in its present state of development, at least-couldn’t handle a working projection; and he
couldn’t explain that fact, either. There was no way at all, apparently, of coupling the
two transmitters together or of automating the controls-which was absurd on the face of
it. There were job lots of things it couldn’t do; and in no case at all could he understand
why not.
That condition was, however, perfectly natural. In fact, it was inevitable. For, as has
been pointed out, the laws of the fourth-dimensional region are completely inexplicable
in three-dimensional terms. Obvious impossibilities become commonplace events;
many things that are inevitable in our ordinary continuum become starkly impossible
there.
Tammon had told DuQuesne just that; Seaton had told him the same, and much more
strongly for having been there in person; but DuQuesne could not help but boggle at
such information. Of the three men, he was far and away the least able to accept an
obvious impossibility as a fact and go on from there.
So Blackie DuQuesne, his face like a steel-black thundercloud, methodically and
untiringly worked with his new device until he was quite sure that of all the things he
could make it do, he could make it do all of them very well.
And that would be enough. Never mind the things it wouldn’t do. What it would do would
be plenty to get rid of Richard Ballinger Seaton once and for all.
Within range of Earth at last, DuQuesne set about the first step in that program.
The simplest and crudest methods would work-backed by the weird fourth-dimensional
powers of the quad. And DuQuesne knew exactly how to go about recruiting the
assistance he needed in those methods.
He launched a working projection of himself to the Safe Deposit Department of the First
National Bank. He signed a name and counted out a sheaf of currency from a box. He
then took a taxi to the World Steel Building and an elevator up to the office of the
president.
Brushing aside private secretaries, vice presidents, and other small fry, he strode
through a succession of private offices into the sanctum sanctorum of President
Brookings himself.
The tycoon was, as usual, alone. If he was surprised at the intrusion he did not show it.
He took the big cigar from his mouth, little-fingered half an inch of ash from the end of it
into a bronze tray, put it back between his teeth, and waited.
“Still thinking your usual devious, petty-larceny, half-vest thoughts, eh, Brookings?”
DuQuesne sneered.
“Still thinking your usual devious, petty-larceny, half-vast sublime gall to show up
around here again,” Brookings said, evenly. “Even via projection, after the raw stuff you
pulled and the ungodly flop you made of everything. Especially after the way your pal
Seaton dragged you out of here with your tail between your legs. Incidentally, it .took
everything you had coming to repair the damage you did to the building on your way
out.”
“Stupid as ever, I see. And the galaxy’s tightest pennypincher. But back pay and the law
of contracts and so forth are of no importance at the moment. What I’m here about is:
with all these Norlaminian so-called `observers’ looking down the back of your neck all
the time, Perkins’ successor and his goon squads must be eating mighty low on the
hog.”
“We haven’t any-” At DuQuesne’s sardonically contemptuous smile Brookings changed
instantly the sense of what he had been going to say-“work for them, to speak of, at
that. Why?”
“So six of your best and fastest gunnies would be interested in ten grand apiece for a
month’s loaf and a minute’s work.”
“Don’t say mine, Doctor. Please! You know very well that I never have anything to do
with anything like that.”
“No? But you know who took over the Perkins Café and the top-mobster job after I
killed Perkins. So I want six off the top downstairs in the lobby at sixteen hours Eastern
Daylight time today.”
“You know I never handle-”
“Shut up! I’m not asking you-I’m telling you. You’ll handle this, or else.”
Brookings shrugged his shoulders and sighed. He knew DuQuesne. “If you want good
men they’ll have to know what the job is.”
“Naturally. Dick and Dorothy Seaton, Martin and Margaret Crane, and their Jap Shiro
and his wife-Apple Blossom or whatever her name is. Seaton’s fast, for an amateur, but
he’s no pro. Crane is slow-he thinks and aims. And the others don’t count. I’ll guarantee
complete surprise enough for one clear shot at Seaton. Anybody who is apt to need two
shots I don’t want. So-no problem:”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Since DuQuesne knew that was as close as Brookings ever came to saying “yes”, he
accepted it. “In advance, of course.” Brookings held out his hand.
“Naturally.” DuQuesne took a rubber-banded sheaf of thousand-dollar bills out of his
inside coat pocket and tossed it across the desk. “Count ’em.”
“Naturally.” Brookings picked the sheaf up and riffled through it. “Correct. Good-by,
Doctor.”
“Good-by,” DuQuesne said, and the projection vanished.
At four o’clock that afternoon DuQuesne picked up his goons-through the fourth
dimension, which surprised them tremendously and scared them no little, although
none of them would admit that fact-and headed for the galaxy toward which the Skylark
of Valeron had been flying so long. The Capital D was of course much faster than the
gigantic planetoid; and the actual difference in speed between the two intergalactic
flyers was much greater than the rated one because DuQuesne was driving with all his
engines at absolute max-risking burn-out, tear-out, and unavoidable collision at or near
the frightful velocity of turnover-which Seaton of course was not doing. He didn’t want to
endanger the Valeron.
In the target galaxy-Galaxy DW-427-LU, according to Klazmon’s chart-there was only
one solar system showing really intense sixth-order activity. Almost all of that activity
would be occurring on one planet; a planet whose inhabitants were highly inimical to
(probably) all other forms of intelligent life.
Klazmon’s side-bands of thought had been very informative on those points.
Thus it was by neither accident nor coincidence that DuQuesne came up to within long
working range of the Skylark of Valeron well before that flying worldlet came within what
DuQuesne thought was extreme range of a planet that DuQuesne knew to be a very
dangerous planet indeed.
He had wanted it that way; -he had risked his ship and his life to make it come out that
way. When the Valeron came within range of the target planet she would be
DuQuesne’s not Seaton’s. And DuQuesne was calmly confident that he and a Valeron
re-tuned to his own mind could cope with any possible situation.
As a matter of fact, they couldn’t. It was not, however, DuQuesne’s error or fault that
made it so; it was merely the way Fate’s mop flopped. Neither he nor Seaton had any
idea whatever of the appalling magnitude of the forces so soon to be hurled against
Seaton’s supposedly invulnerable flying fortress, the Skylark of Valeron.
Operating strictly according to plan, then, DuQuesne called his goons to attention.
“You’ve been briefed and you’ve had plenty of practice, but I’ll recap the essential
points.
“Guns in hands. They’ll be eating dinner, with their legs under the table. Sitting ducks
for one shot. But for one shot only. Especially Seaton-for an amateur he’s fast. So work
fast-land and shoot. I’ll give you the usual three-second countdown, beginning, now–
Seconds! Three! Two! One! Mark!” and the six men ‘Vanished.
And in the dining room of the Seatons’ home in the Skylark of Valeron six forty-five-
caliber automatics barked viciously, practically as one.
16 THE CHLORANS
While much work had been done on a personal gravity control, to provide for the
comfort of such visitors as Dunark and Sitar, it was still in the design stage when the
Skylark of Valeron neared Galaxy DW-427-LU. Wherefore, when the Skylarkers sat
down to dinner that evening in the Seatons’ dining room that room was almost forty per
cent undergrav. And wherefore, when DuQuesne’s six hired killers fired practically as
one, all six bullets went harmlessly high.
For, at low gravity, two facts of marksmanship-unknown to or not considered by either
DuQuesne or any of his men-became dominant. First, a pistol expert compensates
automatically for the weight of his weapon. Second, the more expert the marksman, the
more automatic this compensation is.
And one shot each was all those would-be killers had. Dunark and Sitar as has been
said, went armed even to bed; and Osnomian reflexes were and are the fastest
possessed by any known race of man. Each of their machine pistols clicked twice and
four American hoodlums died, liquescent brains and comminuted skulls spattering
abroad, before they could do anything more than begin to bring their guns back down
into line for their second shots.
The other two gangsters also died; if not as quickly or as messily, just as dead. For