E. E. Doc Smith - The Galaxy Primes.pdf - E.E. Doc. Smith - margozap

BATTLE RAGES ACROSS SPACE!

The Primes went down, over what had been one of that world's largest cities. The air, the stratosphere, and all

nearby space was full of battling vessels of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the tremendous globular

spaceships of the invading Dilipics down to the tiny, one-man jet-fighters of the Arpalones.

The Dilipics were using projectile weapons only - ranging in size from heavy machine guns up to 75-millimetre

quick-firing rifles. They were also launching thousands of guided missiles of fantastic speed and of tremendous

explosive power.

Each defending Arpalone vessel, depending upon its type and class, carried from four up to a hundred

burnished-metal reflectors some four feet in diameter, each with a small black device at its optical centre and

each pouring out a tight beam of highly effective energy. Whenever one struck a Dilipic ship or plane

everything in its path flared almost instantly into vapour and the beam glared incandescently.

The invading task-force was arranged hi a whirling, swirling, almost cylindrical cone, like a tornado. Each

Dilipic unit seemed madly, suicidally determined that nothing would get through that furious wall to interfere

with whatever it was that was coming down from space to the ground through the relatively quiet 'eye' of the

pseudo-hurricane.

On the other hand, the Arpalones were madly, suicidally determined to break through that vortex wall. Group

after group of jet-fighters came diving in. Occasionally, their combined blasts made enough of an opening for

the centre fighter to get through. Once inside, the pilot stood his little stubby-winged craft squarely on her tail,

opened his projectors to absolute maximum power and spread, and climbed straight up ...

THE GALAXY PRIMES - a superb novel of conflict and high adventure in the depths of space by E. E. 'Doc' Smith,

world-famous creator of the epic LENSMAN and SKYLARK series (both avail' able in Panther Science Fiction).

Also by E. E. 'Doc' Smith in Panther Science Fiction

Spacehounds oflPC Subspace Explorers*

The LENSMAN series

Triplanetary First Lensman Galactic Patrol Grey Lensman Second Stage Lensmen Children of the Lens Masters of

the Vortex

The SKYLARK series

The Skylark of Space Skylark Three Skylark of Valeron Skylark DuQuesne

*Forthcoming

E. E. 'Doc' Smith

The Galaxy Primes

Panther

Granada Publishing Limited

First published in Great Britain in 1975 by

Panther Books Ltd

Frogmore, St Albans, Herts AL2 2NF

Chaucer Press) Ltd Bungay, Suffolk Set in Linotype Times

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired

out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that

in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the

subsequent purchaser. This book is published at a net price and is supplied subject to the Publishers Association

Standard Conditions of Sale registered under the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1956.

THE GALAXY PRIMES

ONE

Her hair was a brilliant green. So was her spectacularly filled halter. So were her tight short-shorts, her lipstick, and

the lacquer on her finger- and toe-nails. As she strolled into the Main of the starship, followed hesitantly by the other

girl, she drove a mental probe at the black-haired, powerfully-built man seated at the instrument-banked console.

Blocked.

Then at the other, slenderer man who was rising to his feet from the pilot's bucket seat. His guard was partially down;

he was telepathing a pleasant if somewhat reserved greeting to both newcomers.

She turned to her companion and spoke aloud. 'So these are the system's best.' The emphasis was somewhere

between condescension and sneer. 'Not much to choose between, I'd say ... 'port me a tenth-piece, Clee? Heads, I take

the tow-head.'

She flipped the coin dexterously. 'Heads it is, Lola, so I get Jim - James James James the Ninth himself. You have

the honor of pairing with Clee - or should I say His Learnedness Right the Honorable Director Doctor Cleander

Simmsworth Garlock, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Science, Prime Operator, President and First Fellow of the

Galaxian Society, First Fellow of the Gunther Society, Fellow of the Institute of Paraphysics, of the Institute of

Nuclear Physics, of the College of Mathematics, of the Congress of Psiontists, and of all the other top-bracket brain-

gangs you ever heard of. Also, for your information, his men have given him a couple of informal degrees - P.D.Q.

and S.O.B.'

The big psiontist's expression of saturnine, almost contemptuous amusement had not changed; his voice came flat

and cold. 'The less you say, Doctor Bellamy, the better. Bitchy, swellheaded women give me an acute rectal pain.

Pitching your curves over all the vizzies in space got you aboard, but it won't get you a thing from here on. And for

your information, Doctor Bellamy, one more crack like that and I take you over my knee and blister your backside.'

'Try it, you clumsy ape!' she jeered. 'That I want to see -

any time you want to get both arms broken at the elbows!'

'Now's as good a time as any. I like your spirit, but I can't say a thing for your judgment.' He got up and started

purposefully toward her, but both noncombatants came between.

'Hold it, Clee!' James protested, both hands against the heavier man's chest. 'What the hell kind of show is that to put

on?' And simultaneously:

'Belle! For godsake - picking a fight already, and with nobody knows how many million people looking onl You

know as well as I do that we may have to spend the rest of our lives together, so act like civilized beings - please -

both of you! And don't...'

'Nobody's watching this but us,' Garlock interrupted. 'When pussy there started using her claws I cut the gun.'

'That's what you think,' James said sharply, 'but Fatso and his number one girl friend are coming in on the tight

beam.'

'Oh?' Garlock whirled toward the hitherto dark and silent three-dimensional communications instrument. The face of

a bossy-looking woman was already bright.

'Garlock! How dare you try to cut Chancellor Ferber off?' she demanded. Her voice was deep-pitched, blatant with

authority. 'Here you are, sir.'

The woman's face shifted to one side and a man's appeared - a face to justify in full his nickname.

'"Fatso," eh?' Chancellor Ferber snarled. Pale eyes glared from the fat face. That costs you exactly one thousand

credits, James."

'How much will this cost me, Fatso?' Garlock asked.

'Five thousand - and, since nobody can call me that deliberately, demotion three grades and probation for three years.

Make a note, Miss Foster.'

'Noted sir.'

'Still sure we aren't going anywhere,' Garlock said. What a brain!'

'Sure I'm sure!' Ferber gloated. 'In a couple of hours I'm going to buy your precious starship in as junk. In the

meantime, whether you like it or not, I'm going to watch your expression while you push all those pretty buttons and

nothing happens.'

'The trouble with you, Fatso,' Garlock said dispassionately, as he opened a drawer and took out a pair of cutting

pliers, 'is

that all your strength is in your glands and none in your brain. There are a lot of things - including a lot of tests - you

know nothing about. How much will you see after I've cut one wire?' 'You wouldn't dare!' the fat man shouted. 'I'd

fire you -blacklist you all over the sys —'

Voice and images died away and Garlock turned to the two women in the Main. He began to smile, but his mental

shield did not weaken.

'You've got a point there, Lola,' he said, going on as though Feber's interruption had not occurred. 'Not that I blame

either Belle or myself. If anything was ever calculated to drive a man nuts, this farce was. As the only female Prime

in the system, Belle should have been in automatically - she had no competition. And to anybody with three brain

cells working the other place lay between you, Lola, and the other three female Ops in the age group.

'But no, Ferber and the rest of the Board - stupidity iiber alles\ - think all us Ops and Primes are psycho and that the

ship will never even lift. So they made a Grand Circus of it. But they succeeded in one thing - with such abysmal

stupidity so rampant I'm getting more and more reconciled to the idea of our not getting back ... at least, not for a

long, long time.' 'Why, they said we had a very good chance...' Lola began. 'Yeah, and they said a lot of even bigger

damn lies than that one. Have you read any of my papers?' 'I'm sorry. I'm not a mathematician.'

'Our motion will be purely at random. If it isn't, 111 eat this whole ship. We won't get back until Jim and I work out

something to steer us with. But they must be wondering no end, outside, what the score is, so I'm willing to call it a

draw -temporarily - and let 'em in again. How about it, Belle?'

'A draw it is - temporarily.' Neither, however, even offered to shake hands.

'Smile pretty, everybody,' Garlock said, and pressed a stud, '...the matter? What's the matter? Oh ... the worried voice

of the System's ace newscaster came in. 'Power failure already 1 )'

'No.' Garlock replied. 'I figured we had a couple of minutes of privacy coming, if you can understand the meaning of

the word. Now all four of us tell everybody who is watching or

listening au revoir or goodbye, whichever it may turn out to be.' He reached for the switch.

'Wait a minute!' the newscaster demanded. 'Leave it on until the last poss —' His voice broke off sharply.

Turn it back on!' Belle ordered. . 'No.' 'Scared?'

'Exactly. I'm scared purple. So would you be, if you had three brain cells working in that gloryhound's head of yours.

Get set, everybody, and we'll take off.'

'Stop it, both of you!' Lola exclaimed. 'Where do you want us to sit, and do we strap down?'

'You sit here; Belle at that plate beside Jim. Yes, strap down. There probably won't be any shock, and we should land

right side up, but there's no sense in taking chances. Sure your stuff's all aboard?' 'Yes, it's in our rooms.'

The four secured themselves; the two men checked their instruments for the dozenth time. The pilot donned his

scanner. The ship lifted effortlessly, noiselessly. Through the atmosphere; through and far beyond the stratosphere. It

stopped. 'Ready, Clee?' James licked his lips. 'As ready as I ever will be, I guess. Shoot." The pilots's right hand

moved unenthusiastically toward a red button on his panel ... slowed ... stopped. He stared into his scanner at Earth

far below.

'Hit it, Jim!' Oarlock snapped. 'Hit it, for godsake, before we all lose our nerve!'

James stabbed convulsively at the button, and in the very instant of contact - instantaneously, without a fractional

microsecond of time-lapse - their familiar surroundings disappeared. Without any sensation of motion, of

displacement, or of the passage of any time whatsoever, the planet beneath them was no longer their familiar Earth.

The plates showed no familiar stars nor patterns of heavenly bodies. The brightly-shining sun was very evidently not

Sol.

'Well, we went somewhere ... but not to Alpha Centauri, not much to our surprise.' James gulped twice; then went on,

speaking almost jauntily now that the attempt had been made and had failed. 'So now it's up to you, Clee, as Director

of 10

Project Gunther and captain of the good ship Pleiades, to boss the more-or-less simple - more, I hope - job of getting

us back to Tellus.'

Science, both physical and paraphysical, had done its best. Gunther's Theorems, which defined the electromagnetic

and electrogravitic parameters pertaining to the annihilation of distance, had been studied, tested, and applied to the

full. So had the Psionic Corollaries - which, while not having the status of paraphysical laws, did allow computation

of the qualities and magnitudes of the stresses required for any given application of the Gunther Effect.

The planning of the starship Pleiades had been difficult in the extreme, its construction almost impossible. While it

was practically a foregone conclusion that any man of the requisite caliber would already be a member of the

Galaxian Society, the three planets and eight satellites were screened, psiontist by psiontist, to select the two

strongest and most versatile of their breed.

These two, Garlock and James, were heads of departments of, and under iron-clad contract to, vast Solar System

Enterprises, Inc., the only concern able and willing to attempt the building of the first starship.

However, Alonzo P. Ferber, Chancellor of S.S.E., would not risk a tenth-piece of the company's money on such a

bird-brained scheme. Himself a Gunther First, he believed implicity that Firsts were in fact tops in Gunther ability;

that these few self-styled 'Operators' and 'Prime Operators' were either charlatans or self-deluded crackpots. Since he

could not feel that so-called 'Operator Field', no such thing did or could exist. No Gunther starship could ever,

possibly, work.

He did loan Garlock and James to the Galaxians, but that was as far as he would go. For salaries and labor, for

research and materials, for trials and for errors; the Society paid and paid and paid.

Thus the starship Pleiades had cost the Galaxian Society almost a thousand million credits.

Garlock and James had worked on the ship since its inception. They were to be of the crew; for over a year it had

been taken for granted that they would be its only crew.

As the Pleiades neared completion, however, it became clearer and clearer that the displacement-control presented

an unsolved, and quite possibly an insoluble, problem. It was mathematically certain that, when the Gunther field

went on, the ship would be displaced instantaneously to some location in space having precisely the Gunther

coordinates required by that particular field. One impeccably rigorous analysis showed that the ship would shift into

the nearest solar system possessing an Earth-type planet - which was believed to be Alpha Centauri and which was

close enough to Sol so that orientation would be automatic and the return to Earth a simple matter.

Since the Gunther Effect did in fact annihilate distance, however, another group of mathematicians, led by Garlock

and James, proved with equal rigor that the point of destination was no more likely to be any one given Gunther

point than any other one of the myriads of billions of equiguntherial points undoubtedly existing throughout our

entire normal space-time continuum.

The two men would go anyway, of course. Carefully-calculated pressures would make them go. It was neither

necesary nor desirable, however, for them to go alone.

Wherefore the planets and satellites were combed again this time to select two women - the two most highly-gifted

psioni-cists in the eighteen-to-twenty-five age group. Thus, if the Pleiades returned successfully to Earth, well and

good. If she did not, the four selectees would found, upon some far-off world, a race much abler than the humanity of

Earth; since eighty-three percent of Earth's dwellers had psionic grades lower than Four. This search, with its

attendant fanfare and studiedly blatant publicity, was so planned and engineered that the selected women did not

arrive at the spaceport until a bare fifteen minutes before the scheduled time of takeoff. Thus it made no difference

whether the women liked the men or not, or vice versa; or whether or not any of them really wanted to make the trip.

Pressures were such that each of them had to go, whether he or she wanted to or not.

'Cut the rope, Jim, and let the old bucket drop,' Garlock said. 'Not too close. Before we make any kind of contact

we'll have to do some organizing. These instruments' - he waved at 12

the console - 'show that ours is the only Operator Field in this whole region of space. Hence, there are no Operators

and no Primes. That means that from now until we get back to Tellus ...'

'// we get back to Tellus,' Belle corrected, sweetly. 'Until we get back to Tellus there will be no Gunthering aboard

this ship ...'

'What?' Belle broke in again. 'Have you lost your mind?' 'There will be little if any lepping, and nothing else at all. At

the table, if we want sugar, we will reach for it or have it passed. We will pick up things, such as cigarettes, with our

fingers. We will carry lighters and use them. When we go from place to place, we will walk. Is that clear?'

'You seem to be talking English,' Belle said, 'but the words don't make sense.'

'I didn't think you were that stupid.' Their eyes locked and held. Then Garlock grinned savagely. 'Okay. You tell her,

Lola, in words of as few syllables as possible.'

'Why, to get used to it, of course,' Lola explained, while Belle glared at Garlock. 'So as not to reveal anything we

don't have to."

'Excellent, Miss Montandon - all monosyllables except two. That should make it clear, even to Miss Bellamy.' He

paused, glancing calmly at Belle's glare, then said, 'In emergencies, of course, anything goes. We will now proceed

with business.'

'One minute, please!' Belle snapped. 'Just why, Lord Director Captain Garlock, are you insisting on oral

communication, when lepping is so much faster and better? It's stupid -reactionary. Don't you ever lep?'

"With Jim, on business, yes; with women, no more than I have to. What I think is nobody's business but mine.' What

a way to run a ship! Or a project!' 'Running this project is my business, not yours; and if there's any one thing in the

entire universe it does not need, it's a female exhibitionist. Besides your obvious qualifications to be one of the Eves

in case of Ultimate Contingency...' He broke off and stared at her, his contemptuous gaze traveling slowly,

dissectingly, from her toes to the topmost wave of her hairdo. 'Forty-two, twenty, forty?' he asked.

'You flatter me.' Her voice was controlled fury. 'Thirty-nine,

twenty-two, thirty-nine. Five-seven. One thirty-five. If any of it's any of your business, which it isn't. You should be

discussing brains and ability, not vital statistics.'

'Brains? Well, yes - as a Prime, you must have a brain. What do you think you're good for on this project? What can

you do?'

'I can do anything any man ever born can do, and do it better!'

'Okay. Compute a Gunther field that will put us two hundred thousand feet directly above the peak of that mountain.'

That isn't fair and you know it - not that I expected fairness from you. That doesn't take either brains or ability...'

'Oh, no?'

"No. Merely highly specialized training that you know I haven't had. Give me a five-tape course on it and I'll come

closer than either you or James; for a hundred credits a shot.'

'I'll do just that. Something you are supposed to know, then. How would you go about making first contact?'

'Well, I wouldn't do it the way you would - by knocking down the first native I saw, putting my foot on his face, and

yelling, "Bow down, you stupid beasts, and worship me—" '

'Hold it, both of you!' James broke in 'What the hell are you trying to prove? How about cutting out this cat-and-dog

act and getting some work done?'

'You've got a point there,' Garlock admitted, holding his temper by a visible effort. 'Sorry, Jim. Belle, what were you

briefed for?'

'To understudy you.' She, too, fought her temper down, To learn everything about Project Gunther. I have a whole

box of tapes in my room, including advanced Gunther math and first-contact techniques. I'm to study them during all

my on-watch time unless you assign other duties.'

'No matter what your duties may be, you'll have to have time to study. If you don't find what you want in your own

tapes -and you probably won't, since Ferber and his Miss Foster ran the selections - use our library. It's good -

designed to carry on our civilization. Miss Montandon? No, that's ridiculous, the way we're fixed. Lola?'

'I'm to learn how to be Doctor James'...'

'Jim please, Lola,' James said. 'And call him Clee.' 14

'I'd like that.' She smiled winningly. 'And my friends call me "Brownie".'

'I see why they would. It fits like a coat of lacquer.' It did. Her hair was a dark, lustrous brown, as were her eyebrows.

Her eyes were brown. Her skin, too - her dark red playsuit left little to the imagination - was a rich and even brown.

Originally fairly dark, it had been tanned to a more-than-fashionable depth of color by naked sunbathing and by

practically-naked outdoor sports. A couple of inches shorter than the green-haired girl, she too had a figure that

would have delighted any sculptor.

'I'm your friend, Brownie, and very glad to be such,' James said. 'Go ahead.'

'I'm to be your assistant. I have about a thousand tapes to study, too. It'll be quite awhile, I'm afraid, before I can be

of much use, but I'll do the best I can.'

'If we had hit Alpha Centauri that arrangement would have been good, but as we are, it isn't.' Garlock frowned in

thought, his heavy black eyebrows almost meeting above his finely-chiseled, acquiline nose. 'Since neither Jim nor I

need an assistant any more than we need tails, it was designed to give you girls something to do. But out here, lost,

there's work for a dozen trained specialists and there are only four of us. So we shouldn't duplicate effort. Right? You

first, Belle.'

'Are you asking me or telling me?' she asked. 'And that's a fair question; don't read anything into it that isn't there.

With your attitude, I want information.'

'I am asking you,' he replied, carefully. 'For your information, when I know what should be done, I give orders.

When I don't know, as now, I ask advice. If I like it, I follow it Fair enough?'

'Fair enough. We're apt to need any number of specialists.' 'Lola?'

'Of course we shouldn't duplicate. What shall I study?' "That's what we'll have to figure out. We can't do it exactly, of

course; all we can do now is set up a rough scheme. Jim's job is the only one that's definite. He'll have to work full

time on nebular configurations. If we hit inhabited planets he'll have to add their star-charts to his own. That leaves

three of us to do all the other work of a survey. Ideally, we would cover all

the factors that would be of use in getting us back to Tellus, but since we don't know what those factors are... Found

out anything yet, Jim?'

'A little. It's a Tellus-type planet, apparently strictly so. Oceans and continents. Lots of inhabitants - farms, villages,

all sizes of cities. We're not close enough to say definitely, but the inhabitants seem to be humanoid, if not human.'

'Hold her here. Besides astronomy, which is all yours, what do we need most?'

'We should have enough to classify planets and inhabitants, so as to chart a space-trend if there is any. I'd say the

most important ones would be geology, stratigraphy, paleontology, oceanography, xenology, anthropology,

ethnology, vertebrate biology, botany, and at least some ecology.'

That's about the list I was afraid of. But there are only three of us.'

'Each of you will have to be a lot of specialists in one, then. I'd say the best split would be planetology, xenology,

and anthropology - each, of course, stretched all out of shape to cover a dozen related and non-related specialities.'

'Good enough. Xenology, of course, is mine. Contacts, liaison, politics, correlation, and so on, as well as studying the

non-human life forms - including as many lower animals and plants as possible. I'll make a stab at it. Now, Belle,

since you're a Prime and Lola's an Operator, you get the next toughest job. Planetography.'

'Why not?' Belle smiled and began to act as one of the party. 'All I know about it is a hazy idea of what the word

means, but I'll start studying as soon as we get squared away.'

'Fine. That leaves anthropology to you, Lola. Besides, that's your line, isn't it?'

'Yes. Sociological Anthropology. I have my M.S. in it, and I was working for my Ph.D. But as Jim said, it isn't only

the one specialty. You want me, I take it, to cover humanoid races, too.'

E. E. Doc Smith - The Galaxy Primes.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: