Free E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne by E. E. (Doc) Smith Page B

a man with a paper nose! How d’you figure on keeping stuff
that
size secret from Steel?’
    ‘It can be done. I know a chap who owns a steel mill – so insignificant, relatively speaking, that he has not been bought out or frozen out by Steel. I have helped him out from time to time, and he assures me that he will be glad to cooperate. We will not be able to oversee much of the work ourselves, which is a drawback. However, we can get MacDougall to do it for us.’
    ‘MacDougall? The man who built Intercontinental? He wouldn’t touch a little job like this with a pole!’
    ‘On the contrary, he is keen on doing it. It means building the first spaceship, you know.’
    ‘He’s too big to disappear, I’d think. Wouldn’t Steel follow him up?’
    ‘They never have, a few times when he and I have been out of touch with civilization for three months at a time.’
    ‘Well, it would cost more than our whole capital.’
    ‘No more talk of money, Dick. Your contribution to the firm is worth more than everything I have.’
    ‘Hokay – if that’s the way you want it, it tickles me likeI’d swallowed an ostrich feather … and I can’t think of any more objections. Four times the size – wheeeeekity-wheek! A two-hundred-pound bar – k-z-r-e-e-p-t-POWIE!
    ‘And why don’t we built an attractor – a thing like an object-compass except with a ten-pound bar instead of a needle, so if anything chases us in space we can reach out and shake the whey out of it – or machine guns shooting Mark Ones-to-Tens through pressure gaskets in the walls? I just bodaciously do NOT relish the prospect of fleeing from a gaggle of semi-intelligent alien monstrosities merely because I got nothing bigger than a rifle to fight back with.’
    ‘All you have to do is design them, Dick; and that shouldn’t be too hard. But, speaking of emergencies, the power plant should really have a very large factor of safety. Four hundred pounds, say, and everything in duplicate, from power-bars to push-buttons?’
    ‘I’ll buy that.’
    Work was soon begun on the huge steel shell in the independent steel plant under the direct supervision of MacDougall by men who had been in his employ for years. While it was being built, Seaton and Crane went ahead with the construction of the original spaceship. Practically all of their time, however, was spent in perfecting the many essential things that were to go into the real
Skylark.
    Thus they did not know that to the flawed members there were being attached faulty plates by imperfect welding. Nor could they have detected the poor workmanship by any ordinary inspection, for it was being done by a picked crew of experts, picked by Perkins. To make things even, Steel did not know that the many peculiar instruments installed by Seaton and Crane were not exactly what they should have been.
    In due course ‘The Cripple’– a name which Seaton soon shortened to ‘Old Crip’– was finished. The foreman overheard a conversation between Crane and Seaton in which it was decided not to start for a couple of weeks, as they
had
to work out some kind of a book of navigation tables. Prescott reported that Steel was still sitting on its hands, waiting for the first flight. Word came from MacDougall that the
Skylark
was ready. Crane and Seaton went somewhere in the helicopter ‘to make a few final tests.’
    A few nights later a huge ball landed on Crane Field. It moved lightly, easily, betraying its thousands of tons of weight only by the hole it made in the hard-beaten ground. Seaton and Crane sprang out.
    Dorothy and her father were waiting. Seaton caught her up and kissed her vigorously. Then, a look of sheerest triumph on his face, he extended a hand to Vaneman.
    ‘She flies!
How
she flies! We’ve been around the moon!’
    ‘What?’
Dorothy was shocked. ‘Without even
telling me
? Why, I’d’ve been scared pea-green if I’d known!’
    ‘That was why,’ Seaton assured her. ‘Now you won’t have to worry