He was second. Again. And such an insignificantly poor second as to he completely out of the competition.
Something would have to be done about this intolerable situation… and finding out what could be done about it would take precedence over everything else until he did find out.
He scowled in thought. That worldlet of a spaceship changed everything — radically. He’d been going to let eager-beaver Seaton grab the ball and run with it while he, DuQuesne, went on about his own business. But now could he take the risk? Ten to one — or a hundred to one? — he couldn’t touch that planetoid’s safety screens with anything he had. But it was worth his while to try…
Energizing the lightest possible fifth- and sixth-order webs, he reached out with his utmost delicacy of touch to feel out the huge globe’s equipment; to find out exactly what it had.
He found out exactly nothing; and in zero time. At the first, almost imperceptible touch of DuQuesne’s web the mighty planetoid’s every defense flared instantaneously into being.
DuQuesne cut his webbing, the defenses vanished, and Seaton said, “No peeking, DuQuesne. Come inside and you can look around all you please, but from outside it can’t be done.”
“I see it can’t. How do I get inside?”
“One of your shuttles or small boats. Go neutral as soon as you clear your outer skin and I’ll bring you in.”
“I’ll do that,” — and as DuQuesne in one of his vessel’s lifeboats traversed the long series of locks through the worldlet’s tremendously thick shell he kept on wrestling with his problem.
No, the idea of letting Seaton be the Big Solo Hero was out like the well-known light.
Seaton and his whole party would have to die. And the sooner the better.
He’d known it all along, really; his thinking had slipped, back there, for sure. With that fireball of a ship — flying base, rather — by the time Seaton got the job done he would be so big that nothing could ever cut him down to size. For that matter, was there anything that could be done about Seaton and his planetoid, even at the size they already were?
There was no vulnerability apparent… on the outside, at least. But there had to be something; some chink or opening; all he had to do was think of it — like the time he and “Baby Doll” Loring had taken over a fully-manned superdreadnought of the Fenachrone.
The smart thing to do, the best thing for Marc C. DuQuesne, would be to join Seaton and work hand in glove with him — for a while. Until he had a bigger, more powerful worldlet than Seaton did and knew more than all the Skylarkers put together. Then blow the Skylark of Valeron and everyone and everything in it into impalpable dust and go on about his own business; letting Civilization worry about itself.
To get away with that, he might have to give his word to act as one of the party, as before.
He never had broken his word… so he wouldn’t give it, this time, unless he had to… but if he had to? If it came to a choice — breaking his word or being Emperor Marc the First of a galaxy, founder of a dynasty the like of which no civilization had ever seen before?
Whatever happened, come hell or high water, Seaton and his crew must and would die.
He, DuQuesne, must and would come out on top!
As soon as DuQuesne’s lifeboat was inside the enormous hollow globe that was the Skylark of Valeron, Seaton brought it to a gentle landing in a dock behind his own home and walked out to the dock with a thought-helmet on his head and its mate in his hand.
DuQuesne opened his lifeboat’s locks and Seaton joined him in the tiny craft’s main compartment.
Face to face, neither man spoke in greeting or offered to shake hands; both knew that there was nothing of friendship between them or ever would be. Nor did DuQuesne wonder why Seaton was meeting him thus: outside and alone. He knew exactly what the women, especially Margaret, thought of him; but such trifles had no effect whatever upon the essence of Marc C. DuQuesne.
Seaton handed DuQuesne the spare headset. DuQuesne put it on and Seaton said in thought, “This, you’ll notice, is no ordinary mechanical educator; not by seven thousand rows of Christmas trees. I suppose you know you’re in the Skylark of Valeron. Study it, and take your time. I’ll give you her prints before you go — if we’re going to have to be allies again you ought to have something better than your Capital D to work with.”
Seaton thought that this surprise might make DuQuesne’s guard slip for an instant, but it didn’t. DuQuesne studied the worldlet intensively for over an hour, then took off his headset and said:
“Nice job, Seaton. Beautiful; especially that tank-chart of the First Universe and that super-computer brain — some parts of which, I see, this headset enables me to operate.
The rest of it, I suppose, is keyed to and in sync with your own mind? No others need apply?”
“That’s right. So, with the prints, you’ll have everything you need, I think. But before you go into detail, I may know a thing that you don’t and that many have a lot of bearing, one place or another. Have you ever heard of any way of getting into or through the fourth dimension except by rotation?”
“No. Not even in theory. How sure are you that there is or can be any other way of doing it?”
“Positive. One that not even the Norlaminians know anything about,” and Seaton gave DuQuesne the full picture and the full story and all the side-bands of thought of everything that had happened to Madlyn Mannis and Charles van der Gleiss.
At the sight of Mergon and Luloy — two of the three Jelmi whom the monstrous alien Klazmon had been comparing with the Fenachrone and with the chlorine-breathing amoeboid Chlorans and with DuQuesne himself — it took every iota of DuQuesne’s iron control to make no sign of the astounding burst of interest he felt; for in one blinding flash of revealment his entire course of action became pellucidly clear. He knew exactly where and what Galaxy DW-427-LU was. He knew how to get Seaton headed toward that galaxy. He knew how to kill Seaton and all his crew and take over the Skylark of Valeron. And, best of all, he knew how to cover his tracks!
Completely unsuspicious of any of these thoughts, Seaton went on, “Now we’re ready, I think, for the fine details of what you found out.”
After giving a precisely detailed report that lasted for twenty minutes, DuQuesne said, “Now as to location. I have a cylindrical chart — a plug-chart, you might call it, of all the galaxies lying close to the line between the point in space where your stasis-capsule whiffed out and the First Galaxy. Those four reels there.” He pointed. “But I have no idea whatever as to where that plug lies in the universe — its universal coordinates. But since you know where you are and I know how I got here, it can be computed — in time.”
“In practically nothing flat,” Seaton said. “As fast as you can run your tapes through your scanner there.” Seaton put his headset back on; DuQuesne followed suit. “They don’t even have to be in order. When the end of the last tape clears the scanner your plug will be in our tank.”
And it was: a long, narrow cylinder of yellowish-green haze.
“Nice; very nice indeed.” DuQuesne paid tribute to performance. “I started my trip right there.” He marked the spot with a tiny purple light. It was a weird sensation, this; working, with that gigantic brain, in that super-gigantic tank-chart, with only a headset and at a distance of miles!
“With my artificial gravity set to exact universal north as straight up,” DuQuesne went on, “I moved along a course as close as possible to the axis of that cylinder to this point here.” The purple point extended itself into a long line of purple light and stopped.