Second, he brought over a doctor, complete with kit and instruments and supplies; and third, the Fenachrone equivalent of a registered nurse.
“You, doctor!” DuQuesne snapped, in Fenachronian. “I don’t know whether this spineless weakling is too far gone to save or not. Or whether he is worth saving or not.
But since he was actually in charge of your expedition-to-preserve-the-race I will listen to what he has to say instead of blasting him out of hand. So give him a shot of the strongest stuff you have — or is he in greater need of food than of stimulant?”
DuQuesne did not know whether the doctor would cooperate with a human being or not. But he did — whether from lack of spirit of his own or from desire to save his chief, DuQuesne did not care enough to ask.
“Both,” the doctor said, “but nourishment first, by all means. Intravenous, nurse, please,” and doctor and nurse went to work with the skill and precision of their highly trained crafts.
And, somewhat to DuQuesne’s surprise, Sleemet began immediately to rally; and in three-quarters of an hour he had regained full consciousness.
“You spineless worm!” DuQuesne shot at the erstwhile invalid, in true Fenachrone tone and spirit. “You gutless wonder! You pusillanimous weakling, you sniveling coward! Is it the act of a noble of the Fenachrone to give up, to yield supinely, to surrender ignominiously to a fate however malign while a spark of life endures?”
Sleemet was scarcely stirred by this vicious castigation. He raised dull eyes-eyes shockingly lifeless to anyone who had ever seen the ruby-lighted, flame-shot wells of vibrant force that normal Fenachrone eyes were — and said lifelessly, “There is a point, the certainty of death, at which struggle becomes negative instead of positive. It merely prolongs the agony. Having passed that point, I die.”
“There is no such point, idiot, while life lasts! Do I look like Klazmon of Llurdiax?”
“No, but death is no less certain at your hands than at his.”
“Why should it be, stupid?” and DuQuesne’s sneer was extra-high-voltage stuff, even for Doctor Marc C. DuQuesne.
Now was the crucial moment. IF he could take all those Fenachrone over, and IF he could control them after they got back to normal, what a crew they would make! He stared contemptuously at the ex-admiral and went on:
“Whether or not you and your four thousand die in the near future is up to you. While I do not have to have a crew, I can use one efficiently for a few weeks. If you choose to work with me I will, at the end of that time, give you a duplicate of your original spaceship and will see to it that you are allowed to resume your journey wherever you wish.”
“Sir, the Fenachrone do not…” the doctor began stiffly.
“Shut up, you poor, dumb clown!” DuQuesne snapped.
“Haven’t you learned anything? That instead of being the strongest race in space you are one of the weakest? You have one choice merely — cooperate or die. And that is not yours, but Sleemet’s. Sleemet?”
“But how do I know that if…”
“If you have any part of a brain, fool, use it! What matters it to me whether Fenachrone live or die? I’m not asking you anything; I’m telling you under what conditions I will save your lives. If you want to argue the matter I’ll put you three — and the bed — back where you were and be on my way. Which do you prefer?”
Sleemet had learned something. He had been beaten down flat enough so that he could learn something — and he realized that he had much to learn from any race who could do what his rescuer had just done.
“We will work with you,” Sleemet said. “You will, I trust, instruct us concerning how you liberated us three and propose to liberate the others?”
“I can’t. It was fourth-dimensional translation.” DuQuesne lied blandly. “Did you ever try to explain the color ‘blue’ to a man born blind? No scientist of your race will be able to understand either the theory or the mechanics of fourth dimensional translation for something like eleven hundred thousand of your years.”
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.