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Title: Children of the Lens
Author: Smith, Edward E. [Elmer] "Doc" (1890-1965)
Date of first publication: February 1966
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Pyramid Books, April 1974
   [eleventh printing of the February 1966 edition]
Date first posted: 2 November 2017
Date last updated: 2 November 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1477

This ebook was produced by Al Haines, Cindy Beyer,
Mark Akrigg & the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada
Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






CHILDREN OF THE LENS

By E. E. "Doc" Smith




TO DAN




THE TUBE OF DEATH

The terminus of the Patrol's hyper-spatial tube erupted into
space alongside the enemy planet. It would be in existence for
exactly three seconds.

Through that tube was traveling the ultimate weapon--an utterly
foreign planet with an absolutely impossible intrinsic velocity,
whose kinetic energy could be measured only in infinities. But
what would happen after it erupted into normal space no one, not
even its brilliant creators, could predict with certainty.

All they knew was that if the weapon didn't totally destroy
Ploor instantly, Earth's galaxy had exactly three seconds left
to live....


A LENSMAN ADVENTURE

Sixth in the Great Series








CONTENTS

Message of Transmittal
1. Kim and Kit; Gray Lensmen
2. Worsel and the Overlords
3. Kinnison Writes a Space-Opera
4. Nadreck of Palain VII at Work
5. The Abduction of a President
6. Tregonsee, Camilla, and "X"
7. Kathryn on Guard
8. Black Lensmen
9. An Arisian Education
10. Constance Out-Worsels Worsel
11. Nadreck Traps a Trapper
12. Kalonia Becomes of Interest
13. Clarrissa Takes Her L-2 Work
14. Kinnison-Thyron, Drug Runner
15. Thyron Follows a Lead
16. Red Lensman in Gray
17. Nadreck vs. Kandron
18. Camilla Kinnison, Detector
19. The Hell-Hole in Space
20. Kinnison and the Black Lensman
21. The Red Lensman on Lyrane
22. Kit Invades Eddore; and--
23. --Escapes with His Life
24. The Conference Solves a Problem
25. The Defense of Arisia
26. The Battle of Ploor
27. Kinnison Trapped
28. The Battle of Eddore
29. The Power of Love
Epilogue




CHILDREN OF THE LENS




MESSAGE OF TRANSMITTAL

_Subject_: The Conclusion of the Boskonian War; A Report:

_By_: Christopher K. Kinnison, L3, of Klovia:

_To_: The Entity Able to Obtain and to Read It.

To you, the third-level intellect who has been guided to this
imperishable container and who is able to break the Seal and to read
this tape, and to your fellows, greetings:

For reasons which will become obvious, this report will not be made
available for an indefinite but very long time; my present visualization
of the Cosmic All does not extend to the time at which such action will
become necessary. Therefore it is desirable to review briefly the most
pertinent facts of the earlier phases of Civilization's climactic
conflict: information which, while widely known at present, will
probably in that future time exist otherwise only in the memories of my
descendants.

In early Civilization law enforcement lagged behind crime because the
police were limited in their spheres of action, while criminals were
not. Each technological advance made that condition worse until finally,
when Bergenholm so perfected the crude inertialess space-drive of
Rodebush and Cleveland that commerce throughout the galaxy became an
actuality, crime began to threaten Civilization's very existence.

Of course it was not then suspected that there was anything organized,
coherent, or of large purpose about this crime. Centuries were to pass
before my father, Kimball Kinnison of Tellus, now galactic coordinator,
was to prove that Boskonia--an autocratic, dictatorial culture
diametrically opposed to every ideal of Civilization--was in fact back
of practically all the pernicious activities of the First Galaxy. Even
he, however, has never had any inkling either of the eons-long conflict
between the Arisians and the Eddorians or of the fundamental _raison
d'etre_ of the Galactic Patrol--material which can never be revealed to
any mind not inherently stable at the third level of stress.

Virgil Samms, then chief of the Triplanetary Service, perceived the
general situation and foresaw the shape of the inevitable. He realized
that unless and until his organization could secure an identifying
symbol which could not be counterfeited, police work would remain
relatively ineffectual. Tellurian science had done its best in the
golden meteors of the Service, and its best was not good enough.

Through one Dr. Nels Bergenholm, an Arisian-activated form of human
flesh, Virgil Samms became the first wearer of Arisia's Lens, and during
his life he began the rigid selection of those worthy of wearing it. For
centuries the Patrol grew and spread. It became widely known that the
Lens was a perfect telepath, that it glowed with colored light only when
worn by the individual to whose ego it was attuned, that it killed any
other living being who attempted to wear it. Whatever his race or shape,
any wearer of the Lens was accepted as the embodiment of Civilization.

Kimball Kinnison was the first Lensman to realize that the Lens was more
than an identification and a telepath. He was thus the first Lensman to
return to Arisia to take the second stage of Lensmanship--the treatment
which only an exceptional brain can withstand, but which gives the
second-stage Lensman any mental power which he needs and which he can
both visualize and control.

Aided by Lensmen Worsel of Velantia and Tregonsee of Rigel IV--the
former a winged reptile, the latter a four-legged, barrel-shaped
creature with the sense of perception instead of sight--Kimball Kinnison
traced and surveyed Boskone's military organization in the First Galaxy.
He helped plan the attack on Grand Base, the headquarters of Helmuth,
who "spoke for Boskone". By flooding the control dome of Grand Base with
thionite, that deadly drug native to the peculiar planet Trenco, he made
it possible for Civilization's Grand Fleet, under the command of Port
Admiral Haynes, to reduce that base. He, personally, killed Helmuth in
hand-to-hand combat.

He was instrumental in the almost-complete destruction of the Overlords
of Delgon; those sadistic, life-eating reptiles who were the first to
employ the hyper-spatial tube against humanity.

He was wounded more than once; in one of his hospitalizations becoming
acquainted with Surgeon-Marshal Lacy and with Sector Chief Nurse
Clanissa MacDougall, who was later to become the widely-known "Red"
Lensman and, still later, my mother.

In spite of the military defeat, however, Boskonia's real organization
remained intact, and Kinnison's further search led into Lundmark's
Nebula, thenceforth called the Second Galaxy. The planet Medon, being
attacked by Boskonians, was rescued from the enemy and was moved across
inter-galactic space to the First Galaxy. Medon made two notable
contributions to Civilization: first, electrical insulation, conductors,
and switches by whose means voltages and amperages theretofore
undreamed-of could be handled; and later Phillips, a Posenian surgeon,
was able there to complete the researches which made it possible for
human bodies to grow anew lost members or organs.

Kinnison, deciding that the drug syndicate was the quickest and surest
line to Boskone, became Wild Bill Williams the meteor-miner, a
hard-drinking, bentlam-eating, fast-shooting space-hellion. As Williams
he traced the zwilnik line upward, step by step, to the planet Jarnevon
in the Second Galaxy. Upon Jarnevon lived the Eich; frigid-blooded
monsters more intelligent, more merciless, more truly Boskonian even
than the Overlords.

He and Worsel, second-stage Lensmen both, set out to investigate
Jarnevon. He was captured, tortured, dismembered; but Worsel brought him
back to Tellus with his mind and knowledge intact--the enormously
important knowledge that Jarnevon was ruled by a council of nine of the
Eich, a council named Boskone.

Kinnison was given a Phillips treatment, and again Clarrissa MacDougall
nursed him back to health. They loved each other, but they could not
marry until the Gray Lensman's job was done; until Civilization had
triumphed over Boskonia.

The Galactic Patrol assembled its Grand Fleet, composed of millions of
units, under the flagship _Z9M9Z_. It attacked. The planet of Jalte,
Boskonia's director of the First Galaxy, was consumed by a bomb of
negative matter. Jarnevon was crushed between two colliding planets;
positioned inertialess, then inerted especially for that crushing. Grand
Fleet returned, triumphant.

But Boskonia struck back, sending an immense fleet against Tellus
through a hyper-spatial tube instead of through normal space. This
method of approach was not, however, unexpected. Survey-ships and
detectors were out; the scientists of the Patrol had been for months
hard at work on the "sunbeam"--a device, to concentrate the energy of
the sun into one frightful beam. With this weapon re-enforcing the
already vast powers of Grand Fleet, the invaders were wiped out.

Again Kinnison had to search for a high Boskonian; some authority higher
than the Council of Boskone. Taking his personal super-dreadnought, the
_Dauntless_, which carried his indetectable, non-ferrous speedster, he
found a zwilnik trail and followed it to Dunstan's Region, an
unexplored, virtually unknown, outlying spiral arm of the First Galaxy.
It led to the planet Lyrane II, with its humanoid matriarchy, ruled by
Helen, its queen.

There he found Illona Potter, the ex-Aldebaranian dancer; who, turning
against her Boskonian masters, told him all she knew of the Boskonian
planet Lonabar, where she had spent most of her life. Lonabar was
unknown to the Patrol and Illona knew nothing of its location in space.
She did, however, know its unique jewelry--gems also completely unknown
to Civilization.

Nadreck of Palain VII, a frigid-blooded Second-Stage Lensman, with one
jewel as a clue, set out to find Lonabar; while Kinnison began to
investigate Boskonian activities among the matriarchs.

The Lyranians, however, were fanatically non-cooperative. They hated all
males; they despised and detested all foreigners. Kinnison, with the
consent and assistance of Mentor of Arisia, made Clarrissa MacDougall an
Unattached Lensman and assigned to her the task of working Lyrane II.

Nadreck found and mapped Lonabar; and to build up an unimpeachable
Boskonian identity Kinnison became Cartiff the jeweler--Cartiff the
jewel-thief and swindler--Cartiff the fence--Cartiff the
murderer-outlaw--Cartiff the Boskonian big shot. He challenged and
overthrew Menjo Bleeko, the dictator of Lonabar, and before killing him
took from his mind everything he knew.

The Red Lensman secured information from which it was deduced that a
cavern of Overlords existed on Lyrane II. This cavern was raided and
destroyed, the Patrolmen learning that the Eich themselves had a heavily
fortified base on Lyrane VIII.

Nadreck, master psychologist, invaded that base tracelessly; learning
that the Eich received orders from the Thralian solar system in the
Second Galaxy and that frigid-blooded Kandron of Onlo (Thrallis IX) was
second in power only to human Alcon, the Tyrant of Thrale (Thrallis II).

Kinnison went to Thrale, Nadreck to Onlo; the operations of both being
covered by the Patrol's invasion of the Second Galaxy. In that invasion
Boskonia's Grand Fleet was defeated and the planet Klovia was occupied
and fortified.

Assuming the personality of Traska Gannel, a Thralian, Kinnison worked
his way upward in Alcon's military organization. Trapped in a
hyper-spatial tube, ejected into an unknown one of the infinity of
parallel, co-existent, three-dimensional spaces comprising the Cosmic
All, he was rescued by Mentor, working through the brain of Sir Austin
Cardynge, the Tellurian mathematician.

Returning to Thrale, he fomented a revolution, in which he killed Alcon
and took his place as the Tyrant of Thrale. He then discovered that his
prime minister, Fossten, who concealed his true appearance by means of a
zone of hypnosis, had been Alcon's superior instead of his adviser.
Neither quite ready for an open break, but both supremely confident of
victory when that break should come, subtle hostilities began.

Gannel and Fossten planned and launched an attack on Klovia, but just
before engagement the hostilities between the two Boskonian leaders
flared into an open fight for supremacy. After a terrific mental
struggle, during which the entire crew of the flagship died, leaving the
Boskonian fleet at the mercy of the Patrol, Kinnison won.

He did not know, of course, then or ever, either that Fossten was in
fact Gharlane of Eddore or that it was Mentor of Arisia who in fact
overcame Fossten. Kinnison thought, and Mentor encouraged him to
believe, that Fossten was an Arisian who had been insane since youth,
and that Kinnison had killed him without assistance. It is a mere
formality to emphasize at this point that none of this information must
ever become available to any mind below the third level; since to any
entity able either to obtain or to read this report it will be obvious
that such revealment would set up an inferiority complex which must
inevitably destroy both the Patrol and Civilization.

With Fossten dead and with Kinnison already the despot of Thrale, it was
comparatively easy for the Patrol to take over. Nadreck drove the
Onlonian garrisons insane, so that all fought to the death among
themselves; thus rendering Onlo's mighty armament completely useless.

Then, thinking that the Boskonian War was over--encouraged, in fact, by
Mentor so to think--Kinnison married Clarrissa, established his
headquarters upon Klovia, and assumed his duties as galactic
coordinator.

Kimball Kinnison, while in no sense a mutant, was the penultimate
product of a prodigiously long line of selective, controlled breeding.
So was Clarrissa MacDougall. Just what course the science of Arisia took
in making those two what they are I can deduce, but I do not as yet
actually know. Nor, for the purpose of this record, does it matter. Port
Admiral Haynes and Surgeon-Marshal Lacy thought that they brought them
together and promoted their romance. Let them think so--as agents, they
did. Whatever the method employed, the result was that the genes of
those two uniquely complementary penultimates were precisely those
necessary to produce the first, and at present the only third-stage
Lensman.

I was born on Klovia, as were, three and four galactic-standard years
later, my four sisters--two pairs of non-identical twins. I had little
babyhood, no childhood. Fathered and mothered by Second-Stage Lensmen,
accustomed from infancy to wide-open two-ways with such beings as Worsel
of Velantia, Tregonsee of Rigel IV, and Nadreck of Palain VII, it would
seem obvious that we did not go to school. We were not like other
children of our ages; but before I realized that it was anything unusual
for a baby who could scarcely walk to be computing highly perturbed
asteroidal orbits as "mental arithmetic", I knew that we would have to
keep our abnormalities to ourselves, insofar as the bulk of mankind and
of Civilization was concerned.

I traveled much; sometimes with my father or mother or both, sometimes
alone. At least once each year I went to Arisia for treatment. I took
the last two years of Lensmanship, for physical reasons only, at
Wentworth Hall instead of the Academy of Klovia because upon Tellus the
name Kinnison is not at all uncommon, while upon Klovia the fact that
"Kit" Kinnison was the son of the coordinator could not have been
concealed.

I graduated, and with my formal enlensment this record properly begins.

I have recorded this material as impersonally as possible, realizing
fully that my sisters and I did only the work for which we were
specifically developed and trained; even as you who read this will do
that for which you shall have been developed and are to be trained.

                                  Respectfully submitted,

                                  _Christopher K. Kinnison, L3, Klovia._




CHAPTER 1

KIM AND KIT; GRAY LENSMEN


Galactic Coordinator Kimball Kinnison finished his second cup of
Tellurian coffee, got up from the breakfast table, and prowled about in
black abstraction. Twenty-odd years had changed him but little. He
weighed the same, or a few pounds less; although a little of his mass
had shifted downward from his mighty chest and shoulders. His hair was
still brown; his stern face was only faintly lined. He was mature, with
a conscious maturity no young man can know.

"Since when, Kim, did you think you could get away with blocking _me_
out of your mind?" Clarrissa Kinnison directed a quiet thought. The
years had dealt as lightly with the Red Lensman as with the Gray. She
had been gorgeous; she was now magnificent. "This room is shielded, you
know, against even the girls."

"Sorry, Cris--I didn't mean it that way."

"I know," she laughed. "Automatic. But you've had that block up for two
solid weeks, except when you force yourself to keep it down. That means
you're 'way off the green."

"I've been thinking, incredible as it may seem."

"I know it. Let's have it, Kim."

"QX--you asked for it. Queer things have been going on; all over.
Inexplicable things... no apparent reason."

"Such as?"

"Almost any kind of insidious deviltry you care to name. Disaffections,
psychoses, mass hysterias, hallucinations; pointing toward a
Civilization-wide epidemic of revolutions and uprisings for which there
seems to be no basis or justification whatever."

"Why, Kim! How could there be? I haven't heard of anything like that!"

"It hasn't got around. Each solar system thinks it's a purely local
condition, but it isn't. As galactic coordinator, with a broad view of
the entire picture, my office would of course see such a thing before
anyone else could. We saw it, and set out to nip it in the bud...
but..." He shrugged his shoulders and grinned wryly.

"But what?" Clarrissa persisted.

"It didn't nip. We sent Lensmen to investigate, but none of them got to
the first check-station. Then I asked our Second-Stage Lensmen--Worsel,
Nadreck, and Tregonsee--to drop whatever they were doing and solve it
for me. They hit it and bounced. They followed, and are still following,
leads and clues galore, but they haven't got a millo's worth of results
so far."

"What? You mean it's a problem _they_ can't solve?"

"That they haven't, to date," he corrected, absently. "And that 'gives
me furiously to think'."

"It would," she conceded, "and it also would make you itch to join them.
Think at me, it'll help you correlate. You should have gone over the
data with me right at first."

"I had reasons not to, as you'll see. But I'm stumped now, so here goes.
We'll have to go away back, to before we were married. First; Mentor
told me, quote, only your descendants will be ready for that for which
you now so dimly grope, unquote. Second; you were the only being ever
able to read my thoughts without a Lens. Third; Mentor told us, when we
asked him if it was QX for us to go ahead, that our marriage was
_necessary_, a choice of phraseology which bothered you somewhat at the
time, but which I then explained as being in accord with his
visualization of the Cosmic All. Fourth; the Patrol formula is to send
the man best fitted for any job to do that job, and if he can't swing
it, to send the Number One graduate of the current class of Lensmen.
Fifth; a Lensman has got to use everything and everybody available, no
matter what or who it is. I used even you, you remember, in that Lyrane
affair and others. Sixth; Sir Austin Cardynge believed to the day of his
death that we were thrown out of that hyper-spatial tube, and out of
space, deliberately."

"Well, go on. I don't see much, if any, connection."

"You will, if you think of those six points in connection with our
present predicament. Kit graduates next month, and he'll rank number one
of all Civilization, for all the tea in China."

"Of course. But after all, he's a Lensman. He'll have to be assigned
some problem; why not that one?"

"You don't see yet what that problem is. I've been adding two and two
together for weeks, and can't get any other answer than four. And if two
and two are four, Kit has got to tackle Boskone--the _real_ Boskone; the
one I never did and probably never can reach."

"No, Kim--no!" she almost shrieked. "Not Kit, Kim--he's just a boy!"

Kinnison waited, wordless.

She got up, crossed the room to him. He put his arm around her in the
old but ever new gesture.

"Lensman's load, Cris," he said, quietly.

"Of course," she replied then, as quietly. "It was a shock at first,
coming after all these years, but... if it has to be, it must. But
he--surely we can help him, Kim?"

"Surely." The man's arm tightened. "When he hits space I go back to
work. So do Nadreck and Worsel and Tregonsee. So do you, if your kind of
a job turns up. And with us to do the blocking, and with Kit to carry
the ball..." His thought died away.

"I'll say so," she breathed. Then: "But you won't call me, I know,
unless you absolutely _have_ to... and to give up you and Kit both...
why did we have to be Lensmen, Kim?" she protested, rebelliously.
"Why couldn't we have been ground-grippers? You used to growl that
thought at me before I knew what a Lens really meant..."

"Vell, some of us has got to be der first violiners in der orchestra,"
Kinnison misquoted, in an attempt at lightness. "Ve can't all push vind
t'rough der trombone."

"I suppose that's true." The Red Lensman's somber air deepened. "Well,
we were going to start for Tellus today, anyway, to see Kit graduate.
This doesn't change that."

And in a distant room four tall, shapely, auburn-haired girls stared at
each other briefly, then went en rapport; for their mother had erred
greatly in saying that the breakfast room was screened against their
minds. Nothing was or could be screened against them; they could think
above, below, or, by sufficient effort, straight through any
thought-screen known to Tellurian science. Nothing in which they were
interested was safe from them, and they were interested in practically
everything.

"Kay, we've got ourselves a job!" Kathryn, older by minutes than Karen,
excluded pointedly the younger twins, Camilla and Constance--"Cam" and
"Con."

"At last!" Karen exclaimed. "I've been wondering what we were born for,
with nine-tenths of our minds so deep down that nobody except Kit even
knows they're there and so heavily blocked that we can't let even each
other in without a conscious effort. This is it. We'll go places now,
Kat, and really do things."

"What do you mean _you'll_ go places and do things?" Con demanded,
indignantly. "Do you think for a second you carry screen enough to block
_us_ out of all the fun?"

"Certainly," Kat said, equably. "You're too young."

"We'll let you know what we're doing, though," Kay conceded,
magnanimously. "You might, just conceivably, contribute an idea we could
use."

"Ideas--phooey!" Con jeered. "A real idea would shatter both your
skulls. You haven't any more plan than a..."

"Hush--shut up, everybody!" Kat commanded. "This is too new for any of
us to have any worth-while ideas on, yet. Tell you what let's do--we'll
all think this over until we're aboard the _Dauntless_, half-way to
Tellus; then we'll compare notes and decide what to do."

They left Klovia that afternoon. Kinnison's personal super-dreadnought,
the mighty _Dauntless_--the fourth to bear that name--bored through
inter-galactic space. Time passed. The four young red-heads convened.

"I've got it all worked out!" Kat burst out, enthusiastically,
forestalling the other three. "There'll be four Second-Stage Lensmen at
work and there are four of us. We'll circulate--percolate--you might
say--around and through the universe. We'll pick up ideas and facts and
feed 'em to our Gray Lensmen. Surreptitiously, sort of, so they'll think
they got 'em themselves. I'll take dad for my partner, Kay can have..."

"You'll do no such thing!" A general clamor arose, Con's thought being
the most insistent. "If we aren't going to work with them all,
indiscriminately, we'll draw lots or throw dice to see who gets him, so
there!"

"Seal it, snake-hips, please," Kat requested, sweetly. "It is trite but
true to say that infants should be seen, but not heard. This is serious
business..."

"Snake-hips! Infant!" Con interrupted, venomously. "Listen, my
steatopygous and senile friend!" Constance measured perhaps a quarter of
an inch less in gluteal circumference than did her oldest sister; she
tipped the beam at one scant pound below her weight. "You and Kay are a
year older than Cam and I, of course; a year ago your minds were
stronger than ours. That condition, however, no longer exists. We too
are grown-up. And to put that statement to test, what can you do that I
can't?"

"This." Kathryn extended a bare arm, narrowed her eyes in concentration.
A Lens materialized about her wrist; not attached to it by a metallic
bracelet, but a bracelet in itself, clinging sentiently to the smooth,
bronzed skin. "I felt that in this work there would be a need. I learned
to satisfy it. Can you match that?"

They could. In a matter of seconds the three others were similarly
enlensed. They had not previously perceived the need, but at Kathryn's
demonstration their acquisition of full knowledge had been virtually
instantaneous.

Kat's Lens disappeared.

So did the other three. Each knew that no hint of this knowledge or of
this power should ever be revealed; each knew that in any moment of
stress the Lens of Civilization could be and would be hers.

"Logic, then, and by reason, not by chance." Kat changed her tactics. "I
still get him. Everybody knows who works best with whom. You, Con, have
tagged around after Worsel all your life. You used to ride him like a
horse..."

"She still does," Kay snickered. "He pretty nearly split her in two a
while ago in a seven-gravity pull-out, and she almost broke a toe when
she kicked him for it."

"Worsel is nice," Con defended herself vigorously. "He's more human than
most people, and more fun, as well as having infinitely more brains. And
_you_ can't talk, Kay--what anyone can see in that Nadreck, so
cold-blooded that he freezes you even through armor at twenty
feet--you'll get as cold and hard as he is if you don't..."

"And every time Cam gets within five hundred parsecs of Tregonsee she
goes into the silences with him, contemplating raptly the whichnesses of
the why," Kathryn interrupted, forestalling recriminations. "So you see,
by the process of elimination, dad's mine."

Since they could not all have him it was finally agreed that Kathryn's
claim would be allowed and, after a great deal of discussion and
argument, a tentative plan of action was developed. In due course the
_Dauntless_ landed at Prime Base. The Kinnisons went to Wentworth Hall,
the towering, chromium-and-glass home of the Tellurian cadets of the
Galactic Patrol. They watched the impressive ceremonies of graduation.
Then, as the new Lensmen marched out to the magnificent cadences of "Our
Patrol", the Gray Lensman, leaving his wife and daughters to their own
devices, made his way to his Tellurian office.

"Lensman Christopher K. Kinnison, sir, by appointment," his secretary
announced, and as Kit strode in Kinnison stood up and came to attention.

"Christopher K. Kinnison of Klovia, sir, reporting for duty." Kit
saluted crisply.

The coordinator returned the salute punctiliously. Then: "At rest, Kit.
I'm proud of you, mighty proud. We all are. The women want to heroize
you, but I had to see you first, to clear up a few things. An
explanation, an apology, and, in a sense, commiseration."

"An apology, sir?" Kit was dumbfounded. "Why, that's unthinkable..."

"For not graduating you in Gray. It has never been done, but that wasn't
the reason. Your commandant, the board of examiners, and Port Admiral
LaForge, all recommended it, agreeing that none of us is qualified to
give you either orders or directions. I blocked it."

"Of course. For the son of the coordinator to be the first Lensman to
graduate Unattached would smell--especially since the fewer who know of
my peculiar characteristics the better. That can wait, sir."

"Not too long, son." Kinnison's smile was a trifle forced. "Here's your
Release and your kit, and a request that you go to work on whatever it
is that's going on. We rather think it heads up somewhere in the Second
Galaxy, but that's just a guess."

"I start out from Klovia, then? Good--I can go home with you."

"That's the idea, and on the way there you can study the situation.
We've made tapes of the data, with our best attempts at analysis and
interpretation. The stuff's up to date, except for a thing I got this
morning... I can't figure out whether it means anything or not, but
it should be inserted..." Kinnison paced the room, scowling.

"Might as well tell me. I'll insert it when I scan the tape."

"QX. I don't suppose you've heard much about the unusual shipping
trouble we've been having, particularly in the Second Galaxy?"

"Rumor--gossip only. I'd rather have it straight."

"It's all on the tapes, so I'll just hit the high spots. Losses are
twenty-five percent above normal. A few very peculiar derelicts have
been found--they seem to have been wrecked by madmen. Not only wrecked,
but gutted, and every mark of identification wiped out. We can't
determine even origin or destination, since the normal disappearances
outnumber the abnormal ones by four to one. On the tapes this is lumped
in with the other psychoses you'll learn about. But this morning they
found another derelict, in which the chief pilot had scrawled 'WARE
HELLHOLE IN SP' across a plate. Connection with the other derelicts, if
any, obscure. If the pilot was sane when he wrote that message it means
something--but nobody knows what. If he wasn't, it doesn't, any more
than the dozens of obviously senseless--excuse me, I should say
apparently senseless--messages on the tapes."

"Hm...m. Interesting. I'll bear it in mind and tape it in its place.
But speaking of peculiar things, I've got one I wanted to tell you
about--getting my Release was such a shock I almost forgot it. Reported
it, but nobody thought it was anything important. Maybe--probably--it
isn't. Tune your mind up to the top of the range--there--did you ever
hear of a race that thinks on that band?"

"I never did--it's practically unreachable. Why--have you?"

"Yes and no. Only once, and that only a touch. Or, rather, a burst; as
though a hard-held mind-block had exploded, or the creature had just
died a violent, instantaneous death. Not enough of it to trace, and I
never found any more of it."

"Any characteristics? Bursts can be quite revealing."

"A few. It was on my last break-in trip in the Second Galaxy, out beyond
Thrale--about here." Kit marked the spot upon a mental chart. "Mentality
very high--precisionist grade--possibly beyond social needs, as the
planet was a bare desert and terrifically hot. No thought of cities. Nor
of water, although both may have existed without appearing in that burst
of thought. The thing's bodily structure was RTSL, to four places. No
gross digestive tract--atmosphere-nourished or an energy-converter,
perhaps. The sun was a blue giant. No spectral data, of course, but at a
rough guess I'd say somewhere around class B5 or A0. That's all I could
get."

"That's a lot to get from one burst. It doesn't mean a thing to me right
now... but I'll watch for a chance to fit it in somewhere."

How casually they dismissed as unimportant that cryptic burst of
thought! But if they both, right then, together, had been
authoritatively informed that that description fitted exactly the
physical form forced upon its denizens in its summer by the
accurately-described, simply hellish climatic conditions obtaining
during that season on the noxious planet Ploor, the information would
still not have seemed important to either of them--then.

"Anything else we ought to discuss before night?" The older Lensman went
on without a break.

"Not that I know of."

"You said your Release was a shock. You've got another one coming."

"I'm braced--blast!"

"Worsel, Tregonsee, Nadreck and I are quitting our jobs and going Gray
again. Our main purpose in life is going to be rallying 'round at max
whenever you whistle."

"That _is_ a shock, sir... Thanks... I hadn't expected--it's
really overwhelming. And you said something about _commiserating_ me?"
Kit lifted his red-thatched head--all of Clarrissa's children had
inherited her startling hair--and gray eyes stared level into eyes of
gray.

"In a sense, yes. You'll understand later... Well, you'd better go
hunt up your mother and the girls. After the clambake is over..."

"I'd better cut it, hadn't I?" Kit asked, eagerly. "Don't you think it'd
be better for me to get started right away?"

"Not on your life!" Kinnison demurred, positively. "Do you think I want
that mob of red-heads snatching me bald? You're in for a large day and
evening of lionization, so take it like a man. As I was about to say, as
soon as the brawl is over tonight we'll all board the _Dauntless_ and do
a flit for Klovia, where we'll fix you up an outfit. Until then, son
..." Two big hands gripped.

"But I'll be seeing you around the Hall!" Kit exclaimed. "You can't..."

"No, I can't run out on it, either," Kinnison grinned, "but we won't be
in a sealed and shielded room. So, son... I'm proud of you."

"Right back at you, big fellow--and thanks a million." Kit strode out
and, a few minutes later, the coordinator did likewise.

The "brawl", which was the gala event of the Tellurian social year, was
duly enjoyed by all the Kinnisons. The _Dauntless_ made an uneventful
flight to Klovia. Arrangements were made. Plans, necessarily sketchy and
elastic, were laid.

Two big, gray-clad Lensmen stood upon the deserted spacefield between
two blackly indetectable speedsters. Kinnison was massive, sure, calm
with the poised calmness of maturity, experience, and power. Kit, with
the broad shoulders and narrow waist of his years and training, was taut
and tense, fiery, eager to come to grips with Civilization's foes.

"Remember, son," Kinnison said as the two gripped hands. "There are four
of us--old-timers who've been through the mill--on call every second. If
you can use any one of us or all of us don't wait--snap out a call."

"I know, dad... thanks. The four best. One of you may make a strike
before I do. With the thousands of leads we have, and your experience
and know-how, you probably will. So remember it cuts both ways. If any
of you can use me any time, _you_ whistle."

"QX. We'll keep in touch. Clear ether, Kit!"

"Clear ether, dad!" What a wealth of meaning there was in that
low-voiced, simple exchange of the standard bon voyage!

For minutes, as his speedster flashed through space, Kinnison thought
only of the boy. He knew exactly how he felt; he re-lived in memory the
supremely ecstatic moments of his own first launching into space as a
Gray Lensman. But Kit had the stuff--stuff which he, Kinnison could
never know anything about--and he had his own job to do. Therefore,
methodically, like the old campaigner he was, he set about it.




CHAPTER 2

WORSEL AND THE OVERLORDS


Worsel the Velantian, hard and durable and long-lived as Velantians are,
had in twenty Tellurian years changed scarcely at all. As the first
Lensman and the only Second-Stage Lensman of his race, the twenty years
had been very fully occupied indeed.

He had solved the varied technological and administrative problems
incident to the welding of Velantia into the structure of Civilization.
He had worked at the many tasks which, in the opinion of the Galactic
Council, fitted his peculiarly individual talents. In his "spare" time
he had sought out in various parts of two galaxies, and had ruthlessly
slain, widely-scattered groups of the Overlords of Delgon.

Continuously, however, he had taken an intense sort of godfatherly
interest in the Kinnison children, particularly in Kit and in the
youngest daughter, Constance; finding in the girl a mentality
surprisingly akin to his own.

When Kinnison's call came he answered it. He was now out in space; not
in the _Dauntless_, but in a ship of his own, under his own command. And
what a ship! The _Velan_ was manned entirely by beings of his own race.
It carried Velantian air, at Velantian temperature and pressure. Above
all, it was built and powered for inert maneuvering at the atrocious
accelerations employed by the Velantians in their daily lives; and
Worsel loved it with enthusiasm and elan.

He had worked conscientiously and well with Kinnison and with other
entities of Civilization. He and they had all known, however, that he
could work more efficiently alone or with others of his own kind. Hence,
except in emergencies, he had done so; and hence, except in similar
emergencies, he would so continue to do.

Out in deep space, Worsel entwined himself, in a Velantian's idea of
comfort, in an intricate series of figures-of-eight around a pair of
parallel bars and relaxed in thought. There were insidious deviltries
afoot, Kinnison had said. There were disaffections, psychoses, mass
hysterias, and--Oh happy thought!--hallucinations. There were also
certain revolutions and sundry uprisings, which might or might not be
connected or associated with the disappearances of a considerable number
of persons of note. In these latter, however, Worsel of Velantia was not
interested. He knew without being told that Kinnison would pounce upon
such blatant manifestations as those. He himself would work upon
something much more to his taste.

Hallucination was Worsel's dish. He had been born among hallucinations;
had been reared in an atmosphere of them. What he did not know about
hallucinations could have been printed in pica on the smallest one of
his scales.

Therefore, isolating one section of his multi-compartmented mind from
all others and from any control over his physical self, he sensitized it
to receive whatever hallucinatory influences might be abroad.
Simultaneously he set two other parts of his mind to watch over the one
to be victimized; to study and to analyze whatever figments of obtrusive
mentality might be received and entertained.

Then, using all his naturally tremendous sensitivity and reach, all his
Arisian super-training, and the full power of his Lens, he sent his
mental receptors out into space. And then, although the thought is
staggeringly incomprehensible to any Tellurian or near-human mind, he
_relaxed_. For day after day, as the _Velan_ hurtled randomly through
the void, he hung blissfully slack upon his bars, most of his mind a
welter of the indescribable thoughts in which it is a Velantian's joy to
revel.

Suddenly, after an unknown interval of time, a thought impinged: a
thought under the impact of which Worsel's long body tightened so
convulsively as to pull the bars a foot out of true. Overlords! The
unmistakable, the body-and-mind-paralyzing hunting call of the Overlords
of Delgon!

His crew had not felt it yet, of course; nor would they feel it. If they
should, they would be worse than useless in the conflict to come; for
they could not withstand that baneful influence. Worsel could. Worsel
was the only Velantian who could.

"Thought-screens all!" his commanding thought snapped out. Then, even
before the order could be obeyed: "As you were!"

For the impenetrably shielded chamber of his mind told him instantly
that this was no ordinary Delgonian hunting call; or rather, that it was
more than that. Much more.

Mixed with, superimposed upon the overwhelming compulsion which
generations of Velantians had come to know so bitterly and so well, were
the very things for which he had been searching--hallucinations! To
shield his crew or, except in the subtlest possible fashion himself,
simply would not do. Overlords everywhere knew that there was at least
one Velantian Lensman who was mentally their master; and, while they
hated this Lensman tremendously, they feared him even more. Therefore,
even though a Velantian was any Overlord's choicest prey, at the first
indication of an ability to disobey their commands the monsters would
cease entirely to radiate; would withdraw at once every strand of their
far-flung mental nets into the fastnesses of their superbly hidden and
indetectably shielded cavern.

Therefore Worsel allowed the inimical influence to take over, not only
the total minds of his crew, but also the unshielded portions of his
own. And stealthily, so insidiously that no mind affected could discern
the change, values gradually grew vague and reality began to alter.

Loyalty dimmed, and _esprit de corps_. Family ties and pride of race
waned into meaninglessness. All concepts of Civilization, of the
Galactic Patrol, degenerated into strengthless gossamer, into oblivion.
And to replace those hitherto mighty motivations there crept in an
overmastering need for, and the exact method of obtainment of, whatever
it was that was each Velantian's deepest, most primal desire. Each
crewman stared into an individual visiplate whose substance was to him
as real and as solid as the metal of his ship had ever been; each saw
upon that plate whatever it was that, consciously or unconsciously, he
wanted most to see. Noble or base, lofty or low, intellectual or
physical, spiritual or carnal, it made no difference to the Overlords.
Whatever each victim wanted most was there.

No figment was, however, even to the Velantians, actual or tangible. It
was a picture on a plate, transmitted from a well-defined point in
space. There, upon that planet, was the actuality, eagerly await; toward
and to that planet must the _Velan_ go at maximum blast. Into that line
and at that blast, then, the pilots set their vessel without orders, and
each of the crew saw upon his non-existent plate that she had so been
set. If she had not been, if the pilots had been able to offer any
resistance, the crew would have slaughtered them out of hand. As it was,
all was well.

And Worsel, watching the affected portion of his mind accept those
hallucinations as truths and admiring unreservedly the consummate
artistry with which the work was being done, was well content. He knew
that only a hard, solidly-driven, individually probing beam could force
him to reveal the fact that a portion of his mind and all of his bodily
controls were being withheld; he knew that unless he made a slip no such
investigation was to be expected. He would not slip.

No human or near-human mind can really understand how the mind of a
Velantian works. A Tellurian can, by dint of training, learn to do two
or more unrelated things simultaneously. But neither is done very well
and both must be more or less routine in nature. To perform any original
or difficult operation successfully he must concentrate on it, and he
can concentrate upon only one thing at a time. A Velantian can and does,
however, concentrate upon half-a-dozen totally unrelated things at once;
and, with his multiplicity of arms, hands, and eyes, he can perform
simultaneously an astonishing number of completely independent
operations.

The Velantian's is, however, in no sense such a multiple personality as
would exist if six or eight human heads were mounted upon one body.
There is no joint tenancy about it. There is only one ego permeating all
those pseudo-independent compartments; no contradictory orders are, or
ordinarily can be, sent along the bundled nerves of the spinal cord.
While individual in thought and in the control of certain actions, the
mind-compartments are basically, fundamentally, one mind.

Worsel had progressed beyond his fellows. He was different; unique. The
perception of the need of the ability to isolate certain compartments of
his mind, to separate them completely from his real ego, was one of the
things which had enabled him to become the only Second-Stage Lensman of
his race.

L2 Worsel, then, held himself aloof and observed appreciatively
everything that went on. More, he did a little hallucinating of his own.
Under the Overlords' compulsion he was supposed to remain motionless,
staring raptly into an imaginary visiplate at an orgiastic saturnalia of
which no description will be attempted. Therefore, as far as the
occupied portion of his mind and through it the Overlords were
concerned, he did so. Actually, however, his body moved purposefully
about, directed solely by his own grim will; moved to make ready against
the time of landing.

For Worsel knew that his opponents were not fools. He knew that they
reduced their risks to the irreducible minimum. He knew that the mighty
_Velan_, with her prodigious weaponry, would not be permitted to be
within extreme range of the cavern, if the Overlords could possibly
prevent it, when that cavern's location was revealed. His was the task
to see to it that she was not only within range, but was at the very
portal.

The speeding space-ship approached the planet... went inert...
matched the planetary intrinsic... landed. Her airlocks opened. Her
crew rushed out headlong, sprang into the air, and arrowed away en
masse. Then Worsel, Grand Master of Hallucinations, went blithely but
intensely to work.

Thus, although he stayed at the _Velan's_ control board instead of
joining the glamored Velantians in their rush over the unfamiliar
terrain, and although the huge vessel lifted lightly into the air and
followed them, neither the fiend-possessed part of Worsel's mind, nor
any of his fellows, nor through them any one of the many Overlords, knew
that either of those two things was happening. To that part of his mind
Worsel's body was, under full control, flying along upon tireless wings
in the midst of the crowd; to it and to all other Velantians and hence
to the Overlords the _Velan_ lay motionless and deserted upon the rocks
far below and behind them. They watched her diminish in the distance;
they saw her vanish beyond the horizon!

This was eminently tricky work, necessitating as it did such nicety of
synchronization with the Delgonians' own compulsions as to be
indetectable even to the monsters themselves. Worsel was, however, an
expert; he went at the job not with any doubt as to his ability to carry
it through, but only with an uncontrollably shivering physical urge to
come to grips with the hereditary enemies of his race.

The flyers shot downward, and as a boulder-camouflaged entrance yawned
open in the mountain's side Worsel closed up and shot out a widely
enveloping zone of thought-screen. The Overlords' control vanished. The
Velantians, realizing instantly what had happened, flew madly back to
their ship. They jammed through the airlocks, flashed to their posts.
The cavern's gates had closed by then, but the monsters had no screen
fit to cope with the _Velan's_ tremendous batteries. Down they went.
Barriers, bastions, and a considerable portion of the mountain's face
flamed away in fiery vapor or flowed away in molten streams. Through
reeking atmosphere, over red-hot debris, the armored Velantians flew to
the attack.

The Overlords had, however, learned. This cavern, as well as being
hidden, was defended by physical, as well as mental, means. There were
inner barriers of metal and of force, there were armed and armored
defenders who, dominated completely by the monsters, fought with the
callous fury of the robots which in effect they were. Nevertheless,
against all opposition, the attackers bored relentlessly in. Heavy
semi-portables blazed, hand-to-hand combat raged in the narrow confines
of that noisome tunnel. In the wavering, glaring light of the contending
beams and screens, through the hot and rankly stinking steam billowing
away from the reeking walls, the invaders fought their way. One by one
and group by group the defenders died where they stood and the
Velantians drove onward over their burned and dismembered bodies.

Into the cavern at last. To the Overlords. Overlords! They who for ages
had preyed upon generation after generation of helpless Velantians,
torturing their bodies to the point of death and then devouring
ghoulishly the life-forces which their mangled bodies could no longer
retain!

Worsel and his crew threw away their DeLameters. Only when it is
absolutely necessary does any Velantian use any artificial weapon
against any Overlord of Delgon. He is too furious, too berserk, to do
so. He is scared to the core of his being; the cold grue of a thousand
fiendishly eaten ancestors has bred that fear into the innermost atoms
of his chemistry. But against that fear, negating and surmounting it, is
a hatred of such depth and violence as no human being has ever known; a
starkly savage hatred which can be even partially assuaged only by the
ultimate of violences--by rending his foe apart member by member; by
actually feeling the Delgonian's life depart under gripping hands and
tearing talons and constricting body and shearing tail.

It is best, then, not to go into too fine detail as to this conflict.
Since there were almost a hundred of the Delgonians, since they were
insensately vicious fighters when cornered, and since their physical
make-up was very similar to the Velantians' own, many of Worsel's
troopers died. But since the _Velan_ carried over fifteen hundred and
since less than half of her personnel could even get into the cavern,
there were plenty of them left to operate and to fight the space-ship.

Worsel took great care that the opposing commander was not killed with
his minions. The fighting over, the Velantians chained this sole
survivor into one of his own racks and stretched him out into
immobility. Then, restraining by main strength the terrific urge to put
the machine then and there to its fullest ghastly use, Worsel cut his
screen, threw a couple of turns of tail around a convenient anchorage,
and faced the Boskonian almost nose to nose. Eight weirdly stalked eyes
curled out as he drove a probing thought-beam against the monster's
shield.

"I could use this--or this--or this," Worsel gloated. As he touched
various wheels and levers the chains hummed slightly, sparks flashed,
the rigid body twitched. "I am not going to, however--yet. While you are
still sane I shall take your total knowledge."

Face to face, eye to eye, brain to brain, that silently and motionlessly
cataclysmic battle was joined.

As has been said, Worsel had hunted down and had destroyed many
Overlords. He had hunted them, however, like vermin. He had killed them
with bombs and beams, with talons, teeth, and tail. He had not engaged
an Overlord mind to mind for over twenty Tellurian years; not since he
and Nadreck of Palain Seven had captured alive the leaders of those who
had been preying upon Helen's matriarchs and warring upon Civilization
from their cavern on Lyrane II. Nor had he ever dueled one mentally to
the death without powerful support; Kinnison or some other Lensman had
always been near by.

But Worsel would need no help. He was not shivering in eagerness now.
His body was as still as the solid rock upon which most of it lay; every
chamber and every faculty of his mind was concentrated upon battering
down or blasting through the Overlord's stubbornly-held shields.

Brighter and brighter flamed Worsel's Lens, flooding the gloomy cave
with pulsating polychromatic light. Alert for any possible trickery,
guarding intently against any possibility of counterthrust, Worsel
slammed in bolt after bolt of mental force. He surrounded the monster's
mind with a searing, constricting field. He squeezed; relentlessly and
with appalling power.

The Overlord was beaten. He, who had never before encountered a foreign
mind or a vital force stronger than his own, knew that he was beaten. He
knew that at long last he had met that half-fabulous Velantian Lensman
with whom not one of his monstrous race could cope. He knew starkly,
with the chilling, numbing terror possible only to such a being in such
a position, that he was doomed to die the same hideous and
long-drawn-out death he had dealt out to so many others. He did not read
into the mind of the bitterly vengeful, the implacably ferocious
Velantian any more mercy, any more compunction, than were actually
there. He knew perfectly that there was no slightest trace of either.
Knowing these things with the black certainty that was his, he quailed.

There is an old saying that the brave man dies only once, the coward a
thousand times. The Overlord, during that lethal combat, died more times
than it is pleasant to contemplate. Nevertheless, he fought. His mind
was keen and powerful; he brought to the defense of his beleaguered ego
every resource of skill and of trickery and of sheer power at his
command. In vain. Deeper and deeper, in spite of everything he could do,
the relentless Lensman squeezed and smashed and cut and pried and bored;
little by little the Overlord gave mental ground.

"This station is here... this staff is here... I am here, then...
to wreak damage... all possible damage... to the commerce...
and to the personnel of... the Galactic Patrol... and
Civilization in every aspect..." the Overlord admitted haltingly as
Worsel's pressure became intolerable; but such admissions, however
unwillingly made or however revealing in substance, were not enough.

Worsel wanted, and would be satisfied with nothing less than, his
enemy's total knowledge. Hence he maintained his assault until, unable
longer to withstand the frightful battering, the Overlord's barriers
went completely down; until every convolution of his brain and every
track of his mind lay open, helplessly exposed to Worsel's poignant
scrutiny. Then, scarcely taking time to gloat over his victim, Worsel
did scrutinize.

Period.

Hurtling through space, toward a definite objective now, Worsel studied
and analyzed some of the things he had just learned. He was not
surprised that this Overlord had not known any of his superior officers
in things or enterprises Boskonian; that he did not consciously know
that he had been obeying orders or that he had superiors. That
technique, by this time, was familiar enough. The Boskonian
psychologists were able operators; to attempt to unravel the unknowable
complexities of their subconscious compulsions would be a sheer waste of
time.

What the Overlords had been doing, however, was clear enough. That
outpost had indeed been wreaking havoc with Civilization's commerce.
Ship after ship had been lured from its course; had been compelled to
land upon this barren planet. Some of those vessels had been destroyed;
some of them had been stripped and rifled as though by pirates of old;
some of them had been set upon new courses with hulls, mechanical
equipment, and cargoes almost untouched. No crewman or passenger,
however, escaped unscathed; even though only ten percent of them died in
the Overlordish fashion Worsel knew so well.

The Overlord himself had wondered why they had not been able to kill
them all. They wanted intensely enough to do so; their lust for
life-force simply could not be sated. He knew only that _something_ had
limited their killing to ten percent of the bag.

Worsel grinned wolfishly at that thought, even while he was admiring the
quality of the psychology able to impress such a compulsion upon such
intractable minds as those. That was the work of the Boskonian
higher-ups; to spread confusion wider and wider.

The other ninety percent had merely been "played with"--a procedure
which, although less satisfying to the Overlords than the ultimate
treatment, was not very different as far as the victims' egos were
concerned. For none of them emerged from the ordeal with any memory of
what had happened, or of who or what he had ever been. They were not all
completely mad; some were only partially so. All had, however, been...
altered. Changed; shockingly transformed. No two were alike. Each
Overlord, it appeared, had tried with all his ultra-hellish might to
excel his fellows in the manufacture of an outrageous something whose
like had never before been seen on land or sea or in the depths of
space.

These and many other things Worsel studied carefully. He'd head for the
"Hell-Hole in Space," he decided. This planet, the Overlords he had just
slain, were not the Hell-Hole; could have had nothing to do with
it--wrong location.

He knew now, though, what the Hell-Hole really was. It was a cavern of
Overlords--couldn't be anything else--and in himself and his crew and
his mighty vessel he, the Overlord-slayer supreme of two galaxies, had
everything it took to extirpate any number of Overlords. That Hell-Hole
was just as good as out, as of that minute.

And just then a solid, diamond-clear thought came in.

"Worsel! Con calling. What goes on there, fellow old snake?"




CHAPTER 3

KINNISON WRITES A SPACE-OPERA


Each of the Second-Stage Lensmen had exactly the same facts, the same
data, upon which to theorize and from which to draw conclusions. Each
had shared his experiences, his findings, and his deductions and
inductions with all of the others. They had discussed minutely, in
wide-open four-ways, every phase of the Boskonian problem. Nevertheless
the approach of each to that problem and the point of attack chosen by
each was individual and characteristic.

Kimball Kinnison was by nature forthright; direct. As has been seen, he
could use the approach circuitous if necessary, but he much preferred
and upon every possible occasion employed the approach direct. He liked
plain, unambiguous clues much better than obscure ones; the more obvious
and factual the clue was, the better he liked it.

He was now, therefore, heading for Antigan IV, the scene of the latest
and apparently the most outrageous of a long series of crimes of
violence. He didn't know much about it; the request had come through
regular channels, not via Lens, that he visit Antigan and direct the
investigation of the supposed murder of the Planetary President.

As his speedster flashed through space the Gray Lensman mulled over in
his mind the broad aspects of this crime-wave. It was spreading far and
wide, and the wider it spread and the intenser it became the more
vividly one salient fact struck out. Selectivity--distribution. The
solar systems of Thrale, Velantia, Tellus, Klovia, and Palain had not
been affected. Thrale, Tellus, and Klovia were full of Lensmen.
Velantia, Rigel, Palain, and a good part of the time Klovia, were the
working headquarters of Second-Stage Lensmen. It seemed, then, that the
trouble was roughly in inverse ratio to the numbers or the abilities of
the Lensmen in the neighborhood. Something, therefore, that
Lensmen--particularly Second-Stage Lensmen--were bad for. That was true,
of course, for all crime. Nevertheless, this seemed to be a special
case.

And when he reached his destination he found out that it was. The planet
was seething. Its business and its everyday activities seemed to be
almost paralyzed. Martial law had been declared; the streets were
practically deserted except for thick-clustered groups of heavily-armed
guards. What few people were abroad were furtive and sly; slinking
hastily along with their fear-filled eyes trying to look in all
directions at once.

"QX, Wainwright, go ahead," Kinnison directed bruskly when, alone with
the escorting Patrol officers in a shielded car, he was being taken to
the Capitol grounds. "There's been too much pussyfooting about the whole
affair."

"Very well, sir," and Wainwright told his tale. Things had been
happening for months. Little things, but disturbing. Then murders and
kidnappings and unexplained disappearances had begun to increase. The
police forces had been falling farther and farther behind. The usual
cries of incompetence and corruption had been raised, only further to
confuse the issue. Circulars--dodgers--handbills appeared all over the
planet; from where nobody knew. The keenest detectives could find no
clue to paper-makers, printers, or distributors. The usual inflammatory,
subversive, propaganda--"Down with the Patrol!" "Give us back our
freedom!" and so on--but, because of the high tension already
prevailing, the stuff had been unusually effective in breaking down the
morale of the citizenry as a whole.

"Then this last thing. For two solid weeks the whole world was literally
plastered with the announcement that at midnight on the thirty-fourth of
Dreel--you're familiar with our calendar, I think?--President Renwood
would disappear. Two weeks warning--daring us to do our damndest."
Wainwright got that far and stopped.

"Well, go on. He disappeared, I know. How? What did you fellows do to
prevent it? Why all the secrecy?"

"If you insist I'll have to tell you, of course, but I'd rather not."
Wainwright flushed uncomfortably. "You wouldn't believe it. Nobody
could. I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't been there. I'd rather
you'd wait, sir, and let the vice-president tell you, in the presence of
the treasurer and the others who were on duty that night."

"Um...m... I see... maybe." Kinnison's mind raced. "That's why
nobody would give me details? Afraid I wouldn't believe it--that I'd
think they'd been..." He stopped. "Hypnotized" would have been the
next word, but that would have been jumping at conclusions. Even if
true, there was no sense in airing that hypothesis--yet.

"Not afraid, sir. They _knew_ you wouldn't believe it."

After entering Government Reservation they went, not to the president's
private quarters, but into the Treasury and down into the sub-basement
housing the most massive, the most utterly impregnable vault of the
planet. There the nation's most responsible officers told Kinnison, with
their entire minds as well as their tongues, what had happened.

Upon that black day business had been suspended. No visitors of any sort
had been permitted to enter the Reservation. No one had been allowed to
approach Renwood except old and trusted officers about whose loyalty
there could be no question. Air-ships and space-ships had filled the
sky. Troops, armed with semi-portables or manning fixed-mount heavy
stuff, had covered the grounds. At five minutes before midnight Renwood,
accompanied by four secret-service men, had entered the vault, which was
thereupon locked by the treasurer. All the cabinet members saw them go
in, as did the attendant corps of specially-selected guards.
Nevertheless, when the treasurer opened the vault at five minutes after
midnight, the five men were gone. No trace of any one of them had been
found from that time on.

"And that--every word of it--is TRUE!" the assembled minds yelled as
one, all unconsciously, into the mind of the Lensman.

During all this telling Kinnison had been searching mind after mind;
inspecting each minutely for the tell-tale marks of mental surgery. He
found none. No hypnosis. This thing had actually happened, exactly as
they told it. Convinced of that fact, his eyes clouded with foreboding,
he sent out his sense of perception and studied the vault itself.
Millimeter by cubic millimeter he scanned the innermost details of its
massive structure--the concrete, the neocarballoy, the steel, the
heat-conductors and the closely-spaced gas cells. He traced the
intricate wiring of the net-works of alarms. Everything was sound.
Everything functioned. Nothing had been disturbed.

The sun of this system, although rather on the small side, was intensely
hot; this planet, Four, was pretty far out. Well beyond Cardynge's
Limit. A tube, of course... for all the tea in China it had to be a
tube. Kinnison sagged; the indomitable Gray Lensman showed his years and
more.

"I know it happened." His voice was grim, quiet, as he spoke to the
still protesting men. "I also know how it was done, but that's all."

"HOW?" they demanded, practically in one voice.

"A hyper-spatial tube," and Kinnison went on to explain, as well as he
could, the functioning of a thing which was intrinsically beyond the
grasp of any non-mathematical three-dimensional mind.

"But what can we or anybody else _do_ about it?" the treasurer asked,
numbly.

"Nothing whatever." Kinnison's voice was flat. "When it's gone, it's
gone. Where does the light go when a lamp goes out? No more trace.
Hundreds of millions of planets in this galaxy, as many in the Second.
Millions and millions of galaxies. All that in one universe--our own
universe. And there are an infinite number--too many to be expressed,
let alone to be grasped--of universes, side by side, like pages in a
book except thinner, in the hyper-dimension. So you can figure out for
yourselves the chances of ever finding either President Renwood or the
Boskonians who took him--so close to zero as to be indistinguishable
from zero absolute."

The treasurer was crushed. "Do you mean to say that there's no
protection at all from this thing? That they can keep on doing away with
us just as they please? The nation is going mad, sir, day by day--one
more such occurrence and we will be a planet of maniacs."

"Oh, no--I didn't say that." The tension lightened. "Just that we can't
do anything about the president and his aides. The tube can be detected
while it's in place, and anyone coming through it can be shot as soon as
he can be seen. What you need is a couple of Rigellian Lensmen, or
Ordoviks. I'll see to it that you get them. I don't think, with them
here, they'll even try to repeat." He did not add what he knew somberly
to be a fact, that the enemy would go elsewhere, to some other planet
not protected by a Lensman able to perceive the intangible structure of
a sphere of force.

Frustrated, the Lensman again took to space. It was terrible, this thing
of having everything happening where he wasn't and when he got there
having nothing left to work on. Hit-and-run--stab-in-the-back--how could
a man fight something he couldn't see or sense or feel or find? But this
chewing his fingernails to the elbow wasn't getting him anywhere,
either; he'd have to find something that he _could_ stick a tooth into.
What?

All former avenues of approach were blocked; he was sure of that. The
Boskonians who were now in charge of things could really think. No
underling would know anything about any one of them except at such times
and places as the directors chose, and those conferences would be as
nearly detection-proof as they could be made. What to do?

Easy. Catch a big operator in the act. He grinned wryly to himself. Easy
to say, but not... however, it wasn't impossible. The Boskonians were
not super-men--they didn't have any more jets than he did. Put himself
in the other fellow's place--what would he do if he were a Boskonian big
shot? He had had quite a lot of experience in the role. Were there any
specific groups of crimes which revealed techniques similar to those
which he himself would use in like case?

He, personally, preferred to work direct and to attack in force. At
need, however, he had done a smooth job of boring from within. In the
face of the Patrol's overwhelming superiority of armament, especially in
the First Galaxy, they would have to bore from within. How? By what
means? He was a Lensman; they weren't. Jet back! Or were they, perhaps?
How did he know they weren't, by this time? Fossten the renegade
Arisian.... No use kidding himself; Fossten might have known as much
about the Lens as Mentor himself, and might have developed an
organization that even Mentor didn't know anything about. Or Mentor
might be figuring that it would be good for what ailed a certain
fat-headed Gray Lensman to have to dope this out for himself. QX.

He shot a call to Vice-Coordinator Maitland, who was now in complete
charge of the office which Kinnison had temporarily abandoned.

"Cliff? Kim. Just gave birth to an idea." He explained rapidly what the
idea was. "Maybe nothing to it, but we'd better get up on our toes and
find out. You might suggest to the boys that they check up here and
there, particularly around the rough spots. If any of them find any
trace anywhere of off-color, sour, or even slightly rancid Lensmanship,
with or without a Lens appearing in the picture, burn a hole in space
getting it to me. QX?... Thanks."

Viewed in this new perspective, Renwood of Antigan IV might have been
neither a patriot nor a victim, but a saboteur. The tube could have been
a prop, used deliberately to cap the mysterious climax. The four honest
and devoted guards were the real casualties. Renwood--or whoever he
was--having accomplished his object of undermining and destroying the
whole planet's morale, might simply have gone elsewhere to continue his
nefarious activities. It was fiendishly clever. That spectacularly
theatrical finale was certainly one for the book. The whole thing,
though, was very much of a piece in quality of workmanship with what he
had done in becoming the Tyrant of Thrale. Far-fetched? No. He had
already denied in his thoughts that the Boskonian operators were
super-men. Conversely, he wasn't, either. He would have to admit that
they might very well be as good as he was; to deny them the ability to
do anything he himself could do would be sheer stupidity.

Where did that put him? On Radelix, by Klono's golden gills! A
good-sized planet. Important enough, but not too much so. People human.
Comparatively little hell being raised there--yet. Very few Lensmen, and
Gerrond the top. Hm...m. Gerrond. Not too bright, as Lensmen went,
and inclined to be a bit brass-hattish. To Radelix, by all means, next.

He went to Radelix, but not in the _Dauntless_ and not in gray. He was a
passenger aboard a luxury liner, a writer in search of local color for
another saga of the space-ways. Sybly Whyte--one of the Patrol's most
carefully-established figments--had a bullet-proof past. His omnivorous
interest and his uninhibited nosiness were the natural attributes of his
profession--everything is grist which comes to an author's mill.

Sybly Whyte, then, prowled about Radelix. Industriously and, to some
observers, pointlessly. He and his red-leather notebook were apt to be
seen anywhere at any time, day or night. He visited space-ports, he
climbed through freighters, he lost small sums in playing various games
of so-called chance in spacemen's dives. On the other hand, he truckled
assiduously to the social elite and attended all functions into which he
could wangle or could force his way. He made a pest of himself in the
offices of politicians, bankers, merchant princes, tycoons of business
and manufacture, and all other sorts of greats.

He was stopped one day in the outer office of an industrial potentate.
"Get out and stay out," a peg-legged guard told him. "The boss hasn't
read any of your stuff, but I have, and neither of us wants to talk to
you. Data, huh? What the hell do you need of data on atomic cats and
bulldozers to write them damn space-operas of yours? Why don't you get a
roustabout job on a freighter and learn something first-handed? Get
yourself a space-tan instead of that imitation you got under a lamp;
work some of that lard off your carcass!" Whyte was definitely fatter
than Kinnison had been; and, somehow, softer; he peered owlishly through
heavy lenses which, fortunately, did not interfere with his sense of
perception. "Then maybe some of your tripe will be half-fit to
read--beat it!"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir; very much, sir." Kinnison bobbed obsequiously
and scurried out, writing industriously in his notebook the while. He
had, however, found out what he wanted to know. The boss was nobody he
wanted.

Nor was an eminent statesman whom he button-holed at a reception. "I
fail to see, sir, entirely, any point in your interviewing _me_," that
worthy informed him, frigidly. "I am not, I am--uh--sure, suitable
material for any opus upon which you may be at work."

"Oh, you can't ever tell, sir," Kinnison said. "You see, I never know
who or what is going to get into any of my stories until after I start
to write it, and sometimes not even then." The statesman glared and
Kinnison retreated in disorder.

To stay in character Kinnison actually wrote a novel; it was later
acclaimed as one of Sybly Whyte's best.

"Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the
tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium,
then another. Its terrible xmex-like snout locked on. Its zymolosely
polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. _Slurp!
Slurp!_ At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship's plating
deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the
airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the
yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN?
And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror
just beyond this thin and fragile wall..." Kinnison was taping
verbosely along when his first real clue developed.

A yellow "attention" light gleamed upon his visiphone panel, a subdued
chime gave notice that a message of importance was about to be broadcast
to the world. Kinnison-Whyte flipped his switch and the stern face of
the provost-marshal appeared upon the screen.

"Attention, please," the image spoke. "Every citizen of Radelix is urged
to be on the lookout for the source of certain inflammatory and
subversive literature which is beginning to appear in various cities of
this planet. Our officers cannot be everywhere at once; you citizens
are. It is hoped that by the aid of your vigilance this threat to our
planetary peace and security can be removed before it becomes really
serious; that we can avoid the imposition of martial law."

This message, while not of extreme or urgent import to most Radeligians,
held for Kinnison a profound and unique meaning. He was right. He had
deduced the thing one hundred percent. He knew, what was going to happen
next, and how; he knew that neither the law-enforcement officers of
Radelix nor its massed citizenry could stop it. They could not even
impede it. A force of Lensmen could stop it--but that would not get the
Patrol anywhere unless they could capture or kill the beings really
responsible for what was done. To alarm them would not do.

Whether or not he could do much of anything before the grand climax
depended on a lot of factors. On what that climax was; who was
threatened with what; whether or not the threatened one was actually a
Boskonian. A great deal of investigation was indicated.

If the enemy were going to repeat, as seemed probable, the president
would be the victim. If he, Kinnison, could not get the big shots lined
up before the plot came to a head, he would have to let it develop right
up to the point of disappearance; and for Whyte to appear at that time
would be to attract undesirable attention. No--by that time he must
already have been kicking around underfoot long enough to have become an
unnoticeable fixture.

Wherefore he moved into quarters as close to the executive offices as he
could possibly get; and in those quarters he worked openly and wordily
at the bringing of the affair of Qadgop and the beautiful-but-dumb
Cynthia to a satisfactory conclusion.




CHAPTER 4

NADRECK OF PALAIN VII AT WORK


In order to understand these and subsequent events it is necessary to
cut back briefly some twenty-odd years, to the momentous interview upon
chill, dark Onto between monstrous Kandron and his superior in affairs
Boskonian, the unspeakable Alcon, the Tyrant of Thrale. At almost the
end of that interview, when Kandron had suggested the possibility that
his own base had perhaps been vulnerable to Star A Star's insidious
manipulations:

"Do you mean to admit that _you_ may have been invaded and
searched--tracelessly?" Alcon fairly shrieked the thought.

"Certainly," Kandron replied, coldly. "While I do not believe that it
has been done, the possibility must be conceded. What science can devise
science can circumvent. It is not Onlo and I who are their prime
objectives, you must realize, but Thrale and you. Especially you."

"You may be right. With no data whatever upon who or what Star A Star
really is, with no tenable theory as to how he could have done what
actually has been done, speculation is idle." Thus Alcon ended the
conversation and, almost immediately, went back to Thrale.

After the Tyrant's departure Kandron continued to think, and the more he
thought the more uneasy he became. It was undoubtedly true that Alcon
and Thrale were the Patrol's prime objectives. But, those objectives
attained, was it reasonable to suppose that he and Onlo would be spared?
It was not. Should he warn Alcon further? He should not. If the Tyrant,
after all that had been said, could not see the danger he was in, he
wasn't worth saving. If he preferred to stay and fight it out, that was
his lookout. Kandron would take no chances with his own extremely
valuable life.

Should he warn his own men? How could he? They were able and hardened
fighters all; no possible warning could make them defend their
fortresses and their lives any more efficiently than they were already
prepared to do; nothing he could say would be of any use in preparing
them for a threat whose basic nature, even, was completely unknown.
Furthermore, this hypothetical invasion probably had not happened and
very well might not happen at all, and to flee from an imaginary foe
would not redound to his credit.

No. As a personage of large affairs, not limited to Onlo, he would be
called elsewhere. He would stay elsewhere until after whatever was going
to happen had happened. If nothing happened during the ensuing few weeks
he would return from his official trip and all would be well.

He inspected Onlo thoroughly, he cautioned his officers repeatedly and
insistently to keep alert against every conceivable emergency while he
was so unavoidably absent. Then he departed, with a fleet of vessels
manned by hand-picked crews, to a long-prepared and hitherto secret
retreat.

From that safe place he watched, through the eyes and the instruments of
his skilled observers, everything that occurred. Thrale fell, and Onlo.
The Patrol triumphed. Then, knowing the full measure of the disaster and
accepting it with the grim passivity so characteristic of his breed,
Kandron broadcast certain signals and one of his--and Alcon's--superiors
got in touch with him. He reported concisely. They conferred. He was
given orders which were to keep him busy for over twenty Tellurian
years.

He knew now that Onlo had been invaded, tracelessly, by some feat of
mentality beyond comprehension and almost beyond belief. Onlo had fallen
without any of its defenders having energized a single one of their
gigantic engines of war. The fall of Thrale, and the manner of that
fall's accomplishment, were plain enough. Human stuff. The work,
undoubtedly, of human Lensmen; perhaps the work of the human Lensman who
was so frequently associated with Star A Star.

But Onlo! Kandron himself had set those snares along those intricately
zig-zagged communications lines; he knew their capabilities. Kandron
himself had installed Onlo's blocking and shielding screens; he knew
their might. He knew, since no other path existed leading to Thrale,
that those lines had been followed and those screens had been
penetrated, and all without setting off a single alarm. Those things had
actually happened. Hence Kandron set his stupendous mind to the task of
envisaging what the being must be, mentally, who could do them; what the
mind of this Star A Star--it could have been no one else--must in
actuality be.

He succeeded. He deduced Nadreck of Palain VII, practically in toto; and
for the Star A Star thus envisaged he set traps throughout both
galaxies. They might or might not kill him. Killing him immediately,
however, was not really of the essence; that matter could wait until he
could give it his personal attention. The important thing was to see to
it that Star A Star could never, by any possible chance, discover a true
lead to any high Boskonian.

Sneeringly, gloatingly, Kandron issued orders; then flung himself with
all his zeal and ability into the task of reorganizing the shattered
fragments of the Boskonian Empire into a force capable of wrecking
Civilization.

Thus it is not strange that for more than twenty years Nadreck of Palain
VII made very little progress indeed. Time after time he grazed the hot
edge of death. Indeed, it was only by the exertion of his every iota of
skill, power, and callous efficiency that he managed to survive. He
struck a few telling blows for Civilization, but most of the time he was
strictly on the defensive. Every clue he followed, it seemed, led subtly
into a trap; every course he pursued ended, always figuratively and all
too often literally, in a cul-de-sac filled with semi-portable
projectors all agog to blast him out of the ether.

Year by year he became more conscious of some imperceptible,
indetectable, but potent foe, an individual enemy obstructing his every
move and determined to make an end of him. And year by year, as material
accumulated, it became more and more certain that the inimical entity
was in fact Kandron, once of Onlo.

When Kit went into space, then, and Kinnison called Nadreck into
consultation, the usually reticent and unloquacious Palainian was ready
to talk. He told the Gray Lensman everything he knew and everything he
deduced or suspected about the ex-Onlonian chieftain.

"Kandron of Onlo!" Kinnison exploded, so violently as to sear the
sub-ether through which the thought passed. "Holy Klono's gadolinium
guts! And you can sit there on your spiny tokus and tell me Kandron got
away from you back there? You knew it, and not only didn't do a damn
thing about it yourself, but didn't even tell me or anybody else about
it so we could do it? _What_ a brain!"

"Certainly. Why do anything before action becomes necessary?" Nadreck
was entirely unmoved by the Tellurian's passion. "My powers are
admittedly small, my intellect feeble. However, even to me it was clear
then and it is clear now that Kandron was then of no importance. My
assignment was to reduce Onlo. I reduced it. Whether or not Kandron was
there at the time did not then have and cannot now have anything to do
with that task. Kandron, personally, is another, an entirely distinct
problem."

Kinnison swore a blistering deep-space oath; then, by main strength,
shut himself up. Nadreck wasn't human; there was no use even trying to
judge him by human or near-human standards. He was fundamentally,
incomprehensibly, and radically different. And it was just as well for
humanity that he was. For if his hellishly able race had possessed the
characteristically human abilities, in addition to their own,
Civilization would of necessity have been basically Palainian instead of
basically human, as it now is. "QX, ace," he growled, finally. "Skip
it."

"But Kandron has been hampering my activities for years, and, now that
you also have become interested in his operations, he has become a
factor of which cognizance should be taken," Nadreck went imperturbably
on. He could no more understand Kinnison's viewpoint than the Tellurian
could understand his. "With your permission, therefore, I shall
find--and slay--this Kandron."

"Go to it, little chum," Kinnison sighed, bitingly--and uselessly.
"Clear ether."

****

While this conference was taking place, Kandron reclined in a bitterly
cold, completely unlighted room of his headquarters and indulged in a
little gloating concerning the predicament in which he was keeping
Nadreck of Palain VII, who was, in all probability, the once-dreaded
Star A Star of the Galactic Patrol. It was true that the Lensman was
still alive. He would probably, Kandron mused quite pleasurably, remain
alive until he himself could find the time to attend to him in person.
He was an able operator, but one presenting no real menace, now that he
was known and understood. There were other things more pressing, just as
there had been ever since the fall of Thrale. The revised Plan was going
nicely, and as soon as he had resolved that human thing... The
Ploorans had suggested... could it be possible, after all, that
Nadreck of Palain was not he who had been known so long only as Star A
Star? That the human factor was actually...?

Through the operation of some unknowable sense Kandron knew that it was
time for his aide to be at hand to report upon those human affairs. He
sent out a signal and another Onlonian scuttled in.

"That unknown human element," Kandron radiated harshly. "I assume that
you are not reporting that it has been resolved?"

"Sorry, Supremacy, but your assumption is correct," the creature
radiated back, in no very conciliatory fashion. "The trap at Antigan IV
was set particularly for him; specifically to match the man whose
mentality you computed and diagrammed for us. Was it too obvious, think
you, Supremacy? Or perhaps not quite obvious enough? Or, the galaxy
being large, is it perhaps that he simply did not learn of it in time?
In the next attempt, what degree of obviousness should I employ and what
degree of repetition is desirable?"

"The technique of the Antigan affair was flawless," Kandron decided. "He
did not learn of it, as you suggest, or we should have caught him. He is
a master workman, always concealed by his very obviousness until after
he has done his work. Thus we can never, save by merest chance, catch
him before the act; we must make him come to us. We must keep on trying
until he does come to us. It is of no great moment, really, whether we
catch him now or five years hence. This work must be done in any
event--it is simply a fortunate coincidence that the necessary
destruction of Civilization upon its own planets presents such a fine
opportunity of trapping him.

"As to repeating the Antigan technique, we should not repeat it
exactly--or, hold! It might be best to do just that. To repeat a process
is of course the mark of an inferior mind; but if that human can be made
to believe that our minds are inferior, so much the better. Keep on
trying; report as instructed. Remember that he must be taken alive, so
that we can take from his living brain the secrets we have not yet been
able to learn. Forget, in the instant of leaving this room, everything
about me and about any connection between us until I force recollection
upon you. Go."

The minion went, and Kandron set out to do more of the things which he
could best do. He would have liked to take Nadreck's trail himself; he
could catch and he could kill that evasive entity and the task would
have been a pleasant one. He would have liked to supervise the trapping
of that enigmatic human Lensman who might--or might not--be that
frequently and copiously damned Star A Star. That, too, would be an
eminently pleasant chore. There were, however, other matters more
pressing by far. If the Great Plan were to succeed, and it absolutely
must and would, every Boskonian must perform his assigned duties.
Nadreck and his putative accomplice were side issues. Kandron's task was
to set up and to direct certain psychoses and disorders; a ghastly train
of mental ills of which he possessed such supreme mastery, and which
were surely and safely helping to destroy the foundation upon which
Galactic Civilization rested. That part was his, and he would do it to
the best of his ability. The other things, the personal and
non-essential matters, could wait.

Kandron set out then, and traveled fast and far; and wherever he went
there spread still further abroad the already widespread blight. A
disgusting, a horrible blight with which no human physician or
psychiatrist, apparently, could cope; one of, perhaps the worst of, the
corrosive blights which had been eating so long at Civilization's
vitals.



And L2 Nadreck, having decided to find and slay the ex-ruler of Onlo,
went about it in his usual unhurried but eminently thorough fashion. He
made no effort to locate him or to trace him personally. That would be
bad--foolish. Worse, it would be inefficient. Worst, it would probably
be impossible. No, he would find out where Kandron would be at some
suitable future time, and wait for him there.

To that end Nadreck collected a vast mass of data concerning the
occurrences and phenomena which the Big Four had discussed so
thoroughly. He analyzed each item, sorting out those which bore the
characteristic stamp of the arch-foe whom by now he had come to know so
well. The internal evidence of Kandron's craftmanship was unmistakable;
and, not now to his surprise, Nadreck discerned that the number of the
Onlonian's dark deeds was legion.

There was the affair of the Prime Minister of DeSilva III, who at a
cabinet meeting shot and killed his sovereign and eleven chiefs of state
before committing suicide. The president of Viridon; who, at his press
conference, ran amuck with a scimitar snatched from a wall, hewed
unsuspecting reporters to gory bits until overpowered, and then
swallowed poison.

A variant of the theme, but still plainly Kandron's doing, was the
interesting episode in which a Tellurian tycoon named Edmundson, while
upon an ocean voyage, threw fifteen women passengers overboard, then
leaped after them dressed only in a life-jacket stuffed with lead.
Another out of the same whimsical mold was that of Dillway, the highly
respected operations chief of Central Spaceways. That potentate called
his secretaries one by one into his 60th floor office and unconcernedly
tossed them, one by one, out of the window. He danced a jig on the
coping before diving after them to the street.

A particularly juicy and entertaining bit, Nadreck thought, was the case
of Narkor Base Hospital, in which four of the planet's most eminent
surgeons decapitated every other person in the place--patients, nurses,
orderlies, and all, with a fine disregard of age, sex, or
condition--arranged the severed heads, each upright and each facing due
north, upon the tiled floor to spell the word "Revenge", and then hacked
each other to death with scalpels.

These, and a thousand or more other events of similar technique, Nadreck
tabulated and subjected to statistical analysis. Scattered so widely
throughout such a vast volume of space, they had created little or no
general disturbance; indeed, they had scarcely been noticed by
Civilization as a whole. Collected, they made a truly staggering, a
revolting and appalling total. Nadreck, however, was inherently
incapable of being staggered, revolted, or appalled. That repulsive
summation, a thing which in its massed horror would have shaken to the
core any being possessing any shred of sympathy or tenderness, was to
Nadreck an interesting and not too difficult problem in psychology and
mathematics.

He placed each episode in space and in time, correlating each with all
of its fellows in a space-time matrix. He determined the locus of
centers and derived the equations of its most probable motion. He
extended it by extrapolation in accordance with that equation. Then,
assuring himself that his margin of error was as small as he could make
it, he set out for a planet which Kandron would most probably visit at a
time far enough in the future to enable him to prepare to receive the
Onlonian.

That planet, being inhabited by near-human beings, was warm, brightly
sun-lit, and had an atmosphere rich in oxygen. Nadreck detested it,
since his ideal of a planet was precisely the opposite. Fortunately,
however, he would not have to land upon it until after Kandron's
arrival--possibly not then--and the fact that his proposed quarry was,
like himself, a frigid-blooded poison-breather, made the task of
detection a simple one.

Nadreck set his indetectable speedster into a circular orbit around the
planet, far enough out to be comfortable, and sent out course after
course of delicate, extremely sensitive screen. Precision of
pattern-analysis was of course needless. The probability was that all
legitimate movement of personnel to and from the planet would be
composed of warm-blooded oxygen-breathers; that any visitor not so
classified would be Kandron. Any frigid-blooded visitor had at least to
be investigated, hence his analytical screens had to be capable only of
differentiation between two types of beings as far apart as the galactic
poles in practically every respect. Nadreck knew that no supervision
would be necessary to perform such an open-and-shut separation as that;
he would have nothing more to do until his electronic announcers should
warn him of Kandron's approach--or until the passage of time should
inform him that the Onlonian was not coming to this particular planet.

Being a mathematician, Nadreck knew that any datum secured by
extrapolation is of doubtful value. He thus knew that the actual
probability of Kandron's coming was less, by some indeterminable amount,
than the mathematical one. Nevertheless, having done all that he could
do, he waited with the monstrous, unhuman patience known only to such
races as his.

Day by day, week by week, the speedster circled the planet and its big,
hot sun; and as it circled, the lone voyager studied. He analyzed more
data more precisely; he drew deeper and deeper upon his store of
knowledge to determine what steps next to take in the event that this
attempt should end, as so many previous ones had ended, in failure.




CHAPTER 5

THE ABDUCTION OF A PRESIDENT


Kinnison the author toiled manfully at his epic of space whenever he was
under any sort of observation, and enough at other times to avert any
suspicion. Indeed, he worked as much as Sybly Whyte, an advertisedly
temperamental writer, had ever worked. Besides interviewing the high and
the low, and taking notes everywhere, he attended authors' teas, at
which he cursed his characters fluently and bitterly for their failure
to co-operate with him. With short-haired women and long-haired men he
bemoaned the perversity of a public which compelled them to prostitute
the real genius of which each was the unique possessor. He sympathized
particularly with a fat woman writer of whodunits, whose extremely
unrealistic yet amazingly popular Gray Lensman hero had lived through
ten full-length novels and twenty million copies.

Even though her real field was the drama, she wasn't writing the kind of
detective tripe that most of these crank-turners ground out, she
confided to Kinnison. She had known lots of Gray Lensmen _very_
intimately, and _her_ stories were drawn from real life in every
particular!

Thus Kinnison remained in character; and thus he was enabled to work
completely unnoticed at his real job of finding out what was going on,
how the Boskonians were operating to ruin Radelix as they had ruined
Antigan IV.

His first care was to investigate the planet's president. That took
doing, but he did it. He examined that mind line by line and channel by
channel, with no results whatever. No scars, no sign of tampering.
Calling in assistance, he searched the president's past. Still no soap.
Everything checked. Boring from within, then, was out. His first
hypothesis was wrong; this invasion and this sabotage were being done
from without. How?

Those first leaflets were followed by others, each batch more vitriolic
in tone than the preceding one. Apparently they came from empty
stratosphere; at least, no ships were to be detected in the neighborhood
after any shower of the handbills had appeared. But that was not
surprising. With its inertialess drive any space-ship could have been
parsecs away before the papers touched atmosphere. Or they could have
been bombed in from almost any distance. Or, as Kinnison thought most
reasonable, they could have been simply dumped out of the mouth of a
hyper-spatial tube. In any event the method was immaterial. The results
only were important; and those results, the Lensman discovered, were
entirely disproportionate to the ostensible causes. The subversive
literature had some effect, of course, but essentially it must be a
blind. No possible tonnage of anonymous printing could cause that much
sheer demoralization.

Crack-pot societies of all kinds sprang up everywhere, advocating
everything from absolutism to anarchy. Queer cults arose, preaching free
love, the imminent end of the world, and many other departures from the
norm of thought. The Authors' League, of course, was affected more than
any other organization of its size, because of its relatively large
content of strong and intensely opinionated minds. Instead of becoming
one radical group it split into a dozen.

Kinnison joined one of those "Down with Everything!" groups, not as a
leader, but as a follower. Not too sheep-like a follower, but just
inconspicuous enough to retain his invisibly average status; and from
his place of concealment in the middle of the front row he studied the
minds of each of his fellow anarchists. He watched those minds change,
he found out who was doing the changing. When Kinnison's turn came he
was all set for trouble. He expected to battle a powerful mentality. He
would not have been overly surprised to encounter another mad Arisian,
hiding behind a zone of hypnotic compulsion. He expected anything, in
fact, except what he found--which was a very ordinary Radeligian
therapist. The guy was a clever enough operator, of course, but he could
not work against even the feeblest opposition. Hence the Gray Lensman
had no trouble at all, either in learning everything the fellow knew,
or, upon leaving him, in implanting within his mind the knowledge that
Sybly Whyte was now exactly the type of worker desired.

The trouble was that the therapist didn't know a thing. This not
entirely unexpected development posed Kinnison three questions. Did the
high-ups ever communicate with such small fry, or did they just give
them one set of orders and cut them loose? Should he stay in this
Radeligian's mind until he found out? If he was in control of the
therapist when a big shot took over, did he have jets enough to keep
from being found out? Risky business; better scout around first, anyway.
He'd do a flit.

He drove his black speedster a million miles. He covered Radelix like a
blanket, around the equator and from pole to pole. Everywhere he found
the same state of things. The planet was literally riddled with the
agitators; he found so many that he was forced to a black conclusion.
There could be no connection or communication between such numbers of
saboteurs and any real authority. They must have been given one set of
do-or-die instructions--whether they did or died was immaterial.
Experimentally, Kinnison had a few of the leaders taken into custody.
Nothing happened.

Martial law was finally declared, but this measure succeeded only in
driving the movement underground. What the subversive societies lost in
numbers they more than made up in desperation and violence. Crime raged
unchecked and uncheckable, murder became an every-day commonplace,
insanity waxed rife. And Kinnison, knowing now that no channel to
important prey would be opened until the climax, watched grimly while
the rape of the planet went on.

President Thompson and Lensman Gerrond sent message after message to
Prime Base and to Klovia, imploring help. The replies to these pleas
were all alike. The matter had been referred to the galactic council and
to the coordinator. Everything that could be done was being done.
Neither office could say anything else, except that, with the galaxy in
such a disturbed condition, each planet must do its best to solve its
own problems.

The thing built up toward its atrocious finale. Gerrond invited the
president to a conference in a down-town hotel room, and there, eyes
glancing from moment to moment at the dials of a complete little
test-kit held open upon his lap:

"I have just had some startling news, Mr. Thompson," Gerrond said,
abruptly. "Kinnison has been here on Radelix for weeks."

"What? Kinnison? Where is he? Why didn't he...?"

"Yes, Kinnison. Kinnison of Klovia. The coordinator himself. I don't
know where he is, or was. I didn't ask him." The Lensman smiled
fleetingly. "One doesn't, you know. He discussed the situation with me
at length. I'm still amazed..."

"Why doesn't he stop it, then?" the president demanded. "Or can't he
stop it?"

"That's what I've got to explain to you. He won't be able to do a thing,
he says, until the last minute..."

"Why not? I tell you, if this thing can be stopped it's got to be
stopped, and no matter what has to be done--"

"Just a minute!" Gerrond snapped. "I know you're out of control--I don't
like to see Radelix torn apart any better than you do--but you ought to
know by this time that Galactic Coordinator Kimball Kinnison is in a
better position to know what to do than any other man in the universe.
Furthermore, his word is the last word. What he says, goes."

"Of course," Thompson apologized. "I am overwrought... but to see our
entire world pulled down around us, our institutions, the work of
centuries, destroyed, millions of lives lost... all needlessly..."

"It won't come to that, he says, if we all do our parts. And you, sir,
are very much in the picture."

"I? How?"

"Are you familiar with what happened to Antigan IV?"

"Why, no. They had some trouble over there, I recall, but..."

"That's it. That's why this must go on. No planet cares particularly
about what happens to any other planet, but Kinnison cares about them
all as a whole. If this trouble is headed off now it will simply spread
to other planets; if it is allowed to come to a climax there's a chance
to put an end to the whole trouble, for good."

"But what has that to do with me? What can I, personally, do?"

"Much. That last act at Antigan IV, the thing that made it a planet of
maniacs, was the kidnaping of Planetary President Renwood. Murdered,
supposedly, since no trace of him has been found."

"Oh." The older man's hands clenched, then loosened. "I am willing...
provided... is Kinnison fairly certain that my death will enable
him..."

"It won't get that far, sir. He intends to stop it just before that. He
and his associates--I don't know who they are--have been listing every
enemy agent they can find, and they will all be taken care of at once.
He believes that Boskone will publish in advance a definite time at
which they will take you away from us. That was the way it went at
Antigan."

"Even from the Patrol?"

"From the main base itself. Coordinator Kinnison is pretty sure they can
do it, except for something he can bring into play only at the last
moment. Incidentally, that's why we're having this meeting here, with
this detector he gave me. He's afraid this base is porous."

"In that case... what can he..." The president fell silent.

"All I know is that we're to dress you in a certain suit of armor and
have you in my private office a few minutes before the time they set. We
and the guards leave the office at minus two minutes and walk down the
corridor, just fast enough to be exactly in front of Room Twenty-four at
minus one. We're to rehearse it until our timing is perfect. I don't
know what will happen then, but _something_ will."

Time passed; the Boskonian infiltration progressed according to plan. It
appeared that Radelix was going in the same fashion in which Antigan IV
had gone. Below the surface, however, there was one great difference.
Every ship reaching Radelix brought at least one man who did not leave.
Some of these visitors were tall and lithe, some were short and fat.
Some were old, some were young. Some were pale, some were burned to the
color of ancient leather by the fervent rays of space. They were alike
only in the "look of eagles" in their steady, quiet eyes. Each landed
and went about his ostensible business, interesting himself not at all
in any of the others.

Again the Boskonians declared their contempt of the Patrol by setting
the exact time at which Planetary President Thompson was to be taken.
Again the appointed hour was midnight.

Lieutenant-admiral Lensman Gerrond was, as Kinnison had intimated
frequently, somewhat of a brass hat. He did not, he simply could not
believe that his base was as pregnable as the coordinator had assumed it
to be. Kinnison, knowing that all ordinary defenses would be useless,
had not even mentioned them. Gerrond, unable to believe that his
hitherto invincible and invulnerable weapons and defenses were all of a
sudden useless, mustered them of his own volition.

All leaves had been cancelled. Every detector, every beam, every device
of defense and offense was fully manned. Every man was keyed up and
alert. And Gerrond, while apprehensive that something was about to
happen which wasn't in the book, was pretty sure in his stout old
war-dog's soul that he and his men had stuff enough.

At two minutes before midnight the armored president and his escorts
left Gerrond's office. One minute later they were passing the door of
the specified room. A bomb exploded shatteringly behind them, armored
men rushed yelling out of a branch corridor in their rear. Everybody
stopped and turned to look. So, the hidden Kinnison assured himself, did
an unseen observer in an invisible hovering, three-dimensional
hyper-circle.

Kinnison threw the door open, flashed an explanatory thought at the
president, yanked him into the room and into the midst of a corps of
Lensmen armed with devices not usually encountered even in Patrol bases.
The door snapped shut and Kinnison stood where Thompson had stood an
instant before, clad in armor identical with that which the president
had worn. The exchange had required less than one second.

"QX, Gerrond and you fellows!" Kinnison drove the thought. "The
president is safe--I'm taking over. Double time straight ahead--hipe!
Get clear--give us a chance to use our stuff!"

The unarmored men broke into a run, and as they did so the door of Room
Twenty-four swung open and stayed open. Weapons erupted from other doors
and from more branch corridors. The hyper-circle, which was in fact the
terminus of a hyper-spatial tube, began to thicken toward visibility.

It did not, however, materialize. Only by the intensest effort of vision
could it be discerned as the sheerest wisp, more tenuous than fog. The
men within the ship, if ship it was, were visible only as striations in
air are visible, and no more to be made out in detail. Instead of a full
materialization, the only thing that was or became solid was a
dead-black thing which reached purposefully outward and downward toward
Kinnison, a thing combined of tongs and coarse-meshed, heavy net.

Kinnison's DeLameters flamed at maximum intensity and minimum aperture.
Useless. The stuff was dureum; that unbelievably dense and ultimately
refractory synthetic which, saturated with pure force, is the only known
substance which can exist as an actuality both in normal space and in
that pseudo-space which composes the hyper-spatial tube. The Lensman
flicked on his neutralizer and shot away inertialess; but that maneuver,
too, had been foreseen. The Boskonian engineers matched every move he
made, within a split second after he made it; the tong-net closed.

Semi-portables flamed then--heavy stuff--but they might just as well
have remained cold. Their beams could not cut the dureum linkages; they
slid harmlessly _past_--not through--the wraith-like, figmental invaders
at whom they were aimed. Kinnison was hauled aboard the Boskonian
vessel; its structure and its furnishings and its crew becoming ever
firmer and more substantial to his senses as he went from normal into
pseudo space.

As the pseudo world became real, the reality of the base behind him
thinned into unreality. In seconds it disappeared utterly, and Kinnison
knew that to the senses of his fellow human beings he had simply
vanished. This ship, though, was real enough. So were his captors.

The net opened, dumping the Lensman ignominiously to the floor. Tractor
beams wrenched his blazing DeLameters out of his grasp--whether or not
hands and arms came with them was entirely his own look-out. Tractors
and pressors jerked him upright, slammed him against the steel wall of
the room, held him motionless against it.

Furiously he launched his ultimately lethal weapon, the Worsel-designed,
Thorndyke-built, mind-controlled projector of thought-borne vibrations
which decomposed the molecules without which thought and life itself
could not exist. Nothing happened. He explored, finding that even his
sense of perception was stopped a full foot away from every part of
every one of those humanoid bodies. He settled down then and thought. A
great light dawned; a shock struck sickeningly home.

No such elaborate and super-powered preparations would have been made
for the capture of any civilian. Presidents were old men, physically
weak and with no extraordinary powers of mind. No--this whole chain of
events had been according to plan--a high Boskonian's plan. Ruining a
planet was, of course, a highly desirable thing in itself, but it could
not have been the main feature.

Somebody with a real brain was out after the four Second-Stage Lensmen
and he wasn't fooling. And if Nadreck, Worsel, Tregonsee and himself
were all to disappear, the Patrol would know that it had been nudged.
But jet back--which of the four other than himself would have taken that
particular bait? Not one of them. Weren't they out after them, too? Sure
they were--they must be. Oh, if he could only warn them--but after all,
what good would it do? They had all warned each other repeatedly to
watch out for traps; all four had been constantly on guard. What
possible foresight could have avoided a snare set so perfectly to match
every detail of a man's make-up?

But he wasn't licked yet. They had to know what he knew, how he had done
what he had done, whether or not he had any superiors and who they were.
Therefore they had had to take him alive, just as he had had to take
various Boskonian chiefs. And they'd find out that as long as he was
alive he'd be a dangerous buzz-saw to monkey with.

The captain, or whoever was in charge, would send for him; that was a
foregone conclusion. He'd have to find out what he had caught; he'd have
to make a report of some kind. And somebody would slip. One hundred
percent vigilance was impossible, and Kinnison would be on his toes to
take advantage of that slip, however slight it might be.

But the captors did not take Kinnison to the captain. Instead,
accompanied by half a dozen unarmored men, that worthy came to Kinnison.

"Start talking, fellow, and talk fast," the Boskonian directed crisply
in the lingua franca of deep space as the armored soldiers strode out.
"I want to know who you are, what you are, what you've done, and
everything about you and the Patrol. So talk--or do you want me to pull
you apart with these tractors, armor and all?"

Kinnison paid no attention, but drove at the commander with his every
mental force and weapon. Blocked. This ape too had a full-body,
full-coverage screen.

There was a switch at the captain's hip, handy for fingertip control. If
he could only move! It would be _so_ easy to flip that switch! Or if he
could throw something--or make one of those other fellows brush against
him just right--or if the guy happened to sit down a little too close to
the arm of a chair--or if there were a pet animal of any kind around--or
a spider or a worm or even a gnat...




CHAPTER 6

TREGONSEE, CAMILLA, AND "X"


Second-Stage Lensman Tregonsee of Rigel IV did not rush madly out into
space in quest of something or anything Boskonian in response to
Kinnison's call. To hurry was not Tregonsee's way. He could move fast
upon occasion, but before he would move at all he had to know exactly
how, where, and why he should move.

He conferred with his three fellows, he furnished them with all the data
he possessed, he helped integrate the totaled facts into one composite.
That composite pleased the others well enough so that they went to work,
each in his own fashion, but it did not please Tregonsee. He could not
visualize any coherent whole from the available parts. Therefore, while
Kinnison was investigating the fall of Antigan IV, Tregonsee was
sitting--or rather, standing--still and thinking. He was still standing
still and thinking when Kinnison went to Radelix.

Finally he called in an assistant to help him think. He had more respect
for the opinions of Camilla Kinnison than for those of any other entity,
outside of Arisia, of the two galaxies. He had helped train all five of
the Kinnison children, and in Cam he had found a kindred soul.
Possessing a truer sense of values than any of his fellows, he alone
realized that the pupils had long since passed their tutors; and it is a
measure of his quality that the realization brought into Tregonsee's
tranquil soul no tinge of rancor, but only wonder. What those incredible
Children of the Lens had he did not know, but he knew that
they--particularly Camilla--had extraordinary gifts.

In the mind of this scarcely grown woman he perceived depths which he
could not plumb, extensions and vistas the meanings of which he could
not even vaguely grasp. He did not try either to plumb the abysses or to
survey the expanses; he made no slightest effort, ever, to take from any
of the children anything which the child did not first offer to reveal.
In his own mind he tried to classify theirs; but, realizing in the end
that that task was and always would be beyond his power, he accepted the
fact as calmly as he accepted the numberless others of Nature's
inexplicable facts. Tregonsee came the closest of any Second-Stage
Lensman to the real truth, but even he never did suspect the existence
of the Eddorians.

Camilla, as quiet as her twin sister Constance was boisterous, parked
her speedster in one of the capacious holds of the Rigellian's
space-ship and joined him in the control room.

"You believe, I take it, that dad's logic is faulty, his deductions
erroneous?" the girl thought; after a casual greeting. "I'm not
surprised. So do I. He jumped at conclusions. But then, he does that,
you know."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that, exactly. However, it seems to me," Tregonsee
replied carefully, "that he did not have sufficient basis in fact to
form any definite conclusion as to whether or not Renwood of Antigan was
a Boskonian operative. It is that point which I wish to discuss with you
first."

Cam concentrated. "I don't see that it makes any difference,
fundamentally, whether he was or not," she decided, finally. "A
difference in method only, not in motivation. Interesting, perhaps, but
immaterial. It is virtually certain in either case that Kandron of Onlo
or some other entity is the prime force and is the one who must be
destroyed."

"Of course, my dear, but that is only the first differential. How about
the second, and the third? Method governs. Nadreck, concerning himself
only with Kandron, tabulated and studied only the Kandronesque
manifestations. He may--probably will--eliminate Kandron. It is by no
means assured, however, that that step will be enough. In fact, from my
preliminary study, I would risk a small wager that the larger and worse
aspects would remain untouched. I would therefore suggest that we
ignore, for the time being, Nadreck's findings and examine anew all the
data available."

"I wouldn't bet you a millo on that." Camilla caught her lower lip
between white, even teeth. "Check. The probability is that Renwood was a
loyal citizen. Let us consider every possible argument for and against
that assumption..."

They went into contact of minds so close that the separate thoughts
simply could not be resolved into terms of speech. They remained that
way, not for the period of a few minutes which would have exhausted any
ordinary brain, but for four solid hours; and at the end of that
conference they had arrived at a few tentative conclusions.

Kinnison had said that there was no possibility of tracing a
hyper-spatial tube after it had ceased to exist. There were millions of
planets in the two galaxies. There was an indefinite, quite possibly an
infinite number of co-existent parallel spaces, into any one of which
the tube might have led. Knowing these things, Kinnison had decided that
the probability was infinitesimally small that any successful
investigation could be made along those lines.

Tregonsee and Camilla, starting with the same facts, arrived at entirely
different results. There were many spaces, true, but the inhabitants of
any one space belonged to that space and would not be interested in the
conquest or the permanent taking over of any other. Foreign spaces,
then, need not be considered. Civilization had only one significant
enemy; Boskonia. Boskonia, then, captained possibly by Kandron of Onlo,
was the attacker. The tube itself could not be traced and there were
millions of planets, yes, but those facts were not pertinent.

Why not? Because "X", who might or might not be Kandron, was not
operating from a fixed headquarters, receiving reports from subordinates
who did the work. A rigid philosophical analysis, of which few other
minds would have been capable, showed that "X" was doing the work
himself, and was moving from solar system to solar system to do it.
Those mass psychoses in which entire garrisons went mad all at once,
those mass hysterias in which vast groups of civilians went reasonlessly
out of control, could not have been brought about by an ordinary mind.
Of all Civilization, only Nadreck of Palain VII had the requisite
ability; was it reasonable to suppose that Boskonia had many such minds?
No. "X" was either singular or a small integer.

Which? Could they decide the point? With some additional data, they
could. Their linked minds went en rapport with Worsel, with Nadreck,
with Kinnison, and with the Principal Statistician at Prime Base.

In addition to Nadreck's locus, they determined two more--one of all
inimical manifestations, the other of those which Nadreck had not used
in his computations. Their final exhaustive analysis showed that there
were at least two, and very probably only two, prime intelligences
directing those Boskonian activities. They made no attempt to identify
either of them. They communicated to Nadreck their results and their
conclusions.

"I am working on Kandron," the Palainian replied, flatly. "I made no
assumptions as to whether or not there were other prime movers at work,
since the point has no bearing. Your information is interesting, and may
perhaps prove valuable, and I thank you for it--but my present
assignment is to find and to kill Kandron of Onlo."

Tregonsee and Camilla, then, set out to find "X"; not any definite
actual or deduced entity, but the perpetrator of certain closely-related
and highly characteristic phenomena, viz. mass psychoses and mass
hysterias. Nor did they extrapolate. They visited the last few planets
which had been affected, in the order in which the attacks occurred.
They studied every phase of every situation. They worked slowly,
but--they hoped and they believed--surely. Neither of them had any idea
then that behind "X" lay Ploor, and beyond Ploor, Eddore.

Having examined the planet latest to be stricken, they made no effort to
pick out definitely the one next to be attacked. It might be any one of
ten worlds, or possibly even twelve. Hence, neglecting entirely the
mathematical and logical probabilities involved, they watched them all,
each taking six. Each flitted from world to world, with senses alert to
perceive the first sign of subversive activity. Tregonsee was a retired
magnate, spending his declining years in seeing the galaxy. Camilla was
a Tellurian business girl on vacation.

Young, beautiful, innocent-looking girls who traveled alone were, then
as ever, regarded as fair game by the Don Juans of any given human
world. Scarcely had Camilla registered at the Hotel Grande when a
well-groomed, self-satisfied man-about-town made an approach.

"Hel-lo, beautiful! Remember me, don't you--old Tom Thomas? What say we
split a bottle of fayalin, to renew old..." He broke off, for the
red-headed eyeful's reaction was in no sense orthodox. She was not
coldly unaware of his presence. She was neither coy nor angry, neither
fearful nor scornful. She was only and vastly _amused_.

"You think, then, that I am human and desirable?" Her smile was
devastating. "Did you ever hear of the Canthrips of Ollenole?" She had
never heard of them either, before that instant, but this small implied
mendacity did not bother her.

"No...o, I can't say that I have." The man, while very evidently
taken aback by this new line of resistance, persevered. "What kind of a
brush-off do you think you're trying to give me?"

"Brush-off? See me as I am, you beast, and thank whatever gods you
recognize that I am not hungry, having eaten just last night." In his
sight her green eyes darkened to a jetty black, the flecks of gold in
them scintillated and began to emit sparks. Her hair turned into a mass
of horribly clutching tentacles. Her teeth became fangs, her fingers
talons, her strong, splendidly proportioned body a monstrosity out of
hell's grisliest depths.

After a moment she allowed the frightful picture to fade back into her
charming self, keeping the Romeo from fainting by the power of her will.

"Call the manager if you like. He has been watching and has seen nothing
except that you are pale and sweating. I, a friend of yours, have been
giving you some bad news, perhaps. Tell your stupid police all about me,
if you wish to spend the next few weeks in a padded cell. I'll see you
again in a day or two, I hope: I'll be hungry again by that time." She
walked away, serenely confident that the fellow would never willingly
come within sight of her again.

She had not damaged his ego permanently--he was not a neurotic type--but
she had given him a jolt that he'd never forget. Camilla Kinnison nor
any of her sisters had anything to fear from any male or males infesting
any planet or roaming any depths of space.

The expected and awaited trouble developed. Tregonsee and Camilla landed
and began their hunt. The League for Planetary Purity, it appeared, was
the primary focal point; hence the two attended a meeting of that
crusading body. That was a mistake; Tregonsee should have stayed out in
deep space, concealed behind a solid thought-screen.

For Camilla was an unknown. Furthermore, her mind was inherently stable
at the third level of stress; no lesser mind could penetrate her screens
or, having failed to do so, could recognize the fact of failure.
Tregonsee, however, was known throughout all civilized space. He was not
wearing his Lens, of course, but his very shape made him suspect. Worse,
he could not hide from any mind as powerful as that of "X" the fact that
his mind was very decidedly not that of a retired Rigellian gentleman.

Thus Camilla had known that the procedure was a mistake. She intimated
as much, but she could not sway the unswerving Tregonsee from his
determined course without revealing things which must forever remain
hidden from him. She acquiesced, therefore, but she knew what to expect.

Hence, when the invading intelligence blanketed the assemblage lightly,
only to be withdrawn instantly upon detecting the emanations of a mind
of real power, Cam had a bare moment of time in which to act. She
synchronized with the intruding thought, began to analyze it and to
trace it back to its source. She did not have time enough to succeed
fully in either endeavor, but she did get a line. When the foreign
influence vanished she shot a message to Tregonsee and they sped away.

Hurtling through space along the established line, Tregonsee's mind was
a turmoil of thought; thoughts as plain as print to Camilla. She flushed
uncomfortably--she could of course blush at will.

"I'm not half the super-woman you're picturing," she said. That was true
enough; no one this side of Arisia could have been. "You're so famous,
you know, and I'm not--while he was examining you I had a fraction of a
second to work in. You didn't."

"That may be true." Although Tregonsee had no eyes, the girl knew that
he was staring at her; scanning, but not intruding. She lowered her
barriers so far that he thought they were completely down. "You have,
however, extraordinary and completely inexplicable powers... but,
being the daughter of Kimball and Clarrissa Kinnison..."

"That's it, I think." She paused, then, in a burst of girlish
confidence, went on: "I've got something, I really do think, but I don't
know what it is or what to do with it. Maybe in fifty years or so I
will."

This also was close enough to the truth, and it did serve to restore to
Tregonsee his wonted poise. "Be that as it may, I will take your advice
next time, if you will offer it."

"Try and stop me--I love to give advice." She laughed unaffectedly. "It
might not be any better next time."

Then, further to quiet the shrewd Rigellian's suspicions, she strode
over to the control panel and checked the course. Having done so, she
fanned out detectors, centering upon that course, to the fullest range
of their power. She swaggered a little when she speared with a CRX
tracer a distant vessel in a highly satisfactory location. That act
would cut her down to size in Tregonsee's mind.

"You think, then, that 'X' is in that ship?" he asked quietly.

"Probably not." She could not afford to act too dumb--she could fool a
Second-Stage Lensman a little, but nobody could fool one much. "It may,
however, give us a lead."

"It is practically certain that 'X' is not in that vessel." Tregonsee
thought. "In fact, it may be a trap. We must, however, make the
customary arrangements to take it into custody."

Cam nodded and the Rigellian communications officers energized their
long-range beams. Far ahead of the fleeing vessel, centering upon its
line of flight, fast cruisers of the Galactic Patrol began to form a
gigantic cup. Hours passed, and--a not unexpected
circumstance--Tregonsee's super-dreadnought gained rapidly upon the
supposed Boskonian.

The quarry did not swerve or dodge. Straight into the mouth of the cup
it sped. Tractors and pressors reached out, locked on, and were neither
repulsed nor cut. The strange ship did not go inert, did not put out a
single course of screen, did not fire a beam. She did not reply to
signals. Spy-rays combed her from needle nose to driving jets, searching
every compartment. There was no sign of life aboard.

Spots of pink appeared upon Camilla's deliciously smooth cheeks, her
eyes flashed. "We've been had, Uncle Trig--_how_ we've been had!" she
exclaimed, and her chagrin was not all assumed. She had not quite
anticipated such a complete fiasco as this.

"Score one for 'X'," Tregonsee said. He not only seemed to be, but
actually was, calm and unmoved. "We will now go back and pick up where
we left off."

They did not discuss the thing at all, nor did they wonder how "X"
escaped them. After the fact, they both knew. There had been at least
two vessels; at least one of them had been inherently indetectable and
screened against thought. In one of these latter "X" had taken a course
at some indeterminable angle to the one which they had followed.

"X" was now at a safe distance.

"X" was nobody's fool.




CHAPTER 7

KATHRYN ON GUARD


Kathryn Kinnison, trim and taut in black glamorette, strolled into the
breakfast nook humming a lilting song. Pausing before a full-length
mirror, she adjusted her cocky little black toque at an even more
piquant angle over her left eye. She made a couple of passes at her riot
of curls and gazed at her reflected self in high approval as, putting
both hands upon her smoothly rounded hips, she--"wriggled" is the only
possible term for it--in sheer joy of being alive.

"Kathryn..." Clarrissa Kinnison chided gently. "Don't be
exhibitionistic, dear." Except in times of stress the Kinnison women
used spoken language, "to keep in practice," as they said.

"Why not? It's fun." The tall girl bent over and kissed her mother upon
the lobe of an ear. "You're sweet, mums, you know that? You're the most
_precious_ thing--Ha! Bacon and eggs? Goody!"

The older woman watched half-enviously as her eldest daughter ate with
the carefree abandon of one completely unconcerned about either
digestion or figure. She had no more understood her children, ever, than
a hen can understand the brood of ducklings she has so unwittingly
hatched out, and that comparison was more strikingly apt than Clarrissa
Kinnison ever would know. She now knew, more than a little ruefully,
that she never would understand them.

She had not protested openly at the rigor of the regime to which her son
Christopher had been subjected from birth. That, she knew, was
necessary. It was inconceivable that Kit should not be a Lensman, and
for a man to become a Lensman he had to be given everything he could
possibly take. She was deeply glad, however, that her four other babies
had been girls. Her daughters were _not_ going to be Lensmen. She, who
had known so long and so heavily the weight of Lensman's Load, would see
to that. Herself a womanly, feminine woman, she had fought with every
resource at her command to make her girl babies grow up into replicas of
herself. She had failed.

They simply would not play with dolls, nor play house with other little
girls. Instead, they insisted upon "intruding", as she considered it,
upon Lensmen; preferably upon Second-Stage Lensmen, if any one of the
four chanced to be anywhere within reach. Instead of with toys, they
played with atomic engines and flitters; and, later, with speedsters and
space-ships. Instead of primers, they read galactic encyclopedias. One
of them might be at home, as now, or all of them; or none. She never did
know what to expect.

But they were in no sense disloyal. They loved their mother with a depth
of affection which no other mother, anywhere, has ever known. They tried
their best to keep her from worrying about them. They kept in touch with
her wherever they went--which might be at whim to Tellus or to Thrale or
to Alsakan or to any unplumbed cranny of inter-galactic space--and they
informed her, apparently without reservation, as to everything they did.
They loved their father and their brother and each other and themselves
with the same whole-hearted fervor they bestowed upon her. They behaved
always in exemplary fashion. None of them had ever shown or felt the
slightest interest in any one of numerous boys and men; and this trait,
if the truth is to be told, Clarrissa could understand least of all.

No. The only thing basically wrong with them was the fact, made
abundantly clear since they first toddled, that they should not be and
could not be subjected to any jot or tittle of any form of control,
however applied.

Kathryn finished eating finally and gave her mother a bright, quick
grin. "Sorry, mums, you'll just have to give us up as hard cases, I
guess." Her fine eyes, so like Clarrissa's except in color, clouded as
she went on: "I _am_ sorry, mother, really, that we can't be what you so
want us to be. We've tried _so_ hard, but we just can't. It's something
here, and here." She tapped one temple and prodded her midsection with a
pink fore-finger. "Call it fatalism or anything you please, but I think
we're slated to do a job of some kind, some day, even though none of us
has any idea of what it's going to be."

Clarrissa paled. "I've been thinking just that for years, dear...
I've been afraid to say it, or even to think it... You are Kim's
children, and mine... If there ever was a perfect, a predestined
marriage, it is ours... And Mentor said that our marriage was
necessary..." She paused, and in that instant she almost perceived
the truth. She was closer to it than she had ever been before or ever
would be again. But that truth was far too vast for her mind to grasp.
She went on: "But I'd do it over again, Kathryn, knowing everything I
know now. 'Vast rewards', you know..."

"Of course you would," Kat interrupted. "Any girl would be a fool not
to. The minute I meet a man like dad I'm going to marry him, if I have
to scratch Kay's eyes out and snatch Cam and Con bald-headed to get him.
But speaking of dad, just what do you think of l'affaire Radelix?"

Gone every trace of levity, both women stood up. Gold-flecked tawny eyes
stared deeply into gold-flecked eyes of dark and velvety green.

"I don't know." Clarrissa spoke slowly, meaningfully. "Do you?"

"No. I wish I did." Kathryn's was not the voice of a girl, but that of
an avenging angel. "As Kit says, I'd give four front teeth and my right
leg to the knee joint to know who or what is back of that, but I don't.
I feel very much in the mood to do a flit out that way."

"Do you?" Clarrissa paused. "I'm glad. I'd go myself, in spite of
everything he says, except that I couldn't do anything... If that
_should_ be the job you were talking about... Oh, do anything you
can, dear; _anything_ to make sure he comes back to me!"

"Of course, mums." Kathryn broke away almost by force from her mother's
emotion. "I don't think it is; at least, I haven't got any cosmic hunch
to that effect. And don't worry; it puts wrinkles in the girlish
complexion. I'll do just a little look-see, stick around long enough to
find out what's what, and let you know all about it. 'Bye."

At high velocity Kathryn drove her indetectable speedster to Radelix,
and around and upon that planet she conducted invisible investigations.
She learned a part of the true state of affairs, she deduced more of it,
but she could not see, even dimly, the picture as a whole. This part,
though, was clear enough.

A third-level operator, she did not have to be at the one apparent mouth
of a hyper-spatial tube in order to enter it; she knew that while
communication was impossible either through such a tube from space to
space or from the interior of the tube to either space, the quality of
the tube was not the barrier. The interface was. Wherefore, knowing what
to expect first and working diligently to solve the whole problem, she
waited.

She watched Kinnison's abduction. There was nothing she could do about
that. She could not interfere then without setting up repercussions
which might very well shatter the entire structure of the Galactic
Patrol. When the Boskonian ship had disappeared, however, she tapped the
tube and followed it. Almost nose to tail she pressed it, tensely alert
to do some helpful deed which could be ascribed to accident or to luck.
For she knew starkly that Kinnison's present captors would not slip and
that his every ability had been discounted in advance.

Thus she was ready, when Kinnison's attention concentrated on the switch
controlling the Boskonian captain's thought-screen generator. There were
no pets or spiders or worms, or even gnats, but the captain could sit
down. Around his screen, then, she drove a solid beam of thought, on a
channel which neither the pirate nor the Lensman knew existed. She took
over in a trice the fellow's entire mind. He sat down, as Kinnison had
so earnestly willed him to do, the merest fraction of an inch too close
to the chair's arm. The switch-handle flipped over and Kathryn snatched
her mind away. She was sure that her father would think that bit of luck
purely fortuitous. She was equally sure that the situation was safe, for
a time at least, in Kinnison's highly capable hands. She slowed down,
allowed the distance between the two vessels to increase. But she kept
within range, for one or two more accidents might have to happen.

In the instant of the flicking of the switch the captain's mind became
Kinnison's. He was going to issue orders, to take the ship over in an
orderly way, but his first contact with the subjugated mind made him
change his plans. Instead of uttering orders, the captain leaped out of
the chair toward the beam-controllers.

And not an instant too soon. Others had seen what had happened, had
heard that tell-tale click. All had been warned against that and many
other contingencies. As the captain leaped one of his fellows drew a
bullet-projector and calmly shot him through the head.

The shock of that bullet, the death of the mind in his own mind's grasp,
jarred the Gray Lensman to the core. It was almost the same as though he
himself had been killed. Nevertheless, by sheer force of will he held
on, by sheer power of will he made that dead body take those last three
steps and forced those dead hands to cut the master circuit of the beams
which were holding him helpless.

Free, he leaped forward; but not alone. The others leaped, too, and for
the same controls. Kinnison got there first--just barely first--and as
he came he swung his armored fist.

What a dureum-inlaid glove, driven by all the brawn of Kimball
Kinnison's mighty right arm and powerful torso backed by all the
momentum of body- and armor-mass, will do to a human head met in direct
central impact is nothing to detail here. Simply, that head splashed.
Pivoting nimbly, considering his encumbering armor, he swung a terrific
leg. His steel boot sank calf-deep into the abdomen of the foe next in
line. Two more utterly irresistible blows disposed of two more of the
Boskonians; the last two turned and, frantically, ran. But the Lensman
by that time had the juice back on; and when a man has been smashed
against a bulkhead by the full power of a D2P pressor, all that remains
to be done must be accomplished with a scraper and a sponge.

Kinnison picked up his DeLameters, reconnected them, and took stock. So
far, so good. But there were other men aboard this heap--how many, he'd
better find out--and at least some of them wore dureum-inlaid armor as
capable as his own.

And in her speedster, concluding that this wasn't going to be so bad,
after all, Kathryn glowed with pride in her father's prowess. She was no
shrinking violet, this Third-Stage Lensman; she held no ruth whatever
for Civilization's foes. She herself would have driven that beam as
mercilessly as had the Gray Lensman. She could have told Kinnison what
next to do; could even have inserted the knowledge stealthily into his
mind; but, heroically, she refrained. She'd let him handle this in his
own fashion as long as he possibly could.

The Gray Lensman sent his sense of perception abroad. Twenty more of
them--the ship wasn't very big. Ten aft, armored. Six forward, also
armored. Four, unarmored, in the control-room. That control-room was
pure poison; he'd go aft first. He searched around... surely they'd
have dureum space-axes? Oh, yes, there they were. He hefted them,
selected one of the right weight and balance. He strode down the
companionway to the wardroom. He flung the door open and stepped inside.

His first care was to blast the communicator panels with his DeLameters.
That would delay the mustering of reinforcements. The control-room
couldn't guess, at least for a time, that one man was setting out to
capture their ship single-handed. His second, ignoring the beams of
hand-weapons splashing refulgently from his screens, was to weld the
steel door to the jamb. Then, sheathing his projectors, he swung up his
axe and went grimly to work. He thought fleetingly of how nice it would
be to have vanBuskirk, that dean of all axe-men, at his back; but he
wasn't too old or too fat to swing a pretty mean axe himself. And,
fortunately, these Boskonians, here in their quarters, didn't have axes.
They were heavy, clumsy, and for emergency use only; they were not a
part of the regular uniform, as with Valerians.

The first foe swung up his DeLameter involuntarily as Kinnison's axe
swept down. When the curved blade, driven as viciously as the Lensman's
strength could drive it, struck the ray-gun it did not even pause.
Through it it sliced, the severed halves falling to the floor.

The dureum inlay of the glove held, and glove and axe smashed together
against the helmet. The Boskonian went down with a crash; but, beyond a
broken arm or some such trifle, he wasn't hurt much. And no armor that a
man had to carry around could be made of solid dureum. Hence, Kinnison
reversed his weapon and swung again, aiming carefully at a point between
the inlay strips. The axe's wicked beak tore through steel and skull and
brain, stopping only with the sharply ringing impact of dureum shaft
against dureum stripping.

They were coming at him now, not only with DeLameters, but with whatever
of steel bars and spanners and bludgeons they could find. QX--his armor
could take oodles of that. They might dent it, but they couldn't
possibly get through. Planting one boot solidly on his victim's helmet,
he wrenched his axe out through flesh and bone and metal--no fear of
breakage; not even a Valerian's full savage strength could break the
helve of a space-axe--and struck again. And struck--and struck.

He fought his way to the door--two of the survivors were trying to
unseal it and get away. They failed; and, in failing, died. A couple of
the remaining enemies shrieked and ran in blind panic, and tried to
hide; the others battled desperately on. But whether they ran or fought
there was only one possible end, if the Patrolman were to survive. No
enemy must or could be left alive behind him, to bring to bear upon his
back some semi-portable weapon with whose energies his armor's screens
could not cope.

When the grisly business was over Kinnison, panting, rested briefly.
This was the first real brawl he had been in for twenty years; and for a
veteran--a white-collar man, a coordinator to boot--he hadn't done so
bad, he thought. It was damned hard work and, while he was maybe a hair
short of wind, he hadn't weakened a particle. To here, QX.

And lovely Kathryn, far enough back but not too far and reading
imperceptibly his every thought, agreed with him enthusiastically. She
did not have a father complex, but in common with her sisters she knew
exactly what her father was. With equal exactitude she knew what other
men were. Knowing them, and knowing however imperfectly herself, each of
the Kinnison girls knew that it would be a physical and psychological
impossibility for her to become even mildly interested in any man not at
least her father's equal. They each had dreamed of a man who would be
her own equal, physically and mentally, but it had not yet occurred to
any of them that one such man already existed.

Kinnison cut the door away and again sent out his sense of perception.
With it fanning out ahead of him he retraced his previous path. The apes
in the control-room had done something; he didn't know just what. Two of
them were tinkering with a communicator panel; probably the one to the
wardroom. They probably thought the trouble was at their end. Or did
they? Why hadn't they reconnoitered? He dismissed that problem as being
of no pressing importance. The other two were doing something at another
panel. What? He couldn't make head or tail of it--damn those
full-coverage screens! And Nadreck's fancy drill, even if he had had one
along, wouldn't work unless the screen were absolutely steady. Well, it
didn't make much, if any, difference. They had called the men back from
up forward, and here they came. He'd rather meet them in the corridor
than in an open room, anyway, he could handle them a lot easier...

But tensely watching Kathryn gnawed her lip. Should she tell him, or
control him, or not? No. She wouldn't--she couldn't--yet. Dad could
figure out that pilot-room trap without her help... and she herself,
with all her power of brain, could not visualize with any degree of
clarity the menace which was--which _must_ be--at the tube's end or even
now rushing along it to meet that Boskonian ship...

Kinnison met the oncoming six and vanquished them. By no means as easily
as he had conquered the others, since they had been warned and since
they also now bore space-axes, but just as finally. Kinnison did not
consider it remarkable that he escaped practically unscratched--his
armor was battered and dinged up, cut and torn, but he had only a couple
of superficial wounds. He had met the enemy where they could come at him
only one at a time; he was still the master of any weapon known to space
warfare; it had been at no time evident that any outside influence was
interfering with the normally rapid functioning of the Boskonians'
minds.

He was full of confidence, full of fight, and far from spent when he
faced about to consider what he should do about that control-room. There
was plenty of stuff in there... tougher stuff than he had met up with
so far...

Kathryn in her speedster gritted her teeth and clenched her hands into
hard fists. This was bad--very, _very_ bad--and it was going to get
worse. Closing up fast, she uttered a bitter and exceedingly unladylike
expletive.

Couldn't he _see_--couldn't the damn dumb darling _sense_--that he was
apt to run out of time almost any minute now?

She fairly writhed in an agony of indecision; and indecision, in a
Third-Stage Lensman, is a rare phenomenon indeed. She wanted intensely
to take over, but if she did, was there any way this side of Palain's
purple hells for her to cover up her tracks?

There was none... yet.




CHAPTER 8

BLACK LENSMEN


But Kinnison's mind, while slower than his daughter's and much less
able, was sure. The four Boskonians in the control-room were screened
against his every mental force and it was idle even to hope for another
such lucky break as he had just had. They were armored by this time and
they had both machine rifles and semi-portable projectors. They were
entrenched; evidently intending to fight a delaying and defensive
battle, knowing that if they could hold him off until the tube had been
traversed, the Lensman would not have a chance. Armed with all they
could use of the most powerful mobile weapons aboard and being four to
one, they undoubtedly thought they could win easily enough.

Kinnison thought otherwise. Since he could not use his mind against them
he would use whatever he could find, and this ship, having come upon
such a mission, would be carrying plenty of weapons--and those four men
certainly hadn't had time to tamper with them all. He might even find
some negative-matter bombs.

Setting up a spy-ray block, he proceeded to rummage. They couldn't see
him, and if any one of them had a sense of perception and cut his screen
for even a fraction of a second to use it the battle would end right
then. And if they decided to rush him, so much the better. They
remained, however, forted up, as he had thought they would, and he
rummaged in peace. Various death-dealing implements, invitingly set up,
he ignored after one cursory glance into their interiors. He knew
weapons--these had been fixed. He went on to the armory.

He did not find any negabombs, but he found plenty of untouched weapons
like those now emplaced in the control-room. The rifles were beauties;
high-caliber, water-cooled things, each with a heavy dureum shield-plate
and a single-ply screen. Each had a beam, too, but machine-rifle beams
weren't so hot. Conversely, the semi-portables had lots of screen, but
very little dureum. Kinnison lugged one rifle and two semi-portables, by
easy stages, into the room next to the control-room; so placing them
that the control panels would be well out of the line of fire.

What gave Kinnison his chance was the fact that the enemies' weapons
were set to cover the door. Apparently they had not considered the
possibility that the Lensman would attempt to flank them by blasting
through an inch and a half of high-alloy steel. Kinnison did not know
whether he could do it fast enough to mow them down from the side before
they could reset their magnetic clamps, or not; but he'd give it the
good old college try. It was bound to be a mighty near thing, and the
Lensman grinned wolfishly behind the guard-plates of his helmet as he
arranged his weapons to save every possible fractional second of time.

Aiming one at a spot some three feet above the floor, the other a little
lower, Kinnison cut in the full power of his semis and left them on. He
energized the rifle's beam--every little bit helped--set the defensive
screens at "full", and crouched down into the saddle behind the dureum
shield. He had checked the feeds long since: he had plenty of rounds.

Two large spots and a small one smoked briefly, grew red. They turned
bright red, then yellow, merged into one blinding spot. Metal melted,
sluggishly at first, then thinly, then flaring, blowing out in raging
corruscations of sparks as the fiercely-driven beams ate in. Through!

The first small opening appeared directly in line between the muzzle of
Kinnison's rifle and one of the guns of the enemy, and in the moment of
its appearance the Patrolman's weapon began its stuttering, shattering
roar. The Boskonians had seen the hot spot on the wall, had known
instantly what it meant, and were working frantically to swing their
gun-mounts around so as to interpose their dureum shields and to bring
their own rifles to bear. They had almost succeeded. Kinnison caught
just the bulge of one suit of armor in his sights, but that was enough.
The kinetic energy of the stream of metal tore him out of the saddle; he
was literally riddled while still in air. Two savage bursts took care of
the semi-portables and their operators--as has been intimated, the
shields of the semis were not designed to withstand the type of
artillery Kinnison was using.

That made it cannon to cannon, one to one; and the Lensman knew that
those two identical rifles could hammer at each others' defenses for an
hour without doing any serious damage. He had, however, one big
advantage. Being closer to the bulkhead he could depress his line of
fire more than could the Boskonian. He did so, aiming at the clamps,
which were not built to take very much of that sort of punishment. One
front clamp let go, then the other, and the Lensman knew what to do
about the rear pair, which he could not reach. He directed his fire
against the upper edge of the dureum plate. Under the awful thrust of
that terrific storm of steel the useless front clamps lifted from the
floor. The gun mount, restrained from sliding by the unbreakable grip of
the rear clamps, reared up. Over it went, straight backward, exposing
the gunner to the full blast of Kinnison's fire. That, definitely, was
that.

Kathryn heaved a sigh of relief: as far as she could "see", the tube was
still empty. "That's my pop!" she applauded inaudibly to herself. "Now,"
she breathed, "if the darling has just got jets enough to figure out
that something may be coming at him down this tube--and sense enough to
run back home before it can catch him!"

Kinnison had no suspicion that any danger to himself might lie within
the tube. He had no desire, however, to land alone in an enemy ship in
the exact center of an enemy base, and no intention whatever of doing
so. Moreover, he had once come altogether too close to permanent
immolation in a foreign space because of the discontinuance of a
hyper-spatial tube while he was in it, and once was once too many. Also,
he had just got done leading with his chin, and once of that, too, was
once too many. Therefore his sole thought was to get back into his own
space as fast as he could get there, so as soon as the opposition was
silenced he hurried into the control-room and reversed the vessel's
drive.

Behind him, Kathryn nipped her speedster end for end and led the
retreat. She left the tube before--"before" is an extremely loose and
inaccurate word in this connection, but it conveys the idea better than
any other ordinary term--she got back to Base. She caused an officer to
broadcast an "evacuation" warning, then hung poised, watching intently.
She knew that Kinnison could not leave the tube except at its terminus,
hence would have to materialize inside the building itself. She had
heard of what happened when two dense, hard solids attempted to occupy
the same three-dimensional space at the same time; but to view that
occurrence was not her purpose in lingering. She did not actually know
whether there was anything in the tube or not; but she did know that if
there were, and if it or they should follow her father out into normal
space, even she would have need of every jet she could muster.

Kinnison, maneuvering his Boskonian cruiser to a halt just at the barest
perceptible threshold of normal space, in the intermediate zone in which
nothing except dureum was solid in either space or pseudo-space, had
already given a great deal of thought to the problem of disembarkation.
The ship was small, as space-ships go, but even so it was a lot bigger
than any corridor of any ordinary structure. Those corridor walls and
floors were thick and contained a lot of steel; the ship's walls were
solid alloy. He had never seen metal materialize within metal and,
frankly, he didn't want to be around, even inside G-P armor, when it
happened. Also, there were a lot of explosives aboard, and atomic power
plants, and the chance of touching off a loose atomic vortex within a
few feet of himself was not one to be taken lightly.

He had already rigged a line to a master switch. Power off, with the
ship's dureum cat-walk as close to the floor of the corridor as the
dimensions of the tube permitted, he reversed the controls and poised
himself for a running headlong dive. He could not feel Radeligian
gravitation, of course, but he was pretty sure that he could jump far
enough to get through the interface. He took a short run, jerked the
line, and hurled himself through the space-ship's immaterial wall. The
ship disappeared.

Going through that interface was more of a shock than the Lensman had
anticipated. Even taken very slowly, as it customarily is,
inter-dimensional acceleration brings malaise to which no one has ever
become accustomed, and taking it so rapidly fairly turned Kinnison
inside out. He was going to land with the rolling impact which
constitutes perfect technique in such armored maneuvering. As it was, he
never did know how he landed, except that he made a boiler-shop racket
and brought up against the far wall of the corridor with a climactic
clang. Beyond the addition of a few more bruises and contusions to his
already abundant collection, however, he was not hurt.

As soon as he could collect himself he leaped to his feet and rapped out
orders. "Tractors--pressors--shears! Heavy stuff, to anchor, not to
clamp! Hipe!" He knew what he was up against now, and if they'd only
come back he'd yank them out of that blank tube so fast it'd break every
blank blank one of their blank blank blank necks!

And Kathryn, still watching intently, smiled. Her dad was a pretty smart
old duck, but he wasn't using his noggin now--he was cockeyed as
Trenco's ether in even thinking they _might_ come back. If anything at
all erupted from that hyper-circle it would be something against which
everything he was mustering would be precisely as effective as so much
thin air. And she _still_ had no concrete idea of what she so feared. It
wouldn't be essentially physical, she was pretty sure. It would almost
have to be mental. But who or what could possibly put it across? And
how? And above all, what could she do about it if they did?

Eyes narrowed, brow furrowed in concentration, she thought as she had
never thought before; and the harder she thought the more clouded the
picture became. For the first time in her triumphant life she felt
small--weak--impotent. It was in that hour that Kathryn Kinnison really
grew up.

The tube vanished; she heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. They, whoever
they were, having failed to bring Kinnison to them--this time--were not
coming after him--this time. Not an important enough game to play to the
end? No, that wasn't it. Maybe they weren't ready. But the next time...

Mentor the Arisian had told her bluntly, the last time she had seen him,
to come to him again when she realized that she didn't know quite
everything. Deep down, she had not expected that day ever to come. Now,
however, it had. This escape--if it had been an escape--had taught her
much.

"Mother!" She shot a call to distant Klovia. "I'm on Radelix.
Everything's on the green. Dad has just knocked a flock of Boskonians
into an outside loop and come through QX. I've got to do a little flit,
though, before I come home. 'Bye."

Kinnison stood intermittent guard over the base for four days after the
hyper-spatial tube had disappeared before he gave up; before he did any
very serious thinking about what he should do next.

Could he and should he keep on as Sybly Whyte? He could and he should,
he decided. He hadn't been gone long enough for Whyte's absence to have
been noticed; nothing whatever connected Whyte with Kinnison. If he
really knew what he was doing a more specific alias might be better; but
as long as he was merely smelling around, Whyte's was the best identity
to use. He could go anywhere, do anything, ask anything of anybody, and
all with a perfectly good excuse.

And as Sybly Whyte, then, for days that stretched into weeks, he
roamed--finding, as he had feared, nothing whatever. It seemed as though
all Boskonian activity of the type in which he was most interested had
ceased with his return from the hyper-spatial tube. Just what that meant
he did not know. It was unthinkable that they had given up on him: much
more probably they were hatching something new. And the frustration of
inaction and the trying to figure out what was coming next was driving
him not-so-slowly nuts.

Then, striking through the doldrums, came a call from Maitland.

"Kim? You told me to Lens you immediately about any off-color work.
Don't know whether this is or not. The guy may be--probably is--crazy.
Conklin, who reported him, couldn't decide. Neither can I, from
Conklin's report. Do you want to send somebody special, take over
yourself, or what?"

"I'll take over," Kinnison decided instantly. If neither Conklin nor
Maitland, Gray Lensmen both, could decide, there was no point in sending
anyone else. "Where and who?"

"Planet, Meneas II, not too far from where you are now. City,
Meneateles; 116-3-29, 45-22-17. Place, Jack's Haven, a meteor-miners'
hangout at the corner of Gold and Sapphire Streets. Person, a man called
'Eddie'."

"Thanks, I'll check." Maitland did not send, and Kinnison did not want,
any additional information. Both knew that since the coordinator was
going to investigate this thing himself, he should get his facts, and
particularly his impressions, at first and unprejudiced hand.

To Meneas II, then, and to Jack's Haven, Sybly Whyte went, notebook very
much in evidence. An ordinary enough space-dive Jack's turned out to
be--higher-toned than that Radeligian space-dock saloon of Bominger's;
much less flamboyant than notorious Miners' Rest on far Euphrosyne.

"I wish to interview a person named Eddie," he announced, as he bought a
bottle of wine. "I have been informed that he has had deep-space
adventures worthy of incorporation into one of my novels."

"Eddie? Haw!" The barkeeper laughed raucously. "That space-louse?
Somebody's been kidding you, mister. He's nothing but a broken-down
meteor-miner--you know what a space-louse is, don't you?--that we let
clean cuspidors and do such-like odd jobs for his keep. We don't throw
him out, like we do the others, because he's kind of funny in one way.
Every hour or so he throws a fit, and that amuses people."

Whyte's eager-beaver attitude did not change; his face reflected nothing
of what Kinnison thought of this callous speech. For Kinnison did know
exactly what a space-louse was. More, he knew what turned a man into
one. Ex-meteor-miner himself, he knew what the awesome depths of space,
the ever-present dangers, the privations, the solitude, the
frustrations, did to any mind not adequately integrated. He knew that
only the strong survived; that the many weak succumbed. From sickening
memory he knew just what pitiful wrecks those many became. Nevertheless,
and despite the fact that the information was not necessary:

"Where is this Eddie now?"

"That's him, over there in the corner. By the way he's acting, he'll
have another fit pretty quick now."

The shambling travesty of a man accepted avidly the invitation to table
and downed at a gulp the proffered drink. Then, as though the mild
potion had been a trigger, his wracked body tensed and his features
began to writhe.

"Cateagles!" he screamed; eyes rolling, breath coming in hard, frantic
gasps. "Gangs of cateagles! Thousands! They're clawing me to bits! And
the Lensman! He's sicking them on! _Ow!!_ YOW!!!" He burst into
unintelligible screams and threw himself to the floor. There, rolling
convulsively over and over, he tried the impossible feat of covering
simultaneously with his two claw-like hands his eyes, ears, nose, mouth,
and throat.

Ignoring the crowding spectators, Kinnison invaded the helpless mind
before him. He winced mentally as he scanned the whole atrocious
enormity of what was there. Then, while Whyte busily scribbled notes, he
shot a thought to distant Klovia.

"Cliff! I'm here in Jack's Haven, and I've got Eddie's data. What did
you and Conklin make of it? You agree, of course, that the Lensman is
the crux."

"Definitely. Everything else is hop-happy space-drift. The fact that
there are not--there _can't_ be--any such Lensman as Eddie imagined,
makes him space-drift, too, in our opinion. We called you in on the
millionth chance--sorry we sent you out on a false alarm, but you said
we had to be sure."

"You needn't be sorry." Kinnison's thought was the grimmest Clifford
Maitland had ever felt. "Eddie isn't an ordinary space-louse. You see, I
know one thing that you and Conklin don't. You noticed the woman? Very
faint, decidedly in the background?"

"Now that you mention her--yes. Too far in the background and too faint
to be a key. Most every spaceman has a woman--or a lot of different
ones--more or less on his mind all the time, you know. Immaterial, I'd
say."

"So would I, maybe, except for the fact that she isn't a woman at all,
but a Lyranian..."

"A LYRANIAN!" Maitland interrupted. Kinnison could feel the racing of
his assistant's thoughts. "That complicates things... But how in
Palain's purple hells, Kim, could Eddie ever have got to Lyrane--and if
he did, how did he get away alive?"

"I don't know, Cliff." Kinnison's mind, too, was working fast. "But you
haven't got all the dope yet. To cinch things, I know her
personally--she's that airport manager who tried her damndest to kill me
all the time I was on Lyrane II."

"Hm...m...m." Maitland tried to digest that undigestible bit.
Tried, and failed. "That would seem to make the Lensman real, too,
then--real enough, at least, to investigate--much as I hate to think of
the possibility of a Lensman going that far off the beam." Maitland's
convictions died hard. "You'll handle this yourself, then?"

"Check. At least, I'll help. There may be people better qualified than I
am. I'll get them at it. Thanks, Cliff--clear ether."

He lined a thought to his wife; and after a short, warmly intimate
contact, he told her the story.

"So you see, beautiful," he concluded, "your wish is coming true. I
couldn't keep you out of this if I wanted to. So check with the girls,
put on your Lens, shed your clothes, and go to work."

"I'll do that." Clarrissa laughed and her soaring spirit flooded his
mind. "Thanks, my dear."

Then and only then did Kimball Kinnison, master therapist, pay any
further attention to that which lay contorted upon the floor. But when
Whyte folded up his notebook and left the place, the derelict was
resting quietly; and in a space of time long enough so that the putative
writer of space-opera would not be connected with the cure, those fits
would end. Moreover, Eddie would return, whole, to the void: he would
become what he had never before been--a successful meteor-miner.

Lensmen pay their debts; even to spiders and to worms.




CHAPTER 9

AN ARISIAN EDUCATION


Her adventure in the hyper-spatial tube had taught Kathryn Kinnison
much. Realizing her inadequacy and knowing what to do about it, she
drove her speedster at high velocity to Arisia. Unlike the Second-Stage
Lensmen, she did not even slow down as she approached the planet's
barrier; but, as one sure of her welcome, merely threw out ahead of her
an identifying thought.

"Ah, daughter Kathryn, again you are in time." Was there, or was there
not, a trace of emotion--of welcome, even of affection?--in that usually
utterly emotionless thought? "Land as usual."

She neutralized her controls as she felt the mighty beams of the
landing-engine take hold of her little ship. During previous visits she
had questioned nothing--this time she was questioning _everything_. Was
she landing, or not? Directing her every force inwardly, she probed her
own mind to its profoundest depths. Definitely, she was her own mistress
throughout--no conceivable mind could take _hers_ over so tracelessly.
As definitely, then, she was actually landing.

She landed. The ground on which she stepped was real. So was the
automatic flyer--neither plane nor helicopter--which whisked her from
the spaceport to her familiar destination, an unpretentious residence in
the grounds of the immense hospital. The graveled walk, the flowering
shrubs, and the indescribably sweet and pungent perfume were real; as
were the tiny pain and the drop of blood which resulted when a
needle-sharp thorn pierced her incautious finger.

Through automatically-opening doors she made her way into the familiar,
comfortable, book-lined room which was Mentor's study. And there, at his
big desk, unchanged, sat Mentor. A lot like her father, but older--much
older. About ninety, she had always thought, even though he didn't look
over sixty. This time, however, she drove a probe--and got the shock of
her life. Her thought was stopped--cold--not by superior mental force,
which she could have taken unmoved, but by a seemingly ordinary
thought-screen, and her fast-disintegrating morale began visibly to
crack.

"Is all this--are you--real, or not?" she burst out, finally. "If it
isn't, I'll go mad!"

"That which you have tested--and I--are real, for the moment and as you
understand reality. Your mind in its present state of advancement cannot
be deceived concerning such elementary matters."

"But it all wasn't, before? Or don't you want to answer that?"

"Since the knowledge will affect your growth, I will answer. It was not.
This is the first time that your speedster has landed physically upon
Arisia."

The girl shrank, appalled. "You told me to come back when I found out
that I didn't know it all," she finally forced herself to say. "I
learned that in the tube; but I didn't realize until just now that I
don't know _anything_. Is there any use, Mentor, in going on with me?"
she concluded, bitterly.

"Much," he assured her. "Your development has been eminently
satisfactory, and your present mental condition is both necessary and
sufficient."

"Well, I'll be a spr..." Kathryn bit off the expletive and frowned.
"What were you doing to me before, then, when I thought I got
everything?"

"Power of mind," he informed her. "Sheer power, and penetration, and
control. Depth, and speed, and all the other factors with which you are
already familiar."

"But what was left? I know there is--lots of it--but I can't imagine
what."

"Scope," Mentor replied, gravely. "Each of those qualities and
characteristics must be expanded to encompass the full sphere of
thought. Neither words nor thoughts can give any adequate concept of
what it means; a practically wide-open two-way will be necessary. This
cannot be accomplished, daughter, in the adolescent confines of your
present mind; therefore enter fully into mine."

She did so: and after less than a minute of that awful contact slumped,
inert and boneless, to the floor.

The Arisian, unchanged, unmoved, unmoving, gazed at her until finally
she began to stir.

"That... father Mentor, that was..." She blinked, shook her head
savagely, fought her way back to full consciousness. "That was a shock."

"It was," he agreed. "More so than you realize. Of all the entities of
your Civilization, your brother and now you are the only ones it would
not kill instantly. You now know what the word 'scope' means, and are
ready for your last treatment, in the course of which I shall take your
mind as far along the road of knowledge as mine is capable of going."

"But that would mean... you're implying... But my mind _can't_ be
superior to yours, Mentor! Nothing could be, _possibly_--it's sheerly,
starkly unthinkable!"

"But true, daughter, nevertheless. While you are recovering your
strength from that which was but the beginning of your education, I will
explain certain matters previously obscure. You have long known, of
course, that you five children are not like any others. You have always
known many things without having learned them. You think upon all
possible bands of thought. Your senses of perception, of sight, of
hearing, of touch, are so perfectly merged into one sense that you
perceive at will any possible manifestation upon any possible plane or
dimension of vibration. Also, although this may not have occurred to you
as extraordinary, since it is not obvious, you differ physically from
your fellows in some important respects. You have never experienced the
slightest symptom of physical illness; not even a headache or a decayed
tooth. You do not really require sleep. Vaccinations and inoculations do
not 'take'. No pathogenic organism, however virulent; no poison, however
potent..."

"Stop, Mentor!" Kathryn gasped, turning white. "I can't take it--you
really mean, then, that we aren't human at all?"

"Before going into that I should give you something of background. Our
Arisian visualizations foretold the rise and fall of galactic
civilizations long before any such civilizations came into being. That
of Atlantis, for instance. I was personally concerned in that, and could
not stop its fall." Mentor _was_ showing emotion now; his thought was
bleak and bitter.

"Not that I expected to stop it," he resumed. "It had been known for
many cycles of time that the final abatement of the opposing force would
necessitate the development of a race superior to ours in every respect.

"Blood lines were selected in each of the four strongest races of this
that you know as the First Galaxy. Breeding programs were set up, to
eliminate as many as possible of their weaknesses and to concentrate all
of their strengths. From your knowledge of genetics you realize the
magnitude of the task; you know that it would take much time uselessly
to go into the details of its accomplishment. Your father and your
mother were the penultimates of long--_very_ long--lines of mating;
their reproductive cells were such that in their fusion practically
every gene carrying any trait of weakness was rejected. Conversely, you
carry the genes of every trait of strength ever known to any member of
your human race. Therefore, while in outward seeming you are human, in
every factor of importance you are not; you are even less human than am
I myself."

"And just how human is that?" Kathryn flared, and again her most
penetrant probe of force flattened out against the Arisian's screen.

"Later, daughter, not now. That knowledge will come at the end of your
education, not at its beginning."

"I was afraid so." She stared at the Arisian, her eyes wide and
hopeless; brimming, in spite of her efforts at control, with tears.
"You're a monster, and I am... or am going to be--a worse one. A
monster... and I'll have to live a million years... alone...
why? _Why_, Mentor, did you have to do this to me?"

"Calm yourself, daughter. The shock, while severe, will pass. You have
lost nothing, have gained much."

"Gained? Bah!" The girl's thought was loaded with bitterness and scorn.
"I've lost my parents--I'll still be a girl long after they have died.
I've lost every possibility of ever really living. I want love--and a
husband--and children--and I can't have any of them, ever. Even without
this, I've never seen a man I wanted, and now I can't ever love anybody.
I don't _want_ to live a million years, Mentor--especially alone!" The
thought was a veritable wail of despair.

"The time has come to stop this muddy, childish thinking." Mentor's
thought, however, was only mildly reproving. "Such a reaction is only
natural, but your conclusions are entirely erroneous. One single clear
thought will show you that you have no present psychic, intellectual,
emotional, or physical need of a complement."

"That's true..." wonderingly. "But other girls of my age..."

"Exactly," came Mentor's dry rejoinder. "Thinking of yourself as an
adult of _Homo Sapiens_, you were judging yourself by false standards.
As a matter of fact, you are an adolescent, not an adult. In due time
you will come to love a man, and he you, with a fervor and depth which
you at present cannot even dimly understand."

"But that still leaves my parents," Kathryn felt much better. "I can
apparently age, of course, as easily as I can put on a hat... but I
really do love them, you know, and it will simply break mother's heart
to have all her daughters turn out to be--as she thinks--spinsters."

"On that point, too, you may rest at ease. I am taking care of that.
Kimball and Clarrissa both know, without knowing how they know it, that
your life cycle is tremendously longer than theirs. They both know that
they will not live to see their grandchildren. Be assured, daughter,
that before they pass from this cycle of existence into the next--about
which I know nothing--they shall know that all is to be supremely well
with their line; even though, to Civilization at large, it shall
apparently end with you Five."

"End with us? What do you mean?"

"You have a destiny, the nature of which your mind is not yet qualified
to receive. In due time the knowledge shall be yours. Suffice it now to
say that the next forty or fifty years will be but a fleeting hour in
the span of life which is to be yours. But time, at the moment, presses.
You are now fully recovered and we must get on with this, your last
period of study with me, at the end of which you will be able to bear
the fullest, closest impact of my mind as easily as you have heretofore
borne full contact with your sisters'. Let us proceed with the work."

They did so. Kathryn took and survived those shattering treatments, one
after another, emerging finally with a mind whose power and scope can no
more be explained to any mind below the third level than can the general
theory of relativity be explained to a chimpanzee.

"It was forced, not natural, yes," the Arisian said, gravely, as the
girl was about to leave. "You are many millions of your years ahead of
your natural time. You realize, however, the necessity of that forcing.
You also realize that I can give you no more formal instruction. I will
be with you or on call at all times; I will be of aid in crises; but in
larger matters your further development is in your own hands."

Kathryn shivered. "I realize that, and it scares me clear through...
especially this coming conflict, at which you hint so vaguely. I wish
you'd tell me at least _something_ about it, so I can get ready for it!"

"Daughter, I can't." For the first time in Kathryn's experience, Mentor
the Arisian was unsure. "It is certain that we have been on time; but
since the Eddorians have minds of power little if any inferior to our
own, there are many details which we cannot derive with certainty, and
to advise you wrongly would be to do you irreparable harm. All I can say
is that sufficient warning will be given by your learning, with no
specific effort on your part and from some source other than myself,
that there does in fact exist a planet named 'Ploor'--a name which to
you is now only a meaningless symbol. Go now, daughter Kathryn, and
work."

Kathryn went; knowing that the Arisian had said all that he would say.
In truth, he had told her vastly more than she had expected him to
divulge; and it chilled her to the marrow to think that she, who had
always looked up to the Arisians as demi-gods of sorts, would from now
on be expected to act as their equal--in some ways, perhaps, as their
superior! As her speedster tore through space toward distant Klovia she
wrestled with herself, trying to shake her new self down into a
personality as well integrated as her old one had been. She had not
quite succeeded when she felt a thought.

"Help! I am in difficulty with this, my ship. Will any entity receiving
my call and possessing the tools of a mechanic please come to my
assistance? Or, lacking such tools, possessing a vessel of power
sufficient to tow mine to the place where I must immediately go?"

Kathryn was startled out of her introspective trance. That thought was
on a terrifically high band; one so high that she knew of no race using
it, so high that an ordinary human mind could not possibly have either
sent or received it. Its phraseology, while peculiar, was utterly
precise in definition--the mind behind it was certainly of precisionist
grade. She acknowledged upon the stranger's wave, and sent out a
locator. Good--he wasn't far away. She flashed toward the derelict,
matched intrinsics at a safe distance, and began scanning, only to
encounter a spy-ray block around the whole vessel! To her it was porous
enough--but if the creature thought that his screen was tight, let him
keep on thinking so. It was his move.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" The thought fairly snapped. "Come
close, so that I may bring you in."

"Not yet," Kathryn snapped back. "Cut your block so that I can see what
you are like. I carry equipment for many environments, but I must know
what yours is and equip for it before I can come aboard. You will note
that my screens are down."

"Of course. Excuse me--I supposed that you were one of our own"--there
came the thought of an unspellable and unpronounceable name--"since none
of the lower orders can receive our thoughts direct. Can you equip
yourself to come aboard with your tools?"

"Yes." The stranger's light was fierce stuff; ninety-eight percent of
its energy being beyond the visible. His lamps were beam-held atomics,
nothing less: but there was very little gamma and few neutrons. She
could handle it easily enough, she decided, as she finished donning her
heat-armor and a helmet of practically opaque, diamond-hard plastic.

As she was wafted gently across the intervening space upon a pencil of
force, Kathryn took her first good look at the precisionist himself--or
herself. She--it--looked something like a Dhilian, she thought at first.
There was a squat, powerful, elephantine body with its four stocky legs;
the tremendous double shoulders and enormous arms; the domed, almost
immobile head. But there the resemblance ended. There was only one
head--the thinking head, and that one had no eyes and was not covered
with bone. There was no feeding head--the thing could neither eat nor
breathe. There was no trunk. And what a skin!

It was worse than a hide, really--worse even than a Martian's. The girl
had never seen anything like it. It was incredibly thick, dry, pliable;
filled minutely with cells of a liquid-gaseous something which she knew
to be a more perfect insulator even than the fibres of the tegument
itself.

"R-T-S-L-Q-P." She classified the creature readily enough to six places,
then stopped and wrinkled her forehead. "Seventh place--that incredible
skin--what? S? R? T? It would have to be R..."

"You have the requisite tools, I perceive," the creature greeted Kathryn
as she entered the central compartment of the strange speedster, no
larger than her own. "I can tell you what to do, if..."

"I know what to do." She unbolted the cover, worked deftly with wrenches
and cable and splicer and torch, and in ten minutes was done. "It
doesn't make sense that a person of your obvious intelligence,
manifestly knowing enough to make such minor repairs yourself, would go
so far from home, alone in such a small ship, without any tools.
Burnouts and shorts are apt to happen any time, you know."

"Not in the vessels of the..." Again Kathryn felt that
unpronounceable symbol. She also felt the stranger stiffen in offended
dignity. "We of the higher orders, you should know, do not perform
labor. We think. We direct. Others work, and do their work well, or
suffer accordingly. This is the first time in nine full four-cycle
periods that such a thing has happened, and it will be the last. The
punishment which I shall mete out to the guilty mechanic will ensure
that. I shall, at end, have his life."

"Oh, come, now!" Kathryn protested. "Surely it's no life-and-death
mat..."

"Silence!" came curt command. "It is intolerable that one of the lower
orders should attempt to..."

"Silence yourself!" At the fierce power of the riposte the creature
winced, physically and mentally. "I did this bit of dirty work for you
because you apparently couldn't do it for yourself. I did not object to
the matter-of-course way you accepted it, because some races are made
that way and can't help it. But if you insist on keeping yourself placed
five rungs above me on any ladder you can think of, I'll stop being a
lady--or even a good Girl Scout--and start doing things about it, and
I'll start at any signal you care to call. Get ready, and say when!"

The stranger, taken fully aback, threw out a lightning tentacle of
thought; a feeler which was stopped cold a full foot from the girl's
radiant armor. This was a human female--or was it? It was not. No human
being had ever had, or ever would have, a mind like that. Therefore:

"I have made a grave error," the thing apologized handsomely, "in
thinking that you are not at least my equal. Will you grant me pardon,
please?"

"Certainly--if you don't repeat it. But I still don't like the idea of
your torturing a mechanic for a thing..." She thought intensely, lip
caught between white teeth. "Perhaps there's a way. Where are you going,
and when do you want to get there?"

"To my home planet," pointing out mentally its location in the galaxy.
"I must be there in two hundred G-P hours."

"I see." Kathryn nodded her head. "You can--if you promise not to harm
him. And I can tell whether you really mean it or not."

"As I promise, so I do. But in case I do not promise?"

"In that case you'll get there in about a hundred thousand G-P years,
frozen stiff. For I shall fuse your Bergenholm down into a lump; then,
after welding your ports to the shell, I'll mount a thought-screen
generator outside, powered for seven hundred years. Promise, or that.
Which?"

"I promise not to harm the mechanic in any way." He surrendered stiffly,
and made no protest at Kathryn's entrance into his mind to make sure
that the promise would be kept.

Flushed by her easy conquest of a mind she would previously have been
unable to touch, and engrossed in the problem of setting her own
tremendously enlarged mind to rights, why should it have occurred to the
girl that there was anything worthy of investigation concealed in the
depths of that chance-met stranger's mentality?

Returning to her own speedster, she shed her armor and shot away; and it
was just as well for her peace of mind that she was not aware of the
tight-beamed thought even then speeding from the flitter so far behind
her to dread and distant Ploor.

"...but it was very definitely not a human female. I could not touch
it. It may very well have been one of the accursed Arisians themselves.
But since I did nothing to arouse its suspicions, I got rid of it easily
enough. Spread the warning!"




CHAPTER 10

CONSTANCE OUT-WORSELS WORSEL


While Kathryn Kinnison was working with her father in the hyper-spatial
tube and with Mentor of Arisia, and while Camilla and Tregonsee were
sleuthing the inscrutable "X", Constance was also at work. Although she
lay flat on her back, not moving a muscle, she was working as she had
never worked before. Long since she had put her indetectable speedster
into the control of a director-by-chance. Now, knowing nothing and
caring less of where she and her vessel might be or might go, physically
completely relaxed, she drove her "sensories" out to the full limit of
their prodigious range and held them there for hour after hour.
Worsel-like, she was not consciously listening for any particular thing;
she was merely increasing her already incredibly vast store of
knowledge. One hundred percent receptive, attached to and concerned with
only the brain of her physical body, her mind sped at large; sampling,
testing, analyzing, cataloguing every item with which its most tenuous
fringe came in contact. Through thousands of solar systems that mind
went; millions upon millions of entities either did or did not
contribute something worthwhile.

Suddenly there came something that jarred her into physical movement: a
burst of thought upon a band so high that it was practically always
vacant. She shook herself, got up, lighted an Alaskanite cigarette, and
made herself a pot of coffee.

"This is important, I think," she mused. "I'd better get to work on it
while it's fresh."

She sent out a thought tuned to Worsel, and was surprised when it went
unanswered. She investigated: finding that the Velantian's screens were
full up and held hard--he was fighting Overlords so savagely that he had
not felt her thought. Should she take a hand in this brawl? She should
not, she decided, and grinned fleetingly. Her erstwhile tutor would need
no help in that comparatively minor chore. She'd wait until he wasn't
quite so busy.

"Worsel! Con calling. What goes on there, fellow old snake?" She finally
launched her thought.

"As though you didn't know!" Worsel sent back. "Been quite a while since
I saw you--how about coming aboard?"

"Coming at max," and she did.

Before entering the _Velan_, however, she put on a gravity damper, set
at 980 centimeters. Strong, tough, and supple as she was she did not
relish the thought of the atrocious accelerations used and enjoyed by
Velantians everywhere.

"What did you make of that burst of thought?" she asked by way of
greeting. "Or were you having so much fun you missed it?"

"What burst?" Then, after Constance had explained, "I was busy; but
_not_ having fun."

"Somebody who didn't know you might believe that," the girl derided.
"This thought was important, I think--much more so than dilly-dallying
with Overlords, as you were doing. It was 'way up--on this band here."
She illustrated.

"So?" Worsel came as near to whistling as one of his inarticulate race
could come. "What are they like?"

"VWZY, to four places." Con concentrated. "Multi-legged. Not exactly
carapaceous, but pretty nearly. Spiny, too, I believe. The world was
cold, dismal, barren; but not frigid, but he--it--didn't seem exactly
like an oxygen-breather--more like what a warm-blooded Palainian would
perhaps look like, if you can imagine such a thing. Mentality very
high--precisionist grade--no thought of cities as such. The sun was a
typical yellow dwarf. Does any of this ring a bell in your mind?"

"No." Worsel thought intensely for minutes. So did Constance. Neither
had any idea--then--that the girl was describing the form assumed in
their autumn by the dread inhabitants of the planet Ploor!

"This may indeed be important," Worsel broke the mental silence. "Shall
we explore together?"

"We shall." They tuned to the desired band. "Give it plenty of shove,
too--Go!"

Out and out and out the twinned receptors sped; to encounter a tenuous,
weak, and utterly cryptic vibration. One touch--the merest possible
contact--and it disappeared. It vanished before even Con's
almost-instantaneous reactions could get more than a hint of directional
alignment; and neither of the observers could read any part of it.

Both of these developments were starkly incredible, and Worsel's long
body tightened convulsively, rock-hard, in the violence of the mental
force now driving his exploring mind. Finding nothing, he finally
relaxed.

"Any Lensmen, anywhere, can read and understand any thought, however
garbled or scrambled, or however expressed," he thought at Constance.
"Also, I have always been able to get an exact line on anything I could
perceive, but all I know about this one is that it seemed to come mostly
from somewhere over that way. Did you do any better?"

"Not much, if any." If the thing was surprising to Worsel, it was
sheerly astounding to his companion. She, knowing the measure of her
power, thought to herself--not to the Velantian--"Girl, file _this_ one
carefully away in the big black book!"

Slight as were the directional leads, the _Velan_ tore along the
indicated line at maximum blast. Day after day she sped, a wide-flung
mental net out far ahead and out farther still on all sides. They did
not find what they sought, but they did find--something.

"What is it?" Worsel demanded of the quivering telepath who had made the
report.

"I don't know, sir. Not on that ultra-band, but well below it...
there. Not an Overlord, certainly, but something perhaps equally
unfriendly."

"An Eich!" Both Worsel and Con exclaimed the thought, and the girl went
on, "It was practically certain that we couldn't get them all on
Jarnevon, of course, but none have been reported before... where are
they, anyway? Get me a chart, somebody... It's Novena IX...
QX--tune up your heavy artillery, Worsel--it'd be nice if we could take
the head man alive, but that's a little too much luck to expect."

The Velantian, even though he had issued instantaneously the order to
drive at full blast toward the indicated planet, was momentarily at a
loss. Kinnison's daughter entertained no doubts as to the outcome of the
encounter she was proposing--but she had never seen an Eich close up. He
had. So had her father. Kinnison had come out a very poor second in that
affair, and Worsel knew that he could have done no better, if as well.
However, that had been upon Jarnevon, actually inside one of its
strongest citadels, and neither he nor Kinnison had been prepared.

"What's the plan, Worsel?" Con demanded, vibrantly. "How're you figuring
on taking 'em?"

"Depends on how strong they are. If it's a long-established base, we'll
simply have to report it to LaForge and go on about our business. If, as
seems more probable because it hasn't been reported before, it's a new
establishment--or possibly only a grounded space-ship so far--we'll go
to work on them ourselves. We'll soon be close enough to find out."

"QX", and a fleeting grin passed over Con's vivacious face. For a long
time she had been working with Mentor the Arisian, specifically to
develop the ability to "out-Worsel Worsel," and now was the best time
she ever would have to put her hard schooling to test.

Hence, Master of Hallucination though he was, the Velantian had no hint
of realization when his Klovian companion, working through a channel
which he did not even know existed, took control of every compartment of
his mind. Nor did the crew, in particular or en masse, suspect anything
amiss when she performed the infinitely easier task of taking over
theirs. Nor did the unlucky Eich, when the flying _Velan_ had approached
their planet closely enough to make it clear that their establishment
was indeed a new one, being built around the nucleus of a Boskonian
battleship. Except for their commanding officer they died then and
there--and Con was to regret bitterly, later, that she had made this
engagement such a one-girl affair.

The grounded battleship was a formidable fortress indeed. Under the
fierce impact of its offensive beams the Velantians saw their very
wall-shields flame violet. In return they saw their mighty secondary
beams stopped cold by the Boskonian's inner screens, and had to bring
into play the inconceivable energies of their primaries before the
enemy's space-ship-fortress could be knocked out. And this much of the
battle was real. Instrument- and recorder-tapes could be and were being
doctored to fit; but spent primary shells could not be simulated. Nor
was it thinkable that this super-dreadnaught and its incipient base
should be allowed to survive.

Hence, after the dreadful primaries had quieted the Eich's main
batteries and had reduced the ground-works to flaming pools of lava,
needle-beamers went to work on every minor and secondary control board.
Then, the great vessel definitely helpless as a fighting unit, Worsel
and his hard-bitten crew thought that they went--thought-screened,
full-armored, armed with semi-portables and DeLameters--joyously into
the hand-to-hand combat which each craved. Worsel and two of his
strongest henchmen attacked the armed and armored Boskonian captain.
After a satisfyingly terrific struggle, in the course of which all three
of the Velantians--and some others--were appropriately burned and
wounded, they overpowered him and carried him bodily into the
control-room of the _Velan_. This part of the episode, too, was real; as
was the complete melting down of the Boskonian vessel which occurred
while the transfer was being made.

Then, while Con was engaged in the exceedingly delicate task of
withdrawing her mind from Worsel's without leaving any detectable trace
that she had ever been in it, there happened the completely unexpected;
the one thing for which she was utterly unprepared. The mind of the
captive captain was wrenched from her control as palpably as a
loosely-held stick is snatched from a physical hand; and at the same
time there was hurled against her impenetrable barriers an attack which
could not possibly have stemmed from any Eichian mind!

If her mind had been free, she could have coped with the situation, but
it was not. She _had_ to hold Worsel--she knew with cold certainty what
would ensue if she did not. The crew? They could be blocked out
temporarily--unlike the Velantian Lensman, no one of them could even
suspect that he had been in a stasis unless it were long enough to be
noticeable upon such timepieces as clocks. The procedure, however,
occupied a millisecond or so of precious time; and a considerably longer
interval was required to withdraw with the required tracelessness from
Worsel's mind. Thus, before she could do anything except protect herself
and the Velantian from that surprisingly powerful invading intelligence,
all trace of it disappeared and all that remained of their captive was a
dead body.

Worsel and Constance stared at each other, wordless, for seconds. The
Velantian had a completely and accurately detailed memory of everything
that had happened up to that instant, the only matter not quite clear
being the fact that their hard-won captive was dead; the girl's mind was
racing to fabricate a bullet-proof explanation of that startling fact.
Worsel saved her the trouble.

"It is of course true," he thought at her finally, "that any mind of
sufficient power can destroy by force of will alone the entity of flesh
in which it resides. I never thought about this matter before in
connection with the Eich, but no detail of the experience your father
and I had with them on Jarnevon would support any contention that they
do not have minds of the requisite power... and today's battle, being
purely physical, would not throw any light on the subject.... I
wonder if a thing like that could be stopped? That is, if we had been on
time...?"

"That's it, I think." Con put on her most disarming, most engaging grin
in preparation for the most outrageous series of lies of her long
career. "And I don't think it can be stopped--at least I couldn't stop
him. You see, I got into him a fraction of a second before you did, and
in that instant, just like that," in spite of the fact that Worsel could
not hear, she snapped her fingers ringingly, "faster even than that, he
was gone. I didn't think of it until you brought it up, but you're right
as can be--he killed himself to keep us from finding out whatever he
knew."

Worsel stared at her with six eyes now instead of one, gimlet probes
which glanced imperceptibly off her shield. He was not consciously
trying to break down her barriers--to his fullest perception they were
already down; no barriers were there. He was not consciously trying to
integrate or reintegrate any detail or phase of the episode just
past--no iota of falsity had appeared at any point or instant.
Nevertheless, deep down within those extra reaches that made Worsel of
Velantia what he was, a vague disquiet refused to down. It was too...
too... Worsel's consciousness could not supply the adjective.

Had it been too easy? Very decidedly it had not. His utterly wornout,
battered and wounded crew refuted that thought. So did his own body,
slashed and burned, as well as did the litter of shells and the heaps of
smoking slag which had once been an enemy stronghold.

Also, even though he had not theretofore thought that he and his crew
possessed enough force to do what had just been done, it was starkly
unthinkable that anyone, even an Arisian, could have helped him do
anything without his knowledge. Particularly how could this girl,
daughter of Kimball Kinnison although she was, possibly have stuff
enough to play unperceived the part of guardian angel to him, Worsel of
Velantia?

Least able of all the five Second-Stage Lensmen to appreciate what the
Children of the Lens really were, he did not, then or ever, have any
inkling of the real truth. But Constance, far behind her cheerfully
innocent mask, shivered as she read exactly his disturbed and disturbing
thoughts. For, conversely, an unresolved enigma would affect him more
than it would any of his fellow L2's. He would work on it until he did
resolve it, one way or another. This thing had to be settled, _now_. And
there was a way--a good way.

"But I _did_ help you, you big lug!" she stormed, stamping her booted
foot in emphasis. "I was in there every second, slugging away with
everything I had. Didn't you even feel me, you dope?" She allowed a
thought to become evident; widened her eyes in startled incredulity.
"You _didn't_!" she accused, hotly. "You were reveling so repulsively in
the thrill of body-to-body fighting, just like you were back there in
that cavern of Overlords, that you couldn't have felt a thought if it
was driven into you with a D2P pressor! Of _course_ I helped you, you
wigglesome clunker! If I hadn't been in there pitching, dulling their
edges here and there at critical moments, you'd've had a hell of a time
getting them at all! I'm going to flit right now, and I hope I _never_
see you again as long as I live!"

This vicious counter-attack, completely mendacious though it was, fitted
the facts so exactly that Worsel's inchoate doubts vanished. Moreover,
he was even less well equipped than are human men to cope with the
peculiarly feminine weapons Constance was using so effectively.
Wherefore the Velantian capitulated, almost abjectly, and the girl
allowed herself to be coaxed down from her high horse and to become her
usual sunny and impish self.

But when the _Velan_ was once more on course and she had retired to her
cabin, it was not to sleep. Instead, she thought. Was this intellect of
the same race as the one whose burst of thought she had caught such a
short time before, or not? She could not decide--not enough data. The
first thought had been unconscious and quite revealing; this one simply
a lethal weapon, driven with a power the memory of which made her gasp
again. They could, however, be the same: the mind with which she had
been en rapport could very well be capable of generating the force she
had felt. If they were the same, they were something that should be
studied, intensively and at once; and she herself had kicked away her
only chance to make that study. She had better tell somebody about this,
even if it meant confessing her own bird-brained part, and get some
competent advice. Who?

Kit? No. Not because he would smack her down--she _ought_ to be smacked
down!--but because his brain wasn't enough better than her own to do any
good. In fact, it wasn't a bit better than hers.

Mentor? At the very thought she shuddered, mentally and physically. She
would call him in, fast enough, regardless of consequences to herself,
if it would do any good, but it wouldn't. She was starkly certain of
that. He wouldn't smack her down, like Kit would, but he wouldn't help
her, either. He'd just sit there and sneer at her while she stewed,
hotter and hotter, in her own juice....

"In a childish, perverted, and grossly exaggerated way, daughter
Constance, you are right," the Arisian's thought rolled sonorously into
her astounded mind. "You got yourself into this: get yourself out. One
promising fact, however, I perceive--although seldom and late, you at
last begin really to think."

In that hour Constance Kinnison grew up.




CHAPTER 11

NADRECK TRAPS A TRAPPER


Any human or near-human Lensman would have been appalled by the sheer
loneliness of Nadreck's long vigil. Almost any one of them would have
cursed, fluently and bitterly, when the time came at which he was forced
to concede that the being for whom he lay in wait was not going to visit
that particular planet.

But utterly unhuman Nadreck was not lonely. In fact, there was no word
in the vocabulary of his race even remotely resembling the term in
definition, connotation, or implication. From his galaxy-wide study he
had a dim, imperfect idea of what such an emotion or feeling might be,
but he could not begin to understand it. Nor was he in the least
disturbed by the fact that Kandron did not appear. Instead, he held his
orbit until the minute arrived at which the mathematical probability
became point nine nine nine that his proposed quarry was not going to
appear. Then, as matter-of-factly as though he had merely taken half an
hour out for lunch, he abandoned his position and set out upon the
course so carefully planned for exactly this event.

The search for further clues was long and uneventful: but monstrously,
unhumanly patient Nadreck stuck to it until he found one. True, it was
so slight as to be practically non-existent--a mere fragment of a
whisper of zwilnik instruction--but it bore Kandron's unmistakable
imprint. The Palainian had expected no more. Kandron would not slip.
Momentary leakages from faulty machines would have to occur from time to
time, but Kandron's machines would not be at fault either often or long
at a time.

Nadreck, however, had been ready. Course after course of the most
delicate spotting screen ever devised had been out for weeks. So had
tracers, radiation absorbers, and every other insidious locating device
known to the science of the age. The standard detectors remained blank,
of course--no more so than his own conveyance would that of the Onlonian
be detectable by any ordinary instruments. And as the Palainian
speedster shot away along the most probable course, some fifty delicate
instruments in its bow began stabbing that entire region of space with a
pattern of needles of force through which a Terrestrial barrel could not
have floated untouched.

Thus the Boskonian craft--an inherently indetectable speedster--was
located; and in that instant was speared by three modified CRX tracers.
Nadreck then went inert and began to plot the other speedster's course.
He soon learned that that course was unpredictable; that the vessel was
being operated statistically, completely at random. This too, then, was
a trap.

This knowledge disturbed Nadreck no more than had any more-or-less
similar event of the previous twenty-odd years. He had realized fully
that the leakage could as well have been deliberate as accidental. He
had at no time underestimated Kandron's ability; the future alone would
reveal whether or not Kandron would at any time underestimate his. He
would follow through--there might be a way in which this particular trap
could be used against its setter.

Leg after leg of meaningless course Nadreck followed, until there came
about that which the Palainian knew would happen in time--the speedster
held a straight course for more parsecs than six-sigma limits of
probability could ascribe to pure randomness. Nadreck knew what that
meant. The speedster was returning to its base for servicing, which was
precisely the event for which he had been awaiting. It was the base he
wanted, not the speedster; and that base would never, under any
conceivable conditions, emit any detectable quantity of traceable
radiation. To its base, then, Nadreck followed the little space-ship,
and to say that he was on the alert as he approached that base is a
gross understatement indeed. He expected to set off at least one, and
probably many blasts of force. That would almost certainly be necessary
in order to secure sufficient information concerning the enemy's
defensive screens. It was necessary--but when those blasts arrived
Nadreck was elsewhere, calmly analyzing the data secured by his
instruments during the brief contact which had triggered the Boskonian
projectors into action.

So light, so fleeting, and so unorthodox had been Nadreck's touch that
the personnel of the now doomed base could not have known with any
certainty that any visitor had actually been there. If there had been,
the logical supposition would have been that he and his vessel had been
resolved into their component atoms. Nevertheless Nadreck waited--as has
been shown, he was good at waiting--until the burst of extra vigilance
set up by the occurrence would have subsided into ordinary watchfulness.
Then he began to act.

At first this action was in ultra-slow motion. One millimeter per hour
his drill advanced. Drill was synchronized precisely with screen, and so
guarded as to give an alarm at a level of interference far below that
necessary to energize any probable detector at the generators of the
screen being attacked.

Through defense after defense Nadreck made his cautious, indetectable
way into, the dome. It was a small base, as such things go; manned, as
expected, by escapees from Onlo. Scum, too, for the most part; creatures
of even baser and more violent passions than those upon whom he had
worked in Kandron's Onlonian stronghold. To keep those intractable
entities in line during their brutally long tours of duty, a
psychological therapist had been given authority second only to that of
the base commander. That knowledge, and the fact that there was only one
populated dome, made the Palainian come as close to grinning as one of
his unsmiling race can.

The psychologist wore a multiplex thought-screen, of course, as did
everyone else; but that did not bother Nadreck. Kinnison had opened such
screens many times; not only by means of his own hands, but also at
various times by the use of a dog's jaws, a spider's legs and mandibles,
and even a worm's sinuous body. Wherefore, through the agency of a
quasi-fourth-dimensional life form literally indescribable to
three-dimensional man, Nadreck's ego was soon comfortably ensconced in
the mind of the Onlonian.

That entity knew in detail every weakness of each of his personnel. It
was his duty to watch those weaknesses, to keep them down, to condition
each of his wards in such fashion that friction and strife would be
minimized. Now, however, he proceeded to do exactly the opposite. One
hated another. That hate became a searing obsession, requiring the
concentration of every effort upon ways and means of destroying its
objects. One feared another. That fear ate in, searing as it went,
destroying every normality of outlook and of reason. Many were jealous
of their superiors. This emotion, requiring as it does nothing except
its own substance upon which to feed, became a fantastically spreading,
caustically corrosive blight.

To name each ugly, noisome passion or trait resident in that dome is to
call the complete roster of the vile; and calmly, mercilessly,
unmovedly, ultra-efficiently, Nadreck manipulated them all. As though he
were playing a Satanic organ he touched a nerve here, a synapse there, a
channel somewhere else, bringing the whole group, with the lone
exception of the commander, simultaneously to the point of explosion.
Nor was any sign of this perfect work evident externally; for everyone
there, having lived so long under the iron code of Boskonia, knew
exactly the consequences of any infraction of that code.

The moment came when passion overmastered sense. One of the monsters
stumbled, jostling another. That nudge became, in its recipient's
seething mind, a lethal attack by his bitterest enemy. A forbidden
projector flamed viciously: the offended one was sating his lust so
insensately that he scarcely noticed the bolt that in turn rived away
his own life. Detonated by this incident, the personnel of the base
exploded as one. Blasters raved briefly; knives and swords bit and
slashed; improvised bludgeons crashed against preselected targets;
hard-taloned appendages gouged and tore. And Nadreck, who had long since
withdrawn from the mind of the psychologist, timed with a stop-watch the
duration of the whole grisly affair, from the instant of the first
stumble to the death of the last Onlonian outside the commander's locked
and armored sanctum. Ninety-eight and three-tenths seconds. Good--a nice
job.

The commander, as soon as it was safe to do so, rushed out of his
guarded room to investigate. Amazed, disgruntled, dismayed by the to him
completely inexplicable phenomenon he had just witnessed, he fell an
easy prey to the Palainian Lensman. Nadreck invaded his mind and
explored it, channel by channel; finding--not entirely
unexpectedly--that this Number One knew nothing whatever of interest.

Nadreck did not destroy the base. Instead, after setting up a small
instrument in the commander's private office, he took that unfortunate
wight aboard his speedster and drove off into space. He immobilized his
captive, not by loading him with manacles, but by deftly severing a few
essential nerve trunks. Then he really studied the Onlonian's mind--line
by line, this time; almost cell by cell. A master--almost certainly
Kandron himself--had operated here. There was not the slightest trace of
tampering; no leads to or indications of what the activating stimulus
would have to be; all that the fellow now knew was that it was his job
to hold his base inviolate against any and every form of intrusion and
to keep that speedster flitting around all over space on a
director-by-chance as much as possible of the time, leaking slightly a
certain signal now and then.

Even under this microscopic re-examination, he knew nothing whatever of
Kandron; nothing of Onlo or of Thrale; nothing of any Boskonian
organization, activity, or thing; and Nadreck, although baffled still,
remained undisturbed. This trap, he thought, could almost certainly be
used against the trapper. Until a certain call came through his relay in
the base, he would investigate the planets of this system.

During the investigation a thought impinged upon his Lens from Karen
Kinnison, one of the very few warm-blooded beings for whom he had any
real liking or respect.

"Busy, Nadreck?" she asked, as casually as though she had just left him.

"In large, yes. In detail and at the moment, no. Is there any small
problem in which I can be of assistance?"

"Not small--big. I just got the funniest distress call I ever heard or
heard of. On a high band--way, 'way up--there. Do you know of any race
that thinks on that band?"

"I do not believe so." He thought for a moment. "Definitely, no."

"Neither do I. It wasn't broadcast, either, but was directed at any
member of a special race or tribe--very special. Classification,
straight Z's to ten or twelve places, she--or it--seemed to be trying to
specify."

"A frigid race of extreme type, adapted to an environment having a
temperature of approximately one degree absolute."

"Yes. Like you, only more so." Kay paused, trying to put into
intelligible thought a picture inherently incapable of reception or
recognition by her as yet strictly three-dimensional intelligence.
"Something like the Eich, too, but not much. Their visible aspect was
obscure, fluid... amorphous... Indefinite?... skip it--I
couldn't really perceive it, let alone describe it. I wish you had
caught that thought."

"I wish so, too--it is very interesting. But tell me--if the thought was
directed, not broadcast, how could you have received it?"

"That's the funniest part of the whole thing." Nadreck could feel the
girl frown in concentration. "It came at me from all sides at
once--never felt anything like it. Naturally I started feeling around
for the source--particularly since it was a distress signal--but before
I could get even a general direction of the origin it... it...
well, it didn't really disappear or really weaken, but something
happened to it. I couldn't read it any more--and _that_ really did throw
me for a loss." She paused, then went on. "It didn't so much go away as
go _down_, some way or other. Then it vanished completely, without
really going anywhere. I'm not making myself clear--I simply can't--but
have I given you enough leads so that you can make any sense at all out
of any part of it?"

"I'm very sorry to say that I can not."

Nor could he, ever, for excellent reasons. That girl had a mind whose
power, scope, depth, and range she herself did not, could not even dimly
understand; a mind to be fully comprehended only by an adult of her own
third level. That mind had in fact received in toto a purely
fourth-dimensional thought. If Nadreck had received it, he would have
understood it and recognized it for what it was only because of his
advanced Arisian training--no other Palainian could have done so--and it
would have been sheerly unthinkable to him that any warm-blooded and
therefore strictly three-dimensional entity could by any possibility
receive such a thought; or, having received it, could understand any
part of it. Nevertheless, if he had really concentrated the full powers
of his mind upon the girl's attempted description, he might very well
have recognized in it the clearest possible three-dimensional
delineation of such a thought; and from that point he could have gone on
to a full understanding of the Children of the Lens.

However, he did not so concentrate. It was constitutionally impossible
for him to devote real mental effort to any matter not immediately
pertaining to the particular task in hand. Therefore neither he nor
Karen Kinnison were to know until much later that she had been en
rapport with one of Civilization's bitterest, most implacable foes; that
she had seen with clairvoyant and telepathic accuracy the intrinsically
three-dimensionally-indescribable form assumed in their winter by the
horrid, the monstrous inhabitants of that viciously hostile world, the
unspeakable planet Ploor!

"I was afraid you couldn't." Kay's thought came clear. "That makes it
all the more important--important enough for you to drop whatever you're
doing and join me in getting to the bottom of it, if you could be made
to see it, which of course you can't."

"I am about to take Kandron, and nothing in the Universe can be as
important as that," Nadreck stated quietly, as a simple matter of fact.
"You have observed this that lies here?"

"Yes." Karen, en rapport with Nadreck, was of course cognizant of the
captive, but it had not occurred to her to mention this monster. When
dealing with Nadreck she, against all the tenets of her sex, exhibited
as little curiosity as did the coldly emotionless Lensman himself.
"Since you bid so obviously for the question, why are you keeping it
alive--or rather, not dead?"

"Because he is my sure link to Kandron." If Nadreck of Palain ever was
known to gloat, it was then. "He is Kandron's creature, placed by
Kandron personally as an agency of my destruction. Kandron's brain alone
holds the key compulsion which will restore his memories. At some future
time--perhaps a second from now, perhaps a cycle of years--Kandron will
use that key to learn how his minion fares. Kandron's thought will
energize my re-transmitter in the dome; the compulsion will be forwarded
to this still-living brain. The brain, however, will be in my speedster,
not in that undamaged fortress. You now understand why I cannot stray
far from this being's base; you should see that you should join me
instead of me joining you."

"No; not definite enough," Karen countered decisively, "I can't see
myself passing up a thing like this for the opportunity of spending the
next ten years floating around in an orbit, doing nothing. However, I
check you to a certain extent--when and if anything really happens,
shoot me a thought and I'll rally 'round."

The linkage broke without formal adieus. Nadreck went his way. Karen
went hers. She did not, however, go far along the way she had had in
mind. She was still precisely nowhere in her quest when she felt a
thought, of a type that only her brother or an Arisian could send. It
was Kit.

"Hi, Kay!" A warm, brotherly contact. "How'r'ya doing, sis--are you
growing up?"

"Of _course_ I'm grown up! What a question!"

"Don't get stiff, Kay, there's method in this. Got to be sure." All
trace of levity gone, he probed her unmercifully. "Not too bad, at that,
for a kid. As dad would express it, if he could feel you this way,
you're twenty-nine numbers Brinnell harder than a diamond drill. Plenty
of jets for this job, and by the time the real one comes, you'll
probably be ready."

"Cut the rigmarole, Kit!" she snapped, and hurled a vicious bolt of her
own. If Kit did not counter it as easily as he had handled her earlier
efforts, he did not reveal the fact. "What job? What d'you think you're
talking about? I'm on a job now that I wouldn't drop for Nadreck, and I
don't think I'll drop it for you."

"You'll have to." Kit's thought was grim. "Mother is going to have to go
to work on Lyrane II. The probability is pretty bad that there is or
will be something there that she can't handle. Remote control is out, or
I'd do it myself, but I can't work on Lyrane II in person. Here's the
whole picture--look it over. You can see, sis, that you're elected, so
hop to it."

"I won't!" she stormed. "I can't--I'm too busy. How about asking Con, or
Kat, or Cam?"

"They don't fit the picture," he explained patiently--for him. "In this
case hardness is indicated, as you can see for yourself."

"Hardness, phooey!" she jeered. "To handle Ladora of Lyrane? She thinks
she's a hard-boiled egg, I know, but..."

"Listen, you bird-brained knot-head!" Kit cut in, venomously. "You're
fogging the issue deliberately--stop it! I spread you the whole
picture--you know as well as I do that while there's nothing definite as
yet, the thing needs covering and you're the one to cover it. But
no--just because I'm the one to suggest to or ask anything of you,
you've always got to go into that damned mulish act of yours..."

"Be silent, children, and attend!" Both flushed violently as Mentor came
between them. "Some of the weaker thinkers here are beginning to despair
of you, but my visualization of your development is still clear. To mold
such characters as yours sufficiently, and yet not too much, is a
delicate task indeed; but one which must and shall be done. Christopher,
come to me at once, in person. Karen, I would suggest that you go to
Lyrane and do there whatever you find necessary to do."

"I won't--I've _still_ got this job here to do!" Karen defied even the
ancient Arisian sage.

"That, daughter, can and should wait. I tell you solemnly, as a fact,
that if you do not go to Lyrane you will never get the faintest clue to
that which you now seek."




CHAPTER 12

KALONIA BECOMES OF INTEREST


Christopher Kinnison drove toward Arisia, seething. Why couldn't those
damned sisters of his have sense to match their brains--or why couldn't
he have had some brothers? Especially--right now--Kay. If she had the
sense of a Zabriskan fontema she'd know that this job was _important_
and would snap into it, instead of wild-goose-chasing all over space. If
he were Mentor he'd straighten her out. He had decided to straighten her
out once himself, and he grinned wryly to himself at the memory of what
had happened. What Mentor had done to him, before he even got started,
was really rugged. What he would like to do, next time he got within
reach of her, was to shake her until her teeth rattled.

Or would he? Uh-uh. By no stretch of the imagination could he picture
himself hurting any one of them. They were swell kids--in fact, the
finest people he had ever known. He had rough-housed and wrestled with
them plenty of times, of course--he liked it, and so did they. He could
handle any one of them--he surveyed without his usual complacence his
two-hundred-plus pounds of meat, bone, and gristle--he ought to be able
to, since he outweighed them by fifty or sixty pounds; but it wasn't
easy. Worse than Valerians--just like taking on a combination of boa
constrictor and cateagle--and when Kat and Con ganged up on him that
time they mauled him to a pulp in nothing flat.

But jet back! Weight wasn't it, except maybe among themselves. He had
never met a Valerian yet whose shoulders he couldn't pin flat to the mat
in a hundred seconds, and the smallest of them outweighed him two to
one. Conversely, although he had never thought of it before, what his
sisters had taken from him, without even a bruise, would have broken any
ordinary women up into masses of compound fractures. They were--they
must be--made of different stuff.

His thoughts took a new tack. The kids were special in another way, too,
he had noticed lately, without paying it any particular attention. It
might tie in. They didn't _feel_ like other girls. After dancing with
one of them, other girls felt like robots made out of putty. Their flesh
_was_ different. It was firmer, finer, infinitely more responsive. Each
individual cell seemed to be endowed with a flashing, sparkling life; a
life which, interlinking with that of one of his own cells, made their
bodies as intimately one as were their perfectly synchronized minds.

But what did all this have to do with their lack of sense? QX, they were
nice people. QX, he couldn't beat their brains out, either physically or
mentally. But damn it all, there ought to be _some_ way of driving some
ordinary common sense through their fine-grained, thick, hard, tough
skulls!

Thus it was that Kit approached Arisia in a decidedly mixed frame of
mind. He shot through the barrier without slowing down and without
notification. Inerting his ship, he fought her into an orbit around the
planet. The shape of the orbit was immaterial, as long as its every inch
was inside Arisia's innermost screen. For young Kinnison knew precisely
what those screens were and exactly what they were for. He knew that
distance of itself meant nothing--Mentor could give anyone either basic
or advanced treatments just as well from a distance of a thousand
million parsecs as at hand to hand. The reason for the screens and for
the personal visits was the existence of the Eddorians, who had minds
probably as capable as the Arisians' own. And throughout all the
infinite reaches of the macro-cosmic Universe, only within these highly
special screens was there _certainty_ of privacy from the spying senses
of the ultimate foe.

"The time has come, Christopher, for the last treatment I am able to
give you," Mentor announced without preamble, as soon as Kit had checked
his orbit.

"Oh--so soon? I thought you were pulling me in to pin my ears back for
fighting with Kay--the dim-wit!"

"That, while a minor matter, is worthy of passing mention, since it is
illustrative of the difficulties inherent in the project of developing,
without over-controlling, such minds as yours. En route here, you made a
masterly summation of the situation, with one outstanding omission."

"Huh? What omission? I covered it like a blanket!"

"You assumed throughout, and still assume, as you always do in dealing
with your sisters, that you are unassailably right; that your conclusion
is the only tenable one; that they are always wrong."

"But damn it, they _are_! That's why you sent Kay to Lyrane!"

"In these conflicts with your sisters, you have been right in
approximately half of the cases," Mentor informed him.

"But how about their fights with each other?"

"Do you know of any such?"

"Why... uh... can't say that I do." Kit's surprise was plain. "But
since they fight with me so much, they must..."

"That does not follow, and for a very good reason. We may as well
discuss that reason now, as it is a necessary part of the education
which you are about to receive. You already know that your sisters are
very different, each from the other. Know now, youth, that each was
specifically developed to be so completely different that there is no
possible point which could be made an issue between any two of them."

"Ungh... um..." It took some time for Kit to digest that news.
"Then where do I come in that they _all_ fight with me at the drop of a
hat?"

"That, too, while regrettable, is inevitable. Each of your sisters, as
you may have suspected, is to play a tremendous part in that which is to
come. The Lensmen, we of Arisia, all will contribute, but upon you
Children of the Lens--especially upon the girls--will fall the greater
share of the load. Your individual task will be that of coordinating the
whole; a duty which no Arisian is or ever can be qualified to perform.
You will have to direct the efforts of your sisters; re-enforcing every
heavily-attacked point with your own incomparable force and drive;
keeping them smoothly in mesh and in place. As a side issue, you will
also have to coordinate the feebler efforts of us of Arisia, the
Lensmen, the Patrol, and whatever other minor forces we may be able to
employ."

"Holy--Klono's--claws!" Kit was gasping like a fish. "Just where,
Mentor, do you figure I'm going to pick up the jets to swing _that_
load? And as to coordinating the kids--that's out. I'd make just one
suggestion to any one of them and she'd forget all about the battle and
tear into me--no, I'll take that back. The stickier the going, the
closer they rally 'round."

"Right. It will always be so. Now, youth, that you have these facts,
explain these matters to me, as a sort of preliminary exercise."

"I think I see." Kit thought intensely. "The kids don't fight with each
other because they don't overlap. They fight with me because my central
field overlaps them all. They have no occasion to fight with anybody
else, nor have I, because with anybody else our viewpoint is always
right and the other fellow knows it--except for Palainians and such, who
think along different lines than we do. Thus, Kay never fights with
Nadreck. When he goes off the beam, she simply ignores him and goes on
about her business. But with them and me... we'll have to learn to
arbitrate, or something, I suppose..." his thought trailed off.

"Manifestations of adolescence; with adulthood, now coming fast, they
will pass. Let us get on with the work."

"But wait a minute!" Kit protested. "About this coordinator thing. I
can't do it. I'm too much of a kid--I won't be ready for a job like that
for a thousand years!"

"You must be ready," Mentor's thought was inexorable. "And, when the
time comes, you shall be. Now, youth, come fully into my mind."

There is no use repeating in detail the progress of an Arisian
super-education, especially since the most accurate possible description
of the most important of those details would be intrinsically
meaningless. When, finally, Kit was ready to leave Arisia, he looked
much older and more mature than before; he felt immensely older than he
looked. The concluding conversation of that visit, however, is worth
recording.

"You now know, Christopher," Mentor mused, "What you children are and
how you came to be. You are the accomplishment of long lifetimes of
work. It is with profound satisfaction that I now perceive clearly that
those lifetimes have not been spent in vain."

"Yours, you mean." Kit was embarrassed, but one point still bothered
him. "Dad met and married mother, yes, but how about the others?
Tregonsee, Worsel, and Nadreck? They and the corresponding
females--don't take that literally for Nadreck, of course--were also
penultimates, of lines as long as ours. You Arisians decided that the
human stock was best, so none of the other Second-Stage Lensmen ever met
their complements. Not that it could make any difference to them, of
course, but I should think that three of your fellow students wouldn't
feel so good."

"Ah, youth, I am very glad indeed that you mention the point." The
Arisian's thought was positively gleeful. "You have at no time, then,
detected anything peculiar about this that you know as Mentor of
Arisia?"

"Why, of course not. How could I? Or, rather, why should I?"

"Any lapse on our part, however slight, from practically perfect
synchronization would have revealed to such a mentality as yours that I
whom you know as Mentor am not an individual, but four. While we each
worked as individuals upon all of the experimental lines, whenever we
dealt with any one of the penultimates or ultimates we did so as a
fusion. This was necessary, not only for your fullest possible
development, but also to be sure that each of us had complete data upon
every minute facet of the truth. While it was in no sense important to
the work itself to keep you in ignorance of Mentor's plurality, the fact
that we could keep you ignorant of it, particularly now that you have
become adult, showed that our work was being done in a really
workman-like fashion."

Kit whistled; a long, low whistle which was tribute enough to those who
knew what it meant. He knew what he meant, but there were not enough
words or thoughts to express it.

"But you're going to keep on being Mentor, aren't you?" he asked.

"I am. The real task, as you know, lies ahead."

"QX. You say I'm adult. I'm not. You imply that I'm more than several
notches above you in qualifications. I could laugh myself silly about
that one, if it wasn't so serious. Why, any one of you Arisians has
forgotten more than I know, and could tie me up into bow-knots!"

"There are elements of truth in your thought. That you can now be called
adult, however, does not mean that you have attained your full power;
only that you are able to use effectively the powers you have and are
able to acquire other and larger powers."

"But what _are_ those powers?" Kit demanded. "You've hinted on that same
theme a thousand times, and I don't know what you mean any better than I
did before!"

"You must develop your own powers." Mentor's thought was as final as
Fate. "Your mind is potentially far abler than mine. You will in time
come to know my mind in full; I never will be able to know yours. For
the lesser, but full mind to attempt to instruct in methodology the
greater, although emptier one, is to set that greater mind in an
undersized mold and thus to do it irreparable harm. You have the
abilities and the powers. You will have to develop them yourself, by the
perfection of techniques concerning which I can give you no instructions
whatever."

"But surely you can give me some kind of a hint!" Kit pleaded. "I'm just
a kid, I tell you--I don't even know how or where to begin!"

Under Kit's startled mental gaze, Mentor split suddenly into four parts,
laced together by a pattern of thoughts so intricate and so rapid as to
be unrecognizable. The parts fused and again Mentor spoke.

"I can point the way in only the broadest, most general terms. It has
been decided, however, that I can give you one hint--or, more properly,
one illustration. The surest test of knowledge known to us is the
visualization of the Cosmic All. All science is, as you know, one. The
true key to power lies in the knowledge of the underlying reasons for
the succession of events. If it is pure causation--that is, if any given
state of things follows as an inevitable consequence because of the
state existing an infinitesimal instant before--then the entire course
of the macro-cosmic universe was set for the duration of all eternity in
the instant of its coming into being. This well-known concept, the
stumbling-block upon which many early thinkers came to grief, we now
know to be false. On the other hand, if pure randomness were to govern,
natural laws as we know them could not exist. Thus neither pure
causation nor pure randomness alone can govern the succession of events.

"The truth, then, must lie somewhere in between. In the macro-cosmos,
causation prevails; in the micro-, randomness; both in accord with the
mathematical laws of probability. It is in the region between them--the
intermediate zone, or the interface, so to speak--that the greatest
problems lie. The test of validity of any theory, as you know, is the
accuracy of the predictions which are made possible by its use, and our
greatest thinkers have shown that the completeness and fidelity of any
visualization of the Cosmic All are linear functions of the clarity of
definition of the components of that interface. Full knowledge of that
indeterminate zone would mean infinite power and a statistically perfect
visualization. None of these things, however, will ever be realized; for
the acquirement of that full knowledge would require infinite time.

"That is all I can tell you. It will, properly studied, be enough. I
have built within you a solid foundation; yours alone is the task of
erecting upon that foundation a structure strong enough to withstand the
forces which will be thrown against it.

"It is perhaps natural, in view of what you have recently gone through,
that you should regard the problem of the Eddorians as one of
insuperable difficulty. Actually, however, it is not, as you will
perceive when you have spent a few weeks in re-integrating yourself. You
must not, you shall not, and in my clear visualization you do not,
fail."

Communication ceased. Kit made his way groggily to his control board,
went free, and lined out for Klovia. For a guy whose education was
supposed to be complete, he felt remarkably like a total loss with no
insurance. He had asked for advice and had got--what? A dissertation on
philosophy, mathematics, and physics--good enough stuff, probably, if he
could see what Mentor was driving at, but not of much immediate use. He
did have a brainful of new stuff, though--didn't know yet what half of
it was--he'd better be getting it licked into shape. He'd "sleep" on it.

He did so, and as he lay quiescent in his bunk the tiny pieces of an
incredibly complex jig-saw puzzle began to click into place. The
ordinary zwilniks--all the small fry fitted in well enough. The
Overlords of Delgon. The Kalonians... hm... he'd better check with
dad on that angle. The Eich--under control. Kandron of Onlo, ditto. "X"
was in safe hands; Cam had already been alerted to watch her step. Some
planet named Ploor--what in all the purple hells of Palain had Mentor
meant by that crack? Anyway, that piece didn't fit anywhere--yet. That
left Eddore--and at the thought a series of cold waves raced up and down
the young Lensman's spine. Nevertheless, Eddore was his oyster--his, and
nobody else's. Mentor had made that plain enough. Everything the
Arisians had done for umpteen skillions of years had been aimed at the
Eddorians. They had picked him out to emcee the show--and how could a
man coordinate an attack against something he knew nothing about? And
the only way to get acquainted with Eddore and its denizens was to go
there. Should he call in the kids? He should not. Each of them had her
hands full of her own job; that of developing her own full self. He had
his; and the more he studied the question, the clearer it became that
the first number on the program of his self-development was--would
_have_ to be--a single-handed expedition against the key planet of
Civilization's top-ranking foes.

He sprang out of his bunk, changed his vessel's course, and lined out a
thought to his father.

"Dad? Kit. Been flitting around out Arisia way, and picked up an idea I
want to pass along to you. It's about Kalonians. What do you know about
them?"

"They're blue..."

"I don't mean that."

"I know you don't. There were Helmuth, Jalte, Prellin, Crowninshield...
all I can think of at the moment. Big operators, son, and smart
hombres, if I do say so myself as shouldn't; but they're all ancient
history... hold it! Maybe I know of a modern one, too--Eddie's
Lensman. The only part of that picture that was sharp was the Lens,
since Eddie was never analytically interested in any of the hundreds of
types of people he met, but there was something about that Lensman...
I'll bring him back and focus him as sharply as I can... there." Both
men studied the blurred statue posed in the Gray Lensman's mind.
"Wouldn't you say he could be a Kalonian?"

"Check. I wouldn't want to say much more than that. But about that
Lens--did you really examine it? It _is_ sharp--under the circumstances,
of course, it would be."

"Certainly! Wrong in every respect--rhythm, chroma, context, and aura.
Definitely not Arisian; therefore Boskonian. That's the point--that's
what I was afraid of, you know."

"Double check. And that point ties in tight with the one that made me
call you just now, that everybody, including you and me, seems to have
missed. I've been searching my memory for five hours--you know what my
memory is like--and I have heard of exactly two other Kalonians. They
were big operators, too. I have never heard of the planet itself. To me
it is a startling fact that the sum total of my information on Kalonia,
reliable or otherwise, is that it produced seven big-shot zwilniks; six
of them before I was born. Period."

Kit felt his father's jaw drop.

"No, I don't remember of hearing anything about the planet, either," the
older man finally replied. "But I'll bet I can get you all the
information you want in fifteen minutes."

"Credits to millos it'll be a lot nearer fifteen days. You can find it
sometime, though, if anybody can--that's why I'm taking it up with you.
While I don't want to seem to be giving a Gray Lensman orders"--that
jocular introduction had come to be a sort of ritual in the Kinnison
family--"I would very diffidently suggest that there might be some
connection between that completely unnoticed planet and some of the
things we don't know about Boskonia."

"Diffident! You?" The Gray Lensman laughed deeply. "Like a hydride bomb!
I'll start a search of Kalonia right away. As to your
credits-to-millos-fifteen-days thing, I'd be ashamed to take your money.
You don't know our librarians or our system. Ten millos, even money,
that we get operational data in less than five G-P days from right now.
Want it?"

"I'll say so. I'll wear that cento on my tunic as a medal of victory
over the Gray Lensman. I _do_ know the size of these here two galaxies!"

"QX--it's a bet. I'll Lens you when we get the dope. In the meantime,
Kit, remember that you're my favorite son."

"Well, you're not so bad, yourself. Any time I want mother to divorce
you so as to change fathers for me I'll suggest it to her." What a
terrific, what a tremendous meaning was heterodyned upon that seemingly
light exchange! "Clear ether, dad!"

"Clear ether, son!"




CHAPTER 13

CLARRISSA TAKES HER L-2 WORK


Thousands of years were to pass before Christopher Kinnison could
develop the ability to visualize, from the contemplation of one fact or
artifact, the entire Universe to which it belonged. He could not even
plan in detail his one-man invasion of Eddore until he could integrate
all available data concerning the planet Kalonia into his visualization
of the Boskonian Empire. One unknown, Ploor, blurred his picture badly
enough; two such completely unknown factors made visualization, even in
broad, impossible.

Anyway, he decided, he had one more job to do before he tackled the key
planet of the enemy; and now, while he was waiting for the dope on
Kalonia, would be the best time to do it. Wherefore he sent out a
thought to his mother.

"Hi, First Lady of the Universe! 'Tis thy first-born who wouldst fain
converse with thee. Art pressly engaged in matters of moment or import?"

"Art not, Kit." Clarrissa's characteristic chuckle was as infectious, as
full of the joy of life, as ever. "Not that it would make any
difference--but methinks I detect an undertone of seriosity beneath thy
persiflage. Spill it."

"Let's make it a rendezvous, instead," he suggested. "We're fairly
close, I think--closer than we've been for a long time. Where are you,
exactly?"

"Oh! Can we? Wonderful!" She marked her location and velocity in his
mind. She made no effort to conceal her joy at the idea of a personal
meeting. She never had tried and she never would try to make him put
first matters other than first. She had not expected to see him again,
physically, until this war was over. But if she could...!

"QX. Hold your course and speed; I'll be seeing you in eighty-three
minutes. In the meantime, it'll be just as well if we don't communicate,
even by Lens..."

"Why, son?"

"Nothing definite--just a hunch, is all. 'Bye, gorgeous!"

The two speedsters approached each other--inerted--matched
intrinsics--went free--flashed into contact--sped away together upon
Clarrissa's original course.

"Hi, mums!" Kit spoke into a visiphone. "I should of course come to you,
but it might be better if you come in here--I've got some special rigs
set up here that I don't want to leave. QX?" He snapped on one of the
special rigs as he spoke--a device which he himself had built and
installed; the generator of the most efficient thought-screen then
known.

"Why, of course!" She came, and was swept off her feet in the exuberance
of her tall son's embrace; a greeting which she returned with equal
fervor.

"It's nice, mother, seeing you again." Words, or thoughts even, were
_so_ inadequate! Kit's voice was a trifle rough; his eyes were not
completely dry.

"Uh-huh. It _is_ nice," she agreed, snuggling her spectacular head even
more firmly into the curve of his shoulder. "Mental contact is better
than nothing, of course, but _this_ is perfect!"

"Just as much a menace to navigation as ever, aren't you?" He held her
at arm's length and shook his head in mock disapproval. "Do you think
it's quite right for one woman to have so much of everything when all
the others have so little of anything?"

"Honestly, I don't." She and Kit had always been exceptionally close;
now her love for and her pride in this splendid creature, her son and
her first-born, simply would not be denied. "You're joking, I know, but
that strikes too deep for comfort. I wake up in the night to wonder why,
of all the women in existence, I should be so lucky, especially in my
husband and children... QX, skip it." Kit was shying away--she should
have known better than to try in words even to skirt the profound depths
of sentiment which both she and he knew so well were there.

"Get back onto the beam, gorgeous, you know what I meant. Look at
yourself in the mirror some day--or do you, perchance?"

"Once in a while--maybe twice." She giggled unaffectedly. "You don't
think all this charm and glamor comes without effort, do you? But maybe
you'd better get back onto the beam yourself--you didn't come all these
parsecs out of your way to say pretty things to your mother--even though
I admit they've built up my ego no end."

"On target, dead center." Kit had been grinning, but he sobered quickly.
"I wanted to talk to you about Lyrane and the job you're figuring on
doing out there."

"Why?" she demanded. "Do you know anything about it?"

"Unfortunately, I don't." Kit's black frown of concentration reminded
her forcibly of his father's characteristic scowl.
"Guesses--suspicions--theories--not even good hunches. But I thought...
I wondered..." He paused, embarrassed as a schoolboy, then went
on with a rush: "Would you mind it too much if I went into something
pretty personal?"

"You know I wouldn't, son." In contrast to Kit's usual clarity and
precision of thought, the question was highly ambiguous, but Clarrissa
covered both angles. "I can conceive of no subject, event, action, or
thing, in either my life or yours, too intimate or too personal to
discuss with you in full. Can you?"

"No, I can't--but this is different. As a woman, you're tops--the finest
and best that ever lived." This statement, made with all the
matter-of-factness of stating that a triangle had three corners,
thrilled Clarrissa through and through. "As a Gray Lensman you're over
the rest of them like a cirrus cloud. But you should rate full
Second-Stage, and... well, you may run up against something too hot
to handle, some day, and I... that is, you..."

"You mean that I don't measure up?" she asked, quietly. "I know very
well I don't, and admitting an evident fact should not hurt my feelings
a bit. Don't interrupt, please," as Kit began to protest. "In fact, it
is sheerest effrontery--it has always bothered me terribly, Kit--to be
classed as a Lensman at all, considering what splendid men they all are
and what each one of them had to go through to earn his Lens, to say
nothing of a Release. You know as well as I do that I've never done a
single thing to earn or to deserve it. It was handed to me on a silver
platter. I'm not worthy of it, Kit, and all the real Lensmen know I'm
not. They must know it, Kit--they _must_ feel that way!"

"Did you ever express yourself in exactly that way before, to anybody?
You didn't, I know." Kit stopped sweating; this was going to be easier
than he had feared.

"I couldn't, Kit, it was too deep; but as I said, I can talk _anything_
over with you."

"QX. We can settle that fast enough if you'll answer just one question.
Do you honestly believe that you would have been given the Lens if you
were not absolutely worthy of it? Perfectly--in every minute
particular?"

"Why, I never thought of it that way... probably not... no,
certainly not." Clarrissa's somber mien lightened markedly. "But I still
don't see how or why..."

"Clear enough," Kit interrupted. "You were born with what the rest of
them had to work so hard for--with stuff that no other woman, anywhere,
ever had."

"Except the girls, of course," Clarrissa corrected, half absently.

"Except the kids," he concurred. It could do no harm to agree with his
mother's statement of a self-evident fact. "You can take it from me, as
one who _knows_ that the other Lensmen know you've got plenty of jets.
They know very well that the Arisians wouldn't make a Lens for anybody
who hasn't got what it takes. And so, very neatly, we've stripped ship
for the action I came over here to see you about. It isn't a case of you
not measuring up, because you do, in every respect. It's simply that
you're short a few jets that you ought by rights to have. You really are
a Second-Stage Lensman--you know that, mums--but you never went to
Arisia for your L2 work. I hate to see you blast off without full
equipment into what may prove to be a big-time job; especially when
you're so eminently able to take it. Mentor could give you the works in
a few hours. Why don't you flit for Arisia right now, or let me take you
there?"

"No--NO!" Clarrissa backed away, shaking her head emphatically. "Never!
I couldn't, Kit, ever--not _possibly!_"

"Why not?" Kit was amazed. "Why, mother, you're actually shaking!"

"I know I am--I can't help it. That's why. He's the only thing in the
entire Universe that I'm really afraid of. I can talk _about_ him
without quite getting goose-bumps all over me, but the mere thought of
actually being with him simply scares me into shivering, quivering
fits--no less."

"I see... it might very well work that way, at that. Does dad know
it?"

"Yes--or, that is, he knows I'm afraid of him, but he doesn't know it
the way you do--it simply doesn't register in true color. Kim can't
conceive of me being either a coward or a cry-baby. And I don't want him
to, either, Kit, so please don't tell him, ever."

"I won't--he'd fry me to a cinder in my own grease if I did. Frankly, I
can't see any part of your self-portrait, either. As a matter of cold
fact, you are so obviously neither a coward nor a cry-baby... well,
that's about the silliest crack you ever made. What you've really got,
mums, is a fixation, and if it can't be removed..."

"It can't," she declared flatly. "I've tried that, now and then, ever
since before you were born. Whatever it is, it's a permanent
installation and it's really deep. I've known all along that Kim didn't
give me the whole business--he couldn't--and I've tried again and again
to make myself go to Arisia, or at least to call Mentor about it, but I
can't do it, Kit--I simply _can't!_"

"I understand." Kit nodded. He did understand, now. What she felt was
not, in essence and at bottom, fear at all. It was worse than fear, and
deeper. It was true revulsion; the basic, fundamental, sub-conscious,
sex-based reaction of an intensely vital human female against a mental
monstrosity who had not had a sexual thought for countless thousands of
her years. She could neither analyze nor understand her feeling; but it
was as immutable, as ineradicable, and as old as the surging tide of
life itself.

"But there's another way, just as good--probably better, as far as
you're concerned. You aren't afraid of me, are you?"

"What a _question!_ Of course I'm not... why, do you mean _you_..."
Her expressive eyes widened. "You children--especially you--are
far beyond us... as of course you should be... but _can_ you, Kit?
Really?"

Kit keyed a part of his mind to an ultra-high level. "I know the
techniques, Mentor, but the first question is, should I do it?"

"You should, youth. The time has come when it is necessary."

"Second--I've never done anything like this before, and she's my own
mother. If I make one slip I'll never forgive myself. Will you stand by
and see that I don't slip? And stand guard?"

"I will stand by and stand guard."

"I really can, mums." Kit answered her question with no perceptible
pause. "That is, if you're willing to put everything you've got into it.
Just letting me into your mind isn't enough. You'll have to sweat
blood--you'll think you've been run through a hammer-mill and spread out
on a Delgonian torture screen to dry."

"Don't worry about that, Kit." All the passionate intensity of
Clarrissa's being was in her vibrant voice. "If you just knew how
utterly I've been longing for it--I'll work; and whatever you give me I
can take."

"I'm sure of that. And, not to work under false pretenses, I'd better
tell you how I know. Mentor showed me what to do and told me to do it."

"_Mentor!_"

"Mentor," Kit agreed. "He knew that it was a psychological impossibility
for you to work with him, and that you could and would work with me. So
he appointed me a committee of one." Clarrissa was reacting to this news
as it was inevitable that she should react; and to give her time to
steady down he went on:

"Mentor also knew, and so do you and I, that even though you are afraid
of him, you know what he is and what he means to Civilization. I had to
tell you this so you'd know, without any tinge of doubt, that I'm not a
half-baked kid setting out to do a man's job of work."

"Jet back, Kit! I may have thought a lot of different things about you
at times, but 'half-baked' was never one of them. That's your own
thinking, not mine."

"I wouldn't wonder." Kit grinned wryly. "My ego could stand some
stiffening right now. This isn't going to be funny. You're too fine a
woman, and I think too much of you, to enjoy the prospect of mauling you
around so unmercifully."

"Why, Kit!" Her mood was changing fast. Her old-time, impish smile came
back in force. "You aren't weakening, surely? Shall I hold your hand?"

"Uh-huh--cold feet," he admitted. "It might be a smart idea, at that,
holding hands. Physical linkage. Well, I'm as ready as I ever will be, I
guess--whenever you are, say so. And you'd better sit down before you
fall down."

"QX, Kit--come in."

Kit came; and at the first terrific surge of his mind within hers the
Red Lensman caught her breath, stiffened in every muscle, and all but
screamed in agony. Kit's fingers needed their strength as her hands
clutched his and closed in a veritable spasm. She had thought that she
knew what to expect; but the reality was different--much different. She
had suffered before. On Lyrane II, although she had never told anyone of
it, she had been burned and wounded and beaten. She had borne five
children. This was as though every poignant experience of her past had
been rolled into one, raised to the n^{th} power, and stabbed
relentlessly into the deepest, tenderest, most sensitive centers of her
being.

And Kit, boring in and in and in, knew exactly what to do; and, now that
he had started, he proceeded unflinchingly and with exact precision to
do what had to be done. He opened up her mind as she had never dreamed
it possible for a mind to open. He separated the tiny, jammed
compartments, each completely from every other. He showed her how to
make room for this tremendous expansion and watched her do it, against
the shrieking protests of every cell and fiber of her body and of her
brain. He drilled new channels everywhere, establishing an inconceivably
complex system of communication lines of infinite conductivity. He knew
just what he was doing to her, since the same thing had been done to him
so recently, but he kept on relentlessly until the job was done.
Completely done.

Then, working together, they sorted and labeled and classified and
catalogued. They checked and double checked. Finally she knew, and Kit
knew that she knew, every hitherto unplumbed recess of her mind and
every individual cell of her brain. Every iota of every quality and
characteristic, every scrap of knowledge she had ever acquired or ever
would acquire, would be at her command instantaneously and effortlessly.
Then, and only then, did Kit withdraw his mind from hers.

"Did you say that I was short just a _few_ jets, Kit?" She got up
groggily and mopped her face; upon which her few freckles stood out
surprisingly dark upon a background of white. "I'm a wreck--I'd better
go and..."

"As you were for just a sec--I'll break out a bottle of fayalin. This
rates a celebration of sorts, don't you think?"

"Very much so." As she sipped the pungently aromatic red liquid her
color began to come back. "No wonder I felt as though I were missing
something all these years. Thanks, Kit. I really appreciate it.
You're a..."

"Seal it, mums." He picked her up and squeezed her, hard. He scarcely
noticed her sweat-streaked face and disheveled hair, but she did.

"Good Heavens, Kit, I'm a perfect _hag!_" she exclaimed. "I've _got_ to
go and put on a new face!"

"QX. I don't feel quite so fresh, myself. What I need, though, is a
good, thick steak. Join me?"

"Uh-uh. How can you even think of _eating_, at a time like this?"

"Same way you can think of war-paint and feathers, I suppose. Different
people, different reactions. QX, I'll be in there and see you in fifteen
or twenty minutes. Flit!"

She left, and Kit heaved an almost explosive sigh of relief. Mighty good
thing she hadn't asked too many questions--if she had become really
curious, he would have had a horrible time keeping her away from the
fact that that kind of work never had been done and never would be done
outside of solid Arisian screen. He ate, cleaned up, ran a comb through
his hair, and, when his mother was ready, crossed over into her
speedster.

"Whee--whee-yu!" Kit whistled descriptively. "_What_ a seven-sector
call-out! Just who do you think you're going to knock out of the ether
on Lyrane Two?"

"Nobody at all." Clarrissa laughed. "This is all for you, son--and maybe
a little bit for me, too."

"I'm stunned. You're a blinding flash and a deafening report. But I've
got to do a flit, gorgeous. So clear..."

"Wait a minute--you _can't_ go yet! I've got questions to ask you about
these new networks and things. How do I handle them?"

"Sorry--you've got to develop your own techniques. You know that
already."

"In a way. I thought maybe, though, I could wheedle you into helping me
a little. I should have known better--but tell me, all Lensmen don't
have minds like this, do they?"

"I'll say they don't. They're all like yours was before, but not as
good. Except the other L2's, of course--dad, Worsel, Tregonsee, and
Nadreck. Theirs are more or less like yours is now; but you've got a lot
of stuff they haven't."

"Huh?" she demanded. "Such as?"

"'Way down--there." He showed her. "You worked all that stuff yourself.
I only showed you how, without getting in too close."

"Why? Oh, I see--you would. Life force. I would have lots of that, of
course." She did not blush, but Kit did.

"Life force" was a pitifully inadequate term indeed for that which
Civilization's only Lensman-mother had in such measure, but they both
knew what it was. Kit ducked.

"You can always tell all about a Lensman by looking at his Lens; it's
the wiring diagram of his total mind. You've studied dad's of course."

"Yes. Three times as big as the ordinary ones--or mine--and much finer
and brighter. But _mine_ isn't, Kit?"

"It _wasn't_, you mean. Look at it now."

She opened a drawer, reached in, and stared; her eyes and mouth becoming
three round O's of astonishment. She had never seen that Lens before, or
anything like it. It was three times as big as hers, seven times as fine
and as intricate, and ten times as bright.

"Why, this isn't mine!" she gasped. "But it _must_ be..."

"Sneeze, beautiful," Kit advised. "Cobwebs. You aren't thinking a lick.
Your mind changed, so your Lens had to. See?"

"Of course--I wasn't thinking; that's a fact. Let me look at _your_
Lens, Kit--you never seem to wear it--I haven't seen it since you
graduated."

"Sure. Why not?" He reached into a pocket. "I take after you, that way;
neither of us gets any kick out of throwing his weight around."

His Lens flamed upon his wrist. It was larger in diameter than
Clarrissa's, and thicker. Its texture was finer; its colors were
brighter, harsher, and seemed, somehow, _solider_. Both studied both
Lenses for a moment, then Kit seized his mother's hand, brought their
wrists together, and stared.

"That's it," he breathed. "That's it... That's IT, just as sure as
Klono has got teeth and claws."

"What's it? What do you see?" she demanded.

"I see how and why I got the way I am--and if the kids had Lenses theirs
would be the same. Remember dad's? Look at your dominants--notice that
every one of them is duplicated in mine. Blank them out of mine, and see
what you've got left--pure Kimball Kinnison, with just enough extras
thrown in to make me an individual instead of a carbon copy. Hm... hm...
credits to millos this is what comes of having Lensmen on both sides
of the family. No wonder we're freaks! Don't know whether I'm in
favor of it or not--I don't think they should produce any more Lady
Lensmen, do you? Maybe that's why they never did."

"Don't try to be funny," she reproved; but her dimples were again in
evidence. "If it would result in more people like you and your sisters,
I'd be very much in favor of it; but, some way or other, I doubt it. I
know you're squirming to go, so I won't hold you any longer. What you
just found out about Lenses is fascinating. For the rest of it...
well... thanks, son, and clear ether."

"Clear ether, mother. This is the worst part of being together, leaving
so quick. I'll see you again, though, soon and often. It you get stuck,
yell, and one of the kids or I--or all of us--will be with you in a
split second."

He gave her a quick, hard hug; kissed her enthusiastically, and left. He
did not tell her, and she never did find out, that his "discovery" of
one of the secrets of the Lens was made to keep her from asking
questions which he could not answer.

The Red Lensman was afraid that she would not have time to put her new
mind in order before reaching Lyrane II; but, being naturally a good
housekeeper, she did. More, so rapidly and easily did her mind now work,
she had time to review and to analyze every phase of her previous
activities upon that planet and to lay out in broad her first lines of
action. She wouldn't put on the screws at first, she decided. She would
let them think that she didn't have any more jets than before. Helen was
nice, but a good many of the others, especially that airport manager,
were simply quadruply-distilled vixens. She'd take it easy at first, but
she'd be very sure that she didn't get into any such jams as last time.

She coasted down through Lyrane's stratosphere and poised high above the
city she remembered so well.

"Helen of Lyrane!" she sent out a sharp, clear thought. "That is not
your name, I know, but we did not learn any other..."

She broke off, every nerve taut. Was that, or was it not, Helen's
thought; cut off, wiped out by a guardian block before it could take
shape?

"Who are you stranger, and what do you want?" the thought came, almost
instantly, from a person seated at the desk which had been Helen's.

Clarrissa glanced at the sender and thought that she recognized the
face. Her new channels functioned instantaneously; she remembered every
detail.

"Lensman Clarrissa, formerly of Sol III. Unattached. I remember you,
Ladora, although you were only a child when I was here. Do you remember
me?

"Yes, I repeat, what do you want?" The memory did not decrease Ladora's
hostility.

"I would like to speak to the former Elder Person, if I may."

"You may not. It is no longer with us. Leave at once, or we will shoot
you down."

"Think again, Ladora." Clarrissa held her tone even and calm. "Surely
your memory is not so short that you have forgotten the _Dauntless_ and
its capabilities."

"I remember. You may take up with me whatever it is that you wish to
discuss with my predecessor."

"You are familiar with the Boskonian invasion of years ago. It is
suspected that they are planning new and galaxy-wide outrages, and that
this planet is in some way involved. I have come here to investigate the
situation."

"We will conduct our own investigations," Ladora declared, curtly. "We
insist that you and all other foreigners stay away from this planet."

"_You_ investigate a galactic condition?" In spite of herself, Clarrissa
almost let the connotations of that question become perceptible. "If you
give me permission I will land alone. If you do not, I shall call the
_Dauntless_ and we will land in force. Take your choice."

"Land alone, then, if you must land." Ladora yielded seethingly. "Land
at City Airport."

"Under those guns? No, thanks; I am neither invulnerable nor immortal. I
land where I please."

She landed. During her previous visit she had had a hard enough time
getting any help from these pig-headed matriarchs, but this time she
encountered a non-cooperation so utterly fanatical that it put her
completely at a loss. None of them tried to harm her in any way; but not
one of them would have anything to do with her. Every thought, even the
friendliest, was stopped by a full-coverage block; no acknowledgment,
even, was ever made.

"I can crack those blocks easily enough, if I want to," she declared,
one bad evening, to her mirror, "and if they keep this up very much
longer, by Klono's emerald-filled gizzard, I will!"




CHAPTER 14

KINNISON-THYRON, DRUG RUNNER


When Kimball Kinnison received his son's call he was in Ultra Prime, the
Patrol's stupendous Klovian base, about to enter his ship. He stopped
for a moment; practically in mid-stride. While nothing was to be read in
his expression or in his eyes, the lieutenant to whom he had been
talking had been an interested, if completely uninformed, witness to
many such Lensed conferences and knew that they were usually important.
He was therefore not surprised when the Lensman turned around and headed
for an exit.

"Put her back, please. I won't be going out for a while, after all,"
Kinnison explained, briefly. "Don't know exactly how long."

A fast flitter took him to the hundred-story pile of stainless steel and
glass which was the coordinator's office. He strode along a corridor,
through an unmarked door.

"Hi, Phyllis--the boss in?"

"Why, Coordinator Kinnison! Yes, sir... no, I mean..." His
startled secretary touched a button and a door opened; the door of his
private office.

"Hi, Kim--back so soon?" Vice-Coordinator Maitland also showed surprise
as he got up from the massive desk and shook hands cordially. "Good!
Taking over?"

"Emphatically no. Hardly started yet. Just dropped in to use your plate,
if you've got a free high-power wave. QX?"

"Certainly. If not, you can free one fast enough."

"Communications." Kinnison touched a stud. "Will you please get me
Thrale? Library One; Principal Librarian Nadine Ernley. Plate to plate."

This request was surprising enough to the informed. Since the
coordinator practically never dealt personally with anyone except
Lensmen, and usually Unattached Lensmen at that, it was a rare event
indeed for him to use any ordinary channels of communication. And as the
linkage was completed, subdued murmurs and sundry squeals gave evidence
of the intense excitement at the other end of the line.

"Mrs. Ernley will be on in one moment, sir." The operator's business was
done. Her crisp, clear-cut voice ceased, but the background noise
increased markedly.

"Sh...sh...sh! It's the Gray Lensman, himself!" Everywhere upon
Klovia, Tellus, and Thrale, and in many localities of many other
planets, the words "Gray Lensman", without surname, had only one
meaning.

"Not the _Gray Lensman!_"

"It can't be!"

"It _is_, really--I know him--I actually _met_ him once!"

"Let _me_ look--just a peek!"

"Sh... sh! He'll _hear_ you!"

"Switch on the vision. If we've got a moment, let's get acquainted,"
Kinnison suggested, and upon his plate there burst into view a bevy of
excitedly embarrassed blondes, brunettes, and redheads. "Hi, Madge!
Sorry I don't know the rest of you, but I'll make it a point to meet you
all--before long, I think. Don't go away." The head of the library was
coming on the run. "You're all in on this. Hi, Nadine! Long time no see.
Remember that bunch of squirrel food you rounded up for me?"

"I remember, sir." What a question! As though Nadine Ernley, nee
Hostetter, could ever forget her share in that famous meeting of the
fifty-three greatest scientific minds of all Civilization! "I'm sorry
that I was out in the stacks when you called."

"QX--we all have to work sometime, I suppose. What I'm calling about is
that I've got a mighty big job for you and those smart girls of yours.
Something like that other one, only a lot more so. I want all the
information you can dig up about a planet named Kalonia, just as fast as
you can possibly get it. What makes it extra tough is that I have never
even heard of the planet itself and don't know of anyone who has. There
may be a million other names for it, on a million other planets, but we
don't know any of them. Here's all I know." He summarized; concluding:
"If you can get it for me in less than four point nine five G-P days
from now I'll bring you, Nadine, a Manarkan star-drop; and you can have
each of your girls go down to Brenleer's and pick out a wrist-watch, or
whatever else she likes, and I'll have it engraved to her 'In
appreciation, Kimball Kinnison'. This job is important--my son Kit bet
me ten millos that we can't do it that fast."

"Ten _millos!_" Four or five of the girls gasped as one.

"Fact," he assured them, gravely. "So whenever you get the dope, tell
Communications--no, you listen while I tell them myself. Communications,
all along the line, come in!" They came. "I expect one of these
librarians to call me, plate to plate, within the next few days. When
she does, no matter what time of day or night it is, and no matter what
I or anyone else happen to be doing, that call will have the
right-of-way over any other business in the Universe. Cut!" The plates
went dead, and in Library One:

"But he was joking, surely!"

"Ten _millos_--and a star-drop--why, there aren't more than a dozen of
them on all Thrale!"

"Wrist-watches--or something--from the Gray Lensman!"

"Be quiet, everybody!" Madge exclaimed, "I see now. That's the way
Nadine got _her_ watch, that she always brags about so insufferably and
that makes everybody's eyes turn green. But I don't understand that
silly ten-millo bet... do you, Nadine?"

"I think so. He does the nicest things--things that nobody else would
think of. You've all seen Red Lensman's Chit, in Brenleer's." This was a
statement, not a question. They all had, with what emotions they all
knew. "How would you like to have that one-cento piece, in a
thousand-credit frame, here in our main hall, with the legend 'won from
Christopher Kinnison for Kimball Kinnison by...' and our names? He's
got something like that in mind, I'm sure."

The ensuing clamor indicated that they liked the idea.

"He knew we would; and he knew that doing it this way would make us dig
like we never dug before. He'll give us the watches and things anyway,
of course, but we won't get that one-cento piece unless we win it. So
let's get to work. Take everything out of the machines, finished or not.
Madge, you might start by interviewing Lanion and the other--no, I'd
better do that myself, since you are more familiar with the encyclopedia
than I am. Run the whole English block, starting with K, and follow up
any leads, however slight, that you can find. Betty, you can analyze for
synonyms, starting with the Thralian equivalent of Kalonia and spreading
out to the other Boskonian planets. Put half a dozen techs on it, with
transformers. Frances, you can study Prellin and Bronseca. Joan, Leona,
Edna--Jalte, Helmuth, and Crowninshield. Beth, as our best linguist, you
can do us the most good by sensitizing a tech to the sound of Kalonia in
each of all the languages you know or that the rest of us can find, and
running and re-running all the transcripts we have of Boskonian
meetings. How many of us are left? Not enough... we'll have to spread
ourselves thin on this list of Boskonian planets..."

Thus Principal Librarian Ernley organized a search beside which the
proverbial one of finding a needle in a haystack would have been as
simple as locating a football in a bushel basket. And she and her girls
worked. _How_ they worked! And thus, in four days and three hours,
Kinnison's crash-priority person-to-person call came through. Kalonia
was no longer a planet of mystery.

"Fine work, girls! Put it on a tape and I'll pick it up."

He then left Klovia--precipitately. Since Kit was not within rendezvous
distance, he instructed his son--after giving him the high points of
what he had learned--to forward one one-cento piece to Brenleer of
Thrale, personal delivery. He told Brenleer what to do with it upon
arrival. He landed. He bestowed the star-drop; one of Cartiff's
collection of fine gems. He met the girls, and gave each one her
self-chosen reward. He departed.

Out in open space, he ran the tape, and sat still, scowling blackly. It
was no wonder that Kalonia had remained unknown to Civilization for over
twenty years. There was a lot of information on that tape--and all of it
stunk--but it had been assembled, one unimportant bit at a time, from
the more than eight hundred million cards of Thrale's Boskonian
Archives; and all the really significant items had been found on vocal
transcriptions which had never before been played.

Civilization in general had assumed that Thrale had housed the top
echelons of the Boskonian Empire, and that the continuing inimical
activity had been due solely to momentum. Kinnison and his friends had
had their doubts, but they had not been able to find any iota of
evidence that any higher authority had ever issued any orders to Thrale.
The Gray Lensman now knew, however, that Thrale had never been the top.
Nor was Kalonia. The information on this tape, by its paucity, its
brevity, its incidental and casual nature, made that fact startlingly
clear. Thrale and Kalonia were not in the same ladder. Neither gave the
other any orders--in fact, they had surprisingly little to do with each
other. While Thrale formerly directed the activities of a half-million
or so planets--and Kalonia apparently still did much the same--their
fields of action had not overlapped at any point.

His conquest of Thrale, hailed so widely as such a triumph, had got him
precisely nowhere in the solution of the real problem. It might be
possible for him to conquer Kalonia in a similar fashion, but what would
it get him? Nothing. There would be no more leads upward from Kalonia
than there had been from Thrale. How in all of Noshabkeming's variegated
and iridescent hells was he going to work this out?

A complete analysis revealed only one possible method of procedure. In
one of the transcriptions--made twenty-one years ago and unsealed for
the first time by Beth, the librarian-linguist--one of the speakers had
mentioned casually that the new Kalonian Lensmen seemed to be doing a
good job, and a couple of the others had agreed with him. That was all.
It might, however, be enough; since it made it highly probable that
Eddie's Lensman was in fact a Kalonian, and since even a Black Lensman
would certainly know where he got his Lens. At the thought of trying to
visit the Boskonian equivalent of Arisia he flinched, but only
momentarily. Invasion, or even physical approach, would of course be
impossible; but any planet, even Arisia itself, could be destroyed. If
it could be found, that planet would be destroyed. He had to find
it--that was probably what Mentor had been wanting him to do all the
time! But how?

In his various previous enterprises against Boskonia he had been a
gentleman of leisure, a dock-walloper, a meteor-miner, and many other
things. None of his already established aliases would fit on Kalonia;
and besides, it was very poor technique to repeat himself, especially at
this high level of opposition. To warrant appearance on Kalonia at all,
he would have to be an operator of some kind--not too small, but not big
enough so that an adequate background could not be synthesized in not
too long a time. A zwilnik--an actual drug-runner with a really
worth-while cargo--would be the best bet.

His course of action decided, the Gray Lensman started making calls. He
first called Kit, with whom he held a long conversation. He called the
captain of his battleship-yacht, the _Dauntless_, and gave him many and
explicit orders. He called Vice-Coordinator Maitland, and various other
Unattached Lensmen who had plenty of weight in Narcotics, Public
Relations, Criminal Investigation, Navigation, Homicide, and many other
apparently totally unrelated establishments of the Galactic Patrol.
Finally, after ten solid hours of mind-racking labor, he ate a
tremendous meal and told Clarrissa--he called her last of all--that he
was going to go to bed and sleep for one whole G-P week.

Thus it was that the name of Bradlow Thyron began to obtrude itself
above the threshold of Galactic consciousness. For seven or eight years
that name had been below the middle of the Patrol's long, black list of
the wanted; now it was well up toward the top. That notorious zwilnik
and his villainous crew had been chased from one side of the First
Galaxy to the other. For a few months it had been supposed that they had
been blown out of the ether. Now, however, it was known definitely that
he was operating in the Second Galaxy, and he and every one of his
cutthroat gang--fiends who had blasted thousands of lives with noxious
wares--were wanted for piracy, drug-mongering, and first-degree murder.
From the Patrol's standpoint, the hunting was very poor. G-P
planetographers have charted only a small percentage of the planets of
the Second Galaxy; and only a few of those are peopled by the adherents
of Civilization.

Therefore it required some time, but finally there came the message for
which Kinnison was so impatiently waiting. A Boskonian pretty-big-shot
and drug-master named Harkleroy, on the planet Phlestyn II, city, Nelto,
coordinates so-and-so, fitted his specifications to a "T"; a
middle-sized operator neither too close to nor too far away from
Kalonia. And Kinnison, having long since learned the lingua franca of
the region from a local meteor-miner, was ready to act.

First, he made sure that the mighty _Dauntless_ would be where he wanted
her when he needed her. Then, seated at his speedster's communicator, he
put through regular channels to call to the Boskonian.

"Harkleroy? I've got a proposition you'll be interested in. Where and
when do you want to see me?"

"What makes you think I want to see you at all?" a voice snarled, and
the plate showed a gross, vicious face. "Who are you, scum?"

"Who I am is nobody's business--and if you don't clamp a baffle on that
damn mouth of yours I'll come down there and shove a glop-skinner's
glove so far down your throat you can sit on it."

At the first defiant word the zwilnik began visibly to swell; but in a
matter of seconds he recognized Bradlow Thyron, and Kinnison knew that
he did. That pirate could, and would be expected to, talk back to
anybody.

"I didn't recognize you at first." Harkleroy almost apologized. "We
might do some business, at that. What have you got?"

"Cocaine, heroin, bentlam, hashish, nitrolabe--most anything a
warm-blooded oxygen-breather would want. The prize, though, is two
kilograms of clear-quill thionite."

"Thionite--two kilograms!" The Phlestan's eyes gleamed. "Where and how
did you get it?"

"I asked the Lensman on Trenco to make it for me, special, and he did."

"So you won't talk, huh?" Kinnison could see Harkleroy's brain work.
Thyron could be made to talk, later. "We can maybe do business at that.
Come down here right away."

"I'll do that, but listen!" and the Lensman's eyes burned into the
zwilnik's. "I know what you're figuring on, and I'm telling you right
now not to try it if you want to keep on living. You know this ain't the
first planet I ever landed on, and if you've got a brain you know that a
lot of smarter guys than you are have tried monkey business on me--and
I'm still here. So watch your step!"

The Lensman landed, and made his way to Harkleroy's inner office in what
seemed to be an ordinary enough, if somewhat over-size, suit of light
space-armor. But it was no more ordinary than it was light. It was a
power-house, built of dureum a quarter of an inch thick. Kinnison was
not walking in it; he was merely the engineer of a battery of
two-thousand-horsepower motors. Unaided, he could not have lifted one
leg of that armor off the ground.

As he had expected, everyone he encountered wore a thought-screen; nor
was he surprised at being halted by a blaring loud-speaker in the hall,
since the zwilnik's search-beams were being stopped four feet away from
his armor.

"Halt! Cut your screens or we'll blast you where you stand!"

"Yeah? Act your age, Harkleroy. I told you I had something up my sleeve
besides my arm, and I meant it. Either I come as I am or I flit
somewhere else, to do business with somebody who wants this stuff bad
enough to act like half a man. 'Smatter--afraid you ain't got blasters
enough in there to handle me?"

This taunt bit deep, and the visitor was allowed to proceed. As he
entered the private office, however, he saw that Harkleroy's hand was
poised near a switch, whose closing would signal a score or more of
concealed gunners to burn him down. They supposed that the stuff was
either on his person or in his speedster just outside. Time was short.

"I abase myself--that's the formula you insist on, ain't it?" Kinnison
sneered, without bending his head a millimeter.

Harkleroy's finger touched the stud.

"_Dauntless!_ Come down!" Kinnison snapped out the order.

Hand, stud, and a part of the desk disappeared in the flare of
Kinnison's beam. Wall-ports opened; projectors and machine rifles
erupted vibratory and solid destruction. Kinnison leaped toward the
desk; the attack slowing down and stopping as he neared and seized the
Boskonian. One fierce, short blast reduced the thought-screen generator
to blobs of fused metal. Harkleroy screamed to his gunners to resume
fire, but before bullet or beam took the zwilnik's life, Kinnison
learned what he most wanted to know.

The ape did know something about Black Lensmen. He didn't know where the
Lenses came from, but he did know how the men were chosen. More, he knew
a Lensman personally--one Melasnikov, who had his office in Cadsil, on
Kalonia III itself.

Kinnison turned and ran--the alarm had been given and they were bringing
up stuff too heavy for even his armor to handle. But the _Dauntless_ was
landing already; smashing to rubble five city blocks in the process. She
settled; and as the dureum-clad Gray Lensman began to fight his way out
of Harkleroy's fortress, Major Peter vanBuskirk and a full battalion of
Valerians, armed with space-axes and semi-portables, began to hew and to
blast their way in.




CHAPTER 15

THYRON FOLLOWS A LEAD


Inch by inch, foot by foot, Kinnison fought his way back along the
corpse-littered corridor. Under the ravening force of the attackers'
beams his defensive screens flared into pyrotechnic splendor, but they
did not go down. Fierce-driven metallic slugs spanged and whanged
against the unyielding dureum of his armor; but that, too, held. Dureum
is incredibly massive, unbelievably tough, unimaginably hard--against
these qualities and against the thousands of horsepower driving that
veritable tank and energizing its screens the zwilniks might just as
well have been shining flashlights at him and throwing confetti. His
immediate opponents could not touch him, but the Boskonians were
bringing up reserves that he didn't like a little bit; mobile projectors
with whose energies even those screens could not cope.

He had, however, one great advantage over his enemies. He had the sense
of perception; they did not. He could see them, but they could not see
him. All he had to do was to keep at least one opaque wall between them
until he was securely behind the mobile screens, powered by the
stupendous generators of the _Dauntless_, which vanBuskirk and his
Valerians were so earnestly urging toward him. If a door was handy in
the moment of need, he used it. If not he went through a wall.

The Valerians were fighting furiously and were coming fast. Those two
words, when applied to members of that race, mean something starkly
incredible to anyone who has never seen Valerians in action. They
average something less than seven feet in height; something over four
hundred pounds in weight; and are muscled, boned, and sinewed against a
normal gravitational force of almost three times that of Earth.
VanBuskirk's weakest warrior could do, in full armor, a standing high
jump of fourteen feet against one Tellurian gravity; he could handle
himself and the thirty-pound monstrosity which was his space-axe with a
blinding speed and a devastating efficiency literally appalling to
contemplate. They are the deadliest hand-to-hand fighters ever known;
and, unbelievable as it may seem to any really highly advanced
intelligence, they did and still do fairly revel in that form of combat.

The Valerian tide reached the battling Gray Lensman; closed around him.

"Hi... you little... Tellurian... wart!" Major Peter vanBuskirk
boomed this friendly thought, a yell of pure joy, in cadence with the
blows of his utterly irresistible weapon. His rhythm broke--his
frightful axe was stuck. Not even dureum-inlaid armor could bar the
inward course of those furiously-driven beaks; but sometimes it made it
fairly difficult to get them out. The giant pulled, twisted--put one
red-splashed boot on a battered breastplate--bent his mighty
back--heaved viciously. The weapon came free with a snap that would have
broken any ordinary man's arms, but the Valerian's thought rolled
smoothly on: "Ain't we got fun?"

"Ho, Bus, you big Valerian baboon!" Kinnison thought back in kind.
"Thought maybe we'd need you and your gang--thanks a million. But back
now, and fast!"

Although the Valerians did not like to retreat, after even a successful
operation, they knew how to do it. Hence in a matter of minutes all the
survivors--and the losses had been surprisingly small--were back inside
the _Dauntless_.

"You picked up my speedster, Frank." It was a statement, not a question,
directed at the young Lensman sitting at the "big board."

"Of course, sir. They're massing fast, but without any hostile
demonstration, as you said they would." He nodded unconcernedly at a
plate, which showed the sky dotted with warlike shapes.

"No maulers?"

"None detectable as yet, sir."

"QX. Original orders stand. At detection of one mauler, execute
Operation Able. Tell everybody that while the announcement of Operation
Able will put me out of control instantly and automatically, until such
announcement I will give instructions. What they'll be like I haven't
the foggiest notion. It depends on what his nibs upstairs decides to
do--it's his move next."

As though the last phrase were a cue, a burst of noise rattled from the
speaker--of which only the words "Bradlow Thyron" were intelligible to
the un-Lensed members of the crew. That name, however, explained why
they were not being attacked--yet. Kalonia had heard much of that
intransigent and obdurate pirate and of the fabulous prowess of his
ship; and Kinnison was pretty sure that they were much more interested
in his ship than in him.

"I can't understand you!" The Gray Lensman barked, in the polyglot
language he had so lately learned. "Talk pidgin!"

"Very well. I see that you are indeed Bradlow Thyron, as we were
informed. What do you mean by this outrageous attack? Surrender! Disarm
your men, take off their armor, and march them out of your vessel, or we
will blast you as you lie there--Vice-Admiral Mendonai speaking!"

"I abase myself." Kinnison-Thyron did not sneer--exactly--and he did
incline his stubborn head perhaps the sixteenth part of an inch; but he
made no move to comply with the orders so summarily issued. Instead:

"What the hell kind of planet is this, anyway?" he demanded, hotly. "I
come here to see this louse Harkleroy because a friend of mine tells me
he's a big shot and interested enough in my line so we can do a lot of
business. I give the lug fair warning, too--tell him plain I've been
around plenty and if he tries to give me the works I'll rub him out like
a pencil mark. So what happens? In spite of what I just tell him he
tries dirty work and I knock hell out of him, which he certainly has got
coming to him. Then you and your flock of little tin boats come barging
in like I'd busted a law or something. Who do you think you are, anyway?
What license you got to stick your beak into private business?"

"Ah, I had not heard that version." Vision came on; the face upon the
plate was typically Kalonian--blue, cold, cruel, and keen. "Harkleroy
was warned, you say? Definitely?"

"Plenty definitely. Ask any of the zwilniks in that private office of
his. They're mostly alive and they all must of heard it."

The plate fogged, the speaker again gave out gibberish. The Lensman
knew, however, that the commander of the forces above them was indeed
questioning the dead zwilnik's guards. They knew that Kinnison's story
was being corroborated in full.

"You interest me." The Boskonian's language again became intelligible to
the group at large. "We will forget Harkleroy--stupidity brings its own
reward and the property damage is of no present concern. From what I
have been able to learn of you, you have never belonged to that
so-called Civilization. I know for a fact that you are not, and never
have been, one of us. How have you been able to survive? And why do you
work alone?"

"'How' is easy enough--by keeping one jump ahead of the other guy, like
I did with your pal here, and by being smart enough to have good
engineers put into my ship everything that any other one ever had and
everything they could dream up besides. As to 'why', that's simple, too.
I don't trust nobody. If nobody knows what I'm going to do, nobody's
going to stick a knife into me when I ain't looking--see? So far, it's
paid off big. I'm still around and still healthy. Them that trusted
other guys ain't."

"I see. Crude, but graphic. The more I study you, the more convinced I
become that you make a worth-while addition to our force..."

"No deal, Mendonai," Kinnison interrupted, shaking his unkempt head
positively. "I never yet took no orders from no damn boss, and I ain't
going to."

"You misunderstand me, Thyron." The zwilnik was queerly patient and much
too forbearing. Kinnison's insulting omission of his title should have
touched him off like a rocket. "I was not thinking of you in any minor
capacity, but as an ally. An entirely independent ally, working with us
in certain mutually advantageous undertakings."

"Such as?" Kinnison allowed himself to betray his first sign of
interest. "You may be talking sense now, brother, but what's in it for
me? Believe me, there's got to be plenty."

"There will be plenty. With the ability you have already shown, and with
our vast resources back of you, you will take more every week than you
have been taking in a year."

"Yeah? People like you just love to do things like that for people like
me. What do _you_ figure on getting out of it?" Kinnison wondered, and
Lensed a sharp thought to his junior at the board.

"On your toes, Frank. He's stalling for something, and I'm betting it's
maulers."

"None detectable yet, sir."

"We stand to gain, of course," the pirate admitted, smoothly. "For
instance, there are certain features of your vessel which might--just
possibly, you will observe, and speaking only to mention an example--be
of interest to our naval designers. Also, we have heard that you have an
unusually hot battery of primary beams. You might tell me about some of
those things now; or at least re-focus your plate so that I can see
something besides your not unattractive face."

"I might not, too. What I've got here is my own business, and stays
mine."

"Is that what we are to expect from you in the way of cooperation?" The
commander's voice was still low and level, but now bore a chill of
deadly menace.

"Cooperation, hell!" The cutthroat chief was unimpressed. "I'll maybe
tell you a thing or two--eat out of your dish--after I get good and sold
on your proposition, whatever it is, but not one damn second sooner!"

The commander glared. "I weary of this. You probably are not worth the
trouble, after all. I might as well blast you out now as later. You know
that I can, of course, as well as I do."

"Do I?" Kinnison did sneer, this time. "Act your age, pal. As I told
that fool Harkleroy, this ain't the first planet I ever sat down on, and
it won't be the last. And don't call no maulers," as the Boskonian
officer's hand moved almost imperceptibly toward a row of buttons. "If
you do, I start blasting as soon as we spot one on our plates, and
they're full out right now."

"_You_ would start blasting?" The zwilnik's surprise was plain, but the
hand stopped its motion.

"Yeah--me. Them heaps you got up there don't bother me a bit, but
maulers I can't handle, and I ain't afraid to tell you so because you
probably know it already. I can't stop you from calling 'em, if you want
to, but bend both ears to this--I can out-run 'em and I'll guarantee
that you personally won't be alive to see me run. Why? Because your ship
will be the first one I'll whiff on the way out. And if the rest of your
junkers stick around long enough to try to stop me I'll whiff
twenty-five or thirty more before your maulers get close enough so I'll
have to do a flit. Now, if your brains are made out of the same kind of
thick, blue mud as Harkleroy's, start something!"

This was an impasse. Kinnison knew what he wanted the other to do, but
he could not give him a suggestion, or even a hint, without tipping his
hand. The officer, quite evidently, was in a quandary. He did not want
to open fire upon this tremendous, this fabulous ship. Even if he could
destroy it, such a course would be unthinkable--unless, indeed, the very
act of destruction would brand as false rumor the tales of invincibility
and invulnerability which had heralded its coming, and thus would
operate in his favor at the court-martial so sure to be called. He was
very much afraid, however, that those rumors were not false--a view
which was supported very strongly both by Thyron's undisguised contempt
for the Boskonian warships threatening him and by his equally frank
declaration of his intention to avoid engagement with any craft of
really superior force. Finally, however, the Boskonian perceived one
thing that did not quite fit.

"If you are as good as you claim to be, why aren't you blasting right
now?" he asked, skeptically.

"Because I don't _want_ to, that's why. Use your head, pal." This was
better. Mendonai had shifted the conversation into a line upon which the
Lensman could do a bit of steering. "I had to leave the First Galaxy
because it got too hot for me, and I got no connections at all, yet,
here in the Second. You folks need certain kinds of stuff that I've got
and I need other kinds, that you've got. So we could do a nice business,
if you wanted to. Like I told you, that's why I come to see Harkleroy.
I'd like to do business with some of you people, but I just got bit
pretty bad, and I've got to have some kind of solid guarantee that you
mean business, and no monkey business, before I take a chance again.
See?"

"I see. The idea is good, but the execution may prove difficult. I could
give you my word, which I assure you has never been broken."

"Don't make me laugh," Kinnison snorted. "Would you take mine?"

"The case is different. I would not. Your point, however, is well taken.
How about the protection of a high court of law? I will bring you an
unalterable writ from any court you say."

"Uh-uh," the Gray Lensman dissented. "There never was no court yet that
didn't take orders from the big shots who keep the fat cats fat, and
lawyers are the crookedest damn crooks in the universe. You'll have to
do better than that, pal."

"Well, then, how about a Lensman? You know about Lensmen, don't you?"

"A Lensman!" Kinnison gasped. He shook his head violently. "Are you
completely nuts, or do you think I am? I _do_ know Lensmen, cully--a
Lensman chased me from Alaskan to Vandemar once, and if I hadn't had a
dose of hell's own luck he'd of got me. Lensmen chased me out of the
First Galaxy--why the hell else do you think I'm here? Use your brain,
mister; use your brain!"

"You're thinking of Civilization's Lensmen; particularly of Gray
Lensmen." Mendonai was enjoying Thyron's passion. "Ours are
different--entirely different. They have as much power, or more, but
don't use it the same way. They work with us right along. In fact,
they've been bumping Gray Lensmen off right and left lately."

"You mean he could open up, for instance, your mind and mine, so we
could see the other guy wasn't figuring on running in no stacked decks?
And he'd sort of referee this business we got on the fire? Do you know
one yourself, personally?"

"He could, and would, do all that. Yes, I know one personally. His name
is Melasnikov, and his office is on Three, just a short flit from here.
He may not be there at the moment, but he'll come in if I call. How
about it--shall I call him now?"

"Don't work up a sweat. Sounds like it might work, if we can figure the
approach. I don't suppose you and him would come out to me in space?"

"Hardly. You wouldn't expect us to, would you?"

"It wouldn't be very bright of you to. And since I want to do business,
I guess I got to meet you part way. How'd this be? You pull your ships
out of range. My ship takes station right over your Lensman's office. I
go down in my speedster, like I did here, and go inside to meet him and
you. I wear my armor--and when I say it's real armor I ain't just
snapping my choppers, neither."

"I can see only one slight flaw." The Boskonian was really trying to
work out a mutually satisfactory solution. "The Lensman will open our
minds to you in proof, however, that we will have no intention of
bringing up our maulers or other heavy stuff while we're in conference."

"Right then you'll find out you hadn't better, too." Kinnison grinned
wolfishly.

"What do you mean?" Mendonai demanded.

"I've got enough super-atomic bombs aboard to blow this planet to
hellangone and the boys'll drop 'em all the second you make a queer
move. I've got to take a little chance to start doing business, but it's
a damn small one, 'cause if I go you go too, pal. You and your Lensman
and your fleet and everything alive on your whole damn planet. And your
bosses still won't get any dope on what makes this ship of mine tick the
way she does. So I'm betting you won't make that kind of a swap."

"I certainly would not." Hard as he was, Mendonai was shaken. "Your
suggested method of procedure is satisfactory."

"QX. Are you ready to flit?"

"We are ready."

"Call your Lensman, then, and lead the way. Boys, take her upstairs!"




CHAPTER 16

RED LENSMAN IN GRAY


Karen Kinnison was worried. She, who had always been so sure of herself,
had for weeks been conscious of a gradually increasing--what was it,
anyway? Not exactly a loss of control... a _change_... a something
that manifested itself in increasingly numerous fits of
senseless--sheerly idiotic--stubbornness. And always and only it was
directed at--of all the people in the universe!--her brother. She got
along with her sisters perfectly; their tiny tiffs barely rippled the
surface of any of their minds. But any time her path of action crossed
Kit's, it seemed, the profoundest depths of her being flared into
opposition like exploding duodec. Worse than senseless and idiotic, it
was inexplicable, for the feeling which the Five had for each other was
much deeper than that felt by ordinary brothers and sisters.

She didn't want to fight with Kit. She _liked_ the guy! She liked to
feel his mind en rapport with hers, just as she liked to dance with him;
their bodies as completely in accord as were their minds. No change of
step or motion, however suddenly conceived and executed or however
bizarre, had ever succeeded in taking the other by surprise or in
marring by a millimeter the effortless precision of their performance.
She could do things with Kit that would tie any other man into knots and
break half his bones. All other men were lumps. Kit was so far ahead of
any other man in existence that there was simply no comparison. If she
were Kit she would give her a going-over that would... or could even
he...

At the thought she turned cold inside. He could not. Even Kit, with all
his tremendous power, would hit that solid wall and bounce. Well, there
was one--not a man, but an entity--who could. He might kill her, but
even that would be better than to allow the continued growth within her
mind of this monstrosity which she could neither control nor understand.
Where was she, and where was Lyrane, and where was Arisia? Good--not too
far off line. She would stop off at Arisia en route.

She did so, and made her way to Mentor's office on the hospital grounds.
She told her story.

"Fighting with Kit was bad enough," she concluded, "but when I start
defying _you_, Mentor, it's high time that something was done about it.
Why didn't Kit ever knock me into a logarithmic spiral? Why didn't you
work me over? You called Kit in, with the distinct implication that he
needed more education--why didn't you pull me in here, too, and pound
some sense into me?"

"Concerning you, Christopher had definite instructions, which he obeyed.
I did not touch you for the same reason that I did not order you to come
to me; neither course would have been of any use. Your mind, daughter
Karen, is unique. One of its prime characteristics--the one, in fact,
which is to make you an all-important player in the drama which is to
come--is a yieldlessness very nearly absolute. Your mind might, just
conceivably, be broken; but it cannot be coerced by any imaginable
external force, however applied. Thus it was inevitable from the first
that nothing could be done about the untoward manifestations of this
characteristic until you yourself should recognize the fact that your
development was not complete. It would be idle for me to say that during
adolescence you have not been more than a trifle trying. I was not
speaking idly when I said that the development of you Five has been a
tremendous task. It is with equal seriousness, however, that I now tell
you that the reward is commensurate with the magnitude of the
undertaking. It is impossible to express the satisfaction I feel--the
fulfillment, the completion, the justification--as you children come,
one by one, each in his proper time, for final instruction."

"Oh--you mean, then, that there's nothing really the matter with me?"
Hard as she was, Karen trembled as her awful tension eased. "That I was
_supposed_ to act that way? And I can tell Kit, right away?"

"No need. Your brother has known that it was a passing phase; he shall
know very shortly that it has passed. It is not that you were 'supposed'
to act as you acted. You could not help it. Nor could your brother, nor
I. From now on, however, you shall be completely the mistress of your
own mind. Come fully, daughter Karen, into mine."

She did so, and in a matter of time her "formal education" was complete.

"There is one thing that I don't quite understand..." she began, just
before she boarded her speedster.

"Consider it, and I am sure that you will," Mentor assured her. "Explain
it, whatever it is, to me."

"QX--I'll try. It's about Fossten and dad." Karen cogitated. "Fossten
was, of course, Gharlane--your making dad believe him to be an insane
Arisian was a masterpiece. I see, of course, how you did
that--principally by making Fossten's 'real' shape exactly like the one
he saw of you on Arisia. But his physical actions as Fossten..."

"Go on, daughter. I am sure that your visualization will be sound."

"While acting as Fossten he had to act as a Thralian would have acted,"
she decided with a rush. "He was watched everywhere he went, and knew
it. To display his real power would have been disastrous. Just like you
Arisians, they have to follow the pattern to avoid setting up an
inferiority complex that would ruin everything for them. Gharlane's
actions as Fossten, then, were constrained. Just as they were when he
was Gray Roger, so long ago--except that then he did make a point of
unhuman longevity, deliberately to put an insoluble problem up to First
Lensman Samms and his men. Just as you--you _must_ have... you _did_
coach Virgil Samms, Mentor, and some of you Arisians were there, as
men!"

"We were. We lived and wrought as men and seemed to die as men."

"But you weren't Virgil Samms, please!" Karen almost begged. "Not that
it would break me if you were, but I'd much rather you hadn't been."

"No, none of us was Samms," Mentor assured her. "Nor Cleveland, nor
Rodebush, nor Costigan, nor even Clio Marsden. We worked
with--'coached', as you express it--those persons and others from time
to time in certain small matters, but we were at no time integral with
any of them. One of us was, however, Nels Bergenholm. The full
inertialess space-drive became necessary at that time, and it would have
been poor technique to have had either Rodebush or Cleveland develop so
suddenly the ability to perfect the device as Bergenholm did perfect
it."

"QX. Bergenholm isn't important--he was just an inventor. To get back to
the subject of Fossten: when he was there on the flagship with dad, and
in position to throw his full weight around, it was too late--you
Arisians were on the job. You'll have to take it from there, though; I'm
out beyond my depth."

"Because you lack data. In those last minutes Gharlane knew that Kimball
Kinnison was neither alone nor unprotected. He called for help, but help
did not come. He was isolated; no one of his fellows received his call.
Nor could he escape from the form of flesh he was then energizing. I
myself saw to that." Karen had never before felt the Arisian display
emotion, but his thought was grim and cold. "From that form, which your
father never did perceive, Gharlane of Eddore passed into the next plane
of existence."

Karen shivered. "It served him right... That clears everything up, I
think. But are you _sure_, Mentor"--wistfully--"that you can't, or
rather shouldn't, teach me any more than you have? It's... I feel...
well, 'incompetent' is putting it very mildly indeed."

"To a mind of such power and scope as yours, in its present state of
development, such a feeling is inevitable. Nor can anyone except
yourself do anything about it. Cold comfort, perhaps, but it is the
stark truth that from now on your development is your own task. Yours
alone. As I have already told Christopher and Kathryn, and will very
shortly tell Camilla and Constance, you have had your last Arisian
treatment. I will be on call to any of you at any instant of any day, to
aid you or to guide you or to re-enforce you at need; but of formal
instruction there can be no more."

Karen left Arisia and drove for Lyrane, her thoughts in a turmoil. The
time was too short by far; she deliberately cut her vessel's speed and
took a long detour so that the vast and chaotic library of her mind
could be reduced to some semblance of order before she landed.

She reached Lyrane II, and there, again to all outward seeming a happy,
carefree girl, she hugged her mother rapturously.

"You're the most _wonderful_ thing, mums!" Karen exclaimed. "It's simply
marvelous, seeing you again in the flesh..."

"Now why bring _that_ up?" Clarrissa had--just barely--become accustomed
to working undraped, in the Lyranian fashion.

"I didn't mean it that way at all, and you know I didn't," Kay
snickered. "Shame on you--fishing for compliments, and at your age,
too!" Ignoring the older woman's attempt at protest she went on: "All
kidding aside, mums, you're a mighty smart-looking hunk of woman. I
approve of you exceedingly much. In fact, we're a keen pair and I like
both of us. I've got one advantage over you, of course, in that I never
did care whether I had any clothes on or not. How are you doing?"

"Not so well--of course, though, I haven't been here very long."
Forgetting her undressedness, Clarrissa frowned. "I haven't found Helen,
and I haven't found out yet why she retired. I can't quite decide
whether to put pressure on now, or wait a while longer. Ladora, the new
Elder Person, is... that is, I don't know... Oh, here she comes
now. I'm glad--I want you to meet her."

If Ladora was glad to see Karen, however, she did not show it. Instead,
for an inappreciable instant of time which was nevertheless sufficient
for the acquirement of much information, each studied the other. Like
Helen, the former queen, Ladora was tall, beautifully proportioned,
flawless of skin and feature, hard and fine. But so, and in most
respects even more so, to Ladora's astonishment and quickly-mounting
wrath, was this pink-tanned stranger. Practically instantaneously,
therefore, the Lyranian hurled a vicious mental bolt; only to get the
surprise of her life.

She hadn't found out yet what this strange near-person, Clarrissa of Sol
III, had in the way of equipment, but from the meek way she acted, it
couldn't be much. So Clarrissa's offspring, younger and less
experienced, would be easy enough prey.

But Ladora's bolt, the heaviest she could send, did not pierce even the
outermost fringes of her intended victim's defenses, and so vicious was
the almost simultaneous counterthrust that it went through the
Lyranian's hard-held block in nothing flat. Inside her brain it wrought
such hellishly poignant punishment that the matriarch, forgetting
everything, tried only and madly to scream. She could not. She could not
move a muscle of her face or of her body. She could not even fall. And
the one brief glimpse she had into the stranger's mind showed it to be
such a blaze of incandescent fury that she, who had never feared in the
slightest any living creature, knew now in full measure what fear was.

"I'd like to give that alleged brain of yours a good going over, just
for fun." Karen forced her emotion to subside to a mere seething rage,
and Ladora watched her do it. "But since this whole stinking planet is
my mother's dish, not mine, she'd blast me to a cinder--she's done it
before--if I dip in." She cooled still more--visibly. "At that, I don't
suppose you're too bad an egg, in your own poisonous way--you just don't
know any better. So maybe I'd better warn you, you poor fool, since you
haven't got sense enough to see it, that you're playing with an atomic
vortex when you push her around like you've been doing. Just a very
little more of it and she'll get mad, like I did a second ago except
more so, and you'll wish to Klono you'd never been born. She won't make
a sign until she blows her top, but I'm telling you she's as much harder
and tougher than I am as she is older, and what she does to people she
gets mad at I wouldn't want to watch happen again, even to a snake.
She'll pick you up, curl you into a circle, pull off your arms, shove
your feet down your throat, and roll you across that field there like a
hoop. After that I don't know what she'll do--depends on how much
pressure she develops before she goes off. One thing, though; she's
always sorry afterwards. Why, she even attends the funerals, sometimes,
and insists on paying all the expenses!"

With which outrageous thought she kissed Clarrissa an enthusiastic
goodbye. "Told you I couldn't stay a minute--got to do a flit--'see a
man about a dog', you know--came a million parsecs to squeeze you, mums,
but it was worth it--clear ether!"

She was gone, and it was a dewy-eyed and rapt mother, not a Lensman, who
turned to the still completely disorganized Lyranian. Clarrissa had
perceived nothing whatever of what had happened; Karen had very
carefully seen to that.

"My daughter," Clarrissa mused, as much to herself as to Ladora. "One of
four. The four dearest, finest, sweetest girls that ever lived. I often
wonder how a woman of my limitations, of my faults, could possibly have
borne such children."

And Ladora of Lyrane, humorless and literal as all Lyranians are, took
those thoughts at their face value and correlated their every
connotation and implication with what she herself had perceived in that
"dear, sweet" daughter's mind; with what that daughter had done and had
said. The nature and quality of this hellish near-person's "limitations"
and "faults" became eminently clear; and as she perceived what she
thought was the truth, the Lyranian literally cringed.

"As you know, I have been in doubt as to whether or not to support you
actively, as you wish," Ladora offered, as the two walked across the
field, toward the line of ground-cars. "On the one hand, the certainty
that the safety, and perhaps the very existence, of my race will be at
hazard. On the other, the possibility that you are right in saying that
the situation will continue to deteriorate if we do nothing. The
decision has not been an easy one to make." Ladora was no longer aloof.
She was just plain scared. She had been talking against time, and hoping
that the help for which she had long since called would arrive in time.
"I have touched only the outer surface of your mind. Will you allow me,
without offense, to test its inner quality before deciding definitely?"
In the instant of asking, Ladora sent out a full-driven probe.

"I will not." Ladora's beam struck a barrier which seemed to her exactly
like Karen's. None of her race had developed anything like it. She had
never seen... yes, she had, too--years ago, when she was a child,
that time in the assembly hall--that utterly hated male, Kinnison of
Tellus! Tellus--Sol III! Clarrissa of Sol III, then, wasn't a
near-person at all, but a _female_--Kinnison's kind of female--and a
creature who was physically a person, but mentally that inconceivable
monstrosity, a _female_, might be anything and might do _anything_!
Ladora temporized.

"Excuse me; I did not mean to intrude against your will," she
apologized, smoothly enough. "Since your attitude makes it extremely
difficult for me to cooperate with you, I can make no promises as yet.
What is it that you wish to know first?"

"I wish to interview your predecessor, the person we called Helen."
Strangely refreshed, in a sense galvanized by the brief personal visit
with her dynamic daughter, it was no longer Mrs. Kimball Kinnison who
faced the Lyranian queen. Instead, it was the Red Lensman; a
full-powered Second-Stage Lensman who had finally decided that, since
appeals to reason, logic, and common sense had no perceptible effect
upon this stiff-necked near-woman, the time had come to bear down.
"Furthermore, I intend to interview her now, and not at some such
indefinite future time as your whim may see fit to allow."

Ladora sent out a final desperate call for help and mustered her every
force against the interloper. Fast and strong as her mind was, however,
the Red Lensman's was faster and stronger. The Lyranian's defensive
structure was wrecked in the instant of its building, the frantically
struggling mind was taken over in toto. Help arrived--uselessly; since
although Clarrissa's newly enlarged mind had not been put to warlike
use, it was brilliantly keen and ultimately sure. Nor, in time of
stress, did the softer side of her nature operate to stay mind or hand.
While carrying Lensman's Load she contained no more of ruth for
Civilization's foes than did abysmally frigid Nadreck himself.

Head thrown back, taut and tense, gold-flecked tawny eyes flashing, she
stood there for a moment and took on her shield everything those
belligerent persons could send. More, she returned it in kind, plus; and
under those withering blasts of force more than one of her attackers
died. Then, still holding her block, she and her unwilling captive raced
across the field toward the line of peculiar little fabric-and-wire
machines that were still the last word in Lyranian air-transport.

Clarrissa knew that the Lyranians had no modern offensive or defensive
weapons. They did, however, have some fairly good artillery at the
airport; and she hoped fervently as she ran that she could put out jets
enough to spoil aim and fuzing--luckily, they hadn't developed proximity
fuzes yet!--of whatever ack-ack they could bring to bear on her crate
during the few minutes she would have to use it. Fortunately, there was
no artillery at the small, unimportant airport on which her speedster
lay.

"Here we are. We'll take this tripe--it's the fastest thing here!"

Clarrissa could operate the triplane, of course--any knowledge or
ability that Ladora had ever had was now and permanently the Lensman's.
She started the queer engines; and as the powerful little plane screamed
into the air, hanging from its props, she devoted what of her mind she
could spare to the problem of anti-aircraft fire. She could not handle
all the gun-crews; but she could and did control the most important
members of most of them. Thus, nearly all the shells either went wide or
exploded too soon. Since she knew every point of aim of the few guns
with whose operations she could not interfere, she avoided their
missiles by not being at any one of those points at the predetermined
instant of functioning.

Thus plane and passengers escaped unscratched; and in a matter of
minutes arrived at their destination. The Lyranians there had been
alerted, of course; but they were few in number and they had not been
informed that it would take physical force, not mental, to keep that
red-headed pseudo-person from boarding her outlandish ship of space.

In a few more minutes, then, Clarrissa and her captive were high in the
stratosphere. Clarrissa sat Ladora down--hard--in a seat and fastened
the safety straps.

"Stay in that seat and keep your thoughts to yourself," she directed,
curtly. "If you don't, you'll never again either move or think in this
life." She opened a sliding door, put on a couple of wisps of Manarkan
glamorette, reached for a dress, and paused. Eyes glowing, she gazed
hungrily at a suit of plain gray leather; a costume which she had not as
yet so much as tried on. Should she wear it, or not?

She could work efficiently--at service maximum, really--in ordinary
clothes. Ditto, although she didn't like to, unclothed. In Gray, though,
she could hit absolute max if she had to. Nor had there ever been any
question of right involved; the only barrier had been her own
hyper-sensitivity.

For over twenty years she herself had been the only one to deny her
right. What license, she was wont to ask, did an imitation or synthetic
or amateur or "Red" Lensman have to wear the garb which meant so much to
so many? Over those years, however, it had become increasingly widely
known that hers was one of the five finest and most powerful minds in
the entire Gray Legion; and when Coordinator Kinnison recalled her to
active duty in Unattached status, that Legion passed by unanimous vote a
resolution asking her to join them in Gray. Psychics all, they knew that
nothing less would suffice; that if there was any trace of resentment or
of antagonism or of feelings that she did not intrinsically belong, she
would never don the uniform which every adherent of Civilization so
revered and for which, deep down, she had always so intensely longed.
The Legion had sent her these Grays. Kit had convinced her that she did
actually deserve them.

She really should wear them. She would.

She put them on, thrilling to the core as she did so, and made the quick
little gesture she had seen Kim make so many times. Gray Seal. No one,
however accustomed, has ever donned or ever will don unmoved the plain
gray leather of the Unattached Lensman of the Galactic Patrol.

Hands on hips, she studied herself minutely and approvingly, both in the
mirror and by means of her vastly more efficient sense of perception.
She wriggled a little, and giggled inwardly as she remembered deploring
as "exhibitionistic" this same conduct in her oldest daughter.

The Grays fitted her perfectly. A bit revealing, perhaps, but her figure
was still good--very good, as a matter of fact. Not a speck of dirt or
tarnish. Her DeLameters were fully charged. Her tremendous Lens flamed
brilliantly upon her wrist. She looked--and felt--ready. She could hit
absolute max in a fraction of a micro-second. If she had to get really
tough, she would. She sent out a call.

"Helen of Lyrane! I know they've got you around here somewhere, and if
any of your guards try to screen out _this_ thought I'll burn their
brains out. Clarrissa of Sol III calling. Come in, Helen!"

"Clarrissa!" This time there was no interference. A world of welcome was
in every nuance of the thought. "Where are you?"

"High up, at..." Clarrissa gave her position. "I'm in my speedster,
so can get to anywhere on the planet in minutes. More important, where
are you? And why?"

"In jail, in my own apartment." Queens should have palaces, but Lyrane's
ruler did not. Everything was strictly utilitarian. "The tower on the
corner, remember? On the top floor? 'Why' is too long to go into
now--I'd better tell you as much as possible of what you should know,
while there's still time."

"Time? Are you in danger?"

"Yes. Ladora would have killed me long ago if it had dared. My following
grows less daily, the Boskonians stronger. The guards have already
summoned help. They are coming now, to take me."

"That's what _they_ think!" Clarrissa had already reached the scene. She
had exactly the velocity she wanted. She slanted downward in a screaming
dive. "Can you tell whether they're limbering up any ack-ack around
there?"

"I don't believe so--I don't feel any such thoughts."

"QX. Get away from the window." If they hadn't started already they
never would; the Red Lensman was deadly sure of that.

She came within range--her range--of the guns. She was in time. Several
gunners were running toward their stations. None of them arrived. The
speedster leveled off and stuck its hard, sharp nose into and almost
through the indicated room; re-enforced concrete, steel bars, and glass
showering abroad as it did so. The port snapped open. As Helen leaped
in, Clarrissa practically threw Ladora out.

"Bring Ladora back!" Helen demanded. "I shall have its life!"

"Nix!" Clarrissa snapped. "I know everything she does. We've other fish
to fry, my dear."

The massive door clanged shut. The speedster darted forward, straight
through the solid concrete wall. Clarrissa's vessel, solidly built of
beryllium alloys, had been designed to take brutal punishment. She took
it.

Out in open space, Clarrissa went free, leaving the artificial gravity
at normal. Helen stood up, took Clarrissa's hand, and shook it gravely
and strongly; a gesture at which the Red Lensman almost choked.

Helen of Lyrane had changed even less than had the Earth-woman. She was
still six feet tall; erect, taut, springy, and poised. She didn't weigh
a pound more than the one-eighty she had scaled twenty-odd years ago.
Her vivid auburn hair showed not one strand of gray. Her eyes were as
clear and as proud; her skin almost as fine and firm.

"You are, then, alone?" In spite of her control, Helen's thought showed
relief.

"Yes. My hus... Kimball Kinnison is very busy elsewhere." Clarrissa
understood perfectly. Helen, after twenty years of thinking things over,
really liked her; but she still simply couldn't stand a male, not even
Kim; any more than Clarrissa could ever adapt herself to the Lyranian
habit of using the neuter pronoun "it" when referring to one of
themselves. She couldn't. Anybody who ever got one glimpse of Helen
would simply have to think of her as _she_! But enough of this
wool-gathering--which had taken perhaps one millisecond of time.

"There's nothing to keep us from working together perfectly,"
Clarrissa's thought flashed on. "Ladora didn't know much, and you do. So
tell me all about things, so we can decide where to begin!"




CHAPTER 17

NADRECK VS. KANDRON


When Kandron called his minion in that small and nameless base to learn
whether or not he had succeeded in trapping the Palainian Lensman,
Nadreck's relay station functioned so perfectly, and Nadreck was so
completely in charge of his captive's mind, that the caller could feel
nothing out of the ordinary. Ultra-suspicious though Kandron was, there
was nothing whatever to indicate that anything had changed at that base
since he had last called its commander. That individual's subconscious
mind reacted properly to the key stimulus. The conscious mind took over,
remembered, and answered properly a series of trick questions.

These things occurred because the minion was still alive. His ego, the
pattern and matrix of his personality, was still in existence and had
not been changed. What Kandron did not and could not suspect was that
that ego was no longer in control of mind, brain, or body; that it was
utterly unable, of its own volition, either to think any iota of
independent thought or to stimulate any single physical cell. The
Onlonian's ego was present--just barely present--but that was all. It
was Nadreck who, using that ego as a guide and, in a sense, as a
helplessly impotent transformer, received the call. Nadreck made those
exactly correct replies. Nadreck was now ready to render a detailed and
fully documented--and completely mendacious--report upon his own
destruction!

Nadreck's special tracers were already out, determining line and
intensity. Strippers and analyzers were busily at work on the fringes of
the beam, dissecting out, isolating, and identifying each of the many
scraps of extraneous thought accompanying the main beam. These
side-thoughts, in fact, were Nadreck's prime concern. The Second-Stage
Lensman had learned that no being--except possibly an Arisian--could
narrow a beam of thought down to one single, pure sequence. Of the four,
however, only Nadreck recognized in those side-bands a rich field; only
he had designed and developed mechanisms with which to work that field.

The stronger and clearer the mind, the fewer and less complete were the
extraneous fragments of thought; but Nadreck knew that even Kandron's
brain would carry quite a few such nongermane accompaniments, and from
each of those bits he could reconstruct an entire sequence as accurately
as a competent paleontologist reconstructs a prehistoric animal from one
fossilized piece of bone.

Thus Nadreck was completely ready when the harshly domineering Kandron
asked his first real question.

"I do not suppose that you have succeeded in killing the Lensman?"

"Yes, Your Supremacy, I have." Nadreck could feel Kandron's start of
surprise; could perceive without his instruments Kandron's fleeting
thoughts of the hundreds of unsuccessful previous attempts upon his
life. It was clear that the Onlonian was not at all credulous.

"Report in detail!" Kandron ordered.

Nadreck did so, adhering rigidly to the truth up to the moment in which
his probes of force had touched off the Boskonian alarms. Then:

"Spy-ray photographs taken at the instant of alarm show an indetectable
speedster, with one, and only one occupant, as Your Supremacy
anticipated. A careful study of all the pictures taken of that occupant
shows: first, that he was definitely alive at that time, and was neither
a projection nor an artificial mechanism; and second, that his physical
measurements agree in every particular with the specifications furnished
by Your Supremacy as being those of Nadreck of Palain VII.

"Since Your Supremacy personally computed and supervised the placement
of those projectors," Nadreck went smoothly on, "you know that the
possibility is vanishingly small that any material thing, free or inert,
could have escaped destruction. As a check, I took seven hundred twenty
nine samples of the circumambient space, statistically at random, for
analysis. After appropriate allowances for the exactly-observed elapsed
times of sampling, diffusion of droplets and molecular and atomic
aggregates, temperatures, pressures, and all other factors known or
assumed to be operating, I determined that there had been present in the
center of action of our beams a mass of approximately four thousand six
hundred seventy eight point zero one metric tons. This value, Your
Supremacy will note, is in close agreement with the most efficient mass
of an indetectable speedster designed for long distance work."

That figure was in fact closer than close. It was an almost exact
statement of the actual mass of Nadreck's ship.

"Exact composition?" Kandron demanded.

Nadreck recited a rapid-fire string of elements and figures. They, too,
were correct within the experimental error of a very good analyst. The
base commander had not known them, but it was well within the bounds of
possibility that the insidious Kandron would. He did. He was now
practically certain that his ablest and bitterest enemy had been
destroyed at last, but there were still a few lingering shreds of doubt.

"Let me look over your work," Kandron directed.

"Yes, Your Supremacy." Nadreck the Thorough was ready for even that
extreme test. Through the eyes of the ultimately enslaved monstrosity
Kandron checked and rechecked Nadreck's pictures, Nadreck's charts and
diagrams, Nadreck's more than four hundred pages of mathematical,
physical, and chemical notes and determinations; all without finding a
single flaw.

In the end Kandron was ready to believe that Nadreck had in fact ceased
to exist. However, he himself had not done the work. There was no
corpse. If he himself had killed the Palainian, if he himself had
actually felt the Lensman's life depart in the grasp of his own
tentacles; then, and only then, would he have _known_ that Nadreck was
dead. As it was, even though the work had been done in exact accordance
with his own instructions, there remained an infinitesimal uncertainty.
Wherefore:

"Shift your field of operations to cover X-174, Y-240, Z-16. Do not
relax your vigilance in the slightest because of what has happened." He
considered briefly the idea of allowing the underling to call him, in
case anything happened, but decided against it "Are the men standing
up?"

"Yes, Your Supremacy, they are in very good shape indeed."

And so on. "Yes, Your Supremacy, the psychologist is doing a very fine
job. Yes, Your Supremacy... yes... yes... yes..."

Very shortly after the characteristically Kandronesque ending of that
interview, Nadreck had learned everything he needed to know. He knew
where Kandron was and what he was doing. He knew much of what Kandron
had done during the preceding twenty years; and, since he himself
figured prominently in many of those sequences, they constituted
invaluable checks upon the validity of his other reconstructions. He
knew the construction, the armament, and the various ingenious
mechanisms, including the locks, of Kandron's vessel; he knew more than
any other outsider had ever known of Kandron's private life. He knew
where Kandron was going next, and what he was going to do there. He knew
in broad what Kandron intended to do during the coming century.

Thus well informed, Nadreck set his speedster into a course toward the
planet of Civilization which was Kandron's next objective. He did not
hurry; it was no part of his plan to interfere in any way in the
horrible program of planet-wide madness and slaughter which Kandron had
in mind. It simply did not occur to him to try to save the planet as
well as to kill the Onlonian; Nadreck, being Nadreck, took without doubt
or question the safest and surest course.

Nadreck knew that Kandron would set his vessel into an orbit around the
planet, and that he would take a small boat--a flitter--for the one
personal visit necessary to establish his lines of communication and
control. Vessel and flitter would be alike indetectable, of course; but
Nadreck found the one easily enough and knew when the other left its
mother-ship. Then, using his lightest, stealthiest spy-rays, the
Palainian set about the exceedingly delicate business of boarding the
Boskonian craft.

That undertaking could be made a story in its own right, for Kandron did
not leave his ship unguarded. However, merely by thinking about his own
safety, Kandron had all unwittingly given away the keys to his
supposedly impregnable fortress. While Kandron was wondering whether or
not the Lensman was really dead, and especially after he had been
convinced that he most probably was, the Onlonian's thoughts had touched
fleetingly upon a multitude of closely-related subjects. Would it be
safe to abandon some of the more onerous precautions he had always
taken, and which had served him so well for so many years? And as he
thought of them, each one of his safeguards flashed at least partially
into view; and for Nadreck, any significant part was as good as the
whole. Kandron's protective devices, therefore, did not protect.
Projectors, designed to flame out against intruders, remained cold.
Ports opened; and as Nadreck touched sundry buttons various invisible
beams, whose breaking would have produced unpleasant results, ceased to
exist. In short, Nadreck knew all the answers. If he had not been coldly
certain that his information was complete, he would not have acted at
all.

After entry, his first care was to send out spotting devices which would
give warning in case Kandron should return unexpectedly soon. Then,
working in the service-spaces behind instrument-boards and panels, in
junction boxes, and in various other out-of-the-way places, he cut into
lead after lead, ran wire after wire, and installed item after item of
apparatus and equipment upon which he had been at work for weeks. He
finished his work undisturbed. He checked and rechecked the circuits,
making absolutely certain that every major one of the vessel's
controlling leads ran to or through at least one of the things he had
just installed. With painstaking nicety he obliterated every visible
sign of his visit. He departed as carefully as he had come; restoring to
full efficiency as he went each one of Kandron's burglar-alarms.

Kandron returned, entered his ship as usual, stored his flitter, and
extended a tentacular member toward the row of switches on his panel.

"Don't touch anything, Kandron," he was advised by a thought as cold and
as deadly as any one of his own; and upon the Onlonian equivalent of a
visiplate there appeared the one likeness which he least expected and
least desired to perceive.

"Nadreck of Palain VII--Star A Star--THE Lensman!" The Onlonian was
physically and emotionally incapable of gasping, but the idea is
appropriate. "You have, then, wired and mined this ship."

There was a subdued clicking of relays. The Bergenholm came up to speed,
the speedster spun about and darted away under a couple of kilodynes of
drive.

"I am Nadreck of Palain VII, yes. One of the group of Lensmen whose
collective activities you have ascribed to Star A Star and _the_
Lensman. Your ship is, as you have deduced, mined. The only reason you
did not die as you entered it is that I wish to be really certain, and
not merely statistically so, that it is Kandron of Onlo, not someone
else, who dies."

"That unutterable fool!" Kandron quivered in helpless rage. "Oh, that I
had taken the time and killed you myself!"

"If you had done your own work, the techniques I used here could not
have been employed, and you might have been in no danger at the present
moment," Nadreck admitted, equably enough. "My powers are small, my
intellect feeble, and what might have been has no present bearing. I am
inclined, however, to question the validity of your conclusions, due to
the known fact that you have been directing a campaign against me for
over twenty years without success; whereas I have succeeded against you
in less than half a year.... My analysis is now complete. You may now
touch any control you please. By the way, you do not deny that you are
Kandron of Onlo, do you?"

Neither of those monstrous beings mentioned or even thought of mercy. In
neither of their languages was there any word for or concept of such a
thing.

"That would be idle. You know my pattern as well as I know yours....
I cannot understand how you got through that..."

"It is not necessary that you should. Do you wish to close one of those
switches or shall I?"

Kandron had been thinking for minutes, studying every aspect of his
predicament. Knowing Nadreck, he knew just how desperate the situation
was. There was, however, one very small chance--just one. The way he had
come was clear. That was the _only_ clear way. Wherefore, to gain an
extra instant of tune, he reached out toward a switch; but even while he
was reaching he put every ounce of his tremendous strength into a leap
which hurled him across the room toward his flitter.

No luck. One of Nadreck's minor tentacles was already curled around a
switch, tensed and ready. Kandron was still in air when a relay snapped
shut and four canisters of duodec detonated as one. Duodecaplylatomate,
that frightful detonant whose violence is exceeded only by that of
nuclear disintegration!

There was an appalling flash of viciously white light, which expanded in
milliseconds into an enormous globe of incandescent gas. Cooling and
darkening as it expanded rapidly into the near-vacuum of interplanetary
space, the gases and vapors soon became invisible. Through and
throughout the entire volume of volatilization Nadreck drove analyzers
and detectors, until he knew positively that no particle of material
substance larger in diameter than five microns remained of either
Kandron or his space-ship. He then called the Gray Lensman.

"Kinnison? Nadreck of Palain VII calling, to report that my assignment
has been completed. I have destroyed Kandron of Onlo."

"Good! Fine business, ace! What kind of a picture did you get? He must
have known something about the higher echelons--or did he? Was he just
another dead end?"

"I did not go into that."

"Huh? Why not?" Kinnison demanded, exasperation in every line of his
thought.

"Because it was not included in the project," Nadreck explained,
patiently. "You already know that one must concentrate in order to work
efficiently. To secure the requisite minimum of information it was
necessary to steer his thoughts into one, and only one, set of channels.
There were some foreign side-bands, of course, and it may be that some
of them touched upon this new subject which you have now, too late,
introduced... no, there were no such."

"Damnation!" Kinnison exploded; then by main strength shut himself up.
"QX, ace; skip it. But listen, my spiny and murderous friend. Get
this--engrave it in big type right on the top-side inside of your thick
skull--what we want is INFORMATION, not mere liquidation. Next time you
get hold of such a big shot as Kandron must have been, don't kill him
until either: first, you get some leads as to who or what the real head
of the outfit is; or, second, you make sure that he doesn't know. Then
kill him all you want to, but FIND OUT WHAT HE KNOWS FIRST. Have I made
myself clear this time?"

"You have, and as coordinator your instructions should and will govern.
I point out, however, that the introduction of a multiplicity of
objectives into a problem not only destroys its unity, but also
increases markedly both the time necessary for, and the actual personal
danger involved in, its solution."

"So what?" Kinnison countered, as evenly as he could. "That way, we may
be able to get the answer some day. Your way, we never will. But the
thing's done--there's no use yapping and yowling about it now. Have you
any ideas as to what you should do next?"

"No. Whatever you wish, that I shall try to do."

"I'll check with the others." He did so, receiving no helpful ideas
until he consulted his wife.

"Hi, Kim, my dear!" came Clarrissa's buoyant thought; and, after a brief
but intense greeting: "Glad you called. Nothing definite enough yet to
report to you officially, but there are indications that Lyrane IX may
be an important..."

"Nine?" Kinnison interrupted. "Not Eight again?"

"Nine," she confirmed. "A new item. So I may be doing a flit over there
one of these days."

"Uh-uh," he denied. "Lyrane Nine would be none of your business. Stay
away from it."

"Says who?" she demanded. "We went into this once before, Kim, about you
telling me what I could and couldn't do."

"Yeah, and I came out second best." Kinnison grinned. "But now, as
coordinator, I make suggestions to even Second-Stage Lensmen, and they
follow them--or else. I therefore suggest officially that you stay away
from Lyrane IX on the grounds that since it is colder than a Palainian's
heart, it is definitely not your problem, but Nadreck's. And I'm adding
this--if you don't behave yourself I'll come over there and administer
appropriate physical suasion."

"Come on over--that'd be fun!" Clarrissa giggled, then sobered quickly.
"But seriously, you win, I guess--this time. You'll keep me informed?"

"I'll do that. Clear ether, Cris!" and he turned back to the Palainian.

"...so you see this is your problem. Go to it, little chum."

"I go, Kinnison."




CHAPTER 18

CAMILLA KINNISON, DETECTOR


For hours Camilla and Tregonsee wrestled separately and fruitlessly with
the problem of the elusive "X". Then, after she had studied the
Rigellian's mind in a fashion which he could neither detect nor employ,
Camilla broke the mental silence.

"Uncle Trig, my conclusions frighten me. Can you conceive of the
possibility that it was contact with _my_ mind, not yours, that made 'X'
run away?"

"That is the only tenable conclusion. I know the power of my own mind,
but I have never been able to guess at the capabilities of yours. I fear
that I, at least, underestimated our opponent."

"I know I did, and I was terribly wrong. I shouldn't have tried to fool
you, either, even a little bit. There are some things about me that I
just _can't_ show to most people, but you are different--you're _such_ a
wonderful person!"

"Thanks, Camilla, for your trust." Understandingly, he did not go on to
say that he would keep on being worthy of it. "I accept the fact that
you five, being children of two Second-Stage Lensmen, are basically
beyond my comprehension. There are indications that you do not as yet
thoroughly understand yourself. You have, however, decided upon a course
of action."

"Oh--I'm _so_ relieved! Yes, I have. But before we go into that, I
haven't been able to solve the problem of 'X'. More, I have proved that
I cannot solve it without more data. Therefore, you can't either.
Check?"

"I had not reached that conclusion, but I accept your statement as
truth."

"One of those uncommon powers of mine, to which you referred a while
ago, is a wide range of perception, from large masses down to extremely
tiny components. Another, or perhaps a part of the same one, is that,
after resolving and analyzing these fine details, I can build up a
logical and coherent whole by processes of interpolation and
extrapolation."

"I can believe that such things would be possible to such a mind as
yours must be. Go on."

"Well, that is how I know that I underestimated Mr. 'X'. Whoever or
whatever he is, I am completely unable to resolve the structure of his
thought. I gave you all I got of it. Look at it again, please--hard.
What can you make of it now?"

"It is exactly the same as it was before; a fragment of a simple and
plain introductory thought to an audience. That is all."

"That's all I can see, too, and that's what surprises me so." The
hitherto imperturbable and serene Camilla got up and began to pace the
floor. "That thought is apparently absolutely solid; and since that is a
definitely impossible condition, the truth is that its structure is so
fine that I cannot resolve it into its component units. This shows that
I am not nearly as competent as I thought I was. When you and dad and
the others reached that point, you each went to Arisia. I've decided to
do the same thing."

"That decision seems eminently sound."

"Thanks, Uncle Trig--that was what I hoped you'd say. I've never been
there, you know, and the idea scared me a little. Clear ether!"

There is no need to go into detail as to Camilla's bout with Mentor. Her
mind, like Karen's, had had to mature of itself before any treatment
could be really effective; but, once mature, she took as much in one
session as Kathryn had taken in all her many. She had not suggested that
the Rigellian accompany her to Arisia; they both knew that he had
already received all he could take. Upon her return she greeted him
casually as though she had been gone only a matter of hours.

"What Mentor did to me, Uncle Trig, shouldn't have been done to a
Delgonian catlat. It doesn't show too much, though, I hope--does it?"

"Not at all." He scanned her narrowly, both physically and mentally. "I
can perceive no change in gross. In fine, however, you have changed. You
have developed."

"Yes, more than I would have believed possible. I can't do much with my
present very poor transcription of that thought, since the all-important
fine detail is missing. We'll have to intercept another one. I'll get it
_all_, this time."

"But you did something with this one, I am sure. There must have been
some developable features--a sort of latent-image effect?"

"A little. Practically infinitesimal compared to what was really there.
Physically, his classification to four places is TUUV; quite a bit like
the Nevians, you notice. His home planet is big, and practically covered
with liquid. No real cities, just groups of half-submerged, temporary
structures. Mentality very high, but we knew that already. Normally, he
thinks upon a very short wave, so short that he was then working at the
very bottom of his range. His sun is a fairly hot main-sequence star, of
spectral class somewhere around F, and it's probably more or less
variable, because there was quite a distinct implication of change. But
that's normal enough, isn't it?"

Within the limits imposed by the amount and kind of data available,
Camilla's observations and analyses had been perfect, her reconstruction
flawless. She did not then have any idea, however, that "X" was in fact
a spring-form Plooran. More, she did not even know that such a planet as
Ploor existed, except for Mentor's one mention of it.

"Of course. Peoples of planets of variable suns think that such suns are
the only kind fit to have planets. You cannot reconstruct the nature of
the change?"

"No. Worse, I can't find even a hint of where his planet is in
space--but then, I probably couldn't, anyway, even with a whole, fresh
thought to study."

"Probably not. 'Rigel Four' would be an utterly meaningless thought to
anyone ignorant of Rigel; and, except when making a conscious effort, as
in directing strangers, I never think of its location in terms of
galactic coordinates. I suppose that the location of a home planet is
always taken for granted. That would seem to leave us just about where
we were before in our search for 'X', except for your implied ability to
intercept another of his thoughts, almost at will. Explain, please."

"Not _my_ ability--ours." Camilla smiled, confidently. "I couldn't do it
alone, neither could you, but between us it won't be too difficult. You,
with your utterly calm, utterly unshakable certainty, can drive a
thought to any corner of the universe. You can fix and hold it steady on
any indicated atom. I can't do that, or anything like it, but with my
present ability to detect and to analyze I'm not afraid of missing 'X'
if we can come within parsecs of him. So my idea is a sort of piggy-back
hunting trip; you to take me for a ride, mentally, very much as Worsel
takes Con, physically. That would work, don't you think?"

"Perfectly, I am sure." The stolid Rigellian was immensely pleased.
"Link your mind with mine, then, and we will set out. If you have no
better plan of action mapped out, I would suggest starting at the point
where we lost him and working outward, covering an expanding sphere."

"You know best. I'll stick to you wherever you go."

Tregonsee launched his thought; a thought which, at a velocity not to be
measured even in multiples of that of light, generated the surface of a
continuously enlarging sphere of space. And with that thought, a very
part of it, sped Camilla's incomprehensibly delicate, instantaneously
reactive detector web. The Rigellian, with his unhuman perseverance,
would have surveyed total space had it been necessary; and the now adult
Camilla would have stayed with him. However, the patient pair did not
have to comb all of space. In a matter of hours the girl's almost
infinitely tenuous detector touched, with infinitesimal power and for an
inappreciable instant of time, the exact thought-structure to which it
had been so carefully attuned.

"Halt!" she flashed, and Tregonsee's mighty super-dreadnaught shot away
along the indicated line at maximum blast.

"You are not now thinking at him, of course, but how sure are you that
he did not feel your detector?" Tregonsee asked.

"Positive," the girl replied. "I couldn't even feel it myself until
after a million-fold amplification. It was just a web, you know, not
nearly solid enough for an analyzer or a recorder. I didn't touch his
mind at all. However, when we get close enough to work efficiently,
which will be in about five days, we will have to touch him. Assuming
that he is as sensitive as we are, he will feel us; hence we will have
to work fast and according to some definite plan. What are your ideas as
to technique?"

"I may offer a suggestion or two, later, but I resign leadership to you.
You already have made plans, have you not?"

"Only a framework; we'll have to work out the details together. Since we
agree that it was my mind that he did not like, you will have to make
the first contact."

"Of course. But since the action of thought is so nearly instantaneous,
are you sure that you will be able to protect yourself in case he
overcomes me at that first contact?" If the Rigellian gave any thought
at all to his own fate in such a case, no trace of it was evident.

"My screens are good. I am fairly certain that I could protect both of
us, but it might slow me down a trifle; and even an instant's delay
might keep me from getting the information we want. It would be better,
I think, to call Kit in. Or, better yet, Kay. She can stop a
super-atomic bomb. With Kay covering us, we will both be free to work."

Again they went into a union of minds; considering, weighing, analyzing,
rejecting, and--a few times--accepting. And finally, well within the
five-day time limit, they had drawn up a completely detailed plan of
action.

How uselessly that time was spent! For that action, instead of
progressing according to their carefully worked-out plan, was ended
almost in the instant of its beginning.

According to plan, Tregonsee tuned his mind to "X's" pattern as soon as
they had come within working range. He reached out as delicately as he
could, and his best was very fine work indeed. He might just as well
have struck with all his power, for at first touch of the fringe,
extremely light and entirely innocuous though it was, the stranger's
barriers flared into being and there came back instantly a mental bolt
of such vicious intensity that it would have gone through Tregonsee's
hardest-held block as though no barrier had been there. But that bolt
did not strike Tregonsee's shield. Instead, it struck Karen Kinnison's,
which has already been described.

It did not exactly bounce, nor did it cling, nor did it linger, even for
a microsecond, to do battle as expected. It simply vanished; as though
that minute interval of time had been sufficient for the enemy to have
recovered from the shock of encountering a completely unexpected
resistance, to have analyzed the texture of the shield, to have deduced
from that analysis the full capabilities of its owner and operator, to
have decided that he did not care to have any dealings with the entity
so deduced, and finally, as he no doubt supposed, to have begun to
retreat in good order.

His retreat, however, was not in good order. He did not escape, this
time. This time, as she had declared that she would be, Camilla was
ready for anything--literally anything. Everything she had--and she had
plenty--was on the trips; tense, taut, and poised. Knowing that Karen,
the Ultimate of Defense, was on guard, she was wholly free to hurl her
every force on the instant. Scarcely had the leading element of her
probe touched the stranger's screens, however, when those screens, "X"
himself, his vessel and any others that might have been accompanying it,
and everything tangible in nearby space, all disappeared at once in the
inconceivably violent, the ultimately cataclysmic detonation of a
super-atomic bomb.

It may not, perhaps, be generally known that the "completely liberating"
or "super-atomic" bomb liberates one hundred percent of the component
energy of its total mass in approximately sixty nine hundredths of one
microsecond. Its violence and destructiveness thus differ, both in
degree and in kind, from those of the earlier type, which liberated only
the energy of nuclear fission, very much as the radiation of S-Doradus
differs from that of Earth's moon. Its mass attains, and holds for an
appreciable length of time, a temperature to be measured only in
millions of Centigrade degrees; which fact accounts in large part for
its utterly incredible vehemence.

Nothing inert in its entire sphere of primary action can even begin to
move out of the way before being reduced to its subatomic constituents
and thus contributing in some measure to the cataclysm. Nothing is or
becomes visible until the secondary stage begins; until the frightful
globe has expanded to a diameter of thousands of yards and by this
expansion has cooled down to a point at which some of its radiation lies
in the visible violet. And as for lethal radiation--there are radiations
and they are lethal.

The conflict with "X" had occupied approximately two milliseconds of
actual time. The expansion had been progressing for a second or two when
Karen lowered her shield.

"Well, that finished that," she commented. "I'd better get back on the
job. Did you find out what you want to know, Cam, or not?"

"I got a little in the moment before the explosion. Not much." Camilla
was deep in study. "It's going to be quite a job of reconstruction. One
thing of interest to you, though, is that this 'X' had quit sabotage
temporarily and was on his way to Lyrane IX, where he had some
important..."

"Nine?" Karen asked sharply. "Not Eight? I've been watching Eight, you
know--I haven't even thought of Nine."

"Nine, definitely. The thought was clear. You might give it a scan once
in a while. How is mother doing?"

"She's doing a grand job, and that Helen is quite an operator, too. I'm
not doing much--just a touch here and there--I'll see what I can see on
Nine. I'm not the scanner or detector you are, though, you know--maybe
you'd better come over here too. Suppose?"

"I think so--don't you, Uncle Trig?" Tregonsee did. "We can do some
exploring as we come, but since I have no definite patterns for web
work, we may not be able to do much until we get close. Clear ether,
Kay!"

"The fine structure is there, and I can resolve it and analyze it,"
Camilla informed Tregonsee, after a few hours of intense concentration.
"There are quite a few clear extraneous sequences, instead of the
blurred latent images we had before, but there's still no indication of
the location of his home planet. I can see his physical classification
to ten places instead of four, more detail as to the sun's variation,
the seasons, their habits, and so on. Things that seem mostly to be of
very little importance, as far as we're concerned. I learned one fact,
though, that is new and important. According to my reconstruction, his
business on Lyrane IX was the induction of Boskonian Lensmen--_Black_
Lensmen, Tregonsee, just as father suspected!"

"In that case, he must have been the Boskonian counterpart of an
Arisian, and hence one of the highest echelon. I am very glad indeed
that you and Karen relieved me of the necessity of trying to handle him
myself... your father will be very glad to know that we have at last
and in fact reached the top..."

Camilla was paying attention to the Rigellian's cogitations with only a
fraction of her mind; most of it being engaged in a private conversation
with her brother.

"...so you see, Kit, he was under a sub-conscious compulsion. He
_had_ to destroy himself, his ship, and everything in it, in the very
instant of attack by any mind definitely superior to his own. Therefore
he couldn't have been an Eddorian, possibly, but merely another
intermediate, and I haven't been of much help."

"Sure you have, Cam! You got a lot of information, and some mighty good
leads to Lyrane IX and what goes on there. I'm on my way to Eddore now;
and by working down from there and up from Lyrane IX we can't go wrong.
Clear ether, sis!"




CHAPTER 19

THE HELL-HOLE IN SPACE


Constance Kinnison did not waste much time in idle recriminations, even
at herself. Realizing at last that she was still not fully competent,
and being able to define exactly what she lacked, she went to Arisia for
final treatment. She took that treatment and emerged from it, as her
brother and sisters had emerged, a completely integrated personality.

She had something of everything the others had, of course, as did they
all; but her dominants, the characteristics which had operated to make
Worsel her favorite Second-Stage Lensman, were much like those of the
Velantian. Her mind, like his, was quick and facile, yet of
extraordinary power and range. She did not have much of her father's
flat, driving urge or of his indomitable will to do; she was the least
able of all the Five to exert long-sustained extreme effort. Her top,
however, was vastly higher than theirs. Her armament was almost entirely
offensive: she was far and away the deadliest fighter of them all. She
only of them all had more than a trace of pure killer instinct; and when
roused to full fighting pitch her mental bolts were weapons of as
starkly incomprehensible an effectiveness as the sphere of primary
action of a super-atomic bomb.

As soon as Constance had left the _Velan_, remarking that she was going
to Arisia to take her medicine, Worsel called a staff meeting to discuss
in detail the matter of the "Hell-Hole in Space".

That conference was neither long nor heated; it was unanimously agreed
that the phenomenon was--_must_ be--simply another undiscovered cavern
of Overlords.

In view of the fact that Worsel and his crew had been hunting down and
killing Overlords for more than twenty years, the only logical course of
action was for them to deal similarly with one more, perhaps the only
remaining large group of their hereditary foes. Nor did any doubt of
their ability to do so enter any one of the Velantian's minds.

How wrong they were!

They did not have to search for the "Hell-Hole." Long since, to stop its
dreadful toll, a spherical cordon of robot guard-ships had been posted
to warn all traffic away from the outer fringes of its influence. Since
they merely warned against, but could not physically prohibit, entry
into the dangerous space, Worsel did not pay any attention to the
guard-ships or to their signals as the _Velan_ went through the warning
web. His plans were, he thought, well laid. His ship was free. Its
speed, by Velantian standards, was very low. Each member of his crew
wore a full-coverage thought-screen; a similar and vastly more powerful
screen would surround the whole vessel if one of Worsel's minor members
were either to tighten or to relax its grip upon a spring-mounted
control. Worsel was, he thought, ready for anything.

But the "Hell-Hole in Space" was not a cavern of Overlords. No sun, no
planet, nothing material existed within that spherical volume of space.
But _something_ was there. Slow as was the _Velan's_ pace, it was still
too fast by far; for in a matter of seconds, through the supposedly
impervious thought-screens, there came an attack of utterly malignant
ferocity; an assault which tore at Worsel's mind in a fashion he had
never imagined possible; a poignant, rending, unbearably crescendo force
whose violence seemed to double with every mile of distance.

The _Velan's_ all-encompassing screen snapped on--uselessly. Its
tremendous power was as unopposed as were the lesser powers of the
personal shields; that highly inimical thought was coming past, not
through, the barriers. An Arisian, or one of the Children of the Lens,
would have been able to perceive and to block that band; no one of
lesser mental stature could.

Strong and fast as Worsel was, mentally and physically, he acted just
barely in time. All his resistance and all his strength had to be called
into play to maintain his mind's control over his body; to enable him to
spin his ship end for end and to kick her drive up to maximum blast. To
his surprise, his agony decreased with distance as rapidly as it had
built up; disappearing entirely as the _Velan_ reached the web she had
crossed such a short time before.

Groggy, sick, and shaken, hanging slackly from his bars, the Velantian
Lensman was roused to action by the mental and physical frenzy of his
crew. Ten of them had died in the Hell-Hole; six more were torn to bits
before their commander could muster enough force to stop their insane
rioting. Then Master Therapist Worsel went to work; and one by one he
brought the survivors back. They remembered; but he made those memories
bearable.

He then called Kinnison. "...but there didn't seem to be anything
personal about it, as one would expect from an Overlord," he concluded
his brief report. "It did not concentrate on us, reach for us, or follow
us as we left. Its intensity seemed to vary only with distance--perhaps
inversely as distance squared; it might very well have been radiated
from a center. While it is nothing like anything I ever felt before, I
still think it must be an Overlord--maybe a sort of second-stage
Overlord, just as you and I are Second-Stage Lensmen. He's too strong
for me now, just as they used to be too strong for us before we met you.
By the same reasoning, however, I'm pretty sure that if you can come
over here, you and I together could figure out a way of taking him. How
about it?"

"Mighty interesting, and I'd like to, but I'm right in the middle of a
job," Kinnison replied, and went on to explain rapidly what he, as
Bradlow Thyron, had done and what he still had to do. "As soon as I can
get away I'll come over. In the meantime, chum, keep away from there. Do
a flit--find something else to keep you amused until I can join you."

Worsel set out, and after a few days--or weeks? Idle time means
practically nothing to a Velantian--a sharply-Lensed thought drove in.

"Help! A Lensman calling help! Line this thought and come fast..."
The message ended as sharply as it had begun; in a flare of agony which,
Worsel knew, meant that that Lensman, whoever he was, had died.

Since the thought, although broadcast, had come in strong and clear,
Worsel knew that its sender had been close by. While the time had been
very short indeed, he had been able to get a line of sorts. Into that
line he whirled the _Velan's_ sharp prow and along it she hurtled at the
literally inconceivable pace of her maximum drive. As the Gray Lensman
had often remarked, the Velantian super-dreadnought had more legs than a
centipede, and now she was using them all. In minutes, then, the scene
of battle grew large upon her plates.

The Patrol ship, hopelessly outclassed, could last only minutes longer.
Her screens were down; her very wall-shield was dead. Red pock-marks
sprang into being along her sides as the Boskonian needle-beamers wiped
out her few remaining controls. Then, as the helplessly raging Worsel
looked on, his brain seething with unutterable Velantian profanity, the
enemy prepared to board; a course of action which, Worsel could see, was
changed abruptly by the fact--and perhaps as well by the terrific
velocity--of his own unswerving approach. The conquered Patrol cruiser
disappeared in a blaze of detonating duodec; the conqueror devoted his
every jet to the task of running away; strewing his path as he did so
with sundry items of solid and explosive destruction. Such things,
however, whether inert or free, were old and simple stuff to the
_Velan's_ war-wise crew. Their spotters and detectors were full out, as
was also a forefan of annihilating and disintegrating beams.

Thus none of the Boskonian's missiles touched the _Velan_, nor, with all
his speed, could he escape. Few indeed were the ships of space able to
step it, parsec for parsec, with Worsel's mighty craft, and this
luckless pirate vessel was not one of them. Up and up the _Velan_
rushed; second by second the intervening distance lessened. Tractors
shot out, locked on, and pulled briefly with all the force of their
stupendous generators.

Briefly, but long enough. As Worsel had anticipated, that savage yank
had, in the fraction of a second required for the Boskonian commander to
recognize and to cut the tractors, been enough to bring the two
inertialess warcraft almost screen to screen.

"Primaries! Blast!" Worsel hurled the thought even before his tractors
snapped. He was in no mood for a long-drawn-out engagement. He _might_
be able to win with his secondaries, his needles, his tremendously
powerful short-range stuff, and his other ordinary offensive weapons;
but he was taking no chances.

One! Two! Three! The three courses of Boskonian defensive screen
scarcely winked as each, locally overloaded, flared through the visible
into the black and went down.

Crash! The stubborn fabric of the wall-shield offered little more
resistance before it, too, went down, exposing the bare metal of the
Boskonian hull--and, as is well known, any conceivable material
substance simply vanishes at the touch of such fields of force as those.

Driving projectors carved away and main batteries silenced, Worsel's
needle-beamers proceeded systematically to riddle every control panel
and every lifeboat, to make of the immense space-rover a completely
helpless hulk.

"Hold!" An observer flashed the thought. "Number Eight slip is
empty--Number Eight lifeboat got away!"

"Damnation!" Worsel, at the head of his armed and armored storming
party, as furiously eager as they to come to grips with the enemy,
paused briefly. "Trace it--or can you?"

"I did. My tracers can hold it for fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty. No
longer than twenty."

Worsel thought intensely. Which had first call, ship or lifeboat? The
ship, he decided. Its resources were vastly greater; most of its
personnel were probably unharmed. Given any time at all, they might be
able to jury-rig a primary, and that would be bad--very bad. Besides,
there were more people here; and even if, as was distinctly possible,
the Boskonian captain had abandoned his vessel and his crew in an
attempt to save his own life, there was plenty of time.

"Hold that lifeboat," he instructed the observer. "Ten minutes is all we
need here."

And it was. The Boskonians--barrel-bodied, blocky-limbed monstrosities
resembling human beings about as much as they did the Velantians--wore
armor, possessed hand-weapons of power, and fought viciously. They had
even managed to rig a few semi-portable projectors, but none of these
was allowed a single blast. Spy-ray observers were alert, and
needle-beam operators; hence the fighting was all at hand to hand, with
hand-weapons only. For, while the Velantians to a man lusted to kill,
they had had it drilled into them for twenty years that the search for
information came first; the pleasure of killing, second.

Worsel himself went straight for the Boskonian officer in command. That
wight had a couple of guards with him, but they did not
matter--needle-ray men took care of them. He also had a pair of heavy
blasters, which he held steadily on the Velantian. Worsel paused
momentarily; then, finding his screens adequate, he slammed the
control-room door shut with a flick of his tail and launched himself,
straight and level at his foe, with an acceleration of ten gravities.
The Boskonian tried to dodge but could not. The frightful impact did not
kill him, but it hurt him, badly. Worsel, on the other hand, was
scarcely jarred. Hard, tough, and durable, Velantians are accustomed
from birth to knockings-about which would pulverize human bones.

Worsel batted the Boskonian's guns away with two terrific blows of an
armored paw, noting as he did so that violent contact with a steel wall
didn't do their interior mechanisms a bit of good. Then, after cutting
off both his enemy's screens and his own, he batted the Boskonian's
helmet; at first experimentally, then with all his power. Unfortunately,
however, it held. So did the thought-screen, and there were no external
controls. That armor, damn it, was good stuff!

Leaping to the ceiling, he blasted his whole mass straight down upon the
breastplate, striking it so hard this time that he hurt his head. Still
no use. He wedged himself between two heavy braces, flipped a loop of
tail around the Boskonian's feet, and heaved. The armored form flew
across the room, struck the heavy steel wall, bounced, and dropped. The
bulges of the armor were flattened by the force of the collision, the
wall was dented--but the thought-screen still held!

Worsel was running out of time, fast. He couldn't treat the thing very
much rougher without killing him, if he wasn't dead already. He couldn't
take him aboard; he _had_ to cut that screen here and now! He could see
how the armor was put together; but, armored as he was, he could not
take it apart. And, since the whole ship was empty of air, he could not
open his own.

Or could he? He could. He could breathe space long enough to do what had
to be done. He cut off his air, loosened a plate enough to release four
or five hands, and, paying no attention to his laboring lungs, set
furiously to work. He tore open the Boskonian's armor, snapped off his
thought-screen. The creature wasn't quite dead yet--good! He didn't know
a damn thing, though, nor did any member of his crew... but... a
ground-gripper--a big shot--had got away. Who, or what was he?

"Tell me!" Worsel demanded, with the full power of mind and Lens, even
while he was exploring with all his skill and speed. "TELL ME!"

But the Boskonian was dying fast. The ungentle treatment, and now the
lack of air, were taking toll. His patterns were disintegrating by the
second, faster and faster. Meaningless blurs, which, under Worsel's
vicious probing, condensed into something which seemed to be a Lens.

A Lensman? Impossible--starkly unthinkable! But jet back--hadn't Kim
intimated a while back that there might be such things as Black Lensmen?

But Worsel himself wasn't feeling so good. He was only half conscious.
Red, black, and purple spots were dancing in front of every one of his
eyes. He sealed his suit, turned on his air, gasped, and staggered. Two
of the nearest Velantians, both of whom had been en rapport with him
throughout, came running to his aid; arriving just as he recovered full
control.

"Back to the _Velan_, everybody!" he ordered. "No time for any more
fun--we've got to get that lifeboat!" Then, as soon as he had been
obeyed: "Bomb that hulk... Good! Flit!"

Overtaking the lifeboat did not take long. Spearing it with a tractor
and yanking it alongside required only seconds. For all his haste,
Worsel found in it only a something that looked as though it once might
have been a Delgonian Lensman. It had blown itself apart. Because of its
reptilian tenacity of life, however, it was not quite dead: its Lens
still showed an occasional flicker of light and its disintegrating mind
was not yet entirely devoid of patterns. Worsel studied that mind until
all trace of life had vanished. Then he called Kinnison.

"...so you see I guessed wrong. The Lens was too dim to read, but he
must have been a Black Lensman. The only readable thought in his mind
was an extremely fuzzy one of the planet Lyrane Nine. I hate to have
hashed the job up so; especially since I had one chance in two of
guessing right."

"Well, no use squawking now..." Kinnison paused in thought. "Besides,
he could have done it anyway, and would have. You haven't done too
badly, at that. You found a Black Lensman who isn't a Kalonian, and
you've got confirmation of Boskonian interest in Lyrane Nine. What more
do you want? Stick around fairly close to the Hell-Hole, Slim, and as
soon as I can make it, I'll join you there."




CHAPTER 20

KINNISON AND THE BLACK LENSMAN


"Boys, take her upstairs," Kinnison-Thyron ordered, and the tremendous
raider--actually the _Dauntless_ in disguise--floated serenely upward to
a station immediately astern of Mendonai's flagship. All three courses
of multi-ply defensive screen were out, as were full-coverage spy-ray
blocks and thought-screens.

As the fleet blasted in tight formation for Kalonia III, Boskonian
experts tested the _Dauntless'_ defenses thoroughly, and found them
bottle-tight. No intrusion was possible. The only open channel was to
Thyron's plate, which was so villainously fogged that nothing could be
seen except Thyron's face. Convinced at last of that fact, Mendonai sat
back and seethed quietly; his pervasive Kalonian blueness pointing up
his grim and vicious mood.

He had never, in all his life, been insulted so outrageously. Was there
anything--_anything_!--he could do about it? There was not. Thyron,
personally, he could not touch--yet--and the fact that the outlaw had so
brazenly and so nonchalantly placed his vessel in the exact center of
the Boskonian fleet made it pellucidly clear to any Boskonian mind that
he had nothing whatever to fear from that fleet.

Wherefore the Kalonian seethed, and his minions stepped ever more softly
and followed with ever-increasing punctilio the rigid Boskonian code.
For the grapevine carries news swiftly; by this time the whole fleet
knew that His Nibs had been taking a God-awful kicking around, and the
first guy who gave him an excuse to blow his stack would be lucky if he
only got skinned alive.

As the fleet spread out for inert maneuvering above the Kalonian
atmosphere, Kinnison turned again to the young Lensman.

"One last word, Frank. I'm sure everything's covered--a lot of smart
people worked on this problem. Nevertheless, something may happen, so
I'll send you the data as fast as I get it. Remember what I told you
before--if I get the dope we need, I'm expendable and it'll be your job
to get it back to Base. No heroics. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir." The young Lensman gulped. "I hope, though, that it
doesn't..."

"So do I," Kinnison grinned as he climbed into his highly special dureum
armor, "and the chances are a million to one that it won't. That's why
I'm going down there."

In their respective speedsters Kinnison and Mendonai made the long drop
to ground, and side by side they went into the office of Black Lensman
Melasnikov. That worthy, too, wore heavy armor; but he did not have a
mechanical thought-screen. With his terrific power of mind, he did not
need one. Thyron, of course, did; a fact of which Melasnikov became
instantly aware.

"Release your screen," he directed, bruskly.

"Not yet, pal--don't be so hasty," Thyron advised. "Some things about
this here hook-up don't exactly click. We got a little talking to do
before I open up."

"No talk, worm. Talk, especially your talk, is meaningless. From you I
want, and will have, the truth, and not talk. CUT THOSE SCREENS!"

                            *    *    *    *

And lovely Kathryn, in her speedster not too far away, straightened up
and sent out a call.

"Kit--Kay--Cam--Con... are you free?" They were, for the moment.
"Stand by, please, all of you. I'm pretty sure something is going to
happen. Dad can handle this Melasnikov easily enough, if none of the
higher-ups step in, but they probably will. Their Lensmen are probably
important enough to rate protection. Check?"

"Check."

"So, as soon as dad begins to get the best of the argument, the
protector will step in," Kathryn continued, "and whether I can handle
him alone or not depends on how high a higher-up they send in. So I'd
like to have you all stand by for a minute or two, just in case."

How different was Kathryn's attitude now than it had been in the
hyper-spatial tube! And how well for Civilization that it was!

"Hold it, kids, I've got a thought," Kit suggested. "We've never done
any teamwork since we learned how to handle heavy stuff, and we'll have
to get in some practice sometime. What say we link up on this?"

"Oh, yes!" "Let's do!" "Take over, Kit!" Three approvals came as one,
and:

"QX, Kit," came Kathryn's less enthusiastic concurrence, a moment later.
Naturally enough, she would rather do it alone if she could; but she had
to admit that her brother's plan was the better.

Kit laid out the matrix and the four girls came in. There was a brief
moment of snuggling and fitting; then each of the Five caught his breath
in awe. This was new--brand new. Each had thought himself complete and
full; each had supposed that much practice and at least some
give-and-take would be necessary before they could work efficiently as a
group. But this! This was the supposedly ultimately
unattainable--perfection itself! This was UNITY: full; round; complete.
No practice was or ever would be necessary. Not one micro-micro-second
of doubt or of uncertainty would or ever could exist. This was the UNIT,
a thing for which there are no words in any written or spoken language,
a thing theretofore undreamed-of save as a purely theoretical concept in
an unthinkably ancient, four-ply Arisian brain.

"U-m-n-g-n-k." Kit swallowed a lump as big as his fist. "This, kids, is
really..."

"Ah, children, you have done it." Mentor's thought rolled smoothly in.
"You now understand why I could not attempt to describe the Unit to any
one of you. This is the culminating moment of my life--of our lives, we
may now say. For the first time in more years than you can understand,
we are at last sure that our lives have not been lived in vain. But
attend--that for which you are waiting will soon be here."

"What is it?" "Who?" "Tell us how to..."

"We cannot." Four separate Arisians smiled as one; a wash of ineffable
blessing and benediction suffused the Five. "We who made the Unit
possible are almost completely ignorant of the details of its higher
functions. But that it will need no help from our lesser minds is
certain; it is the most powerful and the most nearly perfect creation
this universe has ever seen."

The Arisian vanished; and, even before Kimball Kinnison had released his
screen, a cryptic, utterly untraceable and all-pervasive foreign thought
came in.

To aid the Black Lensman? To study this disturbing new element? Or
merely to observe? Or what? The only certainty was that that thought was
coldly, clearly, and highly inimical to all Civilization.

Again everything happened at once. Karen's impenetrable block flared
into being--not instantly, but instantaneously. Constance assembled and
hurled, in the same lack of time, a mental bolt of whose size and power
she had never been capable. Camilla, the detector-scanner, synchronized
with the attacking thought and steered. And Kathryn and Kit, with all
the force, all the will, and all the drive of human heredity, got behind
it and pushed.

Nor was this, any of it, conscious individual effort. The children of
the Lens were not now five, but one. This was the Unit at work; doing
its first job. It is literally impossible to describe what happened; but
each of the Five knew that one would-be Protector, wherever he had been
in space or whenever in time, would never think again. Seconds passed.
The Unit held tense, awaiting the riposte. No riposte came.

"Fine work, kids!" Kit broke the linkage and each girl felt hard,
brotherly pats on her back. "That's all there is to this one, I
guess--must have been only one guard on duty. You're good eggs, and I
like you--_How_ we can operate now!"

"But it was too easy, Kit!" Kathryn protested. "Too easy by far for it
to have been an Eddorian. We aren't that good. Why, I could have handled
him alone... I think," she added hastily, as she realized that she,
although an essential part of the Unit, had as yet no real understanding
of what that Unit really was.

"You _hope_, you mean!" Constance jeered. "If that bolt was as big and
as hot as I'm afraid it was, anything it hit would have looked easy. Why
didn't you slow us down, Kit? You're supposed to be the Big Brain, you
know. As it was, we haven't the faintest idea of what happened. Who was
he, anyway?"

"Didn't have time," Kit grinned. "Everything got out of hand. All of us
were sort of inebriated by the exuberance of our own enthusiasm, I
guess. Now that we know what our speed is, though, we can slow down next
time--if we want to. As for your last question, Con, you're asking the
wrong guy. Was it Eddorian, Cam, or not?"

"What difference does it make?" Karen asked.

"On the practical side, none. For the completion of the picture, maybe a
lot. Come in, Cam."

"It was not an Eddorian," Camilla decided. "It was not of Arisian, or
even near-Arisian, grade. Sorry to say it, Kit, but it was another
member of that high-thinking race you've already got down on Page One of
your little black book."

"I thought it might be. The missing link between Kalonia and Eddore.
Credits to millos it's that dopey planet Ploor Mentor was yowling about.
Oh, DAMN!"

"Why the capital damn?" asked Constance, brightly. "Let's link up and
let the Unit find it and knock hell out of it. That'd be fun."

"Act your age, baby," Kit advised. "Ploor is taboo--you know that as
well as I do. Mentor told us all not to try to investigate it--that we'd
learn of it in time, so we probably will. I told him a while back I was
going to hunt it up myself, and he told me if I did he'd tie both my
legs around my neck in a lovers' knot, or words to that effect.
Sometimes I'd like to half-brain the old buzzard, but everything he has
said so far has dead-centered the beam. We'll just have to take it, and
try to like it."

                            *    *    *    *

Kinnison was eminently willing to cut his thought-screen, since he could
not work through it to do what had to be done here. Nor was he
over-confident. He knew that he could handle the Black Lensman--_any_
Black Lensman--but he also knew enough of mental phenomena in general
and of Lensmanship in particular to realize that Melasnikov might very
well have within call reserves about whom he, Kinnison, could know
nothing. He knew that he had lied outrageously to young Frank in regard
to the odds applicable to this enterprise; that instead of a million to
one, the actuality was one to one, or even less.

Nevertheless, he was well content. He had neither lied nor exaggerated
in saying that he himself was expendable. That was why Frank and the
_Dauntless_ were upstairs now. Getting the dope and getting it back to
Base were what mattered. Nothing else did.

He was coldly certain that he could get all the information that
Melasnikov had, once he had engaged the Kalonian Lensman mind to mind.
No Boskonian power or thing, he was convinced, could treat him rough
enough or kill him fast enough to keep him from doing that. And he could
and would shoot the stuff along to Frank as fast as he got it. And he
stood an even--almost even, anyway--chance of getting away afterward. If
he could, QX. If he couldn't... well, that would have to be QX, too.

Kinnison flipped his switch and there ensued a conflict of wills that
made the sub-ether boil. The Kalonian was one of the strongest, hardest,
and ablest individuals of his hellishly capable race; and the fact that
he believed implicitly in his own complete invulnerability operated to
double and to quadruple his naturally tremendous strength.

On the other hand, Kimball Kinnison was a Second-Stage Lensman of the
Galactic Patrol.

Back and back, then, inch by inch and foot by foot, the Black Lensman's
defensive zone was forced; back to and down into his own mind. And
there, appallingly enough, Kinnison found almost nothing of value.

No knowledge of the higher reaches of the Boskonian organization; no
hint that any real organization of Black Lensmen existed; only the
peculiarly disturbing fact that he had picked up his Lens on Lyrane IX.
And "picked up" was literal. He had not seen, nor heard, nor had any
dealings of any kind with anyone while he was there.

Since both armored figures stood motionless, no sign of the tremendous
actuality of their mental battle was evident. Thus the Boskonians were
not surprised to hear their Black Lensman speak.

"Very well, Thyron, you have passed this preliminary examination. I know
all that I now need to know. I will accompany you to your vessel, to
complete my investigation there. Lead the way."

Kinnison did so, and as the speedster came to rest inside the
_Dauntless_ the Black Lensman addressed Vice-Admiral Mendonai via plate.

"I am taking Bradlow Thyron and his ship to the spaceyards on Four,
where a really comprehensive study of it can be made. Return to and
complete your original assignment."

"I abase myself, Your Supremacy, but... but I... I _discovered_
that ship!" Mendonai protested.

"Granted," the Black Lensman sneered. "You will be given full credit in
my report for what you have done. The fact of discovery, however, does
not excuse your present conduct. Go--and consider yourself fortunate
that, because of that service, I forbear from disciplining you for your
intolerable insubordination."

"I abase myself, Your Supremacy. I go." He really did abase himself,
this time, and the fleet disappeared.

Then, the mighty _Dauntless_ safely away from Kalonia and on her course
to rendezvous with the _Velan_, Kinnison again went over his captive's
mind; line by line and almost cell by cell. It was still the same. It
was still Lyrane IX and it still didn't make any kind of sense. Since
Boskonians were certainly not supermen, and hence could not possibly
have developed their own Lenses, it followed that they must have
obtained them from the Boskonian counterpart of Arisia. Hence, Lyrane IX
must be IT--a conclusion which was certainly fallacious.
Ridiculous--preposterous--utterly untenable: Lyrane IX never had been,
was not, and never would be the home of any Boskonian super-race.
Nevertheless, it was a definite fact that Melasnikov had got his Lens
there. Also, if he had ever had any special training, such as any
Lensman must have had, he didn't have any memory of it. Nor did he carry
any scars of surgery. What a hash! How could _anybody_ make any sense
out of such a mess as that?

                            *    *    *    *

Ever-watchful Kathryn, eyes narrowed now in concentration, could have
told him, but she did not. Her visualization was beginning to clear up.
Lyrane was out. So was Ploor. The Lenses originated on Eddore; that was
certain. The fact that their training was subconscious weakened the
Black Lensman in precisely the characteristics requisite for ultimate
strength--although probably neither the Eddorians nor the Ploorans, with
their warped, Boskonian sense of values, realized it. The Black Lensmen
would never constitute a serious problem. QX.

                            *    *    *    *

Kinnison, having attended to the unpleasant but necessary job of
resolving Melasnikov into his component atoms, turned to his
Lensman-aide.

"Hold everything, Frank, until I get back. This won't take long."

Nor did it, although the outcome was not at all what the Gray Lensman
had expected.

Kinnison and Worsel, in an inert speedster, crossed the Hell-Hole's
barrier web at a speed of only miles per hour, and then slowed down. The
ship was backing in on her brakes, with everything set to hurl her
forward under full free drive should either Lensman flick a finger.
Kinnison could feel nothing, even though, being en rapport with Worsel,
he knew that his friend was soon suffering intensely.

"Let's flit," the Gray Lensman suggested, and threw on the drive. "I
probed my limit, and couldn't touch or feel a thing. Had enough, didn't
you?"

"More than enough--I couldn't have taken much more."

Each boarded his ship; and as the _Dauntless_ and the _Velan_ tore
through space toward far Lyrane, Kinnison paced his room, scowling in
black abstraction. Nor would a mind-reader have found his thoughts
either cogent or informative.

"Lyrane Nine... _Lyrane_ Nine... Lyrane _Nine_... _LYRANE NINE_...
and something I can't feel or sense or perceive that kills anybody
and everybody else... KLONO'S tungsten TEETH and CURVING CARBALLOY
CLAWS!!!"




CHAPTER 21

THE RED LENSMAN ON LYRANE


Helen's story was short and bitter. Human or near-human Boskonians came
to Lyrane II and spread insidious propaganda all over the planet.
Lyranian matriarchy should abandon its policy of isolationism.
Matriarchs were the highest type of life. Matriarchy was the most
perfect of all existing forms of government--why keep on confining it to
one small planet, when it should by rights be ruling the entire galaxy?
The way things were, there was only one Elder Person; all other
Lyranians, even though better qualified than the then incumbent, were
nothing... and so on. Whereas, if things were as they should be, each
individual Lyranian person could be and would be the Elder Person of a
planet at least, and perhaps of an entire solar system... and so on.
And the visitors, who, they insisted, were no more males than the
Lyranian persons were females, would teach them. They would be amazed at
how easily, under Boskonian guidance, this program could be put into
effect.

Helen fought the intruders with everything she had. She despised the
males of her own race; she detested those of all others. Believing hers
to be the only existing matriarchal race, especially since neither
Kinnison nor the Boskonians seemed to know of any other, she was sure
that any prolonged contact with other cultures would result, not in the
triumph of matriarchy, but in its fall. She not only voiced these
beliefs as she held them--violently--but also acted upon them in the
same fashion.

Because of the ingrained matriarchially conservative habit of Lyranian
thought, particularly among the older persons, Helen found it
comparatively easy to stamp out the visible manifestations; and, being
in no sense a sophisticate, she thought the whole matter settled.
Instead, she merely drove the movement underground, where it grew
tremendously. The young, of course, rebellious as always against the
hide-bound, mossbacked, and reactionary older generation, joined the
subterranean New Deal in droves. Nor was the older generation solid. In
fact, it was riddled by the defection of many thousands who could not
expect to attain any outstanding place in the world as it was and who
believed that the Boskonians' glittering forecasts would come true.

Disaffection spread, then, rapidly and unobserved; culminating in the
carefully-planned uprising which made Helen an ex-queen and put her
under restraint to await a farcical trial and death.

"I see." Clarrissa caught her lower lip between her teeth. "Very
unfunny.... You didn't mention or think of any of your persons as
ringleaders... peculiar that you couldn't catch them, with your
telepathy... no, natural enough, at that... but there's one I want
very much to get hold of. Don't know whether she was really a leader, or
not, but she was mixed up in some way with a Boskonian Lensman. I never
did know her name. She was the wom--the person who managed your airport
here when Kim and I were..."

"Cleonie? Why, I never thought... but it might have, at that...
yes, as I look back..."

"Yes, hindsight _is_ a lot more accurate than foresight," the Red
Lensman grinned. "I've noticed that myself, lots of times."

"It _did_! It _was_ a leader!" Helen declared, furiously. "I shall have
its life, too, the damned, jealous cat--the blood-sucking, back-biting
_louse_!"

"She's all of that, in more ways than you know," Clarrissa agreed,
grimly, and spread in the Lyranian's mind the story of Eddie the
derelict. "So you see that Cleonie has got to be our starting-point.
Have you any idea of where we can find her?"

"I haven't seen or heard anything of Cleonie lately." Helen paused in
thought. "If, though, as I am now almost certain, it was one of the
prime movers behind this brainless brat Ladora, it wouldn't dare leave
the planet for very long at a time. As to how to find it, I don't quite
know... Anybody would be apt to shoot me on sight... would you
dare fly this funny plane of yours down close to a few of our cities?"

"Certainly. I don't know of anything around here that my screens and
fields can't stop. Why?"

"Because I know of several places where Cleonie might be, and if I can
get fairly close to them, I can find it in spite of anything it can do
to hide itself from me. But I don't want to get you into too much
trouble, and I don't want to get killed myself, either, now that you
have rescued me--at least, until after I have killed Cleonie and
Ladora."

"QX. What are you waiting for? Which way, Helen?"

"Back to the city first, for several reasons. Cleonie probably is not
there, but we must make sure. Also, I want my guns..."

"Guns? No. DeLameters are better. I have several spares." In one
fleeting mental contact Clarrissa taught the Lyranian all there was to
know about DeLameters. And that feat impressed Helen even more than did
the nature and power of the weapon.

"What a mind!" she exclaimed. "You didn't have any such equipment as
that, the last time I saw you. Or were you--no, you weren't hiding it."

"You're right; I have developed considerably since then. But about
guns--what do you want of one?"

"To kill that nitwit Ladora on sight, and that snake Cleonie, too, as
soon as you get done with it."

"But why guns? Why not the mental force you always used?

"Except by surprise, I couldn't," Helen admitted, frankly. "All adult
persons are of practically equal mental strength. But speaking of
strength, I marvel that a craft as small as this should be able to ward
off the attack of one of those tremendous Boskonian ships of space..."

"But she _can't_! What made you think she could?"

"Your own statement--or were you thinking of purely Lyranian dangers,
not realizing that Ladora of course called Cleonie as soon as you showed
your teeth, and that Cleonie as surely called the Lensman or some other
Boskonian? And that they must have ships of war not too far away?"

"Heavens, no! It never occurred to me!"

Clarrissa thought briefly. It wouldn't do any good to call Kim. Both the
_Dauntless_ and the _Velan_ were coming as fast as they could, but it
would be a day or so yet before they arrived. Besides, he would tell her
to lay off, which was exactly what she was not going to do. She turned
her thought back to the matriarch.

"Two of our best ships are coming, and I hope they get here first. In
the meantime, we'll just have to work fast and keep our detectors full
out. Anyway, Cleonie won't know that I'm looking for her--I haven't even
mentioned her to anyone except you."

"No?" pessimistically. "Cleonie knows that _I_ am looking for it, and
since it knows by now that I am with you, it would think that both of us
were hunting it even if we weren't. But we are nearly close enough now;
I must concentrate. Fly around quite low over the city, please."

"QX. I'll tune in with you too. 'Two heads', you know." Clarrissa
learned Cleonie's pattern, tuned to it, and combed the city while Helen
was getting ready.

"She isn't here, unless she's behind one of those thought-screens," the
Red Lensman remarked. "Can you tell?"

"Thought-screens! The Boskonians had a few of them, but none of us ever
did. How can you find them? Where are they?"

"One there--two over there. They stick out like big black spots on a
white screen. Can't you see them? I supposed your scanners were the same
as mine, but apparently they aren't. Take a quick peek at them with the
spy--you work it like so. If they've got spy-ray blocks up, too, we'll
have to go down there and blast."

"Politicians only," Helen reported, after a moment's manipulation of the
suddenly familiar instrument. "They need killing, of course, on general
principles, but perhaps we shouldn't take time for that now. The next
place to look is a few degrees east of north of here."

Cleonie was not, however, in that city. Nor in the next, nor the next.
But the speedster's detector screens remained blank and the two allies,
so much alike physically, so different mentally, continued their hunt.
There was opposition, of course--all that the planet afforded--but
Clarrissa's second-stage mind took care of the few items of offense
which her speedster's defenses could not handle.

Finally two things happened almost at once. Clarrissa found Cleonie, and
Helen saw a dim and fuzzy white spot upon the lower left-hand corner of
the detector plate.

"Can't be ours," the Red Lensman decided instantly. "Almost exactly the
wrong direction. Boskonians. Ten minutes--twelve at most--before we have
to flit. Time enough--I hope--if we work fast."

She shot downward, going inert and matching intrinsics at a lack of
altitude which would have been suicidal for any ordinary pilot. She
rammed her beryllium-bronze torpedo through the first-floor wall of a
forbidding, almost windowless building--its many stories of massive
construction, she knew, would help no end against the heavy stuff so
sure to come. Then, while every hitherto-hidden offensive arm of the
Boskone-coached Lyranians converged, screaming through the air and
crashing and clanking along the city's streets, Clarrissa probed and
probed and probed. Cleonie had locked herself into a veritable dungeon
cell in the deepest sub-basement of the structure. She was wearing a
thought-screen, too, but she had been releasing it, for an instant at a
time, to see what was going on. One of those instants was enough--that
screen would never work again. She had been prepared to kill herself at
need; but her full-charged weapons emptied themselves futilely against a
massive lock and she threw her vial of poison across the corridor and
into an empty cell.

So far, so good; but how to get her out of there? Physical approach was
out of the question. There must be somebody around, somewhere, with
keys, or hack-saws, or sledge-hammers, or something. Ha--oxyacetylene
torches! Very much against their wills, two Lyranian mechanics trundled
a dolly along a corridor, into an elevator. The elevator went down four
levels; the artisans began to burn away a barrier of thick steel bars.

By this time the whole building was rocking to the detonation of high
explosive. Much more of that kind of stuff and she would be trapped by
the sheer mass of the rubble. She was handling six jackass-stubborn
people already and that Boskonian warship was coming fast; she did not
quite know whether she was going to get away with this or not.

But somehow, from the unplumbed and unplumbable depths which made her
what she so uniquely was, the Red Lensman drew more and ever more power.
Kinnison, who had once made heavy going of handling two-and-a-fraction
Lensmen, guessed, but never did learn from her, what his beloved wife
really did that day.

Even Helen, only a few feet away, could not understand what was
happening. Left parsecs behind long since, the Lyranian could not help
in any particular, but could only stand and wonder. She knew that this
queerly powerful Lens-bearing Earth-person--white-faced, sweating,
strung to the very snapping-point as she sat motionless at her
board--was exerting some terrible, some tremendous force. She knew that
the heaviest of the circling bombers sheered away and crashed. She knew
that certain mobile projectors, a few blocks away, did not come any
closer. She knew that Cleonie, against every iota of her mulish Lyranian
will, was coming toward the speedster. She knew that many persons, who
wished intensely to bar Cleonie's progress or to shoot her down, were
physically unable to act. She had no faint idea, however, of how such
work could possibly be done.

Cleonie came aboard and Clarrissa snapped out of her trance. The
speedster nudged and blasted its way out of the wrecked stronghold, then
tore a hole through protesting air into open space. Clarrissa shook her
head, wiped her face, studied a tiny dot in the corner of the plate
opposite the one now showing clearly the Boskonian warship, and set her
controls.

"We'll make it--I think," she announced. "Even though we're
indetectable, they of course know our line, and they're so much faster
that they'll be able to find us on their visuals before long. On the
other hand, they must be detecting our ships now, and my guess is that
they won't dare follow us long enough to do us any harm. Keep an eye on
things, Helen, while I find out what Cleonie really knows. And while I
think of it, what's your real name? It isn't polite to keep on calling
you by a name that you never even heard of until you met us."

"Helen," the Lyranian made surprising answer. "I liked it, so I adopted
it--officially."

"Oh... That's a compliment, really, to both Kim and me. Thanks."

The Red Lensman then turned her attention to her captive, and as mind
fitted itself precisely to mind her eyes began to gleam in gratified
delight. Cleonie was a real find; this seemingly unimportant Lyranian
knew a lot--an immense lot--about things that no adherent of the Patrol
had ever heard before. And she, Clarrissa Kinnison, would be the first
of all the Gray Lensmen to learn of them! Therefore, taking her time
now, she allowed every detail of the queer but fascinating
picture-story-history to imprint itself upon her mind.

                            *    *    *    *

And Karen and Camilla, together in Tregonsee's ship, glanced at each
other and exchanged flashing thoughts. Should they interfere? They
hadn't had to so far, but it began to look as though they might have to,
now--it would wreck their mother's mind, if she could understand. She
probably could not understand it, any more than Cleonie could--but even
if she could, she had so much more inherent stability, even than dad,
that she might be able to take it, at that. Nor would she ever leak,
even to dad--and he, bless his tremendous boots, was not the type to
pry. Maybe, though, just to be on the safe side, it would be better to
screen the stuff, and to edit it a little if necessary. The two girls
synchronized their minds all imperceptibly with their mother's and
Cleonie's, and "listened."

                            *    *    *    *

The time was in the unthinkably distant past; the location was
unthinkably remote in space. A huge planet circled slowly about a
cooling sun. Its atmosphere was not air; its liquid was not water. Both
were noxious; composed in large part of compounds known to man only in
his chemical laboratories.

Yet life was there; a race which was even then ancient. Not sexual, this
race. Not androgynous, nor hermaphroditic, but absolutely sexless.
Except for the many who died by physical or mental violence, its members
lived endlessly: after hundreds of thousands of years each being, having
reached his capacity to live and to learn, divided into two individuals;
each of which, although possessing in toto the parent's memories,
knowledges, skills, and powers, had also a renewed and increased
capacity.

And, since life was, there had been competition. Competition for power.
Knowledge was desirable only insofar as it contributed to power. Power
for the individual--the group--the city. Wars raged--_what_ wars!--and
internecine strifes which lasted while planets came into being, grew
old, and died. And finally, to the survivors, there came peace. Since
they could not kill each other, they combined their powers and hurled
them outward--together they would dominate and rule solar
systems--regions--the Galaxy itself--the entire macro-cosmic universe!

More and more they used their minds, to bring across gulfs of space and
to enslave other races, to labor under their direction. By nature and by
choice they were bound to their own planet; few indeed were the planets
upon which their race could possibly live. Thus, then, they lived and
ruled by proxy, through echelon after echelon of underlings, an
ever-increasing number of worlds.

Although they had long since learned that their asexuality was
practically unique, that sexual life dominated the universe, this
knowledge served only to stiffen their determination not only to rule
the universe, but also to change its way of life to conform with their
own. They were still seeking a better proxy race; the more nearly
asexual a race, the better. The Kalonians, whose women had only one
function in life--the production of men--approached that ideal.

Now these creatures had learned of the matriarchs of Lyrane. That they
were physically females meant nothing; to the Eddorians one sex was just
as good--or as bad--as any other. The Lyranians were strong; not tainted
by the weaknesses which seemed to characterize all races believing in
even near-equality of the sexes. Lyranian science had been trying for
centuries to do away with the necessity for males; in a few more
generations, with some help, that goal could be achieved and the perfect
proxy race would have been developed.

This story was not obtained in any such straightforward fashion as it is
presented here. It was dim, murky, confused. Cleonie never had
understood it. Clarrissa understood it somewhat better: that unnamed and
as yet unknown race was the highest of Boskone, and the place of the
Kalonians in the Boskonian scheme was at long last clear.

"I am giving you this story," the Kalonian Lensman told Cleonie coldly,
"not of my own free will but because I must. I hate you as much as you
hate me. What I would like to do to you, you may imagine. Nevertheless,
so that your race may have its chance, I am to take you on a trip and,
if possible, make a Lensman out of you. Come with me." And, urged by her
jealousy of Helen, her seething ambition, and probably, if the truth
were to be known, by an Eddorian mind, Cleonie went.

There is no need to dwell at length upon the horrors, the atrocities, of
that trip; of which the matter of Eddie the meteor-miner was only a very
minor episode. It will suffice to say that Cleonie was very good
Boskonian material; that she learned fast and passed all tests
successfully.

"That's all," the Black Lensman informed her then, "and I'm glad to see
the last of you. You'll get a message when to hop over to Nine and pick
up your Lens. Flit--and I hope the first Gray Lensman you meet rams his
Lens down your throat and turns you inside out."

"The same to you, brother, and soon," Cleonie sneered. "Or, better, when
my race supplants yours as Proxies of Power, I shall give myself the
pleasure of doing just that to you."

"Clarrissa! Clarrissa! Pay attention, please!" The Red Lensman came to
herself with a start--Helen had been thinking at her, with increasing
power, for seconds. The _Velan's_ image filled half the plate.

In minutes, then, Clarrissa and her party were in Kinnison's private
quarters in the _Dauntless_. There had been warm mental greetings;
physical demonstrations would come later. Worsel broke in.

"Excuse it, Kim, but seconds count. Better we split, don't you think?
You find out what the score around here is, from Clarrissa, and take
steps, and I'll chase that damn Boskonian. He's flitting--fast."

"QX, Slim," and the _Velan_ disappeared.

"You remember Helen, of course, Kim." Kinnison bent his head, flipping a
quick grin at his wife, who had spoken aloud. The Lyranian, trying to
unbend, half-offered her hand, but when he did not take it she withdrew
it as enthusiastically as she had twenty years before. "And this is
Cleonie, the... the wench I've been telling you about. You knew her
before."

"Yeah. She hasn't changed much, either--still as unbarbered a mess as
ever. If you've got what you want, Cris, we'd better..."

"Kimball Kinnison, I demand Cleonie's life!" came Helen's vibrant
thought. She had snatched one of Clarrissa's DeLameters and was swinging
it into line when she was caught and held as though in a vise.

"Sorry, Toots," the Gray Lensman's thought was more than a little grim.
"Nice little girls don't play so rough. 'Scuse me, Cris, for dipping
into your dish. Take over."

"Do you really mean that, Kim?"

"Yes. It's your meat--slice it as thick or as thin as you please."

"Even to letting her go?"

"Check. What else could you do? In a lifeboat--I'll even show the jade
how to run it."

"Oh... Kim..."

"Quartermaster! Kinnison. Please check Number Twelve lifeboat and break
it out. I am loaning it to Cleonie of Lyrane II."




CHAPTER 22

KIT INVADES EDDORE; AND--


Kit had decided long since that it was his job to scout the planet
Eddore. His alone. He had told several people that he was en route
there, and in a sense he had been, but he was not hurrying. Once he
started _that_ job, he would have to see it through with absolutely
undisturbed attention, and there had been altogether too many other
things popping up. Now, however, his visualization showed a couple of
weeks of free time, and that would be enough. He wasn't sure whether he
was grown-up enough yet to do a man's job of work or not, and Mentor
wouldn't tell him. This was the best way to find out. If so, QX. If not,
he would back off, wait and try again later.

The kids had wanted to go along, of course.

"Come on, Kit, don't be a pig!" Constance started what developed into
the last violent argument of their long lives. "Let's gang up on
it--think what a grand work-out that would be for the Unit!"

"Uh-uh, Con. Sorry, but it isn't in the cards, any more than it was the
last time we discussed it," he began, reasonably enough.

"We didn't agree to it then," Kay cut in, stormily, "and I for one am
not going to agree to it now. You don't have to do it today. In fact,
later on would be better. Anyway, Kit, I'm telling you right now that if
you go in, we all go, as individuals if not as the Unit."

"Act your age, Kay," he advised. "Get conscious. This is one of the two
places in the universe that can't be worked from a distance, and by the
time you could get here I'll have the job done. So what difference does
it make whether you agree or not? I'm going in now and I'm going in
alone. Pick _that_ one out of your pearly teeth!"

That stopped Karen, cold--they all knew that even she would not endanger
the enterprise by staging a useless demonstration against Eddore's
defensive screens--but there were other arguments. Later, he was to come
to see that his sisters had some right upon their side, but he could not
see it then. None of their ideas would hold air, he declared, and his
temper wore thinner and thinner.

"No, Cam--NO! You know as well as I do that we can't all be spared at
once, either now or at any time in the near-enough future. Kay's full
of pickles, and you all know it. Right now is the best time I'll ever
have...

"Seal it, Kat--you can't be that dumb! Taking the Unit in would blow
things wide open. There isn't a chance that I can get in, even alone,
without touching _something_ off. I, alone, won't be giving too much
away, but the Unit would be a flare-lit tip-off and all hell would be
out for noon. Or are you actually nit-witted enough to think, all Arisia
to the contrary, that we're ready for the grand show-down?...

"Hold it, all of you! Pipe down!" he snorted, finally. "Have I got to
bash in your skulls to make you understand that I can't coordinate an
attack against something without even the foggiest idea of what it is?
Use your brains, kids--_please_ use your brains!"

He finally won them over, even Karen; and while his speedster covered
the last leg of the flight he completed his analysis.

He had all the information he could get--in fact, all that was
available--and it was pitifully meager and confusingly contradictory in
detail. He knew the Arisians, each of them, personally; and had studied,
jointly and severally, the Arisian visualizations of the ultimate foe.
He knew the Lyranian impression of the Plooran version of the story of
Eddore... Ploor! Merely a name. A symbol which Mentor had always kept
rigorously apart from any Boskonian actuality... Ploor _must_ be the
missing link between Kalonia and Eddore... and he knew practically
everything about it except the two really important facts--whether or
not it really was that link, and where, within eleven thousand million
parsecs, it was in space!

He and his sisters had done their best. So had many librarians; who had
found, not at all to his surprise, that no scrap of information or
conjecture concerning Eddore or the Eddorians was to be found in any
library, however comprehensive or exclusive.

Thus he had guesses, hypotheses, theories, and visualizations galore;
but none of them agreed and not one of them was convincing. He had no
real facts whatever. Mentor had informed him, equably enough, that such
a state of affairs was inevitable because of the known power of the
Eddorian mind. That state, however, did not make Kit Kinnison any too
happy as he approached dread and dreaded Eddore. He was in altogether
too much of a dither as to what, actually, to expect.

As he neared the boundary of the star-cluster within which Eddore lay,
he cut his velocity to a crawl. An outer screen, he knew, surrounded the
whole cluster. How many intermediate protective layers existed, where
they were, or what they were like, nobody knew. That information was
only a small part of what he had to have.

His far-flung detector web, at practically zero power, touched the
barrier without giving alarm and stopped. His speedster stopped.
Everything stopped.

Christopher Kinnison, the matrix and the key element of the Unit, had
tools and equipment about which even Mentor of Arisia knew nothing in
detail; about which, it was hoped and believed, the Eddorians were
completely in ignorance. He reached deep into the storehouse-toolbox of
his mind, arranged his selections in order, and went to work.

He built up his detector web, one infinitesimal increment at a time,
until he could just perceive the structure of the barrier. He made no
attempt to analyze it, knowing that any fabric or structure solid enough
to perform such an operation would certainly touch off an alarm.
Analysis could come later, after he had found out whether the generator
of this outer screen was a machine or a living brain.

He felt his way along the barrier; slowly--carefully. He completely
outlined one section, studying the fashion in which the joints were made
and how it must be supported and operated. With the utmost nicety of
which he was capable he synchronized a probe with the almost impossibly
complex structure of the thing and slid it along a feederbeam into the
generator station. A mechanism--they didn't waste live Eddorians, then,
any more than the Arisians did, on outer defenses. QX.

A precisely-tuned blanket surrounded his speedster--a blanket which
merged imperceptibly into, and in effect became an integral part of, the
barrier itself. The blanket thinned over half of the speedster. The
speedster crept forward. The barrier--unchanged, unaffected--was
_behind_ the speedster. Man and vessel were through!

Kit breathed deeply in relief and rested. This didn't prove much, of
course. Nadreck had done practically the same thing in getting
Kandron--except that the Palainian would never be able to analyze or to
synthesize such screens as these. The real test would come later; but
this had been mighty good practice.

The real test came with the fifth, the innermost screen. The others,
while of ever-increasing sensitivity, complexity, and power, were all
generated mechanically, and hence posed problems differing only in
degree, and not in kind, from that of the first. The fifth problem,
however, involving a living and highly capable brain, differed in both
degree and kind from the others. The Eddorian would be sensitive to form
and to shape, as well as to interference. Bulges were out, unless he
could do something about the Eddorian--and the speedster couldn't go
through a screen without making a bulge.

Furthermore, this zone had visual and electromagnetic detectors, so
spaced as not to let a microbe through. There were fortresses, maulers,
battleships, and their attendant lesser craft. There were projectors,
and mines, and automatic torpedoes with super-atomic warheads, and other
such things. Were these things completely dependent upon the Eddorian
guardian, or not?

They were not. The officers--Kalonians for the most part--would go into
action at the guardian's signal, of course; but they could at need act
without instructions. A nice set-up--a mighty hard nut to crack! He
would have to use zones of compulsion. Nothing else would do.

Picking out the biggest fortress in the neighborhood, with its
correspondingly large field of coverage, he insinuated his mind into
that of one observing officer after another. When he left, a few minutes
later, he knew that none of those officers would initiate any action in
response to the alarms which he would so soon set off. They were alive,
fully conscious, alert; and would have resented bitterly any suggestion
that they were not completely normal in every respect. Nevertheless,
whatever colors the lights flashed, whatever pictures the plates
revealed, whatever noises blared from the speakers, in their
consciousnesses would be only blankness and silence. Nor would
recorder-tapes reveal later what had occurred. An instrument cannot
register fluctuations when its movable member is controlled by a couple
of steady fingers.

Then the Eddorian. To take over his whole mind was, Kit knew, beyond his
present power. A partial zone, though, could be set up--and young
Kinnison's mind had been developed specifically to perform the
theretofore impossible. Thus the guardian, without suspecting it,
suffered an attack of partial blindness which lasted for the fraction of
a second necessary for the speedster to flash through the screen. And
there was no recorder to worry about. Eddorians, never sleeping and
never relaxing their vigilance, had no doubt whatever of their own
capabilities and needed no checks upon their own performances.

Christopher Kinnison, Child of the Lens, was inside Eddore's innermost
defensive sphere. For countless cycles of time the Arisians had been
working toward and looking forward to the chain of events of which this
was the first link. Nor would he have much time here: he would have
known that even if Mentor had not so stressed the point. As long as he
did nothing he was safe; but as soon as he started sniffing around he
would be open to detection and some Eddorian would climb his frame in
mighty short order. Then blast and lock on--he might get something, or a
lot, or nothing at all. Then--win, lose, or draw--he had to get away.
Strictly under his own power, against an unknown number of the most
powerful and the most ruthless entities ever to live. The Arisian
couldn't get in here to help him, and neither could the kids. Nobody
could. It was strictly and solely up to him.

For more than a moment his spirit failed. The odds against him were far
too long. The load was too heavy; he didn't have half enough jets to
swing it. Just how did a guy as smart as Mentor figure it that he, a
dumb, green kid, stood a Zabriskan fontema's chance against all Eddore?

He was scared; scared to the core of his being; scared as he never had
been before and never would be again. His mouth felt dry, his tongue
cottony. His fingers shook, even as he doubled them into fists to steady
them. To the very end of his long life he remembered the fabric and the
texture of that fear; remembered how it made him decide to turn back,
before it was too late to retrace his way as unobserved as he had come.

Well, why not? Who would care, and what matter? The Arisians? Nuts! It
was all their fault, sending him in half-ready. His parents? They
wouldn't know what the score was, and wouldn't care. They'd be on his
side, no matter what happened. The kids?... The _kids_!...
Oh-oh--THE KIDS!

They'd tried to talk him out of coming in alone. They'd fought like
wildcats to make him take them along. He'd smacked 'em down. Now, if he
sneaked back with his tail between his legs, how'd they take it? What'd
they do? What would they _think_? Then, later, after he had loused
everything up and let the Arisians and the Patrol and all Civilization
get knocked out--then what? The kids would know exactly how and why it
had happened. He couldn't defend himself, even if he tried, and he
wouldn't try. Did he have any idea how much sheer, vitriolic, corrosive
contempt those four red-headed sisters of his could generate? Or, even
if they didn't--or as a follow-up--their condescending, sisterly pity
would be a thousand million times worse. And what would he think of
himself? No soap. It was out. Definitely. The Eddorians could kill him
only once. QX.

He drove straight downward, noting as he did so that his senses were
clear, his hands steady, his tongue normally moist. He was still scared,
but he was no longer paralyzed.

Low enough, he let his every perceptive sense roam abroad--and became
instantly too busy to worry about anything. There was an immense amount
of new stuff here--if he could only be granted time enough to get it
all!

He wasn't. In a second or so, it seemed, his interference was detected
and an Eddorian came in to investigate. Kit threw everything he had, and
in the brief moment before the completely surprised denizen died, the
young Klovian learned more of the real truth of Eddore and of the whole
Boskonian Empire than all the Arisians had ever found out. In that one
flash of ultimately intimate fusion, he _knew_ Eddorian history,
practically in toto. He knew the enemies' culture; he knew how they
behaved, and why. He knew their ideals and their ideologies. He knew a
great deal about their organization; their systems of offense and of
defense. He knew their strengths and, more important, their weaknesses.
He knew exactly how, if Civilization were to triumph at all, its victory
must be achieved.

This seems--or rather, it is--incredible. It is, however, simple truth.
Under such stresses as those, an Eddorian mind can yield, and the mind
of such a one as Christopher Kinnison can absorb, an incredible amount
of knowledge in an incredibly brief interval of time.

Kit, already seated at his controls, cut in his every course of
thought-screen. They would help a little in what was coming, but not
much--no mechanical screen then known to Civilization could block
third-level thought. He kicked in full drive toward the one small area
in which he and his speedster would not encounter either beams or
bombs--the fortress whose observers would not perceive that anything was
amiss. He did not fear physical pursuit, since his speedster was the
fastest thing in space.

For a second or so it was not so bad. Another Eddorian came in,
suspicious and on guard. Kit blasted him down--learning still more in
the process--but he could not prevent him from radiating a frantic and
highly revealing call for help. And although the Eddorians could
scarcely realize that such an astonishing thing as physical invasion had
actually happened, that fact neither slowed them down nor made their
anger less violent.

When Kit flashed past his friendly fortress he was taking about all he
could handle, and more and more Eddorians were piling on. At the fourth
screen it was worse; at the third he reached what he was sure was his
absolute ceiling. Nevertheless, from some hitherto unsuspected
profundity of his being, he managed to draw enough reserve force to
endure that hellish punishment for a little while longer.

Hang on, Kit, hang on! Only two more screens to go. Maybe only one.
Maybe less. Living Eddorian brains, and not mechanical generators, are
now handling all the screens, of course; but if the Arisians'
visualization is worth a tinker's damn, they must have that first screen
knocked down by this time and must be working on the second. Hang on,
Kit, and keep on slugging!

And grimly; doggedly; toward the end sheerly desperately: Christopher
Kinnison, eldest Child of the Lens, hung on and slugged.




CHAPTER 23

--ESCAPES WITH HIS LIFE


If the historian has succeeded in his attempt to describe the characters
and abilities concerned, it is not necessary to enlarge upon what Kit
went through in escaping Eddore. If he has not succeeded, enlargement
would be useless. Therefore it is enough to say that the young Lensman,
by dint of calling up and putting out everything he had, hung on long
enough and slugged his way through.

Arisia had acted precisely on time. The Eddorian guardians had scarcely
taken over the first screen when it was overwhelmed by a tremendous wave
of Arisian thought. It is to be remembered, however, that this was not
the first time that the massed might of Arisia had been thrown against
Eddore's defenses, and the Eddorians had learned much, during the
intervening years, from their exhaustive analyses of the offensive and
defensive techniques of the Arisians. Thus the Arisian drive was
practically stopped at the second zone of defense as Kit approached it.
The screen was wavering, shifting; yielding stubbornly wherever it must
and springing back into place whenever it could.

Under a tremendous concentration of Arisian force the screen weakened in
a limited area directly ahead of the hurtling speedster. A few beams
lashed out aimlessly, uselessly--if the Eddorians could not hold their
main screens proof against the power of the Arisian attack, how could
they protect such minor things as gunners' minds? The little ship
flashed through the weakened barrier and into the center of a sphere of
impenetrable, impermeable Arisian thought.

At the shock of the sudden ending of his terrific battle--the
instantaneous transition from supreme to zero effort--Kit fainted in his
control chair. He lay slumped, inert, in a stupor which changed
gradually into a deep and natural sleep. And as the sleeping man in his
inertialess speedster traversed space at full touring blast, that
peculiar sphere of force still enveloped and still protected him.

Kit finally began to come to. His first foggy thought was that he was
hungry--then, wide awake and remembering, he grabbed his levers.

"Rest quietly, youth, and eat your fill," a grave, resonant pseudo-voice
assured him. "Everything is exactly as it should be."

"Hi, Ment... well, well, if it isn't my old chum Eukonidor! Hi, young
fellow! What's the good word? And what's the big idea of letting--or
making--me sleep for a week when there's work to do?"

"Your part of the work, at least for the immediate present, is done;
and, let me say, very well done."

"Thanks... but..." Kit broke off, flushing darkly.

"Do not reproach yourself, youth, nor us. Consider, please, and recite,
the manufacture of a fine tool of ultimate quality."

"The correct alloy. Hot working--perhaps cold, too.
Forging--heating--quenching--drawing..."

"Enough, youth. Think you that the steel, if sentient, would enjoy those
treatments? While you did not enjoy them, you are able to appreciate
their necessity. You are now a finished tool, forged and tempered."

"Oh... you may have something there, at that. But as to ultimate
quality, don't make me laugh." There was no nuance of merriment in Kit's
thought. "You can't square that with cowardice."

"Nor is there need. The term ultimate was used advisedly, and still
stands. It does not mean or imply, however, a state of perfection, since
that condition is unattainable. I am not advising you to try to forget;
nor am I attempting to force forgetfulness upon you, since your mind
cannot now be coerced by any force at my command. Be assured that
nothing that occurred should irk you; for the simple truth is, that
although stressed as no other mind has ever before been stressed, you
did not yield. Instead, you secured and retained information which we of
Arisia have never been able to obtain; information which will in fact be
the means of preserving your Civilization."

"I can't believe... that is, it doesn't seem..." Kit, knowing that
he was thinking muddily and foolishly, paused and pulled himself
together. Overwhelming, almost paralyzing as that information was, it
must be true. It _was_ true!

"Yes, youth, it is the truth. While we of Arisia have at various times
made ambiguous statements, to lead certain Lensmen and others to arrive
at erroneous conclusions, you know that we do not lie."

"Yes, I know that." Kit plumbed the Arisian's mind. "It sort of knocks
me out of my orbit--that's an awfully big bite to swallow at one gulp,
you know."

"It is. That is one reason I am here, to convince you of the truth,
which you would not otherwise believe fully. Also to see to it that your
rest, without which you might have taken hurt, was not disturbed; as
well as to make sure that you were not permanently damaged by the
Eddorians."

"I wasn't... at least, I don't think so... was I?"

"You were not."

"Good. I was wondering... Mentor will be tied up for a while, of
course, so I'll ask you.... They must have got a sort of pattern of
me, in spite of all I could do, and they'll be camping on my trail from
now on. So I suppose I'll have to keep a solid block up all the time?"

"They will not, Christopher, and you need not. Guided by those whom you
know as Mentor, I myself am to see to that. But time presses--I must
rejoin my fellows."

"One more question first. You've been trying to sell me a bill of goods
I'd certainly like to buy. But damn it, Eukonidor, the kids will know
that I showed a streak of yellow a meter wide. What will _they think_?"

"Is _that_ all?" Eukonidor's thought was almost a laugh. "They will make
that eminently plain in a moment."

The Arisian's presence vanished, as did his sphere of force, and four
clamoring thoughts came jamming in.

"Oh, Kit, we're _so_ glad!" "We _tried_ to help, but they wouldn't let
us!" "They smacked us down!" "_Honestly_, Kit!" "_Oh_, if we'd _only_
been in there, too!"

"Hold it, everybody! Jet back!" This was Con, Kit knew, but an entirely
new Con. "Scan him, Cam, as you never scanned anything before. If they
burned out even one cell of his mind I'm going to hunt Mentor up right
now and kick his cursed teeth out one by one!"

"And listen, Kit!" This was an equally strange Kathryn; blazing with
fury and yet suffusing his mind with a more than sisterly tenderness, a
surpassing richness. "If we'd had the faintest idea of what they were
doing to you, all the Arisians and all the Eddorians and all the devils
in all the hells of the macro-cosmic Universe couldn't have kept us
away. You _must_ believe that, Kit--or can you, quite?"

"Of course, sis--you don't have to prove an axiom. Seal it, all of you.
You're swell people--absolute tops. But I... you... that is..."
He broke off and marshaled his thoughts.

He knew that they knew, in every minute particular, everything that had
occurred. Yet to a girl they thought he was wonderful; their common
thought was that they should have been in there, too: taking what he
took; giving what he gave!

"What I don't get is that you're trying to blame yourselves for what
happened to me, when you were on the dead center of the beam all the
tune. You _couldn't_ have been in there, kids; it would have blown the
whole works higher than up. You knew that then, and you know it even
better now. You also know that I flew the yellow flag. Didn't that even
_register_?"

"Oh, _that_!" Practically identical thoughts of complete dismissal came
in unison, and Karen followed through:

"Since you knew exactly what to expect, we marvel that you ever managed
to go in at all--no one else could have, possibly. Or, once in, and
seeing what was really there, that you didn't flit right out again.
Believe me, brother of mine, you qualify!"

Kit choked. This was too much; but it made him feel good all over. These
kids... the universe's best...

As he thought, a partial block came unconsciously into being. For not
one of those gorgeous, those utterly splendid creatures suspected, even
now, that which he so surely knew--that each one of them was very
shortly to be wrought and tempered as he himself had been. And, worse,
he would have to stand aside and watch them, one by one, walk into it.
Was there anything he could do to ward off, or even to soften, what was
coming to them? There was not. With his present power, he could step in,
of course--at what awful cost to Civilization only he, Christopher
Kinnison, of all Civilization, really knew. No. That was out.
Definitely. He could come in afterward to ease their hurts, as each had
come to him, but that was all... and there was a difference. They
hadn't known about it in advance. It was tough...

Could he do _anything_?

He could not.

                            *    *    *    *

And on clammy, noisome Eddore, the Arisian attackers having been beaten
off and normality restored, a meeting of the Highest Command was held.
No two of those entities were alike in form; some were changing from one
horrible shape into another; all were starkly, indescribably monstrous.
All were concentrating upon the problem which had been so suddenly
thrust upon them; each of them thought at and with each of the others.
To do justice to the complexity or the cogency of the maze of
intertwined thoughts is impossible; the best that can be done is to pick
out a high point here and there.

"This explains the Star A Star whom the Ploorans and the Kalonians so
fear."

"And the failure of our operator on Thrale, and its fall."

"Also our recent quite serious reverses."

"Those stupid--those utterly brainless underlings!"

"We should have been called in at the start!"

"Could you analyze, or even perceive, its pattern save in small part?"

"No."

"Nor could I; an astounding and highly revealing circumstance."

"An Arisian; or, rather, an Arisian development, certainly. No other
entity of Civilization could possibly do what was done here. Nor could
any Arisian as we know them."

"They have developed something very recently which we had not
visualized..."

"Kinnison's son? Bah! Think they to deceive us by the old device of
energizing a form of ordinary flesh?"

"Kinnison--his son--Nadreck--Worsel--Tregonsee--what matters it?"

"Or, as we now know, the completely imaginary Star A Star."

"We must revise our thinking," an authoritatively composite mind
decided. "We must revise our theory and our plan. It may be possible
that this new development will necessitate immediate, instead of later,
action. If we had had a competent race of proxies, none of this would
have happened, as we would have been kept informed. To correct a
situation which may become grave, as well as to acquire fullest and
latest information, we must attend the conference which is now being
held on Ploor."

They did so. With no perceptible lapse of time or mode of transit, the
Eddorian mind was in an assembly room upon that now flooded world.
Resembling Nevians as much as any other race with which man is familiar,
the now amphibious Ploorans lolled upon padded benches and argued
heatedly. They were discussing, upon a lower level, much of the same
material which the Eddorians had been considering so shortly before.

Star A Star. Kinnison had been captured easily enough, but had, almost
immediately, escaped from an escape-proof trap. Another trap was set,
but would it take him? Would it hold him if it did? Kinnison was--_must_
be--Star A Star. No, he could not be, there had been too many unrelated
and simultaneous occurrences. Kinnison, Nadreck, Clarrissa, Worsel,
Tregonsee, even Kinnison's young son, had all shown intermittent flashes
of inexplicable power. Kinnison most of all. It was a fact worthy of
note that the beginning of the long series of Boskonian set-backs
coincided with Kinnison's appearance among the Lensmen.

The situation was bad. Not irreparable, by any means, but grave. The
fault lay with the Eich, and perhaps with Kandron of Onlo. Such
stupidity! Such incompetence! Those lower-echelon operators should have
had brains enough to have reported the matter to Ploor before the
situation got completely out of hand. But they didn't; hence this mess.
None of them, however, expressed a thought that the present situation
was already one with which they themselves could not cope; nor suggested
that it be referred to Eddore before it should become too hot for even
the Masters to handle.

"Fools! Imbeciles! We, the Masters, although through no foresight or
design of yours, are already here. Know now that you have been and still
are yourselves guilty of the same conduct which you are so violently
condemning in others." Neither Eddorians nor Ploorans realized that that
deficiency was inherent in the Boskonian Scheme of Things, or that it
stemmed from the organization's very top. "Sheer stupidity! Gross
overconfidence! Those are the reasons for our recent reverses!"

"But, Masters," a Plooran argued, "now that we have taken over, we are
winning steadily. Civilization is rapidly going to pieces. In a few more
years we will have smashed it flat."

"That is precisely what they wish you to think. They have been and are
playing for time. Your bungling and mismanagement have already given
them sufficient time to develop an object or an entity able to penetrate
our screens; so that Eddore suffered the disgrace of an actual physical
invasion. It was brief, to be sure, and unsuccessful, but it was an
invasion, none the less--the first in our long history."

"But, Masters..."

"Silence! We are not here to indulge in recriminations, but to determine
facts. Since you do not know Eddore's location in space, it is a
certainty that you did not, either wittingly or otherwise, furnish
that information. That in turn makes it clear who, basically, the
invader was..."

"Star A Star?" A wave of questions swept the group.

"One name serves as well as another for what is almost certainly an
Arisian entity or device. It is enough for you to know that it is
something with which your massed minds would be completely unable to
deal. To the best of your knowledge, have you been invaded, either
physically or mentally?"

"We have not, Masters; and it is unbelievable that..."

"Is it so?" The Masters sneered. "Neither our screens nor our Eddorian
guardsmen gave any alarm. We learned of the Arisian's presence only when
he attempted to probe our very minds, at Eddore's very surface. Are your
screens and minds, then, so much better than ours?"

"We erred, Masters. We abase ourselves. What do you wish us to do?"

"That is better. You will be informed, as soon as certain details have
been worked out. Although nothing is established by the fact that you
know of no occurrences here on Ploor, the probability is that you are
still unknown and unsuspected. Nevertheless, one of us is now taking
over control of the trap which you set for Kinnison, in the belief that
he is Star A Star."

"Belief, Masters? It is certain that he is Star A Star!"

"In essence, yes. In exactness, no. Kinnison is, in all probability,
merely a puppet through whom an Arisian works at times. If _you_ take
Kinnison in that trap, however, the entity you call Star A Star will
assuredly kill you all."

"But, Masters..."

"Again, fools, silence!" The thought dripped vitriol. "Remember how
easily Kinnison escaped from you? It was the supremely clever move of
not following through and destroying you then that obscured the truth.
You are completely powerless against the one you call Star A Star.
Against any lesser force, however--and the probability is great that
only such forces, if any, will be sent against you--you should be able
to win. Are you ready?"

"We are ready, Masters." At last the Ploorans were upon familiar ground.
"Since ordinary weapons will be useless against us, they will not
attempt to use them; especially since they have developed three
extraordinary and supposedly irresistible weapons of attack. First;
projectiles composed of negative matter, particularly those of planetary
anti-mass. Second; loose planets, driven inertialess, but incited at the
point at which their intrinsic velocities render collision unavoidable.
Third, and worst; the sunbeam. These gave us some trouble, particularly
the last, but the problems were solved and if any one of the three, or
all of them, are used against us, disaster for the Galactic Patrol is
assured.

"Nor did we stop there. Our psychologists, working with our engineers,
after having analyzed exhaustively the capabilities of the so-called
Second-Stage Lensmen, developed counter-measures against every
super-weapon which they will be able to develop during the next
century."

"Such as?" The Masters were unimpressed.

"The most probable one is an extension of the sunbeam principle, to
operate from a distant sun; or, preferably, a nova. We are now
installing fields and grids by the use of which we, not the Patrol, will
direct that beam."

"Interesting--if true. Spread in our minds the details of all that you
have foreseen and the fashions in which you have safeguarded
yourselves."

It was a long operation, even at the speed of thought. At the end the
Eddorians were unconvinced, skeptical, and pessimistic.

"We can visualize several other things which the forces of Civilization
may be able to develop well within the century," the Master mind said,
coldly. "We will assemble data concerning a few of them for your study.
In the meantime, hold yourselves in readiness to act, as we shall issue
final orders very shortly."

"Yes, Masters," and the Eddorians went back to their home planet as
effortlessly as they had left it. There they concluded their conference.

"...It is clear that Kinnison will enter that trap. He cannot do
otherwise. Kinnison's protector, whoever or whatever he or it may be,
may or may not enter it with him. It may or may not be taken with him.
Whether or not the new Arisian figment is taken, Kimball Kinnison must
die. He is the very keystone of the Galactic Patrol. At his death, as we
will advertise it to have come about, the Patrol will fall apart. The
Arisians, themselves unknown to the rank and file, will be forced to try
to rebuild it around another puppet; but neither his son nor any other
man will ever be able to take Kinnison's place in the esteem of the
hero-worshipping, undisciplined mob which is Civilization. Hence the
importance of your project. You, personally, will supervise the
operation of the trap. You, personally, will kill him."

"With one exception, I agree with everything said. I am not at all
certain that death is the answer. One way or another, however, I shall
deal effectively with Kinnison."

"Deal with? We said kill!"

"I heard you. I still say that mere death may not be adequate. I shall
consider the matter at length, and shall submit in due course my
conclusions and recommendations, for your consideration and approval."

                            *    *    *    *

Although none of the Eddorians knew it, their pessimism in regard to the
ability of the Ploorans to defend their planet against the assaults of
Second-Stage Lensmen was even then being justified. Kimball Kinnison,
after pacing the floor for hours, called his son.

"Kit, I've been working on a thing for months, and I don't know whether
I've got a workable solution at last, or not. It may depend entirely on
you. Before I go into it, though, when we find Boskonia's top planet
we've got to blow it out of the ether, and nothing we've used before
will work. Check?"

"Check, on both." Kit thought soberly for minutes. "Also, it should be
faster than anything we have."

"My thought exactly. I've got something, I think, but nobody except old
Cardynge and Mentor of Arisia..."

"Hold it, dad, while I do a bit of spying and put out some coverage...
QX, go ahead."

"Nobody except those two knew anything about the mathematics involved.
Even Sir Austin knew only enough to be able to understand Mentor's
directions--he didn't do any of the deep stuff himself. Nobody in the
present Conference of Scientists could even begin to handle it. It's
that foreign space, you know, that we called the Nth Space, where that
hyper-spatial tube dumped us that time. You've been doing a lot of work
with some of the Arisians on that sort of stuff--suppose you could get
them to help you compute a tube to take a ship there and back?"

"Hm...m. Let me think a second. Yes, I can. When do you need it?"

"Today--or even yesterday."

"Too fast. It'll take a couple of days, but it'll be ready for you long
before you can get your ship ready and get your gang and the stuff for
your gadget aboard her."

"That won't take so long, son. Same ship we rode before. She's still in
commission, you know--_Space Laboratory Twelve_, her name is now.
Special generators, tools, instruments, everything. We'll be ready in
two days."

They were, and Kit smiled as he greeted Lieutenant-Admiral LaVerne
Thorndyke, Principal Technician, and the other surviving members of his
father's original crew.

"_What_ a tonnage of brass!" Kit said to Kim, later. "Heaviest load I
ever saw on one ship. One sure thing, though, they earned it. You must
have been able to pick _men_, too, in those days."

"What d'ya mean, 'those days', you disrespectful young ape? I can still
pick _men_, son!" Kim grinned back at Kit, but sobered quickly. "There's
more to this than meets the eye. They went through the strain once, and
know what it means. They can take it, and just about all of them will
come back. With a crew of kids, twenty percent would be a high
estimate."

As soon as the vessel was outside the system, Kit got another surprise.
Even though those men were studded with brass and were, by a boy's
standard, _old_, they were not passengers. In their old _Dauntless_ and
well away from port, they gleefully threw off their full-dress regalia.
Each donned the uniform of his status of twenty-odd years back and went
to work. The members of the regular crew, young as all regular space
crewmen are, did not know at first whether they liked the idea of
working watch-and-watch with so much braid or not; but they soon found
out that they did. Those men were men.

It is an iron-clad rule of space, however, that operating pilots must be
young. Master Pilot Henry Henderson cursed that ruling sulphurously,
even while he watched with a proud, if somewhat jaundiced eye, the
smooth performance of Henry Junior at his own old board.

They approached their destination--cut the jets--felt for the
vortex--found it--cut in the special generators. Then, as the fields of
the ship reacted against those of the tube, every man aboard felt a
malaise to which no being has ever become accustomed. Most men become
immune rather quickly to seasickness, to airsickness, and even to
spacesickness. Inter-dimensional acceleration, however, is something
else. It is different--just how different cannot be explained to anyone
who has never experienced it.

The almost unbearable acceleration ceased. They were in the tube. Every
plate showed blank; everywhere there was the same drab and featureless
gray. There was neither light nor darkness; there was simply and
indescribably--nothing whatever, not even empty space.

Kit threw a switch. There was wrenching, twisting, shock, followed by a
deceleration exactly as sickening as the acceleration had been. It
ceased. They were in that enigmatic Nth space which each of the older
men remembered so well; in which so many of their "natural laws" did not
hold. Time still raced, stopped, or ran backward, seemingly at whim;
inert bodies had intrinsic velocities far above that of light--and so
on. Each of those men, about to be marooned of his own choice in this
utterly hostile environment, drew a deep breath and squared his
shoulders as he prepared to disembark.

"That's computation, Kit!" Kinnison applauded, after one glance into a
plate. "That's the same planet we worked on before, right there. All our
machines and stuff, untouched. If you'd figured it any closer it'd have
been a collision course. Are you dead sure, Kit, that everything's QX?"

"Dead sure, dad."

"QX. Well, fellows, I'd like to stay here with you, and so would Kit,
but we've got chores to do. I don't have to tell you to be careful, but
I'm going to, anyway. BE CAREFUL! And as soon as you get done, come back
home just as fast as Klono will let you. Clear ether, fellows!"

"Clear ether, Kim!"

Lensman father and Lensman son boarded their speedster and left. They
traversed the tube and emerged into normal space. All without a word.

"Kit," the older man ground out, finally. "This gives me the colly
wobblies, no less. Suppose some of them--or all of them--get killed out
there? Is it worth it? I know it's my own idea, but will we need it
badly enough to take such a chance?"

"We will, dad. Mentor says so."

And that was that.




CHAPTER 24

THE CONFERENCE SOLVES A PROBLEM


Kit wanted to get back to normal space as soon as possible, in order to
help his sisters pull themselves together, just as they had helped him.
Think as he would, he had not been able to find any flaw in any of them;
but he knew that Mentor would; and he stood aside and watched while
Mentor did.

Kinnison had to get back because he had a lot of business, all of it
pressing. Finally, however, he took time to call a conference of all the
Second-Stage Lensmen and his children; a conference which, bizarrely
enough, was to be held in person and not via Lens.

"Not strictly necessary, of course," the Gray Lensman half-apologized to
his son as their speedsters approached the _Dauntless_. "I still think
it was a good idea, though, especially since we were all so close to
Lyrane anyway."

"So do I. It's been mighty long since we were all together."

They boarded. Clarrissa met Kinnison head-on just inside the portal. The
girls hung back a bit, with a trace, almost, of diffidence; even while
Kit was attempting the physically impossible feat of embracing all four
of them at once.

By common consent the Five used only their eyes. Nothing showed.
Nevertheless, the girls blushed vividly and Kit's face twisted into a
dry, wry grin.

"It was good for what ailed us, though, at that--I guess." Kit did not
seem at all positive. "Mentor, the lug, told me no less than six times
that I had arrived--or at least made statements which I interpreted as
meaning that. And Eukonidor told me I was a 'finished tool', whatever
that means. Personally, I think they were sitting back and wondering how
long it was going to take us to realize that we never could be half as
good as we used to think we were. Suppose?"

"Something like that, probably. We've shivered more than once, wondering
whether we're finished products yet or not."

"We've learned--I hope." Karen, hard as she was, did shiver, physically.
"If we aren't, it'll be... _p-s-s-t_--dad's starting the meeting!"

"...so settle down, all of you, and we'll get going."

What a group! Tregonsee of Rigel IV--stolid, solid, blocky, immobile;
looking as little as possible like one of the profoundest thinkers
Civilization had ever produced--did not move. Worsel, the
ultra-sensitive yet utterly implacable Velantian, curled out three or
four eyes and looked on languidly while Constance kicked a few coils of
his tail into a comfortable chaise lounge, reclined unconcernedly in the
seat thus made, and lighted an Alsakanite cigarette. Clarrissa Kinnison,
radiant in her Grays and looking scarcely older than her daughters, sat
beside Kathryn, each with an arm around the other. Karen and Camilla,
neither of whom could ordinarily be described by the adjective
"cuddlesome," were on a davenport with Kit, snuggling as close to him as
they could get. And in the farthest corner the heavily-armored,
heavily-insulated space-suit which contained Nadreck of Palain VII
chilled the atmosphere for yards around.

"QX?" Kinnison began. "We'll take Nadreck first, since he isn't any too
happy here, and let him flit--he'll keep in touch from outside after he
leaves. Report, please, Nadreck."

"I have explored Lyrane IX _thoroughly_." Nadreck made the statement and
paused. When he used such a thought at all, it meant much. When he
emphasized it, which no one there had ever before known him to do, it
meant that he had examined the planet practically atom by atom. "There
was no life of the level of intelligence in which we are interested to
be found on, beneath, or above its surface. I could find no evidence
that such life has ever been there, either as permanent dwellers or as
occasional visitors."

"When Nadreck settles anything as definitely as that, it stays settled,"
Kinnison remarked as soon as the Palainian had left. "I'll report next.
You all know what I did about Kalonia, and so on. The only significant
fact that I've been able to find--the only lead to the Boskonian
higher-ups--is that Black Lensman Melasnikov got his Lens on Lyrane IX.
There were no traces of mental surgery. I can see two, and only two,
alternatives. Either there was mental surgery which I could not detect,
or there were visitors to Lyrane IX who left no traces of their visits.
More reports may enable us to decide. Worsel?"

The other Second-Stage Lensmen reported in turn. Each had uncovered
leads to Lyrane IX, but Worsel and Tregonsee, who had also studied that
planet with care, agreed with Nadreck that there was nothing to be found
there.

"Kit?" Kinnison asked then. "How about you and the girls?"

"We believe that Lyrane IX was visited by beings having sufficient power
of mind to leave no traces whatever as to who they were or where they
came from. We also believe that there was no surgery, but an infinitely
finer kind of work--an indetectable subconscious compulsion--done on the
minds of the Black Lensmen and others who came into physical contact
with the Boskonians. These opinions are based upon experiences which we
five have had and upon deductions we have made. If we are right, Lyrane
is actually, as well as apparently, a dead end and should be abandoned.
Furthermore, we believe that the Black Lensmen have not been and cannot
become important."

The coordinator was surprised, but after Kit and his sisters had
detailed their findings and their deductions, he turned to the
Rigellian.

"What next, then, Tregonsee?"

"After Lyrane IX, it seems to me that the two most promising subjects
are those entities who think upon such a high band, and the phenomenon
which has been called 'The Hell-Hole in Space.' Of the two, I preferred
the first until Camilla's researches showed that the available data
could not be reconciled with the postulate that the life-forms of her
reconstruction were identical with those reported to you as coordinator.
This data, however, was scanty and casual. While we are here, therefore,
I suggest that we review this matter much more carefully, in the hope
that additional information will enable us to come to a definite
conclusion, one way or the other. Since it was her research, Camilla
will lead."

"First, a question," Camilla began. "Imagine a sun so variable that it
periodically covers practically the entire possible range. It has a
planet whose atmosphere, liquid, and distance are such that its surface
temperature varies from approximately two hundred degrees Centigrade in
mid-summer to about five degrees absolute in midwinter. In the spring
its surface is almost completely submerged. There are terrible winds and
storms in the spring, summer, and fall; but the fall storms are the
worst. Has anyone here ever heard of such a planet having an intelligent
life-form able to maintain a continuing existence through such varied
environments by radical changes in its physical body?"

A silence ensued, which Nadreck finally broke.

"I know of two such planets. Near Palain there is an extremely variable
sun, two of whose planets support life. All of the higher life-forms,
the highest of which are quite intelligent, undergo regular and radical
changes, not only of form, but of organization."

"Thanks, Nadreck. That will perhaps make my story believable. From the
thoughts of one of the entities in question, I reconstructed such a
solar system. More, that entity himself belonged to just such a race. It
was _such_ a nice reconstruction," Camilla went on, plaintively, "and it
fitted all those other life-forms so beautifully, especially Kat's
'four-cycle periods.' And to prove it, Kat--put up your block, now--you
never told anybody the classification of your pet to more than seven
places, did you, or even thought about it?"

"No." Kathryn's mind, since the moment of warning, had been unreadable.

"Take the seven, RTSL and so on. The next three were S-T-R. Check?"

"Check."

"But that makes it _solid_, sis!" Kit exclaimed.

"That's what I thought, for a minute--that we had Boskone at last.
However, when Tregonsee and I first felt 'X', long before you met yours,
Kat, his classification was TUUV. That would fit in well enough as a
spring form, with Kat's as the summer form. What ruins it, though, is
that when he killed himself, just a little while ago and long after a
summer form could possibly exist--to say nothing of a spring form--his
classification was _still_ TUUV. To ten places it was TUUVWYXXWT."

"Well, go on," Kinnison suggested. "What do you make of it?"

"The obvious explanation is that one or all of those entities were
planted or primed--not specifically for us, probably, since we are
relatively unknown, but for any competent observer. If so, they don't
mean a thing." Camilla was not now overestimating her own powers or
underestimating those of Boskonia. "There are a few other things, less
obvious, leading to the same conclusion. Tregonsee is not ready to
believe any of them, however, and neither am I. Assuming that our data
was not biased, we must also account for the fact that the locations in
space were..."

"Just a minute, Cam, before you leave the classifications," Constance
interrupted. "I'm guarded--what was my friend's, to ten places?"

"VWZYTXSYZY," Camilla replied, unhesitatingly.

"Right; and I don't believe it was planted, either, so there..."

"Let me in a second!" Kit demanded. "I didn't know you were on that band
at all. I got that RTSL thing even before I graduated..."

"Huh? What RTSL?" Cam broke in, sharply.

"My fault," Kinnison put in then. "Skipped my mind entirely, when she
asked me for the dope. None of us thought any of this stuff important
until just now, you know. Tell her, Kit."

Kit repeated his story, concluding:

"Beyond four places was pretty dim, but Q P arms and legs--Dhilian,
eh?--would fit, and so would an R-type hide. Both Kat's and mine, then,
could very well have been summer forms, one of their years apart. The
thing I felt was on its own planet, and it _died_ there, and credits to
millos the thought I got wasn't primed. And the location..."

"Brake down, Kit," Camilla instructed. "Let's settle this thing of
timing first. I've got a theory, but I want some ideas from the rest of
you."

"Maybe something like this?" Clarrissa asked, after a few minutes of
silence. "In many forms which metamorphose completely the change depends
on temperature. No change takes place as long as the temperature stays
constant. Your TUUV could have been flitting around in a space-ship at
constant temperature. Could this apply here, Cam, do you think?"

"_Could_ it?" Kinnison exclaimed. "That's it, Cris, for all the tea in
China!"

"That was my theory," Camilla said, still dubiously, "but there is no
proof that it applies. Nadreck, do you know whether or not it applies to
your neighbors?"

"Unfortunately, I do not; but I can find out--by experiment if
necessary."

"It might be a good idea," Kinnison suggested. "Go on, Cam."

"Assuming its truth, there is still left the problem of location, which
Kit has just made infinitely worse than it was before. Con's and mine
were so indefinite that they might possibly have been reconciled with
any precisely-known coordinates; but yours, Kit, is almost as definite
as Kat's, and cannot possibly be made to agree with it. After all, you
know, there are many planets peopled by races similar to ten places. And
if there are four different races, none of them can be the one we want."

"I don't believe it," Kit argued. "Not that thing on that peculiar band.
I'm sure enough of my dope so that I want to cross-question Kat on hers.
QX, Kat?"

"Surely, Kit. Any questions you like."

"Those minds both had plenty of jets--how do you know he wasn't lying to
you? Did you drive in to see? Are you sure even that you saw his real
shape?"

"Certainly I'm sure of his shape!" Kathryn snapped. "If there had been
any zones of compulsion around, I would have known it and got suspicious
right then."

"Maybe, and maybe not," Kit disagreed. "That might depend, you know, on
how good the guy was who was putting out the zone."

"Nuts!" Kathryn snorted, inelegantly. "But as to his telling the truth
about his home planet... um... I'm not sure of that, no. I didn't
check his channels. I was thinking about other things then." The Five
knew that she had just left Mentor. "But why should he want to lie about
a thing like that--he would have, though, at that. Good Boskonian
technique."

"Sure. In your official capacity of coordinator, dad, what do you
think?"

"The probability is that all those four forms of life belong on one
planet. Your location must be wrong, Kat--he gave you the wrong galaxy,
even. Too close to Trenco, too--Tregonsee and I both know that region
like a book and no such variable is anywhere near there. We've got to
find out all about that planet--and fast. Worsel, will you please get
the charts of Kit's region? Kit, will you check with the planetographers
of Klovia as to the variable stars anywhere near where you want them,
and how many planets they've got? I'll call Tellus."

The charts were studied, and in due time the reports of the
planetographers were received. The Klovian scientists reported that
there were four long-period variables in the designated volume of space,
gave the spatial coordinates and catalogue numbers of each, and all
available data concerning their planets. The Tellurians reported only
three, in considerably less detail; but they had named each sun and each
planet.

"Which one did they leave out?" Kinnison wondered audibly as he fitted
the two transparencies together. "This one they call Artonon, no
planets. Dunlie, two planets, Abab and Dunster. Descriptions, and so on.
Rontieff, one planet that they don't know anything about except the name
they have given it. Silly-sounding names--suppose they assemble them by
grabbing letters at random?--Ploor..."

PLOOR! At last! Only their instantaneous speed of reaction enabled the
Five to conceal from the linkage the shrieked thought of what Ploor
really meant. After a flashing exchange of thought, Kit smoothly took
charge of the conference.

"The planet Ploor should be investigated first, I think," he resumed
communication with the group as though his attention had not wavered.
"It is the planet nearest the most probable point of origin of that
thought-burst. Also, the period of the variable and the planet's
distance seem to fit our observations and deductions better than any of
the others. Any arguments?"

No arguments. They all agreed. Kinnison, however, demanded action;
direct and fast.

"We'll investigate it!" he exclaimed. "With the _Dauntless_, the
_Z9M9Z_, and Grand Fleet; and with our very special knick-knack as an
ace up our sleeve!"

"Just a minute, dad!" Kit protested. "If, as some of this material seems
to indicate, the Ploorans actually are the top echelon of Boskonia, even
that array may not be enough."

"You may be right--probably are. What, then? What do you say,
Tregonsee?"

"Fleet action, yes," the Rigellian agreed. "Also, as you implied, but
did not clearly state, independent but correlated action by us five
Second-Stage Lensmen, with our various skills. I would suggest, however,
that your children be put first--very definitely first--in command."

"We object--we haven't got jets enough to..."

"Over-ruled!" Kinnison did not have to think to make that decision. He
knew. "Any other objections?... Approved. I'll call Cliff Maitland
right now, then, and get things going."

That call, however, was never sent; for at that moment the mind of
Mentor of Arisia flooded the group.

"Children, attend! This intrusion is necessary because a matter has come
up which will permit of no delay. Boskonia is now launching the attack
which has been in preparation for over twenty years. Arisia is to be the
first point of attack. Kinnison, Tregonsee, Worsel, and Nadreck will
take immediate steps to assemble the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol
in defense. I will confer at length with the younger Kinnisons.

"The Eddorians, as you know," Mentor went on to the Children of the
Lens, "believe primarily in the efficacy of physical, material force.
While they possess minds of real power, they use them principally as
tools in the development of more and ever more efficient mechanical
devices. We of Arisia, on the other hand, believe in the superiority of
the mind. A fully competent mind would have no need of material devices,
since it could control all material substance directly. While we have
made some progress toward that end, and you will make more in the cycles
to come, Civilization is, and for some time will be, dependent upon
physical things. Hence the Galactic Patrol and its Grand Fleet.

"The Eddorians have succeeded finally in inventing a mechanical
generator able to block our most penetrant thoughts. They believe
implicitly that their vessels, so protected, will be able to destroy our
planet. They may believe that the destruction of our planet would so
weaken us that they would be able to destroy us. It is assumed that you
children have deduced that neither we nor the Eddorians can be slain by
physical force?"

"Yes--the clincher being that no suggestion was made about giving Eddore
a planet from Nth space."

"We Arisians, as you know, have been aiding Nature in the development of
minds much abler than our own. While your minds have not yet attained
their full powers, you will be able to use the Patrol and its resources
to defend Arisia and to destroy the Boskonian fleet. That we cannot do
it ourselves is implicit in what I have said."

"But that means... this is the big show, then, that you have been
hinting at so long?"

"Far from it. An important engagement, of course, but only preliminary
to the real test, which will come when we invade Eddore. Do you agree
with us that if Arisia were to be destroyed now, it would be difficult
to repair the damage done to the morale of the Galactic Patrol?"

"Difficult? It would be impossible!"

"Not necessarily. We have considered the matter at length, however, and
have decided that a Boskonian success at this time would not be for the
good of Civilization."

"I'll say it wouldn't--that's a masterpiece of understatement if there
ever was one! Also, a successful defense of Arisia would be about the
best thing that the Patrol could possibly do for itself."

"Exactly so. Go then, children, and work to that end."

"But how, Mentor--_how_?"

"Again I tell you that I do not know. You have powers--individually,
collectively, and as the Unit--about which I know little or nothing.
_Use them!_"




CHAPTER 25

THE DEFENSE OF ARISIA


The "Big Noise"--socially the _Directrix_, technically the
_Z9M9Z_--floated through space at the center of a hollow sphere of
maulers packed almost screen to screen. She was the Brain. She had been
built around the seventeen million cubic feet of unobstructed space
which comprised her "tank"--the three-dimensional chart in which
vari-colored lights, stationary and moving, represented the positions
and motions of solar systems, ships, loose planets, negaspheres, and all
other objects and items in which Grand Fleet Operations was, or might
become, interested. Completely encircling the tank's more than two
thousand feet of circumference was the Rigellian-manned,
multi-million-plug board; a crew and a board capable of handling
efficiently more than a million combat units.

In the "reducer," the comparatively tiny ten-foot tank set into an
alcove, there were condensed the continuously-changing major features of
the main chart, so that one man could comprehend and direct the board
strategy of the engagement.

Instead of Port Admiral Haynes, who had conned that reducer and issued
general orders during the only previous experience of the _Z9M9Z_ in
serious warfare, Kimball Kinnison was now in supreme command. Instead of
Kinnison and Worsel, who had formerly handled the big tank and the
board, there were Clarrissa, Worsel, Tregonsee, and the Children of the
Lens. There also, in a built-in, thoroughly competent refrigerator, was
Nadreck. Port Admiral Raoul LaForge and Vice-Coordinator Clifford
Maitland were just coming aboard.

Might he need anybody else, Kinnison wondered. Couldn't think of
anybody--he had just about the whole top echelon of Civilization. Cliff
and Laf weren't L2's, of course, but they were mighty good men...
besides, he _liked_ them! Too bad the fourth officer of their class
couldn't be there, too... gallant Wiedel Holmberg, killed in action...
at that, three out of four was a high average--mighty high...

"Hi, Cliff--Hi, Laf!" "Hi, Kim!"

The three old friends shook hands cordially, then the two newcomers
stared for minutes into the maze of lights flashing and winking in the
tremendous space-chart.

"Glad I don't have to try to make sense out of that," LaForge commented,
finally. "Looks a lot different in battle harness than on practice
cruises. You want me on that forward wall there, you said?"

"Yes. You can see it plainer down in the reducer. The white star is
Arisia. The yellows, all marked, are suns and other fixed points, such
as the markers along the arbitrary rim of the galaxy, running from there
to there. Reds will be Boskonians when they get close enough to show.
Greens are ours. Up in the big tank everything is identified, but down
here there's no room for details--each green light marks the location of
a whole operating fleet. That block of green circles, there, is your
command. It's about eighty parsecs deep and covers everything within two
hours--say a hundred and fifty parsecs--of the line between Arisia and
the Second Galaxy. Pretty loose now, of course, but you can tighten it
up and shift it as you please as soon as some reds show up. You'll have
a Rigellian talker--here he is now--when you want anything done, think
at him and he'll give it to the right panel on the board. QX?"

"I think so. I'll practice a bit."

"Now you, Cliff. These green crosses, half-way between the forward wall
and Arisia, are yours. You won't have quite as much depth as Laf, but a
wider coverage. The green tetrahedrons are mine. They blanket Arisia,
you notice, and fill the space out to the second wall."

"Do you think you and I will have anything to do?" Maitland asked,
waving a hand at LaForge's tremendous barrier.

"I wish I could hope not, but I can't. They're going to throw everything
they've got at us."

For weeks Grand Fleet drilled, maneuvered, and practiced. All space
within ten parsecs of Arisia was divided into cubes, each of which was
given a reference number. Fleets were so placed that any point in that
space could be reached by at least one fleet in thirty seconds or less
of elapsed time.

Drill went on until, finally, it happened. Constance, on guard at the
moment, perceived the slight "curdling" of space which presages the
appearance of the terminus of a hyper-spatial tube and gave the alarm.
Kit, the girls, and all the Arisians responded instantly--all knew that
this was to be a thing which not even the Five could handle unaided.

Not one, or a hundred, or a thousand, but at least two hundred thousand
of those tubes erupted, practically at once. Kit could alert and
instruct ten Rigellian operators every second, and so could each of his
sisters; but since every tube within striking distance of Arisia had to
be guarded or plugged within thirty seconds of its appearance, it is
seen that the Arisians did practically all of the spotting and placing
during those first literally incredible two or three minutes.

If the Boskonians could have emerged from a tube's terminus in the
moment of its appearance, it is quite probable that nothing could have
saved Arisia. As it was, however, the enemy required seconds, or
sometimes even whole minutes, to traverse their tubes, which gave the
defenders much valuable time.

Upon arriving at the tube's end, the fleet laced itself, by means of
tractors and pressors, into a rigid although inertialess structure.
Then, if there was time, and because the theory was that the pirates
would probably send a negasphere through first, with an intrinsic
velocity aimed at Arisia, a suitably-equipped loose planet was tossed
into "this end" of the tube. Since they might send a loose or an armed
planet through first, however, the fleet admiral usually threw a
negasphere in, too.

What happened when planet met negasphere, in the unknown medium which
makes up the "interior" of a hyper-spatial tube, is not surely known.
Several highly abstruse mathematical treatises and many volumes of
rather gruesome fiction have been written upon the subject--none of
which, however, has any bearing here.

If the Patrol fleet did not get there first, the succession of events
was different; the degree of difference depending upon how much time the
enemy had had. If, as sometimes happened, a fleet was coming through it
was met by a super-atomic bomb and by the concentrated fire of every
primary projector that the englobing task-force could bring to bear;
with consequences upon which it is neither necessary or desirable to
dwell. If a planet had emerged, it was met by a negasphere...

Have you ever seen a negasphere strike a planet?

The negasphere is built of negative matter. This material--or, rather,
anti-material--is in every respect the exact opposite of the every-day
matter of normal space. Instead of electrons, it has positrons. To it a
push, however violent, is a pull; a pull is a push. When negative matter
strikes positive, then, there is no collision in the usual sense of the
word. One electron and one positron neutralize each other and disappear;
giving rise to two quanta of extremely hard radiation.

Thus, when the spherical hyper-plane which was the aspect of the
negasphere tended to occupy the same three-dimensional space in which
the loose planet already was, there was no actual collision. Instead,
the materials of both simply vanished, along the surface of what should
have been a contact, in a gigantically crescendo burst of pure, raw
energy. The atoms and the molecules of the planet's substance
disappeared; the physically incomprehensible texture of the negasphere's
anti-mass changed into that of normal space. And all circumambient space
was flooded with inconceivably lethal radiation; so intensely lethal
that any being not adequately shielded from it died before he had time
to realize that he was being burned.

Gravitation, of course, was unaffected; and the rapid disappearance of
the planet's mass set up unbalanced forces of tremendous magnitude. The
hot, dense, pseudo-liquid magma tended to erupt as the sphere of
nothingness devoured so rapidly the planet's substance, but not a
particle of it could move. Instead, it vanished. Mountains fell,
crashingly. Oceans poured. Earth-cracks appeared; miles wide, tens of
miles deep, hundreds of miles long. The world heaved... shuddered...
disintegrated... vanished.

The shock attack upon Arisia itself, which in the Eddorian mind had been
mathematically certain to succeed, was over in approximately six
minutes. Kinnison, Maitland, and LaForge, fuming at their stations, had
done nothing at all. The Boskonians had probably thrown everything they
could; the probability was vanishingly small that that particular attack
was to be or could be resumed. Nevertheless a host of Kinnison's
task-forces remained on guard and a detail of Arisians still scanned all
nearby space.

"What shall I do next, Kit?" Camilla asked. "Help Connie crack that
screen?"

Kit glanced at his youngest sister, who was stretched out flat, every
muscle rigidly tense in an extremity of effort.

"No," he decided. "If she can't crack it alone, all four of us couldn't
help her much. Besides, I don't believe she can break it. It's a
mechanical, you know, powered by atomic-motored generators. My guess is
that it'll have to be _solved_, not cracked, and the solution will take
time. When she comes down off that peak, Kay, you might tell her so, and
both of you start solving it. The rest of us have another job. The
Boskonian moppers-up are coming in force, and there isn't a chance that
either we or the Arisians can derive the counter-formula of that screen
in less than a week. Therefore the rest of this battle will have to be
fought out on conventional lines. We can do the most good, I think, by
spotting the Boskonians into the big tank--our scouts aren't locating
five percent of them--for the L2's to pass on to dad and the rest of the
top brass so they can run this battle the way it ought to be run. You'll
do the spotting, Cam, of course; Kat and I will do the pushing. And if
you thought that Tregonsee took you for a ride...! It'll work, don't
you think?"

"Of _course_ it'll work!"

Thus, apparently as though by magic, red lights winked into being
throughout a third of the volume of the immense tank; and the three
master strategists, informed of what was being done, heaved tremendous
sighs of relief. They now had real control. They knew, not only the
positions of their own task-forces, but also, and exactly, the position
of _every_ task-force of the enemy. More, by merely forming in his mind
the desire for the information, any one of the three could know, with no
appreciable lapse of time, the exact composition and the exact strength
of any individual fleet, flotilla, or squadron!

Kit and his two sisters stood close-grouped, motionless; heads bent and
almost touching, arms interlocked. Kinnison perceived with surprise that
Lenses, as big and as bright as Kit's own, flamed upon his daughters'
wrists; a surprise which changed to awe as the very air around those
three red-bronze-auburn heads began to thicken, to pulsate, and to glow
with that indefinable, indescribable polychromatic effulgence so
uniquely characteristic of the Lens of the Galactic Patrol. But there
was work to do, and Kinnison did it.

Since the _Z9M9Z_ was now working as not even the most optimistic of her
planners and designers had dared to hope, the war could now be fought
strategically; that is, with the object of doing the enemy as much harm
as possible with the irreducible minimum of risk. It was not sporting.
It was not clubby. There was nothing whatever of chivalry. There was no
thought whatever of giving the enemy a break. It was massacre--it was
murder--it was war.

It was not ship to ship. No, nor fleet to fleet Instead, ten or twenty
Patrol task-forces, under sure pilotage, dashed out to englobe at
extreme range one fleet of the Boskonians. Then, before the opposing
admiral could assemble a picture of what was going on, his entire
command became the center of impact of hundreds or even thousands of
super-atomic bombs, as well as the focus of an immensely greater number
of scarcely less ravaging primary beams. Not a ship nor a scout nor a
lifeboat of the englobed fleet escaped, ever. In fact, few indeed were
the blobs, or even droplets, of hard alloy or of dureum which remained
merely liquefied or which, later, were able to condense.

Fleet by fleet the Boskonians were blown out of the ether; one by one
the red lights in the tank and in the reducer winked out. And finally
the slaughter was done.

Kit and his two now Lensless sisters unlaced themselves. Karen and
Constance came up for air, announcing that they knew how to work the
problem Kit had handed them, but that it would take time. Clarrissa,
white and shaken by what she had driven herself to do, looked and felt
sick. So did Kinnison; nor had either of the other two commanders
derived any pleasure from the engagement. Tregonsee deplored it. Of all
the Lensed personnel, only Worsel had enjoyed himself. He liked to kill
enemies, at close range or far, and he could not understand or
sympathize with squeamishness. Nadreck, of course, had neither liked nor
disliked any part of the whole affair; to him his part had been merely
another task, to be performed with the smallest outlay of physical and
mental effort consistent with good workmanship.

"What next?" Kinnison asked then, of the group at large. "I say the
Ploorans. They're not like these poor devils were--they probably sent
them in. _They've_ got it coming!"

"They certainly have!"

"Ploor!"

"By all means Ploor!"

"But how about Arisia here?" Maitland asked.

"Under control," Kinnison replied. "We'll leave a heavy guard and a
spare tank--the Arisians will do the rest."

As soon as the tremendous fleet had shaken itself down into the course
for Ploor, all seven of the Kinnisons retired to a small dining room and
ate a festive meal. They drank after-dinner coffee. Most of them smoked.
They discussed, for a long time and not very quietly, the matter of the
Hell-Hole in Space. Finally:

"I know it's a trap, as well as you do." Kinnison got up from the table,
rammed his hands into his breeches pockets, and paced the floor. "It's
got T - R - A - P painted all over it, in bill-poster letters seventeen
meters high. So what? Since I'm the only one who can, I've got to go in,
if it's still there after we knock Ploor off. And it'll still be there,
for all the tea in China. All the Ploorans aren't on Ploor."

Four young Kinnisons flashed thoughts at Kathryn, who frowned and bit
her lip. She had hit that hole with everything she had, and simply
bounced. She had been able to block the radiation, of course, but such
solid barriers had been necessary that she had blinded herself by her
own screens. That it was Eddorian there could be no doubt... warned
by her own activities in the other tube--Plooran of course--and dad
would be worth taking in more ways than one...

"I can't say that I'm any keener about going in than any of you are
about having me do it," the big Lensman went on, "but unless some of you
can figure out a reason for my _not_ going in that isn't fuller of holes
than a sponge, I'm going to tackle it just as soon after we blow Ploor
apart as I can possibly get there."

And Kathryn, his self-appointed guardian, knew that nothing could stop
him. Nor did anyone there, even Clarrissa, try to stop him. Lensmen all,
they knew that he had to go in.

To the Five, the situation was not too serious. Kinnison would come
through unhurt. The Eddorians could take him, of course. But whether or
not they could do anything to him after they got him would depend on
what the Kinnison kids would be doing in the meantime--and that would be
plenty. They couldn't delay his entry into the tube very much without
making a smell, but they could and would hurry Arisia up. And even if,
as seemed probable, he was already in the tube when Arisia was ready for
the big push, a lot could be done at the other end. Those amoeboid
monstrosities would be fighting for their own precious lives, this time,
not for the lives of slaves; and the Five promised each other grimly
that the Eddorians would have too much else to worry about to waste any
time on Kimball Kinnison.

Clarrissa Kinnison, however, fought the hardest and bitterest battle of
her life. She loved Kim with a depth and a fervor which very few women,
anywhere, have ever been able to feel. She knew with a sick, cold
certainty, knew with every fibre of her being and with every cell of her
brain, that if he went into that trap he would die in it. Nevertheless,
she would have to let him go in. More, and worse, she would have to send
him in--to his death--with a smile. She could not ask him not to go in.
She could not even suggest again that there was any possibility that he
need not go in. He had to go in. He _had_ to...

And if Lensman's Load was heavy on him, on her it was almost unbearable.
His part was vastly the easier. He would only have to die; she would
have to live. She would have to keep on living--without Kim--living a
lifetime of deaths, one after another. And she would have to hold her
block and smile, not only with her face, but with her whole mind. She
could be scared, of course, apprehensive, as he himself was; she could
wish with all her strength for his safe return: but if he suspected the
thousandth part of what she really felt it would break his heart. Nor
would it do a bit of good. However broken-hearted at her rebellion
against the inflexible Code of the Lens, he would still go in. Being
Kimball Kinnison, he could not do anything else.

As soon as she could, Clarrissa went to a distant room and turned on a
full-coverage block. She lay down, buried her face in the pillow,
clenched her fists, and fought.

Was there any way--any _possible_ way--that she could die instead? None.
It was not that simple.

She would have to let him go...

With a SMILE...

Not gladly, but proudly and willingly... for the good of the Patrol...

DAMN THE PATROL!!

Clarrissa Kinnison gritted her teeth and writhed.

She would simply _have_ to let him go into that ghastly trap--go to his
absolutely sure and certain death--without showing one white feather,
either to her husband or to her children. Her husband, her Kim, would
have to die... and she--would--_have_--to--_live_...

She got up, smiled experimentally, and snapped off the block. Then,
actually smiling and apparently confident, she strolled down the
corridor.

Such is Lensman's Load.




CHAPTER 26

THE BATTLE OF PLOOR


Twenty-odd years before, when the then _Dauntless_ and her crew were
thrown out of a hyper-spatial tube and into that highly enigmatic Nth
space, LaVerne Thorndyke had been Chief Technician. Mentor of Arisia
found them, and put into the mind of Sir Austin Cardynge, mathematician
extraordinary, the knowledge of how to find the way back to normal
space. Thorndyke, working under nerve-shattering difficulties, had been
in charge of building the machines which were to enable the vessel to
return to her home space. He built them. She returned.

He was now again in charge, and every man of his present crew had been a
member of his former one. He did not command the space-ship or her
regular crew, of course, but they did not count. Not one of those kids
would be allowed to set foot on the fantastically dangerous planet to
which the inertialess _Space Laboratory Twelve_ was anchored.

Older, leaner, grayer, he was now, even more than then, Civilization's
Past Master of Mechanism. If anything could be built, "Thorny" Thorndyke
could build it. If it couldn't be built, he could build something just
as good.

He lined his crew up for inspection; men who, although many of them had
as much rank and had had as many years of as much authority as their
present boss, had been working for days to forget as completely as
possible their executive positions and responsibilities. Each man wore
not one, but three, personal neutralizers; one inside and two outside of
his space-suit. Thorndyke, walking down the line, applied his test-kit
to each individual neutralizer. He then tested his own. QX--all were at
max.

"Fellows," he said then, "you all remember what it was like last time.
This is going to be the same, except more so and for a longer time. How
we did it before without any casualties I'll never know. If we can do it
again it'll be a major miracle, no less. Before, all we had to do was to
build a couple of small generators and some controls out of stuff native
to the planet, and we didn't find that any too easy a job. This time,
for a starter, we've got to build a Bergenholm big enough to free the
whole planet; after which we install the Bergs, tube-generators, atomic
blasts, and other stuff we brought along.

"But that native Berg is going to be a Class A Prime headache, and until
we get it running it's going to be hell on wheels. The only way we can
get away with it is to check and re-check every thing and every step.
Check, check, double-check; then go back and double-check again.

"Remember that the fundamental characteristics of this Nth space are
such that inert matter can travel faster than light; and remember, every
second of the time, that our intrinsic velocity is something like
fifteen lights relative to anything solid in this space. I want every
one of you to picture himself going inert accidentally. You might take a
tangent course or higher--but you might not, too. And it wouldn't only
kill the one who did it. It wouldn't only spoil our record. It could
very easily kill us all and make a crater full of boiling metal out of
our whole installation. So BE CAREFUL! Also bear in mind that one piece,
however small, of this planet's material, accidentally brought aboard,
might wreck the _Dauntless_. Any questions?"

"If the fundamental characteristics--constants--of this space are so
different, how do you know that the stuff will work here?"

"Well, the stuff we built here before worked. The Arisians told Kit
Kinnison that two of the fundamentals, mass and length, are about
normal. Time is a lot different, so that we can't compute power-to-mass
ratios and so on, but we'll have enough power, anyway, to get any speed
we can use."

"I see. We miss the really fancy stuff?"

"Yes. Well, the quicker we get started the quicker we'll get done. Let's
go."

The planet was airless, waterless, desolate; a chaotic jumble of huge
and jagged fragments of various metals in a non-metallic continuous
phase. It was as though some playful child-giant of space had poured
dipperfuls of silver, of iron, of copper, and of other granulated pure
metals into a tank of something else--and then, tired of play, had
thrown the whole mess away!

Neither the metals nor the non-metallic substances were either hot or
cold. They had no apparent temperature, to thermometers or to the
"feelers" of the suits. The machines which these men had built so long
before had not changed in any particular. They still functioned
perfectly; no spot of rust or corrosion or erosion marred any part.
This, at least, was good news.

Inertialess machines, extravagantly equipped with devices to keep them
inertialess, were taken "ashore"; nor were any of these ever to be
returned to the ship. Kinnison had ordered and reiterated that no
unnecessary chances were to be taken of getting any particle of
Nth-space stuff aboard _Space Laboratory Twelve_, and none were taken.

Since men cannot work indefinitely in space-suits, each man had
periodically to be relieved; but each such relief amounted almost to an
operation. Before he left the planet his suit was scrubbed, rinsed, and
dried. In the vessel's airlock it was air-blasted again before the outer
port was closed. He unshelled in the lock and left his suit
there--everything which had come into contact with Nth-space matter
either would be left on the planet's surface or would be jettisoned
before the vessel was again inerted. Unnecessary precautions?
Perhaps--but Thorndyke and his crew returned unharmed to normal space in
undamaged ships.

Finally the Bergenholm was done; by dint of what improvisation,
substitutions and artifice only "Thorny" Thorndyke ever knew; at what
strain and cost was evidenced by the gaunt bodies and haggard faces of
his overworked and underslept crew. To those experts and particularly to
Thorndyke, the thing was not a good job. It was not quiet, nor smooth.
It was not in balance, statically, dynamically, or electrically. The
Chief Technician, to whom a meter-jump of one and a half thousandths had
always been a matter of grave concern, swore feelingly in all the
planetary languages he knew when he saw what those meters were doing.

He scowled morosely. There might have been poorer machines built
sometime, somewhere, he supposed--but damned if he had ever seen any!

But the improvised Berg ran, and kept on running. The planet became
inertialess and remained that way. For hours, then, Thorndyke climbed
over and around and through the Brobdingnagian fabrication, testing and
checking the operation of every part. Finally he climbed down and
reported to his waiting crew.

"QX, fellows, a nice job. A hell of a good job, in fact,
considering--even though we all know that it isn't what any of us would
call a good machine. Part of that meter-jump, of course, is due to the
fact that nothing about the heap is true or balanced, but most of it
must be due to this cockeyed ether. Anyway, none of it is due to the
usual causes--loose bars and faulty insulation. So my best guess is that
she'll keep on doing her stuff while we do ours. One sure thing, she
isn't going to fall apart, even under that ungodly knocking; and I don't
_think_ she'll shake herself off of the planet."

After Thorndyke's somewhat less than enthusiastic approval of his
brain-child, the adventurers into that fantastic region attacked the
second phase of their project. The planetary Bergenholm was landed and
set up. Its meters jumped, too, but the engineers were no longer worried
about that. _That_ machine would run indefinitely. Pits were dug. Atomic
blasts and other engines were installed; as were many exceedingly
complex instruments and mechanisms. A few tons of foreign matter on the
planet's surface would now make no difference; but there was no
relaxation of the extreme precautions against the transfer of any matter
whatever from the planet to the space-ship.

When the job was done, but before the clean-up, Thorndyke called his
crew into conference.

"Fellows, I know just what a God-awful shellacking you've been taking.
We all feel as though we'd been on a Delgonian clambake. Nevertheless,
I've got to tell you something. Kinnison said that if we could get this
one fixed up without too much trouble, it'd be a mighty good idea to
have two of them. What do you say? Did we have too much trouble?"

He got exactly the reaction he had expected.

"Lead us to it!"

"Pick out the one you want!"

"Trouble? Hell, no! If this scrap-heap we built held together this long,
she'll run for years. We can tow her on a tractor-pressor combo, match
intrinsics with clamp-on drivers, and mount her anywhere!"

Another metal-studded, barren, lifeless world was therefore found and
prepared; and no real argument arose until Thorndyke broached the matter
of selecting the two men who were to stay with him and Henderson in the
two lifeboats which were to remain for a time near the two loose planets
after _Space Laboratory Twelve_ had returned to normal space. Everybody
wanted to stay. Each one _was_ going to stay, too, by all the gods of
space, if he had to pull rank to do it!

"Hold it!" Thorndyke commanded. "We'll do the same as we did before,
then, by drawing lots. Quartermaster Allerdyce..."

"Not by a damn sight!" Uhlenhuth, formerly Atomic Technician 1/c,
objected vigorously, and was supported by several others. "He's too
clever with his fingers--look what he did to the original draw! We're
not squawking about that one, you understand--a little fixing was QX
back there--but _this_ one's got to be on the level."

"Now that you mention it, I do remember hearing about the laws of chance
being jimmied a bit." Thorndyke grinned broadly. "So you hold the pot
yourself, Uhly, and Hank and I will each pull out one name."

So it was. Henderson drew Uhlenhuth, to that burly admiral's loud
delight, and Thorndyke drew Nelson, the erstwhile chief communications
officer. The two lifeboats disembarked, each near one of the newly
"loosened" planets. Two men would stay on or near each of those planets,
to be sure that all the machinery functioned perfectly. They would stay
there until the atomic blasts went into action and it became clear that
the Arisians would need no help in navigating those tremendous globes
through Nth space to the points at which two hyper-spatial tubes were
soon to appear.

                            *    *    *    *

Long before the advance scouts of Grand Fleet were within surveying
distance of Ploor, Kit and his sisters had spread a completely detailed
chart of its defenses in the tactical tank. A white star represented
Ploor's sun; a white sphere the planet itself; white Ryerson
string-lights marked a portion of the planetary orbit. Points of white
light, practically all of which were connected to the white sphere by
red string-lights, marked the directions of neighboring stars and the
existence of sunbeams, installed and ready. Pink globes were loose
planets; purple ones negaspheres; red points of light were, as before,
Boskonian task-force fleets. Blues were mobile fortresses; bands of
canary yellow and amber luminescence showed the locations and
emplacements of sunbeam grids and deflectors.

Layer after layer of pinks, purples, and blues almost hid the brilliant
white sphere from sight. More layers of the same colors, not quite as
dense, surrounded the entire solar system. Yellow and amber bands were
everywhere.

Kinnison studied the thing briefly, whistling unmelodiously through his
teeth. The picture was familiar enough, since it duplicated in
practically every respect the chart of the neighborhood of the Patrol's
own Ultra Prime, around Klovia. Those defenses simply could not be
cracked by any concentration possible of any mobile devices theretofore
employed in war.

"Just about what we expected," Kinnison thought to the group at large.
"Some new stuff, but not much. What I want to know, Kit and the rest of
you, is there anything there that looks as though it was supposed to
handle our new baby? Don't see anything, myself."

"There is not," Kit stated, definitely. "We looked. There couldn't be,
anyway. It can't be handled. Looking backwards at it, they may be able
to reconstruct how it was done, but in advance? No. Even Mentor
couldn't--he had to call in a fellow who has studied ultra-high
mathematics for Klono-only-knows-how-many-millions of years to compute
the resultant vectors."

Kit's use of the word "they", which of course meant Ploorans to everyone
except his sisters, concealed his knowledge of the fact that the
Eddorians had taken over the defense of Ploor. Eddorians were handling
those screens. Eddorians were directing and correlating those far-flung
task-forces, with a precision which Kinnison soon noticed.

"Much smoother work than I ever saw them do before," he commented.
"Suppose they have developed a _Z9M9Z_?"

"Could be. They copied everything else you invented, why not that?"
Again the highly ambiguous "they". "No sign of it around Arisia,
though--but maybe they didn't think they'd need it there."

"Or, more likely, they didn't want to risk it so far from home. We can
tell better after the mopping-up starts--if the widget performs as per
specs... but if your dope is right, this is about close enough. You
might tip the boys off, and I'll call Mentor." Kinnison could not reach
Nth space, but it was no secret that Kit could.

The terminus of one of the Patrol's hyper-spatial tubes erupted into
space close to Ploor. That such phenomena were expected was evident--a
Boskonian fleet moved promptly and smoothly to englobe it. But this was
an Arisian tube; computed, installed, and handled by Arisians. It would
be in existence only three seconds; and anything the fleet could do,
even if it got there in nothing flat, would make no difference.

To the observers in the _Z9M9Z_ those three seconds stretched endlessly.
What would happen when that utterly foreign planet, with its absolutely
impossible intrinsic velocity of over fifteen times that of light,
erupted into normal space and went inert? Nobody, not even the Arisian,
knew.

Everybody there had seen pictures of what happened when the
insignificant mass of a space-ship, traveling at only a hundredth of the
velocity of light, collided with a planetoid. That was bad enough. This
projectile, however, had a mass of about eight times ten to the
twenty-first power--an eight followed by twenty-one zeroes--metric tons;
would tend to travel fifteen hundred times as fast; and kinetic energy
equals mass times velocity squared.

There seemed to be a theoretical possibility, since the mass would
instantaneously become some higher order of infinity, that all the
matter in normal space would coalesce with it in zero time; but Mentor
had assured Kit that operators would come into effect to prevent such an
occurrence, and that untoward events would be limited to a radius of ten
or fifteen parsecs. Mentor could solve the problem in detail; but since
the solution would require some two hundred Klovian years and the event
was due to occur in two weeks...

"How about the big computer at Ultra Prime?" Kinnison had asked,
innocently. "You know how fast that works."

"Roughly two thousand years--if it could take that kind of math, which
it can't," Kit had replied, and the subject had been dropped.

Finally it happened. What happened? Even after the fact none of the
observers knew; nor did any except the L3's ever find out. The fuses of
all the recorder and analyzer circuits blew at once. Needles jumped
instantly to maximum and wrapped themselves around their stops. Charts
and ultra-photographic films showed only straight or curved lines
running from the origin to and through the limits in zero time. Ploor
and everything around it disappeared in an utterly indescribable and
completely incomprehensible blast of pure, wild, raw, uncontrolled and
uncontrollable energy. The infinitesimal fraction of that energy which
was visible, heterodyned upon the ultra as it was and screened as it
was, blazed so savagely upon the plates that it seared the eyes.

And if the events caused by the planet aimed at Ploor were
indescribable, what can be said of those initiated by the one directed
against Ploor's sun?

When the heat generated in the interior of a sun becomes greater than
its effective surface is able to radiate, that surface expands. If the
expansion is not fast enough, a more or less insignificant amount of the
sun's material explodes, thus enlarging by force the radiant surface to
whatever extent is necessary to restore equilibrium. Thus come into
being the ordinary novae; suns which may for a few days or for a few
weeks radiate energy at a rate a few hundreds of thousands of times
greater than normal. Since ordinary novae can be produced at will by the
collision of a planet with a sun, the scientists of the Patrol had long
since completed their studies of all the phenomena involved.

The mechanisms of super-novae, however, remained obscure. No adequate
instrumentation had been developed to study conclusively the occasional
super-nova which occurred naturally. No super-nova had ever been
produced artificially--with all its resources of mass, atomic energy,
cosmic energy, and sunbeams, Civilization could neither assemble nor
concentrate enough power.

At the impact of the second loose planet, accompanied by the excess
energy of its impossible and unattainable intrinsic velocity, Ploor's
sun became a super-nova. How deeply the intruding thing penetrated, how
much of the sun's mass exploded, never was and perhaps never will be
determined. The violence of the explosion was such, however, that
Klovian astronomers reported--a few years later--that it was radiating
energy at the rate of some five hundred and fifty million suns.

Thus no attempt will be made to describe what happened when the planet
from Nth space struck the Boskonians' sun. It was indescribability
cubed.




CHAPTER 27

KINNISON TRAPPED


The Boskonian fleets defending Ploor were not all destroyed, of course.
The vessels were inertialess. None of the phenomena accompanying the
coming into being of the super-nova were propagated at a velocity above
that of light; a speed which to any space-ship is scarcely a crawl.

The survivors were, however, disorganized. They had lost their morale
when Ploor was wiped out in such a spectacularly nerve-shattering
fashion. Also, they had lost practically all of their high command; for
the bosses, instead of riding the ether as did the Patrol commanders,
remained in their supposedly secure headquarters and directed matters
from afar. Mentor and his fellows had removed from this plane of
existence the Eddorians who had been present in the flesh on Ploor. The
Arisians had cut all communication between Eddore and the remnants of
the Boskonian defensive force.

Grand Fleet, then, moved in for the kill; and for a time the action near
Arisia was repeated. Following definite flight-and-course orders from
the _Z9M9Z_, ten or more Patrol fleets would make short hops. At the end
of those assigned courses they would discover that they had englobed a
task-force of the enemy. Bomb and beam!

Over and over--flit, bomb, and beam!

One Boskonian high officer, however, had both the time and the authority
to act. A full thousand fleets massed together, their heaviest units
outward, packed together screen to screen in a close-order globe of
defense.

"According to Haynes, that was good strategy in the old days," Kinnison
commented, "but it's no good against loose planets and negaspheres."

Six loose planets were so placed and so released that their inert masses
would crash together at the center of the Boskonian globe; then, a few
minutes later, ten negaspheres of high anti-mass were similarly
launched. After those sixteen missiles had done their work and the
resultant had attained an equilibrium of sorts, there was very little
mopping-up to do.

The Boskonian observers were competent. The Boskonian commanders now
knew that they had no chance whatever of success; that to stay was to be
annihilated; that the only possibility of life lay in flight. Therefore
each remaining Boskonian vice-admiral, after perhaps a moment of
consultation with a few others, ordered his fleet to drive at maximum
blast for his home planet.

"No use chasing them individually, is there, Kit?" Kinnison asked, when
it became clear in the tank that the real battle was over; that all
resistance had ended. "They can't do anything, and this kind of killing
makes me sick at the stomach. Besides, I've got something else to do."

"No. Me, too. So have I." Kit agreed with his father in full.

As soon as the last Boskonian fleet was beyond detector range Grand
Fleet broke up, its component fleets setting out for their respective
worlds.

"The Hell-Hole is still there, Kit," the Gray Lensman said soberly. "If
Ploor was the top--I'm beginning to think there is no top--it leads
either to an automatic mechanism set up by the Ploorans or to Ploorans
who are still alive somewhere. If Ploor wasn't the top, this seems to be
the only lead we have. In either case I've got to take it. Check?"

"Well, I..." Kit tried to duck, but couldn't. "Yes, dad, I'm afraid
it's check."

Two big hands met and gripped: and Kinnison went to take leave of his
wife.

There is no need to go into detail as to what those two said or did. He
knew that he was going into danger; that he might not return. That is,
he knew empirically or academically, as a non-germane sort of fact, that
he might die. He did not, however, really believe so. No man really
believes, ever, that any given event will kill him.

Kinnison expected to be captured, imprisoned, questioned, tortured. He
could understand all of those things, and he did not like any one of
them. That he was more than a trifle afraid and that he hated to leave
her now more than he ever had before were both natural enough--he had
nothing whatever to hide from her.

She, on the other hand, knew starkly that he would never come back. She
knew that he would die in that trap. She knew that she would have to
live a lifetime of emptiness, alone. Hence she had much to conceal from
him. She must be just as scared and as apprehensive as he was, but no
more; just as anxious for their continued happiness as he was, but no
more; just as intensely loving, but no more and in exactly the same
sense. Here lay the test. She must kiss him goodbye as though he were
going into mere danger. She _must not_ give way to the almost
irresistible urge to act in accordance with what she so starkly,
chillingly knew to be the truth, that she would never... _never_...
NEVER kiss her Kim again!

She succeeded. It is a measure of the Red Lensman's quality that she did
not weaken, even when her husband approached the boundary of the
Hell-Hole and sent what she knew would be his last message.

"Here it is--about a second now. Don't worry--I'll be back shortly.
Clear ether, Cris!"

"Of _course_ you will, dear. Clear ether, Kim!"

His speedster did not mount any special generators, nor were any needed.
He and his ship were sucked into that trap as though it had been a
maelstrom.

He felt again the commingled agonies of inter-dimensional acceleration.
He perceived again the formless, textureless, spaceless void of blankly
gray nothingness which was the three-dimensionally-impossible substance
of the tube. A moment later, he felt a new and different
acceleration--he was speeding up _inside the tube_! Then, very shortly,
he felt nothing at all. Startled, he tried to jump up to investigate,
and discovered that he could not move. Even by the utmost exertion of
his will he could not stir a finger or an eyelid. He was completely
immobilized. Nor could he feel. His body was as devoid of sensation as
though it belonged to somebody else. Worse, for his heart was not
beating. He was not breathing. He could not see. It was as though his
every nerve, motor and sensory, voluntary and involuntary, had been
separately anaesthetized. He could still think, but that was all. His
sense of perception still worked.

He wondered whether he was still accelerating or not, and tried to find
out. He could not. He could not determine whether he was moving or
stationary. There were no reference points. Every infinitesimal volume
of that enigmatic grayness was like each and every other.

Mathematically, perhaps, he was not moving at all; since he was in a
continuum in which mass, length and time, and hence inertia and
inertialessness, velocity and acceleration, are meaningless terms.

He was outside of space and beyond time. Effectively, however, he was
moving; moving with an acceleration which nothing material had ever
before approached. He and his vessel were being driven along that tube
by every watt of power generable by one entire Eddorian atomic power
plant. His velocity, long since unthinkable, became incalculable.

All things end: even Eddorian atomic power was not infinite. At the very
peak of power and pace, then, all the force, all the momentum, all the
kinetic energy of the speedster's mass and velocity were concentrated in
and applied to Kinnison's physical body. He sensed something, and tried
to flinch, but could not. In a fleeting instant of what he thought was
time he went _past_, not through, his clothing and his Lens; _past_, not
through, his armor; and _past_, not through, the hard beryllium-alloy
structure of his vessel. He even went past but not through the
N-dimensional interface of the hyper-spatial tube.

This, although Kinnison did not know it, was the Eddorian's climactic
effort. He had taken his prisoner as far as he could possibly reach:
then, assembling and concentrating all available power, he had given him
a catapultic shove into the absolutely unknown and utterly unknowable.
The Eddorian did not know any vector of the Lensman's naked flight; he
did not care where he went. He did not know and could not compute or
even guess at his victim's probable destination.

In what his spacehound's time sense told him was one second, Kinnison
passed exactly two hundred million foreign spaces. He did not know how
he knew the precise number, but he did. Hence, in the Patrol's measured
cadence, he began to count groups of spaces of one hundred million each.
After a few days, his velocity decreased to such a value that he could
count groups of single millions. Then thousands--hundreds--tens--until
finally he could perceive the salient features of each space before it
was blotted out by the next.

How could this be? He wondered, but not foggily; his mind was as clear
and as strong as it had ever been. Spaces were coexistent, not spread
out like this. In the fourth dimension they were flat together, like
pages in a book, except thinner. This was all wrong. It was impossible.
Since it could not happen, it was not happening. He had not been and
could not be drugged. Therefore some Plooran must have him in a zone of
compulsion. _What_ a zone! _What_ an operator the ape must be!

It was, however, real--all of it. What Kinnison did not know, then or
ever, was that he was actually outside the boundaries of space; actually
beyond the confines of time. He was going past, not through, those
spaces and those times.

He was now in each space long enough to study it in some detail. He was
an immense distance above this one; at such a distance that he could
perceive many globular super-universes; each of which in turn was
composed of billions of lenticular galaxies.

Another one. Closer now. Galaxies only; the familiar random masses whose
apparent lack of symmetrical grouping is due to the limitations of
Civilization's observers. He was still going too fast to stop.

In the next space Kinnison found himself within the limits of a solar
system and tried with all the force of his mind to get in touch with
some intelligent entity upon one--any one--of its planets. Before he
could succeed, that system vanished and he was dropping, from a height
of a few thousand kilometers, toward the surface of a warm and verdant
world, so much like Tellus that he thought for an instant he must have
circumnavigated total space. The aspect, the ice-caps, the
cloud-effects, were identical. The oceans, however, while similar, were
different; as were the continents. The mountains were larger and rougher
and harder.

He was falling much too fast. A free fall from infinity wouldn't give
him _this_ much speed!

This whole affair was, as he had decided once before, absolutely
impossible. It was simply preposterous to believe that a naked man,
especially one without blood-circulation or breath, could still be alive
after spending as many weeks in open space as he had just spent. He
_knew_ that he was alive. Therefore none of this was happening; even
though, as surely as he knew that he was alive, he knew that he was
falling.

"Jet back, Lensman!" he thought viciously to himself; tried to shout it
aloud.

For this could be deadly stuff, if he let himself believe it. If he
believed that he was falling from any such height he would die in the
instant of landing. He would not actually crash; his body would not move
from wherever it was that it was. Nevertheless the shock of that wholly
imaginary crash would kill him just as dead and just as instantaneously
as though all his flesh had been actually smashed into a crimson smear
upon one of the neighboring mountain's huge, flat rocks.

"Pretty close, my bright young Plooran friend, but you didn't quite ring
the bell," he thought savagely, trying with all the power of his mind to
break through the zone of compulsion. "So I'm telling you something
right now. If you want to kill me you'll have to do it physically, and
you haven't got jets enough to swing the load. You might as well cut
your zone, because this kind of stuff has been pulled on me by experts,
and it hasn't worked yet."

He was apparently falling, feet downward, toward an open, grassy
mountain meadow, surrounded by forests, through which meandered a small
stream. He was so close now that he could perceive the individual blades
of grass in the meadow and the small fishes in the stream; and he was
still apparently at terminal velocity.

Without his years of spacehound's training in inertialess maneuvering,
he might have died even before he landed, but speed as speed did not
affect him at all. He was used to instantaneous stops from light-speeds.
The only thing that worried him was the matter of inertia. Was he inert
or free?

He declared to himself that he was free. Or, rather, that he had been,
was, and would continue to be motionless. It was physically,
mathematically, intrinsically impossible that any of this stuff had
actually occurred. It was all compulsion, pure and simple, and
he--Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman--would not let it get him down. He
clenched his mental teeth upon that belief and held it doggedly. One
bare foot struck the tip of a blade of grass and his entire body came to
a shockless halt. He grinned in relief--this was what he had wanted, but
had not quite dared wholly to expect. There followed immediately,
however, other events which he had not expected at all.

His halt was less than momentary; in the instant of its accomplishment
he began to fall normally the remaining eight or ten inches to the
ground. Automatically he sprung his space-trained knees, to take the
otherwise disconcerting jar; automatically his left hand snapped up to
the place where his controls should have been. _Legs and arms worked!_

He could see with his eyes. He could feel with his skin. He was drawing
a breath, the first time he had breathed since leaving normal space. Nor
was it an unduly deep breath--he felt no lack of oxygen. His heart was
beating as normally as though it had never missed a beat. He was not
unusually hungry or thirsty. But all that stuff could wait--where was
that damned Plooran?

Kinnison had landed in complete readiness for strife. There were no
rocks or clubs handy, but he had his fists, feet, and teeth; and they
would do until he could find or make something better. But there was
nothing to fight. Drive his sense of perception as he would, he could
find nothing larger or more intelligent than a deer.

The farther this thing went along the less sense it made. A compulsion,
to be any good at all, ought to be logical and coherent. It should fit
into every corner and cranny of the subject's experience and knowledge.
This one didn't fit anything or anywhere. It didn't even come close. Yet
technically, it was a marvelous job. He couldn't detect a trace of it.
This grass looked and felt real. The pebbles hurt his tender feet enough
to make him wince as he walked to the water's edge. He drank deeply. The
water, real or not, was cold, clear, and eminently satisfying.

"Listen, you misguided ape!" he thought probingly. "You might as well
open up now as later whatever you've got in mind. If this performance is
supposed to be non-fiction, it's a flat bust. If it's supposed to be
science-fiction, it isn't much better. If it's space-opera, even, you're
violating all the fundamentals. I've written better stuff--Qadgop and
Cynthia were a lot more convincing." He waited a moment, then went on:

"Who ever heard of the intrepid hero of a space-opera as big as this one
started out to be getting stranded on a completely Earth-like planet and
then have nothing happen? No action at all? How about a couple of
indescribable monsters of superhuman strength and agility, for me to
tear apart with my steel-thewed fingers?"

He glanced around expectantly. No monsters appeared.

"Well, then, how about a damsel for me to rescue from a fate worse than
death? Better make it two of them--safety in numbers, you know--a blonde
and a brunette. No red-heads."

He waited again.

"QX, sport, no women. Suits me perfectly. But I hope you haven't
forgotten about the tasty viands. I can eat fish if I have to, but if
you want to keep your hero happy let's see you lay down here, on a
platter, a one-kilogram steak, three centimeters thick, medium rare,
fried in Tellurian butter and smothered in Venerian superla mushrooms."

No steak appeared, and the Gray Lensman recalled and studied intensively
every detail of what had apparently happened. It _still_ could not have
occurred. He could not have imagined it. It could not have been
compulsion or hypnosis. None of it made any kind of sense.

As a matter of plain fact, however, Kinnison's, first and most positive
conclusion was wrong. His memories were factual records of actual events
and things. He would eat well during his stay upon that nameless planet,
but he would have to procure his own food. Nothing would attack him, or
even annoy him. For the Eddorian's _binding_--this is perhaps as good a
word for it as any, since "geas" implies a curse--was such that the Gray
Lensman could return to space and time only under such conditions and to
such an environment as would not do him any iota of physical harm. He
must continue alive and in good health for at least fifty more of his
years.

                            *    *    *    *

And Clarrissa Kinnison, tense and strained, waited in her room for the
instant of her husband's death. They two were one, with a oneness no
other man and woman had ever known. If one died, from any cause
whatever, the other would feel it.

She waited. Five minutes--ten--fifteen--half an hour--an hour. She began
to relax. Her fists unclenched, her shallow breathing grew deeper.

Two hours. Kim was _still alive_! A wave of happy, buoyant relief swept
through her; her eyes flashed and sparkled. If they hadn't been able to
kill him in two hours they never could. Her Kim had plenty of jets.

Even the top minds of Boskonia could not kill her Kim!




CHAPTER 28

THE BATTLE OF EDDORE


The Arisians and the Children of the Lens had known that Eddore must be
attacked as soon as possible after the fall of Ploor. They were fairly
certain that the interspatial use of planets as projectiles was new; but
they were completely certain that the Eddorians would be able to deduce
in a short time the principles and the concepts, the fundamental
equations, and the essential operators involved in the process. They
would find Nth space or one like it in one day; certainly not more than
two. Their slaves would duplicate the weapon in approximately three
weeks. Shortly thereafter both Ultra Prime and Prime Base, both Klovia
and Tellus, would be blown out of the ether. So would Arisia--perhaps
Arisia would go first. The Eddorians would probably not be able to aim
such planets as accurately as the Arisians had, but they would keep on
trying and they would learn fast.

This weapon was the sheer ultimate in destructiveness. No defense
against it was possible. There was no theory which applied to it or
which could be stretched to cover it. Even the Arisian Masters of
Mathematics had not as yet been able to invent symbologies and
techniques to handle the quantities and magnitudes involved when those
interloping masses of foreign matter struck normal space.

Thus Kit did not have to follow up his announced intention of making the
Arisians hurry. They did not hurry, of course, but they did not lose or
waste a minute. Each Arisian, from the youngest watchman up to the
oldest philosopher, tuned a part of his mind to Mentor, another part to
some one of the millions of Lensmen upon his list, and flashed a
message.

"Lensmen, attend--keep your mind sensitized to this, the pattern of
Mentor of Arisia, who will speak to you as soon as all have been
alerted."

That message went throughout the First Galaxy, throughout inter-galactic
space, and throughout what part of the Second Galaxy had felt the touch
of Civilization. It went to Alsakan and Vandemar and Klovia, to Thrale
and Tellus and Rigel IV, to Mars and Velantia and Palain VII, to Medon
and Venus and Centralia. It went to flitters, battleships, and loose
planets. It went to asteroids and moonlets, to planets large and small.
It went to newly graduated Lensmen and to Lensmen long since retired; to
Lensmen at work and at play. It went to every First-Stage Lensman of the
Galactic Patrol.

Wherever the message went, turmoil followed. Lensmen everywhere flashed
questions at other Lensmen.

"What do you make of it, Fred?"

"Did you get the same thing I did?"

"_Mentor!_ Grinning Noshabkeming, what's up?"

"Damfino. Must be big, though, for Mentor to be handling it."

"_Big!_ It's immense! Who ever heard of Arisia stepping in before?"

"_Big!_ Colossal! Mentor never talked twice to anybody except the L2's
before, did he?"

Millions of Lensed questions flooded every base and every office of the
Patrol. Nobody, not even the vice-coordinator, knew a thing.

"You might as well stop sending in questions as to what this is all
about, because none of us knows any more about it than you do," Maitland
finally sent out a general message. "Apparently everybody with a Lens is
getting the same thought, no more and no less. All I can say is that it
must be a Class A Prime emergency, and everyone who is not actually tied
up in a life and death matter will please drop everything and stand by."

Mentor wanted, and had to have, high tension. He got it. Tension mounted
higher and higher as eventless hours passed and as, for the first time
in history, Patrol business slowed down almost to a stop.

And in a small cruiser, manned by four red-headed girls and one
red-headed youth, tension was also building up. The problem of the
mechanical screens had long since been solved. Atomic powered
counter-generators were in place, ready at the touch of a button to
neutralize the mechanically-generated screens of the enemy and thus to
make the engagement a mind-to-mind combat. They were as close to
Eddore's star-cluster as they could be without giving alarm. They had
had nothing to do for hours except wait. They were probably keyed up
higher than any other five Lensmen in all of space.

Kit, son of his father, was pacing the floor, chain-smoking. Constance
was alternately getting up and sitting down--up--down--up. She, too, was
smoking; or, rather, she was lighting cigarettes and throwing them away.
Kathryn was sitting, stiffly still, manufacturing Lenses which, starting
at her wrists, raced up both bare arms to her shoulders and disappeared.
Karen was meticulously sticking holes in a piece of blank paper with a
pin, making an intricate and meaningless design. Only Camilla made any
pretense of calmness, and it was as transparent as glass. She was
pretending to read a novel; but instead of absorbing its full content at
the rate of one glance per page, she had read half of it word by word
and still had no idea of what the story was about.

"Are you ready, children?" Mentor's thought came in at last.

"Ready!" Without knowing how they got there, the Five found themselves
standing in the middle of the room, packed tight.

"Oh, Kit, I'm shaking like a torso-tosser!" Constance wailed. "I just
_know_ I'm going to louse up this whole damn war!"

"QX, baby, we're all in the same fix. Can't you hear my teeth chatter?
Doesn't mean a thing. Good teams--champions--all feel the same way
before a big game starts... and this is the biggest game ever...
steady down, kids. We'll be QX as soon as the whistle blows--I hope..."

"_P-s-s-t!_" Kathryn hissed. "Listen!"

"Lensmen of the Galactic Patrol!" Mentor's resonant pseudo-voice filled
all space. "I, Mentor of Arisia, am calling upon you because of a crisis
in which no lesser force can be of use. You have been informed upon the
matter of Ploor. It is true that Ploor has been destroyed; that the
Ploorans, physically, are no more. You of the Lens, however, already
know dimly that the physical is not the all. Know now that there is a
residuum of non-material malignancy against which all the physical
weapons of all the universes would be completely impotent. That evil
effluvium, intrinsically vicious, is implacably opposed to every basic
concept and idea of your Patrol. It has been on the move ever since the
destruction of the planet Ploor. Unaided, we of Arisia are not strong
enough to handle it, but the massed and directed force of your
collective mind will be able to destroy it completely. If you wish me to
do so, I will supervise the work of so directing your mental force as to
encompass the complete destruction of this menace, which I tell you most
solemnly is the last weapon of power with which Boskonia will be able to
threaten Civilization. Lensmen of the Galactic Patrol, met as one for
the first time in Civilization's long history, what is your wish?"

A tremendous wave of thought, expressed in millions of variant
phraseologies, made the wish of the Lensmen very clear indeed. They did
not know how such a thing could be done, but they were supremely eager
to have Mentor of Arisia lead them against the Boskonians, whoever and
wherever they might be.

"Your verdict is unanimous, as I had hoped and believed that it would
be. It is well. The part of each of you will be simple, but not easy.
You will all of you, individually, think of two things, and of only two.
First, of your love for and your pride in and your loyalty to your
Patrol. Second, of the clear fact that Civilization must and shall
triumph over Boskonia. Think these thoughts, each of you with all the
strength that in him lies.

"You need not consciously direct those thoughts. Being attuned to my
pattern, the force will flow at my direction. As it passes from you, you
will replenish it, each according to his strength. You will find it the
hardest labor you have ever performed, but it will be of permanent harm
to none and it will not be of long duration. Are you ready?"

"WE ARE READY!" The crescendo roar of thought bulged the galaxy to its
poles.

"Children--strike!"

The generators flared into action--the mechanical screens collapsed--the
Unit struck. The outermost mental screen went down. The Unit struck
again, almost instantly. Down went the second. The third. The fourth.

It was that flawless Unit, not Camilla, who detected and analyzed and
precisely located the Eddorian guardsman handling each of those
far-flung screens. It was the Unit, not Kathryn and Kit, who drilled the
pilot hole through each Eddorian's hard-held block and enlarged it into
a working orifice. It was the Unit, not Karen, whose impenetrable shield
held stubbornly every circular mil of advantage gained in making such
ingress. It was the Unit, not Constance, who assembled and drove home
the blasts of mental force in which the Eddorians died. No time whatever
was lost in consultation or decision. Action was not only instantaneous,
but simultaneous with perception. The Children of the Lens were not now
five, but one. The UNIT.

"Come in, Mentor!" Kit snapped then. "All you Arisians and all the
Lensmen. Nothing specialized--just a general slam at the whole screen.
This fifth screen is the works--they've got twenty minds on it instead
of one, and they're top-notchers. Best strategy now is for us five to
lay off for a second or two and show 'em what we've got in the line of
defense, while the rest of you fellows give 'em hell!"

Arisia and the massed Lensmen struck; a tidal wave of such tremendous
weight and power that under its impact the fifth screen sagged flat
against the planet's surface. Any one Lensman's power was small, of
course, in comparison with that of any Eddorian; but every available
Lensman of the Galactic Patrol was giving, each according to his
strength, and the output of one Lensman, multiplied by the countless
millions which was the number of Lensmen then at work, made itself
tellingly felt.

Countless? Yes. Only Mentor ever knew how many minds contributed to that
stupendous flood of force. Bear in mind that in the First Galaxy alone
there are over one hundred thousand million suns: that each sun has, on
the average, something over one and thirty seven hundredths planets
inhabited by intelligent life: that about one-half of these planets then
adhered to Civilization; and that Tellus, an average planet, graduates
approximately one hundred Lensmen every year.

"So far, Kit, so good," Constance panted. Although she was no longer
trembling, she was still highly excited. "But I don't know how many more
shots like that I've--_we've_--got left in the locker."

"You're doing fine, Connie," Camilla soothed.

"Sure you are, baby. You've got plenty of jets," Kit agreed. Except in
moments of supreme stress these personal, individual exchanges of
by-thoughts did not interfere with the smooth functioning of the Unit.
"Fine work, all of you, kids. I thought we'd get over the shakes as soon
as..."

"Watch it!" Camilla snapped. "Here comes the shock wave. Brace yourself,
Kay. Hold us together, Kit!"

The wave came. Everything that the Eddorians could send. The Unit's
barrier did not waver. After a full second of it--a time comparable to
days of saturation atomic bombing in ordinary warfare--Karen, who had
been standing stiff and still, began to relax.

"This is too, _too_ easy," she declared. "Who's helping me? I can't feel
anything, but I simply _know_ I haven't got this much stuff. You,
Cam--or is it all of you?" Not one of the Five was as yet thoroughly
familiar with the operating characteristics of the Unit.

"All of us, more or less, but mostly Kit," Camilla decided after a
moment's thought. "He's as solid as an inert planet."

"Not me," Kit denied, vigorously. "Must be you other kids. Feels to me
like Kat, mostly. All I'm doing is just sort of leaning up against you a
little--just in case. I haven't done a thing so far."

"Oh, no? Sure not!" Kathryn giggled, an infectious chuckle inherited or
copied directly from her mother. "We know it, Kit. You wouldn't think of
doing anything, even if you could. Just the same, we're mighty glad
you're here, chum!"

"QX, kids, seal the chatter. We've had time to learn that they can't
crack us, and so have they, so let's get to work."

Since the Unit was now under continuous attack, its technique would have
to be entirely different from that used previously. Its barrier must
vanish for an infinitesimal period of time, during which it must
simultaneously detect and blast. Or, rather, the blast would have to be
directed in mid-flight, while the Unit's own block was open. Nor could
that block be open for more than the barest fractional millimicrosecond
before or after the passage of the bolt. It is time that the bolt
compared with the power of the Unit very much as the steady pressure of
burning propellant powder compares with the disruptive force of
detonating duodec: even so it would have wrought much damage to the
minds of the Five had any of it been allowed to reach them.

Also, like parachute-jumping, this technique could not be practiced.
Since the timing had to be so nearly absolute, the first two shots
missed their targets completely; but the Unit learned fast. Eddorian
after Eddorian died.

"Help, All-Highest, help!" a high Eddorian appealed, finally.

"What is it?" His Ultimate Supremacy, knowing that only utter
desperation could be back of such intrusion, accepted the call.

"It is this new Arisian entity..."

"It is not an entity, fool, but a fusion," came curt reprimand. "We
decided that point long ago."

"An entity, I say!" In his urgency the operator committed the
unpardonable by omitting the titles of address. "No possible fusion can
attain such perfection of timing, of synchronization. Our best fusions
have attempted to match it, and have failed. Its screens are
impenetrable. Its thrusts cannot be blocked. My message is this: solve
for us, and quickly, the problem of this entity. If you do not or cannot
do so, we perish all of us, even to you of the Innermost Circle."

"Think you so?" The thought was a sneer. "If your fusions cannot match
those of the Arisians you should die, and the loss will be small."

The fifth screen went down. Eddore lay bare to the Arisian mind. There
were inner defenses, of course, but Kit knew every one; their strengths
and their weaknesses. He had long since spread in Mentor's mind an exact
and completely detailed chart: they had long since drawn up a completely
detailed plan of campaign. Nevertheless, Kit could not keep from
advising Mentor:

"Pick off any who may try to get away. Start on Area B and work up. Be
sure, though, to lay off of Area K or you'll get your beard singed off."

"The plan is being followed, youth," Mentor assured him. "Children, you
have done very well indeed. Rest now, and recuperate your powers against
that which is yet to come."

"QX. Unlace yourselves, kids. Loosen up. Relax. I'll break out a few
beakers of fayalin, and all of us--you especially, Con--had better stoke
up with candy bars."

"_Eat!_ Why, I _couldn't_..." but at her brother's insistence she
took an experimental bite. "But say, I _am_ hungry, at that!"

"Of course you are. You've been putting out a lot of stuff, and there's
more and worse coming. Now rest, all of you."

They rested. Somewhat to their surprise, they could rest; even
Constance. But the respite was short. Area K, the headquarters and the
citadel of His Ultimate Supremacy and the Innermost Circle of the
Boskonian Empire, contained all that remained of Eddorian life.

But this, Kit knew, was the crux. This was what had stopped the Arisians
cold; had held them off for all these millions upon millions of years.
Everything up to now the Arisians could have done themselves; but even
the totalized and integrated mind of Arisia would hit Area K and bounce.

To handle Area K two things were necessary: the Unit and the utterly
inconceivable massed might of the Lensmen.

Knowing better even than Mentor what the situation was, Kit felt again a
twinge of panic, but managed to throw it off.

"No tight linkage yet, kids," Kit the Organizer went smoothly to work.
"Individual effort--a flash of fusion, perhaps, now and then, if any of
us call for it, but no Unit until I give the word. Then give it
everything you've got. Cam, analyze that screen and set us up a pattern
for it--you'll find it'll take some doing. See whether it's absolutely
homogeneous--hunt for weak spots, if any. Con, narrow down to the
sharpest needle you can possibly make and start pecking. Not too
hard--don't tire yourself--just to get acquainted with the texture of
the thing and keep them awake. Kay, take over our guard so Eukonidor can
join the other Arisians. Kat, come along with me--you'll have to help
with the Arisians until I call you into the Unit.

"You Arisians, except Mentor, blanket this dome. Thinner than
that--solider, harder... there. A trifle off-balance yet--give me
just a little more, here on this side. QX--hold it right there! SQUEEZE!
Kat, watch 'em. Hold them right there and in balance until you're sure
the Eddorians aren't going to be able to put any bulges up through the
blanket.

"Now, Mentor, you and the Lensmen. Tell them to give us, for the next
five seconds, absolutely everything they can deliver. When they're at
absolute peak, hit us with the whole charge. Dead center. Don't pull
your punch. We'll be ready.

"Con, get ready to stick the needle right there--they'll think it's just
another peck, I hope--and slug as you never slugged before. Kay, get
ready to drop that screen and stiffen the needle--when that beam hits us
it'll be NO pat on the back. The rest of us will brace you both and keep
the shock from killing us all. Here it comes... make Unit!... GO!"

The Unit struck. Its needle of pure force drove against the Eddorians'
supposedly absolutely impenetrable shield. The Unit's thrust was, of
itself, like nothing ever before known. The Lensmen's pile-driver
blow--the integrated sum total of the top effort of every Lensman of the
entire Galactic Patrol--was of itself irresistible. Something had to
give way.

For an instant it seemed as though nothing were happening or ever would
happen. Strong young arms laced the straining Five into a group as
motionless and as sculpturesque as statuary, while between their bodies
and around them there came into being a gigantic Lens: a Lens whose
splendor filled the entire room with radiance.

Under that awful concentration of force something _had_ to give way. The
Unit held. The Arisians held. The Lensmen held. The needle,
superlatively braced, neither bent nor broke. Therefore the Eddorian's
screen was punctured; and in the instant of its puncturing it
disappeared as does a bubble when it breaks.

There was no mopping up to do. Such was the torrent of force cascading
into the stronghold that within a microsecond after its shield went down
all life within it was snuffed out.

The Boskonian War was over.




CHAPTER 29

THE POWER OF LOVE


"Did you kids come through QX?" The frightful combat over, the dreadful
tension a thing of the past, Kit's first thought was for his sisters.

They were unharmed. None of the Five had suffered anything except mental
exhaustion. Recuperation was rapid.

"Better we hunt that tube up and get dad out of it, don't you think?"
Kit suggested.

"Have you got a story arranged that will hold water?" Camilla asked.

"Everything except for a few minor details, which we can put in later."

Smoothly the four girls linked their minds with their brother's;
effortlessly the Unit's thought surveyed all nearby space. No
hyper-spatial tube, nor any trace of one, was there. Tuned to Kinnison's
pattern, the Unit then scanned not only normal space and the then
present time, but also millions upon millions of other spaces and past
and future times; all without finding the Gray Lensman.

Again and again the Unit reached out, farther and farther; out to the
extreme limit of even its extraordinary range. Every space and every
time was empty. The Children of the Lens broke their linkage and stared
at each other, aghast.

They knew starkly what it must mean, but that conclusion was
unthinkable. Kinnison--their dad--the hub of the universe--the
unshakable, immutable Rock of Civilization--he _couldn't_ be dead. They
simply could not accept the logical explanation as the true one.

And while they pondered, shaken, a call from their Red Lensman mother
came in.

"You are together? Good! I've been _so_ worried about Kim going into
that trap. I've been trying to get in touch with him, but I can't reach
him. You children, with your greater power..."

She broke off as the dread import of the Five's surface thoughts became
clear to her. At first she, too, was shaken, but she rallied
magnificently.

"Nonsense!" she snapped; not in denial of an unwelcome fact, but in sure
knowledge that the supposition was not and could not be a fact. "Kimball
Kinnison is _alive_. He's lost, I know--I last heard from him just
before he went into that tube--but he did _not_ die! If he had, I would
most certainly have felt it. So don't be idiots, children, please.
Think--_really_ think! I'm going to do something--somehow--but what?
Mentor? I've never called him and I'm terribly afraid he might not do
anything. I could go there and make him do something, but that would
take so long--what shall I do? What _can_ I do?"

"Mentor, by all means," Kit decided. "He'll do something--he'll _have_
to. However, there's no need of you going to Arisia in person." Now that
the Eddorians had ceased to exist, inter-galactic space presented no
barrier to Arisian thought, but Kit did not go into that. "Link your
mind with ours." She did so.

"Mentor of Arisia!" the clear-cut thought flashed out. "Kimball Kinnison
of Klovia is not present in this, his normal space and time; nor in any
other continuum we can reach. We need help."

"Ah; 'tis Lensman Clarrissa and the Five." Imperturbably, Mentor's mind
joined theirs on the instant. "I have given the matter no attention, nor
have I scanned my visualization of the Cosmic All. It may therefore be
that Kimball Kinnison has passed on from his plane of exist..."

"He has NOT! It is stark idiocy even to consider such a possibility!"
the Red Lensman interrupted violently, so violently that her thought had
the impact of a physical blow. Mentor and the Five alike could see her
eyes flash and sparkle; could hear her voice crackle as she spoke aloud,
the better to drive home her passionate conviction. "Kim is ALIVE! I
told the children so and now I tell you so. No matter where or when he
might be, in whatever possible extra-dimensional nook or cranny of the
entire macro-cosmic universe or in any possible period of time between
plus and minus eternity, he _couldn't_ die--he could not _possibly_
die--without my knowing it. So find him, please--_please_ find him,
Mentor--or, if you can't or won't, just give me the littlest, _tiniest_
hint as to how to go about it and I'll find him myself!"

The Five were appalled. Especially Kit, who knew, as the others did not,
just how much afraid of Mentor his mother had always been. To direct
such thoughts to any Arisian was unthinkable; but Mentor's only reaction
was one of pleased interest.

"There is much of truth, daughter, in your thought," he replied, slowly.
"Human love, in its highest manifestation, can be a mighty, a really
tremendous thing. The force, the power, the capability of such a love as
yours is a sector of the truth which has not been fully examined. Allow
me, please, a moment in which to consider the various aspects of this
matter."

It took more than a moment. It took more than the twenty-nine seconds
which the Arisian had needed to solve an earlier and supposedly similar
Kinnison problem. In fact, a full half hour elapsed before Mentor
resumed communication; and then he did so, not to the group as a whole,
but only to the Five; using an ultra-frequency to which the Red
Lensman's mind could not be attuned.

"I have not been able to reach him. Since you could not do so I knew
that the problem would not be simple, but I have found that it is
difficult indeed. As I have intimated previously, my visualization is
not entirely clear upon any matter touching the Eddorians directly,
since their minds were of great power. On the other hand, their
visualizations of us were probably even more hazy. Therefore none of our
analyses of each other were or could be much better than approximations.

"It is certain, however, that you were correct in assuming that it was
the Ploorans who set up the hyper-spatial tube as a trap for your
father. The fact that the lower and middle operating echelons of
Boskonia could not kill him established in the Ploorans' minds the
necessity of taking him alive. That fact gave us no concern, for you,
Kathryn, were on guard. Moreover, even if she alone should slip, it was
manifestly impossible for them to accomplish anything against the
combined powers of you Five. However, at some undetermined point in time
the Eddorians took over, as is shown by the fact that you are all at a
loss: it being scarcely necessary to point out to you that the Ploorans
could neither transport your father to any location which you could not
reach nor pose any problem, including his death, which you could not
solve. It is thus certain that it was one or more of the Eddorians who
either killed Kinnison or sent him where he was sent. It is also certain
that, after the easy fashion in which he escaped from the Ploorans after
they had captured him and had him all but in their hands, the Eddorians
did not care to have the Ploorans come to grips with Kimball Kinnison;
fearing, and rightly, that instead of gaining information, they would
lose everything."

"Did they know I was in that tube?" Kathryn asked. "Did they deduce us,
or did they think that dad was a superman?"

"That is one of the many points which are obscure. But it made no
difference, before or after the event, to them or to us, as you should
perceive."

"Of course. They knew that there was at least one third-level mind at
work in the field. They must have deduced that it was Arisian work.
Whether it was dad himself or whether it was coming to his aid at need
would make no difference. They knew very well that he was the keystone
of Civilization, and that to do away with him would be the shrewdest
move they could make. Therefore we still do not understand why they
didn't kill him outright and be done with it--if they didn't."

"In exactness, neither do I... that point is the least clear of all.
Nor is it at all certain that he still lives. It is sheerest folly to
assume that the Eddorians either thought or acted illogically, even
occasionally. Therefore, if Kinnison is not dead, whatever was done was
calculated to be even more final than death itself. This premise, if
adopted, forces the conclusion that they considered the possibility of
our knowing enough about the next cycle of existence to be able to reach
him there."

Kit frowned. "You still harp on the possibility of his death. Does not
your visualization cover that?"

"Not since the Eddorians took control. I have not consciously emphasized
the probability of your father's death; I have merely considered it--in
the case of two mutually exclusive events, neither of which can be shown
to have happened, both must be studied with care. Assume for the moment
that your mother's theory is the truth, that your father is still alive.
In that case, what was done and how it was done are eminently clear."

"Clear? Not to us!" the Five chorused.

"While they did not know at all exactly the power of our minds, they
could establish limits beyond which neither they nor we could go. Being
mechanically inclined, it is reasonable to assume that they had at their
disposal sufficient energy to transport Kinnison to some point well
beyond those limits. They would have given control to a
director-by-chance, so that his ultimate destination would be unknown
and unknowable. He would of course land safely..."

"How? How could they, possibly...?"

"In time that knowledge will be yours. Not now. Whether or not the
hypothesis just stated is true, the fact confronting us is that Kimball
Kinnison is not now in any region which I am at present able to scan."

Gloom descended palpably upon the Five.

"I am not saying or implying that the problem is insoluble. Since
Eddorian minds were involved, however, you already realize that its
solution will require the evaluation of many millions of factors and
will consume a not inconsiderable number of your years..."

"You mean lifetimes!" an impetuous young thought broke in. "Why, long
before that..."

"Contain yourself, daughter Constance," Mentor reproved, gently. "I
realize quite fully all the connotations and implications involved. I
was about to say that it may prove desirable to assist your mother in
the application of powers which may very well transcend in some respects
those of either Arisia or Eddore." He widened the band of thought to
include the Red Lensman and went on as though he were just emerging from
contemplation:

"Children, it appears that the solution of this problem by ordinary
processes will require more time than can conveniently be spared.
Moreover, it affords a priceless and perhaps a unique opportunity of
increasing our store of knowledge. Be informed, however, that the
probability is great that in this project you, Clarrissa, will lose your
life."

"Better not, mother. When Mentor says anything like that, it means
suicide. We don't want to lose you, too." Kit pleaded, and the four
girls added their pleas to his.

Clarrissa knew that suicide was against the Code--but she also knew
that, as long as it wasn't quite suicide, Lensmen went in.

"Exactly how great?" she demanded, vibrantly. "It isn't certain--it
_can't_ be!"

"No, daughter, it is not certain."

"QX, then, I'm going in. Nothing can stop me."

"Very well. Tighten your linkage, Clarrissa, with me. Yours will be the
task of sending your thought to your husband, wherever and whenever in
total space and in total time he may be. If it can be done, you can do
it. You alone of all the entities in existence can do it. I can neither
help you nor guide you in your quest; but by virtue of our relationship
to him whom we are seeking, your oneness with him, you will require
neither help nor guidance. My part will be to follow you and to
construct the means of his return; but the real labor is and must be
yours alone. Take a moment, therefore, to prepare yourself against the
effort, for it will not be small. Gather your resources, daughter;
assemble all your forces and your every power."

They watched Clarrissa, in her distant room, throw herself prone upon
her bed. She closed her eyes, buried her nose in the counterpane, and
gripped a side-rail fiercely in each hand.

"Can't we help, too?" the Five implored, as one.

"I do not know." Mentor's thought was as passionless as the voice of
Fate. "I know of no force at your disposal which can affect in any way
that which is to happen. Since I do not know the full measure of your
powers, however, it would be well for you to accompany us, keeping
yourselves alert to take instant advantage of any opportunity to be of
aid. Are you ready, daughter Clarrissa?"

"I am ready," and the Red Lensman launched her thought.

Clarrissa Kinnison did not know, then or ever; did not have even the
faintest inkling of what she did or of how she did it. Nor, tied to her
by bonds of heritage, love, and sympathy though they were and of immense
powers of mind though they were, did any of the Five succeed, until
after centuries had passed, in elucidating the many complex phenomena
involved. And Mentor, the ancient Arisian sage, never did understand.

All that any of them knew was that an infinitely loving and intensely
suffering woman, stretched rigidly upon a bed, hurled out through space
and time a passionately questing thought: a thought behind which she put
everything she had.

Clarrissa Kinnison, Red Lensman, had much--and every iota of that
impressive sum total ached for, yearned for, and insistently _demanded_
her Kim--her one and only Kim. Kim her husband; Kim the father of her
children; Kim her lover; Kim her other half; Kim her all in all for so
many perfect years.

"Kim! KIM! Wherever you are, Kim, or whenever, listen! Listen and
answer! Hear me--you _must_ hear me calling--I need you, Kim, from the
bottom of my soul... Kim! _My Kim!_ KIM!!"

Through countless spaces and through untellable times that poignant
thought sped; driven by a woman's fears, a woman's hopes, a woman's
all-surpassing love; urged ever onward and ever outward by the
irresistible force of a magnificent woman's frankly bared soul.

Outward... farther... farther out... farther...

Clarrissa's body went limp upon her bed. Her heart slowed; her breathing
almost stopped. Kit probed quickly, finding that those secret cells into
which he had scarcely dared to glance were empty and bare. Even the Red
Lensman's tremendous reserves of vital force were exhausted.

"Mother, come back!"

"Come back to us!"

"Please, _please_, mums, come back!"

"Know you, children, your mother so little?"

They knew her. She would not come back alone. Regardless of any danger
to herself, regardless of life itself, she would not come back until she
had found her Kim.

"But _do_ something, Mentor--DO SOMETHING!"

"Do what? Nothing can be done. It was simply a question of which was the
greater; the volume of the required hypersphere or her remarkable store
of vitality..."

"Shut up!" Kit blazed. "We'll do _something_! Come on, kids, and we'll
try..."

"The Unit!" Kathryn shrieked. "Link up, quick! Cam, make mother's
pattern--hurry it!! Now, Unit, grab it--make her one of us, a six-ply
Unit--_make_ her come in, and snap it up! There! Now, Kit, drive us...
DRIVE US!"

Kit drove. As the surging life-force of the Unit pushed a measure of
vitality back into Clarrissa's inert body, she gained a little strength
and did not grow weaker. The children, however, did; and Mentor, who had
been entirely unmoved by the woman's imminent death, became highly
concerned.

"Children, return!" He first ordered, then entreated. "You are throwing
away not only your lives, but also long lifetimes of intensive labor and
study!"

They paid no attention. No more than their mother would those children
abandon such a mission unaccomplished. Seven Kinnisons would come back
or none.

The four-ply Arisian pondered; and brightened. Now that a theretofore
impossible linkage had been made, the outlook changed. The odds shifted.
The Unit's delicacy of web, its driving force, had not been enough; or
rather, it would have taken too long. Adding the Red Lensman's affinity
for her husband, however... Yes, definitely, the Unit should now
succeed.

It did. Before any of the Five weakened to the danger point the Unit,
again five-fold, snapped back. Clarrissa's life-force, which had tried
so valiantly to fill all of space and all of time, was flowing back into
her. A tight, hard, impossibly writhing and twisting multi-dimensional
beam ran, it seemed, to infinity and vanished.

"A right scholarly bit of work, children," Mentor approved. "I have
arranged the means of his return."

"Thanks, children. Thanks, Mentor." Instead of fainting, Clarrissa
sprang from her bed and stood erect. Flushed and panting, eyes flamingly
alight, she was more intensely vital than any of her children had ever
seen her. Reaction might--would--come later, but she was now all
buoyantly vibrant woman. "Where will he come into our space, and when?"

"In your room before you. Now."

Kinnison materialized; and as the Red Lensman and the Gray went hungrily
into each other's arms, Mentor and the Five turned their attention
toward the future.

                            *    *    *    *

"First, the hyper-spatial tube which was called the 'Hell-Hole in
Space'," Kit began. "We must establish as fact in the minds of all
Civilization that the Ploorans were actually at the top of Boskone. The
story as we have arranged it is that Ploor was the top, and--which
happens to be the truth--that it was destroyed through the efforts of
the Second-Stage Lensmen. The 'Hell-Hole' is to be explained as being
operated by the Plooran 'residuum' which every Lensman knows all about
and which he will never forget. The problem of dad's whereabouts was
different from the previous one in degree only, not in kind. To all
except us, there never were any Eddorians. Any objections? Will that
version hold?"

The consensus was that the story was sound and tight.

"The time has come, then," Karen thought, "to go into the very important
matter of our reason for being and our purpose in life. You have
intimated repeatedly that you Arisians are resigning your Guardianship
of Civilization and that we are to take over; and I have just perceived
the terribly shocking fact that you four are now alone, that all the
other Arisians have already gone. We're not ready, Mentor; you know
we're not--this scares me through and through."

"You are ready, children, for everything that will have to be done. You
have not come to your full maturity and power, of course; that stage
will come only with time. It is best for you, however, that we leave you
now. Your race is potentially vastly stronger and abler than ours. We
reached some time ago the highest point attainable to us: we could no
longer adapt ourselves to the ever-increasing complexity of life. You, a
young new race amply equipped for any emergency within reckonable time,
will be able to do so. In capability and in equipment you begin where we
leave off."

"But we know--you've taught us--scarcely anything!" Constance protested.

"I have taught you exactly enough. That I do not know exactly what
changes to anticipate is implicit in the fact that our race is out of
date. Further Arisian teaching would tend to set you in the out-dated
Arisian mold and thereby defeat our every purpose. As I have informed
you repeatedly, we ourselves do not know what extra qualities you
possess. Hence I am in no sense competent to instruct you in the natures
or in the uses of them. It is certain, however, that you have those
extra qualities. It is equally certain that you possess the abilities to
develop them to the full. I have set your feet on the sure way to the
full development of those abilities."

"But that will take much time, sir," Kit thought, "and if you leave us
now we won't have it."

"You will have time enough and to spare."

"Oh--then we won't have to do it right away?" Constance broke in.
"Good!"

"We're all glad of that," Camilla added. "We're too full of our own
lives, too eager for experiences, to enjoy the prospect of living such
lives as you Arisians have lived. I am right in assuming, am I not, that
our own development will in time force us into the same or a similar
existence?"

"Your muddy thinking has again distorted the truth," Mentor reproved
her. "There will be no force involved. You will gain everything, lose
nothing. You have no conception of the depth and breadth of the vistas
now just beginning to open to you. Your lives will be immeasurably
fuller, higher, greater than any heretofore known to this universe. As
your capabilities increase, you will find that you will no longer care
for the society of entities less able than your own kind."

"But I don't _want_ to live forever!" Constance wailed.

"More muddy thinking." Mentor's thought was--for him--somewhat testy.
"Perhaps, in the present instance, barely excusable. You know that you
are not immortal. You should know that an infinity of time is necessary
for the acquirement of infinite knowledge; and that your span of life
will be just as short, in comparison with your capacity to live and to
learn, as that of _Homo Sapiens_. When the time comes you will want
to--you will need to--change your manner of living."

"Tell us when?" Kat suggested. "It would be nice to know, so we could
get ready."

"I could tell you, since in that my visualization is clear, but I will
not. Fifty years--a hundred--a thousand--what matters it? Live your
lives to the fullest, year by year, developing your every obvious,
latent, and nascent capability; calmly assured that long before any need
for your services shall arise, you shall have established yourselves
upon some planet of your choice and shall be in every respect ready for
whatever may come to pass."

"You are--you must be--right," Kit conceded. "In view of what has just
happened, however, and the chaotic condition of both galaxies, it seems
a poor time to vacate all Guardianship."

"All inimical activity is now completely disorganized. Kinnison and the
Patrol can handle it easily enough. The real conflict is finished. Think
nothing of a few years of vacancy. The Lensmakers, as you know, are
fully automatic, requiring neither maintenance nor attention; what
little time you may wish to devote to the special training of selected
Lensmen can be taken at odd moments from your serious work of developing
yourselves for Guardianship."

"We still feel incompetent," the Five insisted. "Are you sure that you
have given us all the instruction we need?"

"I am sure. I perceive doubt in your minds as to my own competence,
based upon the fact that in this supreme emergency my visualization was
faulty and my actions almost too late. Observe, however, that my
visualization was clear upon every essential factor and that we were not
actually too late. The truth is that our timing was precisely right--no
lesser stress could possibly have prepared you as you are now prepared.

"I am about to go. The time may come when your descendants will realize,
as we did, their inadequacy for continued Guardianship. Their
visualizations, as did ours, may become imperfect and incomplete. If so,
they will then know that the time will have come for them to develop,
from the highest race then existing, new and more competent Guardians.
Then they, as my fellows have done and as I am about to do, will of
their own accord pass on. But that is for the remote future. As to you
children, doubtful now and hesitant as is only natural, you may believe
implicitly what I now tell you is the truth, that even though we
Arisians are no longer here, all shall be well; with us, with you, and
with all Civilization."

The deeply resonant pseudo-voice ceased; the Kinnisons knew that Mentor,
the last of the Arisians, was gone.




EPILOGUE


TO YOU WHO HAVE SCANNED THIS REPORT, FURTHER GREETINGS:

Since I who compiled it am only a youth, a Guardian only by title, and
hence unable to visualize even approximately either the time of nor the
necessity for the opening of this flask of force, I have no idea as to
the bodily shape or the mental attainments of you, the entity to whom it
has now been made available.

You already know that Civilization is again threatened seriously. You
probably know something of the basic nature of that threat. While
studying this tape you have become informed that the situation is
sufficiently grave to have made it again necessary to force certain
selected minds prematurely into the third level of Lensmanship.

You have already learned that in ancient time Civilization after
Civilization fell before it could rise much above the level of
barbarism. You know that we and the previous race of Guardians saw to it
that this, OUR Civilization, has not yet fallen. Know, now that the task
of your race, so soon to replace us, will be to see to it that it does
not fall.

One of us will become en rapport with you as soon as you have
assimilated the facts, the connotations, and the implications of this
material. Prepare your mind for contact.

_Christopher K. Kinnison._






_Novels of science fiction by_ "DOC" SMITH

The Lensman series
    TRIPLANETARY
    FIRST LENSMAN
    GALACTIC PATROL
    GRAY LENSMAN
    SECOND STAGE LENSMEN
    CHILDREN OF THE LENS
    MASTERS OF THE VORTEX

The Skylark series
    THE SKYLARK OF SPACE
    SKYLARK OF VALERON
    SKYLARK THREE
    SKYLARK DU QUESNE






[End of Children of the Lens, by E. E. "Doc" Smith]
