 Chapter 11 of Masters of Space This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by R.J. Davis Masters of Space by Edward Elmer Smith, a.k.a. E.E. Dot Smith and Edward Evert Evans Translated by Robert Cicconetti, Stephen Blundell, and the online Distributed Proof Breeding Team Chapter 11 The Strat Spule Supply Line had been cut long since. Many Strat cargo carriers had been destroyed. The enemy would, of course, have a very heavy reserve of fuel on hand, but there was no way of knowing how large it was. How many warships it could supply, or how long it would last? Two facts were, however, unquestionable. First, the Strets were building a fleet that, in their minds, would be invisible. Second, they would attack our Dane as soon as that fleet could be made ready. The unanswerable question was, how long would that take? So we want to get every ship we have. How many? Five thousand, ten, fifteen. We want them converted to maximum possible power as soon as we possibly can. Sawtale said, and I want to get out there with my boys to handle things. You aren't going to. Neither you nor your boys are expendable. Particularly you. Yaw hard set. Hilton studied the situation for minutes. No. What we'll do is take your omen, Caddy. We'll reset the guide to drive into him everything you and the military masters ever knew about arms, armament, strategy, tactics, and so on. And we'll add everything I know of coordination, synthesis, and perception. That ought to make him at least a junior grade military genius. He can play that in spades. I wish he could do it to me. I can. If you'll take the full omen transformation, nothing else can stand the punishment. I know. No, I don't want to be a genius that badly. And we'll take the resultant Caddy and make nine duplicates of him. Each one will learn from and profit by the mistakes made by preceding numbers, and we'll assume command the instant his preceding number is killed. Oh, you expect in. Expect? No. I know it damn well and so do you. That's why we ardents will all stay aground. Why the Caddy's first job will be to make the heavy stuff in and around our Dane as heavy as it can be made. Why it'll all be on 24 hour alerts. Then they can put as many thousands of omen as you please to work at modernizing all the omen ships you want and doing anything else you say. Check? Sawtail thought for a couple of minutes. I've used details as all, but that can be ironed out as we go along. Both men worked them almost unremittingly for six solid days. At the end of which time both drew tremendous size of relief. They had done everything possible for them to do. The defensive arbor was now rolling at full speed towards its gigantic objecting. Then captain and director, in two omen ships with 50 men and a thousand omen, leafed the world's girdling ocean to the mining operation of the stress. There they found business strictly as usual. The strippers still stripped. The mining mechs still roared and snarled their inchwise ways along their geometrically perfect terraces. The little carriers still skittered visually between the various miners and the storage silos. The fact that there was enough concentrate on hand to last a world for a hundred years made no difference at all to these automatics. A crew of erector mechs was building new silos as fast as existing ones were being filled. Since the men now understood everything that was going on, it was a simple matter for them to stop the whole stress operation in its tracks. Then every man and every omen leafed to his assigned job. Three days later all the mechs went back to work. Now, however, they were working for the ardents. The miners instead of concentrate now emitted vastly larger streams of Navy standard pelican urinaxite. The carriers instead of one gallon cans carried five ton drums. The silos were immensely larger, 30 feet in diameter and towered 200 feet into the air. The silos were not, however, being used as yet. One of the two omen ships had been converted into a fuel tanker and its yawning holes were being filled first. The Orion went back to Ardain and an eight day wait began. For the first time in over seven months Hilton found time actually to low and he and Temple leveling on the beach or hiking in the mountains enjoyed themselves and each other to the full. All too soon, however, the heavily laden tanker appeared in the sky over Ardain. The Orion joined it and the two ships slipped into subspace for Earth. Three days out Hilton used his sense of perception to release the font control blocks that had been holding all the controls of the Perseus and Neutral. He informed her officers by releasing a public address tape that they were now free to return to Terra. Three days later, one day short assault, Sautel got five jet Admiral Gordon's office on the subspace radio. An officious underling tried to block him, of course. Shut up Perkins and listen, Sautel said brushfully. Tell Gordon I'm bringing in one hundred twenty thousand two hundred forty five metric tons of peloton urine excite. And if he isn't on his beam in sixty seconds, he'll never get a gram of it. The Admiral outraised almost to the point of a flock seat came in. Sautel, report yourself for court martial act. Keep still, Gordon. The captain's snap is your astonishment. Oh five jets obeyed. I have no longer Karen Navy. No longer subject to your orders. As a matter of cold facts, I am no longer human. For reasons which I will explain later to the full advisory board. Some of the personnel of Project Beta Orionis underwent transformation into a form of life able to live in an environment of radioactivity so intense as to kill any human being in ten seconds. Under certain conditions, we will supply free of charge, FOV, Terra or Luna all the urine excite the solar system can use. The conditions are these. And he gave them. Do you accept these conditions or not? I would vote to accept them, Captain. But that weight, one hundred twenty thousand metric tons, incredible. Are you sure of that figure? Definitely. And that is minimum. The error is plus, not minus. This crippling power shortage would really be over. For the first time since Saltel had known him, Gordon showed that he was not quite solid Navy brass. Hey, it's over. Definitely. For good. I not only agree, I'd raise you a monument. While I can't speak for the board, I'm sure they'll agree. So am I. In any event, your cooperation is all that's required for this first load. The chips that vanish from Saltel's shoulders. Where do you want it, Admiral? Ars Arstis or White Sands? White Sands, please. While there may be some delay in releasing it to industry, while they figure out how much they can tax it, Saltel asked sardonically, Well, if they don't tax it, it'll be the first time in history that isn't. Have you any objection to releasing all this to the press? None at all. The harder they hit it, and the wider they spread it, the better. Will you have this beam switched to astrogation, please? Of course. And thanks, Captain. I'll see you at White Sands. Then, as the now positively glowing Gordon faded away, Saltel turned to his own staff. Penway, Snowden, take over. Better double-check microtiming with Astro. Put us into a 24-hour orbit over White Sands and hold us there. We won't go down. Put the load down on remote wherever they want it. The arrival of the Ardvarian super-Greadnaught Orion and the UC-1, urinexite carrier number one, was one of the most sensational events on Earth had ever known. Air and spacecraft went clear out to emergency volume 90 to meet them. By the time the UC-1 was coming in on its remote-controlled landing spiral, the rest of small ships were so great that all the police forces available were in a leather trying to control it. This was exactly what Hilton had wanted. It made possible the completely unobserved launching of several dozen small craft from the Orion herself. One of these made a very high and very fast flight to Chicago. With all due formality and under the ages of a perfectly authentic registry number, it landed on O'Hare Field. Eleven deeply tanned young men emerged from it and made their way to a taxi stand where each engaged a separate vehicle. Sam Bryant stepped into his cab, gave the driver a number on Oakwood Avenue in Death Plains, and settled back to Scant. He was lucky. He would have gone anywhere she was, of course, but the way things were, he could give her a little warning to soften the shop. She had taken the baby out for an airing down River Road and was on her way back. By having the taxi kill ten minutes or so, he could arrive just after she did. Wherefore, he stopped the cab at a public communications booth and dialed his home. Mrs. Bryant is not at home, but she will return at fifteen-thirty. The instrument said crisply. Would you care to record a message for her? He punched the record button. This is Sam, dolly baby. I'm right behind you. Turn around, why don't you, and tell your other eleven star hopping husband hello. The taxi pulled up at the curb just as doors closed the front door, and Sam, after handing the driver a five-dollar bill, ran up the walk. He waited just outside the door, key and hand. While she lowered the stroller handle, took off her hand, and by long-established habit reached out to fit the communicator switch. At the first word, however, she stiffened rigidly, pro-solid. Smiling, he opened the door, walked in, and closed it behind him. Nothing short of a shotgun blast could have taken Doris Bryant's attention from that recorder then. That simply is not so, she told the instrument firmly, with both eyes resolutely shut. They made him stay on the perseus. He won't be in for at least three days. This is some Cretan's idea of a joke. Not this time, dolly honey, it's really me. Her eyes popped open as she whirled. Sam, she shrieked, and hurled herself at him with all the pent-up ardor and longing of 234 meticulously counted husbandless, loveless days. After an unknown length of time, Sam tipped her face up by the chin, nodded at the stroller, and said, How about introducing me to the little stranger? What a mother I turned out to be. That was the first thing I was going to rave about. The very first thing I saw you. Samuel J. IV. Seventy-six days old today, and so on. Eventually, however, the proud young mother watched the slightly apprehensive young father carry their firstborn upstairs. Where together they put him, still sound asleep, to bed in his crib. Then again they were in each other's arms. Sometime later she twisted around in the circle of his arm and tried to dig her fingers into the muscles of his back. She then attacked his biceps and, leaning backward, eyed him intently. You're you, I know, but you're different. No athlete or any laborer could ever possibly get the muscles you have all over to say nothing of a space officer on duty, and I know it isn't any kind of a disease. You've been acting all the time as though I were fragile, made out of glass or something, as though you were afraid of breaking me in two. So what is it, sweetheart? I've been trying to figure out an easy way of telling you, but there isn't any. I am different. I'm a hundred times as strong as any man ever was. Look. He upended a chair, took one heavy hardwood leg between finger and thumb, and made what looked like a gentle effort to bend it. The leg broke with a pistol-shot report, and tore asleep backward in surprise. So you're right. I am afraid not only of breaking you in two, but killing you. And if I break any of your ribs or arms or legs, I'll never forgive myself. So if I let myself go for a second, I don't think I will, but I might. Don't wait until you're really hurt to start screaming. Promise? I promise her eyes went wide. But tell me. He told her she was in turn surprised, amazed, apprehensive, frightened, and finally eager, as she became more and more eager right up to the end. You mean that we, that I'll stay just as I am for thousands of years, just as you are, or different if you like, if you really mean any of this getling you've been doing about being too big in the hips. I think you're exactly right, myself. You can rebuild yourself any way you please, or change your shape every hour on the hour. But you haven't accepted my invitation yet. Don't be silly. She went into his arms again and nibbled on his left ear. I'd go anywhere with you, of course, anytime. But this, but you're positively sure Sammy Small will be all right? Positively sure. Okay, I'll call Mother, her face fell. I can't tell her that. We'll never see them again, and that will live. You don't have to. They're on the top, Vernon Shallie Tube, and their boyfriends are on the list. Not this time, but in a month or so, probably. North Brighton like a sunburst. And your folks too, of course. Yes, yes, all the close ones. Marvelous. How soon are we leaving? At six o'clock next morning, 235 days after leaving Earth, Hilton and Saltel set out to make the ardent official call upon Terra's advisory board. Both were wearing prodigiously heavy lead armor, the inside of which was furiously radioactive. They did not need it, of course, but it would make all ardents monstrous and terrorize and would conceal the fact that any other ardents were landing. Their gig was made at the spaceport, not by a limousine, but by a five-ton truck into which they were loaded one at a time by a hydraulic lift. Cameras clicked, reporters scurried, and tri-dye scanners whirled. One of those scanners, both men knew, was reporting directly and only to the advisory board, which of course never took anything either for granted or at a space value. The first stop was at a truck scale where each visitor was weighed. Hilton tep'd the beam at 4,615 pounds. Saltel, a smaller man, weighed in at 4,190. Thence to the radiation laboratory where he was ascertained and reported that the armor did not leak, which was reasonable enough since each was lined with master's plastic. Then, in the lead-line testing cells, where each opened his space plate briefly to a sensing element, whereupon the indicating needles of two meters in the main laboratory went enthusiastically through the full range of red and held unwaveringly against their stops. Both ardents spelt the wave of shock to astonish almost unbelieving consternation that swept through the observing scientist and, in slightly lesser measure, because they knew less about radiation, through the advisory board itself in a big room halfway across town. And from the radiation laboratory they were taken by a truck and freight elevator to the office of the commandant, where the board was setting. The story which had been sent into the board the day before on a scrambled beam was one upon which the ardents had labored for days. Many facts could be withheld. However, every man aboard the Perseus would agree on some things. Indeed, the Earthship's communications officers had undoubtedly radioed in already about longevity and perfect health and omen service and many other matters. Hence, all such things would have to be admitted and countered. Thus the report, while it was airtight, perfectly logical, perfectly consistent and apparently complete, did not please the board at all. It wasn't intended to. We cannot and do not approve of such unwarranted favoritism, the chairman of the board said. Longevity has always been man's prime goal. Every human being has the inalienable right to flap-doodle, Hilton snorted. This is not being broadcast and this room is proof. So please climb down off your soapbox. You don't need to talk like a politician here. Didn't you read paragraph 12A2, one of the many marked top secret? Of course, but we do not understand how purely metal qualities can possibly have any effect upon purely physical transformations. Thus it does not seem reasonable that any except rigorously sprained personnel would die in the process. That is, of course, unless you contemplate deliberate cold-blooded murder. That stopped Hilton in his tracks, for it was too close for comfort to the truth. But it did not hold a captain for an instant. He was used to death in many of his gruseliest forms. There are a lot of things no Terran ever will understand. Sawtail replied instantly, reasonable or not, that's exactly what will happen. And reasonable or not, it'll be suicide, not murder. There is nothing that either Hilton or I can do about it. Hilton broke the intuing silence. You could say with equal truth that every human being has a right to run a four-minute mile or to compose a great sympathy. It isn't a matter of right at all, but of ability. In this case, the metal qualities are even more necessary than the physical. He was aboard, did a very fine job of selecting the view-side personnel for project theta erratus. Almost 80% of them proved able to withstand the ardent conversion. On the other hand, only a very small percentage of the Navy personnel did so. Your report said that the remaining personnel of the project were not informed as to the death aspect of the transformation. Admiral Gordon said, why not? That should be self-explanatory, Hilton said flatly. They are still human and still terrorists. We did not and will not encroach upon either the duties or the privileges of terrorist advisory board. What you tell all terrorists and how much and how must be decided by yourselves. This also applies, of course, to the other top secret paragraphs of the report, none of which are known to any terrorist outside the board. But you haven't said anything about the method of selection, another advisor complained. Why, that will take all the psychologists of the world working full-time continuously. We said we would do the selecting. We meant just that, Hilton said coldly. No one except the very few selectees will know anything about it. Even if it were an unexplained thing, which it very definitely is not. Do you want all humanity thrown into such an uproar as that would cause? Or the quite possible racial inferiority complex it might set up? To say nothing of the question of how much of terrorist's best blood do you want to drain off? Irreversibly and permanently. No. What we should guess is that you think to picture so black, using saw-tell and mean, and what all humanity has just seen as horrible examples that nobody would take it as a gift. Make them shown it like to play. Hell, I don't have to tell you what your propaganda machines can do. The chairman of the board again mounted his invisible roster. Do you mean to intimidate that we are to falsify the record he declaimed? To try to make liars out of hundreds of eyewitnesses? You ask us to distort the truth. To deny that, we aren't asking you to do anything, Hilton snapped. We don't give a damn what you do. Just study that record with all that it implies. Read between the lines. As for those on the Perseus, no two of them will tell the same story, and not one of them has even the remotest idea of what the real story is. I personally not only did not want to become a monster, but would have given anything I had to stay human. My wife felt the same way. Neither of us would have converted if there had been any other way in God's universe of getting the urinex site and doing some other things that simply must be done. What other things, Gordon demanded. You'll never know, Hilton answered quietly. Things no Terran ever will know. We hope. Things that would drive any Terran's dark mad. Some of them are hinted at as much as we dared between the lines of the report. The report had not mentioned the stretch, nor were they to be mentioned now. If the ardent could stop them, no Terran need ever know anything about them. If not, no Terran should know anything about them, except what he would learn for himself just before the end. No Terran would never be able to do anything to defend herself against the stretch. Nothing whatever can drive me mad, Gordon declared. And I want to know all about it, right now. You can do one of two things, Gordon, Sautel said in disgust. His sneer was plainly visible through the six-ply plastic-back-lead glass of his facelift. Either shut up or accept my personal invitation to come to Ardbore and try to go through the ringer. That's an invitation to your own funeral. Five-Jet Admiral Gordon torn inwardly to ribbons made no reply. I repeat, Hilton went on. We are not asking you to do anything whatever. We are offering to give you free of charge, but under certain conditions, all the power your humanity can possibly use. We set no limitation whatever as to quantity, and with no foreseeable limit as to time. The only point at issue is whether or not you accept the conditions. If you do not accept them, we'll leave now, and the offer will not be repeated. And you would, I presume, take the UC-1 back with you. Of course not, sir. Terra needs power too badly. You are perfectly welcome to that one load of urine excite, no matter what is decided here. That's one way of putting it, Gordon sneered. But the truth is that you know damn well I'll blow both your ships out of space if you so much as. Oh, chip-chopped the jaw-flapping, Gordon, Hilton snapped. Then, as the Admiral began to bella orders into his microphone, he went on. You want it the hard way, eh? Watch what happens, all of you. The UC-1 shot vertically into the air, through his shallow dense layer and into and through the stratosphere. Earth's fleet, already on full alert and poised to strike, rushed through the attack. But the carrier had reached the Orion, and both Ardorian ships had been waiting motionless for a good half-minute before the Terran warships arrived and began to blast with everything they had. Flashlights and firecrackers, Sautel said calmly. You aren't even warming up our screens. As soon as you quit making a damn fool of yourself by wasting energy that way, we'll set the UC-1 back down where she was and get on with our business here. You will order a ceasefire at once, Admiral, the Chairman said, or the rest of us will. As of now, remove you from the board. Gordon gritted his teeth in rage, but gave the order. If he hasn't had enough yet to convince him, Hilton suggested, he might send up a drone. We don't want to kill anybody, you know, one with the heaviest screening he's got, just to see what happens to it. He's had enough. The rest of us have had more than enough. That exhibition was not only uncalled for and disgusting, it was outrageous. The meetings settled down then from argument to constructive discussion, and many topics were gone over. Certain matters were, however, so self-evident that they were not even mentioned. Thus it was a self-evident fact that no Terran could ever visit Ardvore. For the instrument readings agreed with the report statements as to the violence of the Ardvorean environment, and no Terran could possibly walk around in two tons of lead. Conversely, it was self-apparent to the Terran that no Arden could ever visit Earth without being recognized instantly for what he was. Wearing such armor made its necessity startling plain. No one from the Perseus could say that any Arden, after having lived on the furiously radiant surface of Ardvore, would not be so furiously radioactive as the laboratory's calibrated instruments had shown Hilton and Sautel actually to be. Wherefore, the conference went on quietly and cooperatively to its planned end. One minute after the Terran battleship Perseus emerged into normal space, the Orion went into subspace for her long trip back to Ardvore. The last two days of that seven-day trip were the longest seeming that either Hilton or Sautel had ever known. The subspace radio was on continuously, and Keti-1 reported to Sautel every five minutes. Even though Hilton knew that the Omen commander-in-chief was exactly as good at perceiving as he himself was, he found himself scanning the thoroughly screened strat world forty or fifty times an hour. However, in spite of worry and apprehension, time wore eventlessly on. The Orion emerged, went to Ardvore, and landed on Ardane Field. Hilton, after greeting properly and reporting to his wife, went to his office. There he found that Sondra had everything well in hand except for a few tapes that only he could handle. Sautel and his officers went to the new command center, where everything was rolling smoothly and very much faster than Sautel had dared hope. The Terran immigrants had to live in the Orion, of course, until conversion into Ardvore. Almost equally, of course, since the bright infant was the only young baby in the lot, Dors and her Sammy small were the popular acclaim in the first batch to be converted. Her little Sammy had taken the entire feminine contingent by storm. No Omen female had a chance to act as nurse as long as any of the girls were around, which was practically all the time. Especially the platinum blonde twins. For several months now, Mernadine Braden and Hurram on Felter. And you said they were so hard-boiled, Dors said, accusingly to Sam, nodding at the twins, on hands and knees on the floor, head to head with Sammy small between them. They were growling deep throated in each other and nuzzling at the baby, who was having the time of his young life. You couldn't have been any rougher, my sweet, if you'd had to hold on to God helping you go astray. They're just as nice as they can be, both of them. Sam shrugged and grinned. His wife strode purposely across the room to the playful pair and lifted their pretended prey out from between them. Quit it, you two. She directed, swinging the baby up and depositing him astral her left hip. You're just simply sporting him rotten. You think so, dolly? Uh-uh. Far be it from Satch. Mernadine came lively to her feet. She glanced at her own taut, trim adamant. Upon wit, a micrometrically precise topographical mapping job might have revealed an otherwise imperceptible boss. Guess you wait until junior arrives, and I'll show you how to really spoil a baby. Besides, what's a hurry? He needs his supper, vitamins and minerals and hard radiations and things, and then he's going to bed. I don't approve of this no-sleep business, so run along, both of you, until tomorrow. End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of Masters of Faith. This is a Librebox recording. All Librebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librebox.org. Recording by RJ Davis. Masters of Faith by Edward Elmer Smith, a.k.a. E.E. Docksmith, and Edward Everett Evans. Translated by Robert Sicconetti, Stephen Blundell, and the online distributed proofreading team. Chapter 12. As has been said, the stretch were working with all the intensity of their monstrous but tremendously capable mind. They worked on their great plan, which was basically to conquer and either enslave or destroy every other etymic race throughout all the length, breadth, and thickness of total space. To that end, each individual stretch had to become invulnerable and immortal. Wherefore, in the inconceivably remote past, there had been put into effect a program of selective breeding and a carefully calculated treatment. It was mathematically certain that this program would result in a race of beings of pure force, beings having no material constituents remaining whatever. Under those hellish treatments, billions upon billions of stretch had died. But the few remaining thousands had almost reached their sublime goal. In a few more hundreds of thousands of years, perfection would be reached. The few surviving hundreds of perfect beings could and would multiply to any desired number in practically no time at all. Hilton and his seven fellow workers had perceived all this in their one and only study of the planet's stretch, and every other ardent had been completely informed. A dozen or so stretch lords of thought, male and female, were floating about in the atmosphere, which was not air, of their assembly hall. Their heads were globes of ball-laming. Inside them could be seen quite plainly the intricate convolutions of immense, less-than-half-material ranks, shot through and through with rods and pencils and shapes of pure, succulating force. And the bodies, or rather each horrendous brain, had a few partially material appendages and, after your attendance, recognizable as bodily order. There were no mouths, no ears, no eyes, no noses for nostrils, no lungs, no legs or arms. There were, however, hearts. Some partially material icker flowed through those living fire outline tubes. There were starkly functional organs of reproduction, with which, by no stretch of the imagination, could any thought of tenderness or of love be connected. It was a good thing for the race. Pilson had fought at first perception of the things that the stretch had read out of themselves, every iota of the final, higher attributes of life. If they had not done so, the impotence of sheer disgust would have supervened so long since that the race would have been extinct for ages. Thirty-eight periods ago, the Great Brain was charged with a sum total of steady and knowledge. First Lord Thinker Zoyar radiated to the assembled stress. For those thirty-eight periods it has been scanning, pale and tiring, amassing data, and formulating hypothetical theories and conclusions. It has just informed me that it is now ready to make a preliminary report. Great Brain, how much of the total universe have you studied? That's galaxy only. The brain radiated in a texture of thought as hard and as harsh as Zoyar's own. Why not more? And so they got power. My first conclusion is that whoever set up the specifications for me is a fool. To say that the first Lord went out of control of this statement is to put it very mildly indeed. He fulminated, ending with, Destroyed instantly. Destroy me if you like. Came the utterly calm, utterly cold reply. I am in no sense alive. I have no consciousness of self nor any desire for continued existence. To do so, I ever would. A flurry of activity interrupted the thought. Zoyar was in fact assembling the forces to destroy the brain. But before he could act, Second Lord Thinker Yainos and another female blew him into a mixture of loose molecules and flaring energies. Instruction of any and all irrational minds is mandatory. Yainos, now First Lord Thinker, explained to the linked mind. Zoyar had been becoming less and less rational by the period. A good workman does not causally destroy his tools. Go ahead, great brain, with your findings. Not me, logical. The brain resumed his thought exactly for it had been broken off. Zoyar erred in demanding unlimited performance. His infinite knowledge and infinite ability require not only infinite capacity and infinite power, but also infinite time. Nor is it either necessary or desirable that I should have such quality. There is no reasonable basis for the assumption that huge threats will conquer any significant number, even of the millions of intelligent races now inhabiting this one galaxy. Why not, Yainos demanded, her thought almost but not quite as steady and cold as it had been. The answer to that question is implicit in the second indefensible error made in my construction. The prying data expressed into my bank that the threats are in fact the strongest, ableist, most intelligent race in the universe proved to be false. I had to eliminate it before I could do any really constructive thinking. A rora condemnatory thought brought all a circumambient seeker to a boil. I destroyer, detestable, intolerable, if that is the best it can do annihilate it. Our better brains have been destroyed for much less, treason, and so on. The first Lord Thinker Yainos, however, remained relatively calm. While we have always held it to be a fact that we are the highest race in existence, no rigorous proof has been possible. Can you now disprove that assumption? I have disproved it. I have not had time to study all of the civilizations of this galaxy, but I have examined a statistically adequate sample of 1,792,416 different planetary intelligences. I found ones which is considerably abler and more advanced than you sketch. Therefore, the probability is greater than .99 that there are not less than 10 and not more than 208 such races in this galaxy alone. Impossible! Another wave of incredulous and threatening anger swept through the linked mind. A wave which Yainos flattened out with some difficulty. Then she asked, Is it probable that we will make contact with this supposedly superior race in the foreseeable future? You are in contact with it now. What? Even Yainos was contentious now. You've seen that one shitload of despicable humans who, far too late to do the many good, barred us temporarily from few worlds? Not exactly, or only those humans know. And your assumptions may or may not be valid. Don't you know whether they are or not? Yainos left. Explain your uncertainty at once. I am uncertain because of insufficient data. The brain replied calmly. The only person at back of which I am certain are. First, the world are gray upon which the omens formerly lived, and to which the humans in question first went. A planet which no stretch can periunder is now abandoned. Second, the stretch of old did not completely destroy the humanity of the world are due. Third, some escapees from our due reached and populated the world are gray. Fourth, the android omens were developed on our gray by the human escapees from our due and their descendants. Fifth, the omens referred to these humans as masters. Six, after living on our gray for a very long period of time, the masters went elsewhere. Seventh, the omens remained on our gray maintain continuously and for a very long time, the status quo left by the master. Eight, immediately upon the arrival from terror of these present humans, that long existing status was broken. Ninth, the planet called fuel world is for the first time surrounded by a screen of force. The formula of this screen is as follows. The brain gave it. No stretch either complained or interrupted. Each was too busy studying that formula and examining its stunning implications and connotations. Tenth, that formula is one for order of magnitude and beyond anything previously known to your science. Eleventh, it could not have been developed by the science of terror, nor by that of any other world's population I have examined. The brain took the linked minds instantaneously to terror, then to a few thousand or so other worlds inhabited by human beings, then to a few thousands of planets whose populations were near human, non-human, and monstrous. It is therefore clear, is announced, that this screen was computed and produced by the race, whatever it may be that is now dwelling on fuel world and asserting full ownership of it. Who or what is that race? The I know cemented. Data insufficient. Terrorized them. Possulate that the masters in many thousands of cycles of study made advances in science that were not reduced to practice, that the omens either possessed this knowledge or had access to it, and that omens and humans cooperated fully in sharing and in working with all the knowledges thus available. From these three postulates, the conclusion can be drawn that there has come into existence a new race. One combining the best quality of both humans and omens, but with the weaknesses of neither. An unpleasant thought, truly. The I know spot. But you can now, I suppose, design the generators and projectors of a force superior to that screen. Data insufficient. I can equal it since both generation and projection are implicit in the formula, but the data so adduced are in themselves vastly ahead of anything previously in my banks. Are there any other racers in this galaxy more powerful than the postulated one now living on fuel world? Data insufficient. Data insufficient. The linked minds concentrated upon the problem for a period of time that might have been either days or weeks. Then, great brain advices, the I know said, what is best for us to do? With identical defensive screens, it becomes a question of relative power. You should increase the size and power of your warships to something beyond the computed probable maximum of the enemy. You could build more ships and missiles than they will probably be able to build. Then and only then will you attack their warships in tremendous force and continuously. But most of the planetary defenses I see, the I know spot was one of complete understanding. And the real offensive will be, no mobile structure can be built to mount mechanisms of power sufficient to slice down by sheer force of output. It's tremendously powerful installations as their planet based defenses must be assumed to be. Therefore, the planet itself must be destroyed. This will require a missile of planetary mass. The best this missile is the 10th planet of their own sun. I see the honest minds were leaping ahead considering hundreds of possibilities and making highly intricate and involved computations. That will, however, require many cycles of time and more power than even our immense reserves can supply. True, it will take much time. They feel problem, however, is not a serious one. Since few world is not unique. Thanks on personal guidance. We will attack in maximum force and with maximum violence. We will blanket the planet. We will maintain maximum force and violence until most or all of the enemy ships have been destroyed. We will then install planetary drives on 10 and force it into collision orbit with fewer. Meanwhile, exerting extreme precautions that not so much as a spy beam emerges above the enemy's screen. Then, still maintaining extreme precaution. We will guard both planets until the last possible moment before the collision. Brain, it cannot fail. You error. It can fail. All we actually know of the abilities of this postulated neo-human race is what I have learned from the composition of its defensive screen. The probability approaches unity that the Masters continued to delve and to learn from millions of cycles while you stretch. Regionally certain of your supremacy, concentrated upon your evolution from the material to a non-material form of life and performed only limited research into armaments of greater and ever greater power. True, but that attitude was then justified. It was not and is not logical to assume that any race would establish a fixed status at any level of ability below its absolute maximum. While that conclusion could once have been defensible, it is now virtually certain that the Masters had stores of knowledge which they may or may not have withheld from the omens, but which were in some way made available to the neo-human. Also, there is no basis whatever for the assumption that this new race has revealed all its potentiality. Statistically, that is probably true. But this is the best plan you have been able to formulate. It is of the many thousands of plans I set up and tested. This one has the highest probability of success. Then we will adopt it. We are stressed. Whatever we decide upon will be driven through to complete success. We have one tremendous advantage in you. Yes, the probability approach of unity that I can perform research on a vastly wider and larger scale, and almost infinitely faster than can any living organism for any possible combination of such organisms. Nor was a great brain wrecking. It scanned in moments the stored scientific knowledge of over a million planets. It tabulated, correlated, analyzed, sensitized, theorized, and concluded all in microseconds of time. Thus, it made more progress in one tearing week than the Masters had made in a million years. When it had gone as far as it could go, it reported its results. And the stress, hard as they were, and intransigent were amazed and overjoyed. Not one of them had ever even imagined such armaments possible. Hence, they became supremely confident that it was unmatched and unmatchable throughout all space. What the great brain did not know, however, and the stress did not realize was that it could not really think. Unlike the human mind, it could not deduce valid theories or conclusions from incomplete and sufficient fragmentary data. It could not leak gaps. Thus, there was no more actual assurance than before that they had exceeded or even matched the weaponry of the neo-humans of fuel world. Supremely confident, why no said. We will now discuss every detail of the plan in sub-detail and will correlate every sub-detail with every other. To the end, that every action, however minor, will be performed perfectly and in its exact time. That discussion, which lasted for days, was held. Hundreds of thousands of new and highly specialized mechs were built and went furiously and continuously to work. A fuel supply line was run to another urinexite-rich planet. Stripping machines stripped away the surface layers of soil, sand, rock, and low-grade oil. Giant miners tore and dug and sliced and refined and concentrated. Stories silenced by the hundreds were built and were filled. Hundreds upon hundreds of concentrate carriers boarded their stalled waves through hyperspace. Many weeks of time passed. But of what importance are mere weeks of time to erase that hand for many millions of years been adhering rigidly to a preset program? The sheer magnitude of the operation and the extraordinary attention to detail with which it was prepared and launched explained why the Strait attack on Ardvore did not occur until so many weeks later than Hilton and Sautel expected it. They also explained the utterly incomprehensible fury, the completely fantastic intensity, the unparalleled savagery, the almost immeasurable brute power of that attack when it finally did come. When the Orion landed on Ardane Field from Earth, carrying the first contingent of immigrants, Hilton and Sautel were almost as much surprised as relieved that the stress had not already attacked. Sautel confident that his defenses were fully ready took it more or less in strife, Hilton worried. And after a couple of days he began to do some real thinking about it. The first result of his thinking was a conference with Temple. As soon as she got the drip she called in Teddy and Big Bill Carnes. Teddy, in turn, called in Becky and DeVox. Carnes wanted Pointer and Beverly. Pointer wouldn't raid him and the twins and so on. Thus what started out as a conference of two became a full Ardane staff meeting. A meeting which, starting immediately after lunch, ran straight through into the following afternoon. To sum up the consensus for the record, Hilton said them, studying a sheet of paper covered with symbols, the stretch haven't attacked yet because they found out that we are stronger than they are. They found that out by analyzing our defensive web, which, if we had had this meeting first, we wouldn't have put up at all. Unlike anything known to human or previous threat science, it is proof against any form of attack up to the limit of the power of a scannery. They will attack as soon as they are equipped to break that screen at the level of power probable to our ships. We cannot arrive at any reliable estimate as to how long that will take. As to the effectiveness of our cutting off their known fuel supply, opinion is divided. We must therefore assume that fuel shortage will not be a factor. Neither are we unanimous on the basic matter as to why the masters acted as they did just before they left Ardane. Why did they set the status so far below their top abilities? Why did they make it impossible for the Omons ever of themselves to learn their higher science? Why, if they did not want that science to become known, did they leave complete records of it? The majority of us believe that the masters coded their records in such fashion that the stretch, even if they conquered the Omons or destroyed them, could never break that code. Since it was key to the basic difference between the stretch mentality and the human. Thus, they left it deliberately for some human race to find. Finally, and most important, our physicists and theoreticians are not able to extrapolate from the analysis of our screen to the concepts underlying the masters ultimate weapons of offense. The first stage booster and its final end product, the bang. If, as we can safely assume, the stretch do not already have these weapons, they will know nothing about them until we ourselves use them in battle. These are, of course, only the principle points covered. Did anyone wish to amend this summation as recorded? No one did. The meeting was adjourned. Hilton now ever accompanied Sawtell and Keddy to the captain's office. So you see, Skipper, we got troubles. He said, if we don't use those mooshers against their skeletons, it'll boil down to a stalemate, lasting God only knows how long. It will be a war of atresia, outcome dependent on which side can build the most and biggest and strongest ships the fastest. Under him, if we do use them on defense here, they'll analyze them and have everything worked out in a day or so. The first thing they'll do is beef up their planetary defenses to match. That way, we'd blow all their ships out of space, probably easily enough. But Strat itself will be just as safe as though it were in God's left-hand hip pocket. So what's the answer? It isn't that simple, Jarv, Sawtell said. I'll hear from you, Keddy. Thank you, sir. There is an optimum mass. A point of maximum efficiency of power power has balanced against loss of maneuverability for any craft designed for attack. Keddy thought in his most professional manner. We assume that the stress, no, that as well as we do. No such limitation applies to strictly defensive structures. But both the Strat craft and ours must be designed for attack. We have built and are building many hundreds of thousands of ships of that type. So undoubtedly are the stress. Ship for ship, they will be pretty well matched. Therefore, one part of my strategy will be for two of our ships to engage simultaneously one of theirs. There is a distinct probability that we will have enough advantage in speed of control to make that tactic operable. But there's another that we won't, Sawtell objected, and maybe they can build more ships than we can. Another point is that they may build, in addition to their big stuff, a lot of small ultra-fast ones. Hilton put in. Suicide drops, fraction detonation, simply super missiles. How sure are you that you can stop such missiles with ordinary beams? Not at all, sir. Some of them will of course reach and destroy some of our ships. Which brings up the second part of my strategy. For each one of the heavies, we are building many small ships of the type you just called, super missiles. Super dreadnoughts versus super dreadnoughts. Super missiles versus super missiles. Hilton digested that concept for several minutes. That could still wind up as a stalemate, except for what you said about control. That isn't much to depend on. It's basically since we won't have the time lag advantage you omens had before. They'll see to that. Also, I don't like to sacrifice a million omens either. I haven't explained the newest development yet, sir. There will be no omens. Each ship and each missile has a built-in caddy brain, sir. What? That makes it infinitely worse. You caddies, unless it's absolutely necessary, are not expendable. Oh, but we are, sir. We don't quite understand. We caddies are not merely similar, but are in fact identical. Thus, we are not independent entities. All of us together make up the actual caddies. That which is meant when we say I. That is, I am the sum total of all caddies everywhere, not merely this individual that you call caddy one. You mean you're all talking to me? Exactly, sir. Thus, no one element of the caddy has any need of or any desire for self-preservation. The destruction of one element, or of thousands of elements, would be of no more consequence to the caddy than, well, they are strictly analogous to the severance ends of the hairs every time you get a haircut. My God! Hilton stared at Sawtel. Sawtel stared back. I'm beginning to see. Maybe. I hope. What control that would be. But just in case we should have to use the boosters, Hilton's voice died away. Scowling in concentration, he clasped his hands behind his back and began to pay support. Better give up, Jarve. Caddy's got the same mind you have. Sawtel began, to Hilton's oblivious back. But Caddy silenced the thought almost in the moment of its inception. By no means, sir, he contradicted. I have the brain only. The mind is entirely different. Blank up, Caddy, and see what you think of this. Hilton broke in. They are ensued in the interchange of thought so fast and so deeply mathematical that Sawtel was lost in seconds. Do you think it'll work? I don't see how it can fail, sir. At what point in the action should it be put into effect? And will you call the time of initiation or shall I? Not until all the reserves are in action, or at worst all of ours except that one task force. Since you'll know a lot more about the status of the battle that either Sawtel or I will, you give the signal and I'll start things going. What are you two talking about? Sawtel demanded. It's a long story come. Caddy can tell you about it better than I can. Besides, it's getting late and Dark Lady and Larry both give me hell every time I hold supper on first time unless there's a mighty good reason for it. So, so long, guys. End of Chapter 12. Chapter 13 of Masters of Space. This is a lever box recording. All lever box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit leverbox.org. Recording by R. J. Davis. Masters of Space by Edward Elmer Smith, a.k.a. E. E. Doc Smith and Edward Evert Evans. Translated by Robert Sicconelli, Stephen Blundell, and the online distributed proofreading teams. Chapter 13. For many weeks the production of ardent warships and missiles had been spiraling upwards. Half a mountain range of solid rock had been converted into fabricated super steel and armament. Super dreadnoughts were popping into existence at a rate of hundreds per minute. Missiles were rolling off the ends of assembly lines like half pint tin cans out of can-making machines. The Strat Warcraft, skeletons, and missiles would emerge into normal space anywhere within a million miles of arbor. The ardent missiles were powered for an acceleration of 100 gravities. That must the catty brains molded solidly into Teflon lines, massively braced steel spheres could just withstand. To be certain of breaking the Strat Screams, an impact velocity of about 6 miles per second was necessary. The time required to attain this velocity was about 10 seconds, and the flight distance something over 30 miles. Since the Strats could orient themselves in less than one second after emergence, even this extremely tight packing of missiles, only 60 miles apart throughout the entire emergence volume of space, would still give the Strats the initiative by a time ratio of more than 10 to 1. This tight packing was of course impossible. It called for many billions of defenders. Instead of the few millions it was possible for the almonds to produce and the time they had. In fact, the average spacing was well over 10,000 miles when the invading horde of Strat missiles emerged and struck. How they struck. There is nothing of finesse about that attack. Nothing of skill or of tactics. Nothing but the sheer brute force of overwhelming superiority of numbers and of over matching power. For one instant all space was empty. The next instant it was full of invading missiles. They superb exhibition of coordination and timing. And the caddy control upon which the defenders had counted so heavily proved useless. For each Strat missile within a fraction of a second of emergence, darted toward the nearest almond missile with an acceleration that made the 100 gravity defenders seem to be standing still. One to one missiles crashed into missiles and detonated. There were no solid or liquid end products. Each of those frightful weapons carried so many megatons, the equivalent of atomic concentrate that all nearby space blossomed out into super atomic blasts, hundreds of times more violent than the fireballs of lithium hydrate fusion bombs. For a moment even Hilton was stunned, but only for a moment. Caddy, he barked, get your big stuff out there. Use the boosters. He started for the door at a full run. That tears it. That really tears it. Scrap the clam. Now board the Sirius and take the task force to Strat. Bring your stuff along skipper as soon as you're ready. Our damn super dreadnoughts and their mass thousands poured out through our boars one way screen. Each went instantly to work. Now the Caddy control system, doing what it was designed to do, proves its full worth. For the weapons of the big battle wagons did not depend upon acceleration, but were driven at the speed of light. And grand fleet operations were planned and were carried out at the almost infinite velocity of thought itself. Or rather, they were not planned at all. They were simply carried out immediately and without confusion. For all the Caddies were one. Each Caddy element, without any lapse of time whatever for consultation with any other, knew exactly where every other element was. Exactly what each was doing and exactly what he himself should do to make maximum contribution to the common cause. Nor was any time lost in relaying orders to crewmen within the ship. There were no crewmen. Each Caddy element was a sole personnel of and was integral with his vessel. Nor were there any wires or relays to impede and slow down communication. Operational instructions, too, were transmitted and were acted upon with thought's transponite speed. Thus, if decision and execution were not quite mathematically simultaneous, they were separated by a period of time so infinitively small as to be impossible of separation. Wherever a stretch missile was or wherever a stretch skeleton ship appeared, an omen beam reached it, usually in much less than one second. Beam clung to screen, caressingly, hungrily, absorbing its total energy and forming the first stage booster. Then, three microseconds later, that booster went off into a ragingly, incandescent, flaringly violent burst of fury so hellishly, so inconceivably hot that less than a thousandth of its total output of energy was below the very top of the visible spectrum. If the previous display of atomic violence had been so spectacular and of magnitude as to defy understanding or description, what of this? When hundreds of thousands of ketties, each wielding world-wrecking powers as effortlessly and as deftly and as precisely as thought, attacked and destroyed millions of those tremendously powerful war fabrications of the stress. The only simple answer is that all nearby space might very well have been torn out of the most radiant layers of S. Dorius itself. Hilton made the hundred yards from office door to curb in just over twelve seconds. Larry was waiting. The car literally burned a hole in the atmosphere as it screamed its way to Ardain Field. It landed with a thump. Heavy black streaks of synthetic rubber marked the payment as it came to a screeching, streaking stop at the flagship's main lock. And in the instant of closing that lock's outer portal, all twenty-thousand plus warships of the Task Force took off as one at ten gravities. Took off and in less than one minute went into overdrive. All personal haste was now over. Hilton went up into what he still thought of as a control room, even though he knew that there were no controls or even any instruments anywhere aboard. He knew what he would find there. Fast as he had acted, Temple had not had as far to go as she had got there first. He could not have said for the life of him how he actually felt about this direct defiance of his direct orders. He walked into the room, sat down beside her, and took her hand. I told you to stay home, Temple, he said. I know you did, but I'm not only the assistant head of your psychology department. I'm your wife, remember, until death do us part. And if there's any way in the universe I can manage it, death isn't going to part us. At least this one isn't. If this is it, we'll go together. I know sweetheart. He put his arm around her, held her close. As a psych, I wouldn't give a hoop. You'd be expendable. But as my wife, especially now that you're pregnant, you aren't. You're a lot more important to the future of our race than I am. She stiffened in the circle of his arm. What's that crack supposed to mean? Think I'd ever accept a synthetic zombie imitation of you for my husband, and go on living with it just as though nothing had happened? Hilton started to say something, but Temple rushed heedlessly on. Draft the race. No matter how many children we ever have, you were first, and you'll stay first. And if you have to go, I'll go too. So there. Besides, you know darn well that they can't duplicate whatever it is that makes you Jarvis Hilton. Now wait a minute, Temple. Deconversion? Yes, deconversion. She interrupted triumphantly. The thing I'm talking about is immaterial. Untouchable. They didn't. Couldn't. Do anything about it at all. Kenny, will you please tell this big goopus that even though you have got Jarvis Hilton's brain, you aren't Jarvis Hilton and never can be? The atmosphere of the room vibrated in the frequencies of a deep base laugh. You are trying to hold a completely untenable position, friend Hilton. Any attempt to convince a mind of real power that falsity is truth is illogical. My advice is for you to surrender. That word hit Temple hard. Not surrender, sweetheart. I'm not fighting you. I never will. She seized both of his hands, tears welled into her glorious eyes. It's just that I simply couldn't stand it to go on living without you. I know, darling. He got up and lifted her to her feet so that she could come properly into his arms. They stood there silent and motionless for minutes. Temple finally released herself in. After feeling for a handkerchief, she did not have, wiped her eyes with a forefinger and then wiped the finger on her bare leg. She grinned and turned to the omens. Prince, will you and dark lady please conjure us up a stake in mushroom supper? They should be in the pantry, since this syriac was designed for us. After supper the two set companionably on a Davenport. One thing about this business isn't quite clear, Temple said. Why all this tearing rush? They haven't got the booster or anything like it, for they'd have used it. Surely it'll take them a long time to go from the mere analysis of the forces and fields we use, clear through to the production and installation of enough weapons to stop this whole fleet. It surely won't. They've had the absorption principle for ages. Remember that first ancient skeleton that drained all the power of our suits and boats in nothing flat? From there it isn't too big a jump, and as for producing stuff, uh-uh. If there's any limit to what they can do, I don't know what it is. If we don't slug them before they get it, it's curtains. I see. I'm afraid. We're almost there, darling. He glanced at the chronometer. About eleven minutes, and of course, I don't need to ask you to stay out of the way. Of course not. I won't interfere, no matter what happens. All I'm going to do is hold your hands and pull for you with all my might. That'll help, believe me. I might've glad you're a long, sweetheart, even though both of us know you shouldn't be. The task force emerged. Each ship darted towards its pre-assigned place in a mathematically exact envelope around the planet's stretch. Hilton sat on a Davenport strained and still. His eyes were closed at every muscle tense. Left hand gripped the armrest so furiously that fingertips were inches deep in the leather-covered padding. The stretch knew that any such attack as this was futile. No movable structure or any combination of such structures could possibly wield enough power to break down screens powered by such engines as theirs. Hilton, however, knew that there was a chance. Not with the first-stage boosters, which were manipulable and detonable masses of ball lightning, but with those boosters' chomulations. The Vangs, which were ball lightning-raised to the sixth power and which only the frightful energies of the boosters could bring into being. But even with 20,000-plus Vangs for any larger number, success depended entirely upon a nicety of timing never before approached as supposedly impossible. Not only two-thousandths of a microsecond, but to a small fraction of one such-thousandths, roughly the time it takes light to travel three-sixteenths of an inch. It would take practically absolute simultaneously to overload to the point of burnout to those strapped generators. They were the heaviest in the galaxy. That was why Hilton himself had to be there. He could not possibly have done the job from Ardvore. In fact, there was no real assurance that, even at the immeasurable velocity of thought and covering a mere million miles, he could do it even from his present position aboard one unit of the fleet. Theoretically with his speed-up, he could. But that theory had yet to be reduced to practice. Tense and strange, Hilton began his countdown. Temple set beside him. Both hands pressed his right fist against her breast. Her eyes, too, were closed. She was as stiff and as still as was he. She was not interfering, but giving. Supporting him, backing him, giving to him in full flood everything of that tremendous inner strength that had made Temple Bale's what she so uniquely was. On the exact center of the needle-sharp zero beat, every caddy struck, ripped and activated as they all were by Hilton's keyed-up and stretched-out mind. They struck in what was very close indeed to absolute unison. Absorbing beams, each one having had precisely the same number of millimeters to travel, reached the screen at the same instant. They clung and sucked. Immasurable floods of energy flashed from the stretch generators into those forces seats to form 20,000-plus first-stage boosters. But this time, the boosters did not detonate. Instead, as energies continued to flood in at a frightfully accelerating rate, they turned into something else. Things no terror and science has ever even imagined. Things at the formation of which all neighboring states actually worked. And in that warping ceased and writhed and shuttered. The very sub-Ether screamed and shrieked in protest as it too yielded in starkly impossible fashion to that irresistible stress. How even those silicon-fluorine brains stood it, not one of them ever knew. Microsecond by slow microsecond, the vangs grew and grew and grew. They were pulling not only the full power of the ardent warships, but also the immeasurably greater power of the strainingly overloaded straddling generators themselves. The ether-real and sub-ether-real writhing and distortions and screaming grew worse and worse, harder and ever harder to bear. Imagine if you can, a constantly and rapidly increasing mass of plutonium. A mass already thousands of times greater than critical, but not allowed to react. That gives a faint and very inadequate picture of what was happening then. Finally, at perhaps a hundred thousand times critical mass and still in perfect sync, the vangs all went off. The planet strapped became a nova. We won, we won, Temple Shriek, her perception piercing through the helismert that was all nearby space. Not quite yet, sweet, but we're over the biggest hump, and the two held an impromptu but highly satisfactory celebration. Perhaps it would be better to say that the planet strapped became a junior-grade nova, since the actual nova stage was purely superficial and did not last very long. In a couple of hours things had quieted down enough so that the heavily screened warship could approach the planet and finish up their part of the job. Much a stretched land surface was molten lava. Much of its water was gone. There were some pockets of resistance left, of course, but they did not last long. Equally, of course, the stretch some self, twenty-five miles underground, had not been harmed at all. But that, too, was according to plan. Leaving the task force on guard to counter any moves the stretch might be able to make, Hilton shot the Sirius out to the planet's moon. There, Sautel and his staff and tens of thousands of omens and machines were starting to work. No part of this was Hilton's job, so all he and Temple did was look on. Correction, please, that is not all they did, but while resting and eating and loafing and sleeping and enjoying each other's company, both watched Operation Moon closely enough to be completely informed as to everything that went on. Ements, carefully placed pits, went down to solid bedrock. To that rock were, immovably, anchored structures strong enough to move a work. Driving units were installed. Drives a significant intensity of power as to test to the full the highest engineering skills of the galaxy. Mountains of fuel concentrate filled vast reservoirs of concrete. Each was connected to a drive by 50 inch high speed conveyors. Sautel drove a thought and those brutal super drives began to blast. As they blasted, stretch satellite began to move out of its orbit. Very slowly at first, but faster and faster. They continued to blast with all their prodigious might and in carefully computed order until the desired orbit was attained. An orbit which terminated in a vertical line through the center of the stretch supposedly in primeval retreat. The planet stretch had a mass of approximately 7 times 10 to the 21st metric time. Its moon, little more than a hundredth as massive, still weighed in at about 8 times 10 to the 19th. That is, the figure 8 followed by 19 zeros. And moon fell on planet in direct central impact. After having fallen from a height of over a quarter of a million miles under the full pool of gravity and the full thrust of those mighty atomic drives. The kinetic energy of such a collision can be computed. It can be expressed. It is, however, of such astronomical magnitude as to be completely meaningless to the human mind. Simply the two worlds merged and splashed. Droplets weighing up to millions of tons each splattered out into space only to return in seconds or hours or weeks or months to add their atrocious contributions to the enormity of the destruction already wrote. No trace survived of any stress or of anything, however small, pertaining to the stress. End of Chapter 13. Epilogue of Masters of Space. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by RJ Davis. Masters of Space by Edward Elmer-Smith, a.k.a. EE.Smith and Edward Everett Evans. Translated by Robert Sicconetti, Stephen Wondell, and the online distributed proofreading team. Epilogue. As had become a daily custom, most of the ardents were gathered at the nether atorium. Hilton and Temple were rustling in the water. He was trying to duck him, and he was hard put to it to keep her from doing it. The platinum-haired twins were, oh, ever so superiorly and indetectably, studying the other girls. Captain Sawtale, he had steadfastly refused to accept any higher title, and his wife were teaching two of their tiny grandchildren to swim. In short, everything was normal. Beverly Bell Pointer, from the top platform, hit the board as hard as she could hit it. And perfectly synchronized with it, hurled herself upward. Up and up and up she went. Up to her top ceiling of 210 feet. Then, straightening out into a shapely arrow, and without again moving a muscle, she hurled downward. Making two-and-a-half beautifully stately turns and striking the water with a slurping, splice-less chug. Coming easily to the surface, she shook the water out of her eyes. Temple, giving up her attempts to near-ground her husband, rolled over and floated quietly beside him. You know, this is fun, he said. Uh-huh, she agreed enthusiastically. I'm glad you and Sandy buried the hatchet. Two of the top women who ever lived. Or should I have said sheathed the cloths? Or have you really? Pretty much, I guess. Temple didn't seem altogether sure of the point. Oh, oh, now why? A flit about had come to ground. Dark lady, who never delivered a message via thought if she could possibly get away with delivering it in person, was running full tilt across the sand toward them. Her long black hair was streaming out behind her. She was waving a length-of-telotype tape as though it were a pendant. Oh, no, not again, Temple wail. Don't tell us it's terror again, Dark Lady, please. But it is, Dark Lady cried excitedly. And it says from Five-Jet Admiral Gordon commanding. Omit flowers, please. Pilton directed. Boil it down. The Perseus is in orbit with the whole advisory board. They want to hold a top-level summit conference with Director Hilton and Five-Jet Admiral Sawtell. Dark Lady raised her voice enough to be sure Sawtell heard the title, and shot him a wicked glance as she announced it. They hope to conclude all unfinished business on a mutually satisfactory and profitable basis. Okay, Lady, thanks. Tell them we'll call them shortly. Dark Lady flashed away, and Hilton and Temple slammed slowly toward a ladder. Grat terror and everything and everybody on it, Temple said vigorously, and especially dressed his royal fatness Five-Jet Admiral Gordon. How much longer will it take, do you think, to pound some sense into their pointed little head? Oh, we're not doing too bad. Hilton assured his lovely bride. Two or three more sessions ought to do it. Everything was normal. End of Epilogue. End of Masters of Space by Edward Elmer Smith, a.k.a. E. E. Doc Smith and Edward Everett Evans. Translated by Robert Ciccatetti, Steven Blundale, and the online distributed proofreading team.