stasis of time . . .”
“Huh? That’s news to me. How’s he figuring on doing it-did he say?”
“Uh-uh. I didn’t talk to him. Peggy says he isn’t going to say anything about it until he
can present the package.” “He should live so long. But ‘scue, please; go ahead.” “Only
one more. Fodan, the simple-minded old darling, wants to work with them. Convert
them!”
“Yeah. Make Christians of ’em. I’ve got a life-sized picture in technicolor of anybody
ever accomplishing that feat. The trouble is, everybody wants to do something different
and none of their ideas are any good at all.”
“Oh? I noticed that you haven’t been enthusiastic about any of them. Pretty grim, in
fact. Why not?”
“Because none of ’em will come even close to getting ’em all and this has got to be a
one hundred point zero zero zero per cent cleanup. You know how they operate on a
cancer. They cut deep enough and wide enough to get it all. Every cell. If they don’t get
it all it spreads all over the body and the patient dies. This is a cancer. It’s already eaten
just. about all of that galaxy by Chlora-typing planets wherever they go-or rather,
enslaved humans are doing it for them-and it’s spreading fast. And when that galaxy
begins to get crowded they won’t just jump to one other; they’ll go for hundreds or
thousands of galaxies and there goes the ball game. So that cancer has got to be
operated on before it spreads any farther.”
Dorothy’s face began to pale. “By that analogy you mean destroy the whole galaxy!
How can such a thing be possible? It can’t possibly be possible!”
He told her how the operation could be performed. That apparatus that the Barlo
women had dredged up out of nowhere had a lot of capabilities that did not appear on
the surface. Blackie DuQuesne had perceived one set of those possibilities, and he and
Blackie had been working on the hardware. They were calling it Project Rho.
Her face, already pale, turned white as he talked; and when he had finished:
“Project … Rho,” she breathed. “How utterly horrible! And yet . . . I never dreamed . . ,
have you talked to Martin yet?”
“No. You first. I don’t want to even think about pushing that kind of a button without
being sure you’re standing at my back.”
“I’ll do better than that, Dick,” She looked him steadily in the eye. “I’ll take half of it. My
finger will be right beside yours on that button.”
“You are an ace, ace. As maybe I’ve said once before.” “Uh-huh, at least once-but
we’re one, remember?” After a moment she went on, “But we can’t possibly sell the
Norlaminians any such bill of goods as that.”
“I’ll say we can’t. They’d cry their eyes out all over the place. Or wait.. When they find
out that they can’t stop it, they’ll help save the human planets, which will be all to the
good; the witches can use the help. But basically, the grand slam will be up to
DuQuesne and his Fenachrone and the witches and Mart and me. Even Mart will need
some persuasion, I’m afraid; and you’ll have to really work on Peg. She’ll simply have a
litter of kittens.”
“Why, Dick; what a way to talk!” She smiled in spite of herself, but sobered quickly.
“She’ll come around, I’m sure; she’ll have to. But Dick, is it actually physically possible?
It’s so huge!”
“Definitely. You see, we’ll be operating in a Gunther universe, so that mass as such
won’t enter and power will be no problem. All we have to do is build an apparatus to
alter the properties of space around and throughout the object to be moved-altering
those properties in such a way as to make its three-dimensional attributes incompatible
with those of its . . .”
She stopped him with an upraised band. “Hold it! Wait up, please. We’ll dispense with
the high math, if you don’t mind. It’s the sheer size of the thing that scares me witless.”
Seaton did grin then. “Well, you’ve always known that making things bigger and better
is the fondest thing I am of. But we know exactly how to do it, and I think we can get it
done before the Norlaminians finish theirs. But DuQuesne should be about ready to
take off. I’ll flip myself over there and see.”
He did so and said, “How’re you doing, Blackie?”
“A few minutes yet to finish final checking. I’ve been thinking. What kind of a celestial
object will that galaxy be when we get done with it? Not a quasi-stellar, certainly; that’s
only a star with the energy of a hundred thousand million stars. This will be a galaxy
with the energy of a hundred thousand million galaxies-the energy of an entire
universe.”
“Yeah. Something new, I’d say. It’ll give some astronomers a thrill, some day. But what I
can’t compute is, whether or not it will sterilize the interstellar space of that galaxy,”
Seaton said.
“Well, if it doesn’t, you might put the Osnomians and Urvanians on it. Keep ’em from
thinking about fighting each other.”
“You know, Blackie, I’d thought of doing exactly that? `Great minds’ and so forth. `Bye
now; be seein’ ya,” and Seaton flipped himself back home.
En route to his destination-barren planet in a starcluster on the opposite side of the
galaxy from the Skylark of Valeron-DuQuesne again went into a huddle with Sleemet.
“So far, you’ve done a job,” he began. “What I told you to do-what I knew how to do-and
done it well. But nothing else. Now I want something more than that. Something you
can do, if you will, that I can’t. As you know, I’ve made arrangements so that in case of
my death this whole planetoid goes up in an atomic blast. That was to keep you from
killing me and making off with it. The same thing will happen, though, if those Chlorans
kill me in the fracas that’s coming. It would seem as though that fact would be enough
to make you make an honest-to-God Effort to be sure that they don’t kill me by doing
your damnedest to help me kill them. Mentally. Both you and the Chlorans know more
about one phase of that than I do-as yet. So, as added inducement to really top effort, if
you’ll really tear into it on this Project Rho I’ll teach you everything I know that you can
take. And I’ll help you build any kind of spacecraft you want before you leave; one even
as big as this one. What do you say?”
Sleemet’s strange eyes glowed. “If you will go mind to mind with me on that I can now
assure you of such cooperation as no member of my race has ever given to any
non-Fenachrone form of life,” he declared; and DuQuesne handed him a headset.
It wasn’t easy, not even for such an accomplished liar as Marc C. DuQuesne was, to
make the four-dim gizmo very much more incomprehensible than it actually was; but
he accomplished the feat-and he actually did give Sleemet practically everything else.
The DQ went into a one-day orbit above one point of an immense plain of the barren
planet that was its goal. A plain some ten thousand square miles of which became
forthwith an Area of Work. Enormous mechanisms sprang into being, by means of
which DuQuesne and several hundred top-bracket Fenachrone engineers sent.
gigantic beams of force hurtling across the galaxy to the Skylark of Valeron and to
hundreds of thousands of other micrometrically determined points. .
But not Sleemet. That wight, knowing now almost everything that DuQuesne knew, was
working in his own private laboratory-working with all the power of his tremendous mind
on the various mental aspects of the battle of giants to come.
Hour after hour, Crane worked in his master control at the base of the Brain, with
Madame Barlo and Drasnik and Margaret, each wearing an extra-complex headset, sit-
ting close to him. They were mapping and modeling three galaxies, on such a large
scale that the vast “tank” of the Skylark of Valeron was millions of times too small. They
were using a discus-shaped volume of open space some ten light-years in diameter
and three light-years thick.
Galaxy DW-427-LU was already meticulously in place; its every celestial body being
represented by a characteristically colored light. “Above” Galaxy DW-427-LU and
“below” it (the terms are used in the explanatory sense only; “on one side of” and “on
the other side of” could be used just as well) as close to it as possible, two other
galaxies were being modeled; each as nearly like DW-427-LU in size and shape as
could be found in that part of the First Universe. They were so close together that in
many places the three models actually interpenetrated.