E.E. 'Doc' Smith SF Gateway Omnibus: The Skylark of Space, Skylark Three, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark DuQuesne Read Online Free

special cabinet. Few people were asked to play either of those instruments; but to those few Crane listened in silence, and his brief words of thanks showed his real appreciation of music.
    He made few friends, not because he hoarded his friendship, but because, even more than most rich men, he had been forced to erect around his real self an almost impenetrable screen.
    As for women, Crane frankly avoided them, partly because his greatest interests in life were things in which women had neither interest nor place, but mostly because he had for years been the prime target of the man-hunting debutantes and the matchmaking mothers of three continents.
    Dorothy Vaneman, with whom he had become acquainted through his friendship with Seaton, had been admitted to his friendship. Her frank comradeship was a continuing revelation, and it was she who had last played for him.
    She and Seaton had been caught near his home by a sudden shower and had dashed in for shelter. While the rain beat outside, Crane had suggested that she pass the time by playing his ‘fiddle.’ Dorothy, a doctor of music and an accomplished violinist, realized with the first sweep of the bow that she was playing an instrument such as she had known only in her dreams, and promptly forgot everything else. She forgot the rain, the listeners, the time and the place; she simply poured into that wonderful violin everything she had of beauty, of tenderness, of artistry.
    Sure, true, and full, the tones filled the big room, and in Crane’s vision there rose a home filled with happy work, with laughter and comradeship. Sensing the girl’s dreams as the music filled his ears, he realized as never before in his busy and purposeful life what a home with the right woman could be like. No thought of love for Dorothy entered his mind – he knew that the love existing between her and Dick was of the sort that only death could alter – but he knew that she had unwittingly given him a great gift. Often thereafter in his lonely hours he saw that dream home, and knew that nothing less than its realization would ever satisfy him.

IV
    Returning to his boarding house, Seaton undressed and went to bed,but not to sleep. He knew that he had seen what could very well become a workable space-drive that afternoon … After an hour of trying to force himself to Sleep he gave up, went to his desk, and started to study. The more he studied, the more strongly convinced he became that his first thought was right – the thing
could
become a space-drive.
    By breakfast time he had the beginnings of a tentative theory roughed out, and also had gained some idea of the nature and magnitude of the obstacles to overcome.
    Arriving at the Laboratory, he found that Scott had spread the news of his adventure, and his room was soon the center of interest. He described what he had seen and done to the impromptu assembly of scientists, and was starting in on the explanation he had deduced when he was interrupted by Ferdinand Scott.
    ‘Quick, Dr Watson, the needle!’ he exclaimed. Seizing a huge pipette from a rack, he went through the motions of injecting its contents into Seaton’s arm.
    ‘It
does
sound like a combination of science-fiction and Sherlock Holmes,’ one of the visitors remarked.
    ‘“Nobody Holme,” you mean,’ Scott said, and a general chorus of friendly but skeptical jibes followed.
    ‘Wait a minute, you hidebound dopes, and I’ll
show
you!’ Seaton snapped. He dipped a short piece of copper wire into his solution.
    It did not turn brown; and when he touched it with his conductors, nothing happened. The group melted away. As they left, some of the men maintained a pitying silence, but Seaton heard one half-smothered chuckle and several remarks about ‘cracking under the strain.’
    Bitterly humiliated at the failure of his demonstration, Seaton scowled morosely at the offending wire. Why should the thing work twice yesterday and not even once today? He reviewed his theory