Skylark Three — Story, Setting & Ideas

Seaton was again seen. He was now standing upon a hemispherical mass of earth. He darted back toward the group upon the ground, while the mass of earth fell with a crash a quarter of a mile away. High above their heads the mirror again encompassed Seaton, and again shot upward and southward. Five times this maneuver was repeated before Seaton came down, landing easily in front of them and opening his helmet.

"It's just what we thought it was, only worse," he reported tersely. "Can't do a thing with it. Gravitation won't work through it--bars won't--nothing will. And dark? _Dark!_ Folks, you ain't never seen no darkness, nor heard no silence. It scared me stiff!"

"Poor little boy--afraid of the dark!" exclaimed Dorothy. "We saw absolute blackness in space."

"Not like this, you didn't. I just saw absolute darkness and heard absolute silence for the first time in my life. I never imagined anything like it--come on up with me and I'll show it to you."

"No you won't!" his wife shrieked as she retreated toward Crane. "Some other time, perhaps."

Seaton removed the harness and glanced at the spot from which he had taken off, where now appeared a hemispherical hole in the ground.

"Let's see what kind of tracks I left, Mart," and the two men bent over the depression. They saw with astonishment that the cut surface was perfectly smooth, with not even the slightest roughness or irregularity visible. Even the smallest loose grains of sand had been sheared in two along a mathematically exact hemispherical surface by the inconceivable force of the disintegrating copper bar.

"Well, that sure wins the----"

An alarm bell sounded. Without a glance around, Seaton seized Dorothy and leaped into the testing shed. Dropping her unceremoniously to the floor he stared through the telescope sight of an enormous ray-generator which had automatically aligned itself upon the distant point of liberation of intra-atomic energy which had caused the alarm to sound. One hand upon the switch, his face was hard and merciless as he waited to make sure of the identity of the approaching space-ship, before he released the frightful power of his generator upon it.

"I've been expecting DuQuesne to try it again," he gritted, striving to make out the visitor, yet more than two hundred miles distant. "He's out to get you, Dot--and this time I'm not just going to warm him up and scare him away, as I did last time. This time that misguided mutt's going to get frizzled right.... I can't locate him with this small telescope, Mart. Line him up in the big one and give me the word, will you?"

"I see him, Dick, but it is not DuQuesne's ship. It is built of transparent arenak, like the 'Kondal.' Even though it seems impossible, I believe it is the 'Kondal'."

"Maybe so, and again maybe DuQuesne built it--or stole it. On second thought, though, I don't believe that DuQuesne would be fool enough to tackle us again in the same way--but I'm taking no chances.... O. K., it is the 'Kondal,' I can see Dunark and Sitar myself, now."

The transparent vessel soon neared the field and the four Terrestrials walked out to greet their Osnomian friends. Through the arenak walls they recognized Dunark, Kofedix of Kondal, at the controls, and saw Sitar, his beautiful young queen, lying in one of the seats near the wall. She attempted a friendly greeting, but her face was strained as though she were laboring under a burden too great for her to bear.

As they watched, Dunark slipped a helmet over his head and one over Sitar's, pressed a button to open one of the doors, and supported her toward the opening.

"They mustn't come out, Dick!" exclaimed Dorothy in dismay. "They'll freeze to death in five minutes without any clothes on!"

"Yes, and Sitar can't stand up under our gravitation, either--I doubt if Dunark can, for long," and Seaton dashed toward the vessel, motioning the visitor back.

But misunderstanding the signal, Dunark came on. As he clambered heavily through the door he staggered as though under an enormous weight, and Sitar collapsed upon the frozen ground. Trying to help her, half-kneeling over her, Dunark struggled, his green skin paling to a yellowish tinge at the touch of the bitter and unexpected cold. Seaton leaped forward and gathered Sitar up in his mighty arms as though she were a child.

"Help Dunark back in, Mart," he directed crisply. "Hop in, girls--we've got to take these folks back up where they can live."