Earth. She looked like a living doll-but appearances can be so deceiving! She was in
fact one of the most proficient female experts in unarmed combat then alive.
“Our house first, please, all of you,” Dorothy said. “We’ll eat before we do one single
solitary thing else. I could eat that fabled missionary from the plains of Timbuctoo.”
Margaret laughed. “Hat and gown and hymnbook too,” she finished. “Me, too, Dick.”
“Okay by me; I could toy with a couple of morsels myself,” Seaton said, and pencils of
force wafted the eight into the roomy kitchen of the house that was in almost every
detail an exact duplicate of the Seatons’ home on Earth. “You’re the chief kitchen
mechanic, Red-Top; strut your stuff.”
Dorothy looked at and thought into the controller-she no longer had to wear any of the
limited-control headsets to operate them-and a damask-clothed table, set for six, laden
with a wide variety of food and equipped with six carved oak chairs and two high-chairs,
came instantly into being in the middle of the room.
The Nisei girl jumped violently; then smiled apologetically. “Shiro told me about such
things, but . . . well,. maybe I’ll get used to them sometimes I hope.”
“Sure you will, Lotus,” Seaton assured her. “It’s pretty weird at first, but you get used to
it fast.”
“I sincerely hope so,” Lotus said, and eyed the six dinner places dubiously. She had
thought that she was thoroughly American, but she wasn’t quite. Traditions are strong.
With an IQ that a Heidelberg student might envy, part of the crew of the most powerful
vehicle man had ever seen, fully educated and trained . . . it was evident that Shiro’s
dainty little bride was more than a little doubtful about sitting at that table.
Until Dorothy took her by the hand and sat her down. “This is where I like my friends to
sit,” she announced. “Where I can see them.”
A flush dyed the porcelain-like perfection of Lotus’s skin. “I thank you, Mrs.-‘
“Friends, remember?” Seaton broke in. “Call her Dot. Now let’s eat!”
Whereafter, they worked.
It may be wondered, among those historians not familiar with the saga of the Skylarks,
why so much consternation and trouble should come from so small an event as the
probabilistic speculation of a single Norlaminian sage that one mere human body, lately
cast into the energy forms of the disembodied intelligences, might soon return into the
universe in a viable form.
Such historians do not, of course, know Blackie DuQuesne.
While Seaton, Crane and the others were eating their meal, across distances to be
measured in gigaparsecs, countless millions of persons were in one way or another
busy at work on projects central to their own central concern. Seaton and Crane were
not idle. They were waiting for further information . . . and at the same time, refurbishing
the inner man with food, with rest and with pleasant company; but an hour later, after
dinner, after the table and its appurtenances had vanished and the three couples were
seated in the living room, more or less facing the fire, Seaton stoked up his battered
black briar and Crane lighted one of his specially made cigarettes.
“Well?” Seaton demanded then. “Have you thank up anything you think is worth two
tinker’s whoops in Hades?”
Crane smiled ruefully. “Not more than one, I’d say-if that many. Let’s consider that
thought or message that Carfon is sending out. It will be received, he says, only by
persons or entities who not only know more than we do about one or more specific
things, but also are friendly enough to be willing to share their knowledge with us. And
to make the matter murkier, we have no idea either of what it is that we lack or what it,
whatever it is, is supposed to be able to do. Therefore Point One would, be: how are
they going to get in touch with us? By what you called magic?”
Sexton did not answer at first, then only nodded. “Magic” was still a much less than real
concept to him. He said, “If you say so-but remember the Peruvian Indian medicinemen
and the cinchona bark that just happened to be full of quinine. So, whatever you want to
call it-magic or extrasensory perception or an unknown band of the sixth or what-have-
you-I’ll bet my last shirt it’ll be bio. And whoever pitches it at us will be good enough at it
to know that they can hit us with it, so all we have to do about that is wait for it to
happen. However, what I’m mostly interested in right now is nothing that far out, but
what we know that a reincarnated Blackie DuQuesne could and probably would do.”
“Such as?”
“The first thing he’ll do, for all the tea in China, will be to design and set up some gadget
or gizmo or technique to kill me with. Certainly me, and probably you, and quite possibly
all of us.”
Dorothy and Margaret both gasped; but Crane nodded and said, “Check. I check you to
your proverbial nineteen decimals. Also, and quite possibly along with that operation, an
all-out attempt to reconquer Earth. He wouldn’t set out to destroy Earth, at this time, at
least . . . would he, do you think?”
Sexton thought for seconds, then said, “My best guess would be no. He wants to boss
it, not wipe it out. However, there are a few other things that might come . . .”
“Wait up, presh!” Dorothy snapped. “Those two will hold us for a while; especially the
first one. I wish to go on record at this point to the effect that I want my husband alive,
not dead.”
Sexton grinned. “You and me both, pet,” he said. “I’m in favor of it. Definitely. However,
as long as I stay inside the Valeron here he doesn’t stand the chance of a snowflake in
you-know-where of getting at me . . .”
How wrong Sexton was!
” . . so the second point is the one that’s really of overriding importance. The rub is that
we can’t make even a wild guess at when he’s going to get loose . . . He could be
building his ship right now . . . so, Engineer Martin Crane, what’s your thought as to
defending Earth; as adequately as possible but in the shortest possible time?”
Crane inhaled-slowly-a deep lungful of smoke, exhaled it even more slowly, and
stubbed out the butt. “That’s a tall order, Dick,” he said, finally, “but I don’t think it’s
hopeless. Since we know DuQuesne’s exact line of departure, we know at least
approximately the line of his return. As a first-approximation idea we should, I think,
cover that line thoroughly with hair-triggered automation. We should occupy the fourth
and the fifth completely; thus taking care of everything we know that he knows . . . but
as for the sixth . . .” Crane paused in thought.
“Yeah,” Sexton agreed. “That sixth order’s an entirely different breed of cats. It’s a
pistol-a question with a capital Q. About all we can do on it, I’d say, is cover everything
we know of it and then set up supersensitive analsynths coupled to all the automatic
constructors and such-like gizmos we can dream up-with as big a gaggle of ground-
and-lofty dreamers as we can round up. The Norlaminians, certainly; and Sacner
Carfon for sure. If what he and Drasnik pulled off wasn’t magic it certainly was a
remarkably reasonable facsimile thereof. All six of us; of course, and . . .”
“But what can you possibly want of us?” Shiro asked, and Dorothy said, “That goes
double for Peggy and me, Dick. Of what good could we two possibly be, thinking about
such stuff as that?”
Sexton flushed. “‘Scuse, please; my error. I switched thinking without announcing the
switch. I do know, though, that our minds all work differently-especially Shiro’s and
double-especially Lotus’s=and that when you don’t have the faintest glimmering of what
you’re getting into you don’t know what you’re going to have to have to cope with it.” He
grinned.
“If you can untangle that, I mean,” he said.
“I think so,” said Crane, unruffled; he had had long practice in following Sexton’s
lightning leaps past syntax. “And you think that this will enable us to deal with
DuQuesne?”
“It’ll have to,” Sexton said positively. “One thing we know, something has to. He’s not
going to send us a polite message asking to be friends-he’s going to hit with all he’s got.
So,” he finished, “let’s hop to it. The Norlaminian observers’ reports are piling up on the
tapes right now. And we’d all better keep our eyes peeled-as well as all the rest of our
senses and instrumental-for Doctor Mare C. Blackie DuQuesne!”
And DuQuesne, so immensely far out in intergalactic space, at control board and
computer, explored for ten solid hours the vastnesses of his new knowledge.