“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; ate 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:”
The mind of DuQuesne almost gasped.
“Out here? Even if you re-create my ship I’d never get back!”
“You should and will have precisely the same chance as before of living out your normal
instant of life ‘in normal fashion. To that end I will construct for you a vessel that will be
the replica of your former one except in that it will have a. sixth-order drive-what your
fellow-human Seaton called the `Cosmic Energy’ drive-so that you will be able to make
the journey in comparatively few of your days. I will instruct you in this drive and in
certain other matters that will be required to implement what I have said. I will set your
vessel’s controls upon your home galaxy at the correct acceleration.
“I compute . . . I construct.”
And faster by far than even an electronic eye could follow, a pattern of incredibly
complex stresses formed in the empty other.
Elemental particles, combining instantaneously, built practically instantaneously upward
through electrons and protons and atoms and molecules beams and weaponry up to a
million tons or more of perfectly-operating superdreadnought-and at the same time built
the vastly more complex structure of the two hundred pounds or so of meat and so forth
that were to enclothe Freemind DuQuesne-and did the whole job in much less time
than the blink of an eye.
” . . I instruct . . . It is done,” and all seven freeminds vanished.
And DuQuesne, seated at a thoroughly familar control board and feeling normal gravity
on the seat of his pants, stared at that board’s instruments, for a moment stunned.
According to those instruments the ship was actually traveling at an acceleration of one
hundred twenty-seven lights; its internal gravity was actually nine hundred eighty-one
point zero six centimeters per second squared.
He stared around the entire room, examining minutely each familiar object. Activating a
visiplate, he scanned the immense skyrover, inside and out, from stem to stern: finding
that it was in fact, except for the stated improvements, an exact duplicate of the mighty
ship of war he had formerly owned: which, he still thought, had been one of the most
powerful battleships ever built by man.
Then, and only then, did he examine the hands resting, quiescent but instantly ready,
upon the board’s flat, bare table. They were big tanned, powerful hands; with long,
strong, tapering, highly competent fingers. They were his hands-his own hands in every
particular, clear down to the tiny scar on the side of his left index finger; where, years
before, a bit of flying glass from an exploding flask had left its mark.
Shaking his head, he got up and went to his private cabin, where he strode up to a full-
length mirror.
The man who stared back at him out of it was tall and powerfully built; with thick, slightly
wavy hair of an intense, glossy black. The eyes, only a trifle lighter in shade, were
surmounted by heavy black eyebrows growing together above his finely-chiseled
aquiline beak of a nose. His saturnine face, while actually tanned, looked almost pale
because of the blackness of the heavy beard always showing through, even after the
closest possible shave.
“He could rematerialize me perfectly-and did,” he said aloud to himself, “and the whole
ship-exactly!”
Scowling in concentration, he went into his bathroom and stepped upon the platform of
his weight-and-height Fairbanks. Six feet and seven-eighths of an inch. Precisely right.
Two hundred two and three-quarters pounds. Ditto.
He examined the various items of equipment and of every-day use. There was his
cutthroat razor, Osnomian-made of arenak-vastly sharper than any Earthly razor could
possibly be honed and so incredibly hard that it could shave generation after generation
of men with no loss whatever of edge.
Comb, brush, toothbrush, lotion-inside the drawers and out-every item was exactly as
he had left it . . . clear down to the correctly-printed, peculiarly-distorted tubes of tooth-
paste and of shaving cream; each of which, when he picked it up, fitted perfectly into
the grip of his left hand.
“I’ll . . . be . . . totally . . . damned,” DuQuesne said then, aloud.
7 DU QUESNE AND KLAZMON
THE Skylark of Valeron swung in orbit around the sun of Earth. She was much more of
worldlet than a spaceship, being a perfect sphere over a thousand kilometers in
diameter. She had to be big. She had to house, among other things, the one-thousand-
kilometers-diameter graduated circles of declination and of right ascension required to
chart the thousands of millions of galaxies making up any given universe of the Cosmic
All.
She was for the most part cold and dark. Even the master-control helmets, sprouting
masses and mazes of thigh-thick bundles of hair-thin silver wire, hung inactivated in the
neutral gray, featureless master-control room. The giant computer, however-the cubic
mile of ultra-miniaturization that everyone called the “Brain”-was still in operation; and in
the worldlet’s miles-wide chart-room, called the “tank,” there still glowed the enormous
lenticular aggregation of points of light that was the chart of the First Universe-each tiny
pool of light representing a galaxy composed of thousands of millions of solar systems.
A precisely coded thought impinged upon a receptor.
A relay clicked, whereupon a neighboring instrument, noting the passage of current
through its vitals, went busily but silently to work, and an entire panel of instrumentation
came to life.
Switch after switch snapped home. Field after field of time-stasis collapsed. The
planetoid’s artificial sun resumed its shining; breezes began again to stir the leaves of
trees and of shrubbery; insects resumed their flitting from bloom to once-more-scented
bloom. Worms resumed their gnawings and borings beneath the green velvet carpets
that were the lawns. Brooks began again to flow; gurglingly. Birds took up their caroling
and chirping and twittering precisely where they had left off so long before; and three
houses there was a house now for Shiro and his bride of a month -became comfortably
warm and softly, invitingly livable.
All that activity meant, of course, that the Seaton-Crane party would soon becoming
aboard.
They were in fact already on the way, in Skylark Two; the forty-foot globe which, made
originally of Osnomian arenak and the only spaceship they owned, had been “flashed
over” into ultra-refractory inoson and now served as Captain’s gig, pinnace, dinghy,
lifeboat, landing craft, and so forth-whatever any of the party wanted her to do. There
were many other craft aboard the Skylark of Valeron, of course, of various shapes and
sizes; but Two had always been the Seatons’ favorite “small boat.”
As Two approached the Valeron, directly in line with one of her huge main ports,
Seaton slowed down to a dawdling crawl-a mere handful of miles per second-and
thought into a helmet already on his head; and the massive gates of locks-of a miles-
long succession of locks through the immensely thick skin of the planetoid-opened in
front of flying Two and closed behind her. Clearing the last gate, Seaton put on a gee
and a half of deceleration and brought the little flying sphere down to a soft and easy
landing in her berth in the back yard of the Seatons’ house.
Eight people disembarked; five of whom were the three Seatons and Martin and
Margaret Crane. (Infant Lucile Crane rode joyously on her mother’s left hip.) Seventh
was short, chunky, lightning-fast Shiro, whose place in these Skylark annals has not
been small. Originally Crane’s “man,” he had long since become Crane’s firm friend;
and he was now as much of a Skylarker as was any of the others.
Eighth was Lotus Blossom, Shiro’s small, finely wrought, San Francisco-born and
western-dressed bride, whom the others had met only that morning, just before leaving