Your most urgent need, I take it, is for something-anything-that will stop that surface of
force before it reaches the skirt of your defensive dome and blocks your dissipators?”
“Exactly!”
“All right. We’ll build you a four-way fourth-order projector to handle full materializations-
four way to handle four attackers in case they get desperate and double their program.
With it you will send working images of yourselves into the power rooms of the Chloran
ships and clamp a short circuiting field across the secondaries of their converters. Of
course they can bar you out with a zone of force if they detect you before you can kill the
generators of their zones, but that will be just as good, as far as we’re concernedthey
can’t do a thing as long as they’re on, you know. Now put on the headset again and I’ll
give you the data on the projector. Better get a recorder, too, as there’ll be some stuff
that you won’t be able to carry in your head.”
The recorder was brought in and from Seaton’s brain there flowed into it and into the
mind of Radnor the fundamental concepts and complete equations and working details of
the new instrument. Upon the Valeronian’s face was first blank amazement, then dawning
comprehension, and lastly sheer, wondering awe as, the plan completed, he removed the
headset. He began a confused panegyric of thanks, but Seaton interrupted him briskly.
“That’s all right, Radnor, you’d do the same thing for us if things were reversed. Humanity
has got to stick together against all the vermin of all the universes. But, say, I’d like to
see this mess cleaned up, myself-think I’ll stick around and help you build it. You’re worn
out, but you won’t rest until the Chlorans are whipped-I can’t blame you for that, I
wouldn’t either-and I’m fresh as a daisy. Let’s go!”
In a few hours the complex machine was done. Radnor and Siblin were seated at two of
the sets of controls, associate physicists at the others.
“Since I don’t know any more about their system of conversion than you do, I can’t tell
you in detail what to do,” Seaton was issuing final instructions. “But whatever you do,
don’t monkey with their primaries-shorting them might overload their liberators and blow
this whole Solar System over into the next galaxy. Take time to be dead sure that you’ve
got the secondaries of their main converters, and slap a short circuit on as many of them
as you can before they cut you off with a zone. You’ll probably find a lot of liberator-
converter sets on vessels of that size, but if you can kill the ones that feed the zone
generators they’re cold meat.”
“You are much more familiar with such things than we are,” Radnor remarked. “Would
you not like to come along?”
“I’ll say I would, but I can’t,” Seaton replied instantly. “This isn’t me at all, you know. Um .
. . um . . . m . . . I could tag along, of course, but it wouldn’t be . . . but let’s see. . .”
“Oh, of course,” Radnor apologized. “In working with you so long and so cordially I forgot
for the moment that you are not here in person.”
“Can’t be done, I’m afraid.” Seaton frowned, still immersed in the hitherto unstudied
problem of the reprojection of a projected image. “Need over two hundred thousand
relays and-um-synchronization-neuro-muscular-not on this outfit. Wonder if it can be done
at all? Have to look into it some time-but excuse me, Radnor, I was thinking and got lost.
Ready to go? I’ll follow you up and be ready to offer advice-not that you’ll need it.
Shoot!”
Radnor snapped on the power and he and his aid shot their projections into one of the
opposing fortresses, Siblin and his associate going into the other. Through compartment
after compartment of the immense structures the as yet invisible projections went,
searching for the power rooms. They were not hard to find, extending as they did nearly
the full length of the stupendous structures; vaulted caverns filled with linked pairs of
mastodonic fabrications, the liberator converters.
Springing in graceful arcs from heavily insulated ports in the ends of one machine of each
pair were five great busbars, which Radnor and Siblin recognized instantly as secondary
leads from the converters-the gigantic mechanisms which, taking the raw intra-atomic
energy from the liberators, converted it into a form in which it could be controlled and
utilized.
Neither Radnor nor Siblin had ever heard of five-phase energy of any kind, but those
secondaries were unmistakable. Therefore all four images drove against the fivefold bars
their perfectly conducting fields of force. Four converters shrieked wildly, trying to
wrench themselves from their foundations; insulation smoked and burst wildly into yellow
flame; the stubs of the bars grew white-hot and began to fuse; and in a matter of
seconds a full half of each prodigious machine subsided to the floor, a semimolten,
utterly useless mass.
Similarly went the next two in each fortress, and the next -then Radnor’s two projections
were cut off sharply as the Chloran’s impenetrable zone of force went on, and that
fortress, all its beams and forces inoperative, floated off into space.
Siblin and his partner were more fortunate. When the amoebus commanding their prey
threw in his zone switch nothing happened. Its source of power had already been
destroyed, and the two Valeronian images went steadily down the line of converters, in
spite of everything the ragingly frantic monstrosities could do to hinder their progress.
The terrible beam of destruction held steadily upon that fortress by the beamers in
Valeron’s mighty dome had never slackened its herculean efforts to pierce the Chloran
screens. Now, as more and more of the converters of that floating citadel were burned
out those screens began to radiate higher and higher into the ultraviolet. Soon they went
down, exposing defenseless metal to the blasting, annihilating fury of the beam, to which
any conceivable substance is but little more resistant than so much vacuum.
There was one gigantic, exploding flash, whose unbearable brilliance darkened even the
incandescent radiance of the failing screen, and Valeron’s mighty beam bored on, un-
impeded. And where that mastodonic creation had floated an instant before there were
only a few curling wisps of vapor.
“Nice job of clean-up, boys-fine!” Seaton clapped a friendly hand upon Radnor’s shoulder.
“Anybody can handle them now. You’d better take a week off and catch up on sleep. I
could do with a little myself, and you’ve been on the job a lot longer than I have.”
“But hold on-don’t go yet!” Radnor exclaimed in consternation. “Why, our whole race
owes its very existence to you-wait at least until our Bardyle can have a word with you!”
“That isn’t necessary, Radnor. Thanks just the same, but I don’t go in for that sort of
thing; any more than you would. Besides, we’ll be here in the flesh in a few days and I’ll
talk to him then. So long!” and the projection disappeared.
In due time Skylark Two came lightly to a landing in a parkway near the council hall, to
be examined curiously by an excited group of Valeronians who wondered audibly that
such a tiny space ship should have borne their salvation. The four Terrestrials, sure of
their welcome, stepped out and were greeted by Siblin, Radnor, and the Bardyle.
“I must apologize, sir, for my cavalier treatment of you at our previous meeting.” Seaton’s
first words to the coordinator were in sincere apology. “I trust that you will pardon it,
realizing that something of the kind was necessary in order to establish communication.”
“Speak not of it, Richard Seaton. I suffered only a temporary inconvenience, a small thing
indeed compared to the experience of encountering a mind of such stupendous power as
yours. Neither words nor deeds can express to you the profound gratitude of our entire
race for what you have done for Valeron.
“I am informed that you personally do not care for extravagant praise, but please believe
me to be voicing the single thought of a world’s people when I say that no words coined
by brain of man could be just, to say nothing of being extravagant, when applied to you. I
do not suppose that we can do anything, however slight, for you in return, in token that
these are not entirely empty words?”
“You certainly can, sir,” Seaton made surprising answer. “We are so completely lost in
space that without a great deal of material and of mechanical aid we shall never be able
to return to, nor even to locate in space, our native galaxy, to say nothing of our native
planet.”
A concerted gasp of astonishment was his reply, then he was assured in no uncertain
terms that the resources of Valeron were at his disposal.
A certain amount of public attention had of course to be endured; but Seaton and Crane,