E. E. Doc Smith - Masters of Space

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MASTER'S OF SPACE

By E.E. ‘Doc' Smith

First Published in Worlds of IF, Nov. 1961

Chapter 1

"But didn't you feel anything, Javo?" Strain was apparent in every line of

Tula's taut,

bare body. "Nothing at all?" "Nothing whatever." The one called Javo relaxed

from his

rigid concentration. "Nothing has changed. Nor will it." "That conclusion is

indefensible!"

Tula snapped. "With the promised return of the Masters there must and will be

changes. Didn't any of you feel anything?"

Her hot, demanding eyes swept the group; a group whose like, except for

physical

perfection, could be found in any nudist colony.

No one except Tula had felt a thing.

"That fact is not too surprising," Javo said finally. "You have the most

sensitive

receptors of us all. But are you sure?"

"I am sure. It was the thought-form of a living Master." "Do you think that the

Master

perceived your web?" "It is certain. Those who built us are stronger than we."

"That is

true. As they promised, then, so long and long ago, our Masters are returning

home to

us."

Jarvis Hilton of Terra, the youngest man yet to be assigned to direct any such

tremendous deep-space undertaking as Project Theta Orionis, sat in conference

with

his two seconds-in-command. Assistant Director Sandra Cummings, analyst-

synthesist

and semantician, was tall, blonde and svelte. Planetographer William Karns-a

black-haired, black-browed, black-eyed man of thirty-was third in rank of the

scientific

group.

"I'm telling you, Jarve, you can't have it both ways," Karns declared. "Captain

Sawtelle

is old-school Navy brass. He goes strictly by the book. So you've got to draw a

razor-sharp line; exactly where the Advisory Board's directive puts it. And next

time he

sticks his ugly puss across that line, kick his face in.

You've been Caspar Milquetoast Two ever since we left Base." "That's the way it

looks

to you?" Hilton's right hand became a fist. "The man has age, experience and

ability.

I've been trying to meet him on a ground of courtesy and decency."

"Exactly. And he doesn't recognize the existence of either. And, since the

Board

rammed you down his throat instead of giving him old Jeffers, you needn't expect

him

to."

"You may be right, Bill. What do you think, Dr. Cummings?"

The girl said: "Bill's right. Also, your constant appeasement isn't doing the

morale of the

whole scientific group a bit of good."

"Well, I haven't enjoyed it, either. So next time I'll pin his ears back.

Anything else?"

"Yes, Dr. Hilton, I have a squawk of my own. I know I was rammed down your

throat,

but just when are you going to let me do some work?"

"None of us has much of anything to do yet, and won't have until we light

somewhere.

You're off base a country mile."

"I'm not off base. You did want Eggleston, not me."

"Sure I did. I've worked with him and know what he can ,> do. But I'm not

holding a

grudge about it."

"No? Why, then, are you on first-name terms with everyone in the scientific

group

except me? Supposedly your first assistant?"

"That's easy!" Hilton snapped. "Because you've been carrying chips on both

shoulders

ever since you came aboard . . . or at least I thought you were." Hilton grinned

suddenly

and held out his hand. "Sorry, Sandy-I'll start all over again."

"I'm sorry too, Chief." They shook hands warmly. "I was pretty stiff, I guess,

but I'll be

good."

"You'll go to work right now, too. As semantician. Dig out that directive and

tear it down.

Draw that fine Bill talked about."

"Can do, boss." She swung to her feet and walked out of the room, her every

movement one of lithe and easy grace.

Karns followed her with his eyes. "Funny. A trained-dancer Ph.D. And a Miss

America

type, like all the other women aboard this spacer. I wonder if she'll make out."

"So do I. I still wish they'd given me Eggy. I've never seen an executive-type

female

Ph.D. yet that was worth the cyanide it would take to poison her."

"That's what Sawtelle thinks of you, too, you know."

"I know; and the Board does know its stuff. So I'm really hoping, Bill, that

she surprises

me as much as I intend to surprise the Navy."

Alarm bells clanged as the mighty Perseus blinked out of overdrive. Every

crewman

sprang to his post.

"Mister Snowden, why did we emerge without orders from me?" Captain Sawtelle

bellowed, storming into the control room three jumps behind Hilton.

'The automatics took control, sir," he said, quietly. "Automatics! I give the

orders!"

"In this case, Captain Sawtelle, you don't," Hilton said. Eyes locked and held.

Sawtelle, this was a new and strange co-commander. "I would suggest that we

discuss

this matter in private."

"Very well, sir," Sawtelle said; and in the captain's cabin Hilton opened up.

"For your information, Captain Sawtelle, I set my interspace coupling detectors

for any

objective I choose. When any one of them reacts, it trips the kickers and we

emerge.

During any emergency outside the Solar System I am in command with the provision

that I must relinquish command to you in case of armed attack on us."

"Where do you think you found any such stuff as that in the directive? It isn't

there and

I know my rights."

"It is; and you don't. Here is a semantic chart of the whole directive. As you

will note, it

overrides many Navy regulations. Disobedience of my orders constitutes mutiny

and I

can-and will-have you put in irons and sent back to Terra for court-martial. Now

let's go

back."

In the control room, Hilton said, "The target has a mass of approximately five

hundred

metric tons. There is also a significant amount of radiation characteristic of

uranexite.

You will please execute search, Captain Sawtelle."

And Captain Sawtelle ordered the search.

"What did you do to the big jerk, boss?" Sandra whispered. "What you and Bill

suggested," Hilton whispered back. "Thanks to your analysis of the directive-

pure

gobbledygook if there ever was any-I could. Mighty good job, Sandy."

Ten or fifteen more minutes passed. Then:

"Here's the source of radiation, sir," a searchman reported. "It's a point

source, though,

not an object at this range." "And here's the artifact, sir," Pilot Snowden

said. "We're

coming up on it fast. But . . . but what's a skyscraper skeleton doing out here

interstellar space?"

As they closed up, everyone could see that the thing did indeed look like the

metallic

skeleton of a great building. It was a huge cube, measuring well over a hundred

yards

along each edge. And it was empty.

"That's one for the book," Sawtelle said.

"And how!" Hilton agreed. "I'll take a boat . . . no, suits would be better.

Karns,

Yarborough, get Techs Leeds and Miller and suit up."

"You'll need a boat escort," Sawtelle said. "Mr. Ashley, execute escort Landing

Craft

One, Two and Three."

The three landing craft approached that enigmatic latticework of structural

steel and

stopped. Five grotesquely armored figures wafted themselves forward on pencils

force. Their leader, whose suit bore the number "14", reached a mammoth girder

and

worked his way along it up to a peculiar-looking bulge. The whole immense

structure

vanished, leaving men and boats in empty space.

Sawtelle gasped. "Snowden! Are you holding 'em?" "No, sir. Faster than light;

hyperspace, sir."

"Mr. Ashby, did you have your interspace rigs set?" "No, sir. I didn't think of

it, sir."

"Doctor Cummings, why weren't yours out?"

"I didn't think of such a thing, either-any more than you did," Sandra said.

Ashby, the Communications Officer, had been working the radio. "No reply from

anyone, sir," he reported.

"Oh, no!" Sandra exclaimed. Then, "But look! They're firing pistols-especially

the one

wearing number fourteen-but pistols?"

"Recoil pistols-sixty-three-for emergency use in case of power failure," Ashby

explained. "That's it . . . but I can't see why all their power went out at

once. But

Fourteen-that's Hilton-is really doing a job with that sixty-three. He'll be

here in a couple

of minutes."

And he was. "Every power unit out there-suits and boats both-drained," Hilton

reported.

"Completely drained. Get some help out there fast!"

In an enormous structure deep below the surface of a far-distant world a group

technicians clustered together in front of one section of a two-miles-long

control board.

They were staring at a light that had just appeared where no light should have

been.

"Someone's brain-pan will be burned out for this," one of the group radiated

harshly.

"That unit was inactivated long ago and it has not been reactivated."

"Someone committed an error, Your Loftiness?" "Silence, fooll Stretts do not

commit

errors!"

As soon as it was clear that no one had been injured, Sawtelle demanded, "How

about

it, Hilton?"

"Structurally, it was high-alloy steel. There were many bulges, possibly

containing

mechanisms. There were drive-units of a non-Terran type. There were many

projectors,

which-at a rough guess-were a hundred times as powerful as any I have ever seen

before. There were no indications that the thing had ever been enclosed, in

whole or in

part. It certainly never had living quarters for warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing

eaters of

organic food."

Sawtelle snorted. "You mean it never had a crew?" "Not necessarily . . .

"Bah! What other kind of intelligent life is there?"

"I don't know. But before we speculate too much. let's look at the tri-di. The

camera

may have caught something I missed."

It hadn't. The three-dimensional pictures added nothing.

"It probably was operated either by programmed automatics or by remote

control,"

Hilton decided, finally. "But how did they drain all our power? And just as bad,

what and

how is that other point source of power we're heading for now?" "What's wrong

with it?"

Sawtelle asked.

"Its strength. No matter what distance or reactant I assume, nothing we know

will fit.

Neither fission nor fusion will do it. It has to be practically total

conversion!"

Chapter 2

The Perseus snapped out of overdrive near the point of interest and Hilton

stared,

motionless and silent.

Space was full of madly warring ships. Half of them were bare, giant skeletons

of steel,

like the "derelict" that had so unexpectedly blasted away from them. The others

were

more or less like the Perseus, except in being bigger, faster and of vastly

greater

power.

Beams of starkly incredible power bit at and clung to equally capable defensive

screens of pure force. As those inconceivable forces met, the glare of their

neutralization filled all nearby space. And ships and skeletons alike were

disappearing

in chunks, blobs, gouts, streamers and sparkles of rended, fused and vaporized

metal.

Hilton watched two ships combine against one skeleton. Dozens of beams,

incredibly

tight and hard, were held inexorably upon dozens of the bulges of the skeleton.

Overloaded, the bulges' screen flared through the spectrum and failed. And bare

metal,

however refractory, endures only for instants under the appalling intensity of

such

beams as those.

The skeletons tried to duplicate the ships' method of attack, but failed. They

were too

slow. Not slow, exactly, either, but hesitant; as though it required whole

seconds for the

commander-or operator? Or remote controller?-of each skeleton to make it act.

The

ships were winning.

"Hey!" Hilton yelped. "Oh-that's the one we saw back there. But what in all

space does

it think it's doing?"

It was plunging at tremendous speed straight through the immense fleet of

embattled

skeletons. It did not fire a beam nor energize a screen; it merely plunged along

though on a plotted course until it collided with one of the skeletons of the

fleet and

both structures plunged, a tangled mass of wreckage, to the ground of the planet

below.

Then hundreds of the ships shot forward, each to plunge into and explode inside

one

of the skeletons. When visibility was restored another wave of ships came

forward to

repeat the performance, but there was nothing left to fight. Every surviving

skeleton had

blinked out of normal space.

The remaining ships made no effort to pursue the skeletons, nor did they re-

form as a

fleet. Each ship went off by itself.

And on that distant planet of the Stretts the group of mechs watched with

amazed

disbelief as light after light after light winked out on their two-miles-long

control board.

Frantically they relayed orders to the skeletons; orders which did not affect

the losses.

"Brain-pans will blacken for this . . ." a mental snarl began, to be

interrupted by a coldly

imperious thought.

"That long-dead unit, so inexplicably reactivated, is approaching the fuel

world. It is

ignoring the battle. It is heading through our fleet toward the Oman half . . .

handle it,

ten eighteen !"

"It does not respond, Your Loftiness."

"Then blast it, fool! Ah, it is inactivated. As encyclopedist, Nine, explain

the freakish

behavior of that unit."

"Yes, Your Loftiness. Many cycles ago we sent a ship against the Omans with a

new

device of destruction. The Omans must have intercepted it, drained it of power

and al-

lowed it to drift on. After all these cycles of time it must have come upon a

small source

of power and of course continued its mission."

"That can be the truth. The Lords of the Universe must be informed."

"The mining units, the carriers and the refiners have not been affected, Your

Loftiness,"

a meth radiated.

"So I see, fool." Then, activating another instrument, His Loftiness thought at

it, in an

entirely different vein, "Lord Ynos, Madam? I have to make a very grave report .

. .

In the Perseus, four scientists and three Navy officers were arguing heatedly;

employing deep-space verbiage not to be found in any dictionary. "Jarve!" Karns

called

out, and Hilton joined the group. "Does anything about this planet make any

sense to

you?"

"No. But you're the planetographer. 'Smatter with it?" "It's a good three

hundred

degrees Kelvin too hot." "Well, you know it's loaded with uranexite."

"That much? The whole crust practically jewelry ore?" "If that's what the

figures say, I'll

buy it."

"Buy this, then. Continuous daylight everywhere. Noon June Sol-quality light

except

that it's all in the visible. Frank says it's from bombardment of a layer of

something, and

Frank admits that the whole thing's impossible."

"When Frank makes up his mind what 'something' is, I'll take it as a datum."

"Third thing: there's only one city on this continent, and it's protected by a

screen that

nobody ever heard of."

Hilton pondered, then turned to the captain. "Will you please run a search-

pattern, sir?

Fine-toothing only the hot spots?"

The planet was approximately the same size as Terra; its atmosphere, except for

its

intense radiation, was similar to Terra's. There were two continents; one

immense

girdling ocean. The temperature of the land surface was everywhere about 100º F,

that

of the water about 90ºF. Each continent had one city, and both were small. One

was

inhabited by what looked like human beings; the other by usuform robots. The

human

city was the only cool spot on the entire planet; under its protective dome the

temperature was 71 ºF.

Hilton decided to study the robots first; and asked the captain to take the

ship down to

observation range. Sawtelle objected; and continued to object until Hilton

started to

order his arrest. Then he said, "I'll do it, under protest, but I want it on

record that I am

doing it against my best judgment."

"It's on record," Hilton said, coldly. "Everything said and done is being, and

will

continue to be, recorded."

The Perseus floated downward "There's what I want most to see," Hilton said,

finally.

"That big strip-mining operation . . . that's it . . . hold it!" Then, via

throatmike, "Attention,

all scientists! You all know what to do. Start doing it."

Sandra's blonde head was very close to Hilton's brown one as they stared into

Hilton's

plate. "Why, they look like giant armadillos!" she exclaimed.

"More like tanks," he disagreed, "except that they've got legs, wheels and

treads-and

arms, cutters, diggers, probes and conveyors-and look at the way those buckets

dip

solid rock!"

The fantastic machine was moving very slowly along a bench or shelf that it was

making for itself as it went along. Below it, to its left, dropped the other

benches being

made by other mining machines. The machines were not using explosives. Hard

though

the ore was, the tools were driven so much harder and were driven with such

tremendous power that the stuff might just as well have been slightly-clayed

sand.

Every bit of loosened ore, down to the finest dust, was forced into a conveyor

and

thence into the armored body of the machine. There it went into a mechanism

whose

basic principles Hilton could not understand. From this monstrosity emerged two

streams of product.

One of these, comprising ninety-nine point nine percent of the input, went out

through

another conveyor into the vast hold of a vehicle which, when full and replaced

by a

duplicate of itself, went careening madly cross-country to a dump.

The other product, a slow, very small stream of tiny, glistening black pellets,

fell into a

one-gallon container being held watchfully by a small machine, more or less like

three-wheeled motor scooter, which was moving carefully along beside the giant

miner.

When this can was almost full another scooter rolled up and, without losing a

single

pellet, took over place and function. The first scooter then covered its bucket,

clamped

it solidly into a recess designed for the purpose and dashed away toward the

city.

Hilton stared slack-jawed at Sandra. She stared back. "Do you make anything of

that,

Jarve?"

"Nothing. T'hey're taking pure uranexite and concentrating-or converting-it a

thousand

to one. I hope we'll be able to do something about it."

"I hope so, too, Chief; and I'm sure we will."

"Well, that's enough for now. You may take us up now, Captain Sawtelle. And

Sandy,

will you please call all department heads and their assistants into the

conference

room?"

At the head of the long conference table, Hilton studied his fourteen

department heads,

all husky young men, and their assistants, all surprisingly attractive and well-

built young

women. Bud Carroll and Sylvia Bannister of Sociology sat together. He was almost

big as Karns; she was a green-eyed redhead whose five-ten and one-fifty would

have

looked big except for the arrangement thereof. There were Bernadine and Hermione

van der Moen, the leggy, breasty, platinum-blonde twins---both of whom were

Cowper

medalists in physics. There was Etienne de Vaux, the mathematical wizard; and

Rebecca Eisenstein, the black-haired, flashing-eyed ex-infant prodigy

theoretical

astronomer. There was Beverly Bell, who made mathematically impossible chemical

syntheses-who swam channels for days on end and computed planetary orbits in her

sleekly-coiffured head.

"First, we'll have a get-together," Hilton said. "Nothing recorded; just to get

acquainted.

You all know that our fourteen departments cover science, from astronomy to

zoology."

He paused, again his eyes swept the group. Stella Wing, who would have been a

grand-opera star except for her drive to know everything about language.

Theodora

(Teddy) Blake, who would prove gleefully that she was the world's best model-but

was

in fact the most brilliantly promising theoretician who had ever lived.

"No other force like this has ever been assembled," Hilton went on. "In more

ways than

one. Sawtelle wanted Jeffers to head this group, instead of me. Everybody

thought he

would head it."

"And Hilton wanted Eggleston and got me," Sandra said. "That's right. And quite

a few

of you didn't want to come at all, but were told by the Board to come or else."

The group stirred. Eyes met eyes, and there were smiles.

"I myself think Jeffers should have had the job. I've never handled anything

half this big

and I'll need a lot of help. But I'm stuck with it and you're stuck with me, so

we'll all take

it and like it. You've noticed, of course, the accent on youth. The Navy crew is

normal,

except for the commanders being unusually young. But we aren't. None of us is

thirty

yet, and none of us has ever been married. You fellows look like a team of

professional

athletes, and you girls-well, if I didn't know better I'd say the Board had

screened you

for the front row of the chorus instead of for a top-bracket brain-gang. How

they found

so many of you I'll never know."

"Virile men and nubile women!" Etienne de Vaux leered enthusiastically. "Vive

Board!"

"Nubile! Bravo, Tiny! Quelle delicatesse de nuance!" "Three rousing cheers for

the

Board!"

"Keep still, you nitwits! Let me ask a question!" This came from one of the

twins.

"Before you give us the deduction, Jarvis-or will it be an intuition or an

induction or a . .

"Or an inducement," the other twin suggested, helpfully. "Not that you would

need very

much of that."

"You keep still, too, Miney. I'm asking, Sir Moderator, if I can give my

deduction first?"

"Sure, Bernadine: go ahead."

"They figured we're going to get completely lost. Then we'll jettison the Navy,

hunt up a

planet of our own and start a race to end all human races. Or would you call

this a see-

duction instead of a dee-duction?"

This produced a storm of whistles, cheers and jeers that it took several

seconds to

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MASTER'SOFSPACEByE.E.‘Doc'SmithFirstPublishedinWorldsofIF,Nov.1961Chapter1"Butdidn'tyoufeelanything,Javo?"StrainwasapparentineverylineofTula'staut,barebody."Nothingatall?""Nothingwhatever."TheonecalledJavorelaxedfromhisrigidconcentration."Nothinghaschanged.Norwillit.""Thatconclusionisindefensible!"T...

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