Sexton strode across the room and uncovered a machine that resembled somewhat a small, unpretentious desk calculator. He picked up a helmet and thought into it briefly; then stared appalled at the figure that appeared on a tape.
( Dorothy Sexton was highly averse to having the appearance of her living room ruined by office equipment. Sexton, however, was living and working under such high tension that he had to have almost instant access to the Valeron’s Brain, at any time of the day or night or wherever he might be. Hence this compromise — inconspicuous machines, each direct-connected to the cubic mile of ultra-miniaturization that was the Brain. E. E. S.)
“My-aunt’s-cat’s-kitten’s-pants-buttons,” he said, slowly. “It’d’ve been smarter, maybe, to’ve put ’em in orbit around a planetless sun… And I don’t suppose there’s a Chinaman’s chance of catching ’em again that same way.”
“No. Those minds are competent,” agreed the Norlaminian. “Only one point is clear. You must again activate the Skylark of Valeron and again wear its sixth-order controller, since we know of no other entity who either — can wear it or should. We eight are here to confer and, on the basis of the few data now available, to plan.”
Sexton scowled in concentration for two long minutes.
It was a measure of the strain that had been working on him that it took that long. As he had said, he was no God, and didn’t want to be. He had not gone looking for either conquest or glory. One thing at a time… but that “one thing” had successively led him across a galaxy, into another dimension, through many a hard and desperate fight against some of the most keen-honed killers of a universe.
His gray eyes hardened. Of all those killers, it was Blackie DuQuesne who posed the greatest threat — to civilization, to Sexton himself, and above all to his wife, Dorothy.
DuQuesne at large was deadly.
“All right,” he snapped at last. “If that’s all that’s in the wood, I suppose that’s the way it’ll have to be carved.”
The Norlaminian merely nodded. He, at least, had had no doubts of how Sexton would react to the challenge. Typically, once Sexton had decided speed became of the essence. “We’ll start moving now,” he barked. “The parameters give us up to a year — maybe — but from this minute we act as though DuQuesne and the Intellectuals are back in circulation right now. So if one of you — Rovol? — will put beams on Mart and Peg and project them over here, we’ll get right at it.”
And Dorothy, her face turning so white that a line of freckles stood boldly out across the bridge of her nose, picked the baby up and clasped him fiercely, protectively to her breast.
M. Reynolds (“Martin” or “Mart”) Crane was tall, slender, imperturbable; his black-haired, ivory-skinned wife Margaret was tall and whistle stacked — she and Dorothy were just about of a size and a shape. In a second or two their full working projections appeared, standing in the middle of the room facing the Sextons — projections so exactly true to life and so solid-seeming as to give no indication whatever that they were not composed of fabric and of flesh and bone and blood.
Sexton stood up and half-bowed to Margaret, but wasted no time in getting down to business. “Hi, Peg — Mart. He briefed you?”
“Up to the moment, yes,” Crane replied.
“You know, then, that some time in the indeterminate but not too distant future all hell is going to be out for noon. Any way I scan it, it looks to me as though, more or less shortly, we’re going to be spurlos versenkt-sunk without a trace.”
“You err, youth.” Drasnik, the First of Psychology of Norlamin, spoke quite sharply, for him. “Your thinking is loose, turbid, confused; inexcusably superficial; completely…”
“But you know what their top man said!” Seaton snapped. “The one they called ‘One’ — and he wasn’t kidding, either, believe me!”
“I do, youth. I know more than that, since they visited us long since. They were not exactly ‘kidding’ you, perhaps, but your several various interpretations of One’s actual words and actions were inconsistent with any and every aspect of the truth. Those words and actions were in all probability designed to elicit such responses and reactions as would enable him to analyze and classify your race. Having done so, the probability approaches unity that you will not again encounter him or any of his group.”
“My — God!” Dorothy, drawing a tremendously deep breath, put Dick the Small back down on the rug and left him to his own devices. “That makes sense… I was scared simply witless.”
“Maybe,” Seaton admitted, “as far as One and the rest of his original gang are concerned. But there’s still DuQuesne. And if Blackie DuQuesne, even as an immaterial pattern of pure sixth-order force, thinks that way about me I’m a Digger Indian.”
“Ah, yes; DuQuesne. One question, please, to clarify my thinking. Can you, do you think, even with the fullest use of all the resources of your Skylark of Valeron, release the intact mind from any body?”
“Of course I… oh, I see what you mean. Just a minute; I think probably I can find out from here.” He went over to his calculator-like instrument, put on a helmet, and stood motionless for a couple of minutes while the great brain of the machine made its computation. Then, wearing a sheepish grin:
“A flat bust. I not only couldn’t, I didn’t,” he reported. cheerfully. “So One not only did the business, but he was good enough to make me know that I was doing it. What an operator!” He sobered, thought intensely, then went on, “So they sucked us in. Played with us.”
“You are now beginning to think clearly, youth,” Drasnik said. “We come now, then, to lesser probabilities. DuQuesne’s mind, of itself, is a mind of power.”
“You can broadcast that to the all-attentive universe,” Seaton said. “Question: how much stuff has he got now? We know he’s got the fifth order down solid. Incarnate, he didn’t know any more than that. However, mind is a pattern of sixth-order force. Knowing what we went through to get the sixth, and that we haven’t got it all yet by seven thousand rows of Christmas trees, the first sub-question asks itself: Can a free mind analyze itself — completely enough to work out and to handle the entire order of force in which it lies?”
“We may assume I think, that One could have given DuQuesne full knowledge of the sixth if he felt like it. The second sub-question, then, is; did he? If those questions aren’t enough to start with I can think of plenty more.”
“They are enough, youth,” Fodan said. “You have pointed out the crux. We will now discuss the matter. Since this first phase lies largely in your province, Drasnik, you will now take over.”
The discussion mounted, and grew, and went on and on. Silently Dorothy slipped away, and the projection of force that was Margaret Crane followed her into the kitchen.
There was no need for Dorothy to prepare coffee and sandwiches for her husband, not by hand; one thought into a controller would have produced any desired amount of any desired comestibles. But she wanted something to do. Both girls knew from experience that a conference of this sort might go on for hours; and Dorothy knew that with food placed before him, Seaton would eat; without it, he would never notice the lack.
She did not, of course, prepare anything for the others.
They were not there. Their bodies were at varying distances — a few miles for Crane and his wife, an unthinkable number of parsecs for the Norlaminians and Sacner Carfon.
The distance between Earth and the Green System was so unthinkably vast that there was no point in trying to express it in numbers of miles, or even parsecs. The central green sun of the cluster that held Norlamin, Osnome and Dasor was visible from Earth, all right — in Earth’s hugest optical telescopes, as a tiny, 20th-magnitude point — but the light that reached Earth had been on its way for tens of thousand of years before Seaton’s ancestors had turned from hunting to agriculture, had taken off their crude skins and begun to build houses, cities, machines and, ultimately, spaceships.