Then he donned a thought-helmet and thought himself up a snack; after eating which-
scarcely tasting any part of it-he put in another ten solid hours of work. Then, leaning
back in his form-fitting seat, he immersed himself in thought-and, being corporeal, no
longer a pattern of pure force, went sound asleep.
He woke up a couple of hours later; stiff, groggy, and ravenous. He thought himself up
a supper of steak and mushrooms, hashed browns, spinach, coffee, and apple pie a la
mode. He ate it-with zest, this time-then sought his long-overdue bed.
In the morning, after a shower and a shave and a breakfast of crisp bacon and over-
easy eggs, toast and butter and marmalade, and four cups of strong, black coffee, he
sat down at his board and again went deep into thought. This time, he thought in words
and sentences, the better to nail down his conclusions.
“One said I’d have precisely the same chance as before of living out my normal lifetime.
Before what? Before the dematerialization or before Seaton got all that extra stuff?
Since he gave me sixth order drive, offense, defense, and communications, he could
have-probably did-put me on a basis of equality with Seaton as of now. Would he have
given me any more than that?”
DuQuesne paused and worked for ten busy minutes at computer and control board
again. What he learned was in the form of curves and quantities, not words; he did not
attempt to speak them aloud, but sat staring into space.
Then, satisfied that the probabilities were adequate to base a plan on, he spoke out
loud again: “No. Why should he give me everything that Seaton’s got? He didn’t owe
me anything.” To Blackie DuQuesne that was not a rueful complaint but a statement of
fact. He went on. “Assume we both now have a relatively small part of the spectrum of
the sixth-order forces, if I keep using this drive-Ouch! What the living hell was that?”
DuQuesne leaped to his feet. “That” had been a sixthorder probe, at the touch of which
his vessel’s every course of defensive screen had flared into action.
DuQuesne was-not shaken, no. But he was surprised, and he didn’t like to be surprised.
There should have been no probes out here!
The probe had been cut off almost instantaneously; but “almost” instantaneously is not
quite zero time, and sixth-order forces operate at the speed of thought. Hence, in that
not-quite-zero instant of time during which the intruding mind had been in contact with
his own, DuQuesne learned a little. The creature was undoubtedly highly intelligent and,
as undoubtedly, unhuman to the point of monstrosity . . . and DuQuesne had no doubt
whatever in his own mind that the alien would think the same of any Tellurian.
DuQuesne studied his board and saw, much to his surprise, that only one instrument
showed any drain at all above maintenance level, and that one was a milliammeter -the
needle of which was steady on the scale at a reading of one point three seven mils! He
was not being attacked at all-merely being observed -and by an observation system
that was using practically no power at all!
Donning a helmet, so as to be able himself to operate at the speed of thought,
DuQuesne began-very skittishly and very gingerly indeed-to soften down his spheres
and zones and shells and solid fields of defensive force. He softened and softened
them down; down to the point at which a working projection could come through and
work.
And a working projection came through.
No one of Marc C. DuQuesne’s acquaintances, friend or enemy, had ever said that he
was any part of either a weakling or a coward. The consensus was that he was harder
than the ultra-refractory hubs of hell itself. Nevertheless, when the simulacrum of
Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth of the Realm of the Llurdi came up to within three feet
of him and waggled one gnarled forefinger at the helmets of a mechanical educator,
even DuQuesne’s burly spirit began to quail a little-but he was strong enough and hard
enough not let any sign show.
With every mind-block he owned set hard, DuQuesne donned a headset and handed
its mate to his visitor. He engaged that monstrous alien mind to mind. Then, releasing
his blocks, he sent the Llurdi a hard, cold, sharp, diamond-clear-and lying!-thought:
“Yes? Who are you, pray, and what, to obtrude your uninvited presence upon me,
Foalang Kassi a’ Doompf, the Highest Imperial of the Drailsen Quadrant?”
This approach was, of course, the natural one for DuQuesne to make; he did not
believe in giving away truth when lies might be so much cheaper-and less dangerous. It
was equally of course the worst possible approach to Klazmon: reenforcing as it did
every unfavorable idea the Llurd had already formed from his lightning-fast preliminary
once-over-lightly of the man and of the man’s tremendous spaceship.
Klazmon did not think back at DuQuesne directly. Instead, he thought to himself and, as
DuQuesne knew, for the record; thoughts that the Earthman could read like print.
To the Llurd, DuQuesne was a peculiarly and repulsively obnoxious monstrosity.
Physically a Jelin, he belonged to a race of Jelmi that had never been subjected to any
kind of logical, sensible, or even intelligent control.
Klazmon then thought at DuQuesne; comparing him with Mergon and Luloy on the one
hand and with Sleemet of the Fenachrone on the other-and deciding that all three races
were basically the same. The Llurd showed neither hatred nor detestation; he was
merely contemptuous, intolerant, and utterly logical. “Like the few remaining
Fenachrone and the rebel faction of our own Jelmi and the people you think of as the
Chlorans, your race is, definitely, surplus population; a nuisance that must be and shall
be abated. Where-” Klazmon suddenly drove a thought”is the Drailsen Quadrant?”
DuQuesne, however, was not to be caught napping. His blocks held. “You’ll never
know,” he sneered. “Any taskforce of yours that ever comes anywhere near us will not
last long enough to energize a sixth-order communicator.”
“That’s an idle boast,” Klazmon stated thoughtfully. “It is true that you and your vessel
are far out of range of any possible Llurdiaxian attacking beam. Even this projection of
me is being relayed through four mergons. Nevertheless we can and we will find you
easily when this becomes desirable. This point will be reached as soon as we have
computed the most logical course to take in exterminating all such surplus races as
yours.”
And Klazmon’s projection vanished; and the helmet he had been wearing fell toward the
floor.
DuQuesne was shocked as he had never been shocked before; and when he learned
from his analsynths just what the range of one of those incredible “mergons” was, he
was starkly appalled.
One thing was crystal-clear: He was up against some truly first-class opposition here.
And it had just stated, calmly and definitely, that its intention was to exterminate him,
Blackie DuQuesne.
The master of lies had learned to assess the value of a truth very precisely. He knew
this one to be 22-karat, crystal-clear, pure quill. Whereupon Blackie DuQuesne turned
to some very intensive thought indeed, compared with which his’ previous efforts might
have been no more than a summer afternoon’s reverie.
We know now, of coarse, that Blackie DuQuesne lacked major elements of information,
and that his constructions could not therefore be complete. They lacked Norlaminian
rigor, or the total visualization of his late companions, the disembodied intellectuals.
And they lacked information.
DuQuesne knew nothing of Mergon and Luloy, now inward bound on Earth in a hideout
orbit. He could not guess how his late visitor had ever heard of the Fenachrone. Nor
knew he anything of that strange band of the sixth order to which Seaton referred, with
more than half a worried frown, as “magic.” In short, DuQuesne was attempting to
reach the greatest conclusion of his life through less than perfect means, with only
fragmentary facts to go on.
Nevertheless, Blackie C. DuQuesne, as Seaton was wont to declare, was no slouch at
figuring; and so he did in time come to a plan which was perhaps the most brilliant-and
also was perhaps the most witless!-of his career.
Lips curled into something much more sneer than grin, DuQuesne sat down at his
construction board. He had come to the conclusion that what he needed was help, and
he knew exactly where to go to get it. His ship wasn’t big enough by far to hold a sixth-
order projection across any important distance . . . but he could build, in less than an
hour, a sixth-order broadcaster. It wouldn’t be selective. It would be enormously
wasteful of power. But it would carry a signal across half a universe.
Whereupon, in less than an hour, a signal began to pour out, into and through space:
“DuQuesne calling Seaton! Reply on tight beam of the sixth. DuQuesne calling Seaton!