Smith, E E 'Doc' - d'Alembert 01 - The Imperial Stars

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THE IMPERIAL STARS
Volume One of The classic Family d’Alembert series
By E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith
With Stephen Goldin
CHAPTER ONE
THREE MEN
By the year 2447, the Empire of Earth would have looked remarkably healthy to an outside observer. In
the almost two centuries since its formation, it had nearly doubled its size in terms of subject planets,
while trade between inhabited worlds was proceeding at a smooth and industrious pace. Hunger and
need had been, if not obliterated, at least confined to small pockets of despair. Yet even the most
vigorous body politic can harbor a cancer that, if not excised quickly, will eat away at the insides and
leave just a useless shell as evidence of its passing. Such a cancer was, in that year, threatening the very
existence of the Empire. (M'benge, The Empire - Yesterday and Today, slot 437.)
The first man was dressed in black from head to toe, the only break in that color scheme being the
goggles over his eyes - and even they were smoky gray. The dark cloth was smooth and pliable; it made
not even the slightest swishing sound as he moved.
The man's belt was divided into a series of compartments, each housing a useful and, in several cases,
lethal tool. Outside, the clothing was completely insulated against electrical shock; inside, between the
black fabric and the man's skin, was another layer of insulation, this designed to keep the man's body
heat in so that he would not register on an infrared detector. Because of this insulation, the interior of the
suit was hellishly hot, but the wearer did not complain. Better to be uncomfortable than dead, was his
belief.
The night around him was cool and dark. The planet Durward had three small moons, but only one - the
smallest - was shining tonight. Its light was scarcely more powerful than a flashlight at a thousand paces -
hardly a threat to give him away.
The house in front of him was another matter. Set out in the open countryside, kilometers away from its
nearest neighbor, it looked to his trained eyes like nothing so much as an enormous booby trap. One
false step, one misguided movement would certainly mean the end of his life ... and possibly worse than
that. The fate of the Empire could be resting on his skill, but the thought didn't make him hesitate. There
were some risks that had to be taken.
There were no guards patrolling the wall that surrounded the house, and that fact worried him more than if
there had been a regiment. No guards meant that the wall itself was hazard enough, and that the people
behind it expected very few survivors to cross to the interior yard.
Reaching into his belt, the man in black took out a sensitive energy detector and gave the wall a quick
scan. He felt no surprise to learn that the barrier was composed of only a thin shell of stone, inside which
was a plethora of electronic equipment. The sensors within the wall could detect heat, electromagnetic
discharge, pressure, or an attempt to alter the circuit functions. The scattered bodies of birds, insects and
small animals at the base of the barrier gave mute testimony to the fate of anything coming in contact with
that wall.
The man had come prepared for this eventuality. Beside him on the ground was a long fiberglass pole.
Picking it up, he backed off some twenty meters from the wall and then ran at it full tilt. Well-trained leg
muscles helped push him upward as he dug the shaft into the ground and polevaulted over the barrier.
Four meters high the wall went, but he cleared it with easily twenty centimeters to spare.
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He hit the ground beyond with his legs coiled under him; he rolled over and used his momentum to propel
him into a running start across the open courtyard between the wall and the house. This was a dangerous
stretch, for there was no cover but the darkness. He crossed the fifty meters of ground silently, then
pulled up panting alongside the building. As far as he knew he was still undetected. He was sweating
profusely inside his insulated clothing, but gave not a thought to his discomfort. There were bigger
matters demanding his attention.
He walked slowly all around the house, checking the windows. None were open - he hadn't expected
them to be -but the alarm system on them was of the standard variety. Reaching into his belt again he
took out two wires and clamped them to the edges of the window frame, thus jumping the alarm circuit.
With this done, opening the window and slithering inside was a routine matter.
He found himself in an unknown room cluttered with furniture. He dared not bump into anything and make
a noise; and turning on a light, of course, would have been sheerest folly. Flipping a tiny switch on his
belt, he turned on a portable radar device, a type invented for blind people. Instantly, the returning radio
echoes painted a picture of the room's layout for him. The door he wanted was three meters away; it
would only be a matter of navigating past a few chairs.
Still he didn't move. Reaching again into a belt compartment, he pulled out the sensor he had first used
on the wall to check the floor. It was free of electronic gadgetry, so he walked silently across the room to
the door.
The portal was also wired with an alarm. He bypassed it the same way he had taken care of the window,
opened the door and looked out into the hallway. It, too, was dark, and there were no sounds anywhere
along its length. His radar vision informed him that the corridor was free of obstructions, but the scanner
indicated that certain planks in the wooden floor were pressure sensitive, and would give him away if he
trod upon them. Exercising the greatest of caution, he stepped gingerly out into the hall, moving toward
the staircase one agonizingly slow step at a time. Involuntarily, he found himself holding his breath, fearful
that even such a slight chest movement would set off the alarms with which this house was booby
trapped.
He reached the stairs and stopped again. According to his informant - a totally reliable one, since he had
been incapable of lying under the influence of nitrobarb - the room he sought was on the second floor.
Checking out the stairway, he found that a majority of the treads were wired for detection, and that the
banister was carrying enough electrical current to light a small city. The man in black set his jaw
determinedly and proceeded to climb the stairs two, three, and sometimes four at a time to avoid stepping
on the alarms.
Third door on the right at the top of the stairs, his involuntary informant had told him. Tracing his way
around the sensors in the floor, he arrived at the desired door. The handle, his instruments told him, was
a bomb that would explode at his touch, blowing him into more pieces than he cared to think about. But
there had to be some way of getting into the room and he was going to find it. He scanned the wall and
found that it was loaded with electrical circuitry. His eyes read the schematics and discovered that one
inconspicuous nailhead in the wall beside the doorsill was really the button that would open the portal.
Still he did not enter immediately. He had been lucky so far in that he had not met up with any living
beings. Inside this room, that was bound to change. Human guards would be stationed around the safe
night and day, adding extra protection for its invaluable contents. The man in black had no way of
knowing a priori how many guards there would be; from here on, he would have to rely on luck and his
reflexes.
Stun-gun drawn and set on ten - its highest setting - he braced himself for the invasion. The door opened
quickly as he pressed the nailhead, a point for him; a slow opening would have alerted the men inside
and given them time to prepare for his coming.
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As it was, he was almost too slow. There were five guards and two ferocious dogs inside the room. Three
of the men were in his direct line of vision and fell instantly as his deadly beams swept across them. The
dogs leaped at him from two different directions. He shot the one on his right, but the momentum of its
leap carried its dead body crashing into him. Trained athlete that he was, he used that to advantage,
falling over backward with the dog's corpse on top of him. His fall caused the second dog's leap to be
high, and one of the two surviving guards, who had now had time to draw his blaster, also missed him.
The man in black had truer aim; even as he hit the floor, he felled the fourth guard with the beam of his
stunner.
The fifth guard also had his weapon out and was using it. But he could not get a clear shot, since his
target was covered by the body of the dog. The blaster bolt burned its way uselessly into the already-
dead animal, while the invader's reflexes helped him recover quickly. After hitting the floor he rolled to his
feet again in one continuous motion, stunner beaming. The fifth guard dropped, as did the second dog.
The man in black was now alone in the room with the safe and the valuable piece of parchment it
contained.
Speed was what counted now. Though he was almost certain that none of the guards had had the time to
set off an alarm, he couldn't afford to bet his life on it. Racing over to the safe, he gave it a quick scan and
learned that it was a combination type, wired all over with alarms. The man worked swiftly to neutralize
the alarms; when that was done, he used magnetic scanners to guide him through the combination.
When the last tumbler clicked into place, he gripped the handle tightly. Opening the safe would probably
set off some sort of alarm, no matter how many he'd disconnected. But that wouldn't matter - once he had
the document, the two personal rocket tubes on the back of his belt could take him out the window and
away from here before any possible pursuit could be mounted. With a sigh of relief, then, he yanked down
on the handle and swung the magnisteel door open.
He had time for just an instant of astonishment as the blaster beam from the ceiling, triggered by the
opening of the door, turned his body to a charcoal powder. The charred remains of the expert agent lay in
a tidy heap in front of the totally empty safe.
The second man was dressed in robes of crimson satin, the long flowing sleeves of which were edged
with three centimeters of white nohar fur - the rarest and most expensive kind in the Galaxy. The satin
draped softly over his tall, spare frame, giving him a majestic - if somewhat satanic - appearance. His red
satin skull cap, embroidered with gold, clung tightly to his thick mane of black-turning gray hair.
He turned his head leisurely as the messenger brought him the decoded note, then held the folded piece
of paper in his hands for a moment, not even bothering to open it. His long, tapering fingers - which were
almost invisible beneath layers of ruby and diamond rings - caressed the smoothness of the paper. He
dismissed the messenger and at last opened the missive. The news it contained brought a smile to his
sharp features - a smile that would have chilled the heart of anyone observing it. The man unconsciously
brought a hand up to his chin to stroke his black goatee as he thought, That's one more, Zander. You
don't have too many left, you know. Then the game will be mine.
He put the note down on an ornately carved solentawood table beside his chair and picked up the large
piece of parchment that had been resting there. In one corner was the colorful achievement containing
three gold dragons on a purple background, a bar sinister and thirteen spots on a field of blood. Idly his
eyes roamed over the wording of the proclamation beneath the crest:
'Be it known to all people of the Empire ... Banion is the true son of my flesh ... Prince of Durward, and all
its dominions ... legitimate heir and successor...'
There was no need for him to read the proclamation in detail - he had long since committed the short but
important message to his memory. Taking the Patent from its special vault was a dangerous luxury, he
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knew, but holding it in his hands gave him such a feeling of power that it could warm even the coldest of
nights.
This, however, was far from a cold night. No matter what the temperature outside, the news of this SOTE
agent's death provided the warm glow of triumph. Handing the Patent to his most trusted vassal to return
to its vault, the man in red stood up impatiently.
Time, he thought. I've waited so long and worked so slowly. I'm not as young as I once was, can 1 wait
until the Plan is finished? Will l live to see that glorious day Mother prophesied?
This room, lavishly decorated though it was with brocade curtains and silken tapestries, was not soothing
enough to the frustrations of his delayed dreams. With long, catlike strides he exited impulsively from the
room. He pressed his hand against the secret panel - which was coded to his prints - and a section of the
wall slid back to reveal a private elevator tube. A cushion of air solidified under his feet as he stepped in,
and dropped him safely and efficiently to a depth of more than fifteen meters below ground level. He left
the tube and found himself enveloped by the eerie darkness of the Planning Room.
Walls, ceiling and floor of this room were all black, a total black, a blackness that greedily absorbed all
light like some ravening beast. It was a blackness that hurt the eyes to see. But the room itself was not
completely dark, for in the center - floor to ceiling - was a sphere seven meters in diameter. Inside the
sphere glowed countless thousands of pinpoint lights, scattered seemingly at random - a three-
dimensional scale map of human-occupied space. The globe towered over the man's head, an enormous
symbol of his vast ambitions.
Blue was the color of Empire, clean and unsullied. Red was the color of his own network. White was
unexplored territory, mainly around the edges. Key systems that he controlled were flashing green. There
were two yellow dots - Durward, to the top right, and Earth, dead center.
There was still some blue, primarily around the periphery. He dismissed those with a mental wave of his
hand. Mopping up operations, he thought; a nuisance rather than an obstacle. The central core, too, was
blue, stretching from Newhope and DesPlaines on one side to improbable Purity on the other. It was a
comparatively small volume, and shrinking fast. He came in here at least once a week to check on his
progress, and the results were most gratifying. A time-lapse film would have shown a crimson fire devour-
ing the Empire, its tongues of flame licking at the few remaining strongholds.
Soon, the man thought as he stood dwarfed before his towering creation. Very soon now. Patience will
win. And it's your move, Zander.
The third man was dressed in gray, a conservative suit so nondescript that no one would have looked
twice at it - which was the whole idea, since the man's job demanded a maximum of anonymity. He was
not an old man by any means, though his bald head and the lines and wrinkles on his face seemed to
give evidence to the contrary. His most outstanding feature, though, was his eyes. No amount of outward
cover could mask the brilliance that dwelled behind them.
He sat in the middle of his richly appointed office while around him a building hummed with activity.
Computers whirred as programmers typed their input and analysts argued over the results. Clerks moved
files from one desk to another, doing their part to keep the river of paperwork flowing dutifully upstream
until it reached someone with the authority to make a decision.
Eventually all the paperwork would, in one form or another, cross the large desk of the man in gray, and
he would take the responsibility for all decisions. But at the moment, all his attention was riveted on the
note that had just been delivered to him by a young, dark-haired girl.
He read the note over three times, not wanting to believe what it said. Finally he looked up at the girl. 'Are
they sure, Helena?' he asked.
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'He mussed his contact time by a full thirty hours. There's no hard evidence, of course, but we can only
suppose that an agent of that caliber would find some way to get in touch in that time- if he were still
alive.'
'Damn!' The man in gray crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it hard against the nearest wall. His
eyes dulled momentarily. 'How many does that make?'
'Eighty-nine,' the girl said grimly.
The man leaned his elbows on the desk and buried his head in his hands. Eighty-nine men and women
that he and his predecessors had sent to their death, all for a piece of paper. One stupid piece of paper
that just happened to control the fate of the Empire.
'It's not your fault,' the girl comforted. She walked around the desk and put her delicate hands on the
man's shoulders. 'I don't know all the details of this matter, but it's obviously a lot tougher than anyone
ever thought it would be.'
'I keep thinking there's something I could have done, some step I should have taken and didn't.'
The girl looked at him compassionately. The Service of the Empire did things to a man, changed him and
made him more than a mere mortal. Its demands were harsher than a nagging wife. It took everything he
had and then dumped him; tormented his failures with guilt and rewarded his successes with little more
than a nod. But there was always the tradition and the glory ...
'There's not much more you could have done,' she said tenderly. 'You've used all our best agents.'
The man looked up, a far-away expression on his face. 'No I haven't. I held the best back, hoping I
wouldn't have to use them. Maybe I didn't want to admit that the danger was this severe.'
He stood up and paced the room before finally stopping in front of the large picture window. From this
height, the vista was magnificent, with waves from the Atlantic Ocean lapping gently against the shores of
Miami Beach while the eastern sky darkened with the approach of night. It looked so peaceful that he was
almost tempted to disbelieve all the plots that were working against the Empire. Almost.
'I'll admit it now,' he said. 'I made a mistake. I only hope it isn't too late to correct it.' He turned back to
face the dark-haired girl. 'It's time for the Circus to come to town.'
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CHAPTER TWO
JULES AND YVETTE
DesPlaines (Plan) 15 rev cat 4-1076-9525. Hostile PX-3MRKQ. Pop (2440) 7,500,000. COL 2018 Fr (qv)
& NrAm (qv) phys. cult. Comm] stndg, 229th. Prin ctrib gal: Circus olt Gal, heav met, prec stones.
(Encyclopedia Galactica, Reel 9, slot 2937)
The circus, in one form or another, is one of the oldest forms of respectable entertainment known to
Mankind. Sporting events, theater, films, radio, television and sensables have all attempted to dislodge it
from its status of popularity, with little lasting success. There is still the marveling at human agility, the
gasping at death-defying feats, the suspense of watching people wager their lives on their skills.
The Circus of the Galaxy was just that - the Circus. It was the top-drawing show everywhere it played, an
attraction whose very name was synonymous with excitement. There were good reasons for the Circus'
success, not the least of which was the fact that the Managing Director - who just happened to be Etienne
d'Alembert, Duke of DesPlaines - settled for nothing short of perfection in all his acts; and while the Circus
remained primarily a d'Alembert effort - fully ninety-eight percent of its personnel were members of that
noble family- the d'Alemberts were a clan of considerable talent. At an age when other children were just
learning to walk, d'Alemberts were already adept at tumbling. By the time they were five, they were
already divided according to their special aptitudes into different branches of the circus that was the
family's life and tradition. The d'Alemberts, despite their exalted lineage, took little part in the affairs of
nobility. They were performers - and more.
As usual, the midway and tent were crowded this evening, for this was the first appearance of the Circus
on Earth in more than twenty years. Its fame had preceded it, and audiences flocked to it to get a look at
what could well be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The fact that the Circus never allowed its
performances to be televised or sensabled enhanced the crowds even more.
There were no 'freaks' on the midway; the Duke considered such exhibitions degrading and fit only for
carnivals, not for the Circus of the Galaxy. But that is not to say that there was not entertainment. There
were food booths, where the curious could sample the delicacies of over a thousand different planets.
There were games of skill and amusement rides, and over all this activity boomed the voice of Henri
d'Alembert, the Duke's nephew twice-removed. 'Ladies and gentlemen, nobles and citizens, we present a
constantly changing panorama to excite and delight you. Over there in the red booth with the yellow
awning is our exotic snack shop. Choose from a menu of over fifty- appealing appetizers, two hundred
terrific, tasty tidbits, five hundred enthralling entrees. All these tender, tantalizing treats await your palate,
coming to you from the farthest corners of the Galaxy for prices ranging from a small handful of kopeks to
a couple of insignificant rubles. For those not interested in food, we invite you to come watch the wrestling
matches about to start in the. side tent. See teams of enormous wrestlers vying against one another,
testing their strength and skill to the limits. Ride our heart-grabbing Eagle's Drop for thrills you never
thought possible. Take your life in your hands and walk through our Haunted House, where there's
nothing to fear but the ghosts and goblins.' Henri had been chief barker for over ten years; he could - and
did - continue his spiel for hours without repeating himself once.
A traveler going down the midway from the main gate to the big tent would pass a gray pavilion marked
'Madame Arabella's - Destinies Divined, Futures Foretold'. Inside, the beautiful, swarthy-complexioned
Arabella would spin tales of the customers' fates using any of the traditional methods, from tarot cards
and tea leaves to palms and crystal balls.
Whether she had any genuine psychic abilities was still a matter for conjecture, but the fact remained that
few of her customers ever asked for refunds.
A few meters further down the midway were the wild animal cages, where the most ferocious beasts from
all over the Galaxy were penned when not performing in the center ring. The least exotic of the creatures
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were the lions and tigers, with which the citizens of Earth were already quite familiar. More unusual were
such specimens as the braknel, two meters high at the shoulder with a loud roar and sharper claws; the
twin gorjas, a hunting team with fifteen centimeter-long fangs that injected into their victims the deadliest
natural poison known to Man; the liltheran, whose eyes had been known to paralyze its prey with hypnotic
effects; the swifter, a beast capable of attaining speeds greater than a hundred and seventy kilometers an
hour, and of killing a full-grown great-ox with one swipe of its powerfully muscled paws; and other
creatures, less impressive to look at but equally lethal in abilities. Yet this entire array of animal savagery
could be controlled by what looked to be a little slip of a DesPlainian girl named Jeanne d'Alembert who,
at only age sixteen, was acknowledged as the greatest animal trainer in all the Galaxy.
Closer still to the main tent was the pavilion of Marcel d'Alembert, Illusionist Extraordinaire. One of the
most popular attractions of the whole Circus, his act always drew crowds. 'You have to watch a magician
closely,' he told his overflow audience. Holding up one deft hand, he said, 'You see this? Well, you should
have been watching this one,' and from his other hand sprouted a large bouquet of flowers, which he
tossed to a pretty girl in the front row. 'Misdirection is the key. I tell you to watch one hand and something
pops out in the other. Suppose you watch both hands?' He held them up for the audience's inspection,
and while their gaze was riveted on his extremities an orange popped out of his mouth. His act continued
on in that vein for thirty minutes, with misdirection both subtle and blatant. Even when he told his
watchers exactly what he was going to do, they still couldn't see how he did it. But of course, that was to
be expected - Marcel d'Alembert was one of the best in the business.
Along the midway, clowns performed continuously. Merry-Andrews male and female, in outlandish garb
and exaggerated makeup played throughout the throngs, taking pratfalls, miming and, in general,
managing to be everywhere and do everything wrong. The children laughed at their outrageous stunts,
and even the adults found it hard not to discard their masks of urbanity and guffaw with the youngsters.
But all these attractions, as colorful and exciting as they certainly were, were merely hors d'oeuvres for
the thrilling drama that was now playing inside the enormous, jam-packed main tent.
For twenty-eight minutes, The Flying d'Alemberts - the greatest troupe of aerialists in the entire Empire of
Earth for the last two centuries - had held its audience silent. Spellbound. Entranced. For twenty-eight
minutes both side rings had been empty and dark. The air over the center ring, from the hard-packed,
imitation-sawdust-covered earth floor up to the plastic top forty-five meters above that floor, had been full
of flying white-clad forms - singles and pairs and groups doing free head stands on trapezes and sway
poles, double trapeze catches, juggling on tightropes, aerial somersaults and other stunts, all utterly
breathtaking ... and all without a safety net.
Suddenly, in perfect unison, eighteen of the twenty d'Alemberts then performing swung to their perches,
secured their apparatuses, and stood motionless, each with his or her right arm pointing upward at the
highest part of the Big Top.
As all those arms pointed up at her, Yvette d'Alembert moved swiftly and gracefully out to the middle of
her high wire-and that wire was high indeed, being forty-one meters above the floor of the ring. She
carried not even so much as a fan for balance, maintaining her equilibrium by almost imperceptible
movements of her hands, feet and body. Reaching the center of the span, she stopped and posed. As far
as the audience could tell, she was as motionless as a statue.
Like all the other d'Alemberts, she was dressed in a silver spangled leotard and tights that clung to every
delicious curve of her body, neck to toes, like a second skin. Thus, while she was too short - one hundred
and sixty-three centimeters - and too wide and too thick - massing a hefty seventy kilos - to be acceptable
as an Earthly fashion model, the sleek lines of her flamboyantly female figure made a very striking and
attractive picture - at a distance. Close up, however, that picture changed.
Although her face was lovely enough to tempt any portrait painter, her ankles were much larger than any
Earthwoman's should have been. Her wrists were those of a two meter, hundred and ten kilo lumberjack.
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Her musculature, from toenails to ears to fingertips, would have made any beefcake film or sensable star
turn instantly green with envy. For all her weight, she had not a gram of flab anywhere on her body. She
looked for all the universe like that incredibly ancient Greek ideal of solid womanhood.
After a few seconds of posing - she knew exactly how long she could get away with hamming it - she
turned her head and looked down at her brother. Jules d'Alembert, wearing the identical outfit to those of
his compatriots, was but ten centimeters taller than his sister, though thirty kilograms heavier. The
tightness of his costume accentuated rather than hid the bulges' of his powerful muscles. A stone wall
would have been soft by comparison, yet his face was handsome enough to melt the hardest of female
hearts.
Jules stood on a perch nineteen meters below his sister's level and an 'impossible' twenty meters off to
one side. The siblings' eyes locked on one another. The audience knew this was to be a feat requiring the
utmost in concentration and, as the two d'Alemberts focused all their attentions on themselves, the
spectators hushed to a deathly stillness.
Flexing her knees slowly, Yvette began swinging her outstretched arms horizontally. As the limbs moved
in ever increasing arcs, she put more and more stress into the tautly stretched steel wire beneath her feet.
Jules, meanwhile, reached out his left hand almost casually and grasped a flying ring. His gaze never
wavering from the body of his sister so far above him, he began to flex his own knees and move his body
in precise synchronization with the swaying motion of the girl-wire system over his head.
The crowd was quiet, frozen in tense anticipation. Yvette's body swayed on its wire, preparatory to her
fantastic leap, building ever-increasing increments of momentum. Finally, in the last cycle through which
she could hold the wire, Yvette squatted and drove both powerful legs downward and to her right. But in
that ultimate moment, something snapped. The harsh metallic report, loud as a pistol shot, was like a
physical blow to the nerves of the audience that had been sitting so anxiously silent.
Several things happened at once
The wire on which Yvette had stood, no longer being anchored at one end, immediately had all its tension
released. Whipping through the air like an infuriated serpent, the thin steel cable dropped toward the
ground, coiling in upon itself with loud metallic whinings and slitherings.
Yvette d'Alembert herself, premiere aerialiste of the entire Galaxy, was deprived of her push-off spot at
the very moment she needed it the most. As her support vanished beneath her, she sprawled helplessly
in midair and began her long fall to the ground.
The eighteen d'Alemberts who had been merely watching the trick came instantly to life on their perches.
With the reflexes of the skilled acrobats that they were, they seized all the ropes, rings and trapezes
within reach and hurled them in the direction of the falling girl, hoping beyond hope that at least one of the
pieces would approach within her grasp and save her from a fatal fall.
Yvette flailed out frantically as she tumbled. One of her fingertips barely touched the bar of a swing, and
the spectators gasped and dug their fingernails deeper into their armrests. But the trapeze was just out of
reach, and none of the other apparatus even came close. Yvette's fall continued unchecked.
Jules d'Alembert was in the lowest position, and consequently had more time to act than did any of the
others; but even he didn't have a millisecond to spare. His every iota of concentration had been upon his
sister even before the wire snapped, though, so he was mentally prepared to do what had to be done. At
the very instant of the break, he pushed himself outward and downward along the arc of the thirty meter
radius of his top-hung flying ring. As he flashed through the air, a glittery white blur, it became readily
apparent that his aim was true and the force of his launching had been precisely right.
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Yvette was falling face down, flat and horizontal, presenting the maximum surface area to the updrafts in
an attempt to retard her fall by even so much as a fraction of a second more. As she neared the point of
intersection with Jules' arc, her downward speed was greater than twenty-one meters per second. Jules,
his body rigidly vertical, was moving almost half that fast as his ring reached the nadir of its prodigious
arc.
In the instant before a right-angle collision occurred - a collision that would have smashed any two
ordinary athletes into shapeless masses of bloody flesh - two strong right hands smacked together in the
practically unbreakable handover-wrist grip of the aerialist. At the same time, Yvette did what she could to
help her brother with his difficult rescue attempt. Spinning and twisting like a cat - except much faster -
she pinioned both her feet against his hard, flat belly. Her hard-sprung knees and powerful leg muscles
absorbed most of the momentum of his mass and speed, cushioning the impact his sturdy body would
otherwise have had on her. Then, at the last possible instant, her legs went around his waist and locked
behind his back. This gave him his right hand free once again, and it flashed upward to join his left in
gripping the ring that was all that kept them from seemingly certain death below.
That took care of the horizontal component of the momentum in the two-person system, but the vertical
component was worse. Much worse, almost twice as great. Its magnitude pulled at their locked bodies,
yanking them downward and into a small but vicious arc. The violent wrenching they received was so
savage it would have broken any ordinary man's back in a fraction of a second. But Jules d'Alembert,
although only a hundred and seventy-three centimeters in height, had all of his one hundred kilo mass in
his favor to absorb the enormous strain. The muscles that were barely concealed beneath his leotard
were super-hard and super-reactive. His skeleton was composed of dense, strong, king-sized bones, held
together by resilient, unbreakable gristle. His arms were as thick as, and immensely stronger than - an
ordinary Earthman's legs.
The two bodies were now unstressed relative to one another, but the danger was far from over. They now
began to hurtle downward at an angle of thirty degrees from the vertical, toward the edge of the ring
facing the reserved-seat and box section of the stands. The people in those sections cringed instinctively
and braced themselves for the possible upcoming impact.
Attention now focused on the weakest point in the whole system, namely Jules' grip on that leather-
covered steel ring. Could he hold it? Could he possibly hold it? Not one person in all that immense
audience moved a muscle; not one of them even breathed. Hands clenched involuntarily, trying by some
unknown psychic connection to add their comparatively puny strength to that of Jules in order to help him
hold on.
The man on the high ring held his grip for just under half a second; held it while that two-centimeter-thick,
superstrength carlong cable stretched more than two meters; held it while the entire supporting framework
creaked and groaned under the unaccustomed strain. Then, the merest moment before that frightful fall
would have been arrested and both would have been safe, Jules' hands slipped from the ring.
Men gasped. Women - some of them, at least - shrieked. But no one in the audience fainted; a sense of
macabre fascination pinned everyone's attention on those two d'Alemberts as they began to fall the
remaining twelve meters to the ground.
A high-speed camera, however, would have revealed the fact that their fall was neither haphazard nor out
of control. They separated and each curled up into a tight position, knees drawn up to their chins, their
bodies braced for impact. As the ground came up to meet them they landed perfectly. Hard-sprung knees
took up half of the shock of landing; hard-sprung elbows took half of what was left. Their heads were bent
low, with chins tucked tightly against their chests. Powerful leg muscles drove them forward, and thick
sturdy shoulders and back muscles struck the floor in perfect rolls. In one fluid, seemingly effortless
motion, both brother and sister had hit the floor and somersaulted lightly to their feet.
-
10
-
Hand in hand they posed, motionless for a moment while they recovered their breath. Then they bowed
deeply in unison, turned and ran lightly to an exit - and they covered the hundred meters of distance in
under eight seconds, at a pace that looked less than a lope.
The multitude of spectators went wild.
They had seen a girl falling to certain death. They had felt a momentary flash of relief - or actually of
disappointment? - when it seemed as though her life might be saved. Then they had watched two
magnificently alive young people fall, if not to certain death, at least to maiming, crippling injury. Then, in
the climactic last split second, the whole terrible accident had become the grand finale of the act.
That it was a grand finale - a crashing smash of a finish - there was no possible doubt. The audience had
had its emotions ripped out and wrung for the last drop of feeling. The only question was, which emotion
was finally being expressed in that shrieking, yelling, clapping, jeering, cheering, whistling and catcalling
throng of Earthpeople - relief, appreciation or disappointment?
No matter; for whatever it was, they had all had the thrill of a lifetime - and few if any of them could
understand how it could possibly have been done.
For of the teeming trillions of people inhabiting the thirteen hundred and forty-two other planets of the
Empire
of Earth, scarcely one in a hundred had ever heard of the planet DesPlaines. Of those who had heard of
it, comparatively few knew that its surface gravity was approximately three thousand centimeters per
second squared - more than three times that of small, green Earth. And most of those who knew that fact
neither knew nor cared that harsh, forbidding, hostile DesPlaines was the home world of the Circus of the
Galaxy and of The Family d'Alembert.
摘要：

-1-THEIMPERIALSTARSVolumeOneofTheclassicFamilyd’AlembertseriesByE.E.‘Doc’SmithWithStephenGoldinCHAPTERONETHREEMENBytheyear2447,theEmpireofEarthwouldhavelookedremarkablyhealthytoanoutsideobserver.Inthealmosttwocenturiessinceitsformation,ithadnearlydoubleditssizeintermsofsubjectplanets,whiletradebetwe...

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