The Galaxy Primes by E. E. Smith (books for men to read txt) 📖

volatilized it with an atomic missile."

"We did not do it," the dictator declared. "It was the war-mongering capitalists."

"You brainless, mindless, contemptible idiot," Garlock sneered. "Are even you actually stupid enough to try to lie with your mind? To minds linked to your own and to mine?"

"We did do it, then, but it was only a flying saucer."

"Just as this ship was, to you, only a flying saucer, I suppose. So here's something else for you to think about, Brother Sovig, with whatever power your alleged brain is able to generate. When you shot down that sensor, the starship did not retaliate, but went on without taking any notice of you. When you tried to shoot us down, we took some slight action, but did not kill anyone and are now discussing the situation. Listen carefully now, and remember—it is very possible that the next craft you attack in such utterly idiotic fashion will, without any more warning than you gave, blow this whole planet into a ball of incandescent gas."

"Can that actually be done?" the scientist asked. For the first time, he became really interested in the proceedings.

"Very easily, Doctor Cheswick," Garlock replied. "We could do it ourselves with scarcely any effort and at very small cost. You are familiar, I suppose, with the phenomenon of ball lightning?"

"Somewhat. Its mechanism has never been elucidated in any very satisfactory mathematics."

"Well, we have at our disposal a field some...."

"Hold it, Clee," James warned. "Do you want to put out that kind of stuff around here?"

"Um ... m ... m. What do you think?"

James studied Cheswick's mind. "Better than I thought," he decided. "He has made two really worthwhile intuitions—a genius type. He's been working on what amounts almost to the Coupler Theory for ten years. He's almost got it, but you know intuitions of that caliber can't be scheduled. He might get it tomorrow—or never. I'd say push him over the hump."

"Okay with me. We'll take a vote—one blackball kills it. Brownie? Just the link, of course. A few hints, perhaps, at application, but no technological data."

"I say give it to him. He's earned it. Besides, he isn't young and may die before he gets it, and that would lose them two or three hundred years."

"Belle?"

"In favor. Shall I drop the linkage? No," she answered her own question. "No other minds here will have any idea of what it means, and it may do some of them a bit of good to see one of their own minds firing on more than one barrel."

"Thank you, Galaxians." The scientist's mind had been quivering with eagerness. "I am inexpressibly glad that you have found me worthy of so much help."

Garlock entered Cheswick's mind. First he impressed, indelibly, six symbols and their meanings. Second, a long and intricate equation; which the scientist studied avidly.

During the ensuing pause, Garlock cut the President and Chief of Staff out of the linkage. "We have just given Cheswick a basic formula. In a couple of hundred years it will give you full telepathy, and then you will begin really to go up. There's nothing secret about it—in fact, I'd advise full publication—but even so it might be a smart idea to give him both protection and good working conditions. Brains like his are apt to be centuries apart on any world."

"But this is ... it could be ... it must be!" Cheswick exclaimed. "I never would have formulated that! It isn't quite implicit, of course, but from this there derives the existence of, and the necessity for, electrogravitics! An entirely new field of reality and experiment in science!"

"There does indeed," Garlock admitted, "and it is far indeed from being implicit. You leaped a tremendous gap. And yes, the resultant is more humanistic than technological."

Belle's ear-splitting whistle resounded throughout the Main. "How do you like them tid-bits, Clee?" she asked. "Two hundred years in seventy-eight seconds? You folks will have telepathy by the time your present crop of babies grows up. Clee, aren't you sorry you got mad and blew your top and wanted to pick up your marbles and go home? Three such intuitions in one man's lifetime beats par, even for the genius course."

"It sure does," Garlock admitted, ruefully. "I should have studied these minds—particularly his—before jumping at conclusions."

"May I say a few words?" the president asked.

"You may indeed, sir. I was hoping you would."

"We have been discouraged; faced with an insoluble problem. Sovig and Lingonor, knowing that their own lives were forfeit anyway, were perfectly willing to destroy all the life on this world to make us yield. Now, however, with the insight and the encouragement you Galaxians have given us, the situation has changed. Reduced to ordinary high explosives, they cannot conquer us...."

"Especially without an airforce," Lola put in. "I, personally, will see to it that every bomber and fighter plane they now have goes to the third moon. It will be your responsibility to see to it that they do not rebuild."

"Thank you, Miss Montandon. We will see to it. As for our internal difficulties—I think, under certain conditions, they can be handled. Our lawless element," he glanced at the gangster, "can be made impotent. The corrupt practices of both capital and labor can be stopped. We have laws," here he looked at the members of Congress and the judge, "which can be enforced. The conditions I mentioned would be difficult at the moment, since so few of us are here and it is manifest that few if any of our people will believe that such people as you Galaxians really exist. Would it be possible for you, Miss Montandon, to spend a few days—or whatever time you can spare—in showing our Congress, and as many other groups as possible, what humanity may hope to become?"

"Of course, sir. I was planning on it."

"I'm afraid that is impossible," the Chief of Staff said.

"Why, General Cardeen?" Lola asked.

"Because you'd be shot," Cardeen said, bluntly. "We have a very good Secret Service, it is true, and we would give you every protection possible; but such an all-out effort as would be made to assassinate you would almost certainly succeed."

"Shot?" Garlock asked in surprise. "What with? You haven't anything that could even begin to crack an Operator's Shield."

"With this, sir." Cardeen held out his automatic pistol for inspection.

"Oh, I hadn't studied it ... a pellet-projector...."

"Pellet! Do you call a four-seventy-five slug a pellet?"

"Not much of that, really ... it shoots eight times—shoot all eight of them at her. None of them will touch her."

"What? I will not! One of those slugs will go through three women like her, front to back in line."

"I will, then." The pistol leaped into Garlock's hand. "Hold up one hand, Brownie, and catch 'em. Don't let 'em splash—no deformation, so he can recognize his own pellets."

Holding the unfamiliar weapon in a clumsy, highly unorthodox grip—something like a schoolgirl's first attempt—Garlock glanced once at Lola's upraised palm and eight shots roared out as fast as the gases of explosion could operate the mechanism. The pistol's barrel remained rigidly motionless under all the stress of ultra-rapid fire. Lola's slim, deeply-tanned arm did not even quiver under the impact of that storm of heavy bullets against her apparently unsupported hand. No one saw those bullets strike that gently-curved right palm, but everyone saw them drop into her cupped left hand, like drops of water dripping rapidly from the end of an icicle into a bowl.

"Here are your pellets, General Cardeen." Lola handed them to him with a smile.

"Holy—Jumping—Snakes!" the general said, and:

"Wotta torpedo!" came the gangster's envious thought.

"You see, I am perfectly safe from being 'shot,' as you call it," Lola said. "So I'll come down and work with you. You might have your news services put out a bulletin, though. I never have killed anyone, and am not going to here, but anyone who tries to shoot me or bomb me or anything will lose both hands at the wrists just before he fires. That would keep them from killing anyone standing near me, don't you think?"

"I should think it would," General Cordeen thought, and a pall of awe covered the linked minds. The implications of the naively frank remark just uttered by this apparently inoffensive and defenseless young woman were simply too overwhelming to be discussed.

"Anything else on the agenda, Clee?" Lola asked.

There was not, and the starship's guests were returned, each to his own home place.

And not one of them, it may be said, was exactly the same as he had been.

The deepest Gunther block was at last penetrated and Belle became conscious of a heretofore unknown mental alignment with the ship.

CHAPTER 4

"I think I'll come along with you and bodyguard you, Lola," Belle said, the following morning after breakfast. "Clee's going to be seven thousand miles deep in mathematics and Jim's doing his stuff at the observatory, and I can't help either of 'em at the moment. You'd do a better job, wouldn't you, if you could concentrate on it?"

"Of course. Thanks, Belle. But remember, it's already been announced—no death. Just hands. I can't really believe that I'll be attacked, but they seem pretty sure of it."

"I'd like to separate anyone like that from his head instead of his hands, but as it is published so it will be performed."

"How about wearing some kind of half-way-comfortable shoes instead of those slippers?" Garlock asked. "That could turn out to be a long, tough brawl, and your dogs'll be begging for mercy before you get back here."

"Uh-uh. Very comfortable and a perfect fit. Besides, if I have to suffer just a little bit for good appearance's sake in a matter of intergalactic amity...."

"A matter of showing off, you mean."

"Why, Clee!" Belle widened her eyes at him. "How you talk! But they're ready, Lola—let's go."

The two girls disappeared from the Main, to appear on the speakers' stand in front of the Capitol Building. President Benton was there, with his cabinet and certain other personages. General Cordeen and his staff. And many others.

"Oh, Miss Bellamy, too? I'm very glad you are here," Benton said, as he shook hands cordially with both.

"Thank you. I came along as bodyguard. May I meet your Secret Service Chief, please?"

"Why, of course. Miss Bellamy, may I present Mr. Avengord?"

"You have the hospital room ready?... Where is it, please?"

"Back of us, in the wing...."

"Just think of it, please, and I will follow your thought.... Ah, yes, there it is. I hope it will not be used. You agree with General Cordeen that there will be one or more attempts at assassination?"

"I'm very much afraid so. This town is literally riddled with enemy agents, and of course we don't know all of them—especially the best ones. They know that if these meetings go through, they're sunk; so they're desperate. We've got this whole area covered like dew—we've arrested sixteen suspects already this morning—but all the advantage is theirs," Avengord finished glumly.

"Not all of it, sir," Belle smiled at him cheerfully. "You have me, and I am a Prime Operator. That is, a wielder of power of no small ability. Oh, you are right. There is an attempt now being prepared."

While Belle had been greeting and conversing, she had also been scanning. Her range, her sensitivity, and her power were immensely greater than Lola's; were probably equal to Garlock's own. She scanned by miles against the scant yards covered by the Secret Service.

"Where?"

"Give me your thought." The Secret Service man did not know what she meant—telepathy was of course new to him—so she seized his attention and directed it to a certain window in a building a couple of miles away on a hill.

"But they couldn't, from there!"

"But they can. They have a quite efficient engine of destruction—a 'rifle' is their thought. Large, and long, with a very good telescope on it—with crosshairs. If I scan their minds more precisely you may know the weapon.... Ah, they think of it as a 'Buford Mark Forty Anti-Aircraft Rifle'."

"A Buford! My God, they can hit any button on her clothes—get her away, quick!" He tried to jump, but could not move.

"As you were," she directed. "There was another Buford there, and another over there." She guided his thought. "Two men to each Buford. There are now six handless men in your hospital room. If you will send men to those three places you will find the Bufords and the hands. Your surgeon will have no difficulty in matching the hands to the men. If any seek to remove either Bufords or hands before your men get there, I will de-hand them, also."

To say that the Secret Service man was flabbergasted is to put it very mildly indeed. Cordeen had told him, with much pounding on his desk and in searing, air-blueing language, what to expect-or, rather, to expect anything, no matter what and