highly reactive, one responds only to Crane’s thoughts, the other only to mine. As soon
as we get some loose time we are going to build a couple of auxiliaries, with automatic
stops against stray thoughts, to break you girls in on-we know as well as you do, Red-
Top, that you haven’t had enough practice yet to take an unlimited control.”
“I’ll say I haven’t!” she agreed feelingly. “I feel a lot better now-I’m sure I can handle the
rest of these things very nicely.”
“Sure you can. Well, let’s call the Cranes and go into the control room,” Seaton
suggested. “The quicker we get started the quicker we’ll get done.”
Accustomed as she was to the banks and tiers of keyboards, switches, dials, meters,
and other operating paraphernalia of the control rooms of the previous Skylarks, Dorothy
was taken aback when she passed through the thick, heavily insulated door into that of
the Skylark of Valeron. For there were four gray walls, a gray ceiling, and a thick gray
rug. There were low, broad double chairs and headsets. There was nothing else.
“This is your seat, Dottie, here beside me, and this is your headset-it’s just a visiset, so
you can see what is going on, not a controller,” he hastened to reassure her. “You have
a better illusion of seeing if your eyes are open, that’s why everything is neutral in color.
But better still for you girls, we’ll turn off the lights.”
The illumination, which had seemed to pervade the entire room instead of emanating
from any definite sources, faded out; but in spite of the fact that the room was in
absolute darkness Dorothy saw with a clarity and a depth of vision impossible to any
Earthly eyes. She saw at one and the same time, with infinite precision of detail, the
houses and their contents; the whole immense sphere of the planetoid, inside and out;
Valeron and her sister planets circling their sun; and the stupendous full sphere of the
vaulted heavens.
She knew that her husband was motionless at her side, yet she saw him materialize in
the control room of Skylark Two. There he seized the cabinet which contained the space
chart of the Fenachrone-that library of films portraying all the galaxies visible to the
wonderfully powerful telescopes and projectors of that horrible but highly scientific race.
That cabinet became instantly a manifold scanner, all its reels flashing through as one.
Simultaneously there appeared in the air above the machine a three-dimensional model
of all the galaxies there listed. A model upon such a scale that the First Galaxy was but a
tiny lenticular pellet, although it was still disproportionately large; upon such a scale that
the whole vast sphere of space covered by the hundreds of Fenachrone scrolls was
compressed into a volume but little larger than a basketball. And yet each tiny galactic
pellet bore its own peculiarly individual identifying marks.
Then Dorothy felt as though she herself had been hurled out into the unthinkable reaches
of space. In a fleeting instant of time she passed through thousands of star clusters, and
not only knew the declination, right ascension, and distance of each galaxy, but saw it
duplicated in miniature in its exact place in an immense, three-dimensional model in the
hollow interior of the space-flyer in which she actually was.
The mapping went on. To human brains and hands the task would have been one of
countless years. Now, however, it was to prove only a matter of hours, for this was no
human brain. Not only was it reactive and effective at distances to be expressed
intelligibly in light-years or parsecs; because of the immeasurable sixth-order velocity of
its carrier wave it was equally effective across reaches of space so incomprehensibly
vast that the rays of visible light emitted at the birth of a sun so far away would reach the
point of observation only after that sun had lived through its entire cycle of life and had
disappeared.
“Well, that’s about enough of that for you, for a while,” Seaton remarked in a matter-of-
fact voice. “A little of that stuff goes a long ways at first-you have to get used to it.”
“I’ll say you do! Why . . . I . . . it . . .” Dorothy paused, even her ready tongue at a loss
for words.
“You can’t describe it in words-don’t try,” Seaton advised. “Let’s go outdoors and watch
the model grow.”
To the awe, if not to the amazement of the observers, the model had already begun to
assume a lenticular pattern. Galaxies, then, really were arranged in general as were the
stars composing them; there really were universes, and they really were lenticular-the
vague speculations of the hardiest and most exploratory cosmic thinkers were being
confirmed.
For hour after hour the model continued to grow and Seaton’s face began to take on a
look of grave concern. At last, however, when the chart was three fourths done or more,
a deep-toned bell clanged out the signal for which he had been waiting-the news that
there was now being plotted a configuration of galaxies identical with that portrayed by
the space chart of the Fenachrone.
“Gosh!” Seaton sighed hugely. “I was beginning to be afraid that we had escaped clear
out of our own universe, and that would have been bad-very, very bad, believe met The
rest of the mapping can wait-let’s got”
Followed by the others he dashed into the control room, threw on his helmet, and hurled
a projection into the now easily recognizable First Galaxy. He found the Green System
without difficulty, but he could not hold it. It was so far away that the utmost delicacy of
control of which the gigantic sixth-order installation was capable could not keep the
viewpoint from leaping erratically, in fantastic bounds of hundreds of millions of miles, all
through and around its objective.
But Seaton had half expected this development and was prepared for it. He had already
sent out a broadcasting projection; and now, upon a band of frequencies wide enough to
affect every receiving instrument in use throughout the Green System and using power
sufficient to overwhelm any transmitter, however strong, that might be in operation, he
sent out In a mighty voice his urgent message to the scientists of Norlamin.
21 DUNARK TAKES A HAND
In the throne room of Kondal, with its gorgeously resplendent jeweled ceiling and jeweled
metallic-tapestry walls, there were seated in earnest consultation the three most
powerful men of the planet Osnome-Roban, the Emperor; Dunark, the Crown Prince; and
Taman, the Commander-in-Chief. Their “clothing” was the ordinary Osnomian regalia of
straps, chains, and metallic bands, all thickly bestudded with blazing gems and for the
most part supporting the full assortment of devastatingly powerful hand weapons without
which any man of that race would have felt stark naked. Their fierce green faces were
keenly hawklike; the hard, clean lines of their bare green bodies bespoke the rigid
physical training that every Osnomian undergoes from birth until death.
“Father, Taman may be right,” Dunark was saying soberly. “We are too savage, too
inherently bloodthirsty, too deeply interested in killing, not as a means to some really
worth-while end, but as an end in itself. Seaton the Overlord thinks so, the Norlaminians
think so, the Dasorians think so, and I am beginning to think so myself. All really
enlightened races look upon us as little better than barbarians, and in part I agree with
them. I believe, however, that if we were really to devote ourselves to study and to
productive effort we could soon equal or surpass any race in the System, except of
course the Norlaminians.”
“There may be something in what you say,” the emperor admitted dubiously, “but it is
against all our racial teachings. What, then, of an outlet for the energies of all manhood?”
“Constructive effort instead of destructive,” argued the Karbix. “Let them build-study-
learn-advance. It is all too true that we are far behind other races of the System in all
really important things.”
“But what of Urvan and his people?” Roban brought up his last and strongest argument.
“They are as savage as we are, if not more so. As you say, the necessity for continuous
warfare ceased with the destruction of Mardonale, but are we to leave our whole planet
defenseless against an interplanetary attack from Urvania?”
“They dare not attack us,” declared Taman, “any more than we dare attack them.
Seaton the Overlord decreed that the people of us two first to attack the other dies root
and branch, and we all know that the word of the Overlord is no idle, passing breath.”
“But he has not been seen for long. He may be far away and the Urvanians may decide
at any time to launch their fleets against us. However, before we decide this momentous
question I suggest that you two pay a visit of state to the court of Urvan. Talk to Urvan