Masters of Space Part 26

"I'll say we're drooling," Sandra said. "I could do handstands and pinwheels with joy."

"Let's see you," Hilton said. "That we'd all get a kick out of."

"Not now--don't want to hold this up--but sometime I just will. Bev?"

"I'm for it--and _how_! And won't Bernadine be amazed," Beverly laughed gleefully, "at her wise-crack about the 'race to end all human races'

coming true?"

"I'm in favor of it, too, one hundred per cent," Poynter said. "Has it occurred to you, Jarve, that this opens up intergalactic exploration? No supplies to carry and plenty of time and fuel?"

"No, it hadn't. You've got a point there, Frank. That might take a little of the curse off of it, at that."

"When some of our kids get to be twenty years old or so and get married, I'm going to take a crew of them to Andromeda. We'll arrange, then, to extend our honeymoons another week," Hilton said. "What will our policy be? Keep it dark for a while with just us eight, or spread it to the rest?"

"Spread it, I'd say," Kincaid said.

"We can't keep it secret, anyway," Teddy argued. "Since Larry and Tuly were in on the whole deal, every Oman on the planet knows all about it.

Somebody is going to ask questions, and Omans always answer questions and always tell the truth."

"Questions have already been asked and answered," Larry said, going to the door and opening it.

Stella rushed in. "We've been hearing the _d.a.m.nedest_ things!" She kissed everybody, ending with Hilton, whom she seized by both shoulders.

"Is it actually true, boss, that you can fix me up so I'll live practically forever and can eat more than eleven calories a day without getting fat as a pig? Candy, ice cream, cake, pie, eclairs, cream puffs, French pastries, sugar and gobs of thick cream in my coffee...?"

Half a dozen others, including the van der Moen twins, came in. Beverly emitted a shriek of joy. "Bernadine! The mother of the race to end all human races!"

"You whistled it, birdie!" Bernadine caroled. "I'm going to have ten or twelve, each one weirder than all the others. I told you I was a prophet--I'm going to hang out my s.h.i.+ngle. Wholesale and retail prophecy; special rates for large parties." Her voice was drowned out in a general clamor.

"Hold it, everybody!" Hilton yelled. "Chip-chop it! _Quit_ it!" Then, as the noise subsided, "If you think I'm going to tell this tall tale over and over again for the next two weeks you're all crazy. So shut down the plant and get everybody out here."

"Not _everybody_, Jarve!" Temple snapped. "We don't want sc.u.m, and there's some of that, even in BuSci."

"You're so right. Who, then?"

"The rest of the heads and a.s.sistants, of course ... and all the lab girls and their husbands and boy-friends. I know they are all okay. That will be enough for now, don't you think?"

"I do think;" and the indicated others were sent for; and in a few minutes arrived.

The Omans brought chairs and Hilton stood on a table. He spoke for ten minutes. Then: "Before you decide whether you want to or not, think it over very carefully, because it's a one-way street. Fluorine can not be displaced. Once in, you're stuck for life. _There is no way back._ I've told you all the drawbacks and disadvantages I know of, but there may be a lot more that I haven't thought of yet. So think it over for a few days and when each of you has definitely made up his or her mind, let me know." He jumped down off the table.

His listeners, however, did not need days, or even seconds, to decide.

Before Hilton's feet hit the floor there was a yell of unanimous approval.

He looked at his wife. "Do you suppose _we're_ nuts?"

"Uh-uh. Not a bit. Alex was right. I'm going to just _love_ it!" She hugged his elbow ecstatically. "So are you, darling, as soon as you stop looking at only the black side."

"You know ... you could be right?" For the first time since the "ghastly" transformation Hilton saw that there really was a bright side and began to study it. "With most of BuSci--and part of the Navy, and selectees from Terra--it _will_ be slightly terrific, at that!"

"And that 'habit-forming-drug' objection isn't insuperable, darling,"

Temple said. "If the younger generations start weakening we'll fix the Omans. I wouldn't want to wipe them out entirely, but ..."

"But how do we settle priority, Doctor Hilton?" a girl called out; a tall, striking, brunette laboratory technician whose name Hilton needed a second to recall. "By pulling straws or hair? Or by shooting dice or each other or what?"

"Thanks, Betty, you've got a point. Sandy c.u.mmings and department heads first, then a.s.sistants. Then you girls, in alphabetical order, each with her own husband or fiance."

"And my name is Ames. Oh, goody!"

"Larry, please tell them to ..."

"I already have, sir. We are set up to handle four at once."

"Good boy. So scat, all of you, and get back to work--except Sandy, Bill, Alex, and Teddy. You four go with Larry."

Since the new sense was not peyondix, Hilton had started calling it "perception" and the others adopted the term as a matter of course.

Hilton could use that sense for what seemed like years--and actually was whole minutes--at a time without fatigue or strain. He could not, however, nor could the Omans, give his tremendous power to anyone else.

As he had said, he could do a certain amount of reworking; but the amount of improvement possible to make depended entirely upon what there was to work on. Thus, Temple could cover about six hundred light-years.

It developed later that the others of the Big Eight could cover from one hundred up to four hundred or so. The other department heads and a.s.sistants turned out to be still weaker, and not one of the rank and file ever became able to cover more than a single planet.

This sense was not exactly telepathy; at least not what Hilton had always thought telepathy would be. If anything, however, it was more.

It was a lumping together of all five known human senses--and half a dozen unknown ones called, collectively, "intuition"--into one super-sense that was all-inclusive and all-informative. If he ever could learn exactly what it was and exactly what it did and how it did it ...

but he'd better chip-chop the wool-gathering and get back onto the job.

The Stretts had licked the old Masters very easily, and intended to wipe out the Omans and the humans. They had no doubt at all as to their ability to do it. Maybe they could. If the Masters hadn't made some progress that the Omans didn't know about, they probably could. That was the first thing to find out. As soon as they'd been converted he'd call in all the experts and they'd go through the Masters' records like a dose of salts through a hillbilly schoolma'am.

At that point in Hilton's cogitations Sawtelle came in.

He had come down in his gig, to confer with Hilton as to the newly beefed-up fleet. Instead of being glum and pessimistic and foreboding, he was chipper and enthusiastic. They had rebuilt a thousand Oman s.h.i.+ps.

By combining Oman and Terran science, and adding everything the First Team had been able to reduce to practise, they had hyped up the power by a good fifteen per cent. Seven hundred of those s.h.i.+ps, and all his men, were now arrayed in defense around Ardry. Three hundred, manned by Omans, were around Fuel Bin.

"Why?" Hilton asked. "It's Fuel Bin they've been attacking."

"Uh-uh. Minor objective," the captain demurred, positively. "The real attack will be here at you; the headquarters and the brains. Then Fuel Bin will be duck soup. But the thing that pleased me most is the control. Man, you never imagined such control! No admiral in history ever had such control of ten s.h.i.+ps as I have of seven hundred. Those Omans spread orders so fast that I don't even finish thinking one and it's being executed. And no misunderstandings, no slips. For instance, this last batch--fifteen skeletons. Far out; they're getting cagy. I just thought 'Box 'em in and slug 'em' and--In! Across! Out! Socko!

Pffft! Just like that and just that fast. None of 'em had time to light a beam. n.o.body before ever even _dreamed_ of such control!"

"That's great, and I like it ... and you're only a captain. How many s.h.i.+ps can Five-Jet Admiral Gordon put into s.p.a.ce?"

"That depends on what you call s.h.i.+ps. Superdreadnoughts, _Perseus_ cla.s.s, six. First-line battles.h.i.+ps, twenty-nine. Second-line, smaller and some pretty old, seventy-three. Counting everything armed that will hold air, something over two hundred."

"I thought it was something like that. How would you like to be Five-Jet Admiral Sawtelle of the Ardrian Navy?"

"I wouldn't. I'm Terran Navy. But you knew that and you know me.