Triplanetary quotes

There is much evidence to support the belief that it was not merely a coincidence that so many planets came into being at about the same time as the galactic inter-passage.

Another school of thought holds that it was pure coincidence; that all suns have planets as naturally and as inevitably as cats have kittens.

Be that as it may, Arisian records are clear upon the point that before the two galaxies began to coalesce, there were never more than three solar systems present in either; and usually only one.

They were intolerant, domineering, rapacious, insatiable, cold, callous, and brutal. They were keen, capable, persevering, analytical, and efficient. They had no trace of any of the softer emotions or sensibilities possessed by races adherent to Civilization.

No Eddorian ever had anything even remotely resembling a sense of humor.

While not essentially bloodthirsty—that is, not loving bloodshed for its own sweet sake—they were no more averse to bloodletting than they were in favor of it. Any amount of killing which would or which might advance an Eddorian toward his goal was commendable;

The Eddorian then drove in with an analyzing probe, only to be surprised again—the Arisian’s thought could not be traced! And Enphilistor, while warding off the raging Eddorian, directed a quiet thought as though he were addressing someone close by his side:

“Come in, please, one or more of the Elders. There is a situation here which I am not qualified to handle.”

“We, the Elders of Arisia in fusion, are here.” A grave, deeply resonant pseudo-voice filled the Eddorians’ minds; each perceived in three-dimensional fidelity an aged, white-bearded human face. “You of Eddore have been expected.

The hatch opened. Ball and closely-prisoned man plummeted downward; slowing abruptly, with a horrible deceleration, to terminal velocity. Had the air been any trifle thicker the Atlantean captain would have died then and there; but that, too, had been computed accurately and Phryges lived.

And as the ball bulleted downward on a screaming slant, it shrank!

This, too, the Atlanteans hoped, was new—a synthetic which air-friction would erode away, molecule by molecule, so rapidly that no perceptible fragment of it would reach ground.

The retaliatory rockets which were to wipe out Norgrad, Uigharstoy, and thousands of square miles of environs were on their way long before either bomb or earthquake destroyed all of the Atlantean launching ramps.

But when equilibrium was at last restored, the ocean rolled serenely where a minor continent had been.

If either of the two had been less suspicious, less jealous, less arrogant and domineering—in other words, had not been Eddorians—this History of Civilization might never have been written; or written very differently and by another hand.

Both were, however, Eddorians.

In the brief interval between the fall of Atlantis and the rise of Rome to the summit of her power, Eukonidor of Arisia had aged scarcely at all. He was still a youth. He was, and would be for many centuries to come, a Watchman.

They were the hardest products of the hardest school the world has ever known: trained rigorously to deal out death mercilessly at command; to accept death unflinchingly at need.

They should not and can not be judged by the higher, finer standards of a softer, gentler day.

The afternoon passed; evening approached. All the gladiators then in Rome assembled in the Claudian Grove, around tables creaking under their loads of food and wine. Women, too, were there in profusion; women for the taking and yearning to be taken;

“Yes? Why not?” The words were innocent enough, but Kinnison’s expression was full of meaning.

“I don’t want to seem trite, but you are just beginning to find out that honesty and loyalty are a hell of a hard team to beat.”

“Get out! Take these termination papers and get out!”

Seated impassively at the desk there was a gray man. Not only was he dressed entirely in gray, but his heavy hair was gray, his eyes were gray, and even his tanned skin seemed to give the impression of grayness in disguise.

His overwhelming personality radiated an aura of grayness⁠—not the gentle gray of the dove, but the resistless, driving gray of the super-dreadnought; the hard, inflexible, brittle gray of the fracture of high-carbon steel.

“Captain Bradley, First Officer Costigan, Miss Marsden,” the man spoke quietly, but crisply. “I had not intended you two men to live so long. That is a detail, however, which we will pass by for the moment. You may remove your suits.”

“I am not accustomed to repeating instructions,” the man at the desk continued; voice still low and level, but instinct with deadly menace.

“You may choose between removing those suits and dying in them, here and now.”

Costigan moved over to Clio and slowly took off her armor. Then, after a flashing exchange of glances and a muttered word, the two officers threw off their suits simultaneously and fired at the same instant;

“Peculiar—highly perplexing—why should that one stimulus, in the case of young females, produce such an entirely disproportionate reaction?” Roger’s eyes bored into Clio’s; the girl shivered and looked away.

“But sex itself, primal and basic, the most widespread concomitant of life in this continuum, is completely illogical and paradoxical. Most baffling⁠—decidedly, this research on sex must go on.”

Roger pressed a button and a tall, comely woman appeared—a woman of indefinite age and of uncertain nationality.

“Probably not,” Cleveland frowned in thought.

“This is a patchwork affair, made of gunny sacks and haywire. I’m holding it together by main strength and awkwardness, and even at that, it’s apt to go to pieces any minute.”

“Can you rig it up for photography?”

the three Terrestrials regarded the unmoving, expressionless “faces”—if those coned heads could be said to possess such thing—with horror and disgust, as well as with other emotions, each according to his type and training.

For to human eyes the Nevian is a fearful thing.

Even today there are few Terrestrials—or Solarians, for that matter—who can look at a Nevian, eye to eye, without feeling a creeping of the skin and experiencing a “gone” sensation in the pit of the stomach.

They were manned by fish some five feet in length. Fish with huge, goggling eyes; fish plentifully equipped with long, armlike tentacles; fish poised before control panels or darting about intent upon their various duties.

Fish with brains, waging war!

Nor was their warfare ineffectual. Their heat-rays boiled the water for hundreds of yards before them and their torpedoes were exploding against the Nevian defenses in one appallingly continuous concussion. But most potent of all was a weapon unknown to Triplanetary warfare.

“I want you to notice something first,” the expert replied. “

But don’t look for what’s there⁠—look for what isn’t there.

”

“You’re right, of course, but you would …” he broke off, unable to put his thoughts into words.

For while inarticulate, manlike, concerning their deepest emotions, in both men was ingrained the code of the organization; both knew that to every man chosen for it the Service was everything, himself nothing.

“But enough of that, we’ll have plenty of grief of our own right here.”

The ship must have been disintegrated as soon as Rodebush released his forces. And yet, had not the physicist dimly foreseen the possibility of such an actual velocity—or had he?

However, individuals could come and go, but the Service went on.

Samms squared his shoulders unconsciously; and slowly, grimly, made his way back to his private office.

“All right. He’s the uplifter and leveler-off. Down with Triplanetary, up with National Sovereignty. We’re power-mad dictators—iron-heel-on-the-necks-of-the-people, and so on. But what’s he like, personally? Thick-skinned, of course—got a brain?”

“Rhinoceros. He’s got a brain, but it’s definitely weaseloid. Bear down⁠—sink it in full length, and then twist it.”

“OK. You’ve got a harpoon, of course?”

And soon the three Terrestrials, without arms, without armor, and almost without clothing, were standing in the control room, again facing the calm and unmoved Nerado. To the surprise of the impetuous Costigan, the Nevian commander was entirely without rancor.

“The desire for freedom is perhaps common to all forms of animate life,”

he commented, through the transformer. “As I told you before, however, you are specimens to be studied by the College of Science, and you shall be so studied in spite of anything you may do. Resign yourselves to that.”

“That thing reminds me of a man I used to know, back in Penobscot.” Penrose was as coldly callous as his unfeeling master.

“The evenest-tempered man in town⁠—mad all the time!”

Eventually Roger found a location which satisfied his requirements of raw materials, and made a landing upon that unfriendly soil. Sweeping beams denuded a great circle of life, and into that circle leaped robots. Robots requiring neither rest nor food, but only lubricants and power;

“I am a poor, ignorant specimen of ape that can be let play with apparatus, am I?” he rasped, as he picked up the key tube of the specialist and opened the door of his prison.

“They’ll learn now that it ain’t safe to judge by the looks of a flea how far he can jump!”

He stepped out through the opening into the water, and, burdened as he was, made shift to swim to the nearest ramp. Up it he ran, toward a main corridor.

“That’s one thing I am good at!” Clio laughed in sheer relief.

“If talking were music, I’d be a full brass band!”

and she kept up a flow of inconsequential chatter until Costigan told her that it was no longer necessary; that he had established the line.

Along the detector line a visibeam sped, and Costigan’s face hardened as he saw the unmistakable outline of Nerado’s interstellar cruiser, far behind them.

“Well, a stern chase always was a long one,”

Costigan said finally. “He can’t catch us for plenty of days yet … now what?” for the alarms of the detectors had broken out anew. There was still another point of interference to be investigated.