Edward Smith - Skylark DuQuesne

APPEARANCES are deceiving. A polished chunk of metal that shines like a Christmas-tree ornament may hold — and release — energy to destroy a city. A seed is quite another order of being to the murderous majesty of a toppling tree. A match flame can become a holocaust.

And the chain of events that can unseat the rulers of galaxies can begin in a cozy living room, before a hearth…

Outwardly, the comfortable (if somewhat splendidly furnished) living room of the home of the Richard Ballinger Seatons of Earth presented a peaceful scene. Peaceful? It was sheerly pastoral! Seaton and Dorothy, his spectacularly auburn-haired wife, sat on a davenport, holding hands. A fire of pine logs burned slowly, crackling occasionally and sending sparks against the fine bronze screen of the fireplace. Richard Ballinger Seaton Junior lay on the rug, trying doggedly, silently, and manfully, if unsuccessfully, to wriggle toward those entrancing flames.

Inwardly, however, it was very much otherwise. Dorothy’s normally pleasant — as well as beautiful — face wore a veritable scowl.

The dinner they had just eaten had been over two hours late; wherefore not one single item of it had been fit to feed to a pig. Furthermore, and worse, Dick was not relaxed and was not paying any attention to her at all. He was still wound up tight; was still concentrating on the multitude of messages driving into his brain through the button in his left ear — messages of such urgency of drive that she herself could actually read them, even though she was wearing no apparatus whatever.

She reached up, twitched the button out of his ear, and tossed it onto a table. “Will you please lay off of that stuff for a minute, Dick?” she demanded. “I’m fed up to the eyeballs with this business of you killing yourself with all time work and no time sleep. You never had any such horrible black circles under your eyes before and you’re getting positively scrawny. You’ve got to quit it; Can’t you let somebody else carry some of the load? Delegate some authority?”

“I’m delegating all I possibly can already, Red-Top.” Seaton absently rubbed his ear.

Until Dorothy had flipped it away, the button had been carrying to him a transcription of the taped reports of more than one hundred Planetary Observers from the planet of Norlamin, each with the IQ of an Einstein and the sagacity of an owl. The last report had had to do with plentiful supplies of X metal that had been turned up on a planet of Omicron Eridani, and the decision to dispatch a fleet of cargo-carrying ships to fetch them away.

But he admitted grudgingly to himself that that particular decision had already been made. His wife was a nearer problem. Paying full attention to her now, he put his arm around her and squeezed.

“Converting a whole planet practically all at once to use fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-order stuff is a job of work, believe me. It’s all so new and so tough that not too many people can handle any part of it. It takes brains. And what makes it extra tough is that altogether too many people who are smart enough to learn it are crooks. Shysters — hoodlers — sticky-fingers generally. But I think we’re just about over the hump. I wouldn’t wonder if these Norlaminian ‘Observers’ — snoopers, really — from the Country of Youth will turn out to be the answer to prayer.”

“They’d better,” she said, darkly. “At least, something had better.”

“Besides, if you think I look like the wrath of God, take a good look at Mart sometime. He’s having more grief than I am.”

“I already have; he looks like a refugee from a concentration camp. Peggy was screaming about it this morning, and we’re both going to just simply…”

What the girls intended to do was not revealed, for at that moment there appeared in the air before them the projected simulacra of eight green-skinned, more-or-less-human men; the men with whom they had worked so long; the ablest thinkers of the Central System.

There was majestic Fodan, the Chief of the Five of Norlamin; there was white-bearded Orlon, the First of Astronomy; Rovol, the First of Rays; Astron, the First of Energy; Drasnik, the First of Psychology; Satrazon and Castor, the Firsts of Chemistry and of Mechanism, respectively; and-in some ways not the least-there was that powerhouse of thought Sacner Carfon the two thousand three hundred forty-sixth: the hairless, almost porpoise-like Chief of the Council of the watery planet Dasor. They were not present in the flesh. But their energy projections were as seemingly solid as Seaton’s own tall, lean body.

“We come, Overlord of the System, upon a matter of—” the Chief of the Five began.

“Don’t call me ‘Overlord’. Please.” Seaton broke in, with grim foreboding in his eyes while Dorothy stiffened rigidly in the circle of his arms. Both knew that those masters of thought could scarcely be prevailed upon to leave their own worlds even via projection.

For all eight of them to come this far — almost halfway across the galaxy! — meant that something was very wrong indeed.

“I’ve told you a dozen times, not only I ain’t no Overlord but I don’t want to be and won’t be. I don’t like to play God — I simply have not got what it takes.”

“ ‘Coordinator’, then, which is of course a far better term for all except the more primitive races,” Fodan went imperturbably on. “We have told you, youth, not a dozen times, but once, which should have been sufficient, that your young and vigorous race possesses qualities that our immensely older peoples no longer have. You, as the ablest individual of your race, are uniquely qualified to serve total civilization. Thus, whenever your services become necessary, you will so serve. Your services have again become necessary. Orlon, in whose province the matter primarily lies, will explain.”

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

“You, friend Richard, with some help from us, succeeded in encapsulating a group of malignant immaterial entities, including the disembodied personality of your fellow-scientist Doctor Marc C. DuQuesne, in a stasis of time. This capsule, within which no time whatever could or can elapse, was launched into space with a linear acceleration of approximately three times ten to the twelfth centimeters per second squared. It was designed and powered to travel at that acceleration for something over one hundred thousand million Tellurian years; at the end of which time it was to have been rotated through the fourth dimension into an unknown and unknowable location in normal three-dimensional space.”

“That’s right,” Sexton said. “And it will. It’ll do just exactly that. Those pure-intellectual louses are gone for good; and so is Blackie DuQuesne.”

“You err, youth,” corrected the Norlaminian. “You did not allow us time sufficient to consider and to evaluate all the many factors involved. Rigid analysis and extended computation show that the probability approaches unity that the capsule of stasis will, almost certainly within one Tellurian year of its launching and highly probably in much less time, encounter celestial matter of sufficient density to volatilize its uranium power bars. This event will of course allow the stasis of time to collapse and the imprisoned immaterial entities will be liberated; in precisely the same condition as in the instant of their encapsulation.”

Dorothy Sexton gasped. Even her husband showed that he was shaken. DuQuesne and the Immortals free? But “But it can’t!” he fairly yelled the protest. “It’ll dodge — it’s built to dodge anything that dense!”