Skylark DuQuesne

23. RE-SETTING OF THE PREMIER

As the Skylark of Valeron approached Galaxy DW-427LU, Dorothy said, “Dick, I suppose it’s occurred to you more than once that I’m not much of a woman.”

“You aren’t? I’d say’ you’d do until the real thing showed up.” Seaton, who had been thinking of the problem of synchronization instead of his wife, changed voice instantly when he really looked at her and saw what a black mood she was in. “You’re the universe’s best, is all, ace. I knew you were feeling a little low in your mind, but not… listen, sweetheart. What could possiby make you think you aren’t the absolute top?”

She did not answer the question. Instead, “What do you think you’re going to get into this time?”

“Nothing much, I’m sure. Prenk’s probably running out of ammunition. We can make more in five minutes than he can in five years.”

“I’m sure that isn’t it. You’re going into personal danger again and I’ll be expected to sit up here in the Skylark eating my heart out wondering if you’re alive or dead. You don’t see Sitar going through that with Dunark.”

“Wait up, sweetheart. Mores and customs, remember?”

“Mores and customs be damned! Do you remember exactly what Sitar said and exactly how she said it? Did it sound like mores and customs to you? Was there any element whatever of suttee in it?”

“But listen, Dottie—” He took her gently in his arms.

“You listen!” she rushed on. “If he dies she doesn’t want to keep on living and she won’t. And she doesn’t care who knows it. Maybe it started that way — society’s sanction but that was her personal profession of faith. And I feel the same way. If you die I don’t want to keep on living and won’t. So next time I’m going with you.”

Being an American male, he could not accept that without an argument. “But there’s Dickie,” he said.

“There are also her three children on Osnome. I learned something from her about what the basic, rock-bottom attitude of a woman toward her man ought to be. Even from little Lotus. She’s no bigger than a minute and a half, but what did she do? So while we’re having this moment of truth let’s be rock-bottom honest with each other for the first time in our lives instead of mouthing the platitudes of our society. I’m not a story-book mother, Dick. If it ever comes right down to a choice, you know how I’ll decide and how long it will take!”

Seaton could not get in touch with Ree-Toe Prenk, of course, until the Valeron was actually inside Galaxy DW427-LU; but as soon as communication could be established Kay-Lee Barlo asked eagerly, “You did get our thought, then, Ky-El? Mother’s and mine? We didn’t feel that we were quite reaching you.”

“Not exactly,” Seaton replied. “I didn’t get any real thought at all; just a feeling that I ought to be going somewhere that bothered me no end until I headed this way. But since it was you people calling, I’m mighty glad I got what little I did.”

The Skylark went into orbit around Ray-See-Nee and the Skylarkers climbed into a landing-craft that Seaton had designed and built specifically for the occasion. It was a miniature battleship — one of the deadliest fighting ships of its size and heft ever built.

And this time the whole party was heavily armed. Dunark and Sitar were in full Osnomian panoply of war. Dorothy wore a pair of her long-barrelled .38 target pistols in leg-holsters under her bouffant skirt. Even little Lotus wore two .25 automatics. “I don’t know whether I can hit anybody with one of these or not,” she had said while Dorothy was rigging her. “I’d much rather work hand to hand. But if they’re too far away to get at I can at least make a lot of noise and look like I’m doing something.”

They were met at the spaceport by two platoons of the Premier’s Guard, led by Captain-General Sy-By Takeel himself. They were guarded like visiting royalty from the spaceport to the Capitol Building and up into the Room of State, where they were greeted with informal cordiality by Prenk and by Kay-Lee, who was now an Exalted of the Thirty-Fifth, besides being First Deputy Premier.

Prenk seated his guests, not on stools in front of and below his throne-like desk, but at a long conference table with Seaton as its head. The two lieutenants posted guards outside the two immense doors at the far end of the vast room and stationed the rest of their men in position to cover both entrances. Takeel, with velvet slippers over his field-boots, stood on Prenk’s desk, commanding the entire room, with a machine-gun-like weapon cradled expertly and accustomedly in the crook of his left arm.

“Are things this bad?” Seaton asked. “I knew it was tough when you told us to come loaded for bear — but this?”

“They’re exactly this bad. These two—” Prenk jerked a thumb at Kay-Lee and at Takeel — “are the only two people on this whole world that I know I can trust. Until quite recently I was sure I held the city — but now I’m not at all sure of holding even this building. I can only hope that you’re not too late. I’ll tell you what the situation is; then you will tell me, please, if there is anything you can do about it.”

He talked for twelve minutes. Then:

“P-s-s-s-st!” Kay-Lee hissed. “Danger! Coming — nearing us — fast! I can feel it — taste it — smell it! Get ready quick!” She sprang to her feet, drew her pistol, and arranged a dozen clips of cartridges meticulously on the table in front of her.

The Osnomians’ chairs crashed backward, their heavy coats flew off, and they stood tensely ready, machine pistols in all four hands. And, seconds later, the other Skylarkers were on their feet and ready too. The Captain-General had not heard the low-voiced warning, but he had seen the action and that was enough. Trigger-nerved Dunark’s chair had no sooner struck the floor on its first bounce than Takeel was going into his shooting stance, with his weapon flipping around into firing position as though it were sliding in a greased groove; the while glaring ferociously at his senior lieutenant — who thereupon began to have an acute attack of the jitters.

It was the commander’s savage motion, actually, that ruined the attackers’ split-second schedule. For, at a certain second, the two lieutenants were to shoot their captain; then to shoot Prenk and Kay-Lee Barlo; and then, as the attack proper was launched, they were to kill as many of their own men as they could. Thus, knowing what a savage performer the Captain-General was with his atrocious weapon, their hands were forced; they had to act a couple of seconds too soon. They tried — but with two short bursts so close together as to be practically one, Takeel cut them down. Cut them both almost literally in two.

Thus, when the two great doors were blasted simultaneously down and the attackers stormed in with guns ablaze, they did not find a half-dead and completely demoralized Guard and a group of surprised visitors. Instead:

The mercenaries were neither dead nor demoralized. They knew exactly what to do and were doing it. Dunark and Sitar had the fire-power of half a company of trained troops and were using it to the fullest full. The Captain general, from his coign of vantage atop the desk, was spraying both entrances with bullets like a gardener watering two flower-beds with a hose. Kay-Lee was throwing lead almost as fast as Takeel was; changing magazines with such fluent speed and precision as to miss scarcely a shot. Dorothy, nostrils flaring and violet eyes blazing, was shooting as steadily and as accurately as though she were out on the range marking up another possible. Even tiny Lotus, with one of her .25’s clutched in both hands, was shooting as fast as she could pull the trigger.

It was Seaton, however, who ended the battle. He waited long enough to be absolutely sure of what was going on, then fired twice with his left-hand magnum — through the doorways, high over the heads of the attackers, far down the corridors.

There were two terrific explosions; followed by one long rumbling crash as that whole section of the building either went somewhere else or collapsed into rubble. Falling and flying masonry and steel and razor-edged shards of structural glass killed almost everyone outside the heavily reenforced wall of the Room of State. The shock-waves of the blasts, raging through the doorways, killed half of the enemy massed there and blew the others half the length of the room. And, continuing on with rapidly decreasing force, knocked most of the Skylarkers flat and blew the Captain general off of the desk and clear back against the wall.

“Sangram’s head!” that worthy yelled, scrambling to his feet with machine-gun again — or still? He had not for an instant lost control of that! — at the ready. “What in Japnonk’s rankest hell was that?”

“X-plosive shell,” Seaton said, his voice as hard as his eyes. “This time I came loaded for bear. Now we’ll mop up and find out what’s been going on. I gather, sir, that your two platoon leaders were in on it?”

“Yes. It’s a shame I had to kill ’em without asking ’em a few questions.” He did not explain that he had had neither the time in which nor the weapon with which merely to wound them seriously enough so that neither of them could fight back with any sort of weapon. There was no need.

“That won’t make too much difference.” Seaton looked around; first at his own crew and then at the guards, half of whom were down. Medics and first-aid men were rushing in to work on them. He looked again, more closely, at his people and at Prenk and Kay-Lee. Not one of them, apparently, had even been scratched.

That, however, was logical. The mercenaries were hardtrained fighting men, shooting was their business. Hence the attackers’ orders had been to shoot the guards first, and there had been no time to evaluate the actual situation and to change the plan of attack. Hence, as far as anyone knew, not a single bullet had been aimed at the far end of the room.

Seaton took a pair of headsets out of his pocket and applied one of them, first to one of the two lieutenants’ heads, then to the other.

“Uh-huh,” he grunted then. “That ape didn’t know too much, but this one was going to be the new captain-general. I suppose you’ve got a recorder, Ree-Toe?”

“I’ll get it, sir!” Kay-Lee exclaimed; and Prenk, eyes bulging, gasped: “Don’t tell me you can read a dead brain, sir!”

“Oh, yes. They keep their charges, sometimes for days.”

Kay-Lee handed Seaton a microphone then, and he spoke into it for ten minutes the while three Rayseenian faces went through gamuts of emotion; each culminating in the same expression of joyous satisfaction.

When Seaton paused for breath Prenk said in awe, “That machine is certainly a something… I don’t suppose…” He stopped.

“I do suppose, yes. I’ll give you a few sets, with blueprints, and show you how they work,” and Seaton went on with his reading.

A few minutes later he cut off the mike and said, “That ape over there,” he pointed, “is one of the Big Wheels. Have someone latch onto him, Ree-Toe; we’ll read him next.

He’s one you’ll be really interested in, so I’ll hook you up in parallel with me so you can get everything he knows into your own brain.” He took a third headset from his pocket and began to adjust its settings, going on, “It takes a different set-up… so… and goes on your head so.”

“That ape” was a fattish, sallow-faced man of fifty, who had been directing operations from outside the room and had intended to stay outside it until everything was secure within. He had been blown into the room and halfway along its length by the force of the blasts. He was pretty badly smashed up, but he was beginning to regain consciousness and was weakly trying to get to his feet.

This unlucky wight was a mine of information indeed, but Prenk stopped the mining operation after only a couple of minutes of digging.

“Sy-By,” he said. “Two more of your officers you can shoot.” He gave two names. “Then come back here with some men you think you can trust and we’ll test ’em to make sure.

By that time I’ll have a list of people for you to round up and bring in for examination.”

There is no need to follow any farther the Premier’s progress in cleaning up his planet.

In fact, only one more incident that occurred there is of interest here — one that occurred while Seaton and Dorothy were getting ready for bed in one of the suites of honor. She put both arms around him suddenly; he pressed her close.

“Dick, I belonged there. Beside you. Every fiber of my being belonged there. That was exactly where I belonged.”

“I know you did, sweet. I’ll have to admit it. But…”

She put her hand over his mouth. “But nothing, my dearest. No buts. I’ve killed rats and rattlesnakes, and that wasn’t any different. Not a bit different in any way.”

Of the more than five thousand Fenachrone who had left their noisome home planet in Sleemet’s flagship, almost seven hundred had died and more were dying.

It was not that the Llurdi were physically cruel to them or abused them in any way. They didn’t. Nor were they kind; they were conspicuously and insultingly neutral and indifferent to them. Conspicuous and insulting, that is, to the hypersensitive minds of the captives. In their own minds, the Llurdi were acting strictly according to logic. Every item of the subjects’ environment duplicated precisely its twin on the subjects’ home world. What more could logically be done? Nothing.

The Llurdi observed the mental anguish of the Fenachrone, of course, and recorded their emotions quite accurately, but with no emotional reactions whatever of their own.

Practically all emotions were either illogical or unsane, or both.

To the illogical and unsane Fenachrone, however — physically, mentally, intellectually and psychologically — the situation was intolerable; one that simply could not be endured.

They were proud, haughty, intolerant; their race had always been so. Since time immemorial it had been bred into their innermost consciousnesses that they were the RACE SUPREME — destined unquestionably to be the absolute rulers of all things living or yet to live throughout all the transfinite reaches of the Cosmic All.

Holding this belief with every fiber of their beings, they had been plunged instantly into a condition of complete, utter helplessness.

Their vessel could not fight. While it was intact except for its tail-section and its power-pods, its every offensive projector was burned out; useless. Nor could they fight personally, either physically or mentally. Their physical strength, enormous as it was, was of no avail against the completely logical, completely matter-of-fact minds of the Llurdi.

Most galling condition of all, the Fenachrone were not treated as enemies; nor as menaces or threats; nor even as intelligent entities whose knowledges and abilities might be worthy of notice. These things were observed and recorded, to be sure, but only as component parts of a newly discovered class of objects, the Fenachrone; a class of objects that happened to be alive. The Fenachrone were neither more nor less noteworthy than were birds or barnacles.

Sleemet, no longer young and perhaps the proudest and most intractable and most intransigent of the lot, could not endure that treatment very long; but he did not bend.

The old adage “Where there’s life there’s hope,” simply is not true where such as the Llurdi and the Fenachrone are concerned. Sleemet lost all hope and broke; broke almost completely down.

He stopped eating. That did not bother the Llurdi in any way. Why should it? They were neither squeamish nor humane, any more than they were cruel or vindictive. The fact that certain of these creatures stopped taking nourishment under certain conditions was merely a datum to be observed and recorded.

But since Sleemet was big and strong, even for a Fenachrone, and had previously eaten very well indeed, it took him a long time to die. And as he weakened — as the bindings between flesh and spirit loosened more and ever more — he regressed more and ever more back into the youth of his race. Back and back. Still farther back; back into its very childhood; back to a time when his remote ancestors ate their meat alive and communicated with each other, sometimes by grunts and gestures, but more often by means of a purely mental faculty that was later to evolve into the power of ocular hypnosis.

Half conscious or less of his surroundings but knowing well that death was very near, Sleemet half-consciously sent out his race’s ages-old mental message — in extremity of the dying.

Marc C. DuQuesne knew vastly more about the Fenachrone than did any other man alive, not excluding Richard Seaton. He and Seaton were, as far as is known, the only two men ever to meet Fenachrone mind to mind and live through the experience; but DuQuesne had been in thought-helmet contact with a Fenachrone much longer and much more intimately and very much more interestedly than Seaton ever had — because of the tremendous intrinsic differences between the personalities of the two men.

Seaton, after having crippled a war-vessel of the Fenachrone, had pinned its captain against a wall with so many beams of force that he could not move his head and could scarcely move any other part of his monstrous body. Then, by means of a pair of thought-helmets, he had taken what of that captain’s knowledge he wanted. He had, however, handled that horribly unhuman brain very gingerly. He had merely read certain parts of it, as one reads an encyclopedia; at no time had his mind become en rapport with that of the monster. In fact, he had said to Crane:

“I’d hate to have much of that brain in my own skull — afraid I’d bite myself. I’m just going to look… and when I see something I want I’ll grab it and put it into my own brain.”

DuQuesne, however, in examining a navigating engineer of that monstrous race, had felt no such revulsion, contrariwise — although possibly not quite consciously — he had admired certain traits of Fenachrone character so much that he had gone en rapport with that engineer’s mind practically cell to cell; with the result that he had emerged from that mental union as nearly a Fenachrone himself as a human being could very well become.

Wherefore, as DuQuesne in his flying-planetoid-base approached the point of its course nearest to the planet Llurdiax, he began to feel the thinnest possible tendril of thought trying to make contact with one of the deepest chambers of his mind. He stiffened; shutting it off by using automatically an ability that he had not known consciously that he had. He relaxed; and, all interest now, tuned his mind to that feeler of thought, began to pull it in, and stopped — and the contact released a flood of Fenachrone knowledge completely new to him.

A Fenachrone, dying somewhere, wanted… wanted what? Not help, exactly. Notice? Attention? To gave something? DuQuesne was not enough of a Fenachrone to translate that one thought even approximately, and he was not interested enough to waste any time on it. It had something to do with the good of the race; that was close enough.

DuQuesne, frowning a little, sat back in his bucket seat and thought. He had supposed that the Fenachrone were all dead… but it made sense that Seaton couldn’t have killed all of a space-faring race, at that. But so what? He didn’t care how many Fenachrone died. But a lot of their stuff was really good, and he certainly hadn’t got it all yet, by any means; it might be smart to listen to what the dying monster had to say — especially since he, DuQuesne, was getting pretty close to the home grounds of Klazmon the Llurd.

Wherefore DuQuesne opened his mental shield: and, since his mind was still tuned precisely to the questing wave and since the DQ was now practically as close to Llurdiax as it would get on course 255U, he received a burst of thought that jarred him to the very teeth.

It is amazing how much information can be carried by a Fenachrone-compressed burst of thought. It was fortunate for DuQuesne that he had the purely Fenachrone abilities to decompress it, to spread it out and analyze it, and later, to absorb it fully.

The salient points, however, were pellucidly clear. The dying monster was First Scientist Fleet Admiral Sleemet; and he and more than four thousand other Fenachrone were helpless captives of and were being studied to death by Llurdan scientists under the personal direction of Llanzlan Klazmon.

Realizing instantly what that meant — Klazmon would be out here in seconds with a probe, if nothing stronger — DuQuesne slammed on full-coverage screens at full power, thus sealing his entire worldlet bottle-tight against any and every spy-ray, beam, probe, band, zone of force and/or order of force that he knew anything about. Since this included everything he had known before this trip began, plus everything he had learned from Freemind One and from the Jelmi and from Klazmon himself, he was grimly certain that he was just as safe as though he were in God’s hip pocket from any possible form of three-dimensional observation or attack.

Cutting in his fourth-dimensional gizmo — how glad he was that he had studied it so long and so intensively that he knew more about it than its inventors did! — he flipped what he called its “eye” into the Fenachrone Reservation on distant Llurdiax. He seized Sleemet, bed and all, in a wrapping of force and deposited the bundle gently on the floor of the DQ’s control room, practically at his, DuQuesne’s feet. Fenachrone could breathe Earth air for hours without appreciable damage — they had proved that often enough and if he decided to keep any of them alive he’d make them some air they liked better.

Second, he brought over a doctor, complete with kit and instruments and supplies; and third, the Fenachrone equivalent of a registered nurse.

“You, doctor!” DuQuesne snapped, in Fenachronian. “I don’t know whether this spineless weakling is too far gone to save or not. Or whether he is worth saving or not.

But since he was actually in charge of your expedition-to-preserve-the-race I will listen to what he has to say instead of blasting him out of hand. So give him a shot of the strongest stuff you have — or is he in greater need of food than of stimulant?”

DuQuesne did not know whether the doctor would cooperate with a human being or not. But he did — whether from lack of spirit of his own or from desire to save his chief, DuQuesne did not care enough to ask.

“Both,” the doctor said, “but nourishment first, by all means. Intravenous, nurse, please,” and doctor and nurse went to work with the skill and precision of their highly trained crafts.

And, somewhat to DuQuesne’s surprise, Sleemet began immediately to rally; and in three-quarters of an hour he had regained full consciousness.

“You spineless worm!” DuQuesne shot at the erstwhile invalid, in true Fenachrone tone and spirit. “You gutless wonder! You pusillanimous weakling, you sniveling coward! Is it the act of a noble of the Fenachrone to give up, to yield supinely, to surrender ignominiously to a fate however malign while a spark of life endures?”

Sleemet was scarcely stirred by this vicious castigation. He raised dull eyes-eyes shockingly lifeless to anyone who had ever seen the ruby-lighted, flame-shot wells of vibrant force that normal Fenachrone eyes were — and said lifelessly, “There is a point, the certainty of death, at which struggle becomes negative instead of positive. It merely prolongs the agony. Having passed that point, I die.”

“There is no such point, idiot, while life lasts! Do I look like Klazmon of Llurdiax?”

“No, but death is no less certain at your hands than at his.”

“Why should it be, stupid?” and DuQuesne’s sneer was extra-high-voltage stuff, even for Doctor Marc C. DuQuesne.

Now was the crucial moment. IF he could take all those Fenachrone over, and IF he could control them after they got back to normal, what a crew they would make! He stared contemptuously at the ex-admiral and went on:

“Whether or not you and your four thousand die in the near future is up to you. While I do not have to have a crew, I can use one efficiently for a few weeks. If you choose to work with me I will, at the end of that time, give you a duplicate of your original spaceship and will see to it that you are allowed to resume your journey wherever you wish.”

“Sir, the Fenachrone do not…” the doctor began stiffly.

“Shut up, you poor, dumb clown!” DuQuesne snapped.

“Haven’t you learned anything? That instead of being the strongest race in space you are one of the weakest? You have one choice merely — cooperate or die. And that is not yours, but Sleemet’s. Sleemet?”

“But how do I know that if…”

“If you have any part of a brain, fool, use it! What matters it to me whether Fenachrone live or die? I’m not asking you anything; I’m telling you under what conditions I will save your lives. If you want to argue the matter I’ll put you three — and the bed — back where you were and be on my way. Which do you prefer?”

Sleemet had learned something. He had been beaten down flat enough so that he could learn something — and he realized that he had much to learn from any race who could do what his rescuer had just done.

“We will work with you,” Sleemet said. “You will, I trust, instruct us concerning how you liberated us three and propose to liberate the others?”

“I can’t. It was fourth-dimensional translation.” DuQuesne lied blandly. “Did you ever try to explain the color ‘blue’ to a man born blind? No scientist of your race will be able to understand either the theory or the mechanics of fourth dimensional translation for something like eleven hundred thousand of your years.”