24. DUQUESNE AND SLEEMET

EN route to the galaxy in which DuQuesne’s aliens supposedly lived, Dorothy said, “Say Dick. I forgot to ask you something. What did you ever find out about that thought business of Kay-Lee’s?”

“Huh?” Seaton was surprised. “What was there to find out? How are you going to 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 master-control 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 that 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 full-coverage 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?”