“Okay. There were some indications that Tammon worked out the theory of that fourth-dimensional gizmo quite a while back; but they had to come this tremendous distance to find enough high-order emanation to mask their research and development work from His Nibs Llanzlan Klazmon the Fifteenth.
“Now. My argument gets pretty tenuous at this point, but isn’t it a fairly safe bet that, having reduced the theory of said gizmo to practice and having built a ship big enough to handle it like toothpicks, they’d beat it right back home as fast as they could leg it, knock the living hell out of the Llurdi — they could, you know, like shooting fish in a well — and issue a star-spangled Declaration of Independence? It does to me.”
“Check. While I didn’t get there by exactly the same route you did, I arrived at the same destination. So it’s not only got to be investigated; it’s got to be Number One on the agenda. Question; who operates? Your baby or mine?”
“You know the answer to that. I’ll have other fish to fry; quite possibly until after you have the Jelman angle solved.”
“My thought exactly.” Seaton assumed that DuQuesne’s first, most urgent job would be to build a worldlet of his own; DuQuesne did not correct this thought. Seaton went on,
“The other question, then, is do we join forces again, or work independently… or maybe table the question temporarily, until you get yourself organized and we will have made at least a stab at evaluating what this Llurdan menace actually amounts to?”
“The last… I think.” DuQuesne scowled in thought, then his face cleared but at no time was there the slightest seepage of side-bands to the effect that he, DuQuesne, would see to it that Seaton would be dead long before that. Or that he, DuQuesne, did not give a tinker’s damn whether anything was ever done about the Llurdan menace or not.
The two men discussed less important details for perhaps ten minutes longer; then DuQuesne took his leave. And, out in deep space again, with his mighty Capital D again boring a hole through the protesting ether, DuQuesne allowed himself a contemptuous and highly satisfactory sneer.
Back in their own living room, Seaton asked his wife, “Dottie, did you smell anything the least bit fishy about that?”
“Not a thing, Dick. I gave it everything I had, and everything about it rang as true as a silver bell. Did you detect anything?”
“Not a thing — curse it! Even helmet to helmet — as deep as I could go without putting the screws on and blowing everything higher than up — it was flawless. But you’ve got to remember the guy’s case-hardened and diamond finished… But you’ve also got to remember that I came to exactly the same conclusions he did — and completely independently.”
“So every indication is that he is acting decently. He’s been known to, you know.”
“Yeah. It’s possible.” Seaton did not sound at all sold on the possibility. “But I wouldn’t trust that big black ape as far as I could drop-kick him… I’d like awfully well to know whether he’s pitching us a curve or not… and if he is, what the barb-tailed devil it can possibly be… so what we’ll have to do, pet, is keep our eyes peeled and look a little bit out all the time.”
And, still scowling and still scanning and re-scanning every tiniest bit of data for flaws, Seaton set course for Galaxy DW-427-LU, having every reason to believe it the galaxy in which the Realm of the Llurdi lay. Also, although he did not mention this fact even to Dorothy, that course “felt right” to some deeply buried, unknown, and impossible sense in which he did not, could not, and would not believe.
For Seaton did not know that Galaxy DW-427-LU was in fact going to be highly important to him in a way that he could not foresee; if he had known, would not have believed; if he had believed, would not have understood.
For at that moment in time, not even Richard Ballinger Seaton knew what forces he had unleashed with his “cosmic beacon.”
13. DUQUESNE AND SENNLLOY
IN the eyes of Blackie DuQuesne, Seaton was forever and helplessly trapped in the philosophy of the “good guy.” It was difficult for DuQuesne to comprehend why a mind of as high an order of excellence as Seaton’s — fully the equal of DuQuesne’s own in many respects, as DuQuesne himself was prepared to concede — should subscribe to the philosophy of lending a helping hand, accepting the defeat of an enemy without rancor, refraining from personal aggrandizement when the way was so easily and temptingly clear to take over the best part of a universe.
Nevertheless, DuQuesne knew that these traits were part of Seaton’s makeup. He had counted on them. He had not been disappointed. It would, have been child’s play for Seaton to have tricked and destroyed him as he entered that monster spaceship Seaton had somehow acquired. Instead of that, Seaton had made him a free gift of its equal!
That, however, was not good enough for Blackie DuQuesne. Seeing how far Seaton had progressed had changed things. He could not accept the status of co-belligerent.
He had to be the victor.
And the one portentous hint he had gleaned from Seaton of the existence of a true fourth-dimensional system could be the tool that would make him the victor; wherefore he set out at once to get it.
Since he had misdirected Seaton as to the vector of the course of the Jelmi, sending him off on what, DuQuesne congratulated himself, was the wildest of wild-goose chases, DuQuesne need only proceed in the right direction and somehow — anyhow; DuQuesne was superbly confident that he would find a means — get from them the secret of what he needed to know. His vessel had power to spare. Therefore he cut in everything his mighty drives could take, computed a tremendous asymptotic curve into the line that the Jelmi must have taken, and took out after the intergalactic flyer that had left Earth’s moon such a short time before.
DuQuesne was aware that force would be an improbably successful means of getting what he wanted. Guile was equally satisfactory. Accordingly he took off his clothes and examined himself, front and back and sides, in a full-length mirror.
He would do, he concluded. There would be nothing about his physical person which would cause him any trouble in his dealings with the Jelmi. Since he always took his sun-lamp treatments in the raw, his color gradation was right. He was too dark for a typical Caucasian Tellurian; but that was all right — he wasn’t going to be a Tellurian. He would, he decided, be a native of some planet whose people went naked… the planet Xylmny, in a galaxy ’way out on the Rim somewhere… yes, he had self-control enough not to give himself away.
But his cabin wouldn’t stand inspection on a usually naked basis, nor would any other private room of the ship. All had closets designed unmistakably for clothing and it wasn’t worth while to rebuild them.
Okay, he’d be a researcher who had visited dozens of planets, and everybody had to wear some kind of clothing or trappings at some time or other. Protectively at least. And probably for formality or for decoration.
Wherefore DuQuesne, with a helmet on his head and a half-smile, half-sneer on his face, let his imagination run riot in filling closet after closet with the utilitarian and the decorative garmenture of world after purely imaginative world. Then, after transferring his own Tellurian clothing to an empty closet, he devoted a couple of hours to designing and constructing the apparel of his equally imaginary native world Xylmny.
In due time a call came in from the spaceship up ahead. “You who are following us from the direction of the world Tellus: do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you following us, Tellurian?”