“Why must they have?” Dunark demanded. “It’s probably just a matter of size. They have a whole planet to fortify. Dozens of ’em if they want to. So it doesn’t have to be a matter of refinement at all. Just brutal, piled up, overwhelming power.”
“Could be,” Seaton agreed. “If so, we can’t match it, since the Valeron was as big as she could be and still have a factor of safety of two point two.” He paused in thought, then went on, “But with such refinement, we could take a planet no matter how loaded it was… I think. So maybe we’d better take off for Norlamin, at that.”
“One thing we should do first, perhaps,” Dorothy suggested. “Find out what that DuQuesne really did. He has me worried.”
“Maybe we should at that,” Seaton agreed. “I’d forgotten all about the big black ape.”
It was easy enough to find the line along which DuQuesne had traveled; the plug-chart was proof that he had not lied about that. They reached without incident the neighborhood of the point DuQuesne had marked on the chart. Seaton sent out a working projection of the device that, by intercepting and amplifying light-waves traversing open space, enabled him actually to see events that had happened in the not-too distant past.
He found the scene he wanted. He studied it, analyzed and recorded it. Then:
“He lied to me almost a hundred and eighty degrees,” Seaton said. “That beam came from that galaxy over there.” He jerked a thumb. “The alien who bothered him was in that galaxy. That much I’ll buy. But it doesn’t make sense that he’d go there. That alien was nobody he wanted to monkey with, that’s for dead sure. So where did he meet the Jelmi, if not in that galaxy?”
“On the moon, perhaps,” Margaret said.
“Possibly. I’ll compute it… no, the timing isn’t right—” Seaton thought for a moment — “but there’s no use guessing. That galaxy may be the first place to look for sign; but I’ll bet my case buck it’ll be a long, cold hunt. I’d like awfully well to have that gizmo — flip bombs past the Chlorans’ screens and walls with it…”
“From a distance greater than their working range?” Crane asked.
“That’s so, too… or maybe so, at that, chum. Who knows what you can do through the fourth? But it looks as though our best bet is to beat it to Norlamin, rebuild this wreck, and tear into that business of refinement of synchronization. So say you all?”
So said they all and Seaton, flipping on full-power sixth order drive, set course for Norlamin.
As the student will be aware, the events in this climactic struggle between the arch-enemies, Seaton and DuQuesne, were at this point reaching an area of maximum tension. It is curious to reflect that the outer symptom of this internal disruptive stress was, in the case of nearly every major component of the events to come, a psychological state of either satisfied achievement, or contented decision, or calm resignation. It is as though each of the major operatives were suffering from a universe-wide sense of false tranquility. On Ray-See-Nee, the new government felt its problems were behind it and only a period of solid, rewarding rebuilding lay ahead. (Although Kay-Lee Barlo had taken certain prudent precautions against this hope being illusory — as we shall see.) The Chlorans, proud and scornful in their absolute supremacy, had no hint that Seaton or anyone else was making or even proposed to make any effective moves against them. The Fenachrone, such few weary survivors as remained of them, had given themselves over to — not despair, no; but a proud acceptance of the fact that they were doomed.
There was in fact no tranquility in store for any of them! But they had not yet found that out.
Meanwhile the Jelmi, for example were just beginning to feel the first itch of new challenges. In their big new space rover, the Mallidaxian, Savant Tammon was as nearly perfectly happy as it is possible for a human or humanoid to be. He had made the greatest breakthrough of his career; perhaps the greatest breakthrough of all history. Exploring its many ramifications and determining its many as yet unsuspected possibilities would keep him busy for the rest of his life. Wherefore he was working fourteen or fifteen hours every day and reveling in every minute of it. He hummed happily to himself; occasionally he burst into song in a voice that was decidedly not of grand-operatic quality.
He had enlarged his private laboratory by tearing out four storerooms adjoining it; and the whole immense room was stacked to the ceiling with new apparatus and equipment. He was standing on a narrow catwalk, rubbing his bristly chin with the back of his hand as he wondered where he could put another two-ton tool, when Mergon and Luloy came swinging in; hand in hand as usual. Vastly different from Tammon, Mergon was not at all happy about the status quo.
“Listen, Tamm!” he burst out. “I’ve been yapping at you for a week and a half for a decision and your time is up as of right now. If you don’t pull your head out of the fourth dimension and make it right now I’ll do it myself and to hell with you and your authority as Captain-Commander.”
“Huh? What? Time? Decision? What decision?” It was plain that the old savant had no idea at all of what his first assistant was so wrought up about.
“You set course for Mallidax and said we were going back to Mallidax. That’s sheer idiocy and you know it. Of all places in the charted universe we should not go to, Mallidax is top and prime. We’re too close for comfort already. Even though Klazmon must have lost us back there in Sol’s system, he certainly picked us up again long ago and he’d give both wings and all his teeth for half the stuff you have here,” and Mergon waved both arms indicatively around the jam-packed room.
“Oh?” Tammon gazed owlishly at the pair. “There was some talk… but why should I care where we go? This is the merest trifle, Mergon. Do not bother me with trivia any more,” and Tammon cut communications with them as definitely as though he had thrown a switch.
Mergon shrugged his shoulders and Luloy giggled. “You’re it, boy. That’s what you get for sticking your neck out. All hail our new Captain-Commander!”
“Well, somebody had to. All our necks would have been in slings in another week. So pass the word, will you, and I’ll skip up to the control room and change course.”
Luloy spread the word; which was received with acclaim. Practically everybody aboard who was anybody agreed with Sennlloy when she said, “It’s high time somebody took over and Merg’s undoubtedly the best man for the job. Tammy’s a nice old dear, but ever since he got bitten by that fourth dimension germ he hasn’t known what month it is or which way is up or within forty million parsecs of where he it in space.”
“You see, Merg?” Luloy crowed, when it became evident that the shift in command was heartily approved. “I wouldn’t even dream of ever saying ‘I told you so’, but I said at the first meeting that you should be Captain commander, and now everybody thinks so, almost.”
“Yeah, almost,” he agreed; not at all enthusiastically. “Everybody except the half-wits. Pass the buck. Let George do it. Nobody with a brain firing on three barrels wants the job.”
“Why, that isn’t so, Merg. You know it isn’t!” she protested, indignantly.
“Well, I don’t want it,” he broke in, “but since Tamm wished it onto me I’ll take a crack at it.”
The Mallidaxian, swinging wide and braking down, hard, skirted the outermost edge of the Realm; the edge farthest away from Llurdiax. Mergon did not approach or signal to any planet of the Jelmi. Instead, he picked out an uninhabited Tellus-type planet four solar systems away from the Border and landed on it. And there, under cover of the superdreadnaught’s mighty defensive screens and with Captain-Commander Mergon tensely, on watch, the engineers and scientists disembarked, set up their high-order projectors, and went furiously to work building an enormous and enormously powerful dome.