Science fiction; Space ships -- Fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
"Speak not of it, Richard Seaton. I suffered only a temporary
inconvenience, a small thing indeed compared to the experience of
encountering a mind of such stupendous power as yours. Neither words
nor deeds can express to you the profound gratitude of our entire race
for what you have done for Valeron.
"I am informed that you personally do not care for extravagant praise,
but please believe me to be voicing the single thought of a world's
people when I say that no words coined by brain of man could be just,
to say nothing of being extravagant, when applied to you. I do not
suppose that we can do anything, however slight, for you in return, in
token that these are not entirely empty words?"
"You certainly can, sir," Seaton made surprising answer. "We are so
completely lost in space that without a great deal of material and of
mechanical aid we shall never be able to return to, nor even to locate
in space, our native Galaxy, to say nothing of our native planet."
A concerted gasp of astonishment was his reply, then he was assured in
no uncertain terms that the resources of Valeron were at his disposal.
A certain amount of public attention had of course to be endured; but
Seaton and Crane, pleading a press of work upon their new projectors,
buried themselves in Radnor's laboratory, leaving it to their wives to
bear the brunt of Valeronian adulation.
"How do you like being a heroine, Dot?" Seaton asked one evening, as
the two women returned from an unusually demonstrative reception in
another city.
"We just revel in it, since we didn't do any of the real work--it's
just too perfectly gorgeous for words," Dorothy replied shamelessly.
"Especially Peggy." She eyed Margaret mischievously and winked
furtively at Seaton. "Why, you ought to see her--she could just simply
roll that stuff up on a fork and eat it, as though it were that much
soft fudge!"
Since the scientific and mechanical details of the construction of a
fifth-order projector have been given in full elsewhere there is no
need to repeat them here. Seaton built his neutronium lens in the core
of the near-by white dwarf star, precisely as Rovol had done it from
distant Norlamin. He brought it to Valeron and around it there began
to come into being a duplicate of the immense projector which the
Terrestrials had been obliged to leave behind them when they abandoned
gigantic _Skylark Three_ to plunge through the fourth dimension in tiny
_Two_.
"Maybe it's none of my business, Radnor," Seaton turned to the
Valeronian curiously during a lull in their work, "but how come you're
still simply shooting away those Chloran vessels by making them put out
their zones of force? Why didn't you hop over there on your projector
and blow their whole planet over into the next Solar System? I would
have done that long ago if it had been me, I think."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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