the Fenachrone appraisingly. “I do not really need you, but I am willing to make the
experiment on the terms I have stated. I will allow you two Xylmnian minutes in which to
decide whether or not to cooperate with me in such an experiment.”
“We will cooperate,” Sleemet said in less than one minute; whereupon DuQuesne told
him in broad terms what he had in mind.
And for many days thereafter the two, so unlike physically but so similar in so many
respects mentally, devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the finer and ever finer refine-
ment of the placing and tuning of mechanisms and of the training of already
hard-trained personnel.
But DuQuesne knew that, given the slightest opportunity, the Fenachrone would take
high delight in killing him and taking the DQ. Wherefore he did not at any time trust any
one of them as far as he could spit.
Moreover, DuQuesne was not quite as sure of his own victory as he had given the
Fenachrone to understand. DuQuesne was not easy in his mind about Galaxy DW-
427-LU. He hadn’t been, not since some superpowered enemy in that galaxy had
attacked Seaton’s Skylark of Valeron without warning and had burned her down to a
core before she could get out of range. And she hadn’t been able to fight back. That
one blast back at them couldn’t have done any damage.
It had been that uneasiness that had been responsible for the DQ’s terrific armament
and for DuQuesne’s wanting the Fenachrone for a crew. Wherefore, as soon as the
Fenachrone were settled in their new’ quarters and before they had recovered enough
of their normal combativeness to become completely unmanageable, DuQuesne got
“on the com” with Sleemet.
“. . . I don’t give a damn what happens to Earth or to Norlamin. I’m no longer interested
in either,” he said in part. “But I don’t want it to happen to me and you don’t want it to
happen to you. You agree with me, I’m sure, that a good strategist does not leave an
enemy behind him without knowing, at very least, who that enemy is and what he can
do.”
“That is one of the basics, yes.”
“All right. Somebody in this galaxy here has more muscle than I like.” DuQuesne
pointed out Galaxy DW-427-LU in his tank and told Sleemet what had happened to the
Skylark of Valeron, then went on, “On theoretical grounds, the degree of
synchronization could make all the difference.” He had reached by theory the
same-point that Seaton had arrived at by experience. “Hence, the greater the number of
operators-of equal skill, of course-the tighter the output. The efficiency will vary directly
as the cube of the number of operators.”
“I see.” Sleemet did see, and for the first time became really interested. “That will be to
our advantage as well as yours. You will have to teach us much.”
“I’ll teach you everything you have to know. Nothing else.”
“That is assumed . . . But I see no possibility of assurance that you will keep your
bargain . . . or will you go mind to mind that you will release us and build us a ship after
this one expedition as your crew?”
“Yes. Without reservation.”
“In that case we will cooperate fully.”
And they did-and so it was that the DQ became the most fantastically armed and
powered and defended fortress that had ever moved its own mass through space.
As the DQ approached Galaxy DW-427-LU, with everything she had either wide open
or on the trips, DuQuesne braked her down and swung into what he called “the curve of
fastest getaway”-and as he did so, in the instant, the mighty vessel’s every defense
went blinding-white.
And in that same instant two thousand nine hundred seventy-seven Fenachrone, males
and females but superlatively expert technicians all, pressed activating switches and
took command, each of a tightly clustered battery of micrometrically synchronized
generators.
And one black-browed, hard-eyed Tellurian, sat with his head buried in the DQ’s
master-control helmet.
While he had not expected to find any significant fraction of what he actually found, he
was not too appalled to go viciously and pin-point-accurately to work. Working through
the fourth dimension, with the transfinite speed of thought, he hurled bomb after bomb
after multi-billion kiloton superatomic bomb: and the target world of each one of those
bombs became a sun.
And the DQ got away. She was by no means intact; but, since her skin had been very
much thicker than the Valeron’s to start with, there was still some of it left when she got
out of range.
Thereupon DuQuesne put on the headset of the DQ’s Brain and began to think. He had
tried direct attack on the galaxy of Chlorans; it had failed. His next step, obviously,
was-to decide what his next step should be.
The flesh-and-blood brain that was thinking into the energy-and-metal Brain of the DQ
was no whit less logical, no iota less unsentimental in its judgments than the great
computer itself. Man-brain and machine-brain together considered the evidence.
Datum: The DQ was not up to handling Galaxy DW-427-LU. Datum: Not even the
added muscle conferred by the willing cooperation of the Fenachrone was enough to
make it so. Datum: No discoverable increase of its armaments or its crew would give it
even a fighting chance against the energies that had just come so close to destroying it.
Wherefore
Finally, an hour later, DuQuesne raised the microphone of a repeating sixth-order
broadcasting transmitter to his lips and said-dispassionately, unemotionally and with no
more expression than if he had been ordering up his lunch: “DuQuesne calling Seaton
reply as before stop.”
26 THE TALENT
Seaton had thought that the visit to the Jelmi would be a short one, just long enough to
get the “gizmo,” but his own breakthrough put an end to such thinking. It took days to
reduce the theory to practice and weeks to build into the Skylark of Valeron the gigantic
installations Seaton wanted.
The very enormity of the breakthrough changed all plans, dislocated all schedules. To
the Jelmi the fourth dimensional translator had been a phenomenon-a weapon -in itself.
It had extremely valuable applications, and each of them offered a long career of study.
That was enough for them. But to Seaton and Crane and the Norlaminians it was
something more than that; it was an effect, a new and unexplored area of knowledge, to
be fitted somehow into the known and computed structure of sixth-order perhaps of
other-order-effects; and to be used and considered in conjunction with them. It was a
theorist’s dream -and an engineer’s nightmare.
Meanwhile, as the male Skylarkers, their Jelm colleagues and the Norlaminians were
busily getting done the impossible task of exploring a whole new field of knowledge and
transmuting it into actual structures and gigantic machines, the women of the party
were exploring the life of an alien race … and having the time of their respective lives
doing it. Sitar, of course, was in her element. Bare skin and jewelry she liked. She liked
to look at and to feel her mink coat, she said, but she hated to have to wear it; and as
for that horrible, scratchy underwear-augh! Hence, now that the personal gravity
controls were personal heaters as well, she was really enjoying herself.
Dorothy and Margaret, of course, took to it as though to the manner born. In three days
neither of them was any more conscious of nudity than was Sennlloy herself. Even
Lotus got used to it. While she could never become an enthusiastic nudist, she said,
she did stop blushing. In fact, she almost stopped feeling like blushing.
“Dick,” Dorothy said one evening, “I’ve finally made contact with them on music.”
“Music!” he snorted. “Huh! It sounds to me like a gaggle of tomcats yowling on a back
fence.”
She laughed. “It’s unworldly, of course, but a lot of it is beautiful, in a weird sort of way,
and they have some magnificent techniques. I’ve been trying everything on them, you
know, and they’ve just been sitting on their hands. I’ll give you three guesses as-to what
I finally hit them with.”
“Strauss waltzes? Jazz? Don’t tell me it was rock-‘n’-roll.” She laughed. “Old-fashioned
ragtime. Not what they call rag these days, but real syncopation. And polkas. Specifi-
cally, three old, old recordings-with improved sound, of course. Pee Wee Hunt’s Twelfth
Street Rag, Plehal Brothers’ Beer Barrel Polka, and-of all things!-Glahe Musette’s Hot
Pretzels. They simply grabbed the ball and ran all over the place with it. What they
came up with is neither rag nor polka-in fact, it’s like nothing ever heard before on any
world-but it’s really toe-tingling stuff. Comes the dance tomorrow evening I’ll show you
some steps and leaps and bounds that will knock your eyes right out of their sockets.”
“I believe that, if what the gals have been teaching me is any criterion. You have to be a