The Skylark of Valeron

by E. E. Smith

The Osnomian prince was the first to disembark, appearing unarmed; for the first time in his warlike life he had of his own volition laid aside his every weapon.

"Glad to see you, Dick," he said simply, but seizing Seaton's hand in both his own, with a pressure that said far more than his words. "We thought they got you, but you're bigger and better than ever—the worse jams you get into, the stronger you come out."

Seaton shook the hands enthusiastically. "Yeah, 'lucky' is my middle name—I could fall into a vat of glue and climb out covered with talcum powder and smelling like a bouquet of violets. But you've advanced more than I have," glancing significantly at the other's waist, bare now of its wonted assortment of lethal weapons. "You're going good, old son—we're all behind you!"

He turned and greeted the other new-comers in cordial and appropriate fashion, then all went into the control room.

During the long flight from Valeron to the First Galaxy no one paid any attention to course or velocity—a handful of cells in the Brain piloted the Skylark better than any human intelligence could have done it. Each Norlaminian scientist studied rapturously new vistas of his specialty: Orlon the charted Galaxies of the First Universe, Rovol the minutely small particles and waves of the sixth order, Astron the illimitable energies of cosmic radiation, and so on.

Seaton spent day after day with the Brain, computing, calculating, thinking with a clarity and a cogency hitherto impossible, all to one end. What should he do, what could he do, with those confounded Intellectuals? Crane, Fodan, and Drasnik spent their time in planning the perfect government—planetary, systemic, galactic, universal—for all intelligent races, wherever situated.

Sacner Carfon studied quietly but profoundly with Caslor of Mechanism, adapting many of the new concepts to the needs of his aqueous planet. Dunark and Urvan, their fiery spirits now subdued and strangely awed, devoted themselves as sedulously to the arts and industries of peace as they formerly had to those of war.

Time thus passed quickly, so quickly that, almost before the travelers were aware, the vast planetoid slowed down abruptly to feel her cautious way among the crowded stars of our Galaxy. Though a mere crawl in comparison with her inconceivable intergalactic speed, her present pace was such that the stars sped past in flaming lines of light. Past the double sun, one luminary of which had been the planet of the Fenachrone, she flew; past the Central System; past the Dark Mass, whose awful attraction scarcely affected her cosmic-energy drive—hurtling toward Earth and toward Earth's now hated master, DuQuesne.

DuQuesne had perceived the planetoid long since, and his robot-manned ships rushed out into space to do battle with Seaton's new and peculiar craft. But of battle there was none; Seaton was in no mood to trifle. Far below the level of DuQuesne's screens, the cosmic energies directed by the Brain drove unopposed upon the power bars of the space fleet of Steel and that entire fleet exploded in one space-filling flash of blinding brilliance. Then the Skylark, approaching the defensive screens, halted.

"I know that you're watching me, DuQuesne, and I know what you're thinking about, but you can't do it." Seaton, at the Brain's control, spoke aloud. "You realize, don't you, that if you clamp on a zone of force it'll throw the Earth out of its orbit?"