explain the mechanism of thought-by unscrewing the inscrutable? She said, and I
quote, `We didn’t feel that we were quite reaching you,’ unquote. So it was she and
Ree-Toe Prenk. Obviously. Holding hands or something-across a Ouija board or some
other focusing device, probably. Staring into each other’s eyes to link minds and direct
the thought.”
“But they did hit you with something,” she insisted, “and it bothers me. They can do it
and we can’t.”
“No sweat, pet. That isn’t a circumstance to what you do every time you think at a
controller to order up a meal or whatever. How do you do that? Different people,
different abilities, is all. Anyway, Earth mediums have done that kind of thing for ages. If
you’re really interested, you can take some time off and learn it, next time we’re on Ray-
See-Nee. But for right now, my red-headed beauty, we’ve got something besides that
kind of monkey-business to worry about.”
“That’s right, we have,” and Dorothy forgot the minor matter in thinking of the major.
“Those aliens. Have you and Martin figured out a modus operandi?”
“More or less. Go in openly, like tourists, but with everything we’ve got not only on the
trips but hyped up to as nearly absolutely instantaneous reactivity as the Brain can
possibly get it.”
Both DuQuesne’s DQ and Seaton’s Skylark of Valeron were within range of Llurdiax.
DuQuesne, however, as has been said, was covering up as tightly as he could.
Everything that could be muzzled or muffled was muzzled or muffled, and he was
traveling comparatively slowly, so as to put out the minimum of detectable high-order
emanation. Furthermore, his screens were shoved out to such a tremendous distance,
and were being varied so rapidly and so radically in shape, that no real pattern existed
to be read. The DQ was not indetectable, of course, but it would have taken a great
deal of highly specialized observation and analysis to find her.
The Skylark of Valeron, on the other hand, was coming in wide open: “Like a tourist,” as
Seaton had told Dorothy the plan was to do.
In the llanzlanate on Llurdiax, therefore, an observer alerted Klazmon, who flew
immediately to his mastercontrol panel. He checked the figures the observer had given
him, and was as nearly appalled as a Llurd could become. An artificial structure of that
size and mass-it was certainly not a natural planetoid-had never even been thought of
by any builder of record. He measured its acceleration-the Valeron was still braking
down at max and his eyes bulged. That thing, tremendous as it was, had the power-to-
mass ratio of a speedster! In spite of its immense size it was actually an intergalactic
flyer!
He launched a probe, as he had done so many times before-but with entirely
unexpected results.
The stranger’s guardian screens were a hundred times as reactive as any known to
Llurdan science. He was not allowed time for even the briefest of mental contacts or for
any real observation at all. So infinitesimal had been the instant usable time that only
one fact was clear. The entities in that mobile monstrosity were-positively-Jelmoids.
Not true Jelmi, certainly. He knew all about the Jelmi. Those tapes bore unmistakable
internal evidence of being true and complete records and there was no hint anywhere in
them of anything like this. If not the Jelmi, who? Ah, yes, the Fenachrone, whose fleet .
. . no, Sleemet knew nothing of such a construction . . . and he was not exactly of the
same race . . . ah, yes, that one much larger ship that had escaped. The probability was
high that its one occupant belonged to precisely the same Jelmoid race as did the
personnel of this planetoid. The escaped one had reported Klazmon’s cursory
investigation as an attack. It was a virtual certainty, therefore, that this was a battleship
of gat race, heading for Llurdiax to . . . to what? To investiate merely? No.
Nor merely to parley. They had made no attempt whatever to communicate. (It did not
occur to Klazmon, then or ever, that his own fiercely driven probe could not possibly
have been taken for an attempt at communication. He had fully intended to
communicate, as soon as he had seized the mind of whoever was in command of the
strange spacecraft.) And now, with the stranger’s incredible fullcoverage screen in
operation, communication was and would remain impossible.
But he had data sufficient for action. These Jelmoids, like all others he knew, were
rabidly anti-social, illogical, unreasoning, unsane and insane. They were-definitely-
surplus population.
So thinking, Llanzlan Klazmon launched his attack.
As the Skylark entered that enigmatic galaxy, Seaton was not in his home, with only a
remote-control helmet with which to work. He was in the control room itself, at the base
of the Brain, with the tremendously complex-master-control itself surrounding his head.
Thus he was attuned to and in instantaneous contact with every activated cell of that
gigantic Brain. It was ready to receive and to act upon with the transfinite speed of
thought any order that Seaton would think. Nor would any such action interfere in any
way with the automatics that Seaton had already set up.
“I’m going to stay here all day,” Seaton said, “and all night tonight, too, if necessary.”
But he did not have to stay there even all day. In less than four hours the llanzlan drove
his probe and Seaton probed practically instantaneously back. And since Seaton’s
hyped-up screens were a hundred times faster than the Llurd’s, Seaton “saw” a
hundred times as much as Klazmon did. He saw the city Llurdias in all its seat-of-
empire pride and glory. He perceived its miles-wide girdle of fortresses. He perceived
the llanzlanate; understood its functions and purposes. He entered the Hall of
Computation and examined minutely the beings and the machines at work there.
How could all this be? Because the speed of thought, if not absolutely infinite, is at least
transfinite; immeasurable to man. And the Valeron’s inorganic brain and Seaton’s
organic one were, absolutely and super-intimately, the two component parts of one
incredibly able, efficient and proficient whole.
Thus, when the alien’s attack was launched in all its fury and almost all of the Valeron’s
mighty defensive engines went simultaneously into automatic action, the coded
chirpings that the Brain employed to summon human help did not sound: that Brain’s
builder, fellow, boss, and perfect complement was already on the job.
And thus, since no warning had been given, the other Skylarkers were surprised when
Seaton called them all down into the control room.
They were even more surprised when they saw how white and strained his face was.
“This may become veree unfunny,” he said. “‘Tsa good thing I muscled her up or we’d
be losing some skin and some of our defense. As it is, we’re holding ’em and we’ve got
a few megas in reserve. Not enough to be really happy about, but some. And we’re
building more, of course. However, that ape down there has undoubtedly got a lot of
stuff otherwheres on the planet that he can hook in pretty fast, so whatever we’re going
to do we’d better do right now.”
“They didn’t try to communicate at all?” Crane asked. “Strange for a race of such
obviously high attainments.”
“Not a lick,” Seaton said, flatly. “Just a probe; the hardest and sharpest probe I ever
saw. When I blocked it Whammo!”
“You probed, too, of course,” Dorothy said. “What did you find out? Are they really
monstrous, as DuQuesne said, out purely to kill?”
“Just that. He wasn’t lying a nickel’s worth on that. His Nibs down there had already
decided that we were surplus population and should be eliminated, and he set right out
to do it. So, unless some of you have some mighty valid reasons not to, I’m going to try
my damndest to eliminate him, right now.”
“We could run, I suppose,” Margaret suggested-but not at all enthusiastically.
“I doubt it. Not without letting him burn us down to basketball size, like the Chlorans did.
He undoubtedly let us get this close on purpose so we couldn’t.”
Since no one else said anything, Seaton energized everything of offense he had. He
tuned it as precisely as he possibly could. He assembled it into the tightest, solidest,
hardest beam he could possibly build. Then, involuntarily tensing his muscles and
bunching his back, he drove the whole gigantic thing squarely at where he knew the
llanzlanate was.
The Llurd’s outer screen scarcely flickered as it went black in nothing flat of time. The
intermediate screen held for eighty-three hundredths of a second. Then the practically
irresistible force of that beam met the practically immovable object that was Klazmon’s
last line of defense. And as it clawed and bit and tore and smashed in ultrapyrotechnic
ferocity, solar-like flares of raw energy erupted from the area of contact and the very