Skylark DuQuesne s-4 Read online

  Hence that was precisely what had been built. No conceivable force or combination of forces, however applied and even at pointblank range, could crack Llurdiax’s utterly impenetrable shields.

  Nor was that all; for Llurdan engineers, as well as Llurdan philosophers, were thoroughly familiar with the concept that “The best defense is a powerful offense.”

  Wherefore Llurdiax’s offensive projectors were designed to smash down any theoretically possible threat originating anywhere within a distance that light would require one and three-quarters millions of Tellurian years to traverse.

  Under the thrustings and the stabbings, the twistings and the tearings, the wrenchings and the bludgeonings of those frightful fields of force, seventeen sets of Fenachrone defensive screens — outer, intermediate, and inner — went successively upward through the visible spectrum, through the ultra-violet, and into the black of failure; baring the individual vessel’s last lines of defense, the wall-shields themselves.

  Then Klazmon increased the power, gouging and raving at those ultra-stubborn defenses until those defenses were just barely holding; at which point he relaxed a little, read his verniers, leaned back in his bucket seat, and took stock.

  The marauding spaceships were tremendous things; cigarshaped; flying in hollow-globe formation with one vessel — the flagship, of course — at the exact center; spaced so closely that their screens had overlapped — overlapped in such fashion that unless and until that shell of force was broken no attack could be made upon that central ship.

  So far, so good. With the overwhelming superiority of ultimate — planetary over any at-all — probable mobile installations he, Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth, had smashed that shell completely. He could, he was sure, destroy all those vessels as completely.

  But it would not do at all to destroy even one of them without examining both it and its crew. Klazmon had to know the who and the what and the wherefore and the how and the why. Therefore, leaving all of his attacking beams exactly as they were, Klazmon assembled another gigantic beam — the entire output of one Llurdiaxian fortress — and hurled it against the tail-section of the flagship.

  Wall-shield and tail-section vanished in a few nanoseconds of time; and not only the tail-section, but also a few hundreds of yards of the flagship’s prodigious length as well, became a furiously raging fireball; a sphere of violence incredible.

  Klazmon drove his projection forward then, through the now unresisting steel wall and into the control room; where it was met by blasts of force from the hand-weapons of the Fenachrone officers.

  This demonstration, however, lasted for only a second or two. Then those officers, knowing what it was that was standing there so unconcernedly, abandoned their physical assault and attacked the invading projection with the full power of the huge, black, flame-shot wells of hypnotic force that were their eyes. When the mental attack also failed they merely stood there; glaring a hatred that was actually tangible.

  Klazmon immobilized each one of the officers individually with pencils of force and began to study them intensively. While much shorter and thicker and wider and immensely stronger than the Jelmi of the Realm, they were definitely Jelmoid in every important respect… yes, the two races had certainly had a common ancestry, and not too far back. Also, their thinking and conduct were precisely as was to be expected of any Jelman or Jelmoid race that had been allowed to develop in its unsane and illogical way for many thousands of years without the many benefits of Llurdan control!

  They would of course have thought-exchange gear; any race of their evident advancement must have… ah, yes; over there.

  Now — which of these wights would be the admiral? That one wearing the multiplex scanner would be the pilot; that one facing the banks of dials and gages would be the prime engineer; those six panels had to be battle panels, so those six monsters had to be gunnery officers… ah!

  That one there — off by himself; seated (in spite of the fact that with their short, blocky legs no Fenachrone had any need, ever, to sit) at a desk that was practically a throne; facing no gadgetry and wearing consciously an aura of power and authority — that one would be the one Klazmon wanted.

  Klazmon’s projection flashed up to the motionlessly straining admiral. The helmets of the “mechanical educator” snapped onto the Llurd’s quietly studious head and onto the head with the contemptuously sneering face — the head of First Scientist Fleet Admiral Sleemet of the Fenachrone.

  That face, however, lost its sneer instantly, for Sleemet — even more overweeningly and brutally and vaingloriously prideful now than were the lower echelons of his race — had never imagined the possibility of the existence of such a mind as this monstrous invader had.

  Klazmon’s mind, the product of seventy thousand years of coldly logical evolution, tore ruthlessly into the mind of the Fenachrone. It bored into and twisted at that straining mind’s hard-held blocks; it battered and shattered them; it knocked them down flat.

  Then Klazmon, omnivorous scholar that he was, set about transferring to his own brain practically everything that the Fenachrone had ever learned. Klazmon learned, as Richard Seaton had learned previously, that all Fenachrone have authority and responsibility were meticulous record-keeper. He learned what had happened to the civilization of the Fenachrone and to its world, and who had done it and how; he learned that each and every captain knew exactly the same and had exactly the same records as did First Scientist Fleet Admiral Sleemet himself; he learned that each vessel, alone by itself, was thoroughly capable of re-creating the entire Fenachrone civilization and culture.

  A few of the many other thousands of things that Klazmon learned were: That there were many Jelman and Jelmoid-human and humanoid, that is — races living in what they called the First Galaxy. That all these races were alike in destructiveness, belligerence to the point of war — lust, savagery, implacability, vengefulness, intolerance, and frightfulness generally. Not one of them (by Klazmon’s light!) had any redeeming features or qualities whatever. That all these races must be destroyed if any worthwhile civilization were ever to thrive and spread.

  There was no word in any language of the Realm of the Llurdi corresponding even remotely to “genocide.” If there had been, Klazmon would have regarded it an an etymological curiosity. All those surviving Fenachrone would have to die: no such race as that had any right whatever to live.

  Before being destroyed, however, they would have to be studied with Llurdan thoroughness; and any and all worthwhile ideas and devices and other artifacts should be and would be incorporated into the Llurdan-Jelman way of life.

  One vessel would be enough, however, to preserve temporarily for the purpose of study. In fact, what was left of the flagship would be enough.

  The now-vanished tail-section had contained nothing new to Llurdan science, the encyclopedic records were intact, and the flagship’s personnel — males and females, adults and adolescents and children and babies — were alive and well.

  Wherefore sixteen sets of multiplex projectors doubled their drain of power from Llurdias’ mighty defensive girdle, and all the Fenachrone aboard sixteen superdreadnoughts died in situ, wherever they happened to be, as those sixteen vessels became tiny sunlets.

  And the Ilanzlan issued orders:

  1) The bulk of the Fenachrone flagship was to be brought in to the llanzlanate at full sixth-order drive.

  2) A test section of the llanzlanate was to be converted at once to a completely authentic Fenachrone environment.

  3) Every possible precaution was to be taken that no Fenachrone suffered any ill effects on the way, during transfer to their new quarters, or while in their new quarters.

  Dropping the Fenachrone flagship and its personnel from his mind, Klazmon immersed himself in thought.

  He had learned much. There was much more of menace than he had supposed, in many galaxies other than Galaxy DW-427-LU… especially that so-called First Galaxy… and particularly the Green System or Central System of
that galaxy? The green-skinned Norlaminians — how of them? And how of that system’s overlord, Seaton of Tellus? That one was, very evidently, a Jelm… and, even after making all due allowance for Sleemet’s bias, he was of a completely uncontrolled and therefore extremely dangerous type.

  And as, evidently, his was a mind of exceeding power, he could very well be a very dangerous and quite immediate threat.

  The mergons must be wider-spread even than originally planned and they must be on the lookout for this Overlord Seaton. In fact, he might be worth interviewing personally.

  It might be well worth while, some of these years, to take some time off and go to that distant galaxy, purposely to make that Jelm Seaton’s acquaintance…

  Shrugging his shoulders and shaking both wings, Klazmon cut off his projection and called another meeting of his Board of Advisors.

  He briefed them on what had happened; then went on:

  “We must protect all our planets in the same way and to the same extent that this planet Llurdiax is protected now: a course of action now necessary because of these many Jelman and Jelmoid races that have been developing for untold millenia in their unsane and illogical ways, with no semblance of or attempt at either guidance or control.

  “Second: any force of any such race that attacks us will be destroyed before it or they can do us any harm.

  “Third: the manufacture and distribution of mergons will continue indefinitely at the present rate.

  “Fourth: No chance or casual vessel or fleet traversing any part of the vast volume of space to be covered by our mergons is to be destroyed, or even hailed, until I myself decide what action, if any, is to be taken.”

  So saying, the Llanzlan Klazmon dismissed his advisors.

  His great wings fanned idly as he contemplated what he had done. He was well pleased with it. He had, he reflected, scratching his head contentedly with the tip of his tail, provided for every possible contingency. Whatever this Jelm, or Jelmlike creature, named Seaton might be or do, he would pose no real threat to the Ilanzlanate.

  Of that Klazmon was one hundred per cent sure…

  And wrong!

  6. OF DISEMBODIED INTELLIGENCES

  WE have now seen how the ripple of thought that began with the conference between Seaton and his advisors from the Green System had spread throughout all of recorded space, and how it had affected the lives and destinies of countless millions of persons who had never heard of him.

  Yet a few threads remain to be drawn into our net. And one of these threads represents the strangest entities Seaton had encountered, ever… as well as the most deadly.

  To understand what these entities are like, it is necessary to look back to their beginnings.

  These are most remote, both in space and in time. In a solar system so distant from that of Sol as to be forever unknowable to anyone of Earth, and at a time an inconceivably vast number of millennia in the past, there once existed a lusty and fertile Tellus-type planet named Marghol. Over the usual millions of years mankind evolved on Marghol and thrived as usual. And finally, also as usual and according to the scheduled fate of all created material things, the planet Marghol grew old.

  Whether or not a Tellus-type planet ordinarily becomes unfit to support human life before its sun goes nova is not surely known. Nor does it matter very much; for, long before either event occurs, the human race involved has developed a faster-than-light drive and has at its disposal dozens or hundreds of Earth-like planets upon which even subhuman life has not yet developed. The planet Marghol, however, while following the usual pattern in general, developed a specific thing that was, as far as is known, unique throughout all the reaches of total space and throughout all time up to the present.

  On Marghol, during many, many millions of years of its prime, there had continued to exist a small, tightly-inbred, self-perpetuating cult of thinkers — of men and women who devoted their every effort and their total power to thought.

  They themselves did not know what freak of mind or quirk of physical environment made the ultimate outcome possible; but after those many millions of years, during which the perpetually inbreeding group grew stronger and stronger mentally and weaker and weaker physically, the seven survivors of the group succeeded finally in liberating their minds — minds perfectly intact and perfectly functioning — from the gross and perishable flesh of their physical bodies.

  Then, able to travel at the unmeasurable speed of thought and with all future time in which to work, they set out to learn everything there was to know. They would learn, they declared, not only all about space and time and zero and infinity and animals and people and life and death, but also everything else comprising or having anything to do with the totality of existence that is the Cosmic All.

  This quest for knowledge has been going on, through universe after universe and through dimension after dimension, for a stretch of time that, given as a number in Tellurian years, would be a number utterly incomprehensible to the human mind. For — what perceptible or tangible difference is there, to the human mind, between a googolplex of seconds and the same number of centuries? And, since these free minds ordinarily kept track of time only by the life-cycles of suns, the period of time during which they had already traveled and studied could have been either shorter or longer than either of the two exact figures mentioned.

  Seven free minds had left the planet Marghol. They called themselves, in lieu of names, “One” to “Seven” in order of their liberation.

  For a brief time — a mere cosmic eye-wink; a few hundreds of millions of years — there had been eight, since One had consented to dematerialize one applicant for immortality.

  The applicant Eight, however, sick and tired of eternal life, had committed suicide by smashing his sixth-order being out of existence against Richard Seaton’s sixth-order screens.

  Now those seven free minds, accompanied by the free mind of Immortality Candidate Doctor Marc C. DuQuesne, were flying through ultra-deep space in a time-stasis capsule. This capsule, as has been said, was designed and powered to travel almost to infinity in both space and time. But, as the Norlaminians pointed out to Seaton, his basic assumptions were invalid.

  Nothing happened, however, for week after week. Then, so immensely far out in intergalactic space that even the vast bulk of a galaxy lying there would have been invisible even to Palomar’s “Long Eye,” the hurtling, capsule struck a cloud of hydrogen gas.

  That gas was, by Earthly standards, a hard vacuum; but the capsule’s velocity by that time was so immensely great that that cloud might just as well have been a mountain of solid rock. The capsule’s directors tried, with all their prodigious might and speed to avoid the obstruction, but even with fullest power they did not have time enough.

  Eight multi-ton power-bars of activated uranium flared practically instantaneously into ragingly incandescent gas; into molecular, atomic, and subatomic vapor and debris. A fireball brighter than a sun glared briefly; then nothing whatever was visible where that massive structure had been.

  And out of that sheer emptiness came a cold, clear thought: the thought of Doctor Marc C. DuQuesne.

  “One, are you familiar enough with this region of space to estimate at all closely how long we were in that stasis of time and where we now are with reference to the First Galaxy?”

  Freemind One did not exactly answer the question. “What matters it?” he asked. If the thought of an immortal and already incredibly old and incredibly knowledgeful mind can be said to show surprise, that thought did. “It should be clear, even to you of infinitesimally short life, that any length of time expressible in any finite number of definite time periods is actually but a moment. Also, the Cosmic All is vast indeed; larger by many orders of magnitude than any that the boldest of your thinkers has as yet dared to imagine.

  “Whether or not space is infinite I do not know. Whether or not my life span will be infinite I do not know. I do not as yet completely understand infinity. I do know, however, that bo
th infinite time and infinite space are requisite for the acquisition of infinite knowledge, which is my goal; wherefore I am well content. You have no valid reason whatever for wishing to return to your Earth. Instead, you should be as eager as I am to explore and to study the as yet unknown.”

  “I have unfinished business there.” DuQuesne’s thought was icy cold. “I’m going back there whether you do or not.”

  “To kill beings who have at best but an instant to live? To rule an ultra-microscopic speck of cosmic dust? A speck whose fleeting existence is of but infinitesimal importance to the Great Scheme of Things? Are you still infantile enough, despite your recent transformation, to regard as valid such indefensible reasons as those?”

  “They’re valid enough to me. And you’d have to go back, too, I should think. Or isn’t it still true that science demands the dematerialization of the whole Skylark party?”

  “Truth is variable,” One said. “Thus, while certain of our remarks were not true in the smaller aspect, each of them was designed to elicit a larger truth. They aided in the initiation of chains of events by observation of which I will be able to fit many more constituent parts of this you call the First Universe precisely into place in the Great Scheme.

  “Now as to you, DuQuesne. The probability was small that you were sufficiently advanced to become a worthy member of our group; but I decided to give you your chance and permitted Richard Seaton to do what he did. As a matter of fact I, not Seaton, did it. You have failed; and I now know that no member of your race can ever become a true Scholar. In a very few millions of your years you would not be thinking of knowledge at all, but merely of self-destruction. I erred, one-tenth of a cycle since, in admitting Freemind Eight to our study group; an entity who was then at approximately the same stage of development as you now are. I will not repeat that error. You will be rematerialized and will be allowed to do whatever you please.”