Of that ultra mathematical dissertation Dunark understood not even the first sentence;
Sacner Carfon perhaps grasped dimly a concept here and there. The Norlaminians,
however, sat back in their seats, relaxed and smiling, their prodigious mentalities not only
absorbing greedily but assimilating completely the enormous doses of mathematical and
physical science being thrust upon them so rapidly. And when that epoch-making, that
almost unbelievable, tale was done, not one of the aged scientists even referred to the
tape of the recorder.
“Oh, wonderful-wonderful!” exclaimed Rovol in ecstasy, his transcendental
imperturbability broken at last. “Think of it! Our knowledge extended one whole order
farther in each direction, both into the small and into the large. Magnificent! And by one
brain, and that of a youth. Extraordinary! And we may now traverse universal space in
ordinary time, because that brain has harnessed the practically infinite power of cosmic
radiation, a power which exhausted the store of uranium carried by Skylark Three in forty
hours. Phenomenal! Stupendous!”
“But do not forget that the brain of that youth is a composite of many,” said Fodan
thoughtfully, “and that in it, among others, were yours and Drasnik’s. Seaton himself
ascribes to that peculiar combination his successful solution of the problem of the sixth
order. You know, of course, that I am in no sense belittling the native power of that brain.
I am merely suggesting that perhaps other noteworthy discoveries may be made by
superimposing brains in other, but equally widely divergent, fields of thought.”
“An interesting idea, truly, and one which may be fruitful of result,” assented Orlon, the
First of Astronomy, “but I would suggest that we waste no more time. I, for one, am
eager to behold with my own inner consciousness the vistas of the galaxies.”
Agreeing, the five white-bearded scientists seated themselves at the multiplex console of
their fifth-order installation and set happily to work. Their gigantic minds were undaunted
by the task they faced-they were only thrilled with interest at the opportunity of working
with magnitudes, distances, forces, objects, and events at the very contemplation of
which any ordinary human mind would quail.
Steadily and contentedly they worked on, while at the behest of their nimble and unerring
fingers there came into being the forces which were to build into their own vessel a
duplicate of the mechano-electrical brain which actuated and controlled the structure,
almost of planetary proportions, in which Seaton was even then hurtling toward them.
Hurtling with a velocity rapidly mounting to a value incalculable; driven by the power
liberated by the disintegrating matter of all the suns of all the galaxies of all the universes
of cosmic space!
22 TRAPPING THE INTELLECTUALS
With all their might of brain and skill of hand and with all the resources of their fifth-order
banks of forces, it was no small task for the Norlaminians to build the sixth-order
controlling system which their ship must have if they were to traverse universal space in
any time short of millenia. But finally it was done.
A towering mechano-electrical brain almost filled the midsection of their enormous sky
rover, the receptors and converters of the free energy of space itself had been installed,
and their intra-atomic space-drive, capable of developing an acceleration of only five
light-velocities, had been replaced by Seaton’s newly developed sixth-order cosmic-
energy drive which could impart to the ship and its entire contents, without jolt, jar, or
strain, any conceivable, almost any calculable, acceleration.
For many days the Norlaminian vessel had been speeding through the void at her frightful
maximum of power toward the Skylark of Valeron, which in turn was driving toward our
galaxy at the same mad pace. Braking down now, since only a few thousand light-years
of distance separated the hurtling fivers, Seaton materialized his image at the brain
control o ‘the smaller cruiser and thought into it for minutes.
“There, we’re all set!” In the control room of the Skylark Seaton laid aside his helmet and
wiped the perspiration from his forehead in sheer relief. “The trap is baited and ready to
spring-I’ve been scared to death for a week that they’d tackle us before we were ready
for them.”
“What difference would it have made?” asked Margaret curiously. “Since we have our
sixth-order screens out they couldn’t hurt us, could they?”
“No, Peg; but keeping them from hurting us isn’t enough -we’ve got to capture them. And
they’ll have to be almost directly between Rovol’s ship and ours to make that capture
possible. You see, we’ll have to send out from each vessel a hollow hemisphere of force
and to surround them. If we had only one ship, or if they don’t come between our two
ships, we can’t bottle them up, because they have exactly the same velocity of
propagation that our forces have.
“Also, you can see that our projector can’t work direct on more than a hemisphere
without cutting its own beams, and that we can’t work through relay stations because,
fast as relays are, the Intellectuals would get away while the relays were cutting in. Any
more questions?”
“Yes; I have one,” put in Dorothy. “You told us that this artificial brain of yours could do
anything that your own brain could think of, and here you’ve got it stuck already and have
to have two of them. How come?”
“Well, this is a highly exceptional case,” Seaton replied. “What I said would be true
ordinarily, but now, as I explained to Peg, it’s working against something that can think
and act just as quickly as I can.”
“I know, dear, I was just putting you on the spot a little. What are you using for bait?”
“Thoughts. We’re broadcasting them from a point midway between the two vessels.
They’re keen on investigating any sixth-order impulses they feel, you know-that’s why
we’ve kept all our stuff on tight beams heretofore, so that they probably couldn’t detect
it-so we’re sending out a highly peculiar type of thought, that we are pretty sure will bring
them in from wherever they are.”
“Let me listen to it, just for a minute?” she pleaded.
“W-e-I-I . . . I don’t know.” He eyed her dubiously. “Not for a minute-no. I haven’t even
tried to listen to the finished product, myself. Being of a type that not even a pure
intellectual can resist, they’d burn out any human brain in mighty short order. Maybe you
might for about a tenth of a second, though.”
He lowered a helmet over her expectant head and snatched it off again, but that moment
had been enough for Dorothy. Her violet eyes widened terribly in an expression
commingled of amazedly poignant horror and of dreadfully ecstatic fascination; her whole
body trembled uncontrollably.
“Dick-Dick!” she shrieked; then, recovering slowly: “How horrible-how ghastly-how
perfectly, exquisitely damnable! What is it? Why, I actually heard babies begging to be
born! And there were men who had died and gone to heaven and to hell; there were
minds that had lost their bodies and didn’t know what to do-were simply shrieking out
their agony, despair, and utter, unreasoning terror for the whole universe to hear! And
there were joys, pleasures, raptures, so condensed as to be almost as unbearable as
the tortures. And there were other things-awful, terrible, utterly indescribable and
unimaginable things! Oh, Dick, I was sure that I had gone stark, raving crazy!”
“Easy, dear,” Seaton reassured his overwrought wife. “All those things are really there,
and more. I told you it was bad medicine-that it would tear any human mind to pieces.”
Seaton paused, weighing in his mind how best to describe the utterly indescribable signal
that was being broadcast, then went on, choosing his words with care:
“All the pangs and all the ecstasies, all the thoughts and all the emotions of all evolution
of all things, animate and inanimate, are there; of all things that ever have existed from
the unknowable beginning of infinite time and of all things that ever shall exist until time’s
unknowable end. It covers all animate life, from the first stirring of that which was to
vitalize the first unicell in the slime of the first world ever to come into being in the
cosmos, to the last cognition of the ultimately last intelligent entity ever to be.
“Our present humanity was of course included, from before conception through birth,
through all of life, through death, and through the life beyond. It covers inanimate
evolution from the ultimate particle and wave, through the birth, life, death, and rebirth of
any possible manifestation of energy and of matter, up to and through the universe.
“Neither Mart nor I could do it all. We carried everything as far as we could, then the
Brain went through with it to its logical conclusion, which of course we could not reach.
Then the Brain systematized all the data and reduced it to a concentrated essence of
pure thought. It is that essence which is being broadcast and which will certainly attract