You must again activate the Skylark of Valeron and again wear its sixth-order controller,
since we know of no other entity who either-can wear it or should. We eight are here to
confer and, on the basis of the few data now available, to plan.”
Sexton scowled in concentration for two long minutes.
It was a measure of the strain that had been working on him that it took that long. As he
had said, he was no God, and didn’t want to be. He had not gone looking for either
conquest or glory. One thing at a time . . . but that “one thing” had successively led him
across a galaxy, into another dimension, through many a hard and desperate fight
against some of the most keen-honed killers of a universe.
His gray eyes hardened. Of all those killers, it was Blackie DuQuesne who posed the
greatest threat-to civilization, to Sexton himself, and above all to his wife, Dorothy.
DuQuesne at large was deadly.
“All right,” he snapped at last. “If that’s all that’s in the wood, I suppose that’s the way
it’ll have to be carved.”
The Norlaminian merely nodded. He, at least, had had no doubts of how Sexton would
react to the challenge. Typically, once Sexton had decided speed became of the
essence. “We’ll start moving now,” be barked. “The parameters give us up to a year-
maybe-but from this minute we act as though DuQuesne and the Intellectuals are back
in circulation right now. So if one of you-Rovol?-will put beams on Mart and Peg and
project them over here, we’ll get right at it.”
And Dorothy, her face turning so white that a line of freckles stood boldly out across the
bridge of her nose, picked the baby up and clasped him fiercely, protectively to her
breast.
M. Reynolds (“Martin” or “Mart”) Crane was tall, slender, imperturbable; his black-
haired, ivory-skinned wife Margaret was tall and whistle stacked-she and Dorothy were
just about of a size and a shape. In a second or two their full working projections
appeared, standing in the middle of the room facing the Sextons-projections so exactly
true to life and so solid-seeming as to give no indication whatever that they were not
composed of fabric and of flesh and bone and blood.
Sexton stood up and half-bowed to Margaret, but wasted no time in getting down to
business. “Hi, Peg-Mart. He briefed you?”
“Up to the moment, yes,” Crane replied.
“You know, then, that some time in the indeterminate but not too distant future all hell is
going to be out for noon. Any way I scan it, it looks to me as though, more or less
shortly, we’re going to be spurlos versenkt-sunk without a trace.”
“You err, youth.” Drasnik, the First of Psychology of Norlamin, spoke quite sharply, for
him. “Your thinking is loose, turbid, confused; inexcusably superficial; completely…”
“But you know what their top man said!” Seaton snapped. “The one they called `One’-
and he wasn’t kidding, either, believe me!”
“I do, youth. I know more than that, since they visited us long since. They were not
exactly `kidding’ you, perhaps, but your several various interpretations of One’s actual
words and actions were inconsistent with any and every aspect of the truth. Those
words and actions were in all probability designed to elicit such responses and
reactions as would enable him to analyze and classify your race. Having done so, the
probability approaches unity that you will not again encounter him or any of his group.”
“My-God!” Dorothy, drawing a tremendously deep breath, put Dick the Small back down
on the rug and left him to his own devices. “That makes sense . . . I was scared simply
witless.”
“Maybe,” Seaton admitted, “as far as One and the rest of his original gang are
concerned. But there’s still DuQuesne. And if Blackie DuQuesne, even as an immaterial
pattern of pure sixth-order force, thinks that way about me I’m a Digger Indian.”
“Ah, yes; DuQuesne. One question, please, to clarify my thinking. Can you, do you
think, even with the fullest use of all the resources of your Skylark of Valeron, release
the intact mind from any body?”
“Of course I . . . oh, I see what you mean. Just a minute; I think probably I can find out
from here.” He went over to his calculator-like instrument, put on a helmet, and stood
motionless for a couple of minutes while the great brain of the machine made its
computation. Then, wearing a sheepish grin:
“A flat bust. I not only couldn’t, I didn’t,” he reported. cheerfully. “So One not only did the
business, but he was good enough to make me know that I was doing it. What an
operator!” He sobered, thought intensely, then went on, “So they sucked us in. Played
with us.”
“You are now beginning to think clearly, youth,” Drasnik said. “We come now, then, to
lesser probabilities. DuQuesne’s mind, of itself, is a mind of power.”
“You can broadcast that to the all-attentive universe,” Seaton said. “Question: how
much stuff has he got now? We know he’s got the fifth order down solid. Incarnate, he
didn’t know any more than that. However, mind is a pattern of sixth-order force.
Knowing what we went through to get the sixth, and that we haven’t got it all yet by
seven thousand rows of Christmas trees, the first sub-question asks itself: Can a free
mind analyze itself- completely enough to work out and to handle the entire order of
force in which it lies?
“We may assume I think, that One could have given DuQuesne full knowledge of the
sixth if he felt like it. The second sub-question, then, is; did he? If those questions aren’t
enough to start with I can think of plenty more.”
“They are enough, youth,” Fodan said. “You have pointed out the crux. We will now
discuss the matter. Since this first phase lies largely in your province, Drasnik, you will
now take over.”
The discussion mounted, and grew, and went on and on. Silently Dorothy slipped away,
and the projection of force that was Margaret Crane followed her into the kitchen.
There was no need for Dorothy to prepare coffee and sandwiches for her husband, not
by hand; one thought into a controller would have produced any desired amount of any
desired comestibles. But she wanted something to do. Both girls knew from experience
that a conference of this sort might go on for hours; and Dorothy knew that with food
placed before him, Seaton would eat; without it, he would never notice the lack.
She did not, of course, prepare anything for the others.
They were not there. Their bodies were at varying distances-a few miles for Crane and
his wife, an unthinkable number of parsecs for the Norlaminians and Sacner Carfon.
The distance between Earth and the Green System was so unthinkably vast that there
was no point in trying to express it in numbers of miles, or even parsecs. The central
green sun of the cluster that held Norlamin Osnome and Dasor was visible from Earth,
all right-in Earth’s hugest optical telescopes, as a tiny, 20th-magnitude point-but the
light that reached Earth had been on its way for tens of thousand of years before
Seaton’s ancestors had turned from hunting to agriculture, had taken off their crude
skins and begun to build houses, cities, machines and, ultimately, spaceships.
To all of this Dorothy and Peggy Crane were no strangers; they had been themselves in
such projections countless times. If they were more than usually silent, it was not
because of the astonishing quality of the meeting that was taking place in the Seatons’
living room, but because of the subject of that meeting. Both Dorothy and Peg knew
Marc DuQuesne well. Both of them had experienced his cold, impersonal deadliness.
Neither wanted to come close to it again.
Back in the living room, Seaton was saying: “If One gave DuQuesne all of the sixth-
order force patterns, he can be anywhere and can do practically anything. So he
probably didn’t. On the other hand if One didn’t give him any of it DuQuesne couldn’t
get back here in forty lifetimes. So he probably gave him some of it. The drive and the
projector, at least. Maybe as much as we have, to equalize us. Maybe One figured he
owed the ape that mach. Whatever the truth may be, we’ve got to assume that
DuQuesne knows as much as we do about sixth-order forces.” He paused, then
corrected himself. “If we’re smart we’ll assume that he knows more than we do. So we’ll
have to find somebody else who knows more than we do to learn from. Question how
do we go about doing that? Not by just wandering around the galaxy at random,
looking; that’s one certain damn sure thing.”
“It is indeed,” the moderator agreed. “Sacner Carfon, you have, I think, a contribution to