Skylark DuQuesne

“I remember. I lied to you, yes. Wholesale and retail. But how else could I have made the approach, the mood you were in, without blowing everything higher than up?”

“Your technique was probably the best possible, I admit.”

“Okay. Yes, we’re from a galaxy so far away from here that you could barely find it with the biggest telescope this world ever had. Our business at the moment is to wipe out every Chloran in this region of space, but we can’t do it without — among other things — a lot more data than we now have. And we’ll need weeks of time, mostly elsewhere, for preparation.

“But before we go too deeply into that you must meet my associates. People, this is His Honor Ree-Toe Prenk; what you might call the Mayor of the City of Ty-Ko-Ma of the Planet Ray-See-Nee. You know all about him. ReeToe, this is Hi-Fi Mokak, my wife — Lo-Test and Hi-Test Crane, husband and wife—” and he went on with two more pairs of coined names.

“Hi-Fi indeed!” Dorothy snorted, under her breath, in English. “Just you wait ’til I get you alone tonight, you egregious clown!”

“Wha’d’ya mean ‘clown’?” he retorted. “Try your hand sometime at inventing seven names on the spur of the moment!”

Seaton then put on a headset, slipped one over Prenk’s head, and said in thought:

“This is what is left — the rest, you might say — of our mobile base the Skylark of Valeron.”

and went on to show him and to describe to him the Great Brain, the immense tank-chart of the entire First Universe, the tremendous driving engines and even more tremendous engines of offense and of defense.

Prenk was held spellbound and speechless, for this “residue,” hundreds of kilometers in diameter and hundreds of millions of tons in weight, was so utterly beyond any artificial structure Prenk had ever imagined that he simply could not grasp its magnitude at all.

And when Seaton went on to show him a full mental picture of what that base had been before the battle with the Chlorans and what it would have to be before they could begin to move against the Chlorans — the one-thousand kilometer control-circles, the thousands of cubic kilometers of solidly packed offensive and defensive gear, the scores of fantastically braced and buttressed layers of inoson that composed the worldlet’s outer skin — he was so strongly affected as to be speechless in fact.

“I… I see. That is… a little, maybe… ” he stammered, then subsided into silence.

“Yes, it is a bit big to get used to all at once,” Seaton agreed. “It needs a lot of work. Some we’re doing; some of it can’t be done anywhere near here; but we don’t want to leave without being reasonably sure that you and your people will be alive when we get back. So we want a lot of information from you.”

“I’ll be glad to tell you everything I know or can find out.,”

“Thanks. Ideas, first. How much do you think the quisling Big Shots actually know? What do you think they’ll do about it? What do you think His Magnificence the Dictator will do? And what should we do about what he thinks he’s going to do? In a few days we’ll want all the information you can get — facts, names, dates, places, times, and perso

“One advantage of a small town and a group like ours,” Prenk said, slowly, “is that everybody knows everybody else’s business. Thus, we all knew who the spies were, but the people were all so low in their minds that they simply did not care whether they lived or died. We had done our best and had failed; most of us had given up hope completely. Now, however, the few remaining spies have been locked up and are under control. They and the overseers are still reporting, but—” he smiled wolfishly — “they are saying precisely and only what I tell them to say. This condition can’t last very long; but, after what you just showed me, I’m pretty sure I can make it last long enough. We have organized a really efficient force of guerrilla fighters and our plans for the capital are…”

A couple of weeks later, then, three hundred fifty-eight highly trained men and one highly trained woman set out.

A woman? Yes. Dorothy had protested vigorously.

“But Sitar! You aren’t going, surely? Surely you’re staying home?”

“Staying home!” the green girl had blazed. “The First Wife of a prince of Osnome goes with her prince wherever he goes. She fights beside him, at need she dies beside him. Would you have him die fighting and me live an hour? I’d blow myself to bits!”

“My God!” Dorothy had gasped, and had stared, appalled.

“That’s right,” Seaton had told her. “Their ethics, mores and customs differ more than somewhat from ours, you know.” And nothing more had been said about Sitar being a member of the Expeditionary Force.

Prenk’s guerrillas had infiltrated the capital city by ones and twos; no group ever larger than two. Each one wore the costume of an easily recognizable class of citizen. They were apparently artisans and workmen, soldiers, sailors, clerks, businessmen, tycoons of industry. Nor were the watches they all wore on their wrists any more alike than were their costumes — except in one respect. They all told the same time, to the tenth of a split second, and they all were kept in sync by pulses from a tiny power-pack that had been hidden in a tree in the outskirts of the city.

At time zero minus thirty minutes, three hundred fifty-nine persons began to enter into and to distribute themselves throughout an immense building that resembled a palace or a cathedral much more than the capitol building even of a world.

At time zero minus four seconds all those persons, who had in the meantime been doing inconspicuous this and i

At time zero on the tick, three hundred fifty-nine knives came out of concealment and that exact number of persons fell.

Some of the guerrillas remained on guard where their victims lay. Others went into various offices on various businesses. On the top-most floor four i

“Your attention, please! These programs have been interrupted to a

Premier Ree-Toe Prenk and his loyalists are now the government. Business is to go on as usual; no new orders will be issued except as they become necessary. That is all.

Scheduled programs will now be resumed.”

It was not as easy everywhere, however, as that a

Cursing silently the fact that his magnum was not to be used during the first few silent seconds of the engagement, he watched the four men constantly out of the corners of his eyes, pla