“We will cooperate,” Sleemet said in less than one minute; whereupon DuQuesne told him in broad terms what he had in mind.
And for many days thereafter the two, so unlike physically but so similar in so many respects mentally, devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the finer and ever finer refine-ment of the placing and tuning of mechanisms and of the training of already hard-trained personnel.
But DuQuesne knew that, given the slightest opportunity, the Fenachrone would take high delight in killing him and taking the DQ. Wherefore he did not at any time trust any one of them as far as he could spit.
Moreover, DuQuesne was not quite as sure of his own victory as he had given the Fenachrone to understand. DuQuesne was not easy in his mind about Galaxy DW-427-LU. He hadn’t been, not since some superpowered enemy in that galaxy had attacked Seaton’s Skylark of Valeron without warning and had burned her down to a core before she could get out of range. And she hadn’t been able to fight back. That one blast back at them couldn’t have done any damage.
It had been that uneasiness that had been responsible for the DQ’s terrific armament and for DuQuesne’s wanting the Fenachrone for a crew. Wherefore, as soon as the Fenachrone were settled in their new quarters and before they had recovered enough of their normal combativeness to become completely unmanageable, DuQuesne got “on the com” with Sleemet.
“… I don’t give a damn what happens to Earth or to Norlamin. I’m no longer interested in either,” he said in part. “But I don’t want it to happen to me and you don’t want it to happen to you. You agree with me, I’m sure, that a good strategist does not leave an enemy behind him without knowing, at very least, who that enemy is and what he can do.”
“That is one of the basics, yes.”
“All right. Somebody in this galaxy here has more muscle than I like.” DuQuesne pointed out Galaxy DW-427-LU in his tank and told Sleemet what had happened to the Skylark of Valeron, then went on, “On theoretical grounds, the degree of synchronization could make all the difference.” He had reached by theory the same point that Seaton had arrived at by experience. “Hence, the greater the number of operators — of equal skill, of course — the tighter the output. The efficiency will vary directly as the cube of the number of operators.”
“I see.” Sleemet did see, and for the first time became really interested. “That will be to our advantage as well as yours. You will have to teach us much.”
“I’ll teach you everything you have to know. Nothing else.”
“That is assumed… But I see no possibility of assurance that you will keep your bargain… or will you go mind to mind that you will release us and build us a ship after this one expedition as your crew?”
“Yes. Without reservation.”
“In that case we will cooperate fully.”
And they did — and so it was that the DQ became the most fantastically armed and powered and defended fortress that had ever moved its own mass through space.
As the DQ approached Galaxy DW-427-LU, with everything she had either wide open or on the trips, DuQuesne braked her down and swung into what he called “the curve of fastest getaway” — and as he did so, in the instant, the mighty vessel’s every defense went blinding-white.
And in that same instant two thousand nine hundred seventy-seven Fenachrone, males and females but superlatively expert technicians all, pressed activating switches and took command, each of a tightly clustered battery of micrometrically synchronized generators.
And one black-browed, hard-eyed Tellurian, sat with his head buried in the DQ’s master-control helmet.
While he had not expected to find any significant fraction of what he actually found, he was not too appalled to go viciously and pin-point-accurately to work. Working through the fourth dimension, with the transfinite speed of thought, he hurled bomb after bomb after multi-billion kiloton superatomic bomb: and the target world of each one of those bombs became a sun.
And the DQ got away. She was by no means intact; but, since her skin had been very much thicker than the Valeron’s to start with, there was still some of it left when she got out of range.
Thereupon DuQuesne put on the headset of the DQ’s Brain and began to think. He had tried direct attack on the galaxy of Chlorans; it had failed. His next step, obviously, was to decide what his next step should be.
The flesh-and-blood brain that was thinking into the energy-and-metal Brain of the DQ was no whit less logical, no iota less unsentimental in its judgments than the great computer itself. Man-brain and machine-brain together considered the evidence.
Datum: The DQ was not up to handling Galaxy DW-427-LU. Datum: Not even the added muscle conferred by the willing cooperation of the Fenachrone was enough to make it so. Datum: No discoverable increase of its armaments or its crew would give it even a fighting chance against the energies that had just come so close to destroying it.
Wherefore—
Finally, an hour later, DuQuesne raised the microphone of a repeating sixth-order broadcasting transmitter to his lips and said — dispassionately, unemotionally and with no more expression than if he had been ordering up his lunch: “DuQuesne calling Seaton reply as before stop.”
26. THE TALENT
Seaton had thought that the visit to the Jelmi would be a short one, just long enough to get the “gizmo,” but his own breakthrough put an end to such thinking. It took days to reduce the theory to practice and weeks to build into the Skylark of Valeron the gigantic installations Seaton wanted.
The very enormity of the breakthrough changed all plans, dislocated all schedules. To the Jelmi the fourth dimensional translator had been a phenomenon — a weapon — in itself.
It had extremely valuable applications, and each of them offered a long career of study.
That was enough for them. But to Seaton and Crane and the Norlaminians it was something more than that; it was an effect, a new and unexplored area of knowledge, to be fitted somehow into the known and computed structure of sixth-order perhaps of other-order-effects; and to be used and considered in conjunction with them. It was a theorist’s dream — and an engineer’s nightmare.
Meanwhile, as the male Skylarkers, their Jelm colleagues and the Norlaminians were busily getting done the impossible task of exploring a whole new field of knowledge and transmuting it into actual structures and gigantic machines, the women of the party were exploring the life of an alien race… and having the time of their respective lives doing it. Sitar, of course, was in her element. Bare skin and jewelry she liked. She liked to look at and to feel her mink coat, she said, but she hated to have to wear it; and as for that horrible, scratchy underwear — augh! Hence, now that the personal gravity controls were personal heaters as well, she was really enjoying herself.
Dorothy and Margaret, of course, took to it as though to the manner born. In three days neither of them was any more conscious of nudity than was Sennlloy herself. Even Lotus got used to it. While she could never become an enthusiastic nudist, she said, she did stop blushing. In fact, she almost stopped feeling like blushing.
“Dick,” Dorothy said one evening, “I’ve finally made contact with them on music.”
“Music!” he snorted. “Huh! It sounds to me like a gaggle of tomcats yowling on a back fence.”
She laughed. “It’s unworldly, of course, but a lot of it is beautiful, in a weird sort of way, and they have some magnificent techniques. I’ve been trying everything on them, you know, and they’ve just been sitting on their hands. I’ll give you three guesses as to what I finally hit them with.”