the eighteen-to-twenty-five age group. Thus, if the Pleiades returned successfully to Earth, well and

good. If she did not, the four selectees would found, upon some far-off world, a race much abler than the humanity of

Earth; since eighty-three percent of Earth's dwellers had psionic grades lower than Four. This search, with its

attendant fanfare and studiedly blatant publicity, was so planned and engineered that the selected women did not

arrive at the spaceport until a bare fifteen minutes before the scheduled time of takeoff. Thus it made no difference

whether the women liked the men or not, or vice versa; or whether or not any of them really wanted to make the trip.

Pressures were such that each of them had to go, whether he or she wanted to or not.

'Cut the rope, Jim, and let the old bucket drop,' Garlock said. 'Not too close. Before we make any kind of contact

we'll have to do some organizing. These instruments' - he waved at 12

the console - 'show that ours is the only Operator Field in this whole region of space. Hence, there are no Operators

and no Primes. That means that from now until we get back to Tellus ...'

'// we get back to Tellus,' Belle corrected, sweetly. 'Until we get back to Tellus there will be no Gunthering aboard

this ship ...'

'What?' Belle broke in again. 'Have you lost your mind?' 'There will be little if any lepping, and nothing else at all. At

the table, if we want sugar, we will reach for it or have it passed. We will pick up things, such as cigarettes, with our

fingers. We will carry lighters and use them. When we go from place to place, we will walk. Is that clear?'

'You seem to be talking English,' Belle said, 'but the words don't make sense.'

'I didn't think you were that stupid.' Their eyes locked and held. Then Garlock grinned savagely. 'Okay. You tell her,

Lola, in words of as few syllables as possible.'

'Why, to get used to it, of course,' Lola explained, while Belle glared at Garlock. 'So as not to reveal anything we

don't have to."

'Excellent, Miss Montandon - all monosyllables except two. That should make it clear, even to Miss Bellamy.' He

paused, glancing calmly at Belle's glare, then said, 'In emergencies, of course, anything goes. We will now proceed

with business.'

'One minute, please!' Belle snapped. 'Just why, Lord Director Captain Garlock, are you insisting on oral

communication, when lepping is so much faster and better? It's stupid -reactionary. Don't you ever lep?'

"With Jim, on business, yes; with women, no more than I have to. What I think is nobody's business but mine.' What

a way to run a ship! Or a project!' 'Running this project is my business, not yours; and if there's any one thing in the

entire universe it does not need, it's a female exhibitionist. Besides your obvious qualifications to be one of the Eves

in case of Ultimate Contingency...' He broke off and stared at her, his contemptuous gaze traveling slowly,

dissectingly, from her toes to the topmost wave of her hairdo. 'Forty-two, twenty, forty?' he asked.

'You flatter me.' Her voice was controlled fury. 'Thirty-nine,

twenty-two, thirty-nine. Five-seven. One thirty-five. If any of it's any of your business, which it isn't. You should be

discussing brains and ability, not vital statistics.'

'Brains? Well, yes - as a Prime, you must have a brain. What do you think you're good for on this project? What can

you do?'

'I can do anything any man ever born can do, and do it better!'

'Okay. Compute a Gunther field that will put us two hundred thousand feet directly above the peak of that mountain.'

That isn't fair and you know it - not that I expected fairness from you. That doesn't take either brains or ability...'

'Oh, no?'

"No. Merely highly specialized training that you know I haven't had. Give me a five-tape course on it and I'll come

closer than either you or James; for a hundred credits a shot.'

'I'll do just that. Something you are supposed to know, then. How would you go about making first contact?'

'Well, I wouldn't do it the way you would - by knocking down the first native I saw, putting my foot on his face, and

yelling, "Bow down, you stupid beasts, and worship me—" '

'Hold it, both of you!' James broke in 'What the hell are you trying to prove? How about cutting out this cat-and-dog

act and getting some work done?'

'You've got a point there,' Garlock admitted, holding his temper by a visible effort. 'Sorry, Jim. Belle, what were you

briefed for?'

'To understudy you.' She, too, fought her temper down, To learn everything about Project Gunther. I have a whole

box of tapes in my room, including advanced Gunther math and first-contact techniques. I'm to study them during all

my on-watch time unless you assign other duties.'

'No matter what your duties may be, you'll have to have time to study. If you don't find what you want in your own

tapes -and you probably won't, since Ferber and his Miss Foster ran the selections - use our library. It's good -

designed to carry on our civilization. Miss Montandon? No, that's ridiculous, the way we're fixed. Lola?'

'I'm to learn how to be Doctor James'...'

'Jim please, Lola,' James said. 'And call him Clee.' 14

'I'd like that.' She smiled winningly. 'And my friends call me "Brownie".'

'I see why they would. It fits like a coat of lacquer.' It did. Her hair was a dark, lustrous brown, as were her eyebrows.

Her eyes were brown. Her skin, too - her dark red playsuit left little to the imagination - was a rich and even brown.

Originally fairly dark, it had been tanned to a more-than-fashionable depth of color by naked sunbathing and by

practically-naked outdoor sports. A couple of inches shorter than the green-haired girl, she too had a figure that

would have delighted any sculptor.

'I'm your friend, Brownie, and very glad to be such,' James said. 'Go ahead.'

'I'm to be your assistant. I have about a thousand tapes to study, too. It'll be quite awhile, I'm afraid, before I can be

of much use, but I'll do the best I can.'

'If we had hit Alpha Centauri that arrangement would have been good, but as we are, it isn't.' Garlock frowned in

thought, his heavy black eyebrows almost meeting above his finely-chiseled, acquiline nose. 'Since neither Jim nor I

need an assistant any more than we need tails, it was designed to give you girls something to do. But out here, lost,

there's work for a dozen trained specialists and there are only four of us. So we shouldn't duplicate effort. Right? You

first, Belle.'

'Are you asking me or telling me?' she asked. 'And that's a fair question; don't read anything into it that isn't there.

With your attitude, I want information.'

'I am asking you,' he replied, carefully. 'For your information, when I know what should be done, I give orders.

When I don't know, as now, I ask advice. If I like it, I follow it Fair enough?'

'Fair enough. We're apt to need any number of specialists.' 'Lola?'

'Of course we shouldn't duplicate. What shall I study?' "That's what we'll have to figure out. We can't do it exactly, of

course; all we can do now is set up a rough scheme. Jim's job is the only one that's definite. He'll have to work full

time on nebular configurations. If we hit inhabited planets he'll have to add their star-charts to his own. That leaves

three of us to do all the other work of a survey. Ideally, we would cover all

the factors that would be of use in getting us back to Tellus, but since we don't know what those factors are... Found

out anything yet, Jim?'

'A little. It's a Tellus-type planet, apparently strictly so. Oceans and continents. Lots of inhabitants - farms, villages,

all sizes of cities. We're not close enough to say definitely, but the inhabitants seem to be humanoid, if not human.'

'Hold her here. Besides astronomy, which is all yours, what do we need most?'

'We should have enough to classify planets and inhabitants, so as to chart a space-trend if there is any. I'd say the

most important ones would be geology, stratigraphy, paleontology, oceanography, xenology, anthropology,

ethnology, vertebrate biology, botany, and at least some ecology.'

That's about the list I was afraid of. But there are only three of us.'

'Each of you will have to be a lot of specialists in one, then. I'd say the best split would be planetology, xenology,

and anthropology - each, of course, stretched all out of shape to cover a dozen related and non-related specialities.'

'Good enough. Xenology, of course, is mine. Contacts, liaison, politics, correlation, and so on, as well as studying the

non-human life forms - including as many lower animals and plants as possible. I'll make a stab at it. Now, Belle,

since you're a Prime and Lola's an Operator, you get the next toughest job. Planetography.'

'Why not?' Belle smiled and began to act as one of the party. 'All I know about it is a hazy idea of what the word

means, but I'll start studying as soon as we get squared away.'

'Fine. That leaves anthropology to you, Lola. Besides, that's your line, isn't it?'

'Yes. Sociological Anthropology. I have my M.S. in it, and I was working for my Ph.D. But as Jim said, it isn't only

the one specialty. You want me, I take it, to cover humanoid races, too.'

'Check. You and Jim both, then, will know what you're doing, while Belle and I are trying to play ours by ear.'

'Where do we draw the line between humanoid and non-human?'

'In case of doubt we'll confer. That covers it as much as we 16

can, I think. Take us down, Jim - and be on your toes to take evasive action fast.'

The ship dropped rapidly toward an airport just outside a fairly large city. Fifty thousand - forty thousand - thirty

thousand feet.

Then a thought-message touched their minds: 'Calling strange spaceship - you must be a spaceship, in spite of your

incredible mass. Do you read me?'

'I read you clearly. This is the spaceship Pleiades, home planet Tellus, Captain Garlock commanding, asking

permission to land and information as to landing conventions.' He did not have to tell James to stop the ship; James

had already

done so.

'I was about to ask you to hold position; I thank you for having done so. Hold for inspection and type-test, please.

We will not blast unless you fire first A few minutes, please.'

A group of twelve jet fighters took off practically vertically upward and climbed with fantastic speed. They leveled

off a thousand feet below the Pleiades and made a flying circle. Up and into the ring thus formed there lumbered a

large, clumsy-looking helicopter.

'We have no record of any planet named "Tellus"; nor of any such ship as yours. Of such incredible mass and with no

visible or detectable means of support or of propulsion. Not from this part of the galaxy, certainly ... could it be that

intergalactic travel is actually possible? But excuse me, Captain Garlock, none of that is any of my business - which

is to determine whether or not you four human beings are compatible with, and thus acceptable to, our humanity of

Hodell... But you do not seem to have a standard televideo testing-box aboard."

'No, sir; only our own tri-di and teevee.' 'You must be examined by means of a standard box. I will rise to your level

and teleport one across to you. It is self-powered and fully Automatic.'

'You needn't rise sir. Just toss the box out of your 'copter into the air. We'll take it from there.' Then, to James: Take

it, Jim.'

'Oh? You can lift large masses against much gravity?' The alien was all attention. 'I have not know that such power

existed. I will observe with keen interest.' 'I have it,' James said. 'Here it is.'

'Thank you, sir,' Garlock said to the alien. Then, to Lola; *You've been reading these - these Hodellians?'

'The officer in the helicopter and those in the fighters, yes. Most of them are Gunther Firsts.' 'Good girl. The set's

coming to life - watch it.'

The likeness of the alien being became clear upon the screen, visible from the waist up. While humanoid, the

creature was very far indeed from being human. He - at least, it had masculine rudimentary nipples - had double

shoulders and four arms. His skin was vividly intense cobalt blue. His ears were black, long, and highly dirigible. His

eyes, a flaming red in color, were large and vertically slitted, like a cat's. He had no hair at all. His nose was large

and Roman; his jaw was square, almost jutting; his bright yellow teeth were clean and sharp.

After a minute of study the alien said, 'Although your vessel is so entirely alien that nothing even remotely like it is

on record, you four are completely human and, if of compatible type, acceptable. Are there any other living beings

aboard with you?'

'Excepting micro-organisms, none.'

'Such life is of no importance. Approach, please, one of you, and grasp with a hand the projecting metal knob.'

With a little trepidation, Garlock did so. He felt no unusual sensation at the contact.

'All four of you are compatible and we accept you. This finding is surprising in the extreme, as you are the first

human beings of record who grade higher than what you call Gunther Two ... or Gunther Second?'

'Either one; the terms are interchangeable.'

'You have minds of tremendous development and power; definitely superior even to my own. However, there is no

doubt that physically you are perfectly compatible with our humanity. Your blood will be of great benefit to it. You

may land. Goodbye.'

'Wait, please. How about landing conventions? And visiting restrictions and so on? And may we keep this box? We

will be glad to trade you something for it, if we have anything you would like to have.'

'Ah, I should have realized that our customs would be widely different from ours. Since you have been examined and

accepted, there are no restrictions - you will not act against humanity's good. Land where you please, go where you

please, do what you please, for as long as you please. Take up permanent residence or leave as soon as you please.

Marry if you like, or simply breed - your unions with this planet's humanity will be fertile. Keep the box without

payment. As Guardians of Humanity we Arpalones do whatever small favors we can. Have I been clear?'

'Abundantly so. Thank you, sir." 'Now I really must go. Goodbye.'

Garlock glanced into his plate. The jets had disappeared, and the helicopter was falling rapidly away. He wiped his

brow.

'Well, I'll be damned,' he said. 'Damned and blasted,' Belle agreed. 'Make it three damns - in spades,' said James. And

Lola just sat speechless, staring at the rapidly-vanishing helicopter.

Garlock was the first to recover his poise. 'Lola, do you check me that this planet is named Hodell, that it is

populated by human beings exactly like us, that these creatures - Arpalones - are, in some way or other, Guardians of

Humanity?'

'Exactly, except they aren't "creatures". They're humanoids, and very fine people.'

'You'd think so, of course ... correction accepted. Well, let's take advantage of their extraordinarily hospitable

invitation and go down. Cut the rope, Jim.'

The airport was very large, and was divided into several sections, each of which was equipped with runways and/or

other landing facilities to suit one class of craft - propeller jobs, jets, or helicopters. There were even a few structures

that looked like rocket pits.

'Where are you doing to sit down, Jim? With the 'copters or over by the blast-pits?'

'With the 'copters, I think. Since I can place her to within a couple of inches, I'll put her squarely into that far corner,

where she'll be out of everybody's way.' 'No concrete out there,' Garlock said, 'but the ground seems

good and solid.'

'We'd better not land on concrete,' James grinned. 'Unless it's terrific stuff we'd smash it. On bare ground, the worst

we can do is sink in a foot or so, and that won't hurt anything.'

James pulled out his scanner and stuck his face into it. The immense starship settled downward toward the selected

corner. There was no noise, no blast, no flame, no smoke - no slightest visible or detectable sign of whatever force it

was that was braking the thousands of tons of the vessel's mass in its miles-long almost vertical plunge to ground.

When the Pleiades struck the ground the impact was scarcely to be felt. When she came to rest, after settling into the

ground her allotted 'foot or so', there was no jar at all.

'Atmosphere, temperature, and so on approximately Earth-normal,' Garlock said. 'Just as our friend said it would be.'

James scanned the city and the field. 'Our visit is kicking up a lot of excitement. Shall we go out?'

'Not yet!' Belle exclaimed. 'I want to see how the women are dressed, first.'

'So do I,' Lola added, 'and some other things besides.' Both women - Lola through her Operator's scanner, Belle by

manipulating the ship's tremendous Operator Field by the sheer power of her Prime Operator's mind - stared eagerly

at the crowd of people now beginning to stream across the field.

'As an anthropologist," Lola announced, 'I'm not only surprised, I am shocked, annoyed, and disgruntled. Why,

they're exactly like white Tellurian human beings!'

'But look at their clothesl' Belle insisted. They're wearing anything and everything, from bikinis to coveralls!'

'Yes, but notice.' This was the anthropological scientist speaking now. 'Breasts and loins, covered. Faces, uncovered.

Heads and feet and hands, either bare or covered. Ditto for legs up to there, backs, arms, necks, and shoulders down

to here, and torsos clear down to there. We won't violate any conventions by going out as we are. Not even you,

Belle. You first, Chief. Yours the high honor of setting first foot - the biggest foot we've got, too - on alien soil.' To

hell with that. We'll go out together.' 'Wait a minute,' Lola said. There's a funny-looking auto-20

mobile just coming through the gate. The Press. Three men and two women. Two cameras, one walkie-talkie, and

two microphones. The photog in the purple shirt is really a sharpie at lepping. Class Three, at least - possibly a Two.'

'How about screens down enough to lep, boss?' Belle suggested. 'Faster. We may need it.'

'Check. I'm too busy to record, anyway - 111 log this stuff up tonight.'

And thoughts flew.

'Check me, Jim,' Garlock flashed. Telepathy, very good. On Gunther, the guy was right - no signs at all of any First

activity, and very few Seconds.'

'Check,' James agreed.

'And Lola, those "Guardians" out there. I thought they were the same as the Arpalone we talked to. They aren't. Not

even telepathic. Same color scheme, that's all.'

'Right. Much more brutish. Much flatter cranium. Long, tearing canine teeth - carnivorous. I'll call them just

"guardians" until we find out what they really are.'

The press car arrived and the Tellurians disembarked - and, accidentally or not, it was Belle's green slipper that first

touched ground. There was a terrific Babel of thought - even worse than voices would have been, since thoughts

came so much faster. The reporters, all of them, wanted to know everything at once. How, what, where, when, and

why. Also who. And all about Tellus and the Tellurian solar system. How did the visitors like Hodell? And all about

Belle's green hair. And the photographers were prodigal of film, shooting everything from all possible angles.

'Hold it!' Garlock loosed a blast of thought that silenced almost the whole field. 'We will have order, please. Lola

Mon-tandon, our anthropologist, will take charge. Keep it orderly, Lola, if you have to throw half of them off the

field. I'm going over to Administration and check in. One of you reporters can come with me, if you like.'

The man in the purple shirt got his bid in first. As the two men walked away together, Garlock noted that the man

was in fact a Second - his flow of lucid, cogent thought did not interfere at all with the steady stream of speech going

into his portable recorder. Garlock also noticed that in any group of

more than a dozen people there was always at least one guardian. They paid no attention whatever to the people, who

in turn ignored them completely. Garlock wondered briefly. Guardians? The Arpolones, out in space, yes. But these

creatures, naked and unarmed on the ground? The Arpolones were non-human people. These things were - what?

At the door of the Field Office the reporter, after turning Garlock over to a startlingly beautiful, leggy, breasty,

blonde receptionist-usherette, hurried away.

He flecked a feeler at her mind and stiffened. How could a Two - a high Two, at that - be working as an usherette?

And with her guard down clear to the floor? He probed - and saw.

'Lola!' He flashed a tight-beamed thought. 'You aren't putting out anything about our sexual customs, family life, and

so on.'

'Of course not. We must know their mores first.' "Good girl. Keep your shield up.'

'Oh, we're so glad to see you, Captain Garlock!' The blonde, who was dressed little more heavily than the cigarette

girls in Venusberg's Cartier Room, seized his left hand in both of hers and held it considerably longer than was

necessary. Her dazzling smile, her laughing eyes, her flashing white teeth, the many exposed inches of her skin, and

her completely unshielded mind all waved banners of welcome.

'Captain Garlock, Governor Atterlin has been most anxious to see you ever since you were first detected. This way,

please, sir.' She turned, brushing her bare hip against his leg in the process, and led him by the hand along a hallway.

Her thoughts flowed on. 'I've been anxious to see you, too, and I'm simply delighted to see you close up, and I hope

to see a lot more of you. You're a wonderfully pleasant surprise, sir; I've never seen a man like you before. I don't

think Hodell ever saw a man like you before, sir. With such a really terrific mind and yet so big and strong and well-

built and handsome and clean-looking and blackish. You're wonderful - you'll be here a long time, I hope? Here we

are, sir.'

She opened a door, walked across the room, sat down in an overstaffed chair, and crossed her legs meticulously.

Then, still smiling happily, she followed with eager eyes and mind Gar-22

lock's every move.

Garlock had been reading Governor Atterlin, so he knew why it was the governor who was in that office instead of

the port manager. He knew that Atterlin had been reading him -as much as he had allowed. They had already

discussed many things, and were still discussing.

The room was much more like a library than an office. The governor, a middle-aged, red-headed man a trifle inclined

to portliness, had been seated in a huge reclining chair facing a teevee screen, but got up to shake hands.

'Welcome, friend Captain Garlock. Now, to continue. As to exchange. Many ships visiting us have nothing we need

or can use. For such, all services are free - or rather, are paid by the city. Our currency is based upon platinum, but

gold, silver, and copper are valuable. Certain jewels also...'

'That's far enough. We will pay our way - we have plenty of metal. What are your ratios of value for the four metals?'

Today's quotations are...' He glanced at a screen, and his fingers flashed over the keys of a computer beside his chair.

'One weight of platinum is equal in value to seven point three four six ...'

'Decimals are not necessary, sir."

'Seven plus, then, weights of gold. One of gold to eleven of silver. One of silver to four of copper.'

'Thank you. We'll use platinum. I bring some bullion tomorrow morning and exchange it for your currency. Shall I

bring it here, or to a bank in the city?'

'Either. Or we can have an armored truck visit your ship.' "That would be better yet Have them bring about five

thousand tanes. Thank you very much, Governor Atterlin, and good afternoon to you, sir.'

'And good afternoon to you, sir. Until tomorrow, then.' 'Oh, may I go with you to your ship, sir, to take just a little

look at it?' the girl asked, winningly.

'Of course, Grand Lady Neldine. I'd like to have your company.'

She seized his elbow and hugged it quickly against her breast. Then, taking his hand, she walked - almost skipped -

along beside him. 'And I want to see Pilot James close up, too, sir—though he's not nearly as wonderful as you are.

And I

wonder why Planetographer Bellamy's hair is green? Very striking, of course, sir, but I don't think I'd care for it

much on me - unless you'd think I should?' And so on.

Belle knew, of course, that they were coming; and Garlock knew that Belle's hackles were very much on the rise. She

could not read him, except very superficially, but she was reading the strange girl like a book and was not liking

anything she read. Wherefore, when Garlock and his joyous companion reached the great space-ship —

'How come you picked up that little man-eating shark?' she sent, venemously, on a tight band.

'It wasn't a case of picking her up. I haven't been able to find any urbane way of scraping her off. First Contact, you

know.'

'She wants altogether too much Contact for a First - 111 scrap her off even if she is Right the Honorable Grand Lady

Claire Vere de Vere Cabot-Lodge ...' Belle changed her tactics even before Garlock began his reprimand. 'I shouldn't

have stid that, Clee, of course." A light mental laugh came. 'It was just the shock; there wasn't anything in any of my

First Contact tapes covering what to do about beautiful and enticing girls who try to seduce our men. She doesn't

know, though, of course, that she's supposed to be a bug-eyed monster and not human at all. Won't Xenology be in

for a rough ride when we check in? Wow!' And for the rest of the day Belle played flawlessly the role of perfect

hostess.

It was full dark before the Hodellians could be persuaded to leave the Pleiades and the locks were closed.

'I've refused one hundred seventy-eight invitations,' Lola reported then. 'All of us, individually and collectively, have

been invited to eat everything, everywhere in town. To see shows in a dozen different theaters and eighteen night

spots. To dance all night in twenty-one different places, ranging from dives to strictly soup-and-fish. I was nice about

it, of course -just begged off because we were dead from our belts both ways from our long, hard trip. My thought, of

course, is that we'd better eat our own food and take it slowly at first. Check, Clee?'

'On the beam, dead center. And you weren't lying much, either. I feel as though I'd done a day's work. After supper

there's a thing I've got to discuss with all three of you.'

Supper was soon over. Then:

'We've got to make a mighty important decision,' Garlock began abruptly. 'Grand Lady Neldine - that title isn't exact,

but close - wondered why I didn't respond at all, either way. However, she didn't make a point of it, and I let her

wonder; but we'll have to decide by tomorrow morning what to do, and it'll have to be airtight. The Hodellians expect

Jim and me to impregnate as many as possible of their highest-rated women before we leave. By then- Code it's

mandatory, since we can't hide the fact that we rate much higher than they do - their highest rating is only Grade Two

by our standards - and all the planets hereabouts upgrade themselves with the highest-grade new blood they can find.

Ordinarily, they'd expect you two girls to become pregnant by your choices of the top men of the planet; but they

know you wouldn't breed down and don't expect you to. But how in all hell can Jim and I refuse to breed them up

without dealing out the deadliest insult they know?'

There was a minute of silence. 'We can't,' James said then. A grin began to spread over his face. 'It might not be too

bad an idea, at that, come to think of it. That ball of fire they picked out for you would be a blue-ribbon dish in

anybody's cookbook. And Grand Lady Lemphi - wow!'

'Is that nice, you back-alley tomcat?' Belle asked plaintively. Then she paused in thought and went on slowly. 'I won't

pretend to like it, but I won't do any public screaming about it'

'Any anthropologist would say you'll have to,' Lola declared without hesitation. 'I don't like it, either. I think it's

horrible; but it's excellent genetics and we cannot and must not violate systems-wide mores.'

'You're all missing the point! Garlock snapped. He got up. jammed his hands into his pockets, and began to pace the

floor. 'I didn't think any one of you was that stupid! If that was all there were to it we'd do it as a matter of course.

But think, damn it! There's nothing higher than Gunther Two in the humanity of this planet. Telepathy is the only

ESP they have. High Gunther uses hitherto unused portions of the brain. It's transmitted through genes, which are

dominant, cumulative, and self-multiplying by interaction. Jim and I carry more, stronger, and higher Gunther genes

than any other two

men known to live. Can we take the chance of planting such genes where none have ever been known before?'

'My God .''said Belle.

Then there were two full minutes of silence.

That one has really got a bone in it,' James said, unhelpfully.

Three minutes more of silence.

'It's up to you, Lola,' Garlock said then. 'It's your field.'

'I was afraid of that. There's a way. Personally, I like it less even than the other, but it's the only one I've been able to

think up. First, are you absolutely sure that our refusal - Belle's and mine, I mean - to breed down will be valid with

them?'

'Positive.'

Then the whole society from which we come will have to be strictly monogamous, in the narrowest, most literal

sense of the term. No exceptions whatever. Adultery, anything illicit, has always been not only unimaginable, but in

fact impossible. We pair - or marry, or whatever they do here - once only. For life. Desire and potency can exist only

within the pair; never outside it. Like eagles. If a man's wife dies, even, he loses all desire and all potency. That

would make it physically impossible for you two to follow the Hodellian Code. You'd both be completely impotent

with any women whatever except your mates - Belle and me.'

'That will work,' Belle said. 'How it will work!' She paused. Then, suddenly, she laughed - the rich, full-throated

laugh which so few women ever allow themselves. 'But do you know what you've done, Lola?'

'Nothing, except suggest a solution. What so funny about that?'

'You're wonderful, Lola - simply priceless! You've created something brand-new to science - an impotent tomcat!

And the more I think about it —' Belle was rocking back and forth with laughter. She could not possibly talk, but her

thought flowed on: 'An impotent tomcat, and he'll have to stay true to me - oh, this is simply killing me!'

'It does put us on the spot - especially Jim,' came Oarlock's thought.

He, too, began to laugh; and Lola, as soon as she stopped thinking about the thing only as a problem in anthropology,

joined in. James, however, did not think it was very funny.

'And that's less than half of it!' Belle went on. 'Think of Clee, Lola. Six two - over two hundred - hard as nails - a

perfect hunk of man telling this whole damn cockeyed region of space that he's impotent, too! And with a perfectly

straight face! And it ties in so beautifully with his making no response, yes or no, when she propositioned him. The

poor, innocent, impotent lamb just simply didn't have even the faintest inkling of what she meant!'

'Listen - listen - LISTEN!' James managed finally to break in. 'Not that I want to be promiscuous, but —'

'Oh, don't worry,' Belle soothed him, speaking aloud but with a still-unsteady voice as she held down her mirth. 'Us

Earthgirls will take care of you two, see if we don't. You won't need any nasty little...' Belle could not hold the pose;

she went off again into whoops of laughter.

'Shut up, will you, and listen!' James roared aloud. There ought to be some better way than that.'

'Better? Than sheer perfection?'

'If you can think of one, Jim, the meeting is still open,' said Garlock. 'But it'll have to be a dilly. I'm not exactly

enamored of Lola's idea, either, but as the answer it's one hundred percent to as many decimal places as you want to

take time to write zeroes.'

There was more talk, but no improvement could be made upon Lola's idea.

'Well, we've got until morning,' Garlock said, finally. 'If anybody comes up with anything by then, let me know. If

not, it goes into effect the minute we open the locks. The meeting is adjourned.'

Belle and James left the room; and, a few minutes later, Garlock went out. Lola followed him into his room and

closed the door behind her. She sat down on the edge of a chair, lighted a cigarette, and began to smoke in short,

nervous puffs. She opened her mouth to say something, but shut it without making a sound.

'You're afraid of me, Lola?' he asked, quietly.

'Oh, I don't... Well, that is ...' She wouldn't lie, and she wouldn't admit the truth. 'You see, I've never ... had very

much experience.'

'You needn't be afraid of me at all. I'm not going to pair with you.'

'You're not?' Her mouth dropped open and the cigarete fell out of it. She took a few seconds to recover it. 'Why not?

Don't you think I could do a good enough job?'

She stood up and stretched, to show her splendid figure to its best advantage.

Garlock laughed. 'Nothing like that, Lola; you have plenty of sex appeal. It's just that I don't like the conditions. I

never have paired. I never had had much to do with women, and that little has been urbane, logical, and strictly en

passant; on the level of mutual physical desire. And I've never taken a virgin. Pairing with one is very definitely not

my idea of urbanity and there's altogether too much obligation to suit me. For all of which good reasons I am not

going to pair with you, now or ever.'

'How do you know whether I'm a virgin or not? You've never read me that deep. Nobody can. Not even you, unless I

let you.'

'Reading isn't necessary - you flaunt it like a banner.'

'I don't know what you mean ... I certainly don't do it intentionally. But I ought to pair with you, Clee!' Lola had lost

all of her nervousness, most of her fear. 'It's part of the job I was chosen for. If I'd known, I'd've gone out and got

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

BATTLERAGESACROSSSPACE!ThePrimeswentdown,overwhathadbeenoneofthatworld'slargestcities.Theair,thestratosphere,andallnearbyspacewasfullofbattlingvesselsofallshapesandsizes,rangingfromthetremendousglobularspaceshipsoftheinvadingDilipicsdowntothetiny,one-manjet-fightersoftheArpalones.TheDilipicswereusin...

展开>> 收起<<

Smith, E E 'Doc' - The Galaxy Primes.pdf

共82页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Smith, E E 'Doc' - The Galaxy Primes

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: