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Title: Galactic Patrol
Author: Smith, Edward E. [Elmer] "Doc" (1890-1965)
Date of first publication: 1950
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Pyramid Books, February 1970
   [Sixth printing of the November 1964 edition]
Date first posted: 17 February 2017
Date last updated: 17 February 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1402

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_.
Bold type in the original printed edition is 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.






          STELLAR AMBUSH


          The pirate cruiser locked onto its quarry, and a
          space-armored horde swarmed through the open
          ports--expecting to be met by confederates on board
          the captured freighter.

          But a blast of pure force met them--Kinnison and
          the Patrolmen were waiting. In seconds the air-lock
          was a shambles.

          The surviving pirates broke and ran, but there was
          no place to hide....

          Lensman Kim Kinnison smiled grimly. This was only
          a pinprick to the power of the Boskonian pirates--but
          it would sting them enough so that the patrol,
          and Kinnison himself, could soon count on all the
          action they could handle....


                                           A LENSMAN ADVENTURE
                                     Third in the Great Series




                       NOVELS OF SCIENCE FICTION
                                   by
                              "DOC" SMITH



                   _The Lensman Series_
                        TRIPLANETARY
                        FIRST LENSMAN
                        GALACTIC PATROL
                        GRAY LENSMAN
                        SECOND STAGE LENSMAN
                        CHILDREN OF THE LENS
                        MASTERS OF THE VORTEX
                   _The Skylark Series_
                        THE SKYLARK OF SPACE
                        SKYLARK THREE
                        SKYLARK OF VALERON
                        SKYLARK DU QUESNE




                          GALACTIC
                          PATROL



                          E.  E.  "DOC"  SMITH




                            GALACTIC PATROL





                                   To
                       Clarrissa M. MacD. Hamnett
                                  and
                       Clarrissa MacD. S. Wilcox




                                CONTENTS


                 1. Graduation
                 2. In Command
                 3. In the Lifeboats
                 4. Escape
                 5. Worsel to the Rescue
                 6. Delgonian Hypnotism
                 7. The Passing of the Overlords
                 8. The Quarry Strikes Back
                 9. Breakdown
                10. Trenco
                11. Grand Base
                12. Kinnison Brings Home the Bacon
                13. Maulers Afloat
                14. Unattached
                15. The Decoy
                16. Kinnison Meets the Wheelmen
                17. Nothing Serious at All
                18. Advanced Training
                19. Judge, Jury, and Executioner
                20. Mac Is a Bone of Contention
                21. The Second Line
                22. Preparing for the Test
                23. Tregonsee Turns Zwilnik
                24. Kinnison Bores from Within




CHAPTER  1                                                  _Graduation_

Dominating twice a hundred square miles of campus, parade-ground,
airport, and space-port, a ninety-story edifice of chromium and glass
sparkled dazzlingly in the bright sunlight of a June morning. This
monumental pile was Wentworth Hall, in which the Tellurian candidates
for the Lens of the Galactic Patrol live and move and have their being.
One wing of its topmost floor seethed with tense activity, for that wing
was the habitat of the lordly Five-Year Men, this was Graduation Day,
and in a few minutes Class Five was due to report in Room A.

Room A, the private office of the Commandant himself; the dreadful lair
into which an undergraduate was summoned only to disappear from the Hall
and from the Cadet Corps; the portentous chamber into which each year
the handful of graduates marched and from which they emerged, each man
in some subtle fashion changed.

In their cubicles of steel the graduates scanned each other narrowly,
making sure that no wrinkle or speck of dust marred the space-black and
silver perfection of the dress uniform of the Patrol; that not even the
tiniest spot of tarnish or dullness violated the glittering golden
meteors upon their collars or the resplendently polished ray-pistols and
other equipment at their belts. The microscopic mutual inspection over,
the kit-boxes were snapped shut and racked, and the embryonic Lensmen
made their way out into the assembly hall.

In the wardroom Kimball Kinnison, Captain of the Class by virtue of
graduating at its head, and his three lieutenants, Clifford Maitland,
Raoul LaForge, and Widel Holmberg, had inspected each other minutely and
were now simply awaiting, in ever-increasing tension, the zero minute.

"Now, fellows, remember that drop!" the young Captain jerked out. "We're
dropping the shaft free, at higher velocity and in tighter formation
than any class ever tried before. If anybody hashes the formation--our
last show and with the whole Corps looking on...."

"Don't worry about the drop, Kim," advised Maitland. "All three platoons
will take that like clockwork. What's got me all of a dither is what is
really going to happen in Room A."

"Uh-_huh_!" exclaimed LaForge and Holmberg as one, and:

"You can play that across the board for the whole Class," Kinnison
agreed. "Well, we'll soon know--it's time to get going," and the four
officers stepped out into the assembly hall; the Class springing to
attention at their approach.

Kinnison, now all brisk Captain, stared along the mathematically exact
lines and snapped:

"Report!"

"Class Five present in full, sir!" The sergeant-major touched a stud at
his belt and all vast Wentworth Hall fairly trembled under the impact of
an all-pervading, lilting, throbbing melody as the world's finest
military band crashed into "Our Patrol."

"Squads left--March!" Although no possible human voice could have been
heard in that gale of soul-stirring sound and although Kinnison's lips
scarcely moved, his command was carried to the very bones of those for
whom it was intended--and to no one else--by the tight-beam
ultra-communicators strapped upon their chests. "Close
formation--forward--March!"

In perfect alignment and cadence the little column marched down the
hall. In their path yawned the shaft--a vertical pit some twenty feet
square extending from main floor to roof of the Hall; more than a
thousand sheer feet of unobstructed air, cleared now of all traffic by
flaring red lights. Five left heels clicked sharply, simultaneously upon
the lip of the stupendous abyss. Five right legs swept out into
emptiness. Five right hands snapped to belts and five bodies, rigidly
erect, arrowed downward at such an appalling velocity that to
unpractised vision they simply vanished.

Six-tenths of a second later, precisely upon a beat of the stirring
march, those ten heels struck the main floor of Wentworth Hall, but not
with a click. Dropping with a velocity of almost two thousand feet per
second though they were at the instant of impact, yet those five husky
bodies came from full speed to an instantaneous, shockless, effortless
halt at contact, for the drop had been made under complete
neutralization of inertia--"free," in space parlance. Inertia restored,
the march was resumed--or rather continued--in perfect time with the
band. Five left feet swung out, and as the right toes left the floor the
second rank, with only bare inches to spare, plunged down into the space
its predecessor had occupied a moment before.

Rank after rank landed and marched away with machine-like precision. The
dread door of Room A opened automatically at the approach of the cadets
and closed behind them.

"Column right--March!" Kinnison commanded inaudibly, and the Class
obeyed in clockwork perfection. "Column left--March! Squad right--March!
Company--Halt! Salute!"

In company front, in a huge, square room devoid of furniture, the Class
faced the Ogre--Lieutenant-Marshal Fritz von Hohendorff, Commandant of
Cadets. Martinet, tyrant, dictator--he was known throughout the System
as the embodiment of soullessness; and, insofar as he had ever been
known to show emotion or feeling before any undergraduate, he seemed to
glory in his repute of being the most pitilessly rigid disciplinarian
that Earth had ever known. His thick, white hair was roached fiercely
upward into a stiff pompadour. His left eye was artificial and his face
bore dozens of tiny, threadlike scars; for not even the marvelous
plastic surgery of that age could repair entirely the ravages of
space-combat. Also, his right leg and left arm, although practically
normal to all outward seeming, were in reality largely products of
science and art instead of nature.

Kinnison faced, then, this reconstructed potentate, saluted crisply, and
snapped:--

"Sir, Class Five reports to the Commandant."

"Take your post, sir." The veteran saluted as punctiliously, and as he
did so a semi-circular desk rose around him from the floor--a desk whose
most striking feature was an intricate mechanism surrounding a
splint-like form.

"Number One, Kimball Kinnison!" von Hohendorff barked. "Front and
center--March!.... The oath, sir."

"Before the Omnipotent Witness I promise never to lower the standard of
the Galactic Patrol," Kinnison said reverently; and, baring his arm,
thrust it into the hollow form.

From a small container labelled "#1, Kimball Kinnison," the Commandant
shook out what was apparently an ornament--a lenticular jewel fabricated
of hundreds of tiny, dead-white gems. Taking it up with a pair of
insulated forceps he touched it momentarily to the bronzed skin of the
arm before him, and at that fleeting contact a flash as of many-colored
fire swept over the stones. Satisfied, he dropped the jewel into a
recess provided for it in the mechanism, which at once burst into
activity.

The forearm was wrapped in thick insulation, molds and shields snapped
into place, and there flared out an instantly-suppressed flash of
brilliance intolerable. Then the molds fell apart, the insulation was
removed, and there was revealed the LENS. Clasped to Kinnison's brawny
wrist by a bracelet of imperishable, almost unbreakable, metal in which
it was imbedded it shone in all its lambent splendor--no longer a
whitely inert piece of jewelry, but a lenticular polychrome of writhing,
almost fluid radiance which proclaimed to all observers in symbols of
ever-changing flame that here was a Lensman of the GALACTIC PATROL.

In similar fashion each man of the Class was invested with the symbol of
his rank. Then the stern-faced Commandant touched a button and from the
bare metal floor there arose deeply-upholstered chairs, one for each
graduate.

"Fall out!" he commanded, then smiled almost boyishly--the first
intimation any of the Class ever had that the hard-boiled old tyrant
_could_ smile--and went on in a strangely altered voice:

"Sit down, men, and smoke up. We have an hour in which to talk things
over, and now I can tell you what it is all about. Each of you will find
his favorite refreshment in the arm of his chair.

"No, there's no catch to it," he continued in answer to amazedly
doubtful stares, and lighted a huge black cigar of Venerian tobacco as
he spoke. "You are Lensmen now. Of course you have yet to go through the
formalities of Commencement, but they don't count. Each of you really
graduated when his Lens came to life.

"We know your individual preferences, and each of you has his favorite
weed, from Tilotson's Pittsburgh stogies up to Snowden's Alsakanite
cigarettes--even though Alsakan is just about as far away from here as a
planet can be and still lie within the galaxy.

"We also know that you are all immune to the lure of noxious drugs. If
you were not, you would not be here today. So smoke up and break up--ask
any questions you care to, and I will try to answer them. Nothing is
barred now--this room is shielded against any spy-ray or communicator
beam operable upon any known frequency."

There was a brief and rather uncomfortable silence, then Kinnison
suggested, diffidently:

"Might it not be best, sir, to tell us all about it, from the ground up?
I imagine that most of us are in too much of a daze to ask intelligent
questions."

"Perhaps. While some of you undoubtedly have your suspicions, I will
begin by telling you what is behind what you have been put through
during the last five years. Feel perfectly free to break in with
questions at any time. You know that every year one million
eighteen-year-old boys of Earth are chosen as cadets by competitive
examinations. You know that during the first year, before any of them
see Wentworth Hall, that number shrinks to less than fifty thousand. You
know that by Graduation Day there are only approximately one hundred
left in the class. Now I am allowed to tell you that you graduates are
those who have come with flying colors through the most brutally rigid,
the most fiendishly thorough process of elimination that it has been
possible to develop.

"Every man who can be made to reveal any real weakness is dropped. Most
of these are dismissed from the Patrol. There are many splendid men,
however, who, for some reason not involving moral turpitude, are not
quite what a Lensman must be. These men make up our organization, from
grease-monkeys up to the highest commissioned officers below the rank of
Lensman. This explains what you already know--that the Galactic Patrol
is the finest body of intelligent beings yet to serve under one banner.

"Of the million who started, you few are left. As must every being who
has ever worn or who ever will wear the Lens, each of you has proven
repeatedly, to the cold verge of death itself, that he is in every
respect worthy to wear it. For instance, Kinnison here once had a highly
adventurous interview with a lady of Aldebaran II and her friends. He
did not know that we knew all about it, but we did."

Kinnison's very ears burned scarlet, but the Commandant went
imperturbably on:

"So it was with Voelker and the hypnotist of Karalon; with LaForge and
the bentlam-eaters; with Flewelling when the Ganymede-Venus thionite
smugglers tried to bribe him with ten million in gold...."

"Good Heavens, Commandant!" broke in one outraged youth. "Do you--did
you--know everything that happened?"

"Not quite everything, perhaps, but it is my business to know enough. No
man who can be cracked has ever worn, or ever will wear, the Lens. And
none of you need be ashamed, for you have passed every test. Those who
did not pass them were those who were dropped.

"Nor is it any disgrace to have been dismissed from the Cadet Corps. The
million who started with you were the pick of the planet, yet we knew in
advance that of that selected million scarcely one in ten thousand would
measure up in every essential. Therefore it would be manifestly unfair
to stigmatize the rest of them because they were not born with that
extra something, that ultimate quality of fiber which does, and of
necessity _must_, characterize the wearers of the Lens. For that reason
not even the man himself knows why he was dismissed, and no one save
those who wear the Lens knows why they were selected--and a Lensman does
not talk.

"It is necessary to consider the history and background of the Patrol in
order to bring out clearly the necessity for such care in the selection
of its personnel. You are all familiar with it, but probably very few of
you have thought of it in that connection. The Patrol is of course an
outgrowth of the old Planetary Police systems; and, until its
development, law enforcement always lagged behind law violation. Thus,
in the old days following the invention of the automobile, state
troopers could not cross state lines. Then when the National Police
finally took charge, they could not follow the rocket-equipped criminals
across the national boundaries.

"Still later, when interplanetary flight became a commonplace, the
Planetary Police were at the same old disadvantage. They had no
authority off their own worlds, while the public enemies flitted
unhampered from planet to planet. And finally, with the invention of the
inertialess drive and the consequent traffic between the worlds of many
solar systems, crime became so rampant, so utterly uncontrollable, that
it threatened the very foundations of Civilization. A man could
perpetrate any crime imaginable without fear of consequences, for in an
hour he could be so far away from the scene as to be completely beyond
the reach of the law.

"And helping powerfully toward utter chaos were the new vices which were
spreading from world to world; among others the taking of new and
horrible drugs. Thionite, for instance; occurring only upon Trenco; a
drug as much deadlier than heroin as that compound is than coffee, and
which even now commands such a fabulous price than a man can carry a
fortune in one hollow boot-heel.

"Thus the Triplanetary Patrol and the Galactic Patrol came into being.
The first was a pitiful enough organization. It was handicapped from
without by politics and politicians, and honey-combed from within by the
usual small but utterly poisonous percentage of the unfit--grafters,
corruptionists, bribe-takers, and out-and-out criminals. It was hampered
by the fact that there was then no emblem or credential which could not
be counterfeited--no one could tell with certainty that the man in
uniform was a Patrolman and not a criminal in disguise.

"As everyone knows, Virgil Samms, then Head of the Triplanetary Patrol,
became First Lensman Samms and founded our Galactic Patrol. The Lens,
which, being proof against counterfeiting or even imitation, makes
identification of Lensmen automatic and positive, was what made our
Patrol possible. Having the Lens, it was easy to weed out the few unfit.
Standards of entrance were raised ever higher, and when it had been
proved beyond question that every Lensman was in fact incorruptible, the
Galactic Council was given more and ever more authority. More and ever
more solar systems, having developed Lensmen of their own, voted to join
Civilization and sought representation on the Galactic Council, even
though such a course meant giving up much of their systemic sovereignty.

"Now the power of the Council and its Patrol is practically absolute.
Our armament and equipment are the ultimate; we can follow the
law-breaker wherever he may go. Furthermore, any Lensman can commandeer
any material or assistance, wherever and whenever required; upon any
planet of any solar system adherent to Civilization; and the Lens is so
respected throughout the galaxy that any wearer of it may be called upon
at any time to be judge, jury, and executioner. Wherever he goes, upon,
in, or through any land, water, air, or space anywhere within the
confines of our Island Universe, his word is LAW.

"That explains what you have been forced to undergo. The only excuse for
its severity is that it produces results--no wearer of the Lens has ever
disgraced it.

"Now as to the Lens itself. Like every one else, you have known _of_ it
ever since you could talk, but you know nothing of its origin or its
nature. Now that you are Lensmen, I can tell you what little I know
about it. Questions?"

"We have all wondered about the Lens, sir, of course," Maitland
ventured. "The outlaws apparently keep up with us in science. I have
always supposed that what science can build, science can duplicate.
Surely more than one Lens has fallen into the hands of the outlaws?"

"If it had been a scientific invention or discovery it would have been
duplicated long ago," the Commandant made surprising answer. "It is,
however, not essentially scientific in nature. It is almost entirely
philosophical, and was developed for us by the Arisians.

"Yes, each of you was sent to Arisia quite recently," von Hohendorff
went on, as the newly commissioned officers stared, dumbfounded, at him
and at each other. "What did you think of them, Murphy?"

"At first, sir, I thought that they were some new kind of dragon; but
dragons with brains that you could actually _feel_. I was glad to get
away, sir. They fairly gave me the creeps, even though I never did see
one of them so much as move."

"They are a peculiar race," the Commandant went on. "Instead of being
mankind's worst enemies, as is generally believed, they are the _sine
qua non_ of our Patrol and of Civilization. I cannot understand them; I
do not know of anyone who can. They gave us the Lens; yet Lensmen must
not reveal that fact to any others. They make a Lens to fit each
candidate; yet no two candidates, apparently, have ever seen the same
things there, nor is it believed that anyone has ever seen them as they
really are. To all except Lensmen they seem to be completely
anti-social; and even those who become Lensmen go to Arisia only once in
their lives. They seem--although I caution you that this seeming may
contain no more of reality than the physical shapes you thought you
saw--to be supremely indifferent to all material things.

"For more generations than you can understand they have devoted
themselves to thinking; mainly of the essence of life. They say that
they know scarcely anything fundamental concerning it; but even so they
know more about it than does any other known race. While ordinarily they
will have no intercourse whatever with outsiders, they did consent to
help the Patrol, for the good of all intelligence.

"Thus, each being about to graduate into Lensmanship is sent to Arisia,
where a Lens is built to match his individual life force. While no mind
other than that of an Arisian can understand its operation, thinking of
your Lens as being synchronized with, or in exact resonance with, your
own vital principle or ego will give you a rough idea of it. The Lens is
not really alive, as we understand the term. It is, however, endowed
with a sort of pseudo-life, by virtue of which it gives off its strong,
characteristically changing light as long as it is in metal-to-flesh
circuit with the living mentality for which it was designed. Also by
virtue of that pseudo-life, it acts as a telepath through which you may
converse with other intelligences, even though they may possess no
organs of speech or of hearing.

"The Lens cannot be removed by anyone except its wearer without
dismemberment; it glows as long as its rightful owner wears it; it
ceases to glow in the instant of its owner's death and disintegrates
shortly thereafter. Also--and here is the thing that renders completely
impossible the impersonation of a Lensman--not only does the Lens not
glow if worn by an imposter; but if a Lensman be taken alive and his
Lens removed, that Lens kills in a space of seconds any living being who
attempts to wear it. As long as it glows--as long as it is in circuit
with its living owner--it is harmless; but in the dark condition its
pseudo-life interferes so strongly with any life to which it is not
attuned that that life is destroyed forthwith."

A brief silence fell, during which the young men absorbed the stunning
import of what their Commandant had been saying. More, there was
striking into each young consciousness a realization of the stark
heroism of the grand old Lensman before them; a man of such fiber that
although physically incapacitated and long past the retirement age, he
had conquered his human emotions sufficiently to accept deliberately his
ogre's role because in that way he could best further the progress of
his Patrol!

"I have scarcely broken the ground," von Hohendorff continued. "I have
merely given you an introduction to your new status. During the next few
weeks, before you are assigned to duty, other officers will make clear
to you the many things about which you are still in the dark. Our time
is growing short, but we perhaps have time for one more question."

"Not a question, sir, but something more important," Kinnison spoke up.
"I speak for the Class when I say that we have misjudged you grievously,
and we wish to apologize."

"I thank you sincerely for the thought, although it is unnecessary. You
could not have thought otherwise of me than as you did. It is not a
pleasant task that we old men have; that of weeding out those who do not
measure up. But we are too old for active duty in space--we no longer
have the instantaneous nervous responses that are for that duty
imperative--so we do what we can. However, the work has its brighter
side, since each year there are about a hundred found worthy of the
Lens. This, my one hour with the graduates, more than makes up for the
year that precedes it; and the other oldsters have somewhat similar
compensations.

"In conclusion, you are now able to understand what kind of mentalities
fill our ranks. You know that any creature wearing the Lens is in every
sense a Lensman, whether he be human or, hailing from some strange and
distant planet, a monstrosity of a shape you have as yet not even
imagined. Whatever his form, you may rest assured that he has been
tested even as you have been; that he is as worthy of trust as are you
yourselves. My last word is this--Lensmen die, but they do not fold up:
individuals come and go, but the Galactic Patrol goes on!"

Then, again all martinet:

"Class Five, attention!" he barked. "Report upon the stage of the main
auditorium!"

The Class, again a rigidly military unit, marched out of Room A and down
the long corridor toward the great theater in which, before the massed
Cadet Corps and a throng of civilians, they were formally to be
graduated.

And as they marched along the graduates realized in what way the wearers
of the Lens who emerged from Room A were different from the candidates
who had entered it such a short time before. They had gone in as boys;
nervous, apprehensive, and still somewhat unsure of themselves, in spite
of their survival through the five long years of grueling tests which
now lay behind them. They emerged from Room A as men: men knowing for
the first time the real meaning of the physical and mental tortures they
had undergone; men able to wield justly the vast powers whose scope and
scale they could even now but dimly comprehend.

CHAPTER  2                                                  _In Command_

Barely a month after his graduation, even before he had entirely
completed the post-graduate tours of duty mentioned by von Hohendorff,
Kinnison was summoned to Prime Base by no less a personage than Port
Admiral Haynes himself. There, in the Admiral's private aero, whose
flaring lights cut a right-of-way through the swarming traffic, the
novice and the veteran flew slowly over the vast establishment of the
Base.

Shops and factories, city-like barracks, landing fields stretching
beyond the far horizon; flying craft ranging from tiny one-man
helicopters through small and large scouts, patrol-ships and cruisers up
to the immense, globular superdreadnaughts of space--all these were
observed and commented upon. Finally the aero landed beside a long,
comparatively low building--a structure heavily guarded, inside Base
although it was--within which Kinnison saw a thing that fairly snatched
away his breath.

A space-ship it was--but what a ship![1] In bulk it was vastly larger
even than the superdreadnaughts of the Patrol; but, unlike them, it was
in shape a perfect teardrop, streamlined to the ultimate possible
degree.

-----

[1] In the "big teardrops"--cruisers and battleships--the driving force
is always directed upward, along the geometrical axis of the ship, and
the artificial gravity is always downward along that same line. Thus,
throughout any possible maneuvering, free or inert, "down" and "up" have
the same significance as within any Earthly structure.

These vessels are ordinarily landed only in special docks, but in
emergencies can be landed almost anywhere, sharp stern down, as their
immense weight drives them deep enough into even the hardest ground to
keep them upright. They sink in water, but are readily maneuverable,
even under water.    E.E.S.

-----

"What do you think of her?" the Port Admiral asked.

"Think of her!" The young officer gulped twice before he attained
coherence. "I can't put it in words, sir; but some day, if I live long
enough and develop enough force, I hope to command a ship like that."

"Sooner than you think, Kinnison," Haynes told him, flatly. "You are in
command of her beginning tomorrow morning."

"Huh? Me?" Kinnison exclaimed, but sobered quickly. "Oh, I see, sir. It
takes ten years of proved accomplishment to rate command of a
first-class vessel, and I have no rating at all. You have already
intimated that this ship is experimental. There is, then, something
about her that is new and untried, and so dangerous that you do not want
to risk an experienced commander in her. I am to give her a work-out,
and if I can bring her back in one piece I turn her over to her real
captain. But that's all right with me, Port Admiral--thanks a lot for
picking me out. What a chance--_What_ a chance!" and Kinnison's eyes
gleamed at the prospect of even a brief command of such a creation.

"Right--and wrong," the old Admiral made surprising answer. "It is true
that she is new, untried, and dangerous, so much so that we are
unwilling to give her to any of our present captains. No, she is not
really new, either. Rather, her basic idea is so old that it has been
abandoned for centuries. She uses explosives; of a type that cannot be
tried out fully except in actual combat. Her primary weapon is what we
have called the 'Q-gun.' The propellant is heptadetonite: the shell
carries a charge of twenty metric tons of duodecaplylatomate."

"But, sir...." Kinnison began.

"Just a minute, I'll go into that later. While your premises were
correct, your conclusion is not. You graduated Number One, and in every
respect save experience you are as well qualified to command as is any
captain of the Fleet; and since the _Brittania_ is such a radical
departure from any conventional type, battle experience is not a
prerequisite. Therefore if she holds together through one engagement she
is yours for good. In other words, to make up for the possibility of
having yourself scattered all over space, you have a chance to win that
ten years' rating you mentioned a minute ago, all in one trip. Fair
enough?"

"Fair? It's fine--wonderful! And thanks a...."

"Never mind the thanks until you get back. You were about to comment, I
believe, upon the impossibility of using explosives against a free
opponent?"

"It can't be impossible, of course, since the _Brittania_ has been
built. I just don't quite see how it could have been made effective."

"You lock to the pirate with tractors, screen to screen--dex about ten
kilometers. You blast a hole through his screens to his wall-shield. The
muzzle of the Q-gun mounts as annular multiplex projector which puts out
a Q-type tube of force--Q47SM9, to be exact. As you can see from the
type formula, this helix extends the gun-barrel from ship to ship and
confines the propellent gases behind the projectile, where they belong.
When the shell strikes the wall-shield of the pirate and detonates,
_something_ will have to give way--all the Brains agree that twenty tons
of duodec, attaining a temperature of about forty million degrees
absolute in less than one micro-second, simply cannot be confined.

"The tube and tractors, being pure force and computed for this
particular combination of explosions, will hold; and our physicists have
calculated that the ten-kilometer column of inert propellent gases will
offer so much inertia and resistance that any possible wall-shield will
have to go down. That is the point that cannot be tried out
experimentally--it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the
pirates may have been able to develop wall-screens as powerful as our
Q-type helices, even though we have not.

"It should not be necessary to point out to you that if they _have_ been
able to develop a wall-shield that will stand up under those conditions,
the back-blast through the breech of the Q-gun will blow the _Brittania_
apart as though she were so much matchwood. That is only one of the
chances--and perhaps not the greatest one--that you and your crew will
have to take. They are all volunteers, by the way, and will get plenty
of extra rating if they come through alive. Do you want the job?"

"You don't have to ask me that, Chief--you _know_ I want it!"

"Of course, but I had to go through the formality of asking, sometime.
But to get on with the discussion, this pirate situation is entirely out
of control, as you already know. We don't even know whether Boskone is a
reality, a figurehead, a symbol, or simply a figment of an old-time
Lensman's imagination. But whoever or whatever Boskone really is, some
being or some group of beings has perfected a mighty efficient
organization of outlaws; so efficient that we haven't even been able to
locate their main base.

"And you may as well know now a fact that is not yet public
property--that even conveyed vessels are no longer safe. The pirates
have developed ships of a new and extraordinary type; ships that are
much faster than our heavy battleships, and yet vastly more heavily
armed than our fast cruisers. Thus, they can outfight any Patrol vessel
that can catch them, and can out-run anything of ours armed heavily
enough to stand up against their beams."

"That accounts for the recent heavy losses," Kinnison mused.

"Yes," Haynes went on, grimly. "Ship after ship of our best has been
blasted out of the ether, doomed before it pointed a beam, and more will
be. We cannot force an engagement on our terms; we must fight them where
and when they please.

"That is the present intolerable situation. We _must_ learn what the
pirates' new power-system is. Our scientists say that it may be
anything, from cosmic-energy receptors and converters down to a
controlled space-warp--whatever that may be. Anyway, they haven't been
able to duplicate it, so it is up to us to find out what it is. The
_Brittania_ is the tool our engineers have designed to get that
information. She is the fastest thing in space, developing at full blast
an inert acceleration of _ten gravities_. Figure out for yourself what
velocity that means free in open space!"

"You have just said that we can't have everything in one ship," Kinnison
said, thoughtfully. "What did they sacrifice to get that speed?"

"All the conventional offensive armament," Haynes replied frankly. "She
has no long-range beams at all, and only enough short-range stuff to
help drive the Q-helix through the enemy's screens. Practically her only
offense is the Q-gun. But she has plenty of defensive screens, she has
speed enough to catch anything afloat, and she has the Q-gun--which we
hope will be enough.

"Now we'll go over the general plan of action. The engineers will go
into all the technical details with you, during a test flight that will
last as long as you like. When you and your crew are thoroughly familiar
with every phase of her operation, bring the engineers back here to Base
and go out on patrol.

"Somewhere in the galaxy you will find a pirate vessel of the new type.
You lock to him, as I said before. You attach the Q-gun well forward,
being sure that the point of attachment is far enough away from the
power-rooms so that the essential mechanisms will not be destroyed. You
board and storm--another revival of the technique of older times.
Specialists in your crew, who will have done nothing much up to that
time, will then find out what our scientists want to know. If at all
possible they will send it in instantly via tight-beam communicator. If
for any reason it should be impossible for them to communicate, the
whole thing is again up to you."

The Port Admiral paused, his eyes boring into those of the younger man,
then went on impressively:

"That information MUST get back to Base. If it does not, the _Brittania_
is a failure; we will be back right where we started from; the slaughter
of our men and the destruction of our ships will continue unchecked. As
to how you are to do it we cannot give even general instructions. All I
can say is that you have the most important assignment in the Universe
today, and repeat--_that information_ MUST GET BACK TO BASE. Now come
aboard and meet your crew and the engineers."

**

Under the expert tutelage of the designers and builders of the
_Brittania_ Lieutenant Kinnison drove her hither and thither through the
trackless wastes of the galaxy.[2] Inert and free, under every possible
degree of power he maneuvered her; attacking imaginary foes and actual
meteorites with equal zeal. Maneuvered and attacked until he and his
ship were one; until he reacted automatically to her slightest demand;
until he and every man of his eager and highly trained crew knew to the
final volt and to the ultimate ampere her gargantuan capacity both to
give it and to take it.

-----

[2] Navigation. Each ship has as reference sphere a galactic-inductor
compass. This instrument, swinging freely in an almost frictionless
mount, is held in one position relative to the galaxy as a whole by
galactic lines of force, analogous to the Terrestrial lines of magnetic
force which affect Terrestrial compasses. Its equator is always parallel
to the galactic equator; its line of zeroes is always parallel to the
line joining Centralia, the central solar system of the First Galaxy,
with the system of Vandemar, which is on its very rim.

The position of the ship in the galaxy is known at all times by that of
a moving dot in the tank. This dot is shifted automatically by
calculating machines coupled inductively to the leads of the drives.
When the ship is inert this device is inoperative, as any distance
traversed in inert flight is entirely negligible in galactic
computations. Due to various perturbations and other slight errors,
cumulative discrepancies occur, for which the pilot must from time to
time correct manually the position of the dot in the tank representing
his ship.

                                                                 E.E.S.

-----

Then and only then did he return to Base, unload the engineers, and set
out upon the quest. Trail after trail he followed, but all were cold.
Alarm after alarm he answered, but always he arrived too late: arrived
to find gutted merchantman and riddled Patrol vessel, with no life in
either and with nothing to indicate in which direction the marauders
might have gone.

Finally, however:

"QBT! Calling QBT!" The _Britannia's_ code call blared from the
sealed-band speaker, and a string of numbers followed--the spatial
coordinates of the luckless vessel's position.

Chief Pilot Henry Henderson punched the figures upon his locator, and in
the "tank"--the enormous, minutely cubed model of the galaxy--there
appeared a redly brilliant point of light. Kinnison rocketed out of his
narrow bunk, digging sleep out of his eyes, and shot himself into place
beside the pilot.

"Right in our laps!" he exulted. "Scarcely ten light-years away! Start
scrambling the ether!" and as the vengeful cruiser darted toward the
scene of depredation all space became filled with blast after blast of
static interference through which, it was hoped, the pirate could not
summon the help he was so soon to need.

But that howling static gave the pirate commander pause. Surely this was
something new? Before him lay a richly-laden freighter, its two
convoying ships already practically out of action. A few more minutes
and the prize would be his. Nevertheless he darted away, swept the ether
with his detectors, saw the _Britannia_, and turned in headlong flight.
For if this streamlined fighter was sufficiently convinced of its
prowess to try to blanket the ether against _him_, that information was
something that Boskone would value far above one shipload of material
wealth.

But the pirate craft was now upon the visiplates of the _Britannia_,
and, entirely ignoring the crippled space-ships, Henderson flung his
vessel after the other. Manipulating his incredibly complex controls
purely by touch, the while staring into his plate not only with his
eyes, but with every fiber of his being as well, he hurled his huge
mount hither and thither in frantic leaps. After what seemed an age he
snapped down a toggle switch and relaxed long enough to grin at
Kinnison.

"Holding 'em?" the young commander demanded.

"Got 'em, Skipper," the pilot replied, positively. "It was touch and go
for ninety seconds, but I've got a CRX tracer on him now at full pull.
He can't put out enough jets to get away from _that_--I can hold him
forever!"

"Fine work, Hen!" Kinnison strapped himself into his seat and donned his
headset. "General call! Attention! Battle stations! By stations,
report!"

"Station One, tractor beams--hot!"

"Station Two, repellors--hot!"

"Station Three, projector One--hot!"

Thus station after station of the warship of the void reported, until:

"Station Fifty-Eight, the Q-gun--hot!" Kinnison himself reported; then
gave to the pilot the words which throughout the spaceways of the galaxy
had come to mean complete readiness to face any emergency.

"Hot and tight, Hen--let's take 'em!"

The pilot shoved his blast-lever, already almost at maximum, clear out
against its stop and hunched himself even more intently over his
instruments, varying by infinitesimals the direction of the thrust that
was driving the _Britannia_ toward the enemy at the unimaginable
velocity of ninety parsecs an hour[3]--a velocity possible only to
inertialess matter being urged through an almost perfect vacuum by a
driving blast capable of lifting the stupendous normal tonnage of the
immense sky-rover against a gravity ten times that of her native Earth.

-----

[3] With the neutralization of inertia it was discovered that there is
no limit whatever to the velocity of inertialess matter. A free ship
takes on instantaneously the velocity at which the force of her drive is
exactly equalled by the friction of the medium.

                                                                 E.E.S.

-----

Unimaginable? Completely so--the ship of the Galactic Patrol was hurling
herself through space at a pace in comparison with which any speed that
the mind can grasp would be the merest crawl: a pace to make light
itself seem stationary.

Ordinary vision would have been useless, but the observers of that day
used no antiquated optical systems. Their detector beams, converted into
light only at their plates, were heterodyned upon and were carried by
sub-etheral ultra-waves; vibrations residing far below the level of the
ether and thus possessing a velocity and a range infinitely greater than
those of any possible ether-borne wave.

Although stars moved across the visiplates in flaming, zig-zag lines of
light as pursued and pursuer passed solar system after solar system in
fantastic, light-years-long hops, yet Henderson kept his cruiser upon
the pirate's tail and steadily cut down the distance between them. Soon
a tractor beam licked out from the Patrol ship, touched the fleeing
marauder lightly, and the two space-ships flashed toward each other.

Nor was the enemy unprepared for combat. One of the crack raiders of
Boskone, master pirate of the known Universe, she had never before found
difficulty in conquering any vessel fleet enough to catch her.
Therefore, her commander made no attempt to cut the beam. Or rather,
since the two inertialess vessels flashed together to repellor-zone
contact in such a minute fraction of a second that any human action
within that time was impossible, it would be more correct to say that
the pirate captain changed his tactics instantly from those of flight to
those of combat.

He thrust out tractor beams of his own, and from the already white-hot
refractory throats of his projectors there raved out horribly potent
beams of annihilation; beams of dreadful power which tore madly at the
straining defensive screens of the Patrol ship. Screens flared vividly,
radiating all the colors of the spectrum. Space itself seemed a rainbow
gone mad, for there were being exerted there forces of a magnitude to
stagger the imagination; forces to be yielded only by the atomic might
from which they sprang; forces whose neutralization set up visible
strains in the very fabric of the ether itself.

The young commander clenched his fists and swore a startled deep-space
oath as red lights flashed and alarmbells clanged. His screens were
leaking like sieves--practically down--needle after needle of force
incredible stabbing at and through his wall-shield--four stations gone
already and more going!

"Scrap the plan!" he yelled into his microphone. "Open everything to
absolute top--short out all resistors--give 'em everything you can put
through the bare bus-bars. Dalhousie, cut all your repellors; bring us
right up to their zone. All you beamers, concentrate on Area Five.
_Break down those screens!_" Kinnison was hunched rigidly over his
panel, his voice came grittily through locked teeth. "_Get through to
that wall-shield so I can use this Q-gun!_"

Under the redoubled force of the _Britannia's_ attack the defenses of
the enemy began to fail. Kinnison's hands flew over his controls. A port
opened in the Patrol-ship's armored side and an ugly snout
protruded--the projector-ringed muzzle of a squat and monstrous cannon.
From its projector bands there leaped out with the velocity of light a
tube of quasi-solid force which was in effect a continuation of the
gun's grim barrel; a tube which crashed through the weakened third
screen of the enemy with a space-wracking shock and struck savagely,
with writhing, twisting thrusts, at the second. Aided by the massed
concentration of the _Britannia's_ every battery of short-range beams,
it went through. And through the first. Now it struck the
very-wall-shield of the outlaw--that impregnable screen which, designed
to bear the brunt of any possible inert collision, had never been
pierced or ruptured by any material substance, however applied.

To this inner defense the immaterial gun-barrel clung. Simultaneously
the tractor beams, hitherto exerting only a few dynes of force,
stiffened into unbreakable, inflexible rods of energy, binding the two
ships of space into one rigid system; each, relative to the other,
immovable.

Then Kinnison's flying finger tip touched a button and the Q-gun spoke.
From its sullen throat there erupted a huge torpedo. Slowly the giant
projectile crept along, watched in awe and amazement by the officers of
both vessels. For to those space-hardened veterans the velocity of light
was a veritable crawl; and here was a thing that would require four or
five whole seconds to cover a mere ten kilometers of distance!

But, although slow, this bomb _might_ prove dangerous, therefore the
pirate commander threw his every resource into attempts to cut the tube
of force, to blast away from the tractor beams, to explode the sluggish
missile before it could reach his wall-shield. In vain; for the
_Britannia's_ every beam was set to protect the torpedo and the mighty
rods of energy without whose grip the inertialess mass of the enemy
vessel would offer no resistance whatever to the force of the proposed
explosion.

Slowly, _so_ slowly, as the age-long seconds crawled into eternity,
there extended from Patrol ship almost to pirate wall a raging,
white-hot pillar--the gases of combustion of the propellant
heptadetonite--ahead of which there rushed the Q-gun's tremendous shell
with its horridly destructive freight. What would happen? Could even the
almost immeasurable force of that frightful charge of atomic explosive
break down a wall-shield designed to withstand the cosmic assaults of
meteoric missiles? And what would happen if that wall-screen held?

In spite of himself Kinnison's mind insisted upon painting the ghastly
picture: the awful explosion; the pirate's screen still intact; the
forward-rushing gases driven backward along the tube of force. The bare
metal of the Q-gun's breech, he knew, was not and could not be
reenforced by the infinitely stronger, although immaterial shields of
pure energy which protected the hull; and no conceivable substance,
however resistant, could impede save momentarily the unimaginable forces
about to be unleashed.

Nor would there be time to release the Q-tube after the explosion but
before the _Brittania's_ own destruction; for if the enemy's shield
stayed up for even a fraction of a second the unthinkable pressure of
the blast would propagate backward through the already densely
compressed gases in the tube, would sweep away as though it were nothing
the immensely thick metallic barrier of the gun-breech, and would wreak
within the bowels of the Patrol vessel a destruction even more complete
than that intended for the foe.

Nor were his men in better case. Each knew that this was the climactic
instant of his existence; that life itself hung poised upon the issue of
the next split second. Hurry it up! Snap into it! Will that crawling,
creeping thing _never_ strike?

Some prayed briefly, some swore bitterly; but prayers and curses were
alike unconscious and had precisely the same meaning--each man, white of
face and grim of jaw, clenched his hands and waited, tense and
straining, for the impact.

CHAPTER  3                                            _In the Lifeboats_

The missile struck, and in the instant of its striking the coldly
brilliant stars were blotted from sight in a vast globe of intolerable
flame. The pirate's shield had failed, and under the cataclysmic force
of that horrific detonation the entire nose-section of the enemy vessel
had flashed into incandescent vapor and had added itself to the rapidly
expanding cloud of fire. As it expanded the cloud cooled. Its fierce
glare subsided to a rosy glow, through which the stars again began to
shine. It faded, cooled, darkened--revealing the crippled hulk of the
pirate ship. She was still fighting; but ineffectually, now that all her
heavy forward batteries were gone.

"Needlers, fire at will!" barked Kinnison, and even that feeble
resistance was ended. Keen-eyed needle-ray men, working at spy-ray
visiplates, bored hole after hole into the captive, seeking out and
destroying the control-panels of the remaining beams and screens.

"Pull 'er up!" came the next order. The two ships of space flashed
together, the yawning, blasted-open fore-end of the raider solidly
against the _Brittania's_ armored side. A great port opened.

"Now, Bus, it's all yours. Classification to six places, straight
A's--they're human or approximately so. Board and storm!"

Back of that port there had been massed a hundred fighting men; dressed
in full panoply of space-armor, armed with the deadliest weapons known
to the science of the age, and powered by the gigantic accumulators of
their ship. At their head was Sergeant vanBuskirk, six and a half feet
of Dutch Valerian dynamite, who had fallen out of Valeria's Cadet Corps
only because of an innate inability to master the intricacies of higher
mathematics. Now the attackers swept forward in a black-and-silver wave.

Four squatly massive semi-portable projectors crashed down upon their
magnetic clamps and in the fierce ardor of their beams the thick
bulkhead before them ran the gamut of the spectrum and puffed outward.
Some score of defenders were revealed, likewise clad in armor, and
battle again was joined. Explosive and solid bullets detonated against
and ricocheted from that highly efficient armor, the beams of DeLameter
hand-projectors splashed in torrents of man-made lightning off its
protective fields of force. But that skirmish was soon over. The
semi-portables, whose vast energies no ordinary personal armor could
withstand, were brought up and clamped down; and in their holocaust of
vibratory destruction all life vanished from the pirates' compartment.

"One more bulkhead and we're in their control room!" vanBuskirk cried.
"Beam it down!"

But when the beamers pressed their switches nothing happened. The
pirates had managed to jury-rig a screen generator, and with it had cut
the power-beams behind the invading forces. Also they had cut loop-holes
in the bulkhead, through which in frantic haste they were trying to
bring heavy projectors of their own into alignment.

"Bring up the ferral paste," the sergeant commanded. "Get up as close to
that wall as you can, so they can't blast us!"

The paste--successor to thermite--was brought up and the giant Dutchman
troweled it on in furious swings, from floor up and around in a huge arc
and back down to floor. He fired it, and simultaneously some of the
enemy gunners managed to angle a projector sharply enough to reach the
further ranks of the Patrolmen. Then mingled the flashing,
scintillating, gassy glare of the thermite and the raving energy of the
pirates' beam to make of that confined space a veritable inferno.

But the paste had done its work, and as the semi-circle of wall fell out
the soldiers of the Lens leaped through the hole in the still-glowing
wall to struggle hand-to-hand against the pirates, now making a
desperate last stand. The semi-portables and other heavy ordnance
powered from the _Brittania_ were of course useless. Pistols were
ineffective against the pirates' armor of hard alloy; hand-rays were
equally impotent against its defensive shields. Now heavy hand-grenades
began to rain down among the combatants, blowing Patrolmen and pirates
alike to bits--for the outlaw chiefs cared nothing that they killed many
of their own men if in so doing they could take toll of the Law. And
worse, a crew of gunners was swiveling a mighty projector around upon
its hastily-improvised mount to cover that sector of the compartment in
which the policemen were most densely massed.

But the minions of the Law had one remaining weapon, carried expressly
for this eventuality. The space-axe--a combination and sublimation of
battle-axe, mace, bludgeon, and lumberman's picaroon, a massively
needle-pointed implement of potentialities limited only by the physical
strength and bodily agility of its wielder.

Now all the men of the _Britannia's_ storming party were Valerians, and
therefore were big, hard, fast, and agile; and of them all their
sergeant leader was the biggest, hardest, fastest, and most agile. When
the space-tempered apex of that thirty-pound monstrosity, driven by the
four-hundred-odd pounds of rawhide and whalebone that was his body,
struck pirate armor that armor gave way. Nor did it matter whether or
not that hellish beak of steel struck a vital part after crashing
through the armor. Head or body, leg or arm, the net result was the
same; a man does not fight effectively when he is breathing space in
lieu of atmosphere.

VanBuskirk perceived the danger to his men in the slowly turning
projector and for the first time called his chief.

"Kim," he spoke in level tones into his microphone. "Blast that
delta-ray, will you?.... Or have they cut this beam, so you can't
hear me?.... Guess they have."

"They've cut our communication," he informed his troopers then. "Keep
them off me as much as you can and I'll attend to that delta-ray outfit
myself."

Aided by the massed interference of his men he plunged toward the
threatening mechanism, hewing to right and to left as he strode. Beside
the temporary projector-mount at last, he aimed a tremendous blow at the
man at the delta-ray controls; only to feel the axe flash
instantaneously to its mark and strike it with a gentle push, and to see
his intended victim float effortless away from the blow. The pirate
commander had played his last card: vanBuskirk floundered, not only
weightless, but inertialess as well!

But the huge Dutchman's mind, while not mathematical, was even faster
than his muscles, and not for nothing had he spent arduous weeks in
inertialess tests of strength and skill. Hooking feet and legs around a
convenient wheel he seized the enemy operator and jammed his helmeted
head down between the base of the mount and the long, heavy steel lever
by means of which it was turned. Then, throwing every ounce of his
wonderful body into the effort, he braced both feet against the
projector's grim barrel and heaved. The helmet flew apart like an
eggshell, blood and brains gushed out in nauseous blobs: but the
delta-ray projector was so jammed that it would not soon again become a
threat.

Then vanBuskirk drew himself across the room toward the main control
panel of the warship. Officer after officer he pushed aside, then
reversed two double-throw switches, restoring gravity and inertia to the
riddled cruiser.

In the meantime the tide of battle had continued in favor of the Patrol.
Few survivors though there were of the black-and-silver force, of the
pirates there were still fewer; fighting now a desperate and hopeless
defensive. But in this combat quarter was not, _could_ not be thought
of, and Sergeant vanBuskirk again waded into the fray. Four times more
his horribly effective hybrid weapon descended like the hammer of Thor,
cleaving and crushing its way through steel and flesh and bone. Then,
striding to the control board, he manipulated switches and dials, then
again spoke evenly to Kinnison.

"You can hear me now, can't you?.... All mopped up--come and get the
dope!"

The specialists, headed by Master Technician LaVerne Thorndyke, had been
waiting strainingly for that word for minutes. Now they literally flew
at their tasks; in furious haste, but following rigidly and in perfect
coordination a pre-arranged schedule. Every control and lead, every
bus-bar and immaterial beam of force was traced and checked. Instruments
and machines were dismantled, sealed mechanisms were ruthlessly torn
apart by jacks or sliced open with cutting beams. And everywhere, every
thing and every movement was being photographed, charted, and
diagrammed.

"Getting the idea now, Kim," Thorndyke said finally, during a brief lull
in his work. "A sweet system...."

"Look at this!" a mechanic interrupted. "Here's a machine that's all
shot to hell!"

The shielding cover had been torn from a monstrous fabrication of metal,
apparently a motor or generator of an exceedingly complex type. The
insulation of its coils and windings had fallen away in charred
fragments, its copper had melted down in sluggish, viscous streams.

"That's what we're looking for!" Thorndyke shouted. "Check those leads!
Alpha!"

"Seven-three-nine-four!" and the minutely careful study went on until:

"That's enough; we've got everything we need now. Have you draftsmen and
photographers got everything down solid?"

"On the boards!" and "In the cans!" rapped out the two reports as one.

"Then let's go!"

"And go _fast_!" Kinnison ordered, briskly. "I'm afraid we're going to
run out of time as it is!"

All hands hurried back into the _Brittania_, paying no attention to the
bodies littering the decks. So desperate was the emergency, each man
knew, that nothing could be done about the dead, whether friend or foe.
Every resource of mechanism, of brain and of brawn, must needs be
strained to the utmost if they themselves were not soon to be in similar
case.

"Can you talk, Nels?" demanded Kinnison of his Communications Officer,
even before the air-lock had closed.

"No, sir, they're blanketing us solid," that worthy replied instantly.
"Space's so full of static you couldn't drive a power-beam through it,
let alone a communicator. Couldn't talk direct, anyway--look where we
are," and he pointed out in the tank their present location.

"Hm...m...m. Couldn't have got much farther away without jumping
the galaxy entirely. Boskone got a warning, either from that ship back
there or from the disturbance. They're undoubtedly concentrating on us
now.... One of them will spear us with a tractor, just as sure as
hell's a man-trap...."

The fledgling commander rammed both hands into his pockets and thought
in black intensity. He _must_ get this data back to Base--but how?
_HOW?_ Henderson was already driving the vessel back toward Sol with
every iota of her inconceivable top speed, but it was out of the
question even to hope that she would ever get there. The life of the
_Brittania_ was now, he was coldly certain, to be measured in hours--and
all too scant measure, even of them. For there must be hundreds of
pirate vessels even now tearing through the void, forming a gigantic net
to cut off her return to Base. Fast though she was, one of that
barricading horde would certainly manage to clamp on a tractor--and when
that happened her night was done.

Nor could she fight. She had conquered one first-class war-vessel of the
public enemy, it was true; but at what awful cost! One fresh vessel
could blast his crippled mount out of space; nor would there be only
one. Within a space of minutes after the attachment of a tracer the
_Brittania_ would be surrounded by the cream of Boskone's fighters.
There was only one chance; and slowly, thoughtfully, and finally grimly,
young Lieutenant Kinnison--now and briefly Captain Kinnison--decided to
take it.

"Listen, everybody!" he ordered. "We _must_ get this information back to
Base, and we can't do it in the _Britannia_. The pirates are bound to
catch us, and our chance in another fight is exactly zero. We'll have to
abandon ship and take to the lifeboats, in the hope that at least one
will be able to get through.

"The technicians and specialists will take all the data they
got--information, descriptions, diagrams, pictures, everything--boil it
down, and put it on a spool of tape. They will make about a hundred
copies of it. The crew and the Valerian privates will man boats starting
with Number Twenty One and blast off as soon as you can get your tapes.
Once away, use very little detectable power, or better yet no power at
all, until you're sure the pirates have chased the _Brittania_ a good
many parsecs away from where you are.

"The rest of us--specialists and the Valerian non-coms--will go last.
Twenty boats, two men to a boat, and each man will have a spool. We'll
start launching when we're as far as it's safe to go. Each boat will be
strictly on its own. Do it any way you can; but some way, _any_ way, get
your spool back to Base. There's no use in me trying to impress you with
the importance of this stuff; you know what it means as well as I do.

"Boatmates will be drawn by lot. The quartermaster will write all our
names--and his own, to make it forty even--on slips of paper and draw
them out of a helmet two at a time. If two navigators, such as Henderson
and I, are drawn together, both names go back into the pot. Get to
work!"

Twice the name of "Kinnison" came out together with that of another
skilled in astronautics and was replaced. The third time, however, it
came out paired with "vanBuskirk," to the manifest joy of the giant
Valerian and to the approval of the crowd as well.

"That was a break for me, Kim!" the sergeant called, over the cheers of
his fellows. "I'm _sure_ of getting back now!"

"That's throwing the oil, big fellow--but I don't know of anybody I'd
rather have at my back than you," Kinnison replied, with a boyish grin.

The pairings were made; DeLameters, spare batteries, and other equipment
were checked and tested; the spools of tape were sealed in their
corrosion-proof containers and distributed; and Kinnison sat talking
with the Master Technician.

"So they've solved the problem of the really efficient reception and
conversion of cosmic radiation!" Kinnison whistled softly through his
teeth. "And a sun--even a small one--radiates the energy given off by
the annihilation of one-to-several million tons of matter per second!
SOME power!"

"That's the story, Skipper, and it explains completely why their ships
have been so much superior to ours. They could have installed faster
drives even than the _Brittania's_--they probably will, now that it has
become necessary. Also, if the bus-bars in that receptor-convertor had
been a few square centimeters larger in cross-section, they could have
held their wall-shield, even against our duodec bomb. Then what?....
They had plenty of intake, but not quite enough distribution."

"They have atomic motors, the same as ours; just as big and just as
efficient," Kinnison coagitated. "But those motors are all we _have_
got, while they use them, and at full power, too, simply as first-stage
exciters for the cosmic-energy screens. Blinding blue blazes, what
power! Some of us have _got_ to get back, Verne. If we don't, Boskone's
got the whole galaxy by the tail, and civilization is sunk without a
trace."

"I'll say so; but also I'll say this for those of us who don't get
back--it won't be for lack of trying. Well, better I go check my boat.
If I don't see you again, Kim old man, clear ether!"

They shook hands briefly and Thorndyke strode away. Enroute, however, he
paused beside the quartermaster and signalled to him to disconnect his
communicator.

"Clever lad, Allerdyce!" Thorndyke whispered, with a grin. "Kinda loaded
the dice a trifle once or twice, didn't you? I don't think anybody but
me smelled a rat, though. Certainly neither the skipper nor Henderson
did, or you'd've had it to do over again."

"At least one team has got to get through," Allerdyce replied, quietly
and obliquely, "and the strongest teams we can muster will find the
going none too easy. Any team made up of strength and weakness is a weak
team. Kinnison, our only Lensman, is of course the best man aboard this
buzz-buggy. Who would you pick for number two?"

"VanBuskirk, of course, the same as you did. I wasn't criticising you,
man, I was complimenting you, and thanking you, in a roundabout way, for
giving me Henderson. He's got plenty of what it takes, too."

"It wasn't 'vanBuskirk, of course,' by any means," the quartermaster
rejoined. "It's mighty hard to figure either you or Henderson third, to
say nothing of fourth, in any kind of company, however fast--mentally
and physically. However, it seemed to me that you fitted in better with
the pilot. I could hand-pick only two teams without getting caught at
it--you spotted me as it was--but I think I picked the two strongest
teams possible. One of you will get through--if none of you four can
make it, nobody could."

"Well, here's hoping, anyway. Thanks again. See you again some time,
maybe--clear ether!"

Chief Pilot Henderson had, a few minutes since, changed the course of
the cruiser from right-line flight to fantastic, zig-zag leaps through
space, and now he turned frowningly to Kinnison.

"We'd better begin dumping them out pretty soon now, I think," he
suggested. "We haven't detected anything yet, but according to the
figures it won't be long now; and after they get their traps set we'll
run out of time mighty quick."

"Right," and one after another, but even so several light-years apart in
space, eighteen of the small boats were launched into the void. In the
control room there were left only Henderson and Thorndyke with
vanBuskirk and Kinnison, who were of course to be the last to leave the
vessel.

"All right, Hen, now we'll try out your roulette-wheel
director-by-chance," Kinnison said, then went on, in answer to
Thorndyke's questioning glance: "A bouncing ball on an oscillating
table. Every time the ball carroms off a pin it shifts the course
through a fairly large, but unpredictable angle. Pure chance--we thought
it might cross them up a little."

Hairline beams were connected from panels to pins, and soon four
interested spectators looked on while, with no human guidance, the
_Brittania_ lurched and leaped even more erratically than she had done
under Henderson's direction. Now, however, the ever-changing vectors of
her course were as unexpected and surprising to her passengers as to any
possible external observer.

One more lifeboat left the vessel, and only the Lensman and his giant
aide remained. While they were waiting the required few minutes before
their own departure, Kinnison spoke.

"Bus, there's one more thing we ought to do, and I've just figured out
how to do it. We don't want this ship to fall into the pirates' hands
intact, as there's a lot of stuff in her that would probably be as new
to them as it was to us. They know we got the best of that ship of
theirs, but they don't know what we did or how. On the other hand, we
want her to drive on as long as possible after we leave her--the farther
away from us she gets, the better our chance of getting away. We should
have something to touch off those duodec torpedoes we have left--all
seven at once--at the first touch of a spy beam; both to keep them from
studying her and to do a little damage if possible--they'll go inert and
pull her up close as soon as they get a tracer on her. Of course we
can't do it by stopping the spy-ray altogether, with a spy-screen, but I
think I can establish an R7TX7M field outside our regular screens that
will interfere with a TX7 just enough--say one-tenth of one percent--to
actuate a relay in the field-supporting beam."

"One-tenth of one percent of one milliwatt is one microwatt, isn't it?
Not much power, I'd say, but that's a little out of my line. Go
ahead--I'll observe while you're busy."

Thus it came about that, a few minutes later, the immense sky-rover of
the Galactic Patrol darted along entirely untenanted. And it was her
non-human helmsman, operating solely by chance, that prolonged the chase
far more than even the most optimistic member of her crew could have
hoped. For the pilots of the pirate pursuers were intelligent, and
assumed that their quarry also was directed by intelligence. Therefore
they aimed their vessels for points toward which the _Brittania_ should
logically go; only and maddeningly to watch her go somewhere else.
Senselessly she hurled herself directly toward enormous suns, once
grazing one so nearly that the harrying pirates gasped at the
foolhardiness of such exposure to lethal radiation. For no reason at all
she shot straight backward, almost into a cluster of pirate craft, only
to dash off on another unexpected tangent before the startled outlaws
could lay a beam against her.

But finally she did it once too often. Flying between two vessels, she
held her line the merest fraction of a second too long. Two tractors
lashed out and the three vessels flashed together, zone to zone to zone.
Then, instantly, the two pirate ships became inert, to anchor in space
their wildly fleeing prey. Then spy-beams licked out, to explore the
_Brittania's_ interior.

At the touch of those beams, light and delicate as they were, the relay
clicked and the torpedoes let go. Those frightful shells were so
designed and so charged that one of them could demolish any inert
structure known to man: what of seven? There was an explosion to stagger
the imagination and which must be left to the imagination, since no
words in any language of the galaxy can describe it adequately.

The _Brittania_, literally blown to bits, more-than-half fused and
partially volatilized by the inconceivable fury of the outburst, was
hurled in all directions in streamers, droplets, chunks, and masses;
each component part urged away from the center of pressure by the
ragingly compressed gases of detonation. Furthermore, each component was
now of course inert and therefore capable of giving up its full measure
of kinetic energy to any inert object with which it should come in
contact.

One mass of wreckage, so fiercely sped that its victim had time neither
to dodge nor become inertialess, crashed full against the side of the
nearer attacker. Meteorite screens flared brilliantly violet and went
down. The full-driven wall-shield held; but so terrific was the
concussion that what few of the crew were not killed outright would take
no interest in current events for many hours to come.

The other, slightly more distant attacker was more fortunate. Her
commander had had time to render her inertialess, and as she rode
lightly away, ahead of the outermost, most tenuous fringe of vapor, he
reported succinctly to his headquarters all that had transpired. There
was a brief interlude of silence, then a speaker gave tongue.

"Helmuth, speaking for Boskone," snapped from it. "Your report is
neither complete nor conclusive. Find, study, photograph, and bring in
to headquarters every fragment and particle pertaining to the wreckage,
paying particular attention to all bodies or portions thereof."

"Helmuth, speaking for Boskone!" roared from the general-wave
unscrambler. "Commanders of all vessels, of every class and tonnage,
upon whatever mission bound, attention! The vessel referred to in our
previous message has been destroyed, but it is feared that some or all
of her personnel were allowed to escape. Every unit of that personnel
must be killed before he has opportunity to communicate with any Patrol
base. Therefore cancel your present orders, whatever they may be, and
proceed at maximum blast to the region previously designated. Scour that
entire volume of space. Beam out of existence every vessel whose papers
do not account unquestionably for every intelligent being aboard.
Investigate every possible avenue of escape. More detailed orders will
be given each of you upon your nearer approach to the neighborhood under
search."

CHAPTER  4                                                      _Escape_

Space-suited complete except for helmets, and with those ready to hand,
Kinnison and vanBuskirk sat in the tiny control room of their lifeboat
as it drifted inert through inter-stellar space. Kinnison was poring
over charts taken from the _Brittania's_ pilot room; the sergeant was
gazing idly into a detector plate.

"No clear ether yet, I don't suppose," the captain remarked, as he
rolled up a chart and tossed it aside.

"No let-up for a second; they're not taking any chances at all. Found
out where we are? Alsakan ought to be hereabouts somewhere, hadn't it?"

"Yeah. Not close, though, even for a ship--out of the question for us.
Nothing much inhabited around here, either, to say nothing of being
civilized. Scarcely one to the block. Don't think I've ever been out
here before; have you?"

"Off my beat entirely. How long do you figure it'll be before it's safe
for us to blast off?"

"Can't start blasting until your plates are clear. Anything we can
detect can detect us as soon as we start putting out power."

"We may be in for a spell of waiting, then...." VanBuskirk broke off
suddenly and his tone changed to one of tense excitement. "Help,
Noshabkeming, help! Look at that!"

"Blinding blue blazes!" Kinnison exclaimed, staring into the plate.
"With all macro-universal space and all eternity to play around in, why
in all space's hells did she have to come back here and now?"

For there, right in their laps, not a hundred miles away, lay the
_Brittania_ and her two pirate captors!

"Better go free, hadn't we?" whispered vanBuskirk.

"Daren't!" Kinnison grunted. "At this range they'd spot us in a split
second. Acting like a hunk of loose metal's our only chance. We'll be
able to dodge any flying chunks, I think.... there she goes!"

From their coign of vantage the two Patrolmen saw their gallant ship's
terrific end; saw the one pirate vessel suffer collision with the flying
fragment; saw the other escape inertialess; saw her disappear.

The inert pirate vessel had now almost exactly the same velocity as the
lifeboat, both in speed and in direction; only very slowly were the
large craft and the small approaching each other. Kinnison stood rigid,
staring into his plate, his nervous hands grasping the switches whose
closing, at the first sign of detection, would render them inertialess
and would pour full blast into their driving projectors. But minute
after minute passed and nothing happened.

"Why don't they _do_ something?" he burst out, finally. "They know we're
here--there isn't a detector made that could be badly enough out of
order to miss us at this distance. Why, they can _see_ us from there,
with no detectors at all!"

"Asleep, unconscious, or dead," vanBuskirk diagnosed, "and they're not
asleep. Believe me, Kim, that ship was nudged. She must've been hit hard
enough to lay her whole crew out cold.... and say, she's got a
standard emergency inlet port--how about it, huh?"

Kinnison's mind leaped eagerly at the daring suggestion of his
subordinate, but he did not reply at once. Their first, their _only_
duty, concerned the safety of two spools of tape. But if the lifeboat
lay there inert until the pirates regained control of their craft,
detection and capture were certain. The same fate was as certain should
they attempt flight with all nearby space so full of enemy fliers.
Therefore, hare-brained though it appeared at first glance, vanBuskirk's
wild idea was actually the safest course!

"All right, Bus, we'll try it. We'll take a chance on going free and
using a tenth of a dyne of drive for a hundredth of a second. Get into
the lock with your magnets."

The lifeboat flashed against the pirate's armored side and the sergeant,
by deftly manipulating his two small hand-magnets, worked it rapidly
along the steel plating, toward the driving jets. There, in the
conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors, was
indeed the emergency inlet port, with its Galactic Standard controls.

In a few minutes the two warriors were inside, dashing toward the
control room. There Kinnison glanced at the board and heaved a sigh of
relief.

"Fine! Same type as the one we studied. Same race, too," he went on,
eyeing the motionless forms scattered about the floor. Seizing one of
the bodies, he propped it against a panel thus obscuring a multiple
lens.

"That's the eye overlooking the control room," he explained
unnecessarily. "We can't cut their headquarters visi-beams without
creating suspicion, but we don't want them looking around in here until
after we've done a little stage-setting."

"But they'll get suspicious anyway when we go free," vanBuskirk
protested.

"Sure, but we'll arrange for that later. First thing we've got to do is
to make sure that all the crew except possibly one or two in here, are
really dead. Don't beam unless you have to; we want to make it look as
though everybody got killed or fatally injured in the crash."

A complete tour of the vessel, with a grim and distasteful
accompaniment, was made. Not all of the pirates were dead, or even
disabled; but, unarmored as they were and taken completely by surprise,
the survivors could offer but little resistance. A cargo port was opened
and the _Brittania's_ lifeboat was drawn inside. Then back to the
control room, where Kinnison picked up another body and strode to the
main panels.

"This fellow," he announced, "was hurt badly, but managed to get to the
board. He threw in the free switch, like this, and then full-blast
drive, so. Then he pulled himself over to the steering globe and tried
to lay course back toward headquarters, but couldn't quite make it. He
died with the course set right there. Not exactly toward Sol, you
notice--that would be too much of a coincidence--but close enough to
help a lot. His bracelet got caught in the guard, like this. There is
clear evidence as to exactly what happened. Now we'll get out of range
of that eye, and let the body that's covering it float away naturally."

"Now what?" asked vanBuskirk, after the two had hidden themselves.

"Nothing whatever until we have to," was the reply. "Wish we could go on
like this for a couple of weeks, but no chance. Headquarters will get
curious pretty quick as to why we're shoving off."

Even as he spoke a furious burst of noise erupted from the communicator;
a noise which meant:

"Vessel F47U596! Where are you going, and why? Report!"

At that brusk command one of the still forms struggled weakly to its
knees and tried to frame words, but fell back dead.

"Perfect!" Kinnison breathed into vanBuskirk's ear. "Couldn't have been
better. Now they'll probably take their time about rounding us up....
maybe we can get back to somewhere near Tellus, after all....
Listen, here comes some more." The communicator was again
sending. "See if you can get a line on their transmitter."

"If there are any survivors able to report, do so at once!" Kinnison
understood the dynamic cone to say. Then, the voice moderating as though
the speaker had turned from his microphone to someone nearby, it went
on, "No one answers, sir. This, you know, is the ship that was lying
closest to the new Patrol ship when she exploded; so close that her
navigator did not have time to go free before collision with the debris.
The crew were apparently all killed or incapacitated by the shock."

"If any of the officers survive have them brought in for trial," a more
distant voice commanded, savagely. "Boskone has no use for bunglers
except to serve as examples. Have the ship seized and returned here as
soon as possible."

"Could you trace it, Bus?" Kinnison demanded. "Even one line on their
headquarters would be mighty useful."

"No, it came in scrambled--couldn't separate it from the rest of the
static out there. Now what?"

"Now we eat and sleep. Particularly and most emphatically, we sleep."

"Watches?"

"No need; I'll be awakened in plenty of time if anything happens. My
Lens, you know."

They ate ravenously and slept prodigiously; then ate and slept again.
Rested and refreshed, they studied charts, but vanBuskirk's mind was
very evidently not upon the maps before them.

"You understand that jargon, and it doesn't even sound like a language
to me," he pondered. "It's the Lens, of course. Maybe it's something
that shouldn't be talked about?"

"No secret--not among us, at least," Kinnison assured him. "The Lens
receives as pure thought any pattern of force which represents, or is in
any way connected with, thought. My brain receives this thought in
English, since that is my native language. At the same time my ears are
practically out of circuit, so that I actually hear the English language
instead of whatever noise is being made. I do not hear the foreign
sounds at all. Therefore I haven't the slightest idea what the pirates'
language sounds like, since I have never heard any of it.

"Conversely, when I want to talk to someone who doesn't know any
language I do, I simply think into the Lens and direct its force at him,
and he thinks I am talking to him in his own mother tongue. Thus, you
are hearing me now in perfect Valerian Dutch, even though you know that
I can speak only a dozen or so words of it, and those with a vile
American accent. Also, you are hearing it in my voice, even though you
know I am actually not saying a word, since you can see that my mouth is
wide open and that neither my lips, tongue, nor vocal cords are moving.
If you were a Frenchman you would be hearing this in French; or, if you
were a Manarkan and couldn't talk at all, you would be getting it as
regular Manarkan telepathy."

"Oh.... I see.... I think," the astounded Dutchman gulped. "Then
why couldn't you talk back to them through their phones?"

"Because the Lens, although a mighty fine and versatile thing, is not
omnipotent," Kinnison replied, dryly. "It sends out only thought; and
thought-waves, lying below the level of the ether, cannot affect a
microphone. The microphone, not being itself intelligent, cannot receive
thought. Of course I can broadcast a thought--everybody does, more or
less--but without a Lens at the other end I can't reach very far. Power,
they tell me, comes with practice--I'm not so good at it yet."

"You can receive a thought.... everybody broadcasts.... Then you
can read minds?" vanBuskirk stated, rather than asked.

"When I want to, yes. That was what I was doing while we were mopping
up. I demanded the location of their base from every one of them alive,
but none of them knew it. I got a lot of pictures and descriptions of
the buildings, layout, arrangements and personnel of the base, but not a
hint as to where it is in space. The navigators were all dead, and not
even the Arisians understand death. But that's getting pretty deep into
philosophy and it's time to eat again. Let's go!"

Days passed uneventfully, but finally the communicator again began to
talk. Two pirate ships were closing in upon the supposedly derelict
vessel; discussing with each other the exact point of convergence of the
three courses.

"I was hoping we'd be able to communicate with Prime Base before they
caught up with us," Kinnison remarked. "But I guess it's no dice--I
can't get anybody on my Lens and the ether's as full of interference as
ever. They're a suspicious bunch, and they aren't going to let us get
away with a single thing if they can help it. You've got that duplicate
of their communications unscrambler built?"

"Yes--that was it you just listened to. I built it out of our own stuff,
and I've gone over the whole ship with a cleaner. There isn't a trace,
not even a finger-print, to show that anybody except her own crew has
ever been aboard."

"Good work! This course takes us right through a planetary system in a
few minutes and we'll have to unload there. Let's see.... this chart
marks planets two and three as inhabited, but with a red reference
number, eleven twenty-seven. Um...m... that means practically
unexplored and unknown. No landing ever made... no patrol
representation or connection.... no commerce.... state of
civilization unknown.... scanned only once, in the Third Galactic
Survey, and that was a hell of a long time ago. Not so good,
apparently--but maybe all the better for us, at that. Anyway, it's a
forced landing, so get ready to shove off."

They boarded their lifeboat, placed it in the cargo-lock, opened the
outer port upon its automatic block, and waited. At their awful galactic
speed the diameter of a solar system would be traversed in such a small
fraction of a second that observation would be impossible, to say
nothing of computation. They would have to act first and compute later.

They flashed into the strange system. A planet loomed terrifyingly
close; at their frightful velocity almost invisible even upon their
ultra-vision plates. The lifeboat shot out, becoming inert as it passed
the screen. The cargo-port swung shut. Luck had been with them; the
planet was scarcely a million miles away. While vanBuskirk drove toward
it, Kinnison made hasty observations.

"Could have been better--but could have been a lot worse," he reported.
"This is planet four. Uninhabited, which is very good. Three, though, is
clear over across the sun, and Two isn't any too close for a space-suit
flight--better than eighty million miles. Easy enough as far as distance
goes--we've all made longer hops in our suits--but we'll be open to
detection for about fifteen minutes. Can't be helped, though....
here we are!"

"Going to land her free, huh?" vanBuskirk whistled. "What a chance!"

"It'd be a bigger one to take the time to land her inert. Her power will
hold--I hope. We'll inert her and match intrinsics with her when we come
back--we'll have more time then."

The lifeboat stopped instantaneously, in a free landing, upon the
uninhabited, desolate, rocky soil of the strange world. Without a word
the two men leaped out, carrying fully packed knapsacks. A portable
projector was then dragged out and its fierce beam directed into the
base of the hill beside which they had come to earth. A cavern was
quickly made, and while its glassy walls were still smoking hot the
lifeboat was driven within it. With their DeLameters the two wayfarers
then undercut the hill, so that a great slide of soil and rock
obliterated every sign of the visit. Kinnison and vanBuskirk could find
their vessel again, from their accurately-taken bearings; but, they
hoped, no one else could.

Then, still without a word, the two adventurers flashed upward. The
atmosphere of the planet, tenuous and cold though it was, nevertheless
so sorely impeded their progress that minutes of precious time were
required for the driving projectors of their suits to force them through
its thin layer. Eventually, however, they were in interplanetary space
and were flying at quadruple the speed of light. Then vanBuskirk spoke.

"Landing the boat, hiding it, and this trip are the danger spots. Heard
anything yet?"

"No, and I don't believe we will. I think probably we've lost them
completely. Won't know definitely, though, until after they catch the
ship, and that won't be for ten minutes yet. We'll be landed by then."

A world now loomed beneath them; a pleasant, Earthly-appearing world of
scattered clouds, green forests, rolling plains, wooded and snow-capped
mountain-ranges, and rolling oceans. Here and there were to be seen what
looked like cities, but Kinnison gave them a wide berth; electing to
land upon an open meadow in the shelter of a black and glassy cliff.

"Ah, just in time: they're beginning to talk," Kinnison announced.
"Unimportant stuff yet, opening the ship and so on. I'll relay the talk
as nearly verbatim as possible when it gets interesting." He fell
silent, then went on in a sing-song tone, as though he were reciting
from memory, which in effect he was:

"'Captains of ships P4J263 and EQ69B47 calling Helmuth! We have stopped
and have boarded the F47U596. Everything is in order and as deduced and
reported by your observers. Everyone aboard is dead. They did not all
die at the same time, but they all died from the effects of the
collision. There is no trace of outside interference and all the
personnel are accounted for.'

"'Helmuth, speaking for Boskone. Your report is inconclusive. Search the
ship minutely for tracks, prints, scratches. Note any missing supplies
or misplaced items of equipment. Study carefully all mechanisms,
particularly converters and communicators, for signs of tampering or
dismantling.'

"Whew!" whistled Kinnison. "They'll find where you took that
communicator apart, Bus, just as sure as hell's a man-trap!"

"No, they won't," declared vanBuskirk as positively. "I did it with
rubber-nosed pliers, and if I left a scratch or a scar or a print on it
I'll eat it, tubes and all!"

A pause.

"'We have studied everything most carefully, Oh Helmuth, and find no
trace of tampering or visit.'

"Helmuth again: 'Your report is still inconclusive. Whoever did what has
been done is probably a Lensman, and certainly has _brains_. Give me the
present recorded serial number of all port openings, and the exact
number of times you have opened each port.'

"Ouch!" groaned Kinnison. "If that means what I think it does, all
hell's out for noon. Did you see any numbering recorders on those ports?
I didn't--of course neither of us thought of such a thing. Hold it--here
comes some more stuff.

"'Port-opening recorder serial numbers are as follows'... don't mean
a thing to us.... 'we have opened the emergency inlet port once and
the starboard main lock twice. No other port at all.'

"And here's Helmuth again: 'Ah, as I thought. The emergency port was
opened once by outsiders, and the starboard cargo port twice. The
Lensman came aboard, headed the ship toward Sol, took his lifeboat
aboard, listened to us, and departed at his leisure. And this in the
very midst of our fleet, the entire personnel of which was supposed to
be looking for him! How supposedly intelligent spacemen could be guilty
of such utter and indefensible stupidity....' He's tellin' 'em
plenty, Bus, but there's no use repeating it. The tone can't be
reproduced, and it's simply taking the hide right off their backs....
here's some more.... 'General broadcast! Ship F47U596 in its
supposedly derelict condition flew from the point of destruction of the
Patrol ship, on course....' No use quoting, Bus, he's simply giving
directions for scouring our whole Line of flight.... Fading
out--they're going on, or back. This outfit, of course, is good for only
the closest kind of close-up work."

"And we're out of the frying pan into the fire, huh?"

"Oh, no; we're a lot better off than we were. We're on a planet and not
using any power they can trace. Also, they've got to cover so much
territory that they can't comb it very fine, and that gives the rest of
the fellows a break. Furthermore...."

A crushing weight descended upon his back, and the Patrolmen found
themselves fighting for their lives. From the bare, supposedly evidently
safe rack face of the cliff there had emerged rope-tentacled
monstrosities in a ravenously attacking swarm. In the savage blasts of
DeLameters hundreds of the gargoyle horde vanished in vivid flares of
radiance, but on they came; by thousands and, it seemed, by millions.
Eventually the batteries energizing the projectors became exhausted.
Then flailing coil met shearing steel, fierce-driven parrot beaks
clanged against space-tempered armor, bulbous heads pulped under
hard-swung axes; but not for the fractional second necessary for
inertialess flight could the two win clear. Then Kinnison sent out his
SOS.

"A Lensman calling help! A Lensman calling help!" he broadcast with the
full power of mind and Lens, and immediately a sharp, clear voice poured
into his brain:

"Coming, wearer of the Lens! Coming at speed to the cliff of the
Catlats. Hold until I come! I arrive in thirty...."

Thirty what? What possible intelligible relative measure of that unknown
and unknowable concept, Time, can be conveyed by thought alone?

"Keep slugging, Bus!" Kinnison panted. "Help is on the way. A local
cop--voice sounds like it could be a woman--will be here in thirty
somethings. Don't know whether it's thirty minutes or thirty days; but
we'll still be there."

"Maybe so and maybe not," grunted the Dutchman. "Something's coming
besides help. Look up and see if you see what I think I do."

Kinnison did so. Through the air from the top of the cliff there was
hurtling downward toward them a veritable dragon: a nightmare's horror
of hideously reptilian head, of leathern wings, of viciously fanged
jaws, of frightfully taloned feet, of multiple knotty arms, of long,
sinuous, heavily-scaled serpent's body. In fleeting glimpses through the
writhing tentacles of his opponents Kinnison perceived little by little
the full picture of that unbelievable monstrosity: and, accustomed as he
was to the outlandish denizens of worlds scarcely known to man, his very
senses reeled.

CHAPTER  5                                        _Worsel to the Rescue_

As the quasi-reptilian organism descended the cliff-dwellers went mad.
Their attack upon the two Patrolmen, already vicious, became insanely
frantic. Abandoning the gigantic Dutchman entirely, every Catlat within
reach threw himself upon Kinnison and so enwrapped the Lensman's head,
arms, and torso that he could scarcely move a muscle. Then entwining
captors and helpless man moved slowly toward the largest of the openings
in the cliff's obsidian face.

Upon that slowly moving mass vanBuskirk hurled himself, deadly space-axe
swinging. But, hew and smite as he would, he could neither free his
chief from the grisly horde enveloping him nor impede measurably that
horde's progress toward its goal. However, he could and did cut away the
comparatively few cables confining Kinnison's legs.

"Clamp a leg-lock around my waist, Kim," he directed, the flashing
thought in no whit interfering with his prodigious axe-play, "and as
soon as I get a chance, before the real tussle comes, I'll couple us
together with all the belt-snaps I can reach--wherever we're going we're
going together! Wonder why they haven't ganged up on me, too, and what
that lizard is doing? Been too busy to look, but thought he'd've been on
my back before this."

"He won't be on your back. That's Worsel, the lad who answered my call.
I told you his voice was funny? They can't talk or hear--use telepathy,
like the Manarkans. He's cleaning them out in great shape. If you can
hold me for three minutes he'll have the lot of them whipped."

"I can hold you for three minutes against all the vermin between here
and Andromeda," vanBuskirk declared. "There, I've got four snaps on
you."

"Not too tight, Bus," Kinnison cautioned. "Leave enough slack so you can
cut me loose if you have to. Remember that the spools are more important
than any one of us. Once inside that cliff we'll be all washed up--even
Worsel can't help us there--so drop me rather than go in yourself."

"Um," grunted the Dutchman, non-committally. "There, I've tossed my
spool out onto the ground. Tell Worsel that if they get us he's to pick
it up and carry on. We'll go ahead with yours, inside the cliff if
necessary."

"I said cut me loose if you can't hold me!" Kinnison snapped, "and I
meant it. That's an official order. Remember it!"

"Official order be damned!" snorted vanBuskirk, still plying his
ponderous mace. "They won't get you into that hole without breaking me
in two, and that will be a job of breaking in anybody's language. Now
shut your pan," he concluded grimly. "We're here, and I'm going to be
too busy, even to think, very shortly."

He spoke truly. He had already selected his point of resistance, and as
he reached it he thrust the head of his mace into the crack behind the
open trap-door, jammed its shaft into the shoulder-socket of his armor,
set blocky legs and Herculean arms against the cliffside, arched his
mighty back, and held. And the surprised Catlats, now inside the gloomy
fastness of their tunnel, thrust anchoring tentacles into crevices in
the wall and pulled; harder, ever harder.

Under the terrific stress Kinnison's heavy armor creaked as its
air-tight joints accommodated themselves to their new and unusual
positions. That armor, or space-tempered alloy, of course would not give
way--but what of its anchor?

Well it was for Kimball Kinnison that day, and well for our present
civilization, that the _Brittania's_ quartermaster had selected Peter
vanBuskirk for the Lensman's mate; for death, inevitable and horrible,
resided within that cliff, and no human frame of Earthly growth, however
armored, could have borne for even a fraction of a second the violence
of the Catlats' pull.

But Peter vanBuskirk, although of Earthly-Dutch ancestry, had been born
and reared upon the planet Valeria, and that massive planet's
gravity--over two and one-half times Earth's--had given him a physique
and a strength almost inconceivable to us life-long dwellers upon small,
green Terra. His head, as has been said, towered seventy-eight inches
above the ground; but at that he appeared squatty because of his
enormous spread of shoulder and his startling girth. His bones were
elephantine--they had to be, to furnish adequate support and leverage
for the incredible masses of muscle overlaying and surrounding them. But
even vanBuskirk's Valerian strength was now being taxed to the
uttermost.

The anchoring chains hummed and snarled as the clamps bit into the
rings. Muscles writhed and knotted, tendons stretched and threatened to
snap; sweat rolled down his mighty back. His jaws locked in agony and
his eyes started from their sockets with the effort; but still
vanBuskirk held.

"Cut me loose!" commanded Kinnison at last. "Even you can't take much
more of that. No use letting them break your back.... _Cut_, I tell
you.... I said _CUT_, you big, dumb, Valerian ape!"

But if vanBuskirk heard or felt the savagely-voiced commands of his
chief he gave no heed. Straining to the very ultimate fiber of his
being, exerting every iota of loyal mind and every atom of
Brobdingnagian frame: grimly, tenaciously, stubbornly the gigantic
Dutchman held.

Held while Worsel of Velantia, that grotesquely hideous, that
fantastically reptilian ally, plowed toward the two Patrolmen through
the horde of Catlats; a veritable tornado of rending fang and shearing
talon, of beating wing and crushing snout, of mailed hand and trenchant
tail:

Held while that demon incarnate drove closer and closer, hurling entire
Catlats and numberless dismembered fragments of Catlats to the four
winds as he came:

Held until Worsel's snake-like body, a supple and sentient cable of
living steel, tipped with its double-edged, razor-keen, scimitar-like
sting, slipped into the tunnel beside Kinnison and wrought grisly havoc
among the Catlats close-packed there!

As the terrific tension upon him was suddenly released vanBuskirk's own
efforts hurled him away from the cliff. He fell to the ground, his
overstrained muscles twitching uncontrollably, and on top of him fell
the fettered Lensman. Kinnison, his hands now free, unfastened the
clamps linking his armor to that of vanBuskirk and whirled to confront
the foe--but the fighting was over. The Catlats had had enough of Worsel
of Velantia; and, screaming and shrieking in baffled rage, the last of
them were disappearing into their caves.

VanBuskirk got shakily to his feet. "Thanks for the help, Worsel, we
were just about to run out of time...." he began, only to be
silenced by an insistent thought from the grotesquely monstrous
stranger.

"Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you cannot screen your
minds!" came urgent mental commands. "These Catlats are a very minor
pest of this planet Delgon. There are others worse by far. Fortunately,
your thoughts are upon a frequency never used here--if I had not been so
very close to you I would not have heard you at all--but should the
Overlords have a listener upon that band your unshielded thinking may
already have done irreparable harm. Follow me. I will slow my speed to
yours, but hurry all possible!"

"You tell 'im, Chief," vanBuskirk said, and fell silent; his mind as
nearly a perfect blank as his iron will could make it.

"This is a screened thought, through my Lens," Kinnison took up the
conversation. "You don't need to slow down on our account--we can
develop any speed you wish. Lead on!"

The Velantian leaped into the air and flashed away in headlong flight.
Much to his surprise the two human beings kept up with him effortlessly
upon their inertialess drives, and after a moment Kinnison directed
another thought.

"If time is an object, Worsel, know that my companion and I can carry
you anywhere you wish to go at a speed hundreds of times greater than
this that we are using," he vouchsafed.

It developed that time was of the utmost possible importance and the
three closed in. Mighty wings folded back, hands and talons gripped
armor chains, and the group, inertialess all, shot away at a pace that
Worsel of Velantia had never imagined even in his wildest dreams of
speed. Their goal, a small, featureless tent of thin sheet metal,
occupying a barren spot in a writhing, crawling expanse of lushly green
jungle, was reached in a space of minutes. Once inside, Worsel sealed
the opening and turned to his armored guests.

"We can now think freely in open converse. This wall is the carrier of a
screen through which no thought can make its way."

"This world you call by a name I have interpreted as Delgon," Kinnison
began, slowly. "You are a native of Velantia, a planet now beyond the
sun. Therefore I assumed that you were taking us to your space-ship.
Where is that ship?"

"I have no ship," the Velantian replied, composedly, "nor have I need of
one. For the remainder of my life--which is now to be measured in a few
of your hours--this tent is my only..."

"No ship!" vanBuskirk broke in. "I hope we won't have to stay on this
Noshabkeming-forgotten planet forever--and I'm not very keen on going
much further in that lifeboat, either."

"We may not have to do either of those things," Kinnison reassured his
sergeant. "Worsel comes of a long-lived tribe, and the fact that he
thinks his enemies are going to get him in a few hours doesn't make it
true, by any means--there are three of us to reckon with now. Also, when
we need a space-ship we'll get one, if we have to build it. Now, let's
find out what this is all about. Worsel, start at the beginning and
don't skip a thing. Between us we can surely find a way out, for all of
us."

Then the Velantian told his story. There was much repetition, much
roundabout thinking, as some of the concepts were so bizarre as to defy
transmission, but finally the Patrolmen had a fairly complete picture of
the situation then obtaining within that strange solar system.

The inhabitants of Delgon were bad, being characterized by a type and a
depth of depravity impossible for a human mind to visualize. Not only
were the Delgonians enemies of the Velantians in the ordinary sense of
the word; not only were they pirates and robbers; not only were they
their masters, taking them both as slaves and as food-cattle; but there
was something more, something deeper and worse, something only partially
transmissible from mind to mind--a horribly and repulsively Saturnalian
type of mental and intellectual, as well as biological, parasitism. This
relationship had gone on for ages, and during those ages rebellion was
impossible, as any Velantian capable of leading such a movement
disappeared before he could make any headway at all.

Finally, however, a thought-screen had been devised, behind which
Velantia developed a high science of her own. The students of this
science lived with but one purpose in life, to free Velantia from the
tyranny of the Overlords of Delgon. Each student, as he reached the
zenith of his mental power, went to Delgon, to study and if possible to
destroy the tyrants. And after disembarking upon the soil of that dread
planet no Velantian, whether student or scientist or private adventurer,
had ever returned to Velantia.

"But why don't you lay a complaint against them before the Council?"
demanded vanBuskirk. "They'd straighten things out in a hurry."

"We have not heretofore known, save by the most unreliable and
roundabout reports, that such an organization as your Galactic Patrol
really exists," the Velantian replied, obliquely. "Nevertheless, many
years since, we launched a space-ship toward its nearest reputed base.
However, since that trip requires three normal lifetimes, with deadly
peril in every moment, it will be a miracle if the ship ever completes
it. Furthermore, even if the ship should reach its destination, our
complaint will probably not even be considered because we have not a
single shred of real evidence with which to support it. No living
Velantian has even seen a Delgonian, nor can anyone testify to the truth
of anything I have told you. While we believe that that is the true
condition of affairs, our belief is based, not upon evidence admissible
in a court of law, but upon deductions from occasional thoughts radiated
from this planet. Nor were these thoughts alike in tenor...."

"Skip that for a minute--we'll take the picture as correct," Kinnison
broke in. "Nothing you have said so far shows any necessity for you to
die in the next few hours."

"The only object in life for a trained Velantian is to liberate his
planet from the horrors of subjection to Delgon. Many such have come
here, but not one has found a workable idea; not one has either returned
to or even communicated with Velantia after starting work here. I am a
Velantian. I am here. Soon I shall open that door and get in touch with
the enemy. Since better men than I am have failed, I do not expect to
succeed. Nor shall I return to my native planet. As soon as I start to
work the Delgonians will command me to come to them. In spite of myself
I will obey that command, and very shortly thereafter I shall die, in
what fashion I do not know."

"Snap out of it, Worsel!" Kinnison ordered, bruskly. "That's the rankest
kind of defeatism, and you know it. Nobody ever got to the first
check-station on that kind of fuel."

"You are talking about something now about which you know nothing
whatever." For the first time Worsel's thoughts showed passion. "Your
thoughts are idle--ignorant--vain. You know nothing whatever of the
mental power of the Delgonians."

"Maybe not--I make no claim to being a mental giant--but I do know that
mental power alone cannot overcome a definitely and positively opposed
_will_. An Arisian could probably break my will, but I'll stake my life
that no other mentality in the known Universe can do it!"

"You think so, Earthling?" and a seething sphere of mental force
encompassed the Tellurian's brain. Kinnison's senses reeled at the
terrific impact, but he shook off the attack and smiled.

"Come again, Worsel. That one jarred me to the heels, but it didn't
quite ring the bell."

"You flatter me," the Velantian declared in surprise. "I could scarcely
touch your mind--could not penetrate even its outermost defenses, and I
exerted all my force. But that fact gives me hope. My mind is of course
inferior to theirs, but since I could not influence you at all, even in
direct contact and at full power, you may be able to resist the minds of
the Delgonians. Are you willing to hazard the stake you mentioned a
moment ago? Or rather, I ask you, by the Lens you wear, so to hazard
it--with the liberty of an entire people dependent upon the outcome."

"Why not? The spools come first, of course--but without you our spools
would both be buried now inside the cliff of the Catlats. Fix it so your
people will find these spools and carry on with them in case we fail,
and I'm your man. There--now tell me what we're apt to be up against,
and then let loose your dogs."

"That I cannot do. I know only that they will direct against us mental
forces such as you have never even imagined--I cannot forewarn you in
any respect whatever as to what forms those forces may appear to assume.
I know, however, that I shall succumb to the first bolt of force.
Therefore bind me with these chains before I open the shield. Physically
I am extremely strong, as you know; therefore be sure to put on enough
chains so that I cannot possibly break free, for if I can break away I
shall undoubtedly kill both of you."

"How come all these things here, ready to hand?" asked vanBuskirk, as
the two Patrolmen so loaded the passive Velantian with chains, manacles,
hand-cuffs, leg-irons and straps that he could not move even his tail.

"It has been tried before, many times," Worsel replied bleakly, "but the
rescuers, being Velantians, also succumbed to the force and took off the
irons. Now I caution you, with all the power of my mind--no matter what
you see, no matter what I may command you or beg of you, no matter how
urgently you yourself may wish to do so--DO NOT LIBERATE ME UNDER ANY
CIRCUMSTANCES unless and until things appear exactly as they do now and
that door is shut. Know fully and ponder well the fact that if you
release me while that door is open it will be because you have yielded
to Delgonian force; and that not only will all three of us die,
lingeringly and horribly; but also and worse, that our deaths will not
have been of any benefit to civilization. Do you understand? Are you
ready?"

"I understand--I am ready," thought Kinnison and vanBuskirk as one.

"Open that door."

Kinnison did so. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then
three-dimensional pictures began to form before their eyes--pictures
which they knew existed only in their own minds, yet which were composed
of such solid substance that they obscured from vision everything else
in the material world. At first hazy and indistinct, the scene--for it
was in no sense now a picture--became clear and sharp. And, piling
horror upon horror, sound was added to sight. And directly before their
eyes, blotting out completely even the solid metal of the wall only a
few feet distant from them, the two outlanders saw and heard something
which can be represented only vaguely by imagining Dante's Inferno an
actuality and raised to the Nth power!

In a dull and gloomy cavern there lay, sat, and stood hordes of
_things_. These beings--the "nobility" of Delgon--had reptilian bodies,
somewhat similar to Worsel's, but they had no wings and their heads were
distinctly apish rather than crocodilian. Every greedy eye in the vast
throng was fixed upon an enormous screen which, like that in a
motion-picture theater, walled off one end of the stupendous cavern.

Slowly, shudderingly, Kinnison's mind began to take in what was
happening upon that screen. And it was really happening, Kinnison was
sure of that--this was not a picture any more than this whole scene was
an illusion. It was all an actuality--somewhere.

Upon that screen there were stretched out victims. Hundreds of these
were Velantians, more hundreds were winged Delgonians, and scores were
creatures whose like Kinnison had never seen. And all these were being
tortured: tortured to death both in fashions known to the Inquisitors of
old and in ways of which even those experts had never an inkling. Some
were being twisted outrageously in three-dimensional frames. Others were
being stretched upon racks. Many were being pulled horribly apart,
chains intermittently but relentlessly extending each helpless member.
Still others were being lowered into pits of constantly increasing
temperature or were being attacked by gradually increasing
concentrations of some foully corrosive vapor which ate away their
tissues, little by little. And, apparently the pice de rsistance of
the hellish exhibition, one luckless Velantian, in a spot of hard, cold
light, was being pressed out flat against the screen, as an insect might
be pressed between two panes of glass. Thinner and thinner he became
under the influence of some awful, invisible force; in spite of every
exertion of inhumanly powerful muscles driving body, tail, wings, arms,
legs, and head in every frantic maneuver which grim and imminent death
could call forth.

Physically nauseated, brain-sick at the atrocious visions blasting his
mind and at the screaming of the damned assailing his ears, Kinnison
strove to wrench his mind away, but was curbed savagely by Worsel.

"You _must_ stay! You _must_ pay attention!" commanded the Velantian.
"This is the first time any living being has seen so much--you _must_
help me now! They have been attacking me from the first; but, braced by
the powerful negatives in your mind, I have been able to resist and have
transmitted a truthful picture so far. But they are surprised at my
resistance and are concentrating more force.... I am slipping fast....
you _must_ brace my mind! And when the picture changes--as
change it must, and soon--do not believe it. Hold fast, brothers of the
Lens, for your own lives and for the people of Velantia. There is
more--and worse!"

Kinnison stayed. So did vanBuskirk, fighting with all his stubborn Dutch
mind. Revolted, outraged, nauseated as they were at the sights and
sounds, they stayed. Flinching with the victims as they were fed into
the hoppers of slowly turning mills; wincing at the unbelievable acts of
the boilers, the beaters, the scourgers, the flayers; suffering
themselves every possible and many apparently impossible nightmares of
slow and hideous torture--with clenched fists and locked teeth, with
sweating foreheads over white and straining faces, Kinnison and
vanBuskirk stayed.

The light in the cavern now changed to a strong, greenish-yellow glare;
and in that hard illumination it was to be seen that each dying being
was surrounded by a palely glowing aura. And now, crowning horror of
that unutterably horrible orgy of Sadism resublimed, from the eyes of
each one of the monstrous audience there leaped out visible beams of
force. These beams touched the auras of the dying prisoners; touched and
clung. And as they clung, the auras shrank and disappeared.

The Overlords of Delgon were actually FEEDING upon the ebbing
life-forces of their tortured, dying victims!

CHAPTER  6                                         _Delgonian Hypnotism_

Gradually and so insidiously that the Velantian's dire warnings might as
well never have been uttered, the scene changed. Or rather, the scene
itself did not change, but the observers' perception of it slowly
underwent such a radical transformation that it was in no sense the same
scene it had been a few minutes before; and they felt almost abjectly
apologetic as they realized how unjust their previous ideas had been.

For the cavern was not a torture-chamber, as they had supposed. It was
in reality a hospital, and the beings they had thought victims of
brutalities unspeakable were in reality patients undergoing treatments
and operations for various ills. In proof whereof the patients--who
should have been dead by this time were the early ideas
well-founded--were now being released from the screen-like operating
theater. And not only was each one completely whole and sound in body,
but he was also possessed of a mental clarity, power, and grasp
undreamed-of before his hospitalization and treatment by Delgon's
super-surgeons!

Also the intruders had misunderstood completely the audience and its
behavior. They were really medical students, and the beams which had
seemed to be devouring rays were simply visi-beams, by means of which
each student could follow, in close-up detail, each step of the
operation in which he was most interested. The patients themselves were
living, vocal witnesses of the visitors' mistakenness, for each, as he
made his way through the assemblage of students, was voicing his thanks
for the marvelous results of his particular treatment or operation.

Kinnison now became acutely aware that he himself was in need of
immediate surgical attention. His body, which he had always regarded so
highly, he now perceived to be sadly inefficient; his mind was in even
worse shape than his physique; and both body and mind would be improved
immeasurably if he could get to the Delgonian hospital before the
surgeons departed. In fact, he felt an almost irresistible urge to rush
away toward that hospital; instantly, without the loss of a single
precious second. And, since he had had no reason to doubt the evidence
of his own senses, his conscious mind was not aroused to active
opposition. However, in his--in his subconscious, or his essence, or
whatever you choose to call that ultimate something of his that made him
a Lensman--a "dead slow bell" began to sound.

"Release me and we'll all go, before the surgeons leave the hospital,"
came an insistent thought from Worsel. "But hurry--we haven't much
time!"

VanBuskirk, completely under the influence of the frantic compulsion,
leaped toward the Velantian, only to be checked bodily by Kinnison, who
was foggily trying to isolate and identify one thing about the situation
that did not ring quite true.

"Just a minute, Bus--shut that door first!" he commanded.

"Never mind the door!" Worsel's thought came in a roaring crescendo.
"Release me instantly! Hurry! Hurry, or it will be too late, for all of
us!"

"All this terrific rush doesn't make any kind of sense at all," Kinnison
declared, closing his mind resolutely to the clamor of the Velantian's
thoughts. "I want to go just as badly as you do, Bus, or maybe more
so--but I can't help feeling that there's something screwy somewhere.
Anyway, remember the last thing Worsel said, and let's shut the door
before we unsnap a single chain."

Then something clicked in the Lensman's mind.

"Hypnotism, through Worsel!" he barked, opposition now aflame. "So
gradual that it never occurred to me to build up a resistance. Holy
Klono, what a fool I've been! Fight 'em, Bus--_fight 'em_! Don't let 'em
kid you any more, and pay no attention to anything Worsel sends at you!"
Whirling around, he leaped toward the open door of the tent.

But as he leaped his brain was invaded by such a concentration of force
that he fell flat upon the floor, physically out of control. He must
_not_ shut the door. He _must_ release the Velantian. They _must_ go to
the Delgonian cavern. Fully aware now, however, of the source of the
waves of compulsion, he threw the sum total of his mental power into an
intense negation and struggled, inch-wise, toward the opening.

Upon him now, in addition to the Delgonians' compulsion, beat at
point-blank range the full power of Worsel's mighty mind, demanding
release and compliance. Also, and worse, he perceived that some powerful
mentality was being exerted to make vanBuskirk kill him. One blow of the
Valerian's ponderous mace would shatter helmet and skull, and all would
be over--once more the Delgonians would have triumphed. But the stubborn
Dutchman, although at the very verge of surrender, was still fighting.
One step forward he would take, bludgeon poised aloft, only to throw it
convulsively backward. Then in spite of himself, he would go over and
pick it up, again to step toward his crawling chief.

Again and again vanBuskirk repeated his futile performance while the
Lensman struggled nearer and nearer the door. Finally he reached it and
kicked it shut. Instantly the mental turmoil ceased and the two white
and shaking Patrolmen released the limp, unconscious Velantian from his
bonds.

"Wonder what we can do to help him revive?" gasped Kinnison, but his
solicitude was unnecessary--the Velantian recovered consciousness as he
spoke.

"Thanks to your wonderful power of resistance, I am alive, unharmed, and
know more of our foes and their methods than any other of my race has
ever learned," Worsel thought, feelingly. "But it is of no value
whatever unless I can send it back to Velantia. The thought-screen is
carried only by the metal of these walls; and if I make an opening in
the wall to think through, however small, it will now mean death. Of
course the science of your Patrol has not perfected an apparatus to
drive thought through such a screen?"

"No. Anyway, it seems to me that we'd better be worrying about something
besides thought-screens," Kinnison suggested. "Surely, now that they
know where we are, they'll be coming out here after us, and we haven't
got much of any defense."

"They don't know where we are, or care...." began the Velantian.

"Why not?" broke in vanBuskirk. "Any spy-ray capable of such scanning as
you showed us--I never saw anything like it before--would certainly be
as easy to trace as an out-and-out atomic blast!"

"I sent out no spy-ray or anything of the kind," Worsel thought,
carefully. "Since our science is so foreign to yours, I am not sure that
I can explain satisfactorily, but I shall try to do so. First, as to
what you saw. When that door is open, no barrier to thought exists. I
merely broadcast a thought, placing myself en rapport with the Delgonian
Overlords in their retreat. This condition established, of course I
heard and saw exactly what they heard and saw--and so, equally of
course, did you, since you were also en rapport with me. That is all."

"That's _all_!" echoed vanBuskirk. "What a system! You can do a thing
like that, without apparatus of any kind, and yet say 'that's all'!"

"It is results that count," Worsel reminded him gently. "While it is
true that we have done much--this is the first time in history that any
Velantian has encountered the mind of a Delgonian Overlord and lived--it
is equally true that it was the will-power of you Patrolmen that made it
possible; not my mentality. Also, it remains true that we cannot leave
this room and live."

"Why won't we need weapons?" asked Kinnison, returning to his previous
line of thought.

"Thought-screens are the only defense we will require," Worsel stated
positively, "for they use no weapons except their minds. By mental power
alone they make us come to them; and, once there, their slaves do the
rest. Of course, if my race is ever to rid the planet of them, we must
employ offensive weapons of power. We have such, but we have never been
able to use them. For, in order to locate the enemy, either by telepathy
or by spy-ray, we must open our metallic shields--and the instant we
release those screens we are lost. From those conditions there is no
escape," Worsel concluded, hopelessly.

"Don't be such a pessimist," Kinnison commanded. "There's a lot of
things not tried yet. For instance, from what I have seen of your
generator equipment and the pattern of that screen, you don't need a
metallic conductor any more than a snake needs hips. Maybe I'm wrong,
but I think we're a bit ahead of you there. If a deVilbiss projector can
handle that screen--and I think it can, with special tuning--vanBuskirk
and I can fix things in an hour so that all three of us can walk out of
here in perfect safety--from mental interference, at least. While we're
trying it out, tell us all the new stuff you got on them just now, and
anything else that by any possibility may prove useful. And remember you
said this is the first time any of you had been able to cut them off.
That fact ought to make them sit up and take notice--probably they'll
stir around more than they ever did before. Come on, Bus--let's tear
into it!"

The deVilbiss projectors were rigged and tuned. Kinnison had been
right--they worked. Then plan after plan was made, only to be discarded
as its weaknesses were pointed out.

"Whichever way we look there are too many 'ifs' and 'buts' to suit me,"
Kinnison summed up the situation finally. "_If_ we can find them, and
_if_ we can get up close to them without losing our minds to them, we
could clean them out _if_ we had some power in our accumulators. So I'd
say the first thing for us to do is to get our batteries charged. We saw
some cities from the air, and cities always have power. Lead us to
power, Worsel--almost _any_ kind of power--and we'll soon have it in our
guns."

"There are cities, yes," Worsel was not at all enthusiastic,
"dwelling-places of the ordinary Delgonians; the people you saw being
eaten in the cavern of the Overlords. As you saw, they resemble us
Velantians to a certain extent. Since they are of a lower culture and
are much weaker in life force than we are, however, the Overlords prefer
us to their own slave races.

"To visit any city of Delgon is out of the question. Every inhabitant of
every city is an abject slave and his brain is an open book. Whatever he
sees, whatever he thinks, is communicated instantly to his master. And I
now perceive that I may have misinformed you as to the Overlords'
ability to use weapons. While the situation has never arisen, it is only
logical to suppose that as soon as we are seen by any Delgonian the
controllers will order all the inhabitants of the city to capture us and
bring us to them."

"What a guy!" interjected vanBuskirk. "Did you ever see his top for
looking at the bright side of life?"

"Only in conversation," the Lensman replied. "When the ether gets
crowded, you notice, he's right in there, blasting away and not saying a
word. But to get back to the question of power. I've got only a few
minutes of free flight left in my battery; and with your mass, you must
be just about out. Come to think of it, didn't you land a trifle hard
when we sat down here?"

"Fairly--I went into the ground up to my knees."

"I thought so. We've _got_ to get some power, and the nearest city--out
of the question or not--is the best place to get it. Luckily, it isn't
far."

VanBuskirk grunted. "As far as I'm concerned it might as well be on
Mars, considering what's between here and there. You can take my
batteries and I'll wait here."

"On your emergency food, water, and air? That's out!"

"What else, then?"

"I can spread my field to cover all three of us," proposed Kinnison.
"That will give us at least one minute of free flight--almost, if not
quite, enough to clear the jungle. They have night here; and, like us,
the Delgonians are night-sleepers. We start at dusk, and tonight we
recharge our batteries."

The following hour, during which the huge, hot sun dropped to the
horizon, was spent in intense discussion, but no significant improvement
upon the Lensman's plan could be devised.

"It is time to go," Worsel announced, curling out one extensile eye
toward the vanishing orb. "I have recorded all my findings. Already I
have lived longer and, through you, have accomplished more, than anyone
has ever believed possible. I am ready to die--I should have been dead
long since."

"Living on borrowed time's a lot better than not living at all,"
Kinnison replied, with a grin. "Link up.... Ready?.... Go!"

He snapped his switches and the close-linked group of three shot into
the air and away. As far as the eye could reach in any direction
extended the sentient, ravenous growth of the jungle; but Kinnison's
eyes were not upon that fantastically inimical green carpet. His whole
attention was occupied by two all-important meters and by the task of so
directing their flight as to gain the greatest possible horizontal
distance with the power at his command.

Fifty seconds of flashing flight, then:

"All right, Worsel, get out in front and get ready to pull!" Kinnison
snapped. "Ten seconds of drive left, but I can hold us free for five
seconds after my driver quits. Pull!"

Kinnison's driver expired, its small accumulator completely exhausted;
and Worsel, with his mighty wings, took up the task of propulsion.
Inertialess still, with Kinnison and vanBuskirk grasping his tail, each
beat a mile-long leap, he struggled on. But all too soon the battery
powering the neutralizers also went dead and the three began to plummet
downward at a sharper and sharper angle, in spite of the Velantian's
Herculean efforts to keep them aloft.

Some distance ahead of them the green of the jungle ended in a sharply
cut line, beyond which there was a heavy growth of fairly open forest. A
couple of miles of this and there was the city, their objective--so near
and yet so far!

"We'll either just make the timber or we just won't," Kinnison, mentally
plotting the course, announced dispassionately. "Just as well if we land
in the jungle, I think. It'll break our fall, anyway--hitting solid
ground inert at this speed would be bad."

"If we land in the jungle we will never leave it," Worsel's thought did
not slow the incredible tempo of his prodigious pinions, "but it makes
little difference whether I die now or later."

"It does to us, you pessimistic croaker!" flared Kinnison. "Forget that
dying complex of yours for a minute! Remember the plan, and follow it!
We're going to strike the jungle, about ninety or a hundred meters in.
If you come in with us you die at once, and the rest of our scheme is
all shot to hell. So when we let go, you go ahead and land in the woods.
We'll join you there, never fear: our armor will hold long enough for us
to cut our way through a hundred meters of any jungle that ever
grew--even this one.... Get ready, Bus.... Leggo!"

They dropped. Through the lush succulence of close-packed upper leaves
and tentacles they crashed; through the heavier, woodier main branches
below; through to the ground. And there they fought for their lives; for
those voracious plants nourished themselves not only upon the soil in
which their roots were imbedded, but also upon anything organic unlucky
enough to come within their reach. Flabby but tough tentacles encircled
them; ghastly sucking disks, exuding a potent corrosive, slobbered wetly
at their armor; knobbed and spiky bludgeons whanged against tempered
steel as the monstrous organisms began dimly to realize that these
particular tid-bits were encased in something far more resistant than
skin, scales, or bark.

But the Lensman and his giant companion were not quiescent. They came
down oriented and fighting. VanBuskirk, in the van, swung his frightful
space-axe as a reaper swings his scythe--one solid, short step forward
with each swing. And close behind the Valerian strode Kinnison, his own
flying axe guarding the giant's head and back. Forward they pressed, and
forward--not the strongest, toughest stems of that monstrous weed could
stay vanBuskirk's Herculean strength; not the most agile of the striking
tendrils and curling tentacles could gain a manacling hold in the face
of Kinnison's flashing speed in cut, thrust, and slash.

Masses of the obscene vegetation crashed down upon their heads from
above, revoltingly cupped orifices sucking and smacking; and they were
showered continually with floods of the opaque, corrosive sap, to the
action of which even their armor was not entirely immune. But, hampered
as they were and almost blinded, they struggled on; while behind them an
ever-lengthening corridor of demolition marked their progress.

"Ain't we got fun?" grunted the Dutchman, in time with his swing. "But
we're quite a team at that, chief--brains and brawn, huh?"

"Uh uh," dissented Kinnison, his weapon flying. "Grace and poise; or, if
you want to be really romantic, ham and eggs."

"Rack and ruin will be more like it if we don't break out before this
confounded goo eats through our armor. But we're making it--the stuff's
thinning out and I think I can see trees up ahead."

"It is well if you can," came a cold, clear thought from Worsel, "for I
am sorely beset. Hasten or I perish!"

At that thought the two Patrolmen forged ahead in a burst of even more
furious activity. Crashing through the thinning barriers of the jungle's
edge, they wiped their lenses partially clear, glanced quickly about,
and saw the Velantian. That worthy was "sorely beset" indeed. Six
animals--huge, reptilian, but lithe and active--had him down. So
helplessly immobile was Worsel that he could scarcely move his tail, and
the monsters were already beginning to gnaw at his scaly, armored hide.

"I'll put a stop to that, Worsel!" called Kinnison; referring to the
fact, well known to all us moderns, that any real animal, no matter how
savage, can be controlled by any wearer of the Lens. For, no matter how
low in the scale of intelligence the animal is, the Lensman can get in
touch with whatever mind the creature has, and reason with it.

But these monstrosities, as Kinnison learned immediately, were not
really animals. Even though of animal form and mobility, they were
purely vegetable in motivation and behavior, reacting only to the
stimuli of food and of reproduction. Weirdly and completely inimical to
all other forms of created life, they were so utterly noisome, so
completely alien that the full power of mind and Lens failed entirely to
gain rapport.

Upon that confusedly writhing heap the Patrolmen flung themselves,
terrible axes destructively a-swing. In turn they were attacked
viciously, but this battle was not long to endure. VanBuskirk's first
terrific blow knocked one adversary away, almost spinning end over end.
Kinnison took out one, the Dutchman another, and the remaining three
were no match at all for the humiliated and furiously raging Velantian.
But it was not until the monstrosities had been gruesomely carved and
torn apart, literally to bits, that they ceased their insensately
voracious attacks.

"They took me by surprise," explained Worsel, unnecessarily, as the
three made their way through the night toward their goal, "and six of
them at once were too much for me. I tried to hold their minds, but
apparently they have none."

"How about the Overlords?" asked Kinnison. "Suppose they have received
any of our thoughts? Bus and I may have done some unguarded radiating."

"No," Worsel made positive reply. "The thought-screen batteries, while
small and of very little actual power, have a very long service-life.
Now let us go over again the next steps of our plan of action."

Since no more untoward events marred their progress toward the Delgonian
city, they soon reached it. It was for the most part dark and quiet, its
somber buildings merely blacker blobs against a background of black.
Here and there, however, were to be seen automotive vehicles moving
about, and the three invaders crouched against a convenient wall,
waiting for one to come along the "street" in which they were.
Eventually one did.

As it passed them Worsel sprang into headlong, gliding flight,
Kinnison's heavy knife in one gnarled fist. And as he sailed he
struck--lethally. Before that luckless Delgonian's brain could radiate a
single thought it was in no condition to function at all; for the head
containing it was bouncing in the gutter. Worsel backed the peculiar
conveyance along the curb and his two companions leaped into it, lying
flat upon its floor and covering themselves from sight as best they
could.

Worsel, familiar with things Delgonian and looking enough like a native
of the planet to pass a casual inspection in the dark, drove the car.
Streets and thoroughfares he traversed at reckless speed, finally
drawing up before a long, low building; entirely dark. He scanned his
surrounding with care, in every direction. Not a creature was in sight.

"All is clear, friends," he thought, and the three adventurers sprang to
the building's entrance. The door--it had a door, of sorts--was locked,
but vanBuskirk's axe made short work of that difficulty. Inside, they
braced the wrecked door against intrusion, then Worsel led the way into
the unlighted interior. Soon he flashed his lamp about him and stepped
upon a black, peculiarly-marked tile set into the floor, whereupon a
harsh, white light illuminated the room.

"Cut it, before somebody takes alarm!" snapped Kinnison.

"No danger of that," replied the Velantian. "There are no windows in any
of these rooms; no light can be seen from outside. This is the control
room of the city's power plant. If you can convert any of this power to
your uses, help yourselves to it. In this building is also a Delgonian
arsenal. Whether or not anything in it can be of service to you is of
course for you to say. I am now at your disposal."

Kinnison had been studying the panels and instruments. Now he and
vanBuskirk tore open their armor--they had already learned that the
atmosphere of Delgon, while not as wholesome for them as that in their
suits, would for a time at least support human life--and wrought
diligently with pliers, screw-drivers, and other tools of the
electrician. Soon their exhausted batteries were upon the floor beneath
the instrument panel, absorbing greedily the electrical fluid from the
bus-bars of the Delgonians.

"Now, while they're getting filled up, let's see what these people use
for guns. Lead on, Worsel!"

CHAPTER  7                                _The Passing of the Overlords_

With Worsel in the lead, the three interlopers hastened along a
corridor, past branching and intersecting hallways, to a distant wing of
the structure. There, it was evident, manufacturing of weapons was
carried on; but a quick study of the queer-looking devices and
mechanisms upon the benches and inside the storage racks lining the
walls convinced Kinnison that the room could yield them nothing of
permanent benefit. There were high-powered beam-projectors, it was true;
but they were so heavy that they were not even semi-portable. There were
also hand-weapons of various peculiar patterns, but without exception
they were ridiculously inferior to the DeLameters of the Patrol in every
respect of power, range, controllability, and storage capacity.
Nevertheless, after testing them out sufficiently to make certain of the
above findings, he selected an armful of the most powerful models and
turned to his companions.

"Let's go back to the power room," he urged. "I'm nervous as a cat. I
feel stark naked without my batteries; and if anyone should happen to
drop in there and do away with them, we'd be sunk without a trace."

Loaded down with Delgonian weapons they hurried back the way they had
come. Much to Kinnison's relief he found that his forebodings had been
groundless; the batteries were still there, still absorbing
myriawatt-hour after myriawatt-hour from the Delgonian generators.
Staring fixedly at the innocuous-looking containers, he frowned in
thought.

"Better we insulate those leads a little heavier and put the cans back
in our armor," he suggested finally. "They'll charge just as well in
place, and it doesn't stand to reason that this drain of power can go on
for the rest of the night without _somebody_ noticing it. And when that
happens those Overlords are bound to take plenty of steps--none of which
we have any idea what are going to be."

"You must have power enough now so that we can all fly away from any
possible trouble," Worsel suggested.

"But that's just exactly what we're _not_ going to do!" Kinnison
declared, with finality. "Now that we've found a good charger, we aren't
going to leave it until our accumulators are chock-a-block. It's coming
in faster than full draft will take it out, and we're going to get a
full-charge if we have to stand off all the vermin of Delgon to do it."

Far longer than Kinnison had thought possible they were unmolested, but
finally a couple of Delgonian engineers came to investigate the
unprecedented shortage in the output of their completely automatic
generators. At the entrance they were stopped, for no ordinary tools
could force the barricade vanBuskirk had erected behind that portal.
With leveled weapons the Patrolmen stood, awaiting the expected attack,
but none developed. Hour by hour the long night wore away, uneventfully.
At daybreak, however, a storming party appeared and massive battering
rams were brought into play.

As the dull, heavy concussions reverberated throughout the building the
Patrolmen each picked up two of the weapons piled before them and
Kinnison addressed the Velantian.

"Drag a couple of those metal benches across that corner and coil up
behind them," he directed. "They'll be enough to ground any stray
charges--if they can't see you they won't know you're here, so probably
nothing much will come your way direct."

The Velantian demurred, declaring that he would not hide while his two
companions were fighting his battle, but Kinnison silenced him fiercely.

"Don't be a fool!" the Lensman snapped. "One of these beams would fry
you to a crisp in ten seconds, but the defensive fields of our armor
could neutralize a thousand of them, from now on. Do as I say, and do it
quick, or I'll shock you unconscious and toss you in there myself!"

Realizing that Kinnison meant exactly what he said, and knowing that,
unarmored as he was, he was utterly unable to resist either the
Tellurian or their common foe, Worsel unwillingly erected his metallic
barrier and coiled his sinuous length behind it. He hid himself just in
time.

The outer barricade had fallen, and now a wave of reptilian forms
flooded into the control room. Nor was this any ordinary investigation.
The Overlords had studied the situation from afar, and this wave was one
of heavily-armed--for Delgon--soldiery. On they came, projectors
fiercely aflame; confident in their belief that nothing could stand
before their blasts. But how wrong they were! The two repulsively erect
bipeds before them neither burned nor fell. Beams, no matter how
powerful, did not reach them at all, but spent themselves in crackingly
incandescent fury, inches from their marks. Nor were these outlandish
beings inoffensive. Utterly careless of the service-life of the
pitifully weak Delgonian projectors, they were using them at maximum
drain and at extreme aperture--and in the resultant beams the Delgonian
soldier-slaves fell in scorched and smoking heaps. On came reserves,
platoon after platoon, only and continuously to meet the same fate; for
as soon as one projector weakened the invincibly armored man would toss
it aside and pick up another. But finally the last commandeered weapon
was exhausted and the beleaguered pair brought their own DeLameters--the
most powerful portable weapons known to the military scientists of the
Galactic Patrol--into play.

And what a difference! In _those_ beams the attacking reptiles did not
smoke or burn. They simply vanished in a blaze of flaming light, as did
also the nearby walls and a good share of the building beyond! The
Delgonian hordes having disappeared, vanBuskirk shut off his projector.
Kinnison, however, left his on, angling its beam sharply upward;
blasting into fiery vapor the ceiling and roof over their heads;
remarking:

"While we're at it we might as well fix things so that we can make a
quick get-away if we want to."

Then they waited. Waited, watching the needles of their meters creep
ever closer to the "full-charge" marks; waited while, as they suspected,
the distant, cowardly-hiding Overlords planned some other, more
promising line of physical attack.

Nor was it long in developing. Another small army appeared, armored this
time; or, more accurately, advancing behind metallic shields. Knowing
what to expect, Kinnison was not surprised when the beam of his
DeLameter not only failed to pierce one of those shields, but did not in
any way impede the progress of the Delgonian column.

"Well, we're all done here, anyway, as far as I'm concerned," Kinnison
grinned at the Dutchman as he spoke. "My cans've been showing full back
pressure for the last two minutes. How about yours?"

"Same here," vanBuskirk reported, and the two leaped lightly into the
Velantian's refuge. Then, inertialess all, the three shot into the air
at such a pace that to the slow senses of the Delgonian slaves they
simply disappeared. Indeed, it was not until the barrier had been
blasted away and every room, nook, and cranny of the immense structure
had been literally and minutely combed that the Delgonians--and through
their enslaved minds the Overlords--became convinced that their prey had
in some uncanny and unknown fashion eluded them.

Now high in air, the three allies traversed in a matter of minutes the
same distance that had cost them so much time and strife the day before.
Over the monster-infested forest they sped, over the deceptively
peaceful green lushness of the jungle, to slant down toward Worsel's
thought-proof tent. Inside that refuge they snapped off their thought
screens and Kinnison yawned prodigiously.

"Working days and nights both is all right for a while, but it gets
monotonous in time. Since this seems to be the only really safe spot on
the planet, I suggest that we take a day or so off and catch up on our
eats and sleeps."

They slept and ate; slept and ate again.

"The next thing on the program," Kinnison announced then, "is to clean
out that den of Overlords. Then Worsel will be free to help us get going
about our own business."

"You speak lightly indeed of the impossible," Worsel, all glum
despondency, reproved him. "I have already explained why the task is,
and must remain, beyond our power."

"Yes, but you don't quite grasp the possibilities of the stuff we've got
now to work with," the Tellurian replied. "Listen: you could never do
anything because you couldn't see through or work through your
thought-screens. Neither we nor you could, even now, enslave a Delgonian
and make him lead us to the cavern, because the Overlords would know all
about it 'way ahead of time and the slave would lead us anywhere else
except to the cavern. However, one of us can cut his screen and
surrender; possibly keeping just enough screen up to keep the enemy from
possessing his mind fully enough to learn that the other two are coming
along. The big question is--which of us is to surrender?"

"That is already decided," Worsel made instant reply. "I am the
logical--in fact, the _only_ one--to do it. Not only would they think it
perfectly natural that they should overpower me, but also I am the only
one of us three sufficiently able to control his thoughts as to keep
from them the knowledge that I am being accompanied. Furthermore, you
both know that it would not be good for your minds, unaccustomed as they
are to the practice, to surrender their control voluntarily to an
enemy."

"I'll say it wouldn't!" Kinnison agreed, feelingly. "I might do it if I
had to, but I wouldn't like it and I don't think I'd ever quite get over
it. I hate to put such a horrible job off onto you, Worsel, but you're
undoubtedly the best equipped to handle it--and even you may have your
hands full."

"Yes...." the Velantian said, thoughtfully. "While the undertaking
is no longer an absolute impossibility, it is difficult... very. In
any event you will probably have to beam me yourselves if we succeed in
reaching the cavern.... The Overlords will see to that. If so, do it
without regret--know that I expect it and am well content to die in that
fashion. Any one of my fellows would be only too glad to be in my place;
meaning what it does to all Velantia. Know also that I have already
reported what is to occur, and that your welcome to Velantia is assured,
whether or not I accompany you there."

"I don't think I'll have to kill you, Worsel," Kinnison replied, slowly,
picturing in detail exactly what that steel-hard reptilian body would be
capable of doing when, unshackled, its directing mind was completely
taken over by an utterly soulless and conscienceless Overlord. "If you
can't keep from going off the deep end, of course you'll get tough and I
know you're mighty hard to handle. However, as I told you back there, I
think I can beam you unconscious without killing you. I may have to burn
off a few scales, but I'll try not to do any damage that can't be
repaired."

"If you can so stop me it will be wonderful indeed. Are we ready?"

They were ready. Worsel opened the door and in a moment was hurtling
through the air, his giant wings arrowing him along at a pace no winged
creature of Earth could even approach. And, following him easily at a
little distance, floated the two Patrolmen upon their inertialess
drives.

During that long flight scarcely a thought was exchanged, even between
Kinnison and vanBuskirk. To direct a thought at the Velantian was of
course out of the question. All lines of communication with him had been
cut; and furthermore his mind, able as it was, was being taxed to the
ultimate cell in doing what he had set out to do. And the two Patrolmen
were reluctant to converse with each other, even upon their tight-beams,
radios, or sounders, for fear that some slight leakage of thought-energy
might reveal their presence to the everwatchful Overlords. If this
opportunity were lost, they knew, another chance to wipe out that
hellish horde might never present itself.

Land was traversed, and sea; but finally a stupendous range of mountains
reared before them and Worsel, folding back his tireless wings, shot
downward in a screaming, full-weight dive. In his line of flight
Kinnison saw the mouth of a cave, a darker spot of blackness in the
black rock of the mountain's side. Upon the ledged approach there lay a
Delgonian--a guard or lookout, of course.

The Lensman's DeLameter was already in his hand, and at sight of the
guardian reptile he sighted and fired in one fast motion. But, rapid as
it was, it was still too slow--the Overlords had seen that the Velantian
had companions of whom he had been able to keep them in ignorance
theretofore.

Instantly Worsel's wings again began to beat, bearing him off at a wide
angle; and, although the Patrolmen were insulated against his thought,
the meaning of his antics was very plain. He was telling them in every
possible way that the hole below was _not_ the cavern of the Overlords;
that it was over this way; that they were to keep on following him to
it. Then, as they refused to follow him, he rushed upon Kinnison in mad
attack.

"Beam him down, Kim!" vanBuskirk yelled. "Don't take any chances with
that bird!" and leveled his own DeLameter.

"Lay off, Bus!" the Lensman snapped. "I can handle him--a lot easier out
here than on the ground."

And so it proved. Inertialess as he was, the buffetings of the Velantian
affected him not at all; and when Worsel coiled his supple body around
him and began to apply pressure, Kinnison simply expanded his
thought-screen to cover them both, thus releasing the mind of his
temporarily inimical friend from the Overlord's grip. Instantly the
Velantian became himself, snapped on his own shield, and the three
continued as one their interrupted downward course.

Worsel came to a halt upon the ledge, beside the practically incinerated
corpse of the lookout; knowing, unarmored as he was, that to go further
meant sudden death. The armored pair, however, shot on into the gloomy
passage. At first they were offered no opposition--the Overlords had had
no time to muster an adequate defense. Scattering handfuls of slaves
rushed them, only to be blasted out of existence as their hand-weapons
proved useless against the armor of the Galactic Patrol. Defenders
became more numerous as the cavern itself was approached, but neither
were they allowed to stay the Patrolman's progress. Finally a palely
shimmering barrier of metal appeared to bar their way. Its fields of
force neutralized or absorbed the blasts of the DeLameters, but its
material substance offered but little resistance to a thirty-pound
sledge, swung by one of the strongest men ever produced by any planet
colonized by the humanity of Earth.

Now they were in the cavern itself--the sanctum sanctorum of the
Overlords of Delgon. There was the hellish torture screen; now licked
clean of life. There was the audience which had been so avid, now
milling about in a mob frenzy of panic. There, upon a raised balcony,
were the "big shots" of this nauseous clan; now doing their utmost to
marshal some force able to cope effectively with this unheard-of
violation of their ages-old immunity.

A last wave of Delgonian slaves hurled themselves forward, futile
projectors furiously aflame, only to disappear in the DeLameters' fans
of force. The Patrolmen hated to kill those mindless slaves, but it was
a nasty job that had to be done. The slaves out of the way, those
ravening beams bored on into the massed Overlords.

And now Kinnison and vanBuskirk killed, if not joyously, at least
relentlessly, mercilessly, and with neither sign nor sensation of
compunction. For this unbelievably monstrous tribe needed killing, root
and branch--not a scion or shoot of it should be allowed to survive, to
continue to contaminate the civilization of the galaxy. Back and forth,
to and fro, up and down swept the raging beams; playing on until in all
the vast volume of that gruesome chamber nothing lived save the two grim
figures in its portal.

Assured of this fact, but with DeLameters still in hand, the two
destroyers retraced their way to the tunnel's mouth, where Worsel
anxiously awaited them. Lines of communication again established,
Kinnison informed the Velantian of all that had taken place and the
latter gradually cut down the power of his thought-screen. Soon it was
at zero strength and he reported jubilantly that for the first time in
untold ages, the Overlords of Delgon were off the air!

"But surely the danger isn't over yet!" protested Kinnison. "We couldn't
have got them all in this one raid. Some of them must have escaped, and
there must be other dens of them on this planet somewhere?"

"Possibly, possibly;" the Velantian waved his tail airily--the first
sign of joyousness he had shown. "But their power is broken, definitely
and forever. With these new screens, and with the arms and armament
which, thanks to you, we can now fabricate, the task of wiping them out
completely will be comparatively simple. Now you will accompany me to
Velantia; where, I assure you, the resources of the planet will be put
solidly behind you in your own endeavors. I have already summoned a
space-ship--in less than twelve days we will be back in Velantia and at
work upon your projects. In the meantime...."

"Twelve _days_! Noshabkeming the Radiant!" vanBuskirk exploded, and
Kinnison put in:

"Sure--you forget they haven't got free drive. We'd better hop over and
get our lifeboat, I think. It's not so good, either way, but in our own
boat we'll be open to detection less than an hour, as against twelve
days in the Velantians'. And the pirates may be here any minute. It's as
good as certain that their ship will be stopped and searched long before
it gets back to Velantia, and if we were aboard it'd be just too bad."

"And, since the crew knows about us, the pirates soon will, and it'll be
just too bad, anyway," vanBuskirk reasoned.

"Not at all," interposed Worsel. "The few of my people who know of you
have been instructed to seal that knowledge. I must admit, however, that
I am greatly disturbed by your conceptions of these pirates of space.
You see, until I met you I knew nothing more of the pirates than I did
of your Patrol."

"What a world!" vanBuskirk exclaimed. "No Patrol and no pirates! But at
that, life might be simpler without both of them and without the free
space-drive--more like it used to be in the good old airplane days that
the novelists rave about."

"Of course I could not judge as to that." The Velantian was very
serious. "This in which we live seems to be an out-of-the-way section of
the galaxy; or it may be that we have nothing the pirates want."

"More likely it's simply that, like the Patrol, they haven't got
organized into this district yet," suggested Kinnison. "There are so
many thousands of millions of solar systems in the galaxy that it will
probably be thousands of years yet before the Patrol gets into them
all."

"But about these pirates," Worsel went back to his point. "If they have
such minds as those of the Overlords, they will be able to break the
seals of our minds. However, I gather from your thoughts that their
minds are not of that strength?"

"Not so far as I know," Kinnison replied. "You folks have the most
powerful brains I ever heard of, short of the Arisians. And speaking of
mental power, you can hear thoughts a lot farther than I can, even with
my Lens or with this pirate receiver I've got. See if you can find out
whether there are any pirates in space around here, will you?"

While the Velantian was concentrating, vanBuskirk asked:

"Why, if his mind is so strong, could the Overlords put him under so
much easier than they could us 'weak-minded' human beings?"

"You are confusing 'mind' with 'will,' I think. Ages of submission to
the Overlords made the Velantians' will-power zero, as far as the bosses
were concerned. On the other hand, you and I could raise stubbornness to
sell to most people. In fact, if the Overlords had succeeded in really
breaking us down, back there, the chances are we'd have gone insane."

"Probably you're right--we break, but don't bend, huh?" and the
Velantian was ready to report.

"I have scanned space to the nearer stars--some eleven of your
light-years--and have encountered no intruding entities," he announced.

"Eleven light-years--what a range!" Kinnison exclaimed. "However, that's
only a shade over two minutes for a pirate ship at full blast. But we've
got to take a chance sometime, and the quicker we get started the sooner
we'll get back. We'll pick you up here, Worsel. No use in you going back
to your tent--we'll be back here long before you could reach it. You'll
be safe enough, I think, especially with our spare DeLameters. Let's get
going, Bus!"

Again they shot into the air, again they traversed the airless depths of
interplanetary space. To locate the temporary tomb of their lifeboat
required only a few minutes, to disinter her only a few more. Then again
they braved detection in the void; Kinnison tense at his controls,
vanBuskirk in strained attention listening to and staring at his
unscramblers and detectors. But the ether was still blank as the
lifeboat struck Delgon's atmosphere; it remained blank while the
lifeboat, inert, blasted frantically to match Worsel's intrinsic
velocity.

"All right, Worsel, snap it up!" Kinnison called, and went on to
vanBuskirk, "Now, you big, flat-footed Valerian spacehound, I hope that
spaceman's god of yours will see to it our luck holds good for just
fourteen minutes more. We've had more luck already than we had any right
to expect, but we can put a little more to most God-awful good use!"

"Noshabkeming _does_ bring spacemen luck," insisted the giant, grimacing
a peculiar salute toward a small, golden image set inside his helmet,
"and the fact that you warty, runty, atheistic little space-fleas of
Tellus haven't got sense enough to know it--not even enough sense to
really believe in your own gods, even Klono--doesn't change matters at
all."

"That's tellin' 'em, Bus!" Kinnison applauded. "But if it helps charge
your batteries, go to it.... Ready to blast! Lift!"

The Velantian had come aboard, the tiny air-lock was again tight, and
the little vessel shot away from Delgon toward far Velantia. And still
the ether remained empty as far as the detectors could reach. Nor was
this fact surprising, in spite of the Lensman's fears to the contrary;
for the Patrolmen had given the pirates such an extremely long line to
cover that many days must yet elapse before the minions of Boskone would
get around to visit that unimportant, unexplored, and almost unknown
solar system. Enroute to his home planet Worsel got in touch with the
crew of the Velantian vessel already in space, ordering them to return
to port post-haste and instructing them in detail what to think and how
to act should they be stopped and searched by one of Boskone's raiders.
By the time these instructions had been given, Velantia loomed large
beneath the flying midget. Then, with Worsel as guide, Kinnison drove
over a mighty ocean upon whose opposite shore lay the great city in
which Worsel lived.

"But I would like to have them welcome you as befits what you have done,
and have you go to the Dome!" mourned the Velantian. "Think of it! You
have done a thing which for ages the massed power of the planet has been
trying vainly to accomplish, and yet you insist that I alone take credit
for it!"

"I don't insist on any such thing," argued Kinnison, "even though it's
practically all yours, anyway. I insist only on your keeping us and the
Patrol out of it, and you know as well as I do why you've got to do
that. Tell them anything else you want to. Say that a couple of
pink-haired Chickladorians helped you and then beat it back home. _That_
planet's far enough away so that if the pirates chase them they'll get a
real run for their money. After this blows over you can tell the
truth--but _not until then_.

"And as for us going to the Dome for a grand hocus-pocus, that is
completely and definitely OUT. We're not going anywhere except to the
biggest airport you've got. You're not going to give us anything except
a lot of material and a lot of highly-trained help that can keep their
thoughts sealed.

"We've got to build a lot of heavy stuff fast; and we've got to get
started on it just as quick as Klono and Noshabkeming will let us!"

CHAPTER  8                                     _The Quarry Strikes Back_

Worsel knew his council of scientists, as well he might; since it
developed that he himself ranked high in that select circle. True to his
promise, the largest airport of the planet was immediately emptied of
its customary personnel, which was replaced the following morning by an
entirely new group of workmen.

Nor were these replacements ordinarily laborers. They were young, keen,
and highly trained; taken to a man from behind the thought-screens of
the Scientists. It is true that they had no inkling of what they were to
do, since none of them had ever dreamed of the possibility of such
engines as they were to be called upon to construct.

But, on the other hand, they were well versed in the fundamental
theories and operations of mathematics, and from pure mathematics to
applied mechanics is but a step. Furthermore, they had _brains_; knew
how to think logically, coherently, and effectively; and needed neither
driving nor supervision--only instruction. And best of all, practically
every one of the required mechanisms already existed, in miniature,
within the _Brittania's_ lifeboat; ready at hand for their dissection,
analysis, and enlargement. It was not lack of understanding which was to
slow up the work; it was simply that the planet did not boast machine
tools and equipment large enough or strong enough to handle the
necessarily huge and heavy parts and members required.

While the construction of this heavy machinery was being rushed through,
Kinnison and vanBuskirk devoted their efforts to the fabrication of an
ultra-sensitive receiver, tunable to the pirates' scrambled wave-bands.
With their exactly detailed knowledge, and with the cleverest
technicians and the choicest equipment of Velantia at their disposal,
the set was soon completed.

Kinnison was giving its exceedingly delicate coils their final alignment
when Worsel wriggled blithely into the radio laboratory.

"Hi, Kimball Kinnison of the Lens!" he called gaily. Throwing a few
yards of his serpent's body in lightning loops about a convenient
pillar, he made a horizontal bar of the rest of himself and dropped one
wing-tip to the floor. Then, nonchalantly upside down, he thrust out
three or four eyes and curled their stalks over the Lensman's shoulder,
the better to inspect the results of the mechanics' efforts. Gone was
the morose, pessimistic, death-haunted Worsel entirely; gay, happy,
carefree, and actually frolicsome--if you can imagine a
thirty-foot-long, crocodile-headed, leather-winged python as being
frolicsome!

"Hi, your royal snakeship!" Kinnison retorted in kind. "Still here, huh?
Thought you'd be back on Delgon by this time, cleaning up the rest of
that mess."

"The equipment is not ready, but there's no hurry about that," the
playful reptile unwrapped ten or twelve feet of tail from the pillar and
waved it airily about. "Their power is broken, their race is done. You
are about to try out the new receiver?"

"Yes--going out after them right now," and Kinnison began deftly to
manipulate the micrometric verniers of his dials.

Eyes fixed upon meters and gauges, he listened.... listened.
Increased his power and listened again. More and more power he applied
to his apparatus, listening continually. Suddenly he stiffened, his
hands becoming rock-still. He listened, if possible even more intently
than before; and as he listened his face grew grim and granite-hard.
Then the micrometers began again crawlingly to move, as though he were
tracing a beam.

"Bus! Hook on the focusing beam-antenna!" he snapped. "It's going to
take every milliwatt of power we've got in this hook-up to tap his beam,
but I think I've got Helmuth direct instead of through a pirate-ship
relay!"

Again and again he checked the readings of his dials and of the
directors of his antenna; each time noting the exact time of the
Velantian day.

"There! As soon as we get some time, Worsel, I'd like to work out these
figures with some of your astronomers. They'll give me a right-line
through Helmuth's headquarters--I hope. Some day, if I'm spared, I'll
get another!"

"What kind of news did you get, chief?" asked vanBuskirk.

"Good and bad both," replied the Lensman. "Good in that Helmuth doesn't
believe that we stayed with his ship as long as we did. He's a
suspicious devil, you know, and is pretty well convinced that we tried
to run the same kind of a blazer on him that we did the other time.
Since he hasn't got enough ships on the job to work the whole line, he's
concentrating on the other end. That means that we've got plenty of days
left yet. The bad part of it is that they've got four of our boats
already and are bound to get more. Lord, how I wish I could call the
rest of them! Some of them could certainly make it here before they got
caught."

"Might I then offer a suggestion?" asked Worsel, of a sudden diffident.

"Surely!" the Lensman replied in surprise. "Your ideas have never been
any kind of poppycock. Why so bashful all at once?"

"Because this one is so.... ah.... so peculiarly personal, since
you men regard so highly the privacy of your minds. Our two sciences, as
you have already observed, are vastly different. You are far beyond us
in mechanics, physics, chemistry, and the other applied sciences. We, on
the other hand, have delved much deeper than you have into psychology
and the other introspective studies. For that reason I know positively
that the Lens you wear is capable of enormously greater things than you
are at present able to make it perform. Of course I cannot use your Lens
directly, since it is attuned to your own ego. However, if the idea
appeals to you, I could, with your consent, occupy your mind and use
your Lens to put you en rapport with your fellows. I have not
volunteered the suggestion before because I know how averse your mind is
to any foreign control."

"Not necessarily to foreign control," Kinnison corrected him. "Only to
_enemy_ control. The idea of friendly control never even occurred to me.
That would be an entirely different breed of cats. Go to it!"

Kinnison relaxed his mind completely, and that of the Velantian came
welling in; wave upon friendly, surging wave of benevolent power. And
not only--or not precisely--power. It was more than power; it was a
dynamic poignancy, a vibrant penetrance, a depth and clarity of
perception that Kinnison in his most cogent moments had never dreamed a
possibility. The possessor of that mind knew things, cameo-clear in
microscopic detail, which the keenest minds of Earth could perceive only
as chaotically indistinct masses of mental light and shade, of no
recognizable pattern whatever!

"Give me the thought-pattern of him with whom you wish first to
converse," came Worsel's thought, this time from deep within the
Lensman's own brain.

Kinnison felt a subtle thrill of uneasiness at that new and
ultra-strange dual personality, but thought back steadily: "Sorry--I
can't."

"Excuse me, I should have known that you cannot think in our patterns.
Think, then, of him as a person--as an individual. That will give me, I
believe, sufficient data."

Into the Earthman's mind there leaped a picture of Henderson, sharp and
clear. He felt his Lens actually tingle and throb as a concentration of
vital force such as he had never known poured through his whole being
and into that almost-living creation of the Arisians; and immediately
thereafter he was in full mental communication with the Master Pilot!
And there, seated across the tiny mess-table of their lifeboat, was
LaVerne Thorndyke, the Master Technician.

Henderson came to his feet with a yell as the telepathic message
bombshelled into his brain, and it required several seconds to convince
him that he was not the victim of space-insanity or suffering from any
other form of hallucination. Once convinced, however, he acted--his
lifeboat shot toward far Velantia at maximum blast.

Then: "Nelson! Allerdyce! Thompson! Jenkins! Uhlenhuth! Smith!
Chatway!...." Kinnison called the roll.

Nelson, the specialist in communications, answered his captain's call.
So did Allerdyce, the juggling quartermaster. So did Uhlenhuth, a
technician. So did those in three other boats. Two of these three were
apparently well within the danger zone and might get nipped in their
dash, but their crews elected without hesitation to take the chance.
Four boats, it was already known, had been captured by the pirates. The
others....

"Only eight boats," Kinnison mused. "Not so good--but it could have been
a lot worse--they might have got us all by this time--and maybe some of
them are just out of our reach." Then, turning to the Velantian, who had
withdrawn his mind as soon as the job was done:

"Thanks, Worsel," he said simply. "Some of those lads coming in have got
plenty of just what it takes, and _how_ we can use them!"

One by one the lifeboats made port, where their crews were welcomed
briefly but feelingly before they were put to work. Nelson, one of the
last pair to arrive, was particularly welcome.

"Nels, we need you badly," Kinnison informed him as soon as greetings
had been exchanged. "The pirates have a beam, carrying a peculiarly
scrambled signal, that they can receive and decode through any ordinary
kind of blanketing interference, and you're the best man we've got to
study their system. Some of these Velantian scientists can probably help
you a lot on that--any race that can develop a screen against thought
figures ought to know more than somewhat about vibration in general.
We've got working models of the pirates' instruments, so you can figure
out their patterns and formulas. When you've done that, I want you and
your Velantians to design something that will scramble all the pirates'
communicator beams in space, as far as you can reach. If you can fix
things so they can't talk, any more than we can, it'll help a lot,
believe me!"

"QX, Chief, we'll give it the works," and the radio man called for
tools, apparatus, and electricians.

Then throughout the great airport the many Velantians and the handful of
Patrolmen labored mightily, side by side, and to very good effect
indeed. Slowly the port became ringed about by, and studded everywhere
with, monstrous mechanisms. Everywhere there were projectors:
refractory-throated demons ready to vomit forth every force known to the
expert technicians of the Patrol. There were absorbers, too, backed by
their bleeder resistors, air-gaps, ground-rods, and racks for discharged
accumulators. There, too, were receptors and converters for the cosmic
energy which was to empower many of the devices. There were, of course,
atomic motor-generators by the score, and battery upon battery of
gigantic accumulators. And Nelson's high-powered scrambler was ready to
go to work.

These machines appeared crude, rough, unfinished; for neither time nor
labor had been wasted upon non-essentials. But inside each one the
moving parts fitted with micrometric accuracy and with hair-spring
balance. All, without exception, functioned perfectly.

At Worsel's call, Kinnison climbed up out of a great beam-proof pit, the
top of whose wall was practically composed of tractor-beam projectors.
Pausing only to make sure that a sticking switch on one of the
screen-dome generators had been replaced, he hurried to the heavily
armored control room, where his little force of fellow Patrolmen awaited
him.

"They're coming, boys," he announced. "You all know what to do. There
are a lot more things we could have done if we'd had more time, but as
it is we'll just go to work on them with what we've got," and Kinnison,
again all brisk Captain, bent over his instruments.

In the ordinary course of events the pirate would have flashed up to the
planet with spy-rays out and issuing a pre-emptory demand for the planet
to show a clean bill of health or to surrender instantly such fugitives
as might lately have landed upon it. But Kinnison did not--could
not--wait for that. The spy-rays, he knew, would reveal the presence of
his armament; and such armament most certainly did not belong to this
planet. Therefore he acted first, and everything happened practically at
once.

A tracer lashed out, the pilot-ray of the rim-battery of extraordinarily
powerful tractors. Under their terrific pull the inertialess ship
flashed toward their center of action. At the same moment there burst
into activity Nelson's scrambler, a dome-screen against cosmic-energy
intake, and a full circle of super-powered projectors.

All these things occurred in the twinkling of an eye, and the vessel was
being slowed down by the atmosphere of Velantia before her startled
commander could even realize that he was being attacked. Only the
automatically-reacting defensive screens saved that ship from instant
destruction; but they did so save it and in seconds the pirates' every
weapon was furiously ablaze.

In vain. The defenses of that pit could take it. They were driven by
mechanisms easily able to absorb the output of any equipment mountable
upon a mobile base, and to his consternation the pirate found that his
cosmic-energy intake was at, and remained at, zero. He sent out call
after call for help, but could not make contact with any other pirate
station--ether and sub-ether alike were closed to him, his signals were
blanketed completely. Nor could his drivers, even though operating at
ruinous overload, move him from the geometrical center of that
incandescently flaming pit, so inconceivably rigid were the tractors'
clamps upon him.

And soon his power began to fail. His vessel, designed to operate upon
cosmic-energy intake, carried only enough accumulators for stablization
of power-flow, an amount ridiculously inadequate for a combat as
profligate of energy as this. But strangely enough, as his defenses
weakened, so lessened the power of the attack. It was no part of the
Lensman's plan to destroy this superdreadnaught of the void.

"That was one good thing about the old _Brittania_," he gritted, as he
cut down step by step the power of his beams, "what power she had,
nobody could block her off from!"

Soon the stored-up energy of the battleship was exhausted and she lay
there, quiescent. Then giant pressors went into action and she was
lifted over the wall of the pit, to settle down in an open space beside
it--open, but still under the domes of force.

Kinnison had no needle-rays as yet, the time at his disposal having been
sufficient only for the construction of the absolutely essential items
of equipment. Now, while he debated with his fellows as to what part of
the vessel to destroy in order to wipe out its crew, the pirates
themselves ended the debate. Ports yawned in the vessel's side and they
came out fighting.

For they were not a breed to die like rats in a trap, and they knew that
to remain inside their vessel was to die whenever and however their
captors willed. They knew also that die they must if they could not
conquer. Their surrender, even if it should be accepted, would mean only
a somewhat later death in the lethal chambers of the Law. In the open,
they could at least take some of their foes with them.

Furthermore, not being men as we know men, they had nothing in common
with either human beings or Velantians. Both to them were vermin, as
they themselves were to the beings manning this surprisingly impregnable
fortress here in this waste corner of the galaxy. Therefore,
space-hardened veterans all, they fought, with the insane ferocity and
desperation of the ultimately last stand; but they did not conquer.
Instead, and to the last man, they died.

As soon as the battle was over, before the interference blanketing the
pirates' communicators was cut off, Kinnison went through the captured
vessel, destroying the headquarters visiplates and every automatic
sender which could transmit any kind of a message to any pirate base.
Then the interference was stopped, the domes were released, and the ship
was removed from the field of operations. Then, while Thorndyke and his
reptilian aides--themselves now radio experts of no mean
attainments--busied themselves at installing a high-powered scrambler
aboard her, Kinnison and Worsel scanned space in search of more prey.
Soon they found it, more distant than the first one had been--two solar
systems away--and in an entirely different direction. Tracers and
tractors and interference and domes of force again became the order of
the day. Projectors again raved out in their incandescent might, and
soon another immense cruiser of the void lay beside her sister ship.
Another, and another; then for a long time space was blank.

The Lensman then energized his ultra-receiver, pointing his antenna
carefully into the galatic line to Helmuth's base, as laid down for him
by the Velantian astronomers. Again, so tight and hard was Helmuth's
beam, he had to drive his apparatus so unmercifully that the tube-noise
almost drowned out the signals, but again he was rewarded by hearing
faintly the voice of the pirate Director of Operations:

"....four vessels, all within or near one of those five solar
systems, have ceased communicating; each cessation being accompanied by
a period of blanketing interference of a pattern never before
registered. You two vessels who are receiving these orders are
instructed to investigate that region with the utmost care. Go with
screens out and everything on the trips, and with automatic recorders
set on me here. It is not believed that the Patrol has anything to do
with this, as ability has been shown transcending anything it has been
known to possess. As a working hypothesis it is assumed that one of the
solar systems, hitherto practically unexplored and unknown, is in
reality the seat of a highly advanced race, which perhaps has taken
offense at the attitude or conduct of our first ship to visit them.
Therefore proceed with extreme caution, with a thorough spy-ray search
at extreme range before approaching at all. If you land, use tact and
diplomacy instead of the customary tactics. Find out whether our ships
and crews have been destroyed, or are only being held: and remember,
automatic reporters on me at all times. Helmuth speaking for
Boskone--off!"

For minutes Kinnison manipulated his controls in vain--he could not get
another sound.

"What are you trying to get, Kim?" asked Thorndyke. "Wasn't that
enough?"

"No, that's only half of it," Kinnison returned. "Helmuth's nobody's
fool. He's certainly trying to plot the boundaries of our interference,
and I want to see how he's coming out with it. But no dice. He's so far
away and his beam's so hard I can't work him unless he happens to be
talking almost directly toward us. Well, it won't be long now until
we'll give him some real interference to plot. Now let's see what we can
do about those two other ships that are heading this way."

Carefully as those two ships investigated, and sedulously as they sought
to obey Helmuth's instructions, all their precautions amounted to
exactly nothing. As ordered, they began to spy-ray survey at extreme
range; but even at that range Kinnison's tracers were effective and
those pirates also ceased communicating in a blaze of interference. Then
recent history repeated itself. The details were changed somewhat, since
there were two vessels instead of one; but the pit was of ample size to
accommodate two ships, and the tractors could hold two as well and as
rigidly as one. The conflict was a little longer, the beaming a little
hotter and more coruscant, but the ending was the same. Scramblers and
other special apparatus were installed and Kinnison called his men
together.

"We're about ready to shove off again. Running away has worked twice so
far and should work once more, if we can ring in enough variations on
the theme to keep Helmuth guessing a while longer. Maybe, if the supply
of pirate ships holds up, we can make Helmuth furnish us transportation
clear back to Prime Base!

"Here's the idea. We've got six ships, and enough Velantians have
volunteered to man them--in spite of the fact that they probably won't
get back. Six ships, of course, isn't enough of a task force to fight
its way through Helmuth's fleets; so we'll spread out, covering plenty
of parsecs and broadcasting every watt of interference we can put out,
in as many different shapes and sizes as our generators can figure. We
won't be able to talk to each other, but nobody else can talk, either,
anywhere near us, and that ought to give us a chance. Each ship will be
on its own, like we were before, in the boats; the big difference being
that we'll be in superdreadnaughts.

"Question--should we split up again or stick together? We'd better all
go in one ship, I think--with spools aboard the others, of course. What
do you think?"

They agreed with him to a man and he directed a thought at the
Velantian.

"Now, Worsel, about you fellows here--you probably won't have it so
easy, either. Sooner or later--and sooner would be my guess--Helmuth's
boys will be coming to see you. In force and cocked and primed and with
blood in their eyes. It'll be a battle, not a slaughter."

"Let them come, in whatever force they care to bring. The more who
attack here, the less there will be to halt your progress. This armament
represents the best of that possessed by both your Patrol and the
pirates, with improvements developed by your scientists and ours in full
cooperation. We understand thoroughly its construction, operation, and
maintenance. You may rest assured that the pirates will never levy
tribute upon us, and that any pirate visiting this system will remain in
it--permanently!"

"At-a-snake, Worsel--long may you wiggle!" Kinnison exclaimed. Then,
more seriously, "Maybe, after this is all over, I'll see you again
sometime. If not, goodbye. Goodbye, all Velantia. All set, everybody?
Clear ether--blast off!"

Six ships, one pirate craft, now vessels of the Galactic Patrol, hurled
themselves into and through Velantian air; into and through
interplanetary space; out into the larger, wider, opener emptiness of
the interstellar void. Six ships, each broadcasting with prodigious
power and volume an all-inclusive interference through which not even a
CRX tracer could be driven.

CHAPTER  9                                                   _Breakdown_

Kimball Kinnison sat at the controls, smoking a rare festive cigarette
and smiling; at peace with the entire universe. For this new picture was
in every element a different one from the old. Instead of being in a
pitifully weak and defenseless lifeboat, skulking and hiding, he was in
one of the most powerful battleships afloat, driving boldly at full
blast almost directly toward home. While the Patrolmen were so terribly
few in number that most of them had to work double shifts--Kinnison and
Henderson had to do all the piloting and navigating--they had under them
a full crew of alert and highly-trained Velantians. And the enemy,
instead of being a close-knit group, keeping Helmuth informed moment by
moment of the situation and instantly responsive to his orders, were now
entirely out of communication with each other and with their
headquarters; groping helplessly. Literally as well as figuratively the
pirates were in the dark; the absolute blackness of interstellar space.

Thorndyke entered the room, frowning slightly. "You look like the fabled
Cheshire cat, Kim. I hate to spoil such perfect bliss, but I'm here to
tell you that we ain't out of the woods yet, by seven thousand rows of
big, green, peppermint trees."

"Maybe not," the Lensman returned blithely, "but compared to the jam we
were in a little while back we're not only sitting on top of the world;
we're perched right on the exact apex of the universe. They can't send
or receive reports or orders, and they can't communicate. Even their
detectors are mighty lame--you know how far they can get on
electromagnetics and visual apparatus. Furthermore, there isn't an
identification number, symbol, or name on the outside of this
buzz-buggy. If it ever had one the friction and attrition have worn it
off, clear down to the armor. What can happen that we can't cope with?"

"These engines can happen," the technician responded, bluntly. "The
Bergenholm is developing a meter-jump that I don't like a little bit."

"Does she knock? Or even tick?" demanded Kinnison.

"Not yet," Thorndyke confessed, reluctantly.

"How big a jump?"

"Pretty near two thousandths maximum. Average a thousandth and a half."

"That's hardly a wiggle on the recorder line. Drivers run for months
with bigger jumps than that."

"Yeah--drivers. But of all the troubles anybody ever had with
Bergenholms, a meter-kick was never one of them, and that's what's got
me guessing as to the whichness of the why. I'm not trying to scare
you--yet. I'm just telling you."

The machine referred to was the neutralizer of inertia, the sine qua non
of interstellar speed, and it was not to be wondered at that the
slightest irregularity in its performance was to the technician a matter
of grave concern. Day after day passed, however, and the huge converter
continued to function; taking in and sending out its wonted torrents of
power. It developed not even a tick, and the meter-jump did not grow
worse. And during those days they put an inconceivable distance behind
them.

During all this time their visual instruments remained blank; to all
optical apparatus space was empty save for the normal tenancy of
celestial bodies. From time to time something invisible or beyond the
range of vision registered upon one of the electromagnet detectors, but
so slow were these instruments that nothing came of their signals. In
fact, by the time the warnings were recorded, the objects causing the
disturbance were probably far astern.

One day, however, the Bergenholm quit--cold. There was no laboring, no
knocking, no heating up, no warning at all. One instant the ship was
speeding along in free flight, the next she was lying inert in space.
Practically motionless, for any possible velocity built up by inert
acceleration is scarcely a crawl, as free space-speeds go.

Then the whole crew labored like mad. As soon as they had the massive
covers off, Thorndyke scanned the interior of the machine and turned to
Kinnison.

"I think we can patch her up, but it'll take quite a while. Maybe you'd
be of more use in the control room--this ain't quite as safe as church,
is it, lying here inert?"

"Most of the stuff is on automatic trip, but maybe I'd better keep an
eye on things, at that. Let me know occasionally how you're getting
along," and the Lensman went back to his controls--none too soon.

For one pirate ship was already beaming him viciously. Only the fact
that his defensive armament was upon its automatic trips had saved the
stolen battleship from practically instantaneous destruction. And as the
surprised Lensman began to check his other instruments another
space-ship flashed into being upon his other side and also went to work.

As Kinnison had already remarked more than once, Helmuth was far from
being a fool, and that new and amazingly effective blanketing of his
every means of communication was a problem whose solution was of
paramount importance. Almost every available ship had been for days upon
the fringe of that interference; observing and reporting continuously.
So rapidly was it moving, however, so peculiar was its apparent shape,
and so contradictory were the directional readings obtained, that
Helmuth's computers had been baffled.

Then Kinnison's Bergenholm failed and his ship went inert. In a space of
minutes the location of one center of interference was known. Its
coordinates were determined and half a dozen warships were ordered to
rush that spot. The raider first to arrive had signalled, visually and
audibly; then, obtaining no response, had anchored with a tractor and
had loosed his bolts. Nor would the result have been different had
everyone aboard, instead of no one, been in the control room at the time
of the signalling. Kinnison could have read the messages, but neither he
nor anyone else then aboard the erstwhile pirate craft could have
answered them in kind.

The two space-ships attacking the turncoat became three, and still the
Lensman sat unworried at his board. His meters showed no dangerous
overload; his noble craft was taking everything her sister-ships could
send.

Then Thorndyke stepped into the room, no longer a natty officer of
space. Instead, he was stripped to sweat-soaked undershirt and overalls,
he was covered with grease and grime, and what of his thickly smeared
face was visible was almost haggard with fatigue. He opened his mouth to
say something, then snapped it shut as his eye was caught by a flaring
visiplate.

"Holy Klono's claws!" he exclaimed, "At us already? Why didn't you
yell?"

"How much good would that have done?" Kinnison wanted to know. "Of
course, if I had known that you were loafing on the job and could have
snapped it up a little, I would have. But there's no particular hurry
about this. It'll take at least four of them to break us down, and I was
hoping you'd have us travelling before they overload us. What was on
your mind?"

"I came up here--One, to tell you that we're ready to blast; Two, to
suggest that you hit her easy at first; and Three, to ask if you know
where there's any grease-soap. But you can cancel Two and Three. We
don't want to play around with these boys much longer--they play too
rough--and I ain't going to wash up until I see whether she holds
together or not. Blast away--and won't those guys be surprised!"

"I'll say so--some of this stuff is NEW!"

The Lensman twirled a couple of knobs, then punched down hard upon three
buttons. As he did so the flaring plates became dark; they were again
alone in space. To the dumbfounded pirates it was as though their prey
had slipped off into the fourth dimension. Their tractors gripped
nothing whatever; their ravening beams bored unimpeded through the space
occupied an instant before by resisting screens; tracers were useless.
They did not know what had happened, or how, and they could neither
report to nor be guided by the master mind of Boskone.

For minutes Thorndyke, vanBuskirk, and Kinnison waited tensely for they
knew not what to happen; but nothing happened and then the tension
gradually relaxed.

"What was the matter with it?" Kinnison asked, finally.

"Overloaded," was Thorndyke's terse reply.

"Overloaded--hooey!" snapped the Lensman. "How _could_ they overload a
Bergenholm? And, even if they could, why in all the nine hells of
Valeria would they want to?"

"They _could_ do it easily enough, in just the way they _did_ do it; by
banking accumulators onto it in series-parallel. As to why, I'll let you
do the guessing. With no load on the Bergenholm you've got full inertia,
with full load you've got zero inertia--you can't go any further. It
looks just plain dumb to me. But then, I think all pirates are short a
few jets somewhere--if they weren't they wouldn't be pirates."

"I don't know whether you're right or not. Hope so, but afraid not.
Personally, I don't believe these folks are pirates at all, in the
ordinary sense of the word."

"Huh? What are they, then?"

"Piracy implies similarity of culture, I would think," the Lensman said,
thoughtfully. "Ordinary pirates are usually renegades, deficient
somehow, as you suggested; rebelling against a constituted authority
which they themselves have at one time acknowledged and of which they
are still afraid. That pattern doesn't fit into this matrix at all,
anywhere."

"So what? Now I say 'hooey' right back at you. Anyway, why worry about
it?"

"Not worrying about it exactly, but somebody has got to do something
about it, or else...."

"I don't like to think; it makes my head ache," interrupted vanBuskirk.
"Besides, we're getting away from the Bergenholm."

"You'll get a real headache there," laughed Kinnison, "because I'll bet
a good Tellurian beefsteak that the pirates were trying to set up a
negative inertia when they overloaded the Bergenholm; and thinking about
that state of matter is enough to make _anybody's_ head ache!"

"I knew that some of the dippier Ph.D.'s in higher mechanics have been
speculating about it," Thorndyke offered, "but it can't be done that
way, can it?"

"Nor any other way that anybody has tried yet, and if such a thing is
possible the results may prove really startling. But you two had better
shove off, you're dead from the neck up. The Berg's spinning like a
top--as smooth as that much green velvet. You'll find a can of soap in
my locker, I think."

"Maybe she'll hold together long enough for us to get some sleep." The
technician eyed a meter dubiously, although its needle was not wavering
a hair's breadth from the green line. "But I'll tell the cockeyed
Universe that we gave her a jury rigging if there ever was one. You
can't depend on it for an hour until after it's been pulled and gone
over; and that, you know as well as I do, takes a real shop, with plenty
of equipment: If you take my advice you'll sit down somewhere while you
can and as soon as you can. That Bergenholm is in bad shape, believe me.
We can hold her together for a while by main strength and awkwardness,
but before very long she's going out for keeps--and when she does you
don't want to find yourself fifty years from a machine shop instead of
fifty minutes."

"I'll say not," the Lensman agreed. "But on the other hand, we don't
want those birds jumping us the minute we land, either. Let's see, where
are we? And where are the bases? Um... um... Sector bases are
white rings, you know, sub-sector bases red stars...." Three heads
bent over charts.

"The nearest red-star marker seems to be in System 240-16-37," Kinnison
finally announced. "Don't know the name of the planet--never been
there...."

"Too far," interrupted Thorndyke. "We'll never make it--might as well
try direct for Prime Base on Tellus. If you can't find a red closer than
that, look for an orange or a yellow."

"Bases of any kind seem to be scarce around here," the Lensman
commented. "You'd think they'd be thicker. Here's a violet triangle, but
that wouldn't help us--just an outpost..... How about this blue
square? It's just about on our line to Tellus, and I can't see anything
any better that we can possibly reach."

"That looks like our best bet," Thorndyke concurred, after a few minutes
of study. "It's probably several breakdowns away, but maybe we can make
it--sometime. Blues are pretty low-grade space-ports, but they've got
tools, anyway. What's the name of it, Kim--or is it only a number?"

"It's that very famous planet, Trenco," the Lensman announced, after
looking up the reference numbers in the atlas.

"_Trenco!_" exclaimed Thorndyke in disgust. "The nuttiest dopiest,
wooziest planet in the galaxy--we _would_ draw something like that to
sit down on for repairs, wouldn't we? Well, I'm on plus time for sleep.
Call me if we go inert before I wake up, will you?"

"I sure will; and I'll try to figure out a way of getting down to ground
without bringing all the pirates in space along with us."

Then Henderson came in to stand his watch, Kinnison slept, and the
mighty Bergenholm continued to hold the vessel inertialess. In fact, all
the men were thoroughly rested and refreshed before the expected
breakdown came. And when it did come they were more or less prepared for
it. The delay was not sufficiently long to enable the pirates to find
them again; but from that point in space to the ill-famed planet which
was their destination, progress was one long series of hops.

The sweating, grunting, swearing engineers made one seemingly impossible
repair after another, by dint of what dodge, improvisation, and
makeshift only the fertile brain of LaVerne Thorndyke ever did know. The
Master Technician, one of the keenest and most highly trained engineers
of the whole Solarian System, was not used to working with his hands.
Although young in years, he was wont to use only his head, in directing
the labors and the energies of others.

Nevertheless, he was now working like a stevedore. He was permanently
grimy and greasy--their one can of mechanics' soap had been used up long
since--his finger-nails were black and broken, his hands and face were
burned, blistered, and cracked. His muscles ached and shrieked at the
unaccustomed effort, until now they were on the build. But through it
all he had stuck uncomplainingly, even buoyantly, to his task. One day,
during an interlude of free flight, he strode into the control-room and
glanced at the course-plotting goniometer, then started into the "tank."

"Still on the original course, I see. Have you got anything doped out
yet?"

"Nothing very good, that's why I'm staying on this course until we reach
the point closest to Trenco. I've figured until my alleged brain
backfired on me, and here's all I can get:

"I've been shrinking and expanding our interference zone, changing its
shape as much as I could, and cutting it off entirely now and then; to
cross up their surveyors as much as I could. When we come to the
jumping-off place we'll simply cut off everything that is sending out
traceable vibrations. The Berg will have to run, of course, but it
doesn't radiate much and we can ground out practically all of that. The
drive is the bad feature--it looks as though we'll have to cut down to
where we can ground out the radiation."

"How about the flare?" Thorndyke took the inevitable slide-rule from a
pocket of his overalls.

"I've already had the Velantians build us some baffles--we've got lots
of spare tantalum, tungsten, carballoy, and refractory, you know--just
in case we should want to use them."

"Radiation.... detection.... decrement.... cosine squared
theta... um... call it point zero zero three eight," the engineer
mumbled, squinting at his "slip-stick." "Times half a million....
about nineteen hundred lights will have to be tops. Mighty slow, but we
would get there sometime--maybe. Now about the baffles," and he went
into another bout of computation during which could be distinguished a
few such words as "temperature... inert corpuscles... velocity...
fusion-point... Weinberger's Constant...." Then:

"It figures that at about eighteen hundred lights your baffles go out,"
he announced. "Pretty close check with the radiation limit. QX, I
guess--but I shudder to think of what we may have to do to that
Bergenholm to hold it together that long."

"It's not so hot. I don't think much of the scheme myself," admitted
Kinnison frankly. "Probably you can think up something better
before...."

"Who, me? What with?" Thorndyke interrupted, with a laugh. "Looks to me
like our best bet--anyway, ain't you the master mind of this outfit?
Blast off!"

Thus it came about that, long later, the Lensman cut off his
interference, cut off his driving power, cut off every mechanism whose
operation generated vibrations which would reveal to enemy detectors the
location of his cruiser. Space-suited mechanics emerged from the stern
lock and fitted over the still white-hot vents of the driving projectors
the baffles they had previously built.

It is of course well known that all ships of space are propelled by the
inert projection, by means of high-potential static fields, of nascent
fourth-order particles or "corpuscles," which are formed, inert, inside
the inertialess projector, by the conversion of some form of energy into
matter. This conversion liberates some heat, and a vast amount of light.
This light, or "flare," shining as it does directly upon and through the
highly tenuous gas formed by the projected corpuscles, makes of a
speeding space-ship one of the most gorgeous spectacles known to man;
and it was this very spectacular effect that Kinnison and his crew must
do away with if their bold scheme were to have any chance at all of
success.

The baffles were in place. Now, instead of shooting out in tell-tale
luminescence, the light was shut in--but so, alas, was approximately
three percent of the heat. And the generation of heat _must_ be cut down
to a point at which the radiation-equilibrium temperature of the baffles
would be below the point of fusion of the refractories of which they
were composed. This would cut down their speed tremendously; but on the
other hand, they were practically safe from detection and would reach
Trenco eventually--if the Bergenholm held out.

Of course there was still the chance of visual or electromagnetic
detection, but that chance was vanishingly small. The proverbial task of
finding a needle in a haystack would be an easy one indeed, compared to
that of seeing in a telescope or upon visiplate or magneplate a
dead-black, lightless ship in the infinity of space. No, the Bergenholm
was their great, their only concern; and the engineers lavished upon
that monstrous fabrication of metal a devotion to which could be likened
only that of a corps of nurses attending the ailing baby of a
multi-millionaire.

This concentration of attention did get results. The engineers still
found it necessary to sweat and to grunt and to swear, but they did
somehow keep the thing running--most of the time. Nor were they
detected--then.

For the attention of the pirate high command was very much taken up with
that fast-moving, that ever-expanding, that peculiarly-fluctuating
volume of interference; utterly enigmatic as it was and impenetrable to
their every instrument of communication. In that system was the Prime
Base of the Galactic Patrol. Therefore it _was_ the Lensman's
work--undoubtedly the same Lensman who had conquered one of their
super-ships and, after having learned its every secret, had escaped in a
lifeboat through the fine-meshed net set to catch him! And, piling Ossa
upon Pelion, this same Lensman had--_must_ have--captured ship after
unconquerable ship of their best and was even now sailing calmly home
with them! It was intolerable, unbearable, an insult that could not and
would not be borne.

Therefore, using as tools every pirate ship in that sector of space,
Helmuth and his computers and navigators were slowly but grimly solving
the equations of motion of that volume of interference. Smaller and
smaller became the uncertainties. Then ship after ship bored into the
sub-ethereal murk, to match course and velocity with, and ultimately to
come to grips with, each focus of disturbance as it was determined.

Thus in a sense and although Kinnison and his friends did not then know
it, it was only the failure of the Bergenholm that was to save their
lives, and with those lives our present Civilization.

Slowly, hatingly, and, for reasons already given, undetected, Kinnison
made pitiful progress toward Trenco; cursing impatiently and impartially
his ship, the crippled generator, its designer and its previous
operators as he went. But at long last Trenco loomed large beneath them
and the Lensman used his Lens.

"Lensman of Trenco space-port, or any other Lensman within call!" he
sent out clearly. "Kinnison of Tellus--Sol III--calling. My Bergenholm
is almost out and I must sit down at Trenco space-port for repairs. I
have avoided the pirates so far, but they may be either behind me or
ahead of me, or both. What is the situation there?"

"I fear that I can be of no help," came back a weak thought, without the
customary identification. "I am out of control. However, Tregonsee is in
the...."

Kinnison felt a poignant, unbearably agonizing mental impact that jarred
him to the very core: a shock that, while of sledge-hammer force, was
still of such a keenly penetrant timbre that it almost exploded every
cell of his brain. It seemed as though some mighty fist, armed with
yard-long needles, had slugged an actual blow into the most vitally
sensitive nerve-centers of his being.

Communication ceased, and the Lensman knew, with a sick, shuddering
certainty, that while in the very act of talking to him a Lensman had
died.

CHAPTER  10                                                     _Trenco_

Judged by any earthly standards the planet Trenco was--and is--a
peculiar one indeed. Its atmosphere, which is not air, and its liquid,
which is not water, are its two outstanding peculiarities and the
sources of most of its others. Almost half of that atmosphere and by far
the greater part of the liquid phase of the planet is a substance of
extremely low latent heat of vaporization, with a boiling-point such
that during the daytime it is a vapor and at night a liquid. To make
matters worse, the other constituents of Trenco's gaseous envelope are
of very feeble blanketing power, low specific heat, and of high
permeability, so that its days are intensely hot and its nights are
bitterly cold.

At night, therefore, it rains. Words are entirely inadequate to describe
to anyone who has never been there just how it does rain during Trenco's
nights. Upon Earth one inch of rainfall in an hour is a terrific
downpour. Upon Trenco that amount of precipitation would scarcely be
considered a mist; for along the equatorial belt, in less than thirteen
Tellurian hours, it rains exactly forty-seven feet and five inches every
night--no more no less, each and every night of every year.

Also there is lightning. Not in Terra's occasional flashes, but in one
continuous, blinding glare which makes night as we know it unknown
there; in nerve-wracking, battering, sense-destroying discharges which
make ether and sub-ether alike impenetrable to any ray or signal short
of a full-driven power beam. The days are practically as bad. The
lightning is not violent then, but the bombardment of Trenco's monstrous
sun, through that outlandishly peculiar atmosphere, produces almost the
same effect.

Because of the difference in pressure set up by the enormous
precipitation, always and everywhere upon Trenco there is wind--and what
a wind! Except at the very poles, where it is too cold for even
Trenconian life to exist, there is hardly a spot in which or a time at
which an Earthly gale would not be considered a dead calm; and along the
equator, at every sunrise and at every sunset, the wind blows from the
day side to the night side at the rate of well over eight hundred miles
an hour!

Through countless thousands of years wind and wave have planed and
scoured the planet Trenco to a geometrically perfect oblate spheroid. It
has no elevations and no depressions. Nothing fixed in an Earthly sense
grows or exists upon its surface; no structure has ever been built there
able to stay in one place through one whole day of the cataclysmic
meteorological phenomena which constitute the natural Trenconian
environment.

There live upon Trenco two types of vegetation, each type having
innumerable sub-divisions. One type sprouts in the mud of morning;
flourishes flatly, by dint of deeply sent and powerful roots, during the
wind and the heat of the day; comes to full fruit in later afternoon;
and at sunset dies and is swept away by the flood. The other type is
free-floating. Some of its genera are remotely like footballs, others
resemble tumbleweeds, still others thistledowns, hundreds of others have
not their remotest counterparts upon Earth. Essentially, however, they
are alike in habits of life. They can sink in the "water" of Trenco;
then can burrow in its mud, from which they derive part of their
sustenance; they can emerge therefrom into the sunlight; they can,
undamaged float in or roll along before the ever-present Trenconian
wind; and they can enwrap, entangle, or otherwise seize and hold
anything with which they come in contact which by any chance may prove
edible.

Animal life, too, while abundant and diverse, is characterized by three
qualities. From lowest to very highest it is amphibious, it is
streamlined, and it is omnivorous. Life upon Trenco is hard, and any
form of life to evolve there must of stern necessity be willing, yes,
even anxious, to eat literally _anything_ available. And for that reason
all surviving forms of life, vegetable and animal, have a voracity and a
fecundity almost unknown anywhere else in the galaxy.

Thionite, the noxious drug referred to earlier in this narrative, is the
sole reason for Trenco's galactic importance. As chlorophyll is to
Earthly vegetation, so is thionite to that of Trenco. Trenco is the only
planet thus far known upon which this substance occurs, nor have our
scientists even yet been able either to analyze or to synthesize it.
Thionite is capable of affecting only those races who breathe oxygen and
possess warm blood, red with hmoglobin. However, the planets peopled by
such races are legion, and very shortly after the drug's discovery
hordes of addicts, smugglers, peddlers, and out-and-out pirates were
rushing toward the new Bonanza. Thousands of these adventurers died,
either from each other's ray-guns or under an avalanche of hungry
Trenconian life; but, thionite being what it is, thousands more kept
coming. Also came the Patrol, to curb the evil traffic at its source by
beaming down ruthlessly any being attempting to gather any Trenconian
vegetation.

Thus between the Patrol and the drug syndicate there rages a bitterly
continuous battle to the death. Arrayed against both factions is the
massed life of the noisome planet, omnivorous as it is, eternally
ravenous, and of an individual power and ferocity and a collective
aggregate of numbers by no means to be despised. And eternally raging
against all these contending parries are the wind, the lightning, the
rain, the flood, and the hellish vibratory output of Trenco's enormous,
malignant, blue-white sun.

This, then, was the planet upon which Kinnison had to land in order to
repair his crippled Bergenholm--and in the end how well it was to be
that such was the case!

"Kinnison of Tellus, greetings. Tregonsee of Rigel IV calling from
Trenco space-port. Have you ever landed on this planet before?"

"No, but what...."

"Skip that for a time; it is most important that you land here quickly
and safely. Where are you in relation to this planet?"

"Your apparent diameter is a shade under six degrees. We are near the
plane of your ecliptic and almost in the plane of your terminator, on
the morning side."

"That is well, you have ample time. Place your ship between Trenco and
the sun. Enter the atmosphere exactly fifteen G-P minutes from the
present moment, at twenty degrees after meridian, as nearly as possible
on the ecliptic, which is also our equator. Go inert as you enter
atmosphere, for a free landing upon this planet is impossible.
Synchronize with our rotation, which is twenty-six point two G-P hours.
Descend vertically until the atmospheric pressure is seven hundred
millimeters of mercury, which will be at an altitude of approximately
one thousand meters. Since you rely largely upon that sense called
sight, allow me to caution you now not to trust it. When your external
pressure is seven hundred millimeters of mercury your altitude will be
one thousand meters, whether you believe it or not. Stop at that
pressure and inform me of the fact, meanwhile holding yourself as nearly
stationary as you can. Check so far?"

"QX--but do you mean to tell me that we can't locate each other at a
_thousand meters_?" Kinnison's amazed thought escaped him. "What kind
of...."

"I can locate you, but you cannot locate me," came the dry reply.
"Everyone knows that Trenco is peculiar, but no one who has never been
here can realize even dimly how peculiar it really is. Detectors and
spy-rays are useless, electro-magnetics are practically paralyzed, and
optical apparatus is distinctly unreliable. You cannot trust your vision
here--do not believe anything you see. It used to require days to land a
ship at this port, but with our Lenses and my 'sense of perception,' as
you call it, it will be a matter of minutes."

Kinnison flashed his ship to the designated position.

"Cut the Berg, Thorndyke, we're all done with it. We've got to build up
an inert velocity to match the rotation, and land inert."

"Thanks be to all the gods of space for that." The engineer heaved a
sigh of relief. "I've been expecting it to blow its top for the last
hour, and I don't know whether we'd ever have got it meshed in again or
not."

"QX on location and orbit," Kinnison reported to the as yet invisible
space-port a few minutes later. "Now, what about that Lensman? What
happened?"

"The usual thing," came the emotionless response. "It happens to
altogether too many Lensmen who can see, in spite of everything we can
tell them. He insisted upon going out after his zwilniks in a
ground-car, and of course we had to let him go. He became confused, lost
control, let something--possibly a zwilnik's bomb--get under his leading
edge, and the wind and the trencos did the rest. He was Lageston of
Mercator V--a good man, too. What is your pressure now?"

"Five hundred millimeters."

"Slow down. Now, if you cannot conquer the tendency to believe your
eyes, you had better shut off your visiplates and watch only the
pressure gauge."

"Being warned, I can disbelieve my eyes, I think," and for a minute or
so communication ceased.

At a startled oath from vanBuskirk, Kinnison glanced into the plate and
it needed all his nerve to keep from wrenching savagely at the controls.
For the whole planet was tipping, lurching, spinning; gyrating madly in
a frenzy of impossible motions; and even as the Patrolmen stared a huge
mass of something shot directly toward the ship!

"Sheer off, Kim!" yelled the Valerian.

"Hold it, Bus," cautioned the Lensman. "That's what we've got to expect,
you know--I passed all the stuff along as I got it. Everything, that is,
except that a 'zwilnik' is anything or anybody that comes after
thionite, and that a 'trenco' is anything, animal or vegetable, that
lives on the planet. QX, Tregonsee--seven hundred, and I'm holding
steady--I hope!"

"Steady enough, but you are too far away for our landing beam to grasp
you. Apply a little drive.... Shift course to your left and down....
more left.... up a trifle... that's it.... slow down.... QX."

There was a gentle, snubbing shock, and Kinnison again translated to his
companions the stranger's thoughts:

"We have you. Cut off all power and lock all controls in neutral. Do
nothing more until I instruct you to come out."

Kinnison obeyed; and, released from all duty, the visitors stared in
fascinated incredulity into the visiplate. For that at which they stared
was and must forever remain impossible of duplication upon Earth, and
only in imagination can it be even faintly pictured. Imagine all the
fantastic and monstrous creatures of a delirium-tremens vision incarnate
and actual. Imagine them being hurled through the air, borne by a
dust-laden gale more severe than any the great American dust-bowl or
Africa's Sahara Desert ever endured. Imagine this scene as being viewed,
not in an ordinary, solid distorting mirror, but in one whose falsely
reflecting contours were changing constantly, with no logical or
intelligible rhythm, into new and ever more grotesque warps. If
imagination has been equal to the task, the resultant is what the
visitors tried to see.

At first they could make nothing whatever of it. Upon nearer approach,
however, the ghastly distortion grew less and the flatly level expanse
took on a semblance of rigidity. Directly beneath them they made out
something that looked like an immense, flat blister upon the otherwise
featureless terrain. Toward this blister their ship was drawn.

A port opened, dwarfed in apparent size to a mere window by the
immensity of the structure one of whose entrances it was. Through this
port the vast bulk of the space-ship was wafted upon the landing-bars,
and behind it the mighty bronze-and-steel gates clanged shut. The lock
was pumped to a vacuum, there was a hiss of entering air, a spray of
vaporous liquid bathed every inch of the vessel's surface, and Kinnison
felt again the calm thought of Tregonsee, the Rigellian Lensman:

"You may now open your air-lock and emerge. If I have read aright our
atmosphere is sufficiently like your own in oxygen content so that you
will suffer no ill effects from it. It may be well, however, to wear
your armor until you have become accustomed to its considerably greater
density."

"That'll be a relief!" growled vanBuskirk's deep bass, when his chief
had transmitted the thought. "I've been breathing this thin stuff so
long I'm getting light-headed."

"That's gratitude!" Thorndyke retorted. "We've been running our air so
heavy that all the rest of us are thick-headed now. If the air in this
space-port is any heavier than what we've been having, I'm going to wear
armor as long as we stay here!"

Kinnison opened the air-lock, found the atmosphere of the space-port
satisfactory, and stepped out; to be greeted cordially by Tregonsee the
Lensman.

This--this apparition was at least erect, which was something. His body
was the size and shape of an oil-drum. Beneath this massive cylinder of
a body were four short, blocky legs upon which he waddled about with
surprising speed. Midway up the body, above each leg, there sprouted out
a ten-foot-long, writhing, boneless, tentacular arm, which toward the
extremity branched out into dozens of lesser tentacles, ranging in size
from hair-like tendrils up to mighty fingers two inches or more in
diameter. Tregonsee's head was merely a neckless, immobile, bulging dome
in the center of the flat upper surface of his body--a dome bearing
neither eyes nor ears, but only four equally-spaced toothless mouths and
four single, flaring nostrils.

But Kinnison felt no qualm of repugnance at Tregonsee's monstrous
appearance, for embedded in the leathery flesh of one arm was the Lens.
Here, the Lensman knew, was in every essential a MAN--and probably a
super-man.

"Welcome to Trenco, Kinnison of Tellus," Tregonsee was saying. "While we
are near neighbors in space, I have never happened to visit your planet.
I have encountered Tellurians here, of course, but they were not of a
type to be received as guests."

"No, a zwilnik is not a high type of Tellurian," Kinnison agreed. "I
have often wished that I could have your sense of perception, if only
for a day. It must be wonderful indeed to be able to perceive a thing as
a whole, inside and out, instead of having vision stopped at its
surface, as is ours. And to be independent of light or darkness, never
to be lost or in need of instruments; to know definitely where you are
in relation to every other object or thing around you--that, I think, is
the most marvelous sense in the Universe."

"Just as I have wished for sight and hearing, those two remarkable and
to us entirely unexplainable senses. I have dreamed, I have studied
volumes, on color and sound. Color in art and in nature; sound in music
and in the voices of loved ones; but they remain meaningless symbols
upon a printed page. However, such thoughts are vain. In all probability
neither of us would enjoy the other's equipment if he had it, and this
interchange is of no material assistance to you."

In flashing thoughts Kinnison then communicated to the other Lensman
everything that had transpired since he left Prime Base.

"I perceive that your Bergenholm is of standard fourteen rating,"
Tregonsee said, as the Tellurian finished his story. "We have several
spares here; and, while they all have regulation Patrol mountings, it
would take much less time to change mounts than to overhaul your
machine."

"That's so, too--I never thought of the possibility of your having
spares on hand--and we've lost a lot of time already. How long will it
take?"

"One shift of labor to change mounts; at least eight to rebuild yours
enough to be sure that it will get you home."

"We'll change mounts, then, by all means. I'll call the boys...."

"There is no need of that. We are amply equipped, and neither you humans
nor the Velantians could handle our tools." Tregonsee made no visible
motion nor could Kinnison perceive a break in his thought, but while he
was conversing with the Tellurian half a dozen of his blocky Rigellians
had dropped whatever they had been doing and were scuttling toward the
visiting ship. "Now I must leave you for a time, as I have one more trip
to make this afternoon."

"Is there anything I can do to help you?" asked Kinnison.

"No," came the definite negative. "I will return in three hours, as well
before sunset the wind makes it impossible to get even a ground-car into
the port. I will then show you why you can be of little assistance to
us."

Kinnison spent those three hours watching the Rigellians work upon the
Bergenholm; there was no need for direction or advice. They knew what to
do and they did it. Those tiny, hair-like fingers, literally hundreds of
them at once, performed delicate tasks with surpassing nicety and
dispatch; when it came to heavy tasks the larger digits or even whole
arms wrapped themselves around the work and, with the solid bracing of
the four block-like legs, exerted forces that even vanBuskirk's giant
frame could not have approached.

As the end of the third hour neared, Kinnison watched with a
spy-ray--there were no windows in Trenco space-port--the leeward
groundway of the structure. In spite of the weird antics of Trenco's
sun--gyrating, jumping, appearing and disappearing--he knew that it was
going down. Soon he saw the ground-car coming in, scuttling crabwise,
nose into the wind but actually moving backward and sidewise. Although
the "seeing" was very poor, at this close range the distortion was
minimized and he could see that, like its parent craft, the ground-car
was a blister. Its edges actually touched the ground all around, sloping
upward and over the top in such a smooth reverse curve that the harder
the wind blew the more firmly was the vehicle pressed downward.

The ground-flap came up just enough to clear the car's top and the tiny
craft crept up. But before the landing-bars could seize her the
ground-car struck an eddy from the flap--an eddy in a medium which,
although gaseous, was at that velocity practically solid. Earth blasted
away in torrents from the leading edge, the car leaped bodily into the
air and was flung away, end over end. But Tregonsee, with consummate
craftsmanship, forced her flat again, and again she crawled up toward
the flap. This time the landing-bars took hold and, although the little
vessel fluttered like a leaf in a gale, she was drawn inside the port
and the flap went down behind her. She was then sprayed, and Tregonsee
came out.

"Why the spray?" thought Kinnison, as the Rigellian entered his
control-room.

"Trencos. Much of the life of this planet starts from almost
imperceptible spores. It develops rapidly, attains considerable size,
and consumes anything organic it touches. This port was depopulated time
after time before the lethal spray was developed. Now turn your spy-ray
again to the lee of the port."

During the few minutes that had elapsed the wind had increased in fury
to such an extent that the very ground was boiling away from the
trailing edge in the tumultuous eddy formed there, ultra-streamlined
though the space-port was. And that eddy, far surpassing in violence any
storm known to Earth, was to the denizens of Trenco a miraculously
appearing quiet spot in which they could stop and rest, eat and be
eaten.

A globular monstrosity had thrust pseudopodia deep into the boiling
dirt. Other limbs now shot out, grasping a tumbleweedlike growth. The
latter fought back viciously, but could make no impression upon the
rubbery integument of the former. Then a smaller creature, slipping down
the polished curve of the shield, was enmeshed by the tumbleweed. There
ensued the amazing spectacle of one-half of the tumbleweed devouring the
newcomer, even while its other half was being devoured by the globe!

"Now look out farther.... still farther," directed Tregonsee.

"I can't. Things take on impossible motions and become so distorted as
to be unrecognizable."

"Exactly. If you saw a zwilnik out there, where would you shoot?"

"At him, I suppose--why?"

"Because if you shot at where you think you see him, not only would you
miss him, but the beam might very well swing around and enter your own
back. Many men have been killed by their own weapons in precisely that
fashion. Since we know, not only what the object is, but exactly where
it is, we can correct our lines of aim for the then existing values of
distortion. This is of course the reason why we Rigellians and other
races possessing the sense of perception are the only ones who can
efficiently police this planet."

"Reason enough, I'd say, from what I've seen," and silence fell.

For minutes the two Lensmen watched, while creatures of a hundred kinds
streamed into the lee of the space-port and killed and ate each other.
Finally something came crawling up-wind, against that unimaginable gale;
a flatly streamlined creature resembling somewhat a turtle, but shaped
as was the ground-car. Thrusting down long, hooked flippers into the
dirt it inched along, paying no attention to the scores of lesser
creatures who hurled themselves upon its armored back, until it was
close beside the largest football-shaped creature in the eddy. Then,
lightning-like, it drove a needle-sharp organ at least eight inches into
the leathery mass of its victim. Struggling convulsively, the stricken
thing lifted the turtle a fraction of an inch--and both were hurled
instantly out of sight; the living ball still eating a luscious bit of
prey despite the fact that it was impaled upon the poniard of the turtle
and was certainly doomed.

"Good Lord, what was that?" exclaimed Kinnison.

"The flat? That was a representative of Trenco's highest life-form. It
may develop a civilization in time--it is quite intelligent now."

"But the difficulties!" protested the Tellurian. "Building cities, even
homes...."

"Neither cities nor homes are necessary here, nor even desirable. Why
build? Nothing is or can be fixed on this planet, and since one place is
exactly like every other place, why wish to remain in any one particular
spot? They do very well, in their own mobile way. Here, you will notice,
comes the rain."

The rain came--forty-four inches per hour of rain--and the incessant
lightning. The dirt became first mud, then muddy water being driven in
fiercely flying gouts and masses. Now, in the lee of the space-port, the
outlandish denizens of Trenco were burrowing down into the mud--still
eating each other and anything else that came within reach.

The water grew deeper and deeper, its upper surface now whipped into
frantic sheets of spray. The structure was now afloat, and Kinnison saw
with astonishment that, small as was the exposed surface and flatly
curved, yet it was pulling through the water at frightful speed the
wide-spreading steel sea-anchors which were holding its head to the
gale.

"With no reference points how do you know where you're going?" he
demanded.

"We neither know nor care," responded Tregonsee, with a mental shrug.
"We are like the natives in that. Since one spot is like every other
spot, why choose between them?"

"What a world--_what_ a world! However, I am beginning to understand why
thionite is so expensive," and, overwhelmed by the ever-increasing fury
raging outside, Kinnison sought his bunk.

Morning came, a reversal of the previous evening. The liquid evaporated,
the mud dried, the flat-growing vegetation sprang up with shocking
speed, the animals emerged and again ate and were eaten.

And eventually came Tregonsee's announcement that it was almost noon,
and that now, for half an hour or so, it would be calm enough for the
space-ship to leave the port.

"You are sure that I would be of no help to you?" asked the Rigellian,
half-pleadingly.

"Sorry, Tregonsee, but I'm afraid you wouldn't fit into my matrix any
better than I would into yours. But here's the spool I told you about.
If you will take it to your base on your next relief you will do
civilization and the Patrol more good than you could by coming with us.
Thanks for the Bergenholm, which is covered by credits, and thanks a lot
for your help and courtesy, which can't be covered. Goodbye," and the
now entirely space-worthy craft shot out through the port, through
Trenco's noxiously peculiar atmosphere, and into the vacuum of space.

CHAPTER  11                                                 _Grand Base_

At some little distance from the galaxy, yet shackled to it by the
flexible yet powerful bonds of gravitation, the small but comfortable
planet upon which was Helmuth's base circled about its parent sun. This
planet had been chosen with the utmost care, and its location was a
secret guarded jealously indeed. Scarcely one in a million of Boskone's
teeming myriads knew even that such a planet existed; and of the chosen
few who had ever been asked to visit it, fewer still by far had been
allowed to leave it.

Grand Base covered hundreds of square miles of that planet's surface. It
was equipped with all the arms and armament known to the military genius
of the age; and in the exact center of that immense citadel there arose
a glittering metallic dome.

The inside surface of that dome was lined with visiplates and
communicators, hundreds of thousands of them. Miles of catwalks clung
precariously to the inward-curving wall. Control panels and instrument
boards covered the floor in banks and tiers, with only narrow runways
between them. And what a personnel! There were Solarians, Crevenians,
Sirians. There were Antareans, Vandemarians, Arcturians. There were
representatives of scores, yes, hundreds of other solar systems of the
galaxy.

But whatever their external form they were all breathers of oxygen and
they were all nourished by warm, red blood. Also, they were all alike
mentally. Each had won his present high place by trampling down those
beneath him and by pulling down those above him in the branch to which
he had first belonged of the "pirate" organization. Each was
characterized by a total lack of scruple; by a coldly ruthless passion
for power and place.

Kinnison had been eminently correct in his belief that Boskone's was not
a "pirate outfit" in any ordinary sense of the word, but even his ideas
of its true nature fell far short indeed of the truth. It was a culture
already inter-galactic in scope, but one built upon ideals diametrically
opposed to those of the civilization represented by the Galactic Patrol.

It was a tyranny, an absolute monarchy, a despotism not even remotely
approximated by the dictatorships of earlier ages. It had only one
creed--"The end justifies the means." Anything--literally _anything at
all_--that produced the desired result was commendable; to fail was the
only crime. The successful named their own rewards; those who failed
were disciplined with an impersonal, rigid severity exactly proportional
to the magnitude of their failures.

Therefore no weaklings dwelt within that fortress; and of all its cold,
hard, ruthless crew far and away the coldest, hardest, and most ruthless
was Helmuth, the "speaker for Boskone," who sat at the great desk in the
dome's geometrical center. This individual was almost human in form and
build, springing as he did from a planet closely approximating Earth in
mass, atmosphere, and climate. Indeed, only his general, all-pervasive
aura of blueness bore witness to the fact that he was not a native of
Tellus.

His eyes were blue, his hair was blue, and even his skin was faintly
blue beneath its coat of ultra-violet tan. His intensely dynamic
personality fairly radiated blueness--not the gentle blue of an Earthly
sky, not the sweetly innocuous blue of an Earthly flower; but the keenly
merciless blue of a delta-ray, the cold and bitter blue of a Polar
iceberg, the unyielding, inflexible blue of quenched and drawn
tungsten-chromium steel.

Now a frown sat heavily upon his arrogantly patrician face as his eyes
bored into the plate before him, from the base of which were issuing the
words being spoken by the assistant pictured in its deep surface:

"....the fifth dove into the deepest ocean of Corvina II, in the
depths of which all rays are useless. The ships which followed have not
as yet reported, but they will do so as soon as they have completed
their mission. No trace of the sixth has been found, and it is therefore
assumed that it was destroyed...."

"Who assumes so?" demanded Helmuth, coldly. "There is no justification
whatever for such an assumption. Go on!"

"The Lensman, if there is one and if he is alive, must therefore be in
the fifth ship, which is about to be taken."

"Your report is neither complete nor conclusive, and I do not at all
approve of your intimation that the Lensman is simply a figment of my
imagination. That it was a Lensman is the only possible logical
conclusion--none other of the Patrol forces could have done what has
been done. Postulating his reality, it seems to me that instead of being
a bare possibility, it is highly probable that he has again escaped us,
and again in one of our own vessels--this time in the one you have so
conveniently assumed to have been destroyed. Have you searched the line
of flight?"

"Yes, sir. Everything in space and every planet within reach of that
line has been examined with care; except, of course, Velantia and
Trenco."

"Velantia is, for the time being, unimportant. The sixth ship left
Velantia and did not go back there. Why Trenco?" and Helmuth pressed a
series of buttons. "Ah, I see.... To recapitulate, one ship, the one
which in all probability is now carrying the Lensman, is still
unaccounted for. _Where is it?_ We know that it has not landed upon or
near any Solarian planet, and measures are being taken to see to it that
it does not land upon or near any planet of 'Civilization.' Now, I
think, it has become necessary to comb that planet Trenco, inch by
inch."

"But sir, how...." began the anxious-eyed underling.

"When did it become necessary to draw diagrams and make blue-prints for
you?" demanded Helmuth, harshly. "We have ships manned by Ordoviks and
other races having the sense of perception. Find out where they are and
get them there at full blast!" and he punched a button, to replace the
image upon his plate by another.

"It has now become of paramount importance that we complete our
knowledge of the Lens of the Patrol," he began, without salutation or
preamble. "Have you traced its origin yet?"

"I believe so, but I do not certainly know. It has proved to be a task
of such difficulty...."

"If it had been an easy one I would not have made a special assignment
of it to you. Go on!"

"Everything seems to point to the planet Arisia, of which I can learn
nothing definite whatever except...."

"Just a moment!" Helmuth punched more buttons and listened.
"Unexplored.... unknown.... shunned by all spacemen....

"Superstition, eh?" he snapped. "Another of those haunted planets?"

"Something more than ordinary spacemen's superstition, sir, but just
what I have not been able to discover. By combing my department I
managed to make up a crew of those who either were not afraid of it or
had never heard of it. That crew is now en route there."

"Whom have we in that sector of space? I find it desirable to check your
findings."

The department head reeled off a list of names and numbers, which
Helmuth considered at length.

"Gildersleeve, the Valerian," he decided. "He is a good man, coming
along fast. Aside from a firm belief in his own peculiar gods, he has
shown no signs of weakness. You considered him?"

"Certainly." The henchman, as cold as his icy chief, knew that
explanations would not satisfy Helmuth, therefore he offered none. "He
is raiding at the moment, but I will put you on him if you like."

"Do so," and upon Helmuth's plate there appeared a deep-space scene of
rapine and pillage.

The convoying Patrol cruiser had already been blasted out of existence;
only a few idly drifting masses of debris remained to show that it had
ever been. Needle-beams were at work, and soon the merchantman hung
inert and helpless. The pirates, scorning to use the emergency inlet
port, simply blasted away the entire entrance panel. Then they boarded,
an armored swarm; flaming DeLameters spreading death and destruction
before them.

The sailors, outnumbered as they were and over-armed, fought
heroically--but uselessly. In groups and singly they fell; those who
were not already dead being callously tossed out into space in slitted
space-suits and with smashed drivers. Only the younger women--the
stewardesses, the nurses, the one or two such among the few
passengers--were taken as booty; all others shared the fate of the crew.

Then, the ship plundered from nose to after-jets and every article or
thing of value trans-shipped, the raider drew off, bathed in the
blue-white glare of the bombs that were destroying every trace of the
merchant-ship's existence. Then and only then did Helmuth reveal himself
to Gildersleeve.

"A good, clean job of work, Captain," he commended. "Now, how would you
like to visit Arisia for me--for _me_, direct?"

A pallor overspread the normally ruddy face of the Valerian and an
uncontrollable tremor shook his giant frame. But as he considered the
implications resident in Helmuth's concluding phrase he licked his lips
and spoke.

"I hate to say no, sir, if you order me to and if there was any way of
making my crew do it. But we were near there once, sir, and we....
I.... they.... it well, sir, I _saw_ things, sir, and I was....
was _warned_, sir!"

"Saw what? And was warned of what?"

"I can't describe what I saw, sir. I can't even think of it in thoughts
that mean anything. As for the warning, though, it was very definite,
sir. I was told very plainly that if I ever go near that planet again I
will die a worse death than any I have dealt out to any other living
being."

"But you will go there again?"

"I tell you, sir, that the crew will not do it," Gildersleeve replied,
doggedly. "Even if I were anxious to go, every man aboard will mutiny if
I try it."

"Call them in right now and tell them that you have been ordered to
Arisia."

The captain did so, but he had scarcely started to talk when he was
stopped in no uncertain fashion by his first officer--also of course a
Valerian--who pulled his DeLameter and spoke savagely:

"Cut it, Gil! We are not going to Arisia. I was with you before, you
know. Set course within five points of that accursed planet and I blast
you where you sit!"

"Helmuth, speaking for Boskone!" ripped from the headquarters speaker.
"This is rankest mutiny. You know the penalty, do you not?"

"Certainly I do--what of it?" The first officer snapped back.

"Suppose that I _tell_ you to go to Arisia?" Helmuth's voice was now
soft and silky, but instinct with deadly menace.

"In that case _I_ tell _you_ to go to the ninth hell--or to Arisia, a
million times worse!"

"What? You dare speak thus to _me_?" demanded the arch-pirate, sheer
amazement at the fellow's audacity blanketing his rising anger.

"I so dare," declared the rebel, brazen defiance and unalterable resolve
in every line of his hard body and in every lineament of his hard face.
"All you can do is kill us. You can order out enough ships to blast us
out of the ether, but that's all you _can_ do. That would be only death
and we'd have the fun of taking a lot of the boys along with us. If we
go to Arisia, though, it would be different--very, _very_ different. No,
Helmuth, and I throw this in your teeth: if I ever go near Arisia again
it will be in a ship in which you, Helmuth, in person, are sitting at
the controls. If you think this is an empty dare and don't like it,
don't take it. Send on your dogs!"

"That will do! Report yourselves to Base D under...." Then Helmuth's
flare of anger passed and his cold reason took charge. Here was
something utterly unprecedented; an entire crew of the hardest-bitten
marauders in space offering open and barefaced mutiny--no, not mutiny,
but actual rebellion--to him, Helmuth, in his very person. And not a
typical, skulking, carefully-planned uprising, but the immovably brazen
desperation of men making an ultimately last-ditch stand. Truly, it must
be a powerful superstition indeed, to make that crew of hard-boiled
hellions choose certain death rather than face again the imaginary--they
_must_ be imaginary--perils of a planet unknown to and unexplored by
Boskone's planetographers. But they were, after all, ordinary space-men,
of little mental force and of small real ability. Even so, it was
clearly indicated that in this case precipitate action was to be
avoided. Therefore he went on calmly and almost without a break. "Cancel
all this that has been spoken and that has taken place. Continue with
your original orders pending further investigation," and switched his
plate back to the department head.

"I have checked your conclusions and have found them correct," he
announced, as though nothing at all out of the way had transpired. "You
did well in sending a ship to investigate. No matter where I am or what
I am doing, notify me instantly at the first sign of irregularity in the
behavior of any member of that ship's personnel."

Nor was that call long in coming. The carefully-selected crew--selected
for complete lack of knowledge of the dread planet which was their
objective--sailed along in blissful ignorance, both of the real meaning
of their mission and of what was to be its ghastly end. Soon after
Helmuth's unsatisfactory interview with Gildersleeve and his mate, the
luckless exploring vessel reached the barrier which the Arisians had set
around their system and through which no uninvited stranger was allowed
to pass.

The free-flying ship struck that frail barrier and stopped. In the
instant of contact a wave of mental force flooded the mind of the
captain, who, gibbering with sheer, stark, panic terror, flashed his
vessel away from that horror-impregnated wall and hurled call after
frantic call along his beam, back to headquarters. His first call, in
the instant of reception, was relayed to Helmuth at his central desk.

"Steady, man; report intelligently!" that worthy snapped, and his eyes,
large now upon the cowering captain's plate, bored steadily,
hypnotically into those of the expedition's leader. "Pull yourself
together and tell me exactly what happened. Everything!"

"Well, sir, when we struck something--a screen of some sort--and
stopped, something came aboard. It was... oh... ay-ay-e-e!" his
voice rose to a shriek, but under Helmuth's dominating glare he subsided
quickly and went on. "A monster, sir, if there ever was one. A
fire-breathing demon, sir, with teeth and claws and cruelly barbed tail.
He spoke to me in my own Crevenian language. He said...."

"Never mind what he said. I did not hear it, but I can guess what it
was. He threatened you with death in some horrible fashion, did he not?"
and the coldly ironical tones did more to restore the shaking man's
equilibrium than reams of remonstrance could have done.

"Well, yes, that was about the size of it, sir," he admitted.

"And does that sound reasonable to you, the commander of a first-class
battleship of Boskone's Fleet?" sneered Helmuth.

"Well, sir, put on that way, it does seem a bit far-fetched," the
captain replied, sheepishly.

"It _is_ far-fetched." The director, in the safety of his dome, could
afford to be positive. "We do not know exactly what caused that
hallucination, apparition, or whatever it was--you were the only one who
could see it, apparently; it certainly was not visible on our
master-plates. It was probably some form of suggestion or hypnotism; and
you know as well as we do that any suggestion can be thrown off by a
definitely opposed will. But you did not oppose it, did you?"

"No, sir, I didn't have time."

"Nor did you have your screens out, nor automatic recorders on the trip.
Not much of anything, in fact.... I think that you had better report
back here, at full blast."

"Oh, no, sir--please!" He knew what rewards were granted to failures,
and Helmuth's carefully chosen words had already produced the effect
desired by their speaker. "They took me by surprise then, but I'll go
through this next time."

"Very well, I will give you one more chance. When you get close to the
barrier, or whatever it is, go inert and put out all your screens. Man
your plates and weapons, for whatever can hypnotize can be killed. Go
ahead at full blast, with all the acceleration you can get. Crash
through anything that opposes you, and beam anything that you can detect
or see. Can you think of anything else?"

"That should be sufficient, sir." The captain's equanimity was
completely restored, now that the warlike preparations were making more
and more nebulous the sudden, but single, thought wave of the Arisian.

"Proceed!"

The plan was carried out to the letter. This time the pirate craft
struck the frail barrier inert, and its slight force offered no tangible
bar to the prodigious mass of metal. But this time, since the barrier
was actually passed, there was no mental warning and no possibility of
retreat.

Many men have skeletons in their closets. Many have phobias, things of
which they are consciously afraid. Many others have them, not
consciously, but buried deep in the subconscious; specters which seldom
or never rise above the threshold of perception. Every sentient being
has, if not such specters as these, at least a few active or latent
dislikes, dreads, or outright fears. This is true, no matter how quiet
and peaceful a life the being has led.

These pirates, however, were the scum of space. They were beings of hard
and criminal lives and of violent and lawless passions. Their hates and
conscience-searing deeds had been legion, their count of crimes long,
black, and hideous. Therefore, slight indeed was the effort required to
locate in their conscious minds--to say nothing of the noxious depths of
their subconscious ones--visions of horror fit to blast stronger
intellects than theirs. And that is exactly what the Arisian Watchman
did. From each pirate's total mind, a veritable charnel pit, he
extracted the foulest, most unspeakable dregs, the deeply hidden things
of which the subject was in the greatest fear. Of these things he formed
a whole of horror incomprehensible and incredible, and this ghastly
whole he made incarnate and visible to the pirate who was its unwilling
parent; as visible as though it were composed of flesh and blood, of
copper and steel. Is it any wonder that each member of that outlaw crew,
seeing such an abhorrent materialization, went instantly mad?

It is of no use to go into the horribly monstrous shapes of the things,
even were it possible; for each of them was visible to only one man, and
none of them was visible to those who looked on from the safety of the
distant base. To them the entire crew simply abandoned their posts and
attacked each other, senselessly and in insane frenzy, with whatever
weapons came first to hand. Indeed, many of them fought bare-handed,
weapons hanging unused in their belts, gouging, beating, clawing, biting
until life had been rived horribly away. In other parts of the ship
DeLameters flamed briefly, bars crashed crunchingly, knives and axes
sheared and trenchantly bit. And soon it was over--almost. The pilot was
still alive, unmoving and rigid at his controls.

Then he, too, moved; rapidly and purposefully. He cut in the Bergenholm,
spun the ship around, shoved her drivers up to maximum blast, and
steadied her into an exact course--and when Helmuth read that course
even his iron nerves failed him momentarily. For the ship was flying,
not for its own home port, but directly toward Grand Base, the jealously
secret planet whose spatial coordinates neither that pilot nor any other
creature of the pirates' rank and file had ever known!

Helmuth snapped out orders, to which the pilot gave no heed. His
voice--for the first time in his career--rose to a howl, but the pilot
still paid no attention. Instead, eyes bulging with horror and fingers
curved tensely into veritable talons, he reared upright upon his bench
and leaped as though to clutch and to rend some unutterably appalling
foe. He leaped over his board into thin and empty air. He came down
a-sprawl in a maze of naked, high-potential bus-bars. His body vanished
in a flash of searing flame and a cloud of thick and greasy smoke.

The bus-bars cleared themselves of their gruesome "short" and the great
ship, manned now entirely by corpses, bored on.

"....stinking klebots, the lily-livered cowards!" the department
head, who had also been yelling orders, was still pounding his desk and
yelling. "If they're _that_ afraid--go crazy and kill each other without
being touched--I'll have to go myself...."

"No, Sansteed," Helmuth interrupted curtly. "You will not have to go.
There is, after all, I think, something there--something that you may
not be able to handle. You see, you missed the one essential key fact."
He referred to the course, the setting of which had shaken him to the
very core.

"Let be," he silenced the other's flood of question and protest. "It
would serve no purpose to detail it to you now. Have the ship taken back
to port."

Helmuth knew now that it was not superstition that made spacemen shun
Arisia. He knew that, from his standpoint at least, there was something
very seriously amiss. But he had not the faintest conception of the real
situation, nor of the real and terrible power which the Arisians could,
and upon occasion would, wield.

CHAPTER  12                             _Kinnison Brings Home the Bacon_

Helmuth sat at his desk, thinking; thinking with all the coldly
analytical precision of which he was capable.

This Lensman was both powerful and tremendously resourceful. The
cosmic-energy drive, developed by the science of a world about which the
Patrol knew nothing, was Boskone's one great item of superiority. If the
Patrol could be kept in ignorance of that drive the struggle would be
over in a year; the culture of the iron hand would be unchallenged
throughout the galaxy. If, however, the Patrol should succeed in
learning Boskone's top secret, the war between the two cultures might
well be prolonged indefinitely. This Lensman knew that secret and was
still at large, of that he was all too certain. Therefore the Lensman
must be destroyed. And that brought up the Lens.

What was it? A peculiar bauble indeed; impossible of duplication because
of some subtlety of intra-atomic arrangement, and possessing peculiar
and dire potentialities. The old belief that no one except a Lensman
could wear a Lens was true--he had proved it. The Lens must account in
some way for the outstanding ability of the Lensman, and it must tie in,
somehow, with both Arisia and the thought-screens. The Lens was the one
thing possessed by the Patrol which his own forces did not have. He must
and would have it, for it was undoubtedly a powerful arm. Not to be
compared, of course, with their own monopoly of cosmic energy--but that
monopoly was now threatened, and seriously. That Lensman _must be
destroyed_.

But how? It was easy to say "Comb Trenco, inch by inch," but doing it
would prove a Herculean task. Suppose that the Lensman should again
escape, in that volume of so fantastically distorted media? He had
already escaped twice, in much clearer ether than Trenco's. However, if
his information should never get back to Prime Base little harm would be
done, and ships had been thrown around every solar system the Lensman
could reach. Not even a grain-of-dust meteorite could pass those screens
without detection. So much for the Lensman. Now about getting the secret
of the Lens.

Again, how? There was _something_ upon Arisia; something connected in
some way with the Lens and with thought--possibly also with those
thought-screens....

His mind flashed back over the unorthodox manner of his acquirement of
those devices--unorthodox in that he had neither stolen them nor
murdered their inventor. A person had come to him with pass-words and
credentials which could not be ignored; had handed him a heavily-sealed
container, which, he said, had come from a planet named Ploor; had
remarked casually "Thought-screen data--you'll know when you need 'em";
and had gone.

Whatever the Arisian was, it had mental power; of that fact there could
be no doubt. Out of the full sphere of space, what was the mathematical
probability that the pilot of that deathship would have set by accident
his course so exactly upon Grand Base? Vanishingly small. Treachery
would not explain the facts--not only had the pilot been completely
insane when he laid the course, but also _he did not know where Grand
Base was_.

As an explanation mental force alone seemed fantastic, but no other as
yet presented itself as a possibility. Also, it was supported by the
unbelievable, the absolutely definite refusal of Gildersleeve's normally
fearless crew even to approach the planet. It would take an unheard-of
mental force so to affect such crime-hardened veterans.

Helmuth was not one to underestimate an enemy. Was there a man beneath
that dome, save himself, of sufficient mental caliber to undertake the
now necessary mission to Arisia? There was not. He himself had the
finest mind on the planet; else that other had deposed him long since
and had sat at the control desk himself. He was sublimely confident that
no outside thought could break down _his_ definitely opposed will--and
besides, there were the thought-screens, the secret of which he had not
as yet shared with anyone. The time had come to use those screens.

It has already been made clear that Helmuth was not a fool. No more was
he a coward. If he himself could best of all his force do a thing, that
thing he did; with the coldly ruthless efficiency that marked alike his
every action and his every thought.

How should he go? Should he accept that challenge, and take
Gildersleeve's rebellious crew of cut-throats to Arisia? No. In the
event of an outcome short of complete success, it would not do to lose
face before that band of ruffians. Moreover, the idea of such a crew
going insane behind him was not one to be relished. He would go alone.

"Wolmark, come to the center," he ordered. When that worthy appeared he
went on: "Be seated, as this is to be a serious conference. I have
watched with admiration and appreciation, as well as some mild
amusement, the development of your lines of information; especially
those concerning affairs which are most distinctly not in your
department. They are, however, efficient--you already know exactly what
has happened." A statement this, in no wise a question.

"Yes, sir," quietly. Wolmark was somewhat taken aback, but not at all
abashed.

"That is the reason you are here now. I thoroughly approve of you. I am
leaving the planet for a few days, and you are the best man in the
organization to take charge in my absence."

"I suspected that you would be leaving, sir."

"I know you did: but I am now informing you, merely to make sure that
you develop no peculiar ideas in my absence, that there are at least a
few things which you do not suspect at all. That safe, for instance,"
nodding toward a peculiarly shimmering globe of force anchoring itself
in air. "Even your highly efficient spy system has not been able to
learn a thing about that."

"No, sir, we have not--yet," he could not forbear adding.

"Nor will you, with any skill or force known to man. But keep on trying,
it amuses me. I know, you see, of all your attempts. But to get on. I
now say, and for your own good I advise you to believe, that failure
upon my part to return to this desk will prove highly unfortunate for
you."

"I believe that, sir. Any man of intelligence would make such
arrangement, if he could. But sir, suppose that the Arisians...."

"If your 'if he could' implies a doubt, act upon it and learn wisdom,"
Helmuth advised him coldly. "You should know by this time that I neither
gamble nor bluff. I have made arrangements to protect myself, both from
enemies, such as the Arisians and the Patrol, and from friends, such as
ambitious youngsters who are trying to supplant me. If I were not
entirely confident of getting back here safely, my dear Wolmark, I would
not go."

"You misunderstand me, sir. Really, I have no idea of supplanting you."

"Not until you get a good opportunity, you mean--I understand you
thoroughly; and, as I have said before, I approve of you. Go ahead with
all your plans. I have kept at least one lap ahead of you so far, and if
the time should ever come when I can no longer do so, I shall no longer
be fit to speak for Boskone. You understand, of course, that the most
important matter now in work is the search for the Lensman, of which the
combing of Trenco and the screening of the Patrol's systems are only two
phases?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. I can, I think, leave matters in your hands. If anything
really serious comes up, such as a development in the Lensman case, let
me know at once. Otherwise do not call me. Take the desk," and Helmuth
strode away.

He was whisked to the space-port, where there awaited him his special
speedster, equipped long since with divers and sundry items of equipment
whose functions were known only to himself.

For him the trip to Arisia was neither long nor tedious. The little
racer was fully automatic, and as it tore through space he worked as
coolly and efficiently as he was wont to do at his desk. Indeed, more
so, for here he could concentrate without interruption. Many were the
matters he planned and the decisions he made, the while his portfolio of
notes grew thicker and thicker.

As he neared his destination he put away his work, actuated his special
mechanisms, and waited. When the speedster struck the barrier and
stopped Helmuth wore a faint, hard smile; but that smile disappeared
with a snap as a thought crashed into his supposedly shielded brain.

"You are surprised that your thought-screens are not effective?" The
thought was coldly contemptuous. "I know in essence what the messenger
from Ploor told you concerning them when he gave them to you; but he
spoke in ignorance. We of Arisia know thought in a way that no member of
his race is now or ever will be able to understand.

"Know, Helmuth, that we Arisians do not want and will not tolerate
uninvited visitors. Your presence is particularly distasteful,
representing as you do a despotic, degrading, and anti-social culture.
Evil and good are of course purely relative, so it cannot be said in
absolute terms that your culture is evil. It is, however, based upon
greed, hatred, corruption, violence, and fear. Justice it does not
recognize, nor mercy, nor truth except as a scientific utility. It is
basically opposed to liberty. Now liberty--of person, of thought, of
action--is the basic and the goal of the civilization to which you are
opposed, and with which any really philosophical mind must find itself
in accord.

"Inflated overweeningly by your warped and perverted ideas, by your
momentary success in dominating your handful of minions, tied to you by
bonds of greed, of passion, and of crime, you come here to wrest from us
the secret of the Lens; from us, a race as much abler than yours as we
are older--a ratio of millions to one.

"You consider yourself cold, hard, ruthless. Compared to me, you are
weak, soft, tender; as helpless as a newborn child. That you may learn
and appreciate that fact is one reason why you are living at this
present moment. Your lesson will now begin."

Then Helmuth, starkly rigid, unable to move a muscle, felt delicate
probes enter his brain. One at a time they pierced his innermost being,
each to a definitely selected center. It seemed that each thrust carried
with it the ultimate measure of exquisitely poignant anguish possible of
endurance, but each successive needle carried with it an even more
keenly unbearable thrill of agony.

Helmuth was not now calm and cold. He could have screamed in wild
abandon, but even that relief was denied him. He could not even scream;
all he could do was sit there and suffer.

Then he began to see things. There, actually materializing in the empty
air of the speedster, he saw in endless procession things he had done,
either in person or by proxy, both during his ascent to his present high
place in the pirates' organization and since the attainment of that
place. Long was the list, and black. As it unfolded his torment grew
more and ever more intense, until finally, after an interval that might
have been a fraction of a second or might have been untold hours, he
could stand no more. He fainted, sinking beyond the reach of pain into a
sea of black unconsciousness.

He awakened white and shaking, wringing wet with perspiration and so
weak that he could scarcely sit erect, but with a supremely blissful
realization that, for the time being at least, his punishment was over.

"This, you will observe, has been a very mild treatment," the cold
Arisian accents went on inside his brain. "Not only do you still live,
you are even still sane. We now come to the second reason why you have
not been destroyed. Your destruction by us would not be good for that
struggling young civilization which you oppose.

"We have given that civilization an instrument by virtue of which it
should become able to destroy you and everything for which you stand. If
it cannot do so it is not yet ready to become a civilization and your
obnoxious culture shall be allowed to conquer and to flourish for a
time.

"Now go back to your dome. Do not return. I know that you will not have
the temerity to do so in person. Do not attempt to do so by any form
whatever of proxy."

There were no threats, no warnings, no mention of consequences; but the
level and incisive tone of the Arisian put a fear into Helmuth's cold
heart the like of which he had never before known.

He whirled his speedster about and hurled her at full blast toward his
home planet. It was only after many hours that he was able to regain
even a semblance of his customary poise, and days elapsed before he
could think coherently enough to consider as a whole the shocking, the
unbelievable thing that had happened to him.

He wanted to believe that the creature, whatever it was, had been
bluffing--that it could not kill him, that it had done its worst. In
similar case he would have killed without mercy, and that course seemed
to him the only logical one to pursue. His cold reason, however, would
not allow him to entertain that comforting belief. Deep down he _knew_
that the Arisian could have killed him as easily as it had slain the
lowest member of his band, and the thought chilled him to the marrow.

What could he do? What _could_ he do? Endlessly, as the miles and
light-years reeled off behind his hurtling racer, this question
reiterated itself; and when his home planet loomed close it was still
unanswered.

Since Wolmark believed implicitly his statement that it would be poor
technique to oppose his return, the planet's screens went down at
Helmuth's signal. His first act was to call all the department heads to
the center, for an extremely important council of war. There he told
them everything that had happened, calmly and concisely, concluding:

"They are aloof, disinterested, unpartisan to a degree I find it
impossible to understand. They disapprove of us on purely philosophical
grounds, but they will take no active part against us as long as we stay
away from their solar system. Therefore we cannot obtain knowledge of
the Lens by direct action, but there are other methods which shall be
worked out in due course.

"The Arisians do approve of the Patrol, and have helped them to the
extent of giving them the Lens. There, however, they stop. If the
Lensmen do not know how to use their Lenses efficiently--and I gather
that they do not--we 'shall be allowed to conquer and to flourish for a
time.' We _will_ conquer, and we will see to it that the time of our
flourishing will be a long one indeed.

"The whole situation, then, boils down to this: our cosmic energy
against the Lens of the Patrol. Ours is the much more powerful arm, but
our only hope of immediate success lies in keeping the Patrol in
ignorance of our cosmic-energy receptors and converters. One Lensman
already has that knowledge. Therefore, gentlemen, it is very clear that
the death of that Lensman has now become absolutely imperative. We
_must_ find him, if it means the abandonment of our every other
enterprise throughout this galaxy. Give me a full report upon the
screening of the planets upon which the Lensman may try to land."

"It is done, sir," came quick reply. "They are completely blockaded.
Ships are spaced so closely that even the electromagnetic detectors have
a five hundred percent overlap. Visual detectors have at least two
hundred fifty percent overlap. Nothing as large as one millimeter in any
dimension can get through without detection and observation."

"And how about the search of Trenco?"

"Results are still negative. One of our ships, with papers all in order,
visited Trenco space-port openly. No one was there except the regular
force of Rigellians. Our captain was in no position to be too
inquisitive, but the missing ship was certainly not in the port and he
gathered that he was the first visitor they had had in a month. We
learned on Rigel IV that Tregonsee, the Lensman on duty on Trenco, has
been there for a month and will not be relieved for another month. He
was the only Lensman there. We are of course carrying on the search of
the rest of the planet. About half the personnel of each vessel to land
has been lost, but they started with double crews and replacements are
being sent."

"The Lensman Tregonsee's story may or may not be true," Helmuth mused.
"It makes little difference. It would be impossible to hide that ship in
Trenco space-port from even a casual inspection, and if the ship is not
there the Lensman is not. He may be in hiding elsewhere on the planet,
but I doubt it. Continue to search nevertheless. There are many things
he may have done.... I will have to consider them, one by one."

But Helmuth had very little time to consider what Kinnison might have
done, for the Lensman had left Trenco long since. Because of the
flare-baffles upon his driving projectors his pace was slow; but to
compensate for this condition the distance to be covered was not too
long. Therefore, even as Helmuth was cogitating upon what next to do,
the Lensman and his crew were approaching the far-flung screen of
Boskonian war-vessels investing the entire Solarian System.

To approach that screen undetected was a physical impossibility, and
before Kinnison realized that he was in a danger zone six tractors had
flicked out, had seized his ship, and had jerked it up to combat range.
But the Lensman was ready for anything, and again everything happened at
once.

Warnings screamed into the distant pirate base and Helmuth, tense at his
desk, took personal charge of his mighty fleet. On the field of action
Kinnison's screens flamed out in stubborn defense, tractors snapped
under his slashing shears, the baffles disappeared in an incandescent
flare as he shot maximum blast into his drive, and space again became
suffused with the output of his now ultra-powered multiplex scramblers.

And through that murk the Lensman directed a thought, with the full
power of mind and Lens.

"Port Admiral Haynes--Prime Base! Port Admiral Haynes--Prime Base!
Urgent! Kinnison calling from the direction of Sirius--urgent!" he sent
out the fiercely-driven message.

It so happened that at Prime Base it was deep night, and Port Admiral
Haynes was sound asleep; but, trigger-nerved old space-cat that he was,
he came instantly and fully awake. Scarcely had an eye flicked open than
his answer had been hurled back:

"Haynes acknowledging--send it, Kinnison!"

"Coming in, in a pirate ship. All the pirates in space are on our necks,
but we're coming in, in spite of hell and high water! Don't send up any
ships to help us down--they could blast you out of space in a second,
but they can't stop us. Get ready--it won't be long now!"

Then, after the Port Admiral had sounded the emergency alarm, Kinnison
went on:

"Our ship carries no markings, but there's only one of us and you'll
know which one it is--we'll be doing the dodging. They'd be crazy to
follow us down into atmosphere, with all the stuff you've got, but they
act crazy enough to do almost anything. If they do follow us down, get
ready to give 'em hell--here we are!"

Pursued and pursuers had touched the outermost fringe of the
stratosphere; and, slowed down to optical visibility by even that highly
rarified atmosphere, the battle raged in incandescent splendor. One ship
was spinning, twisting, looping, gyrating, jumping and darting hither
and thither--performing every weird maneuver that the fertile and agile
minds of the Patrolmen could improvise--to shake off the horde of
attackers.

The pirates, on the other hand, were desperately determined that,
whatever the cost, THE Lensman should not land. Tractors would not hold
and the inertialess ship could not be rammed. Therefore their strategy
was that which had worked so successfully four times before in similar
case--to englobe the ship completely and thus beam her down. And while
attempting this englobement they so massed their forces as to drive the
Lensman's vessel as far as possible away from the grim and tremendously
powerful fortifications of Prime Base, almost directly below them.

But the four ships which the pirates had recaptured had been manned by
Velantians; whereas in this one Kinnison the Lensman and Henderson the
Master Pilot were calling upon their every resource of instantaneous
nervous reaction, of brilliant brain and of lightning hand to avoid that
fatal trap. And avoid it they did, by series after series of fantastic
maneuvers never set down in any manual of space-combat.

Powerful as were the weapons of Prime Base, in that thick atmosphere
their effective range was less than fifty miles. Therefore the gunners,
idle at their controls, and the officers of the superdreadnaughts,
chained by definite orders to the ground, fumed and swore as, powerless
to help their battling fellows, they stood by and watched in their
plates the furious engagement so high overhead.

But slowly, _so_ slowly, Kinnison won his way downward, keeping as close
over Base as he could without being englobed, and finally he managed to
get within range of the gigantic projectors of the Patrol. Only the
heaviest of the fixed-mount guns could reach that mad whirlpool of
ships, but each one of them raved out against the same spot at precisely
the same instant. In the inferno which that spot instantly became, not
even a full-driven wall-shield could endure, and a vast hole yawned
where pirate ships had been. The beams flicked off, and, timed by his
Lens, Kinnison shot his ship through that hole before it could be closed
and arrowed downward at maximum blast.

Ship after ship of the pirate horde followed him down in madly suicidal
last attempts to blast him out of the ether; down toward the terrific
armament of the base. Prime Base itself, the most dreaded, the most
heavily armed, the most impregnable fortress of the Galactic Patrol!
Nothing afloat could even threaten that citadel--the overbold attackers
simply disappeared in brief flashes of coruscant vapor.

Kinnison, even before inerting his ship preparatory to landing, called
his commander.

"Did any of the other boys beat us in, sir?" he asked.

"No, sir," came the curt response. Congratulations, felicitations, and
celebration would come later; Haynes was now the Port Admiral receiving
an official report.

"Then, sir, I have the honor to report that the expedition has
succeeded," and he could not help adding informally, youthfully exultant
at the success of his first real mission, "We've brought home the
bacon!"

CHAPTER  13                                             _Maulers Afloat_

A powerful fleet had been sent to rescue those of the _Brittania's_ crew
who might have managed to stay out of the clutches of the pirates. The
wildly enthusiastic celebration inside Prime Base was over. Outside the
force-walls of the Reservation, however, it was just beginning. The
specialists and the Velantians were in the thick of it. No one on Earth
knew anything about Velantia, and those highly intelligent reptilian
beings knew just as little of Tellus. Nevertheless, simply because they
had aided the Patrolmen, the visitors were practically given the keys to
the planet, and they were enjoying the experience tremendously.

"We want Kinnison--we want Kinnison!" the festive crowd, led by
Universal Telenews men, had been yelling; and finally the Lensman came
out. But after one pose before a lens and a few words into a microphone,
he pleaded, "There's my call, now--urgent!" and fled back inside
Reservation. Then the milling tide of celebrants rolled back toward the
city, taking with it every Patrolman who could get leave.

Engineers and designers were swarming through and over the pirate ship
Kinnison had driven home, each armed with a sheaf of blue-prints already
prepared from the long-cherished data-spool, each directing a corps of
mechanics in dismantling some mechanism of the great space-rover. To
this hive of bustling activity it was that Kinnison had been called. He
stood there, answering as best he could the multitude of questions being
fired at him from all sides, until he was rescued by no less a personage
than Port Admiral Haynes.

"You gentlemen can get your information from the data sheets better than
you can from Kinnison," he remarked with a smile, "and I want to take
his report without any more delay."

Hand under arm, the old Lensman led the young one away, but once inside
his private office he summoned neither secretary nor recorder. Instead,
he pushed the buttons which set up a complete-coverage shield and spoke.

"Now, son, open up. Out with it--everything that you have been holding
back ever since you landed. I got your signal."

"Well, yes, I have been holding back," Kinnison admitted. "I haven't got
enough jets to be sticking my neck out in fast company, even if it were
something to be discussed in public, which it isn't. I'm glad you could
give me this time so quick. I want to go over an idea with you, and with
_no one else_. It may be as cockeyed as Trenco's ether--you're to be the
sole judge of that--but you'll know I mean well, no matter how goofy it
is."

"That certainly is not an overstatement," Haynes replied, dryly. "Go
ahead."

"The great peculiarity of space combat is that we fly free, but fight
inert," Kinnison began, apparently irrelevantly, but choosing his
phraseology with care. "To force an engagement one ship locks to the
other first with tracers, then with tractors, and goes inert. Thus,
relative speed determines the ability to force or to avoid engagement;
but it is relative power that determines the outcome. Heretofore the
pirates--

"And by the way, we are belittling our opponents and building up a
disastrous overconfidence in ourselves by calling them pirates. They are
not--they can't be. Boskonia must be more than a race or a system--it is
very probably a galaxy-wide culture. It is an absolute despotism,
holding its authority by means of a rigid system of rewards and
punishments. In our eyes it is fundamentally wrong, but it works--_how_
it works! It is organized just as we are, and is apparently as strong in
bases, vessels, and personnel.

"Boskonia has had the better of us, both in speed--except for the
_Brittania's_ momentary advantage--and in power. That advantage is now
lost to them. We will have, then, two immense powers, each galactic in
scope, each tremendously powerful in arms, equipment, and personnel;
each having exactly the same weapons and defenses, and each determined
to wipe out the other. A stalemate is inevitable; an absolute deadlock;
a sheerly destructive war of attrition which will go on for centuries
and which must end in the annihilation of both Boskonia and
civilization."

"But our new projectors and screens!" protested the elder man. "They
give us an overwhelming advantage. We can force or avoid engagement, as
we please. You know the plan to crush them--you helped to develop it."

"Yes, I know the plan. I also know that we will not crush them. So do
you. We both know that our advantage will be only temporary." The young
Lensman, unimpressed, was in deadly earnest.

The Admiral did not reply for a time. Deep down, he himself had felt the
doubt; but neither he nor any other of his school had ever mentioned the
thing that Kinnison had now so baldly put into words. He knew that
whatever one side had, of weapon or armor or equipment, would sooner or
later become the property of the other; as was witnessed by the
desperate venture which Kinnison himself had so recently and so
successfully concluded. He knew that the devices installed in the
vessels captured upon Velantia had been destroyed before falling into
the hands of the enemy, but he also knew that with entire fleets so
equipped the new arms could not be kept secret indefinitely. Therefore
he finally replied:

"That may be true." He paused, then went on like the indomitable veteran
that he was. "But we have the advantage now and we'll drive it while
we've got it. After all, we may be able to hold it long enough."

"I've just thought of one more thing that would help--communication,"
Kinnison did not argue the previous point, but went ahead. "It seems to
be impossible to drive any kind of a communicator beam through the
double interference...."

"_Seems_ to be!" barked Haynes. "It is impossible! Nothing but a
thought...."

"That's it exactly--_thought_!" interrupted Kinnison in turn. "The
Velantians can do things with a Lens that nobody would believe possible.
Why not examine some of them for Lensmen? I'm sure that Worsel could
pass, and probably many others. They can drive thoughts through anything
except their own thought-screens--and what communicators they would
make!"

"That idea has distinct possibilities and will be followed up. However,
it is not what you wanted to discuss. Go ahead."

"QX." Kinnison went into Lens-to-Lens communication. "I want some kind
of a shield or screen that will neutralize or nullify a detector. I
asked Hotchkiss, the communications expert, about it--under seal. He
said it had never been investigated, even as an academic problem in
research, but that it was theoretically possible."

"This room is shielded, you know." Haynes was surprised at the use of
the Lenses. "Is it _that_ important?"

"I don't know. As I said before, I may be cockeyed; but if my idea is
any good at all that nullifier is the most important thing in the
universe, and if word of it gets out it may be useless. You see, sir,
over the long route, the only really permanent advantage that we have
over Boskonia, the one thing they can't get, is the Lens. There must be
some way to use it. If that nullifier is possible, and if we can keep it
secret for a while, I believe I've found it. At least, I want to try
something. It may not work--probably it won't, it's a mighty slim
chance--but if it does, we may be able to wipe out Boskonia in a few
months instead of carrying on forever a war of attrition. First, I want
to go...."

"Hold on!" Haynes snapped. "I've been thinking, too. I can't see any
possible relation between such a device and any real military weapon, or
the Lens, either. If I can't, not many others can, and that's a point in
your favor. If there's anything at all in your idea, it's too big to
share with anyone, even me. Keep it to yourself."

"But it's a peculiar hook-up, and may not be any good at all," protested
Kinnison. "You might want to cancel it."

"No danger of that," came the positive statement. "You know more about
the pirates--pardon me, about Boskonia--than any other Patrolman. You
believe that your idea has some slight chance of success. Very
well--that fact is enough to put every resource of the Patrol back of
you. Put your idea on a tape under Lensman's Seal, so that it will not
be lost in case of your death. Then go ahead. If it is possible to
develop that nullifier you shall have it. Hotchkiss will take charge of
it, and have any other Lensmen he wants. No one except Lensmen will work
on it or know anything about it. No records will be kept. It will not
even exist until you yourself release it to us."

"Thanks, sir," and Kinnison left the room.

Then for weeks Prime Base was the scene of an activity furious indeed.
New apparatus was designed and tested--new shears, new generators, new
scramblers, and many other new things. Each item was designed and
tested, redesigned and retested, until even the most skeptical of the
Patrol's engineers could no longer find in it anything to criticize.
Then throughout the galaxy the ships of the Patrol were recalled to
their sector bases to be rebuilt.

There were to be two great classes of vessels. Those of the
first--special scouting cruisers--were to have speed and
defense--nothing else. They were to be the fastest things in space, and
able to defend themselves against attack--that was all. Vessels of the
second class had to be built from the keel upward, since nothing even
remotely like them had theretofore been conceived. They were to be huge,
ungainly, slow--simply storehouses of incomprehensibly vast powers of
offense. They carried projectors of a size and power never before set
upon movable foundations, nor were they dependent upon cosmic energy.
They carried their own, in bank upon bank of stupendous accumulators. In
fact, each of these monstrous floating fortresses was to be able to
generate screens of such design and power that no vessel anywhere near
them could receive cosmic energy!

This, then, was the bolt which civilization was preparing to hurl
against Boskonia. In theory the thing was simplicity itself. The
ultra-fast cruisers would catch the enemy, lock on with tractors so hard
that they could not be sheared, and go inert, thus anchoring the enemy
in space. Then, while absorbing and dissipating everything that the
opposition could send, they would put out a peculiarly patterned
interference, the center of which could easily be located. The mobile
fortresses would then come up, cut off the Boskonians' power-intake, and
finish up the job.

Not soon was that bolt forged; but in time civilization was ready to
launch its terrific and, it was generally hoped and believed, conclusive
attack upon Boskonia. Every sector base and sub-base was ready; the zero
hour had been set.

At Prime Base Kimball Kinnison, the youngest Tellurian ever to wear the
four silver bars of captain, sat at the conning-plate of the heavy
battle-cruiser _Brittania_, so named at his own request. He thrilled
inwardly as he thought of her speed. Such was her force of drive that,
streamlined to the ultimate degree although she was, she had special
wall-shields, and special dissipators to radiate into space the heat of
friction of the medium through which she tore so madly. Otherwise she
would have destroyed herself in an hour of full blast, even in the hard
vacuum of interstellar space!

And in his office Port Admiral Haynes watched a chronometer. Minutes to
go--then seconds.

"Clear ether!" His deep voice was gruff with unexpressed emotion. "Five
seconds--four--three--two--one--Lift!" and the Fleet shot into the air.

The first objective of this Tellurian fleet was very close indeed to
home, for the Boskonians had established a base upon Neptune's moon,
right here in the Solarian System. So close to Prime Base that only
intensive screening and constant vigilance had kept its spy-rays out; so
powerful that the ordinary battleships of the Patrol had not been sent
against it. Now it was to be reduced.

Short as was the time necessary to traverse any interplanetary distance,
the Solarians were detected and were met in force by the ships of
Boskone. But scarcely had battle been joined when the enemy began to
realize that this was to be a battle the like of which they had never
before seen; and when they began to understand it, it was too late. They
could not run, and all space was so full of interference that they could
not even report to Helmuth what was going on. These first, peculiarly
tear-drop-shaped vessels of the Patrol did not fight at all. They simply
held on like bull-dogs, taking without response everything that the
white-hot projectors could throw at them. Their defensive screens
radiated fiercely, high into the violet, under the appalling punishment
being dealt out to them by the batteries of ship and shore, but they did
not go down. Nor did the grip of a single tractor loosen from its
anchorage. And in minutes the squat and monstrous maulers came up. Out
went their cosmic-energy blocking screens, out shot their tractor beams,
and out from the refractory throats of their stupendous projectors raved
the most terrifically destructive forces ever generated by mobile
machinery.

Boskonian outer screens scarcely even flickered as they went down before
the immeasurable, the incredible violence of that thrust. The second
course offered a briefly brilliant burst of violet radiance as it gave
way. The inner screen resisted stubbornly as it ran the spectrum in a
wildly coruscant display of pyrotechnic splendor; but it, too, went
through the ultra-violet and into the black. Now the wall-shield
itself--that inconceivably rigid fabrication of pure force which only
the detonation of twenty metric tons of duodec had ever been known to
rupture--was all that barred from the base metal of Boskonian walls the
utterly indescribable fury of the maulers' beams. Now force was
streaming from that shield in veritable torrents. So terrible were the
conflicting energies there at grips that their neutralization was
actually visible and tangible. In sheets and masses, in terrific,
ether-wracking vortices, and in miles-long, pillaring streamers and
flashes, those energies were being hurled away. Hurled to all the points
of the sphere's full compass, filling and suffusing all nearby space.

The Boskonian commanders stared at their instruments, first in
bewildered amazement and then in sheer, stark, unbelieving horror as
their power-intake dropped to zero and their wall-shields began to
fail--and still the attack continued in never-lessening power. Surely
that beaming _must_ slacken down soon--no conceivable mobile plant could
throw such a load for long!

But those mobile plants could--and did. The attack kept up, at the
terrifically high level upon which it had begun. No ordinary storage
cells fed those mighty projectors; along no ordinary bus-bars were their
Titanic amperages borne. Those maulers were designed to do just one
thing--to _maul_--and that one thing they did well; relentlessly and
thoroughly.

Higher and higher into the spectrum the defending wall-shields began to
radiate. At the first blast they had leaped almost through the visible
spectrum, in one unbearably fierce succession of red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, and indigo; up to a sultry, coruscating, blindingly hard
violet. Now the doomed shields began leaping erratically into the
ultra-violet. To the eye they were already invisible; upon the recorders
they were showing momentary flashes of black.

Soon they went down; and in the instant of each failure one vessel of
Boskonia was no more. For, that last defense gone, nothing save
unresisting metal was left to withstand the ardor of those
ultra-powerful, ravening beams. As has already been said, no substance,
however refractory or resistant or inert, can endure even momentarily in
such a field of force. Therefore every atom, alike of vessel and of
contents, went to make up the searing, seething burst of brilliant,
incandescently luminous vapor which suffused all circumambient space.

Thus passed out of the Scheme of Things the vessels of the Solarian
Detachment of Boskonia. Not a single vessel escaped; the cruisers saw to
that. And then the attack thundered on to the base. Here the cruisers
were useless; they merely formed an observant fringe, the while
continuing to so blanket all channels of communication that the doomed
pirates could send out no word of what was happening. The maulers moved
up and grimly, doggedly, methodically went to work.

Since a base is always much more powerfully armored than is a
battleship, the reduction of the fortresses took longer than had the
destruction of the fleet. But their receptors could no longer draw power
from the sun or from any other heavenly body, and their other sources of
power were comparatively weak. Therefore their defenses also failed
under that incessant assault. Course after course their screens went
down, and with the last ones went every structure. The maulers' beams
went through metal and masonry as effortlessly as steel-jacketed bullets
go through butter, and bored on, deep into the planet's bed-rock, before
their frightful force was spent.

Then around and around they spiralled until nothing whatever was left of
the Boskonian works; until only a seething, white-hot lake of molten
lava in the midst of the satellite's frigid waste was all that remained
to show that anything had ever been built there.

Surrender had not been thought of. Quarter or clemency had not been
asked or offered. Victory of itself was not enough. This was, and of
stern necessity had to be, a war of utter, complete, and merciless
extinction.

CHAPTER  14                                                 _Unattached_

The enemy stronghold so insultingly close to Prime Base having been
obliterated, Regional Fleets, in loose formations, began to scour the
various Galactic Regions. For a few weeks game was plentiful enough.
Hundreds of raiding vessels were overtaken and held by the Patrol
cruisers, then blasted to vapor by the maulers.

Many Boskonian bases were also reduced. The locations of most of these
had long been known to the Intelligence Service, others were detected or
discovered by the fast-flying cruisers themselves. Marauding vessels
revealed the sites of others by succeeding in reaching them before being
overtaken by the cruisers. Others were found by the tracers and loops of
the Signal Corps.

Very few of these bases were hidden or in any way difficult of access,
and most of them fell before the blasts of a single mauler. But if one
mauler was not enough, others were summoned until it did fall. One
fortress, a hitherto unknown and surprisingly strong Secor Base,
required the concentration of every mauler of Tellus, but they were
brought up and the fortress fell. As had been said, this was a war of
extinction and every pirate base that was found was wiped out.

But one day a cruiser found a base which had not even a spy-ray shield
up, and a cursory inspection showed it to be completely empty.
Machinery, equipment, stores, and personnel had all been evacuated.
Suspicious, the Patrol vessels stood off and beamed it from afar, but
there were no untoward occurrences. The structures simply slumped down
into lava, and that was all.

Every base discovered thereafter was in the same condition, and at the
same time the ships of Boskone, formerly so plentiful, disappeared
utterly from space. Day after day the cruisers sped hither and thither
throughout the vast reaches of the void, at the peak of their
unimaginably high pace, without finding a trace of any Boskonian vessel.
More remarkable still, and for the first time in years, the ether was
absolutely free from Boskonian interference.

Following an impulse, Kinnison asked and received permission to take his
ship on scouting duty. At maximum blast he drove toward the Velantian
system, to the point at which he had picked up Helmuth's communication
line. Along that line he drove for days, halting only when well outside
the galaxy. Ahead of him there was nothing reachable except a few
star-clusters. Behind him there extended the immensity of the galactic
lens in all its splendor, but Captain Kinnison had no eye for
astronomical beauty that day.

He held the _Brittania_ there for an hour, while he mulled over in his
mind what the apparent facts could mean. He knew that he had covered the
line, from its point of determination out beyond the galaxy's edge. He
knew that his detectors, operating as they had been in clear and
undistorted ether, could not possibly have missed a thing as large as
Helmuth's base must be, if it had been anywhere near that line; that
their effective range was immensely greater than the largest possible
error in the determination or the following of the line. There were, he
concluded, four possible explanations, and only four.

First, Helmuth's base might also have been evacuated. This was
unthinkable. From what he himself knew of Helmuth that base would be as
nearly impregnable as anything could be made, and it was no more apt to
be vacated than was Prime Base of the Patrol. Second, it might be
subterranean; buried under enough metal-bearing rock to ground out all
radiation. This possibility was just as unlikely as the first. Third,
Helmuth might already have the device he himself wanted so badly, and
upon which Hotchkiss and the other experts had been at work so long, a
detector nullifier. This was possible, distinctly so. Possible enough,
at least, to warrant filing the idea for future consideration. Fourth,
that base might not be in the galaxy at all, but in that star-cluster
out there straight ahead of him, or possibly in one even farther away.
That idea seemed the best of the four. It would necessitate
ultra-powerful communicators, of course, but Helmuth could very well
have them. It squared up in other ways--its pattern fitted into the
matrix very nicely.

But if that base were out there.... it could stay there--for a while....
a battle-cruiser just wasn't enough ship for that job. Too much
opposition out there, and not--enough--ship.... Or too much ship?
But he wasn't ready, yet, anyway. He needed, and would get, another line
on Helmuth's base. Therefore, shrugging his shoulders, he whirled his
vessel about and set out to rejoin the fleet.

While a full day short of junction, Kinnison was called to his plate, to
see upon its lambent surface the visage of Port Admiral Haynes.

"Did you find out anything on your trip?" he asked.

"Nothing definite, sir. Just a couple of things to think about, is all.
But I can say that I don't like this at all--I don't like anything about
it or any part of it."

"No more do I," agreed the admiral. "It looks very much as though your
forecast of a stalemate might be about to eventuate. Where are you
headed for now?"

"Back to the Fleet."

"Don't do it. Stay on scouting duty for a while longer. And, unless
something more interesting turns up, report back here to me--we have
something that may interest you. The boys have been...."

The admiral's picture was broken up into flashes of blinding light and
his words became a meaningless, jumbled roar of noise. A distress call
had begun to come in, only to be blotted out by a flood of Boskonian
static interference, of which the ether had for so long been clear. The
young Lensman used his Lens.

"Excuse me, sir, while I see what this is all about?"

"Certainly, son."

"Got its center located?" Kinnison yelped at his communications officer.
"They're close--right in our laps!"

"Yes, sir!" and the radio man snapped out numbers.

"Blast!" the captain commanded, unnecessarily; for the alert pilot had
already set the course and was kicking in full-blast drive. "If that
baby is what I think it is, all hell's out for noon."

Toward the center of disturbance the _Brittania_ flashed, emitting now a
scream of peculiarly patterned interference which was not only a
scrambler of all un-Lensed communication throughout that whole part of
the galaxy, but also an imperative call for any mauler within range. So
close had the cruiser been to the scene of depredation that for her to
reach it required only minutes.

There lay the merchantman and her Boskonian assailant. Emboldened by the
cessation of piratical activities, some shipping concern had sent out a
freighter, loaded probably with highly "urgent" cargo; and this was the
result. The marauder, inert now, had gripped her with his tractors and
was beaming her into submission. She was resisting, but feebly now; it
was apparent that her screens were failing. Her crew must soon open
ports in token of surrender or roast to a man; and they would probably
prefer to roast.

Thus the situation obtaining in one instant. The next instant it was
changed; the Boskonian discovering suddenly that his beams, instead of
boring through the weak defenses of the freighter, were not even
exciting to a glow the mighty protective envelopes of a battle-cruiser
of the Patrol. He switched from the diffused heat-beam he had been using
upon the merchantman to the hardest, hottest, most penetrating beam of
annihilation he mounted--with but little more to show for it and with no
better results. For the _Brittania's_ screens had been designed to stand
up almost indefinitely against the most potent beams of any ordinary
warship, and they stood up.

Kinnison had tremendously powerful beams of his own, but he did not use
them. It would take the super-powerful offense of a mauler to produce a
definite answer to the question seething in his mind.

Increase power as the pirate would, to whatever ruinous overload, he
could not break down Kinnison's screens; nor, dodge as he would, could
he again get in position to attack his former prey. And eventually the
mauler arrived; fortunately it, too, had been fairly close by. Out
reached its mighty tractors. Out raved one of its tremendous beams,
striking the Boskonian's defenses squarely amidships.

That beam struck and the pirate ship disappeared--but not in a hazily
incandescent flare of volatilized metal. The raider disappeared bodily,
and still all in one piece. He had put out super-shears of his own,
snapping the mauler's supposedly unbreakable tractors like threads; and
the velocity of his departure was due almost as much to the pressor
effect of the Patrol beam as it was to the thrust of his own drivers.

It was the beginning of the stalemate Kinnison had foreseen.

"I was afraid of that," the young captain muttered; and, paying no
attention whatever to the merchantman, he called the commander of the
mauler. At this close range, of course, no ether scrambler could
interfere with visual apparatus, and there on his plate he saw the face
of Clifford Maitland, the man who had graduated number two in his own
class.

"Hi, Kim, you old space-flea!" Maitland exclaimed in delight. "Oh,
pardon me, sir," he went on in mock deference, with an exaggerated
salute. "To a guy with four jets, I should say...."

"Seal that, Cliff, or I'll climb up you like a squirrel, first chance I
get!" Kinnison retorted. "So they've got you skippering an El Ponderoso,
huh? Think of a mere infant like you being let play with so much
high-power! What'll we do about this heap here?"

"Damfino. It isn't covered, so you'll have to tell me, Captain."

"Who'm I to be passing out orders? As you say, it isn't covered in the
book--it's against G I regs for them to be cutting our tractors. But
he's all yours, not mine--I've got to flit. You might find out what he's
carrying, from where, to where, and why. Then, if you want to, you can
escort him either back where he came from or on to where he's going;
whichever you think best. If this interference doesn't let-up, maybe
you'd better Lens Prime Base for orders. Or use your own judgment, if
any. Clear ether, Cliff, I've got to buzz along."

"Clear ether, spacehound!"

"Now, Hank," Kinnison turned to his pilot, "we've got urgent business at
Prime Base--and when I say 'urgent' I don't mean perchance. Let's see
you burn a hole in the ether."

The _Brittania_ streaked Earthward, and scarcely had she touched ground
when Kinnison was summoned to the office of the Port Admiral. As soon as
he was announced, Haynes bruskly cleared his office and sealed it
against any possible form of intrusion or eavesdropping. He had aged
noticeably since these two had had that memorable conference in this
same room. His face was lined and careworn, his eyes and his entire mien
bore witness to days and nights of sleeplessly continuous work.

"You were right, Kinnison," he began, Lens to Lens. "A stalemate it is;
a hopeless deadlock. I called you in to tell you that Hotchkiss has your
nullifier done, and that it works perfectly against all long-range
stuff. Against electromagnetics, however, it is not very effective.
About all that can be done, it seems, is to shorten the range; and it
doesn't interfere with vision at all."

"I can get by with that, I think--I will be out of electromagnetic range
most of the time, and nobody watches their electros very close, anyway.
Thanks a lot. It's ready to install?"

"Doesn't need installation. It's such a little thing you can put it in
your pocket. It's self-contained and will work anywhere."

"Better and better. In that case I'll need two of them--and a ship. I
would like to have one of those new automatic speedsters.[4] Lots of
legs, cruising range, and screens. Only one beam, but I probably won't
use even that one...."

-----

[4] Unlike the larger war-vessels of the Patrol, speedsters are very
narrow in proportion to their length, and in their design nothing is
considered save speed and maneuverability. Very definitely they are not
built for comfort. Thus, although their gravity plates are set for
horizontal flight, they have braking jets, under jets, side jets, and
top jets, as well as driving jets; so that in inert maneuvering any
direction whatever may seem "down," and that direction may change with
bewildering rapidity.

Nothing can be loose in a speedster--everything, even to food-supplies
in the refrigerators, must be clamped into place. Sleeping is done in
hammocks, not in beds. All seats and resting-places have heavy
safety-straps, and there are no loose items of furniture or equipment
anywhere on board.

Because they are designed for the utmost possible speed in the free
condition, speedsters are extremely cranky and tricky in inert flight
unless they are being handled upon their under jets, which are designed
and placed specifically and only for inert flight.

Some of the ultra-fast vessels of the pirates, as will be brought out
later, were also of this shape and design.

                                                                 E.E.S.

-----

"Going _alone_?" interrupted Haynes. "Better take your battle-cruiser,
at least. I don't like the idea of you going into deep space alone."

"I don't particularly relish the prospect, either, but it's got to be
that way. The whole fleet, maulers and all, isn't enough to do by force
what's got to be done, and even two men is too many to do it in the only
way it can be done. You see, sir...."

"No explanations, please. It's on the spool, where we can get it if we
need it. Are you informed as to the latest developments?"

"No, sir. I heard a little coming in, but not much."

"We are almost back where we were before you took off in the first
_Brittania_. Commerce is almost at a standstill. All shipping firms are
practically idle, but that is neither all of it nor the worst of it. You
may not realize how important interstellar trade is; but as a result of
its stoppage general business has slowed down tremendously. As is only
to be expected, perhaps, complaints are coming in by the thousand
because we have not already blasted the pirates out of space, and
demands that we do so at once. They do not understand the true
situation, nor realize that we are doing everything we can. We cannot
send a mauler with every freighter and liner, and mauler-escorted
vessels are the only ones to arrive at their destinations."

"But why? With tractor shears on all ships, how can they hold them?"
asked Kinnison.

"Magnets!" snorted Haynes. "Plain, old-fashioned electromagnets. No pull
to speak of, at a distance, of course, but with the raider running free
they don't need much. Close up--lock on--board and storm--all done!"

"Hm.. m.. m. That changes things. I've got to find a pirate ship. I
was planning on following a freighter or liner out toward Alsakan, but
if there aren't any to follow.... I'll have to hunt around...."

"That is easily arranged. Lots of them want to go. We will let one go,
with a mauler accompanying her, but well outside detector range."

"That covers everything, then, except the assignment. I can't very well
ask for leave, but maybe I could be put on special assignment, reporting
direct to you?"

"Something better than that," and Haynes smiled broadly, in genuine
pleasure. "Everything is fixed. Your Release has been entered in the
books. Your commission as captain has been cancelled, so leave your
uniform in your former quarters. Here is your credit book and here is
the rest of your kit. You are now an Unattached Lensman."

The Release! The goal toward which all Lensmen strive, but which so few
attain! He was now a free agent, responsible to no one and to nothing
save his own conscience. He was no longer of Earth, nor of the Solarian
System, but of the galaxy as a whole. He was no longer a tiny cog in the
immense machine of the Galactic Patrol; wherever he might go, throughout
the immensity of the entire Island Universe, he _would be_ the Galactic
Patrol!

"Yes, it's real." The older man was enjoying the youngster's
stupefaction at his Release, reminding him as it did of the time, long
years before, when he had won his own. "You go anywhere you please and
do anything you please, for as long as you please. You take anything you
want, whenever you want it, with or without giving reasons--although you
will usually give a thumb-printed credit slip in return. You report if,
as, when, where, how, and to whom you please--or not, as you please. You
don't even get a salary any more. You help yourself to that, too,
wherever you may be; as much as you want, whenever you want it."

"But, sir... I.... you... I mean.... that is...."
Kinnison gulped three times before he could speak coherently. "I'm not
ready, sir. Why, I'm nothing but a kid--I haven't got enough jets to
swing it. Just the bare thought of it scares me into hysterics!"

"It would--it always does." Haynes was very much in earnest now, but it
was a glad, proud earnestness. "You are to be as nearly absolutely free
an agent as it is possible for a living, flesh-and-blood creature to be.
To the man on the street that would seem to spell a condition of perfect
bliss. Only a Gray Lensman knows what a frightful load it really is; but
it is a load that such a Lensman is glad and proud to carry."

"Yes, sir, he would be, of course, if he...."

"That thought will bother you for a time--if it did not, you would not
be here--but don't worry about it any more than you can help. All I can
say is that in the opinion of those who should know, not only have you
proved yourself ready for Release, but also you have earned it."

"How do they figure that out?" Kinnison demanded, hotly. "All that saved
my bacon on that trip was luck--a burned-out Bergenholm--and at the time
I thought it was bad luck, at that. And vanBuskirk and Worsel and the
other boys and the Lord knows who else pulled me out of jam after jam.
I'd like awfully well to believe that I'm ready, sir, but I'm not. I
can't take credit for pure dumb luck and for other men's abilities."

"Well, cooperation is to be expected, and we like to make Gray Lensmen
out of the lucky ones." Haynes laughed deeply. "It may make you feel
better, though, if I tell you two more things. First, that so far you
have made the best showing of any man yet graduated from Wentworth Hall.
Second, that we of the Court believe that you would have succeeded in
that almost impossible mission without vanBuskirk, without Worsel, and
without the lucky failure of the Bergenholm. In a different, and now of
course unguessable fashion, but succeeded, nevertheless. Nor is this to
be taken as in any sense a belittlement of the very real abilities of
those others, nor a denial that luck, or chance, does exist. It is
merely our recognition of the fact that you have what it takes to be an
Unattached Lensman.

"Seal it now, and buzz off!" he commanded, as Kinnison tried to say
something; and, clapping him on the shoulder, he turned him around and
gave him a gentle shove toward the door. "Clear ether, lad!"

"Same to you, sir--all of it there is. I still think that you and all
the rest of the Court are cockeyed; but I'll try not to let you down,"
and the newly unattached Lensman blundered out. He stumbled over the
threshold, bumped against a stenographer who was hurrying along the
corridor, and almost barged into the jamb of the entrance door instead
of going through the opening. Outside he regained his physical poise and
walked on air toward his quarters; but he never could remember afterward
what he did or whom he met on that long, fast hike. Over and over the
one thought pounded in his brain: unattached! _Unattached!!_
UNATTACHED!!!

And behind him, in the Port Admiral's office, that high official sat and
mused, smiling faintly with lips and eyes, staring unseeingly at the
still open doorway through which Kinnison had staggered. The boy had
measured up in every particular. He would be a good man. He would marry.
He did not think so now, of course--in his own mind his life was
consecrate--but he would. If necessary, the Patrol itself would see to
it that he did. There were ways, and such stock was altogether too good
not to be propagated. And, fifteen years from now--if he lived--when he
was no longer fit for the grinding, grueling life to which he now looked
forward so eagerly, he would select the Earth-bound job for which he was
best fitted and would become a good executive. For such were the
executives of the Patrol. But this day-dreaming was getting him nowhere,
fast: he shook himself and plunged again into his work.

Kinnison reached his quarters at last, realizing with a thrill that they
were no longer his. He now had no quarters, no residence, no address.
Wherever he might be, throughout the whole of illimitable space, there
was his home. But, instead of being dismayed by the thought of the life
he faced, he was filled by a fierce eagerness to be actually living it.

There was a tap at his door and an orderly entered, carrying a bulky
package.

"Your Grays, sir," he announced, with a crisp salute.

"Thanks." Kinnison returned the salute as smartly; and, almost before
the door had closed, he was yanking off the
space-black-and-silver-and-gold gorgeousness of the uniform he wore.

Stripped bare, he made the quick, meaningful gesture he had not really
expected ever to be able to make. Gray Seal. No entity has ever donned
or ever will don the Gray unmoved, nor without dedicating himself anew
to that for which it stands.

The Gray--the unadorned, neutral-colored leather that was the proud garb
of that branch of the Patrol to which he was thenceforth to belong. It
had been tailored to his measurements, and he could not help studying
with approval his reflection in the mirror. The round, almost visorless
cap, heavily and softly quilted in protection against the helmet of his
armor. The heavy goggles, opaque to all radiation harmful to the eyes.
The short jacket, emphasizing broad shoulders and narrow waist. The trim
breeches and high boots, encasing powerful, tapering legs.

"What an outfit--_what_ an outfit!" he breathed. "And maybe I ain't such
a bad-looking ape, at that, in these Grays!"

He did not then, and never did realize that he was wearing the plainest,
drabbest, most strictly utilitarian uniform in existence; for to him, as
to all others who knew it, the sheer, stark simplicity of the Unattached
Lensman's plain gray leather transcended by far the gaudy trappings of
the other branches of the Service. He had admired himself boyishly, as
men do, feeling a trifle ashamed in so doing; but he did not then and
never did appreciate what a striking figure of a man he really was as he
strode out of Quarters and down the wide avenue toward the _Brittania's_
dock.

He was glad indeed that there had been no ceremony or public show
connected with this, his real and only important graduation. For as his
fellows--not only his own crew, but also his friends from all over the
Reservation--thronged about him, mauling and pummeling him in
congratulation and acclaim, he knew that he couldn't stand much more. If
there were to be much more of it, he discovered suddenly, he would
either pass out cold or cry like a baby--he didn't quite know which.

That whole howling, chanting mob clustered about him; and, considering
it an honor to carry the least of his personal belongings, formed a
yelling, cap-tossing escort. Traffic meant nothing whatever to that
pleasantly mad crew; nor, temporarily, did regulations. Let traffic
detour--let pedestrians, no matter how august, cool their heels--let
cars, trucks, yes, even trains, wait until they got past--let everything
wait, or turn around and go back, or go some other way. Here comes
Kinnison! Kimball Kinnison! Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman! Make way!
And way was made; from the _Brittania's_ dock clear across the base to
the slip in which the Lensman's new speedster lay.

And what a ship this little speedster was! Trim, trig, streamlined to
the ultimate she lay there; quiescent but surcharged with power. Almost
sentient she was, this power-packed, ultraracy little fabrication of
space-toughened alloy; instantly ready at his touch to liberate those
tremendous energies which were to hurl him through the infinite reaches
of the cosmic void.

None of the mob came aboard, of course. They backed off, still
frantically waving and throwing whatever came closest to hand; and as
Kinnison touched a button and shot into the air he swallowed several
times in a vain attempt to dispose of an amazing lump which had somehow
appeared in his throat.

CHAPTER  15                                                  _The Decoy_

It so happened that for many long weeks there had been lying in New York
Space-port an urgent shipment for Alsakan, and that urgency was not
merely a one-way affair. For, with the possible exception of a few
packets whose owners had locked them in vaults and would not part with
them at any price, there was not a single Alsakanite cigarette left on
Earth!

Luxuries, then as now, soared feverishly in price with scarcity. Only
the rich smoked Alsakanite cigarettes, and to those rich the price of
anything they really wanted was a matter of almost complete
indifference. And plenty of them wanted, and wanted badly, their
Alsakanite cigarettes--there was no doubt of that. The current market
report upon them was:

"Bid, one thousand credits per packet of ten. Offered, none at any
price."

With that ever-climbing figure in mind, a merchant prince named Matthews
had been trying to get an Alsakan-bound ship into the ether. He knew
that one cargo of Alsakanite cigarettes safely landed in any Tellurian
space-port would yield more profit than could be made by his entire
fleet in ten years of normal trading. Therefore he had for weeks been
pulling every wire, and even every string, that he could reach;
political, financial, even at times verging altogether too close for
comfort upon the criminal--but without results.

For, even if he could find a crew willing to take the risk, to launch
the ship without an escort would be out of the question. There would be
no profit in a ship that did not return to Earth. The ship was his, to
do with as he pleased, but the escorting maulers were assigned solely by
the Galactic Patrol, and the Patrol would not give his ship an escort.

In answer to his first request, he had been informed that only cargoes
classed as "necessary" were being escorted at all regularly; that
"semi-necessary" loads were escorted occasionally, when of a
particularly useful or desirable commodity and if opportunity offered;
that "luxury" loads such as his were not being escorted at all; that he
would be notified if, as, and when the _Prometheus_ could be given
escort. Then the merchant prince began his siege.

Politicians of high rank, local and national, sent in "requests" of
varying degrees of diplomacy. Financiers first offered inducements, then
threatened to "bear down," then put on all the various kinds of pressure
known to their pressure-loving ilk. Pleas, demands, threats, and
pressures were alike, however, futile. The Patrol could not be coaxed or
bullied, cajoled, bribed, or cowed; and all further communications upon
the subject, from whatever source originating were ignored.

Having exhausted his every resource of diplomacy, politics, guile, and
finance, the merchant prince resigned himself to the inevitable and
stopped trying to get his ship off the ground. Then New York Base
received from Prime Base an open message, not even coded, which read:

"Authorize space-ship _Prometheus_ to clear for Alsakan at will,
escorted by Patrol ship B 42 TC 838, whose present orders are hereby
cancelled. Signed, Haynes."

A demolition bomb dropped into that sub-base would not have caused
greater excitement than did that message. No one could explain it--the
base commander, the mauler's captain, the captain of the _Prometheus_,
or the highly pleased but equally surprised Matthews--but all of them
did whatever they could to expedite the departure of the freighter. She
was, and had been for a long time, practically ready to sail.

As the base commander and Matthews sat in the office, shortly before the
scheduled time of departure, Kinnison arrived--or, more correctly, let
them know that he was there. He invited them both into the control-room
of his speedster; and invitations from Gray Lensmen were accepted
without question or demur.

"I suppose you are wondering what this is all about," he began. "I'll
make it as short as I can. I asked you in here because this is the only
convenient place in which I _know_ that what we say will not be
overheard. There are lots of spy-rays around here, whether you know it
or not. The _Prometheus_ is to be allowed to go to Alsakan, because that
is where pirates seem to be most numerous, and we do not want to waste
time hunting all over space to find one. Your vessel was selected, Mr.
Matthews, for three reasons, and in spite of the attempts you have been
making to obtain special privileges, not because of them. First, because
there is no necessary or semi-necessary freight waiting for clearance
into that region. Second, because we do not want your firm to fail. We
do not know of any other large shipping line in such a shaky position as
yours, nor of any firm anywhere to which one single cargo would make
such an immense financial difference."

"You are certainly right there, Lensman!" Matthews agreed,
whole-heartedly. "It means bankruptcy on the one hand and a fortune on
the other."

"Here's what is to happen. The ship and the mauler blast off on
schedule, fourteen minutes from now. They get about to Valeria, when
they are both recalled--urgent orders for the mauler to go on rescue
work. The mauler comes back, but your captain will, in all probability,
keep on going, saying that he started out for Alsakan and that's where
he's going...."

"But he wouldn't--he wouldn't _dare_!" gasped the ship-owner.

"Sure he would," Kinnison insisted, cheerfully enough. "That is the
third good reason your vessel is being allowed to set out, because it
certainly will be attacked. You didn't know it until now, but your
captain and over half of your crew are pirates themselves, and are going
to...."

"What? Pirates!" Matthews bellowed. "I'll go down there and...."

"You'll do nothing whatever, Mr. Matthews, except watch things, and you
will do that from here. The situation is under control."

"But my ship! My cargo!" the shipper wailed. "We'll be ruined
if they...."

"Let me finish, please," the Lensman interrupted. "As soon as the mauler
turns back it is practically certain that your captain will send out a
message, letting the pirates know that he is easy prey. Within a minute
after sending that message, he dies. So does every other pirate aboard.
Your ship lands on Valeria and takes on a crew of space-fighting
wildcats, headed by Peter vanBuskirk. Then it goes on toward Alsakan,
and when the pirates board that ship, after its pre-arranged
half-hearted resistance and easy surrender, they are going to think that
all hell's out for noon. Especially since the mauler, back from her
'rescue work,' will be tagging along, not too far away."

"Then my ship will really go to Alsakan, and back, safely?" Matthews was
almost dazed. Matters were entirely out of his hands, and things had
moved so rapidly that he hardly knew what to think. "But if my own crews
are pirates, some of them may.... but I can of course get police
protection if necessary."

"Unless something entirely unforeseen happens, the _Prometheus_ will
make the round trip in safety, cargoes and all--under mauler escort all
the way. You will of course have to take the other matter up with your
local police."

"When is the attack to take place, sir?" asked the base commander.

"That's what the mauler skipper wanted to know when I told him what was
ahead of him," Kinnison grinned. "He wanted to sneak up a little closer
about that time. I'd like to know, myself, but unfortunately that will
have to be decided by the pirates after they get the signal. It will be
on the way out, though, because the cargo she has aboard now is a lot
more valuable to Boskone than a load of Alsakanite cigarettes would be."

"But do you think you can take the pirate ship that way?" asked the
commander, dubiously.

"No, but we will cut down his personnel to such an extent that he will
have to head back for his base."

"And that's what you want--the base. I see."

He did not see--quite--but the Lensman did not enlighten him further.

There was a brilliant double flare as freighter and mauler lifted into
the air, and Kinnison showed the ship-owner out.

"Hadn't I better be going, too?" asked the commander. "Those orders, you
know."

"A couple of minutes yet. I have another message for you--official.
Matthews won't need a police escort long--if any. When that ship is
attacked it is to be the signal for cleaning out every pirate in Greater
New York--the worst pirate hot-bed on Tellus. Neither you nor your force
will be in on it directly, but you might pass the word around, so that
our own men will be informed ahead of the Telenews outfits."

"Good! That has needed doing for a long time."

"Yes, but you know it takes a long time to line up every man in such a
big organization. They want to get them all, without getting any
innocent bystanders."

"Who's doing it--Prime Base?"

"Yes. Enough men will be thrown in here to do the whole job in an hour."

"That _is_ good news--clear ether, Lensman!" and the base commander went
back to his post.

As the air-lock toggles rammed home, sealing the exit behind the
departing visitor, Kinnison eased his speedster into the air and headed
for Valeria. Since the two vessels ahead of him had left atmosphere
inertialess, as would he, and since several hundred seconds had elapsed
since their take-off, he was of course some ten thousand miles off their
line as well as being uncounted millions of miles behind them. But the
larger distance meant no more than the smaller, and neither of them
meant anything at all to the Patrol's finest speedster. Kinnison, on
easy touring blast, caught up with them in minutes. Closing up to less
than one light-year, he slowed his pace to match theirs and held his
distance.

Any ordinary ship would have been detected long since, but Kinnison rode
no ordinary ship. His speedster was immune to all detection save
electromagnetic or visual, and therefore, even at that close range--the
travel of half a minute for even a slow space-ship in open space--he was
safe. For electromagnetics are useless at that distance: and visual
apparatus, even with sub-ether converters, is reliable only up to a few
mere thousands of miles, unless the observer knows exactly what to look
for and where to look for it.

Kinnison, then, closed up and followed the _Prometheus_ and her mauler
escort; and as they approached the Valerian solar system the recall
message came booming in. Also, as had been expected, the renegade
captain of the freighter sent his defiant answer and his message to the
pirate high command. The mauler turned back, the merchantman kept on.
Suddenly, however, she stopped, inert, and from her ports were ejected
discrete bits of matter--probably the bodies of the Boskonian members of
her crew. Then the _Prometheus_, again inertialess, flashed directly
toward the planet Valeria.

An inertialess landing is, of course, highly irregular, and is made only
when the ship is to take off again immediately. It saves all the time
ordinarily lost in spiraling and deceleration, and saves the computation
of a landing orbit, which is no task for an amateur computer. It is,
however, dangerous. It takes power, plenty of it, to maintain the force
which neutralizes the inertia of mass, and if that force fails even for
an instant while a ship is upon a planet's surface, the consequences are
usually highly disastrous. For in the neutralization of inertia there is
no magic, no getting of something for nothing, no violation of Nature's
law of the conservation of matter and energy. The instant that force
becomes inoperative the ship possesses exactly the same velocity,
momentum, and inertia that it possessed at the instant the force took
effect. Thus, if a space-ship takes off from Earth, with its orbital
velocity of about eighteen and one-half miles per second relative to the
sun, goes free, dashes to Mars, lands free, and then goes inert, its
original velocity, both in speed and in direction, is instantly
restored; with consequences better imagined than described. Such a
velocity of course _might_ take the ship harmlessly into the air; but it
probably would not.

Inertialess vessels do not ordinarily load freight. They do, however,
take on passengers, especially military personnel accustomed to
open-space maneuvers in powered space-suits. Men and ship must go
inert--separately, of course--immediately after leaving the planet, so
that the men can match their intrinsic velocity to the ship's; but that
takes only a very small fraction of the time required for an inert
landing.

Hence the _Prometheus_ landed free, and so did Kinnison. He stepped out,
fully armored against Valeria's extremely heavy atmosphere, and laboring
a trifle under its terrific gravitation, to be greeted cordially by
_Lieutenant_ vanBuskirk, whose fighting men were already streaming
aboard the freighter.

"Hi, Kim!" the Dutchman called, gaily. "Everything went off like
clockwork. Won't hold you up long--be blasting off in ten minutes."

"Ho, Lefty!" the Lensman acknowledged, as cordially, but saluting the
newly commissioned officer with an exaggerated formality. "Say, Bus,
I've been doing some thinking. Why wouldn't it be a good idea to...."

"Uh-uh, it would _not_," denied the fighter, positively. "I know what
you're going to say--that you want in on this party--but don't say it."

"But I...." Kinnison began to argue.

"Nix," the Valerian declared flatly. "You've got to stay with your
speedster. No room for her inside; she's clear full of cargo and my men.
You can't clamp on outside, because that would give the whole thing
away. And besides, for the first and last time in my life I've got a
chance to give a Gray Lensman orders. Those orders are to stay out of
and away from this ship--and I'll see to it that you do, too, you little
Tellurian shrimp! Boy, what a kick I get out of that!"

"You would, you big, dumb Valerian ape--you always were a small-souled
type!" Kinnison retorted. "Piggy-piggy.... Haynes, huh?"

"Uh-huh." VanBuskirk nodded. "How else could I talk so rough to _you_
and get away with it? However, don't feel too bad--you aren't missing a
thing, really. It's in the cans already, and your fun is up ahead
somewhere. And by the way, Kim, congratulations. You had it coming.
We're all behind you, from here to the Magellanic Clouds and back."

"Thanks. The same to you, Bus, and many of 'em. Well, if you won't let
me stow away, I'll tag along behind, I guess. Clear ether--or rather, I
hope it's full of pirates by tomorrow morning. Won't be, though,
probably; don't imagine they'll move until we're almost there."

And tag along Kinnison did, through thousands and thousands of parsecs
of uneventful voyage.

Part of the time he spent in the speedster dashing hither and yon. Most
of it, however, he spent in the vastly more comfortable mauler; to the
armored side of which his tiny vessel clung with its magnetic clamps
while he slept and ate, gossiped and read, exercised and played with the
mauler's officers and crew, in deep-space comradery. It so happened,
however, that when the long-awaited attack developed he was out in his
speedster, and thus saw and heard everything from the beginning.

Space was filled with the old, familiar interference. The raider flashed
up, locked on with magnets, and began to beam. Not heavily--scarcely
enough to warm up the defensive screens--and Kinnison probed into the
pirate with his spy-ray.

"Terrestrials--North Americans!" he exclaimed, half-aloud, startled for
an instant. "But naturally they would be, since this is a put-up job and
over half the crew were New York gangsters."

"The blighter's got his spy-ray screens up," the pilot was grumbling to
his captain. The fact that he spoke in English was immaterial to the
Lensman; he would have understood equally well any other possible form
of communication or of thought exchange. "That wasn't part of the plan,
was it?"

If Helmuth or one of the other able minds at Grand Base had been
directing that attack it would have stopped right there. The pilot had
shown a flash of feeling that, with a little encouragement, might have
grown into a suspicion. But the captain was not an imaginative man.
Therefore:

"Nothing was said about it, either way," he replied. "Probably the
mate's on duty--he isn't one of us, you know. The captain will open up.
If he doesn't do it pretty quick I'll open her up myself.... there,
the port's opening. Slide a little forward... hold it! Go get 'em,
men!"

Men, hundreds of them, armed and armored, swarmed through the
freighter's locks. But as the last man of the boarding party passed the
portal something happened that was most decidedly not on the program.
The outer port slammed shut and its toggles drove home!

"Blast those screens! Knock them down--get in there with a spy-ray!"
barked the pirate captain. He was not one of those hardy and valiant
souls who, like Gildersleeve, led in person the attacks of his
cut-throats. He emulated instead the higher Boskonian officials and
directed his raids from the safety of his control-room; but, as has been
intimated, he was not exactly like those officials. It was only after it
was too late that he became suspicious. "I wonder if somebody could have
double-crossed us?.... Highjackers?"

"We'll bally soon know," the pilot growled, and even as he spoke the
spy-ray got through, revealing a very shambles.

For vanBuskirk and his Valerians had not been caught napping, nor were
they a crew--unarmored, partially armed, and rendered even more impotent
by internal mutiny, strife, and slaughter--such as the pirates had
expected to find.

Instead, the boarders met a force that was overwhelmingly superior to
their own. Not only in the strength and agility of its units, but also
in that at least one semi-portable projector commanded every corridor of
the freighter. In the blasts of those projectors most of the pirates
died instantly, not knowing what struck them.

They were the fortunate ones. The others knew what was coming and saw it
as it came, for the Valerians did not even draw their DeLameters. They
knew that the pirates' armor could withstand for minutes any
hand-weapon's beams, and they disdained to remount the heavy
semi-portables. They came in with their space-axes, and at the sight the
pirates broke and ran screaming in panic fear. But they could not
escape. The toggles of the exit port were socketed and locked.

Therefore the storming party died to the last man; and, as vanBuskirk
had foretold, it was scarcely even a struggle. For ordinary armor is so
much tin-plate against a Valerian swinging a space-axe.

The spy-ray of the pirate captain got through just in time to see the
ghastly finale of the massacre, and his face turned first purple, then
white.

"The Patrol!" he gasped. "Valerians--a whole company of them! I'll say
we've been double-crossed!"

"Righto--we've been jolly well had," the pilot agreed. "You don't know
the half of it, either. Somebody's coming, and it isn't a boy scout. If
a mauler should suck us in, we'd be very much a spent force, what?"

"Cut the gabble!" snapped the captain. "Is it a mauler, or not?"

"A bit too far away yet to say, but it probably is. They wouldn't have
sent those jaspers out without cover, old bean--they know we can burn
that freighter's screens down in an hour. Better get ready to run,
what?"

The commander did so, wild thoughts racing through his mind. If a mauler
got close enough to him to use magnets, he was done. His heaviest beams
wouldn't even warm up a mauler's screens; his defenses wouldn't stand up
for a second against a mauler's blasts.... and he'd be ordered back
to base....

"Tally ho, old fruit!" The pilot slammed on maximum blast. "It's a
mauler and we've been bloody well jobbed. Back to base?"

"Yes," and the discomfited captain energized his communicator, to report
to his immediate superior the humiliating outcome of the supposedly
carefully-planned coup.

CHAPTER  16                                _Kinnison Meets the Wheelmen_

As the pirate fled into space Kinnison followed, matching his quarry in
course and speed. He then cut in the automatic controller on his drive,
the automatic recorder on his plate, and began to tune in his
beam-tracer; only to be brought up short by the realization that the
spy-ray's point would not stay in the pirate's control room without
constant attention and manual adjustment. He had known that, too. Even
the most precise of automatic controllers, driven by the most carefully
stabilized electronic currents, are prone to slip a little at even such
close range as ten million miles, especially in the bumpy ether near
solar systems, and there was nothing to correct the slip. He had not
thought of that before; the pilot always made those minor corrections as
a matter of course.

But now he was torn between two desires. He wanted to listen to the
conversation that would ensue as soon as the pirate captain got into
communication with his superior officers; and, especially should Helmuth
put in his beam, he very much wanted to trace it and thus secure another
line on the headquarters he was so anxious to locate. He now feared that
he could not do both--a fear that soon was to prove well grounded--and
wished fervently that for a few minutes he could be two men. Or at least
a Velantian; they had eyes and hands and separate brain-compartments
enough so that they could do half-a-dozen things at once and do each one
well. He could not; but he could try. Maybe he should have brought one
of the boys along, at that. No, that would wreck everything, later on;
he would have to do the best he could.

Communication was established and the pirate captain began to make his
report; and by using one hand on the ray and the other on the tracer, he
managed to get a partial line and to record scraps of the conversation.
He missed, however, the essential part of the entire episode, that part
in which the base commander turned the unsuccessful captain over to
Helmuth himself. Therefore Kinnison was surprised indeed at the
disappearance of the beam he was so laboriously trying to trace, and to
hear Helmuth conclude his castigation of the unlucky captain with:

"....not entirely your fault, I will not punish you at all severely
this time. Report to our base on Aldebaran I, turn your vessel over to
commander there, and do anything he tells you to for thirty of the days
of that planet."

Frantically Kinnison drew back his tracer and searched for Helmuth's
beam; but before he could synchronize with it the message of the
pirates' high chief was finished and his beam was gone. The Lensman sat
back in thought.

Aldebaran! Practically next door to his own Solarian System, from which
he had come so far. How had they possibly managed to keep concealed, or
to re-establish, a base so close to Sol, through all the intensive
searching that had been done? But they _had_--that was the important
thing. Anyway, he knew where he was going, and that helped. One other
thing he hadn't thought of, and one that might have spoiled everything,
was the fact that he couldn't stay awake indefinitely to follow that
ship! He had to sleep sometime, and while he was asleep his quarry was
bound to escape. He of course had a CRX tracer, which would hold a ship
without attention as long as it was anywhere within even extreme range;
and it would have been a simple enough matter to have had a photo-cell
relay put in between the plate of the CRX and the automatic controls of
the spacer and driver--but he had not asked for it. Well, luckily, he
now knew where he was going, and the trip to Aldebaran would be long
enough for him to build a dozen such controls. He had all the necessary
parts and plenty of tools.

Therefore, following the pirate ship easily as it tore through space,
Kinnison built his automatic "chaser," as he called it. During each of
the first four or five "nights" he lost the vessel he was pursuing, but
found it without any great difficulty upon awakening. Thereafter he held
it continuously; improving day by day the performance of his apparatus
until it could do almost anything except talk. After that he devoted his
time to an intensive study of the general problem before him. His
results were highly unsatisfactory; for in order to solve any problem
one must have enough data to set it up, either in actual equations or in
logical sequences, and Kinnison did not have enough data. He had
altogether too many unknowns and not enough knowns.

The first specific problem was that of getting into the pirate base.
Since the searchers of the Patrol had not found it, that base must be
very well hidden indeed. And hiding anything as large as a base on
Aldebaran I, as he remembered it, would be quite a feat in itself. He
had been in that system only once, but....

Alone in his ship, and in deep space although he was, he blushed
painfully as he remembered what had happened to him during that visit.
He had chased a couple of dope runners to Aldebaran II, and there he had
encountered the most vividly, the most flawlessly, the most remarkably
and intriguingly beautiful girl he had ever seen. He had seen beautiful
women, of course, before and in plenty. He had seen beauties amateur and
professional; social butterflies, dancers, actresses, models, and
posturers; both in the flesh and in Telenewscasts; but he had never
supposed that such an utterly ravishing creature as she was could exist
outside of a thionite dream. As a timidly innocent damsel in distress
she had been perfect, and if she had held that pose a little longer
Kinnison shuddered to think of what might have happened.

But, having known too many dope-runners and too few Patrolmen, she
misjudged entirely, not only the cadet's sentiments, but also his
reactions. For, even as she came amorously into his arms, he had known
that there was something screwy. Women like that did not play that kind
of game for nothing. She must be mixed up with the two he had been
chasing. He got away from her, with only a couple of scratches, just in
time to capture her confederates as they were making their escape--and
he had been afraid of beautiful women ever since. He'd like to see that
Aldebaranian hell-cat again--just once. He'd been just a kid then, but
now....

But that line of thought was getting him nowhere, fast. It was Aldebaran
I that he had better be thinking of. Barren, lifeless, desolate,
airless, waterless. Bare as his hand, covered with extinct volcanoes,
cratered, jagged, and torn. To hide a base on that planet would take
plenty of doing, and, conversely, it would be correspondingly difficult
to approach. If on the surface at all, which he doubted very strongly,
it would be covered. In any event, all its approaches would be
thoroughly screened and equipped with lookouts on the ultra-violet and
on the infra-red, as well as on the visible. His detector nullifier
wouldn't help him much there. Those screens and lookouts were bad--very,
very bad. Question--could _anything_ get into that base without setting
off an alarm?

His speedster could not even get close, that was certain. Could he,
alone? He would have to wear armor, of course, to hold his air, and it
would radiate. Not necessarily--he could land out of range and walk,
without power; but there were still the screens and the lookouts. If the
pirates were on their toes it simply wasn't in the cards; and he had to
assume that they would be alert.

What, then, could pass those barriers? Prolonged consideration of every
fact of the situation gave definite answer and marked out clearly the
course he must take. Something admitted by the pirates themselves was
the only thing that could get in. The vessel ahead of his was going in.
Therefore he must and would enter that base within the pirate vessel
itself. With that point decided there remained only the working out of a
method, which proved to be almost ridiculously simple.

Once inside the base, what should he--or rather, what _could_ he--do?
For days he made and discarded plans, but finally he tossed them all out
of his mind. So much depended upon the location of the base, its
personnel, its arrangement, and its routine, that he could develop not
even the rough draft of a working plan. He knew what he wanted to do,
but he had not even the remotest idea as to how he could go about doing
it. Of the openings that appeared, he would have to choose the most
feasible and fit his actions to whatever situation then and there
obtained.

So deciding, he shot his spy-ray toward the planet and studied it with
care. It was indeed as he had remembered it, or worse. Bleakly, hotly
arid, it had no soil whatever, its entire surface being composed of
igneous rock, lava, and pumice. Stupendous ranges of mountains
criss-crossed and intersected each other at random, each range a
succession of dead volcanic peaks and blown-off craters. Mountainside
and rocky plain, crater-wall and valley floor, alike and innumerably
were pockmarked with sub-craters and with immensely yawning shell-holes,
as though the whole planet had been throughout geologic ages the target
of an incessant cosmic bombardment.

Over its surface and through and through its volume he drove his
spy-ray; finding nothing. He bored into its substance with his detectors
and his tracers; with results completely negative. Of course, closer up,
his electromagnetics would report iron--plenty of it--but that
information would also be meaningless. Practically all planets had iron
cores. As far as his instruments could tell--and he had given Aldebaran
I a more thorough going-over by far than any ordinary surveying ship
would have given it--there was no base of any kind upon or within the
planet. Yet he _knew_ that a base was there. So what?--maybe--Helmuth's
base might be inside the galaxy after all, protected from detection in
the same way; probably by solid miles of iron or of iron ore. A second
line upon that base had now become imperative. But they were approaching
the system fast; he had better get ready.

He belted on his personal equipment, including a nullifier, then
inspected his armor, checking its supplies and apparatus carefully
before he hooked it ready to his hand. Glancing into the plate, he noted
with approval that his "chaser" was functioning perfectly. Pursued and
pursuer were now both well inside the solar system of Aldebaran; and, as
slowed the pirate so slowed the speedster. Finally the leader went inert
in preparation for his spiral, but Kinnison was no longer following.
Before he went inert he flashed down to within fifty thousand miles of
the planet's forbidding surface. He then cut his Bergenholm, threw the
speedster into an almost circular orbit, well away from the landing
orbit selected by the pirate, cut off all his power, and drifted. He
stayed in the speedster, observing and computing, until he had so
exactly defined its path that he could find it unerringly at any future
instant. Then he went into the air-lock, stepped out into space, and,
waiting only to be sure that the portal had snapped shut behind him, set
his course toward the pirate's spiral.

Inert now, his progress was so slow as to seem imperceptible, but he had
plenty of time. And it was only relatively that his speed was low. He
was actually hurtling through space at the rate of well over two
thousand miles an hour, and his powerful little driver was increasing
that speed constantly by an acceleration of two Earth gravities.

Soon the vessel crept up, beneath him now, and Kinnison, increasing his
drive to five gravities, shot toward it in a long, slanting dive. This
was the most ticklish minute of the trip, but the Lensman had assumed
correctly that the ship's officers would be looking ahead of them and
down, not backward and up. They were, and he made his approach unseen.
The approach itself, the boarding of an inert space-ship at its
frightful landing-spiral velocity, was elementary to any competent
space-man. There was not even a flare to bother him or to reveal him to
sight, as the braking jets were now doing all the work. Matching course
and velocity ever more closely, he crept up--flung his magnet--pulled
up, hand over hand--opened the emergency inlet lock--and there he was.

Unconcernedly he made his way along the sternway and into the now
deserted quarters of the fighters. There he lay down in a hammock,
snapped the acceleration straps, and shot his spy-ray into the control
room. And there, in the pirate captain's own visiplate, he observed the
rugged and torn topography of the terrain below as the pilot fought his
ship down, mile by mile. Tough going, this, Kinnison reflected, and the
bird was doing a nice job, even if he was taking it the hard way,
bringing her down straight on her nose instead of taking one more spiral
around the planet and then sliding in on her under jets, which were
designed and placed specifically for such work. But taking it the hard
way he was, and his vessel was bucking, kicking, bouncing and spinning
on the terrific blasts of her braking jets. Down she came, fast; and it
was only after she was actually inside one of those stupendous craters,
well below the level of its rim, that the pilot flattened her out and
assumed normal landing position.

They were still going too fast, Kinnison thought, but the pirate pilot
knew what he was doing. Five miles the vessel dropped, straight down
that Titanic shaft, before the bottom was reached. The shaft's wall was
studded with windows; in front of the craft loomed the outer gate of a
gigantic air-lock. It opened, the ship was trundled inside,
landing-cradle and all, and the massive gate closed behind it. This was
the pirates' base, and Kinnison was inside it!

"Men, attention!" The pirate commander snapped then. "The air is deadly
poison, so put on your armor and be sure your tanks are full. They have
rooms for us, having good air, but don't open your suits a crack until I
tell you to. Assemble! All of you that are not here in this control room
in five minutes will stay on board and take your own chances!"

Kinnison decided instantly to assemble with the crew. He could do
nothing in the ship, and it would be inspected, of course. He had plenty
of air, but space-armor all looked alike, and his Lens would warn him in
time of any unfriendly or suspicious thought. He had better go. If they
called a roll.... but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

No roll was called; in fact, the captain paid no attention at all to his
men. They would come along or not, just as they pleased. But since to
stay in the ship meant death, every man was prompt. At the expiration of
the five minutes the captain strode away, followed by the crowd. Through
a doorway, left turn, and the captain was met by a creature whose shape
Kinnison could not make out. A pause, a straggling forward, then a right
turn.

Kinnison decided that he would not take that turn. He would stay here,
close to the shaft, where he could blast his way out if necessary, until
he had studied the whole base thoroughly enough to map out a plan of
campaign. He soon found an empty and apparently unused room, and assured
himself that through its heavy, crystal-clear window he could indeed
look out into the vastly cylindrical emptiness of a volcanic shaft.

Then with his spy-ray he watched the pirates as they were escorted to
the quarters prepared for them. Those might have been rooms of state,
but it looked to Kinnison very much as though his former shipmates were
being jailed ignominiously, and he was glad that he had taken leave of
them. Shooting his ray here and there throughout the structure, he
finally found what he was looking for; the communicator room. That room
was fairly well lighted, and at what he saw there his jaw dropped in
sheerest amazement.

He had expected to see men, since Aldebaran II, the only inhabited
planet in the system, had been colonized from Tellus and its people were
as truly human and Caucasian as those of Chicago or of Paris. But
there... these _things_.... he had been around quite a bit, but he had
never seen nor heard of their like. They were wheels, really. When they
went anywhere they rolled. Heads where hubs ought to be.... eyes....
arms, dozens of them, and very capable-looking hands....

"Vogenar!" a crisp thought flashed from one of the peculiar entities to
another, impinging also upon Kinnison's Lens. "Someone--some
outsider--is looking at me. Relieve me while I abate this intolerable
nuisance."

"One of those creatures from Tellus? We will teach them very shortly
that such intrusion is not to be borne."

"No, it is not one of them. The touch is similar, but the tone is
entirely different. Nor could it be one of them, for not one of them is
equipped with the instrument which is such a clumsy substitute for
inherent power of mind. There, I will now...."

Kinnison snapped on his thought-screen, but the damage had already been
done. In the violated Communications Room the angry observer went on:

"....attune myself and trace the origin of that prying look. It has
disappeared now, but its sender cannot be distant, since our walls are
shielded and screened.... Ah, there is a blank space, which I cannot
penetrate, in the seventh room of the fourth corridor. In all
probability it is one of our guests, hiding now behind a thought
screen." Then his orders boomed out to a corps of guards. "Take him and
put him with the others!"

Kinnison had not heard the order, but he was ready for anything, and
those who came to take him found that it was much easier to issue such
orders than to carry them out.

"Halt!" snapped the Lensman, his Lens carrying the crackling command
deep into the Wheelmen's minds. "I do not wish to harm you, but come no
closer!"

"You? Harm us?" came a cold, clear thought, and the creatures vanished.
But not for long. They or others like them were back in moments, this
time armed and armored for strife.

Again Kinnison found that DeLameters were useless. The armor of the foe
mounted generators as capable as his own; and, although the air in the
room soon became one intolerably glaring field of force, in which the
very walls themselves began to crumble and to vaporize, neither he nor
his attackers were harmed. Again, then, the Lensman had recourse to his
medival weapon; sheathing his DeLameter and wading in with his axe.
Although not a vanBuskirk, he was, for an Earthman, of unusual strength,
skill, and speed: and to those opposing him he was a very Hercules.

Therefore, as he struck and struck and struck again, the cell became a
gorily reeking slaughter-pen, its every corner high-piled with the
shattered corpses of the Wheelmen and its floor running with blood and
slime. The last few of the attackers, unwilling to face longer that
irresistible steel, wheeled away, and Kinnison thought flashingly of
what he should do next.

This trip was a bust so far. He couldn't do himself a bit of good here
now, and he'd better flit while he was still in one piece. How? The
door? No. Couldn't make it--he'd run out of time quick that way. His
screens would stop small-arms projectiles, but they knew that as well as
he did. They'd use a young cannon--or, more probably, a semi-portable.
Better take out the wall. That would give them something else to think
about, too, while he was doing his flit.

Only a fraction of a second was taken up by these thoughts, then
Kinnison was at the wall. He set his DeLameter to minimum aperture and
at maximum blast, to throw an irresistible cutting pencil. Through the
wall that pencil pierced; up, over, and around.

But, fast as the Lensman had acted, he was still too late. There came
trundling into the room behind him a low, four-wheeled truck, bearing a
complex and monstrous mechanism. Kinnison whirled to face it. As he
turned the section of the wall upon which he had been at work blew
outward with a crash. The ensuing rush of escaping atmosphere swept the
Lensman up and whisked him out through the opening and into the shaft.
In the meantime the mechanism upon the truck had begun a staccato,
grinding roar, and as it roared Kinnison felt slugs ripping through his
armor and tearing through his flesh; each as crushing, crunching,
paralyzing a blow as though it had been inflicted by vanBuskirk's space
axe.

This was the first time Kinnison had ever been really badly wounded, and
it made him sick. But, sick and numb, senses reeling at the shock of his
slug-torn body, his right hand flashed to the external controller of his
neutralizer. For he was falling inert. Only ten or fifteen meters to the
bottom, as remembered it--he had mighty little time to waste if he were
not to land inert. He snapped the controller. Nothing happened.
Something had been shot away. His driver, too, was dead. Snapping the
sleeve of his armor into its clamp he began to withdraw his arm in order
to operate the internal controls, but he ran out of time. He crashed; on
the top of a subsiding pile of masonry which had preceded him, but which
had not yet attained a state of equilibrium; underneath a shower of
similar material which rebounded from his armor in a boiler-shop clangor
of noise.

Well it was that that heap of masonry had not yet had time to settle
into form, for in some slight measure it acted as a cushion to break the
Lensman's fall. But an inert fall of forty feet, even cushioned by
sliding rocks, is in no sense a light one. Kinnison crashed. It seemed
as though a thousand pile-drivers struck him at once. Surges of almost
unbearable agony swept over him as bones snapped and bruised flesh gave
way; and he knew dimly that a merciful tide of oblivion was reaching up
to engulf his shrieking, suffering mind.

But, foggily at first in the stunned confusion of his entire being,
something stirred; that unknown and unknowable something, that
indefinable ultimate quality that had made him what he was. He lived,
and while a Lensman lived he did not quit. To quit was to die then and
there, since he was losing air fast. He had plastic in his kit, of
course, and the holes were small. He _must_ plug those leaks, and plug
them quick. His left arm, he found, he could not move at all. It must be
smashed pretty badly. Every shallow breath was a searing pain--that
meant a rib or two gone out. Luckily, however, he was not breathing
blood, therefore his lungs must still be intact. He could move his right
arm, although it seemed like a lump of clay or a limb belonging to
someone else. But, mustering all his power of will, he made it move. He
dragged it out of the armor's clamped sleeve; and forced the leaden hand
to slide through the welter of blood that seemed almost to fill the
bulge of his armor. He found his kit-box, and, after an eternity of
pain-wracked time, he compelled his sluggish hand to open it and to take
out the plastic.

Then, in a continuously crescendo throbbing of agony, he forced his
maimed, crushed, and broken body to writhe and to wriggle about, so that
his one sound hand could find and stop the holes through which his
precious air was whistling out and away. Find them he did, and quickly,
and seal them tight; but when he had plugged the last one he slumped
down, spent and exhausted. He did not hurt so much, now; his suffering
had mounted to such terrific heights of intolerable keenness that the
nerves themselves, in outraged protest at carrying such a load, had
blocked it off.

There was much more to do, but he simply could not do it without a rest.
Even his iron will could not drive his tortured muscles to any further
effort until they had been allowed to recuperate a little from what they
had gone through.

How much air did he have left, if any, he wondered: foggily and with an
entirely detached and disinterested impersonality. Maybe his tanks were
empty. Of course it couldn't have taken him so long to plug those leaks
as it had seemed to, or he wouldn't have had any air left at all, in
tanks or suit. He couldn't, however, have much left. He would look at
his gauges and see.

But now he found that he could not move even his eyeballs, so deep was
the coma that was enveloping him. Away off somewhere there was a billowy
expanse of blackness, utterly heavenly in its deep, softly-cushioned
comfort; and from that sea of peace and surcease there came reaching to
embrace him huge, soft, tender arms. Why suffer, something crooned at
him. It was so much easier to let go!

CHAPTER  17                                     _Nothing Serious at All_

Kinnison did not lose consciousness--quite. There was too much to do,
too much that _had_ to be done. He _had_ to get out of here. He _had_ to
get back to his speedster. He _had_, by hook or by crook, to get back to
Prime Base! Therefore, grimly, doggedly, teeth tight-locked in the
enhancing agony of every movement, he drew again upon those hidden,
those deeply buried resources which even he had no idea he possessed.
His code was simple: the code of the Lens. While a Lensman lived he did
not quit. Kinnison was a Lensman. Kinnison lived. Kinnison did not quit.

He fought back that engulfing tide of blackness, wave by wave as it
came. He beat down by sheer force of will those tenderly beckoning,
those sweetly seducing arms of oblivion. He forced the mass of
protesting putty that was his body to do what _had_ to be done. He
thrust styptic gauze into the most copiously bleeding of his wounds. He
was burned, too, he discovered then--they must have had a high-powered
needle-beam on that truck, as well as the rifle--but he could do nothing
about burns. There simply wasn't time.

He found the power lead that had been severed by a bullet. Stripping the
insulation was an almost impossible job, but it was finally
accomplished, after a fashion. Bridging the gap proved to be even a
worse one. Since there was no slack, the ends could not be twisted
together, but had to be joined by a short piece of spare wire, which in
turn had to be stripped and then twisted with each end of the severed
lead. That task, too, he finally finished; working purely by feel
although he was, and half-conscious withal in a wracking haze of pain.

Soldering those joints was of course out of the question. He was afraid
even to try to insulate them with tape, lest the loosely-twined strands
should fall apart in the attempt. He did have some dry handkerchiefs,
however, if he could reach them. He could, and did; and wrapped one
carefully about the wires' bare joints. Then, apprehensively, he tried
his neutralizer. Wonder of wonder, it worked! So did his driver!

In moments then he was rocketing up the shaft, and as he passed the
opening out of which he had been blown he realized with amazement that
what had seemed to him like hours must have been minutes only, and few
even of them. For the frantic Wheelmen were just then lifting into place
the temporary shield which was to stem the mighty outrush of their
atmosphere. Wonderingly, Kinnison looked at his air-gauges. He had
enough--if he hurried.

And hurry he did. He _could_ hurry, since there was practically no
atmosphere to impede his flight. Up the five-miles-deep shaft he shot
and out into space. His chronometer, built to withstand even severer
shocks than that of his fall, told him where his speedster was to be
found, and in a matter of minutes he found her. He forced his rebellious
right arm into the sleeve of his armor and fumbled at the lock. It
yielded. The port swung open. He was inside his own ship again.

Again the encroaching universe of blackness threatened, but again he
fought it off. He _could not_ pass out--yet! Dragging himself to the
board, he laid his course upon Sol, too distant by far to permit of the
selection of such a tiny objective as its planet Earth. He connected the
automatic controls.

He was weakening fast, and he knew it. But from somewhere and in some
fashion he _must_ get strength to do what _must_ be done--and somehow he
did it. He cut in the Berg, cut in maximum blast. Hang on, Kim! Hang on
for just a second more! He disconnected the spacer. He killed the
detector nullifiers. Then, with the utterly last remnant of his strength
he thought into his Lens.

"Haynes." The thought went out blurred, distorted, weak. "Kinnison. I'm
coming.... com...."

He was done. Out, cold. Utterly spent. He had already done too
much--far, far too much. He had driven that pitifully mangled body of
his to its ultimately last possible movement; his wracked and tortured
mind to its ultimately last possible thought. The last iota of even his
tremendous reserve of vitality was consumed and he plunged, parsecs
deep, into the black depths of oblivion which had so long and so
unsuccessfully been trying to engulf him. And on and on the speedster
flashed at the very peak of her unimaginably high speed; carrying the
insensible, the utterly spent, the sorely wounded, the abysmally
unconscious Lensman toward his native Earth.

                         *    *    *    *    *

But Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, had done everything that had _had_
to be done before he blacked out. His final thought, feeble though it
was, and incomplete, did its work.

Port Admiral Haynes was seated at his desk, discussing matters of import
with an office-full of executives, when that thought arrived. Hardened
old spacehound that he was, and survivor of many encounters and
hospitalizations, he knew instantly what that thought connoted and from
the depths of what dire need it had been sent.

Therefore, to the amazement of the officers in the room, he suddenly
leaped to his feet, seized his microphone, and snapped out orders.
Orders, and still more orders. Every vessel in seven sectors, of
whatever class or tonnage, was to shove its detectors out to the limit.
Kinnison's speedster is out there somewhere. Find her--get her--kill her
drive and drag her in here, to number ten landing field. Get a pilot
here, fast--no, two pilots, in armor. Get them off the top of the board,
too--Henderson and Watson or Schermerhorn if they're anywhere within
range. He then Lensed his life-long friend Surgeon-Marshal Lacy, at Base
Hospital.

"Sawbones, I've got a boy out that's badly hurt. He's coming in
free--you know what that means. Send over a good doctor. And have you
got a nurse who knows how to use a personal neutralizer and who isn't
afraid to go into the net?"

"Coming myself. Yes." The doctor's thought was as crisp as the
admiral's. "When do you want us?"

"As soon as they get their tractors on that speedster--you'll know when
that happens."

Then, neglecting all other business, the Port Admiral directed in person
the far-flung screen of ships searching for Kinnison's flying midget.

Eventually she was found; and Haynes, cutting off his plates, leaped to
a closet, in which was hanging his own armor. Unused for years,
nevertheless it was kept in readiness for instant service; and now, at
long last, the old spacehound had a good excuse to use it again. He
could have sent out one of the younger men, of course, but this was one
job that he was going to do himself.

Armored, he strode out into the landing field across the paved way.
There awaiting him were two armored figures, the two top-bracket pilots.
There were the doctor and the nurse. He barely saw--or, rather, he saw
without noticing--a saucy white cap atop a riot of red-bronze-auburn
curls; a symmetrical young body in its spotless white. He did not notice
the face at all. What he saw was that there was a neutralizer strapped
snugly into the curve of her back, that it was fitted properly, and that
it was not yet functioning.

For this that faced them was no ordinary job. The speedster would land
free. Worse, the admiral feared--and rightly--that Kinnison would also
be free, but independently; with an intrinsic velocity different from
that of his ship. They must enter the speedster, take her out into
space, and inert her. Kinnison must be taken out of the speedster,
inerted, his velocity matched to that of the flier, and brought back
aboard. Then and only then could doctor and nurse begin to work on him.
Then they would have to land as fast as a landing could be made--the boy
should have been in hospital long ago.

And during all these evolutions and until their return to ground the
rescuers themselves would remain inertialess. Ordinarily such visitors
left the ship, inerted themselves, and came back to it inert, under
their own power. But now there was no time for that. They had to get
Kinnison to the hospital; and besides, the doctor and the
nurse--particularly the nurse--could not be expected to be space-suit
navigators. They would all take it in the net, and that was another
reason for haste. For while they were gone their intrinsic velocity
would remain unchanged, while that of their present surroundings would
be changing constantly. The longer they were gone the greater would
become the discrepancy. Hence the net.

The net--a leather-and-canvas sack, lined with sponge-rubber-padded
coiled steel, anchored to ceiling and to walls and to floor through
every shock-absorbing artifice of beryllium-copper springs and of rubber
and nylon cable that the mind of man had been able to devise. It takes
something to absorb and to dissipate the kinetic energy which may reside
within a human body when its intrinsic velocity does not match the
intrinsic velocity of its surroundings--that is, if that body is not to
be mashed to a pulp. It takes something, also, to enable any human being
to face without flinching the prospect of going into that net,
especially in ignorance of exactly how much kinetic energy will have to
be dissipated. Haynes cogitated, studying the erect, supple young back,
then spoke:

"Maybe we'd better cancel the nurse, Lacy, or get her a suit...."

"Time is too important," the girl herself put in, crisply. "Don't worry
about me, Port Admiral; I've been in the net before."

She turned toward Haynes as she spoke, and for the first time he really
saw her face. Why, she was a real beauty--a knockout--a seven-sector
callout....

"Here she is!" In the grip of a tractor the speedster flashed to ground
in front of the waiting five, and they hurried aboard.

They hurried, but there was no flurry, no confusion. Each knew exactly
what to do, and each did it.

Out into space shot the little vessel, jerking savagely downward and
sidewise as one of the pilots cut the Bergenholm. Out of the air-lock
flew the Port Admiral and the helpless, unconscious Kinnison,
inertialess both and now chained together. Off they darted, in a new
direction and with tremendous speed as Haynes cut Kinnison's
neutralizer. There was a mighty double flare as the drivers of both
space-suits went to work.

As soon as it was safe to do so, out darted an armored figure with a
space-line, whose grappling end clinked into a socket of the old man's
armor as the pilot rammed it home. Then, as an angler plays a fish, two
husky pilots, feet wide-braced against the steel portal of the air-lock
and bodies sweating with effort, heaving when they could and giving line
only when they must helped the laboring drivers to overcome the
difference in velocity.

Soon the Lensmen, young and old, were inside. Doctor and nurse went
instantly to work, with the calmness and precision so characteristic of
their highly-skilled crafts. In a trice they had him out of his armor,
out of his leather, and into a hammock; perceiving at once that except
for a few pads of gauze they could do nothing for their patient until
they had him upon an operating table. Meanwhile the pilots, having swung
the hammocks, had been observing, computing and conferring.

"She's got a lot of speed, Admiral--most of it straight down," Henderson
reported. "On her landing jets it'll take close to two G's on a full
revolution to bring her in. Either one of us can balance her down, but
it'll have to be straight on her tail and it'll mean over five G's most
of the way. Which do you want?"

"Which is more important, Lacy, time or pressure?" Haynes transferred
decision to the surgeon.

"Time." Lacy decided instantly. "Fight her down!" His patient had been
through so much already of force and pressure that a little more would
not do additional hurt, and time was most decidedly of the essence.
Doctor, nurse, and admiral leaped into hammocks; pilots at their
controls tightened safety belts and acceleration straps--five gravities
for over half an hour is no light matter--and the fight was on.

Starkly incandescent flares ripped and raved from driving jets and side
jets. The speedster spun around viciously, only to be curbed, skilfully
if savagely, at the precisely right instant. Without an orbit, without
even a corkscrew or other spiral, she was going down--straight down. And
not upon her under jets was this descent to be, nor upon her even more
powerful braking jets. Master Pilot Henry Henderson, Prime Base's best,
was going to kill the awful inertia of the speedster by "balancing her
down on her tail." Or, to translate from the jargon of space, he was
going to hold the tricky, cranky little vessel upright upon the terrific
blasts of her main driving projectors, against the Earth's gravitation
and against all other perturbing forces, while her driving force
counteracted, overcame, and dissipated the full frightful measure of the
kinetic energy of her mass and speed!

And balance her down he did. Haynes was afraid for a minute that that
intrepid wight was actually going to _land_ the speedster on her tail.
He didn't--quite--but he had only a scant hundred feet to spare when he
nosed her over and eased her to ground on her under-jets.

The crash-wagon and its crew were waiting, and as Kinnison was rushed to
the hospital the others hurried to the net room. Doctor Lacy first, of
course, then the nurse; and, to Haynes' approving surprise, she took it
like a veteran. Hardly had the surgeon let himself out of the "cocoon"
than she was in it; and hardly had the terrific surges and recoils of
her own not inconsiderable one hundred and forty-five pounds of mass
abated than she herself was out and sprinting across the sward toward
the hospital.

Haynes went back to his office and tried to work, but he could not
concentrate, and made his way back to the hospital. There he waited, and
as Lacy came out of the operating room he buttonholed him.

"How about it, Lacy, will he live?" he demanded.

"Live? Of course he'll live," the surgeon replied, gruffly. "Can't tell
you details yet--we won't know, ourselves, for a couple of hours yet. Do
a flit, Haynes. Come back at sixteen forty--not a second before--and
I'll tell you all about it."

Since there was no help for it the Port Admiral did go away, but he was
back promptly on the tick of the designated hour.

"How is he?" he demanded without preamble. "Will he really live, or were
you just giving me a shot in the arm?"

"Better than that, much better," the surgeon assured him. "Definitely
so; yes. He's in much better shape than we dared hope. Must have been a
very light crash indeed--nothing seriously the matter with him at all.
We won't even have to amputate, from what we can see now. He should make
a one hundred percent recovery, not only without artificial members, but
with scarcely a scar. He couldn't have been in a space crack-up at all,
or he wouldn't have come out with so little injury."

"Fine, Doc--wonderful! Now the details."

"Here's the picture." The doctor unrolled a full-length X-ray print,
showing every anatomical detail of the Lensman's interior structure.
"First, just notice that skeleton. It is really remarkable. Slightly out
of true here and there right now, of course, but I believe it's going to
turn out to be the first absolutely perfect male skeleton I have ever
seen. That young man will go far, Haynes."

"Sure he will. Why else do you suppose we put him in Gray? But I didn't
come over here to be told that--show me the damage."

"Look at the picture--see for yourself. Multiple and compound fractures,
you notice, of legs and arm; and a few ribs. Scapula, of course--there.
Oh, yes, there's a skull fracture, too, but it doesn't amount to much.
That's all--the spine, you see, isn't injured at all."

"What d'you mean, 'that's all'? How about his wounds? I saw some of them
myself, and they were _not_ pin-pricks."

"Nothing of the least importance. A few punctured wounds and a couple of
incised ones, but nothing even close to a vital part. He won't need even
a transfusion, since he stopped the major hemorrhages himself, shortly
after he was wounded. There are a few burns, of course, but they are
mostly superficial--none that will not yield quite readily to
treatment."

"Mighty glad of that. He'll be here six weeks, then?"

"Better call it twelve, I think--ten at least. You see, some of the
fractures, especially those in the left leg, and a couple of burns, are
rather severe, as such things go. Then, too, the length of time elapsing
between injury and treatment didn't do anything a bit of good."

"In two weeks he'll be wanting to get up and go places and do things;
and in six he'll be tearing down your hospital, stone by stone."

"Yes." The surgeon smiled. "He isn't the type to make an ideal patient;
but, as I have told you before, I like to have patients that we do not
like."

"And another thing. I want the files on his nurses, particularly the
red-headed one."

"I suspected that you would, so I had them sent down. Here you are. Glad
you noticed MacDougall--she's by way of being my favorite. Clarrissa
MacDougall--Scotch, of course, with that name--twenty years old. Height,
five feet six; weight, one forty-five and a half. Here are her pictures,
conventional and X-ray. Man, look at that skeleton! Beautiful! The only
really perfect skeleton I ever saw in a woman...."

"It isn't the skeleton I'm interested in," grunted Haynes. "It's what is
outside the skeleton that my Lensman will be looking at."

"You needn't worry about MacDougall," declared the surgeon. "One good
look at that picture will tell you that. She classifies--with that
skeleton she _has_ to. She couldn't leave the beam a millimeter, even if
she wanted to. Good, bad, or indifferent; male or female; physical,
mental, moral, and psychological; the skeleton tells the whole story."

"Maybe it does to you, but not to me," and Haynes took up the
"conventional" photograph a stereoscope in full, true color; an
almost-living duplicate of the girl in question. Her thick, heavy hair
was not red, but was a vividly intense and brilliant auburn; a coppery
bronze, flashed with red and gold. Her eyes.... bronze was all that
he could think of, with flecks of topaz and of tawny gold. Her skin,
too, was faintly bronze, glowing with even more than healthy youth's
normal measure of sparkling vitality. Not only was she beautiful, the
Port Admiral decided; in the words of the surgeon, she "classified."

"Hm.... m. Dimples, too," Haynes muttered. "Worse even than I
thought--she's a menace to civilization," and he went on to read the
documents. "Family.... hm. History.... experiences...
reactions and characteristics.... behavior patterns....
psychology.... mentality...."

"She'll do, Lacy," he advised the surgeon finally. "Keep her on with
him...."

"Do!" Lacy snorted. "It isn't a question of whether _she_ rates. Look at
that hair--those eyes. Pure Samms. A man to match her would have to be
one in a hundred thousand million. With that skeleton, though, he is."

"Of course he is. You don't seem to realize, you myopic old
appendix-snatcher, that _he's_ pure _Kinnison_!"

"Ah... so maybe we could.... but he won't be falling for anybody
yet, since he's just been unattached. He'll be bullet-proof for quite a
while. You ought to know that young Lensmen--especially young Gray
Lensmen--can't see anything but their jobs; for a couple of years,
anyway."

"His skeleton tells you that, too, huh?" Haynes grunted, skeptically.
"Ordinarily, yes; but you never can tell, especially in hospitals...."

"More of your layman's misinformation!" Lacy snapped. "Contrary to
popular belief, romance does not thrive in hospitals; except, of course,
among the staff. Patients oftentimes think that they fall in love with
nurses, but it takes two people to make one romance. Nurses do not fall
in love with patients, because a man is never at his best under
hospitalization. In fact, the better a man is, the poorer a showing he
is apt to make."

"And, as I forget who said, a long time ago, 'no generalization is true,
not even this one'," retorted the Port Admiral. "When it does hit him it
will hit hard, and we'll take no chances. How about the black-haired
one?"

"Well, I just told you that MacDougall has the only perfect skeleton I
ever saw in a woman. Brownlee is very good, too, of course, but...."

"But not good enough to rate Lensman's Mate, eh?" Haynes completed the
thought. "Then take her out. Pick the best skeletons you've got for this
job, and see that no others come anywhere near him. Transfer them to
some other hospital--to some other floor of this one, at least. Any
woman that he ever falls for will fall for him, in spite of your ideas
as to the one-wayness of hospital romance; and I don't want him to have
such a good chance of making a dive at something that doesn't rate up.
Am I right or wrong, and for how much?"

"Well, I haven't had time yet to really study his skeleton, but...."

"Better take a week off and study it. I've studied a lot of people in
the last sixty-five years, and I'll match my experience against your
knowledge of bones, any time. Not saying that he _will_ fall this trip,
you understand--just playing safe."

CHAPTER  18                                          _Advanced Training_

Kinnison came to--or, rather, to say that he came half-to would be a
more accurate statement--with a yell directed at the blurrily-seen
figure in white which he knew must be a nurse.

"Nurse!" Then, as a searing stab of pain shot through him at the effort,
he went on, thinking at the figure in white through his Lens:

"My speedster! I must have landed her free! Get the space-port...."

"There, there, Lensman," a low, rich voice crooned, and a red-head bent
over him. "The speedster has been taken care of. Everything is on the
green; go to sleep and rest."

"Never mind your ship," the unctuous voice went on. "It was landed and
put away...."

"Listen, dumb-bell!" snapped the patient, speaking aloud now, in spite
of the pain, the better to drive home his meaning. "Don't try to soothe
me! What do you think I am, delirious? Get this and get it straight. I
said I landed that speedster _free_. If you don't know what that means,
tell somebody that does. Get the space-port--get Haynes--get...."

"We got them, Lensman, long ago." Although her voice was still creamily,
sweetly soft, an angry color burned into the nurse's face. "I said
everything is on zero. Your speedster was inerted; how else could you be
here, inert? I helped do it myself, so I _know_ she's inert."

"QX." The patient relapsed instantly into unconsciousness and the nurse
turned to an intern standing by--wherever _that_ nurse was, at least one
doctor could almost always be found.

"But my ship...."

"Dumb-bell!" she flared. "What a sweet mess _he's_ going to be to take
care of! Not even conscious yet, and he's calling names and picking
fights already!"

In a few days Kinnison was fully and alertly conscious. In a week most
of the pain had left him, and he was beginning to chafe under restraint.
In ten days he was "fit to be tied," and his acquaintance with his head
nurse, so inauspiciously begun, developed even more inauspiciously as
time went on. For, as Haynes and Lacy had each more than anticipated,
the Lensman was by no means an ideal patient.

Nothing that could be done would satisfy him. All doctors were
fat-heads, even Lacy, the man who had put him together. All nurses were
dumb-bells, even--or especially?--"Mac," who with almost superhuman
skill, tact, and patience had been holding him together. Why, even
fat-heads and dumb-bells, even high-grade morons, ought to know that a
man needed food!

Accustomed to eating everything he could reach, three or four or five
times a day, he did not realize--nor did his stomach--that his now
quiescent body could no longer use the five thousand or more calories
that it had been wont to burn up, each twenty-four hours, in intense
effort. He was always hungry, and he was forever demanding food.

And food, to him, did not mean orange juice or grape juice or tomato
juice or milk. Nor did it mean weak tea and hard, dry toast and an
occasional anemic soft-boiled egg. If he ate eggs at all he wanted them
fried; three or four of them, accompanied by two or three thick slices
of ham.

He wanted--and demanded in no uncertain terms, argumentatively and
persistently--a big, thick, rare beefsteak. He wanted baked beans, with
plenty of fat pork. He wanted bread in thick slices, piled high with
butter, and not this quadruply-and-unmentionably-qualified toast. He
wanted roast beef, rare, in big, thick slabs. He wanted potatoes and
thick brown gravy. He wanted corned beef and cabbage. He wanted pie--any
kind of pie--in large, thick quarters. He wanted peas and corn and
asparagus and cucumbers, and also various other-worldly staples of diet
which he often and insistently mentioned by name.

But above all he wanted beefsteak. He thought about it days and dreamed
about it nights. One night in particular he dreamed about it--an
especially luscious porterhouse, fried in butter and smothered in
mushrooms--only to wake up, mouth watering, literally starved, to face
again the weak tea, dry toast, and, horror of horrors, this time a
flabby, pallid, flaccid _poached_ egg! It was the last straw.

"Take it away," he said, weakly; then, when the nurse did not obey, he
reached out and pushed the breakfast, tray and all, off the table. Then,
as it crashed to the floor, he turned away, and, in spite of all his
efforts, two hot tears forced themselves between his eyelids.

It was a particularly trying ordeal, and one requiring all of even Mac's
skill, diplomacy, and forbearance, to make the recalcitrant patient eat
the breakfast prescribed for him. She was finally successful, however,
and as she stepped out into the corridor she met the ubiquitous interne.

"How's your Lensman?" he asked, in the privacy of the diet kitchen.

"Don't call him _my_ Lensman!" she stormed. She was about to explode
with the pent-up feelings which she of course could not vent upon such a
pitiful, helpless thing as her star patient. "Beefsteak! I almost wish
they _would_ give him a beefsteak, and that he'd choke on it--which of
course he would. He's worse than a baby. I never saw such a.... such
a _brat_ in my life. I'd like to spank him--he needs it. I'd like to
know how _he_ ever got to be a Lensman, the big cantankerous clunker!
I'm _going_ to spank him, too, one of these days, see if I don't!"

"Don't take it so hard, Mac," the interne urged. He was, however, very
much relieved that relations between the handsome young Lensman and the
gorgeous red-head were not upon a more cordial basis. "He won't be here
very long. But I never saw a patient clog _your_ jets before."

"You probably never saw a patient like _him_ before, either. I certainly
hope he never gets cracked up again."

"Huh?"

"Do I have to draw you a chart?" she asked, sweetly. "Or, if he does get
cracked up again, I hope they send him to some other hospital," and she
flounced out.

Nurse MacDougall thought that when the Lensman could eat the meat he
craved her troubles would be over; but she was mistaken. Kinnison was
nervous, moody, brooding; by turns irritable, sullen, and pugnacious.
Nor is it to be wondered at. He was chained to that bed, and in his mind
was the gnawing consciousness that he had failed. And not only
failed--he had made a complete fool of himself. He had underestimated an
enemy, and as a result of his own stupidity the whole Patrol had taken a
setback. He was anguished and tormented. Therefore:

"Listen, Mac," he pleaded one day. "Bring me some clothes and let me
take a walk. I need exercise."

"Uh uh, Kim, not yet," she denied him gently, but with her entrancing
smile in full evidence. "But pretty quick, when that leg looks a little
less like a Chinese puzzle, you and nursie go bye-bye."

"Beautiful, but dumb!" the Lensman growled. "Can't you and those
cockeyed croakers realize that I'll never get any strength back if you
keep me in bed all the rest of my life? And don't talk baby-talk at me,
either. I'm well enough at least so you can wipe that professional smile
off your pan and cut that soothing bedside manner of yours."

"Very well--I think so, too!" she snapped, patience at long last gone.
"Somebody should tell you the truth. I always supposed that Lensmen had
to have _brains_, but you've been a perfect _brat_ ever since you've
been here. First you wanted to eat yourself sick, and now you want to
get up, with bones half-knit and burns half-healed, and undo everything
that has been done for you. Why don't you snap out of it and act your
age for a change?"

"I never did think nurses had much sense, and now I know they haven't."
Kinnison eyed her with intense disfavor, not at all convinced. "I'm not
talking about going back to work. I mean a little gentle exercise, and I
know what I need."

"You'd be surprised at what you don't know," and the nurse walked out,
chin in air. In five minutes, however, she was back, her radiant smile
again flashing.

"Sorry, Kim, I shouldn't have blasted off that way--I know that
you're bound to back-fire and to have brain-storms. I would, too,
if I were...."

"Cancel it, Mac," he began, awkwardly. "I don't know why I have to be
crabbing at you all the time."

"QX, Lensman," she replied, entirely serene now. "I do. You're not the
type to stay in bed without it griping you; but when a man has been
ground up into such hamburger as you are, he has to stay in bed whether
he likes it or not, and no matter how much he pops off about it. Roll
over here, now, and I'll give you an alcohol rub. But it won't be long
now, really--pretty soon we'll have you out in a wheel-chair...."

Thus it went for weeks. Kinnison knew his behavior was atrocious,
abominable; but he simply could not help it. Every so often the
accumulated pressure of his bitterness and anxiety _would_ blow off;
and, like a jungle tiger with a toothache, he would bite and claw
anything or anybody within reach.

Finally, however, the last picture was studied, the last bandage
removed, and he was discharged as fit. And he was not discharged,
bitterly although he resented his "captivity," as he called it, until he
really _was_ fit. Haynes saw to that. And Haynes had allowed only the
most sketchy interviews during that long convalescence. Discharged,
however, Kinnison sought him out.

"Let me talk first," Haynes instructed him at sight. "No
self-reproaches, no destructive criticism. Everything constructive. Now,
Kimball, I'm mighty glad to hear that you made a perfect recovery. You
were in bad shape. Go ahead."

"You have just about shut my mouth by your first order." Kinnison smiled
sourly as he spoke. "Two words--flat failure. No, let me add two
more--as yet."

"That's the spirit!" Haynes exclaimed. "Nor do we agree with you that it
was a failure. It was merely not a success--so far--which is an
altogether different thing. Also, I may add that we had very fine
reports indeed on you from the hospital."

"Huh?" Kinnison was amazed to the point of being inarticulate.

"You just about tore it down, of course, but that was only to be
expected."

"But, sir, I made such a...."

"Exactly. As Lacy tells me quite frequently, he likes to have patients
over there that they don't like. Mull that one over for a bit--you may
understand it better as you get older. The thought, however, may take
some of the load off your mind."

"Well, sir, I am feeling a trifle low, but if you and the rest of them
still think...."

"We do so think. Cheer up and get on with the story."

"I've been doing a lot of thinking, and before I go around sticking out
my neck again I'm going to...."

"You don't need to tell me, you know."

"No, sir, but I think I'd better. I'm going to Arisia to see if I can
get me a few treatments for swell-head and lame-brain. I still think
that I know how to use the Lens to good advantage, but I simply haven't
got enough jets to do it. You see, I...." he stopped. He would not
offer anything that might sound like an alibi: but his thoughts were
plain as print to the old Lensman.

"Go ahead, son. We know you wouldn't."

"If I thought at all, I assumed that I was tackling men, since those on
the ship were men, and men were the only known inhabitants of the
Aldebaranian system. But when those wheelers took me so easily and so
completely, it became very evident that I didn't have enough stuff. I
ran like a scared pup, and I was lucky to get home at all. It wouldn't
have happened if...." he paused.

"If what? Reason it out, son," Haynes advised, pointedly. "You are
wrong, dead wrong. You made no mistake, either in judgment or in
execution. You have been blaming yourself for assuming that they were
men. Suppose you had assumed that they were the Arisians themselves.
Then what? After close scrutiny, even in the light of after-knowledge,
we do not see how you could have changed the outcome." It did not occur,
even to the sagacious old admiral, that Kinnison need not have gone in.
Lensmen always went in.

"Well, anyway, they licked me, and that hurts," Kinnison admitted,
frankly. "So I'm going back to Arisia for more training, if they'll give
it to me. I may be gone quite a while, as it may take even Mentor a long
time to increase the permeability of my skull enough so that an idea can
filter through it in something under a century."

"Didn't Mentor tell you never to go back there?"

"No, sir." Kinnison grinned boyishly. "He must've forgot it in my
case--the only slip he ever made, I guess. That's what gives me an out."

"Um...m...m." Haynes pondered this startling bit of information.
He knew, far better than young Kinnison could, the Arisian power of
mind: he did not believe that Mentor of Arisia had ever forgotten
anything, however tiny or unimportant. "It has never been done....
they are a peculiar race; incomprehensible.... but not vindictive.
He may refuse you, but nothing worse--that is, if you do not cross the
barrier without invitation. It's a splendid idea, I think; but be very
careful to strike that barrier free and at almost zero power--or else
don't strike it at all."

They shook hands, and in a space of minutes the speedster was again
tearing through space. Kinnison now knew exactly what he wanted to get,
and he utilized every waking hour of that long trip in physical and
mental exercise to prepare himself to take it. Thus the time did not
seem long. He crept up to the barrier at a snail's pace, stopping
instantly as he touched it, and through that barrier he sent a thought.

"Kimball Kinnison of Sol Three calling Mentor of Arisia. Is it permitted
that I approach your planet?" He was neither brazen nor obsequious, but
was matter-of-factly asking a simple question and expecting a simple
reply.

"It is permitted, Kimball Kinnison of Tellus," a slow, deep, measured
voice resounded in his brain. "Neutralize your controls. You will be
landed."

He did so, and the inert speedster shot forward, to come to ground in a
perfect landing at a regulation space-port. He strode into the office,
to confront the same grotesque entity who had measured him for his Lens
not so long ago. Now, however, he stared straight into that entity's
unblinking eyes, in silence.

"Ah, you have progressed. You realize now that vision is not always
reliable. At our previous interview you took it for granted that what
you saw must really exist, and did not wonder as to what our true shapes
might be."

"I am wondering now, seriously," Kinnison replied, "and if it is
permitted, I intend to stay here until I can see your true shapes."

"This?" and the figure changed instantly into that of an old,
white-bearded, scholarly gentleman.

"No. There is a vast difference between seeing something myself and
having you show it to me. I realize fully that you can make me see you
as anything you choose. You could appear to me as a perfect copy of
myself, or as any other thing, person or object conceivable to my mind."

"Ah; your development has been eminently satisfactory. It is now
permissible to tell you, youth, that your present quest, not for mere
information, but for real knowledge, was expected."

"Huh? How could that be? I didn't decide definitely, myself, until only
a couple of weeks ago."

"It was inevitable. When we fitted your Lens we knew that you would
return if you lived. As we recently informed that one known as
Helmuth...."

"_Helmuth!_ You know, then, where...." Kinnison choked himself off.
He would not ask for help in that--he would fight his own battles and
bury his own dead. If they volunteered the information, well and good;
but he would not ask it. Nor did the Arisian furnish it.

"You are right," the sage remarked, imperturbably. "For proper
development it is essential that you secure that information for
yourself." Then he continued his previous thought:

"As we told Helmuth recently, we have given your civilization an
instrumentality--the Lens--by virtue of which it should be able to make
itself secure throughout the galaxy. Having given it, we could do
nothing more of real or permanent benefit until you Lensmen yourselves
began to understand the true relationship between mind and Lens. That
understanding has been inevitable; for long we have known that in time a
certain few of your minds would become strong enough to discover that
theretofore unknown relationship. As soon as any mind made that
discovery it would of course return to Arisia, the source of the Lens,
for additional instruction; which, equally of course, that mind could
not have borne previously.

"Decade by decade your minds have become stronger. Finally you came to
be fitted with a Lens. Your mind, while pitifully undeveloped, had a
latent capacity and a power that made your return here certain. There
are several others who will return. Indeed, it has become a topic of
discussion among us as to whether you or one other would be the first
advanced student."

"Who is that other, if I may ask?"

"Your friend, Worsel the Velantian."

"He's got a real mind--way, way ahead of mine," the Lensman stated, as a
matter of self-evident fact.

"In some ways, yes. In other and highly important characteristics, no."

"Huh?" Kinnison exclaimed. "In what possible way have I got it over
him?"

"I am not certain that I can explain it exactly in thoughts which you
can understand. Broadly speaking, his mind is the better trained, the
more fully developed. It is of more grasp and reach, and of vastly
greater present power. It is more controllable, more responsive, more
adaptable than is yours--now. But your mind, while undeveloped, is of
considerable greater capacity than his, and of greater and more varied
latent capabilities. Above all, you have a driving force, a will to do,
an undefeatable mental urge that no one of his race will ever be able to
develop. Since I predicted that you would be the first to return, I am
naturally gratified that you have developed in accordance with that
prediction."

"Well, I have been more or less under pressure, and I got quite a few
lucky breaks. But at that, it seemed to me that I was progressing
backward instead of forward."

"It is ever thus with the really competent. Prepare yourself!"

He launched a mental bolt, at the impact of which Kinnison's mind
literally turned inside out in a wildly gyrating spiral vortex of
dizzyingly confused images.

"Resist!" came the harsh command.

"Resist! How?" demanded the writhing, sweating Lensman. "You might as
well tell a fly to resist an inert space-ship!"

"Use your will--your force--your adaptability. Shift your mind to meet
mine at every point. Apart from these fundamentals neither I nor anyone
else can tell you how; each mind must find its own medium and develop
its own technique. But this is a very mild treatment indeed; one
conditioned to your present strength. I will increase it gradually in
severity, but rest assured that I will at no time raise it to the point
of permanent damage. Constructive exercises will come later; the first
step must be to build up your resistance. Therefore resist!"

The force, which had not slackened for an instant, waxed slowly to the
very verge of intolerability; and grimly, doggedly, the Lensman fought
it. Teeth locked, muscles straining, fingers digging savagely into the
hard leather upholstery of his chair he fought it; mustering his every
ultimate resource to the task....

Suddenly the torture ceased and the Lensman slumped down, a mental and
physical wreck. He was white, trembling, sweating; shaken to the very
core of his being. He was ashamed of his weakness. He was humiliated and
bitterly disappointed at the showing he had made; but from the Arisian
there came a calm, encouraging thought.

"You need not feel ashamed; you should instead feel proud, for you have
made a start which is almost surprising, even to me, your sponsor. This
may seem to you like needless punishment, but it is not. This is the
only possible way in which that which you seek may be found."

"In that case, go to it," the Lensman declared. "I can take it."

The "advanced instruction" went on, with the pupil becoming ever
stronger; until he was taking without damage thrusts that would at first
have slain him instantly. The bouts became shorter and shorter,
requiring as they did such terrific outpourings of mental force that no
human mind could stand the awful strain for more than half an hour at a
time.

And now these savage conflicts of wills and minds were interspersed with
real instruction; with lessons neither painful nor unpleasant. In these
the aged scientists probed gently into the youngster's mind, opening it
out and exposing to its owner's gaze vast caverns whose very presence he
had never even suspected. Some of these storehouses were already
partially or completely filled; needing only arrangement and connection.
Others were nearly empty. These were catalogued and made accessible. And
in all, permeating everything, was the Lens.

"Just like clearing out a clogged-up water system; with the Lens the
pump that couldn't work!" exclaimed Kinnison one day.

"More like that than you at present realize," assented the Arisian. "You
have observed, of course, that I have not given you any detailed
instructions nor pointed out any specific abilities of the Lens which
you have not known how to use. You will have to operate the pump
yourself; and you have many surprises awaiting you as to what your Lens
will pump, and how. Our sole task is to prepare your mind to work with
the Lens, and that task is not yet done. Let us on with it."

After what seemed to Kinnison like weeks the time came when he could
block out Mentor's suggestions completely; nor, now blocked out, should
the Arisian be able to discern that fact. The Lensman gathered all his
force together, concentrated it, and hurled it back at his teacher; and
there ensued a struggle none the less Titanic because of its essential
friendliness. The very ether seethed and boiled with the fury of the
mental forces there at grips, but finally the Lensman beat down the
other's screens. Then, boring deep into his eyes, he willed with all his
force to see that Arisian as he really was. And instantly the scholarly
old man subsided into a.... a BRAIN! There were a few appendages, of
course, and appurtenances, and incidentalia to nourishment, locomotion,
and the like, but to all intents and purposes the Arisian was simply and
solely a brain.

Tension ended, conflict ceased, and Kinnison apologized.

"Think nothing of it," and the brain actually smiled into Kinnison's
mind. "Any mind of power sufficient to neutralize the forces which I
have employed is of course able to hurl no feeble bolts of its own. See
to it, however, that you thrust no such force at any lesser mind, or it
dies instantly."

Kinnison started to stammer a reply, but the Arisian went on:

"No, son, I knew and know that the warning is superfluous. If you were
not worthy of this power and were you not able to control it properly
you would not have it. You have obtained that which you sought. Go,
then, with power."

"But this is only one phase, barely a beginning!" protested Kinnison.

"Ah, you realize even that? Truly, youth, you have come far, and fast.
But you are not yet ready for more, and it is a truism that the
reception of forces for which a mind is not prepared will destroy that
mind. Thus, when you came to me you knew exactly what you wanted. Do you
know with equal certainty what more you want from us?"

"No."

"Nor will you for years, if ever. Indeed, it may well be that only your
descendants will be ready for that for which you now so dimly grope.
Again I say, young man, go with power."

Kinnison went.

CHAPTER  19                               _Judge, Jury, and Executioner_

It had taken the Lensman a long time to work out in his mind exactly
what it was that he had wanted from the Arisians, and from no single
source had the basic idea come. Part of it had come from his own
knowledge of ordinary hypnosis; part from the ability of the Overlords
of Delgon to control from a distance the minds of others; part from
Worsel, who, working through Kinnison's own mind, had done such
surprising things with a Lens; and a great part indeed from the Arisians
themselves, who had the astounding ability literally and completely to
superimpose their own mentalities upon those of others, wherever
situated. Part by part and bit by bit the Tellurian Lensman had built up
his plan, but he had not had the sheer power of intellect to make it
work. Now he had that, and was ready to go.

Where? His first impulse was to return to Aldebaran I and to invade
again the stronghold of the Wheelmen, who had routed him so
ignominiously in his one encounter with them. Ordinary prudence,
however, counseled against that course.

"You'd better lay off them a while, Kim, old boy," he told himself quite
frankly. "They've got a lot of jets and you don't know how to use this
new stuff of yours yet. Better pick out something easier to take!"

Ever since leaving Arisia he had been subconsciously aware of a
difference in his eyesight. He was seeing things much more clearly than
he had ever seen them before; more sharply and in greater detail. Now
this awareness crept into his consciousness and he glanced toward his
tube-lights. They were out--except for the tiny lamps and bulls-eyes of
his instrument board the vessel must be in complete darkness. He
remembered then with a shock that when he entered the speedster he had
not turned on his lights--he could see, and had not thought of them at
all!

This, then, was the first of the surprises the Arisian had promised him.
He now had the sense of perception of the Rigellians. Or was it that of
the Wheelmen? Or both? Or were they the same sense? Intently aware now,
he focused his attention upon a meter before him. First upon its dial,
noting that the needle was exactly upon the green hair-line of normal
operation. Then deeper. Instantly the face of the instrument
disappeared--moved behind his point of sight, or so it seemed--so that
he could see its coils, pivots, and other interior parts. He could look
into and study the grain and particle-size of the dense, hard condensite
of the board itself. His vision was limited, apparently, only by his
will to see!

"Well--ain't--that--something?" he demanded of the universe at large;
then, as a thought struck him; "I wonder if they blinded me in the
process?"

He switched on his lamps, discovering that his vision was unimpaired and
normal in every respect; and a rigid investigation proved to him
conclusively that in addition to ordinary vision he now had an extra
sense--or perhaps two of them--and that he could change from one to the
other, or use them simultaneously, at will! But the very fact of this
discovery gave Kinnison pause.

He hadn't better go anywhere, or do anything, until he had found out
something about his new equipment. The fact was that he didn't even know
what he had, to say nothing of knowing how to use it. If he had the
sense of a Zabriskan fontema he would go somewhere where he could do a
little experimenting without getting his jets burned off in case
something slipped at a critical moment. Where was the nearest Patrol
base? A big one, fully defended.... Let's see.... Radelix would
be about the closest Sector Base, he guessed--he'd find out if he could
raid that outfit without getting caught at it.

Off he shot, and in due course a fair, green, Earthlike planet lay
beneath his vessel's keel. Since it was Earthlike in climate, age,
atmosphere, and mass, its people were of course more or less similar to
humanity in general characteristics, both of body and of mind. If
anything, they were even more intelligent than Earthlings, and their
Patrol base was a very strong one indeed. His spy-ray would be useless,
since all Patrol bases were screened thoroughly and continuously--he
would see what a sense of perception would do. From Tregonsee's
explanation, it ought to work at this range.

It did. When Kinnison concentrated his attention upon the base he saw
it. He advanced toward it at the speed of thought and entered it;
passing through screens and metal walls without hindrance and without
giving alarm. He saw men at their accustomed tasks and heard, or rather
sensed, their conversation: the everyday chat of their professions. A
thrill shot through him at a dazzling possibility thus revealed.

If he could make one of those fellows down there do something without
his knowing that he was doing it, the problem was solved. That computer,
say; make him uncover that calculator and set up a certain integral on
it. It would be easy enough to get into touch with him and have him do
it, but this was something altogether different.

Kinnison got into the computer's mind easily enough, and willed
intensely what he was to do; but the officer did not do it. He got up;
then, staring about him in bewilderment, sat down again.

"What's the matter?" asked one of his fellows. "Forget something?"

"Not exactly," the computer still stared. "I was going to set up an
integral. I didn't want it, either--I could swear that somebody _told_
me to set it up."

"Nobody did," grunted the other, "and you'd better start staying home
nights--then maybe you wouldn't get funny ideas."

This wasn't so good, Kinnison reflected. The guy should have done it,
and shouldn't have remembered a thing about it. Well, he hadn't really
thought he could put it across at that distance, anyway--he didn't have
the brain of an Arisian. He'd have to follow his original plan, of
close-up work.

Waiting until the base was well into the night side of the planet and
making sure that his flare-baffles were in place, he allowed the
speedster to drop downward, landing at some little distance from the
fortress. There he left the ship and made his way toward his objective
in a rapid series of long, inertialess hops. Lower and shorter became
the hops. Then he cut off his power entirely and walked until he saw
before him, rising from the ground and stretching interminably upward,
an almost invisibly shimmering web of force. This, the prowler knew, was
the curtain which marked the border of the Reservation; the trigger upon
which a touch, either of solid object or of beam, would initiate a
succession of events which he was in no position to stop.

To the eye that base was not impressive, being merely a few square miles
of level ground, outlined with low, broad pill-boxes and studded here
and there with harmless-looking, bulging domes. There were a few
clusters of buildings. That was all--to the eye--but Kinnison was not
deceived. He knew that the base itself was a thousand feet underground;
that the pill-boxes housed lookouts and detectors; and that those domes
were simply weathershields which, rolled back, would expose projectors
second in power not even to those of Prime Base itself.

Far to the right, between two tall pylons of metal, was a gate; the
nearest opening in the web. Kinnison had avoided it purposely; it was no
part of his plan to subject himself yet to the scrutiny of the
all-inclusive photo-cells of that entrance. Instead, with his new sense
of perception, he sought out the conduits leading to those cells and
traced them down, through concrete and steel and masonry, to the control
room far below. He then superimposed his mind upon that of the man at
the board and flew boldly toward the entrance. He now actually had a
dual personality; since one part of his mind was in his body, darting
through the air toward the portal, while the other part was deep in the
base below, watching him come and acknowledging his signals!

A trap lifted, revealing a sloping, tunneled ramp, down which the
Lensman shot. He soon found a convenient store-room; and, slipping
within it, he withdrew his control carefully from the mind of the
observer, wiping out all traces of that control as he did so. He then
watched apprehensively for a possible reaction. He was almost sure that
he had performed the operation correctly, but he had to be absolutely
certain; more than his life depended upon the outcome of this test. The
observer, however, remained calm and placid at his post; and a close
reading of his thoughts showed that he had not the faintest suspicion
that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.

One more test and he was through. He must find out how many minds he
could control simultaneously, but he'd better do that openly. No use
making a man feel like a fool needlessly--he'd done that once already,
and once was one time too many.

Therefore, reversing the procedure by which he had come, he went back to
his speedster, took her out into the ether, and slept. Then, when the
light of morning flooded the base, he cut his detector nullifier and
approached it boldly.

"Radelix base! Lensman Kinnison of Tellus, Unattached, asking permission
to land. I wish to confer with your commanding officer, Lensman
Gerrond."

A spy-ray swept through the speedster, the web disappeared, and Kinnison
landed, to be greeted with a quiet and cordial respect. The base
commander knew that his visitor was not there purely for pleasure--Gray
Lensmen did not take pleasure jaunts. Therefore he led the way into his
private office and shielded it.

"My announcement was not at all informative," Kinnison admitted then,
"but my errand is nothing to be advertised. I've got to try out
something, and I want to ask you and three of your best
and--'stubbornest,' if I may use the term--officers to cooperate with me
for a few minutes. QX?"

"Of course."

Three officers were called in and Kinnison explained. "I've been working
for a long time on a mind-controller, and I want to see if it works.
I'll put your books on this table, one in front of each of you. Now I
would like to try to make two or three of you--all four of you if I
can--each bend over, pick up his book, and hold it. Your part of the
game will be for each of you to try not to pick it up, and to put it
back as soon as you possibly can if I do make you obey. Will you?"

"Sure!" three of them chorused, and "There will be no mental damage, of
course?" asked the commander.

"None whatever, and no after-effects. I've had it worked on myself, a
lot."

"Do you want any apparatus?"

"No, I have everything necessary. Remember, I want top resistance."

"Let her come! You'll get plenty of resistance. If you can make any one
of us pick up a book, after all this warning, I'll say you've got
something."

Officer after officer, in spite of strainingly resisting mind and body,
lifted his book from the table, only to drop it again as Kinnison's
control relaxed for an instant. He could control two of them--_any_ two
of them--but he could not quite handle three. Satisfied, he ceased his
efforts; and, as the base commander poured long, cold drinks for the
sweating five, one of his fellows asked:

"What did you do, anyway, Kinnison--oh, pardon me, I shouldn't have
asked."

"Sorry," the Tellurian replied uncomfortably, "but it isn't ready yet.
You'll all know about it as soon as possible, but not just now."

"Sure," the Radeligian replied. "I knew I shouldn't have blasted off as
soon as I spoke."

"Well, thanks a lot, fellows." Kinnison set his empty glass down with a
click. "I can make a nice progress report on this do-jig now. And one
more thing. I did a little long-range experimenting on one of your
computers last night...."

"Desk Twelve? The one who thought he wanted to integrate something?"

"That's the one. Tell him I was using him for a mind-ray subject, will
you, and give him this fifty-credit bill? Don't want the boys needling
him _too_ much."

"Yes, and thanks.... and.... I wonder...." the Radeligian
Lensman had something on his mind. "Well.... can you make a man tell
the truth with that? And if you can, will you?"

"I think so. Certainly I will, if I can. Why?" Kinnison knew that he
could, but did not wish to seem cocksure.

"There's been a murder." The other three glanced at each other in
understanding and sighed with profound relief. "A particularly fiendish
murder of a woman--a girl, rather. Two men stand accused. Each has a
perfect alibi, supported by honest witnesses; but you know how much an
alibi means now. Both men tell perfectly straight stories, even under a
lie-detector, but neither will let me--or any other Lensman so
far--touch his mind." Gerrond paused.

"Uh-huh." Kinnison understood. "Lots of innocent people simply can't
stand Lensing and have mighty strong blocks."

"Glad you've seen such. One of those men is lying with a polish I
wouldn't have believed possible, or else both are innocent. And one of
them _must_ be guilty; they are the only suspects. If we try them now we
make fools of ourselves, and we can't put the trial off very much longer
without losing face. If you can help us out you'll be doing a lot for
the Patrol, throughout this whole sector."

"I can help you," Kinnison declared. "For this, though, better have some
props. Make me a box--double Burbank controls, with five baby spots on
it--orange, blue, green, purple, and red. The biggest set of headphones
you've got, and a thick, black blindfold. How soon can you try 'em?"

"The sooner the better. It can be arranged for this afternoon."

The trial was announced, and long before the appointed hour the great
court-room of that world's largest city was thronged. The hour struck.
Quiet reigned. Kinnison, in his somber gray, strode to the judge's desk
and sat down behind the peculiar box upon it. In dead silence two Patrol
officers approached. The first invested him reverently with the
headphones, the second so enwrapped his head in black cloth that it was
apparent to all observers that his vision was completely obscured.

"Although from a world far distant in space, I have been asked to try
two suspects for the crime of murder," Kinnison intoned. "I do not know
the details of the crime nor the identity of the suspects. I do know
that they and their witnesses are within these railings. I shall now
select those who are about to be examined."

Piercing beams of intense, vari-colored light played over the two
groups, and the deep, impressive voice went on:

"I know now who the suspects are. They are about to rise, to walk, and
to seat themselves as I shall direct."

They did so; it being plainly evident to all observers that they were
under some awful compulsion.

"The witnesses may be excused. Truth is the only thing of importance
here; and witnesses, being human and therefore frail, obstruct truth
more frequently than they further its progress. I shall now examine
these two accused."

Again the vivid, weirdly distorting glares of light lashed out; bathing
in intense monochrome and in various ghastly combinations first one
prisoner, then the other; the while Kinnison drove his mind into theirs,
plumbing their deepest depths. The silence, already profound, became the
utter stillness of outer space as the throng, holding its very breath
now, sat enthralled by that portentous examination.

"I have examined them fully. You are all aware that any Lensman of the
Galactic Patrol may in case of need serve as judge, jury, and
executioner. I am, however, none of these; nor is this proceeding to be
a trial as you may have understood the term. I have said that witnesses
are superfluous. I will now add that neither judge nor jury are
necessary. All that is required is to discover the truth; since truth is
all-powerful. For that same reason no executioner is needed here--the
discovered truth will in and of itself serve us in that capacity.

"One of these men is guilty, the other is innocent. From the mind of the
guilty one I am about to construct a composite, not of this one fiendish
crime alone, but of all the crimes he has ever committed. I shall
project that composite into the air before him. No innocent mind will be
able to see any iota of it. The guilty man, however, will perceive its
every revolting detail; and, so perceiving, he will forthwith cease to
exist in this plane of life."

One of the men had nothing to fear--Kinnison had told him so, long
since. The other had been trembling for minutes in uncontrollable
paroxysms of terror. Now this one leaped from his seat, clawing savagely
at his eyes and screaming in mad abandon.

"I did it! Help! Mercy! Take her away! Oh...h..h!!" he shrieked,
and died, horribly, even as he shrieked.

Nor was there noise in the court-room after the thing was over. The
stunned spectators slunk away, scarcely daring even to breathe until
they were safely outside.

Nor were the Radeligian officers in much better case. Not a word was
said until the five were back in the base commander's office. Then
Kinnison, still white of face and set of jaw, spoke. The others knew
that he had found the guilty man, and that he had in some peculiarly
terrible fashion executed him. He knew that they knew that the man was
hideously guilty. Nevertheless:

"He was guilty," the Tellurian jerked out. "Guilty as all the devils in
hell. I never had to do that before and it gripes me--but I couldn't
shove the job off onto you fellows. I wouldn't want anybody to see that
picture that didn't have to, and without it you could never begin to
understand just how atrociously and damnably guilty that hell-hound
really was."

"Thanks, Kinnison," Gerrond said, simply. "Kinnison. Kinnison of Tellus.
I'll remember that name, in case we ever need you as badly again. But,
after what you just did, it will be a long time--if ever. You didn't
know, did you, that all the inhabitants of four planets were watching
you?"

"Holy Klono, no! Were they?"

"They were; and if the way you scared _me_ is any criterion, it will be
a long, cold day before anything like that comes up again in this
system. And thanks again, Gray Lensman. You have done something for our
whole Patrol this day."

"Be sure to dismantle that box so thoroughly that nobody will recognize
any of its component parts," and Kinnison managed a rather feeble grin.
"One more thing and I'll buzz along. Do you fellows happen to know where
there's a good, strong pirate base around here anywhere? And, while I
don't want to seem fussy, I would like it all the better if they were
warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, so I won't have to wear armor all the
time."

"What are you trying to do, give us the needle, or something?" This is
not precisely what the Radeligian said, but it conveys the thought
Kinnison received as the base commander stared at him in amazement.

"Don't tell me that there is such a base around here!" exclaimed the
Tellurian in delight. "Is there, really?"

"There is. So strong that we haven't been able to touch it; manned and
staffed by natives of your own planet, Tellus of Sol. We reported it to
Prime Base some eighty-three days ago, just after we discovered it.
You're direct from there...." He fell silent. This was no way to be
talking to a Gray Lensman.

"I was in the hospital then, fighting with my nurse because she wouldn't
give me anything to eat," Kinnison explained with a laugh. "When I left
Tellus I didn't check up on the late data--didn't think I'd need it
quite so soon. If you've got it, though...."

"Hospital! You?" queried one of the younger Radeligians.

"Yeah--bit off more than I could chew," and the Tellurian described
briefly his misadventure with the Wheelmen of Aldebaran I. "This other
thing has come up since then, though, and I won't be sticking my neck
out that way again. If you've got such a made-to-order base as that in
this region, it'll save me a long trip. Where is it?"

They gave him its coordinates and what little information they had been
able to secure concerning it. They did not ask him why he wanted that
data. They may have wondered at his temerity in daring to scout alone a
fortress whose strength had kept at bay the massed Patrol forces of the
sector: but if they did so they kept their thoughts well screened. For
this was a Gray Lensman, and very evidently a super-powered individual,
even of that select group whose weakest members were powerful indeed. If
he felt like talking they would listen; but Kinnison did not talk. He
listened; then, when he had learned everything they knew of the
Boskonian base:

"Well, I'd better be flitting. Clear ether, fellows!" and he was gone.

CHAPTER  20                                _Mac Is a Bone of Contention_

Out from Radelix and into deep space shot the speedster, bearing the
Gray Lensman toward Boyssia II, where the Boskonian base was situated.
The Patrol forces had not been able to locate it definitely, therefore
it must be cleverly hidden indeed. Manned and staffed by Tellurians--and
this was fairly close to the line first taken by the pilot of the pirate
vessel whose crew had been so decimated by vanBuskirk and his Valerians.
There couldn't be so many Boskonian bases with Tellurian personnel,
Kinnison reflected. It was well within the bounds of possibility, even
of probability, that he might encounter here his former, but
unsuspecting, shipmates again.

Since the Boyssian system was less than a hundred parsecs from Radelix,
a couple of hours found the Lensman staring down upon another strange
planet; and this one was a very Earthly world indeed. There were polar
ice-caps, areas of intensely dazzling white. There was an atmosphere,
deep and sweetly blue, filled for the most part with sunlight, but
flecked here and there with clouds, some of which were slow-moving
storms. There were continents, bearing mountains and plains, lakes and
rivers. There were oceans, studded with islands great and small.

But Kinnison was no planetographer, nor had he been gone from Tellus
sufficiently long so that the sight of this beautiful and home-like
world aroused in him any qualm of nostalgia. He was looking for a pirate
base; and, dropping his speedster as low into the night side as he
dared, he began his search.

Of man or of the works of man he at first found little enough trace. All
human or near-human life was apparently still in a savage state of
development; and, except for a few scattered races, or rather tribes, of
burrowers and of cliff- or cave-dwellers, it was still nomadic,
wandering here and there without permanent habitation or structure.
Animals of scores of genera and species were there in myriads, but
neither was Kinnison a biologist. He wanted pirates; and, it seemed,
that was the one form of life which he was _not_ going to find!

But finally, through sheer, grim, bull-dog pertinacity, he was
successful. That base was there, somewhere. He would find it, no matter
how long it took. He would find it, if he had to examine the entire
crust of the planet, land and water alike, kilometer by plotted cubic
kilometer! He set out to do just that; and it was thus that he found the
Boskonian stronghold.

It had been built directly beneath a towering range of mountains,
protected from detection by mile upon mile of native copper and of iron
ore.

Its entrances, invisible before, were even now not readily perceptible,
camouflaged as they were by outer layers of rock which matched exactly
in form, color, and texture the rocks of the cliffs in which they were
placed. Once those entrances were located, the rest was easy. Again he
set his speedster into a carefully-observed orbit and came to ground in
his armor. Again he crept forward, furtively and skulkingly, until he
could perceive again a shimmering web of force.

With minor variations his method of entry into the Boskonian base was
similar to that he had used in making his way into the Patrol base upon
Radelix. He was, however, working now with a surety and a precision
which had then been lacking. His practise with the Patrolmen had given
him knowledge and technique. His sitting in judgment, during which he
had touched almost every mind in the vast assemblage, had taught him
much. And above all, the grisly finale of that sitting, horribly
distasteful and soul-wracking as it had been, had given him training of
inestimable value; necessitating as it had the infliction of the
ultimate penalty.

He knew that he might have to stay inside that base for some time,
therefore he selected his hiding-place with care. He could of course
blank out the knowledge of his presence in the mind of anyone chancing
to discover him; but since such an interruption might come at a critical
instant, he preferred to take up his residence in a secluded place.
There were, of course, many vacant suites in the officers' quarters--all
bases must have accommodations for visitors--and the Lensman decided to
occupy one of them. It was a simple matter to obtain a key, and, inside
the bare but comfortable little room, he stripped off his armor with a
sigh of relief.

Leaning back in a deeply-upholstered leather arm-chair, he closed his
eyes and let his sense of perception roam throughout the great
establishment. With all his newly developed power he studied it, hour
after hour and day after day. When he was hungry the pirate cooks fed
him, not knowing that they did so--he had lived on iron rations long
enough. When he was tired he slept, with his eternally vigilant Lens on
guard.

Finally he knew everything there was to be known about that stronghold
and was ready to act. He did not take over the mind of the base
commander, but chose instead the chief communications officer as the one
most likely and most intimately to have dealings with Helmuth. For
Helmuth, he who spoke for Boskone, had for many months been the
Lensman's definite objective.

But this game could not be hurried. Bases, no matter how important, did
not call Grand Base except upon matters of the most dire urgency, and no
such matter eventuated. Nor did Helmuth call that base, since nothing
out of the ordinary was happening--to any pirates' knowledge, that
is--and his attention was more necessary elsewhere.

One day, however, there came crackling in a triumphant report--a ship
working out of that base had taken noble booty indeed; no less a prize
than a fully-supplied hospital ship of the Patrol itself! As the report
progressed Kinnison's heart went down into his boots and he swore
bitterly to himself. How in all the nine hells of Valeria had they
managed to take such a ship as that? Hadn't she been escorted?

Nevertheless, as chief communications officer he took the report and
congratulated heartily, through the ship's radio man, its captain, its
officers, and its crew.

"Mighty fine work; Helmuth himself shall hear of this," he concluded his
words of praise. "How did you do it? With one of the new maulers?"

"Yes, sir," came the reply. "Our mauler, accompanying us just out of
range, came up and engaged theirs. That left us free to take this ship.
We locked on with magnets, cut our way in, and here we are."

There they were indeed. The hospital ship was red with blood; patients,
doctors, interns, officers and operating crew alike had been butchered
with the horribly ruthless savagery which was the customary technique of
all the agencies of Boskone. Of all that ship's personnel only the
nurses lived. They were not to be put to death--yet. In fact, and under
certain conditions, they need not die at all.

They huddled together, a little knot of white-clad misery in that
corpse-littered room, and even now one of them was being dragged away.
She was fighting viciously, with fists and feet, with nails and teeth.
No one pirate could handle her; it took two strong men to subdue that
struggling fury. They hauled her upright and she threw back her head, in
panting defiance. There was a cascade of red-bronze hair and Kinnison
saw--Clarrissa MacDougall! And remembered that there _had_ been some
talk that they were going to put her back into space service! The
Lensman decided instantly what to do.

"Stop, you swine!" he roared through his pirate mouthpiece. "Where do
you think you're going with that nurse?"

"To the captain's cabin, sir." The huskies stopped short in amazement as
that roar filled the room, but answered the question concisely.

"Let her go!" Then, as the girl fled back to the huddled group in the
corner: "Tell the captain to come out here and assemble every officer
and man of the crew. I want to talk to you all at once."

He had a minute or two in which to think, and he thought furiously, but
accurately. He had to do something, but whatever he did must be done
strictly according to the pirates' own standards of ethics; if he made
one slip it might be Aldebaran I all over again. He knew how to keep
from making that slip, he thought. But also, and this was the hard part,
he must work in something that would let those nurses know that there
was still hope; that there were more acts of this drama yet to come.
Otherwise he knew with a stark, cold certainty what would happen. He
knew of what stuff the space-nurses of the Patrol were made; knew that
they could be driven just so far, and no farther--alive.

There was a way out of that, too. In the childishness of his
hospitalization he had called Nurse MacDougall a dumb-bell. He had
thought of her, and had spoken to her quite frankly, in uncomplimentary
terms. But he knew that there was a real brain back of that beautiful
face, that a quick and keen intelligence resided under that red-bronze
thatch. Therefore when the assembly was complete he was ready, and in no
uncertain or ambiguous language he opened up.

"Listen, you--all of you" he roared. "This is the first time in months
that we have made such a haul as this, and you fellows have the brazen
gall to start helping yourselves to the choicest stuff before anybody
else gets a look at it. I tell you now to lay off, and that goes exactly
as it lays. I, personally, will kill any man that touches one of those
women before they arrive here at base. Now you, captain, are the first
and worst offender of the lot," and he stared directly into the eyes of
the officer whom he had last seen entering the dungeon of the Wheelmen.

"I admit that you're a good picker." Kinnison's voice was now venomously
soft, his intonation distinct with thinly veiled sarcasm.
"Unfortunately, however, your taste agrees too well with mine. You see,
captain, I'm going to need a nurse myself. I think I'm coming down with
something. And, since I've got to have a nurse, I'll take that
red-headed one. I had a nurse once with hair just that color, who
insisted on feeding me tea and toast and a soft-boiled egg when I wanted
beefsteak; and I'm going to take my grudge out on this one here for all
the red-headed nurses that ever lived. I trust that you will pardon the
length of this speech, but I want to give you my reasons in full for
cautioning you that that particular nurse is my own particular personal
property. Mark her for me, and see to it that she gets here--exactly as
she is now."

The captain had been afraid to interrupt his superior, but now he
erupted.

"But see here, Blakeslee!" he stormed. "She's mine, by every right. I
captured her, I saw her first, I've got her here...."

"Enough of that back-talk, captain!" Kinnison sneered elaborately. "You
know, of course, that you are violating every rule by taking booty for
yourself before division at base, and that you can get shot for doing
it."

"But everybody does it!" protested the captain.

"Except when a superior officer catches him at it. Superiors get first
pick, you know," the Lensman reminded him suavely.

"But I protest, sir! I'll take it up with...."

"Shut up!" Kinnison snarled, with cold finality. "Take it up with whom
you please, but remember this, my last warning. Bring her in to me as
she is and you live. Touch her and you die! Now, you nurses, come over
here to the board!"

Nurse MacDougall had been whispering furtively to the others and now she
led the way, head high and eyes blazing defiance. She was an actress, as
well as a nurse.

"Take a good, long look at this button, right here, marked 'Relay 46,'"
came curt instructions. "If anybody aboard this ship touches any one of
you, or even looks at you as though he wants to, press this button and
I'll do the rest. Now, you big, red-headed dumb-bell, look at me. Don't
start begging--yet. I just want to be sure you'll know me when you see
me."

"I'll know you, never fear, you.... you _brat_!" she flared, thus
informing the Lensman that she had received his message. "I'll not only
know you--I'll scratch your eyes out on sight!"

"That'll be a good trick if you can do it," Kinnison sneered, and cut
off.

"What's it all about, Mac? What has got into you?" demanded one of the
nurses, as soon as the women were alone.

"I don't know," she whispered. "Watch out, they may have spy-rays on us.
I don't know anything, really, and the whole thing is too wildly
impossible, too utterly fantastic to make sense. But pass the word along
to all the girls to ride this out, because my Gray Lensman is in on it,
somewhere and somehow. I don't see how he can be, possibly, but I just
know he is."

For, at the first mention of tea and toast, before she perceived even an
inkling of the true situation, her mind had flashed back instantly to
Kinnison, the most stubborn and rebellious patient she had ever had.
More, the only man she had ever known who had treated her precisely as
though she were a part of the hospital's very furniture. As is the way
of women--particularly of beautiful women--she had orated of women's
rights and of women's status in the scheme of things. She had decried
all special privileges, and had stated, often and with heat, that she
asked no odds of any man living or yet to be born. Nevertheless, and
also beautiful-womanlike, the thought had bitten deep that here was a
man who had never even realized that she _was_ a woman, to say nothing
of realizing that she was an extraordinarily beautiful one! And deep
within her and sternly suppressed the thought had still rankled.

At the mention of beefsteak she had all but screamed, gripping her knees
with frantic hands to keep her emotion down. For she had had no real
hope; she was simply fighting with everything she had until the hopeless
end, which she had known could not long be delayed. Now she gathered
herself together and began to act.

When the word "dumb-bell" boomed from the speaker she knew, beyond doubt
or peradventure, that it was Kinnison, the Gray Lensman, who was really
doing that talking. It was crazy--it didn't make any kind of sense at
all--but it was, it must be, true. And, again womanlike, she knew with a
calm certainty that as long as that Gray Lensman were alive and
conscious, he would be completely the master of any situation in which
he might find himself. Therefore she passed along her illogical but
cheering thought, and the nurses, being also women, accepted it without
question as the actual and accomplished fact.

They carried on, and when the captured hospital ship had docked at base,
Kinnison was completely ready to force matters to a conclusion. In
addition to the chief communications officer, he now had under his
control a highly capable observer. To handle two such minds was child's
play to the intellect which had directed, against their full fighting
wills, the minds of two and three quarters alert, powerful, and fully
warned officers of the Galactic Patrol!

"Good girl, Mac," he put his mind en rapport with hers and sent his
message. "Glad you got the idea. You did a good job of acting, and if
you can do some more as good we'll be all set. Can do?"

"I'll say I can!" she assented fervently. "I don't know what you are
doing, how you can possibly do it, or where you are, but that can wait.
Tell me what to do and I'll do it!"

"Make passes at the base commander," he instructed her. "Hate me--the
ape I'm working through, you know; Blakeslee, his name is--like poison.
Go into it big--all jets wide open. You maybe could love him, but if I
get you you'll blow out your brains--if any. You knew the line--play up
to him with everything you can bring to bear, and hate me to hell and
back. Help all you can to start a fight between us. If he falls for you
hard enough the blow-off comes then and there. If not, he'll be able to
do us all plenty of dirt. I can kill a lot of them, but not enough of
them quick enough."

"He'll fall," she promised him gleefully, "like ten thousand bricks
falling down a well. Just watch my jets!"

And fall he did. He had not even seen a woman for months, and he
expected nothing except bitter-end resistance and suicide from any of
these women of the Patrol. Therefore he was rocked to the heels--set
back upon his very haunches--when the most beautiful woman he had ever
seen came of her own volition into his arms, seeking in them sanctuary
from his own chief communications officer.

"I hate him!" she sobbed, nestling against the huge bulk of the
commander's body and turning upon him the full blast of the high-powered
projectors which were her eyes. "_You_ wouldn't be so mean to me, I just
know you wouldn't!" and her subtly perfumed head sank upon his shoulder.
The outlaw was just so much soft wax.

"I'll say I wouldn't be mean to you" his voice dropped to a gentle
bellow. "Why, you little sweetheart, I'll _marry_ you. I will so, by all
the gods of space!"

It thus came about that nurse and base commander entered the control
room together, arms about each other.

"There he is!" she shrieked, pointing at the chief communications
officer. "He's the one! Now let's see you start something, you rat-faced
clunker! There's one real man around here, and he won't let you touch
me--ya-a-a!" She gave him a resounding Bronx cheer, and her escort
swelled visibly.

"Is--that--so?" Kinnison sneered. "Get this, glamor-puss, and get it
straight. I marked you for mine as soon as I saw you, and mine you're
going to be, whether you like it or not and no matter what anybody says
or does about it. As for you, captain, you're too late--I saw her first.
And now, you red-headed tomato, come over here where you belong."

She snuggled closer into the commander's embrace and the big man turned
purple.

"What d'you mean, too late!" he roared. "You took her away from the
ship's captain, didn't you? You said that superior officers get first
choice, didn't you? I'm the boss here and I'm taking her away from you,
get me? You'll stand for it, too, Blakeslee, and like it. One word out
of you and I'll have you spread-eagled across the mouth of number six
projector!"

"Superior officers don't _always_ get first choice," Kinnison replied;
with bitter, cold ferocity, but choosing his words with care. "It
depends entirely on who the two men are."

Now was the time to strike. Kinnison knew that if the commander kept his
head, the lives of those valiant women were forfeit, and his own whole
plan seriously endangered. He himself could get away, of course--but he
could not see himself doing it under these conditions. No, he must goad
the commander to a frenzy. And without swearing would be better--the ape
was used to invectives that would raise blisters on armor plate. Mac
would help. In fact, and without his suggestion, she was even then hard
at work fomenting trouble between the two men.

"You don't have to take that kind of stuff off of anybody, big boy," she
was whispering, urgently. "Don't call in a crew to spread-eagle him,
either; beam him out yourself. You're a better man than he is, any time.
Blast him down--that'll show him who's who around here!"

"When the inferior is such a man as I am, and the superior such a louse
as you are;" the biting, contemptuously sneering voice went on without a
break, "Such a bloated swine; such a mangy, low-down cur; such a
pussy-gutted tub of lard; such a brainless, filthy spawn of the lowest
dregs of the rottenest scum of space; such an utterly incompetent,
self-opinionated, misbegotten abortion as you are...."

The outraged pirate, bellowing profanity in wildly mounting rage, tried
to break in; but Kinnison-Blakeslee's voice, if no louder than his, was
far more penetrant.

"....then, in that case, the inferior keeps the red-headed wench
himself. Put that on a tape, you white-livered coward, and eat it!"

Still bellowing, the fat man had turned and was leaping toward the arms
cabinet.

"Blast him! Blast him down!" the nurse had been shrieking; and, as the
raging commander neared the cabinet, no one noticed that her latest and
loudest scream was "Kim! Blast him down! Don't wait any longer--beam him
before he gets a gun!"

But the Lensman did not act--yet. Although almost every man of the
pirate crew stared spell-bound, Kinnison's enslaved observer had for
many seconds been jamming the sub-ether with Helmuth's personal and
urgent call. It was of almost vital importance to his plan that Helmuth
himself should see the climax of this scene. Therefore Blakeslee stood
immobile while his profanely raving superior reached the cabinet and
tore it open.

CHAPTER  21                                            _The Second Line_

Blakeslee was already armed--Kinnison had seen to that--and as the base
commander wrenched open the arms cabinet Helmuth's private look-out set
began to draw current. Helmuth himself was now looking on and the
enslaved observer had already begun to trace his beam. Therefore as the
furious pirate whirled around with raised DeLameter he faced one already
ablaze; and in a matter of seconds there was only a charred and smoking
heap where he had stood.

Kinnison wondered that Helmuth's cold voice was not already snapping
from the speaker, but he was soon to discover the reason for that
silence. Unobserved by the Lensman, one of the observers had recovered
sufficiently from his shocked amazement to turn in a riot alarm to the
guard-room. Five armed men answered that call on the double, stopped and
glanced around.

"Guards! Blast Blakeslee down!" Helmuth's unmistakable voice blared from
his speaker.

Obediently and manfully enough the five guards tried; and, had it
actually been Blakeslee confronting them so defiantly, they probably
would have succeeded. It was the body of the communications officer, it
is true. The mind operating the muscles of that body, however, was the
mind of Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, the fastest man with a hand-gun
old Tellus had ever produced; keyed up, expecting the move, and with two
DeLameters out and poised at hip! _This_ was the being whom Helmuth was
so nonchalantly ordering his minions to slay! Faster than any watching
eye could follow, five bolts of lightning flicked from Blakeslee's
DeLameters. The last guard went down, his head a shrivelled cinder,
before a single pirate bolt could be loosed. Then:

"You see, Helmuth," Kinnison spoke conversationally to the board, his
voice dripping vitriol, "Playing it safe from a distance, and making
other men pull your chestnuts out of the fire, is a very fine trick as
long as it works. But when it fails to work, as now, it puts you exactly
where I want you. I, for one, have been for a long time completely fed
up with taking orders from a mere voice; especially from the voice of
one whose entire method of operation proves him to be the prize coward
of the galaxy."

"Observer! You other at the board!" snarled Helmuth, paying no attention
to Kinnison's barbed shafts. "Sound the assembly--armed!"

"No use, Helmuth, he's stone deaf," Kinnison explained, voice smoothly
venomous. "I'm the only man in this base you can talk to, and you won't
be able to do even that very much longer."

"And you really think that you can get away with this mutiny--this
barefaced insubordination--this defiance of _my authority_?"

"Sure I can--that's what I've been telling you. If you were here in
person, or ever had been; if any of the boys had ever seen you, or had
ever known you as anything except a disembodied voice; maybe I couldn't.
But, since nobody has ever seen even your face, that gives me a
chance...."

In his distant base Helmuth's mind had flashed over every aspect of this
unheard-of situation. He decided to play for time; therefore, even as
his hands darted to buttons here and there, he spoke:

"Do _you_ want to see my face?" he demanded. "If you do see it, no power
in the galaxy...."

"Skip it, Chief," sneered Kinnison. "Don't try to kid me into believing
you wouldn't kill me now, under any conditions, if you possibly could.
As for your face, it makes no difference to me whether I ever see your
ugly pan or not."

"Well, you shall!" and Helmuth's visage appeared; concentrating upon the
rebellious officer a glare of such fury and such power that any ordinary
man must have quailed. But not Blakeslee-Kinnison!

"Well! Not so bad, at that--the guy looks almost human!" Kinnison
exclaimed, in the tone most carefully designed to drive even more
frantic the helpless and inwardly raging pirate leader. "But I've got
things to do. You can guess at what goes on around here from now on,"
and in the blaze of a DeLameter Helmuth's plate, set, and "eye"
disappeared. Kinnison had also been playing for time, and his observer
had checked and rechecked this second and highly important line to
Helmuth's ultra-secret base.

Then, throughout the fortress, there blared out the urgent assembly
call, to which the Lensman added, verbally:

"This is a one hundred percent callout, including crews of ships in
dock, regular base personnel, and all prisoners. Come as you are and
come fast--the doors of the auditorium will be locked in five minutes
and any man outside those doors will be given ample reason to wish that
he had been inside."

The auditorium was immediately off the control room, and was so arranged
that when a partition was rolled back the control room became its stage.
All Boskonian bases were arranged thus, in order that the supervising
officers at Grand Base could oversee through their instruments upon the
main panel just such assemblies as this one was supposed to be. Every
man hearing that call assumed that it came from Grand Base, and every
man hurried to obey it.

Kinnison rolled back the partition between the two rooms and watched for
weapons as the men came streaming into the auditorium. Ordinarily only
the guards went armed, but possibly a few of the ships' officers would
be wearing their DeLameters.... four--five--six. The captain and the
pilot of the battleship that had taken the hospital ship, Vice-Commander
Krimsky of the base, and three guards. Knives, billies, and such did not
count.

"Time's up. Lock the doors. Bring the keys and the nurses up here," he
ordered the six armed men, calling each by name. "You women take these
chairs over here, you men sit there."

Then, when all were seated, Kinnison touched a button and the steel
partition slid smoothly into place.

"What's coming off here?" demanded one of the officers. "Where's the
commander? How about Grand Base? Look at that board!"

"Sit tight." Kinnison directed. "Hands on knees--I'll burn any or all of
you that make a move. I have already burned the old man and five guards,
and have put Grand Base out of the picture. Now I want to find out just
how us seven stand." The Lensman already knew, but he was not tipping
his hand.

"Why us seven?"

"Because we are the only ones who happened to be wearing side-arms.
Everyone else of the entire personnel is unarmed and is now locked in
the auditorium. You know how apt they are to get out until one of us
lets them out."

"But Helmuth--he'll have you blasted for this!"

"Hardly--my plans were not made yesterday. How many of you fellows are
with me?"

"What's your scheme?"

"To take these nurses to some Patrol base and surrender. I'm sick of
this whole game; and, since none of them have been hurt, I figure
they're good for a pardon and a fresh start--a light sentence at least."

"Oh, so _that's_ the reason...." growled the captain.

"Exactly--but I don't want anyone with me whose only thought would be to
burn me down at the first opportunity."

"Count me in," declared the pilot. "I've got a strong stomach, but
enough of these jobbies is altogether too much. If you wangle anything
short of a life sentence for me I'll go along, but I bloody well won't
help you against...."

"Sure not. Not until after we're out in space. I don't need any help
here."

"Do you want my DeLameter?"

"No, keep it. You won't use it on me. Anybody else?"

One guard joined the pilot, standing aside; the other four wavered.

"Time's up!" Kinnison snapped. "Now, you four fellows, either go for
your DeLameters or turn your backs, and do it right now!"

They elected to turn their backs and Kinnison collected their weapons,
one by one. Having disarmed them, he again rolled back the partition and
ordered them to join the wondering throng in the auditorium. He then
addressed the assemblage, telling them what he had done and what he had
it in mind to do.

"A good many of you must be fed up on this lawless game of piracy and
anxious to resume association with decent men, if you can do so without
incurring too great a punishment," he concluded. "I feel quite certain
that those of us who man the hospital ship in order to return these
nurses to the Patrol will get light sentences, at most. Miss MacDougall
is a head nurse--a commissioned officer of the Patrol. We will ask her
what she thinks."

"I can say more than that," she replied clearly. "I am not 'quite
certain,' either--I am absolutely sure that whatever men Mr. Blakeslee
selects for his crew will not be given any sentences at all. They will
be pardoned, and will be given whatever jobs they can do best."

"How do you know, Miss?" asked one. "We're a black lot."

"I know you are." The head nurse's voice was serenely positive. "I won't
say _how_ I know, but you can take my word for it that I _do_ know."

"Those of you who want to take a chance with us line up over here,"
Kinnison directed, and walked rapidly down the line, reading the mind of
each man in turn. Many of them he waved back into the main group, as he
found thoughts of treachery or signs of inherent criminality. Those he
selected were those who were really sincere in their desire to quit
forever the ranks of Boskone, those who were in those ranks because of
some press of circumstance rather than because of a mental taint. As
each man passed inspection he armed himself from the cabinet and stood
at ease before the group of women.

Having selected his crew, the Lensman operated the controls that opened
the exit nearest the hospital ship, blasted away the panel, so that that
exit could not be closed, unlocked a door, and turned to the pirates.

"Vice-Commander Krimsky, as senior officer, you are now in command of
this base," he remarked. "While I am in no sense giving you orders,
there are a few matters about which you should be informed. First, I set
no definite time as to when you may leave this room--I merely state that
you will find it decidedly unhealthy to follow us at all closely as we
go from here to the hospital ship. Second, you haven't a ship fit to
take the ether; your main injector toggles have all been broken off at
the pivots. If your mechanics work at top speed, new ones can be put on
in exactly two hours. Third, there is going to be a severe earthquake in
precisely two hours and thirty minutes, one which should make this base
merely a memory."

"An earthquake! Don't bluff, Blakeslee--you couldn't do _that_!"

"Well, perhaps not a regular earthquake, but something that will do just
as well. If you think I'm bluffing, wait and find out. But common sense
should give you the answer to that--I know exactly what Helmuth is doing
now, whether you do or not. At first I intended to wipe you all out
without warning, but I changed my mind. I decided to leave you alive, so
that you could report to Helmuth exactly what happened. I wish I could
be watching him when he finds out how easily one man took him, and how
far from foolproof his system is--but we can't have everything. Let's
go!"

As the group hurried away, Mac loitered until she was near Blakeslee,
who was bringing up the rear.

"Where are you, Kim?" she whispered urgently.

"I'll join up at the next corridor. Keep farther ahead, and get ready to
run when we do!"

As they passed that corridor a figure in gray leather, carrying an
extremely heavy object, stepped out of it. Kinnison himself set his
burden down, yanked a lever, and ran--and as he ran fountains of
intolerable heat erupted and cascaded from the mechanism he had left
upon the floor. Just ahead of him, but at some distance behind the
others, ran Blakeslee and the girl.

"Gosh, I'm glad to see you, Kim!" she panted as the Lensman caught up
with them and all three slowed down. "What is that thing back there?"

"Nothing much--just a KJ4Z hot-shot. Won't do any real damage--just melt
this tunnel down so they can't interfere with our get-away."

"Then you _were_ bluffing about the earthquake?" she asked, a shade of
disappointment in her tone.

"Hardly," he reproved her. "That isn't due for two hours and a half yet,
but it'll happen on scheduled time."

"How?"

"You remember about the curious cat, don't you? However, no particular
secret about it, I guess--three lithium-hydride bombs placed where
they'll do the most good and timed for exactly simultaneous detonation.
Here we are--don't tell anybody I'm here."

Aboard the vessel, Kinnison disappeared into a stateroom while Blakeslee
continued in charge. Men were divided into watches, duties were
assigned, inspections were made, and the ship shot into the air. There
was a brief halt to pick up Kinnison's speedster; then, again on the
way, Blakeslee turned the board over to Crandall, the pilot, and went
into Kinnison's room.

There the Lensman withdrew his control, leaving intact the memory of
everything that had happened. For minutes Blakeslee was almost in a
daze, but struggled through it and held out his hand.

"Mighty glad to meet you, Lensman. Thanks. All I can say is that after I
got sucked in I couldn't...."

"Sure, I know all about it--that was one of the reasons I picked you
out. Your subconscious didn't fight back a bit, at any time. You're to
be in charge, from here to Tellus. Please go and chase everybody out of
the control room except Crandall."

"Say, I just thought of something!" exclaimed Blakeslee when Kinnison
joined the two officers at the board. "You must be that particular
Lensman who has been getting in Helmuth's hair so much lately!"

"Probably--that's my chief aim in life."

"I'd like to see Halmuth's face when he gets the report of this. I've
said that before, haven't I? But I mean it now, even more than I did
before."

"I'm thinking of Helmuth, too, but not that way." The pilot had been
scowling at his plate, and now turned to Blakeslee and the Lensman,
glancing curiously from one to the other. "Oh I say.... A Lensman,
what? A bit of good old light begins to dawn; but that can wait. Helmuth
is after us, foot, horse, and marines. Look at that plate!"

"Four of 'em already!" exclaimed Blakeslee. "And there's another! And we
haven't got a beam hot enough to light a cigarette, nor a screen strong
enough to stop a firecracker. We've got legs, but not as many as they've
got. You knew all about that, though, before we started; and from what
you've pulled off so far you've got something left on the hooks. What is
it? What's the answer?"

"For some reason or other they can't detect us. All you have to do is to
stay out of range of their electros and drill for Tellus."

"Some reason or other, eh? Nine ships on the plate now--all Boskonians
and all looking for us--and not seeing us--_some_ reason! But I'm not
asking questions...."

"Just as well not to. I'd rather you'd answer one. Who or what is
Boskone?"

"Nobody knows. Helmuth speaks for Boskone, and nobody else ever does,
not even Boskone himself--if there is such a person. Nobody can prove
it, but everybody knows that Helmuth and Boskone are simply two names
for the same man. Helmuth, you know, is only a voice--nobody ever saw
his face until today."

"I'm beginning to think so, myself," and Kinnison strode away, to call
at the office of Head Nurse MacDougall.

"Mac, here's a small, but highly important box," he told her, taking the
neutralizer from his pocket and handing it to her. "Put it in your
locker until you get to Tellus. Then take it, yourself, in person, and
give it to Haynes, himself, in person, and to nobody else. Just tell him
I sent it--he knows all about it."

"But why not keep it and give it to him yourself? You're coming with us,
aren't you?"

"Probably not all the way. I imagine I'll have to do a flit before
long."

"But I want to talk to you!" she exclaimed. "Why, I've got a million
questions to ask you!"

"That would take a long time," he grinned at her, "and time is just what
we ain't got right now, neither of us," and he strode back to the board.

There he labored for hours at a calculating machine and in the tank;
finally to squat down upon his heels, staring at two needle-like rays of
light in the tank and whistling softly between his teeth. For those two
lines, while exactly in the same plane, did not intersect in the tank at
all! Estimating as carefully as he could the point of intersection of
the lines, he punched the "cancel" key to wipe out all traces of his
work and went to the chart-room. Chart after chart he hauled down, and
for many minutes he worked with calipers, compass, goniometer, and a
carefully-set adjustable triangle. Finally he marked a point--exactly
upon a numbered dot already upon the chart--and again whistled. Then:

"Huh!" he grunted. He rechecked all his figures and retraversed the
chart, only to have his needle pierce again the same tiny hole. He
stared at it for a full minute, studying the map all around his marker.

"Star cluster AC 257-4736," he ruminated. "The smallest most
insignificant, least-known star-cluster he could find, and my largest
possible error can't put it anywhere else.... kind of thought it
might be in a cluster, but I never would have looked _there_. No wonder
it took a lot of stuff to trace his beam--it would have to be four
numbers Brinnell harder than a diamond drill to work from there."

Again whistling tunelessly to himself he rolled up the chart upon which
he had been at work, stuck it under his arm, replaced the others in
their compartments, and went back to the control room.

"How's tricks, fellows?" he asked.

"QX," replied Blakeslee. "We're through them and into clear ether. Not a
ship on the plate, and nobody gave us even a tumble."

"Fine! You won't have any trouble, then, from here in to Prime Base.
Glad of it, too--I've got to flit. That'll mean long watches for you
two, but it can't very well be helped."

"But I say, old bird, I don't mind the watches, but...."

"Don't worry about that, either. This crew can be trusted, to a man. Not
one of you joined the pirates of your own free will, and not one of you
has ever taken active part...."

"What are you, a mind-reader or something?" Crandall burst out.

"Something like that," Kinnison assented with a grin, and Blakeslee put
in:

"More than that, you mean. Something like hypnosis, only more so. You
think I had something to do with this, but I didn't--the Lensman did it
all himself."

"Um....m." Crandall stared at Kinnison, new respect in his eyes. "I
knew that Unattached Lensmen were good, but I had no idea they were
_that_ good. No wonder Helmuth has been getting his wind up about you.
I'll string along with any one who can take a whole base, single-handed,
and make such a bally ass to boot out of such a keen old bird as Helmuth
is. But I'm in a bit of a dither, not so say a funk, about what's going
to happen when we pop into Prime Base without you. Every man jack of us,
you know, is slated for the lethal chamber without trial. Miss
MacDougall will do her bit, of course, but what I mean is has she enough
jets to swing it, what?"

"She has, but to avoid all argument I've fixed that up, too. Here's a
tape, telling all about what happened. It ends up with my recommendation
for a full pardon for each of you, and for a job at whatever he is found
best fitted for. Signed with my thumb-print. Give it or send it to Port
Admiral Haynes as soon as you land. I've got enough jets, I think, so
that it will go as it lays."

"Jets? You? Right-o! You've got jets enough to lift fourteen freighters
off the North Pole of Valeria. What next?"

"Stores and supplies for my speedster. I'm doing a long flit and this
ship has supplies to burn, so load me up, Plimsoll down."

The speedster was stocked forthwith. Then, with nothing more than a
casually waved salute in the way of farewell, Kinnison boarded his tiny
space-ship and shot away toward his distant goal. Crandall, the pilot,
sought his bunk; while Blakeslee started his long trick at the board. In
an hour or so the head nurse strolled in.

"Kim?" she queried, doubtfully.

"No, Miss MacDougall--Blakeslee. Sorry...."

"Oh, I'm glad of that--that means that everything's settled. Where's the
Lensman--in bed?"

"He has gone, Miss."

"Gone! Without a word? Where?"

"He didn't say."

"He wouldn't, of course." The nurse turned away, exclaiming inaudibly;
"Gone! I'd like to cuff him for that, the lug! GONE! Why, the great,
big, lobsterly clunker!"

CHAPTER  22                                     _Preparing for the Test_

But Kinnison was not heading for Helmuth's base--yet. He was splitting
the ether toward Aldebaran instead, as fast as his speedster could go;
and she was one of the fastest things in the galaxy. He had two good
reasons for going there before tackling Boskone's Grand Base. First, to
try out his skill upon non-human intellects. If he could handle the
Wheelmen he was ready to take the far greater hazard. Second, he owed
those wheelers something, and he did not like to call in the whole
Patrol to help him pay his debts. He could, he thought, handle that base
himself.

Knowing exactly where it was, he had no difficulty in finding the
volcanic shaft which was its entrance. Down that shaft his sense of
perception sped. He found the lookout plates and followed their power
leads. Gently, carefully, he insinuated his mind into that of the
Wheelman at the board; discovering, to his great relief, that that
monstrosity was no more difficult to handle than had been the Radeligian
observer. Mind or intellect, he found, were not affected at all by the
shape of the brains concerned; quality, reach, and power were the
essential factors. Therefore he let himself in and took position in the
same room from which he had been driven so violently. Kinnison examined
with interest the wall through which he had been blown, noting that it
had been repaired so perfectly that he could scarcely find the joints
which had been made.

These wheelers, the Lensman knew, had explosives; since the bullets
which had torn their way through his armor and through his flesh had
been propelled by that agency. Therefore, to the mind within his grasp
he suggested "the place where explosives are kept?" and the thought of
that mind flashed to the store-room in question. Similarly, the thought
of the one who had access to that room pointed out to the Lensman the
particular Wheelman he wanted. It was as easy as that, and since he took
care not to look at any of the weird beings, he gave no alarm.

Kinnison withdrew his mind delicately, leaving no trace of its
occupancy, and went to investigate the arsenal. There he found a few
cases of machine-rifle cartridges, and that was all. Then into the mind
of the munitions officer, where he discovered that the heavy bombs were
kept in a distant crater, so that no damage would be done by any
possible explosion.

"Not quite as simple as I thought," Kinnison ruminated, "but there's a
way out of that, too."

There was. It took an hour or so of time; and he had to control two
Wheelmen instead of one, but he found that he could do that. When the
munitions master took out a bombscow after a load of H.E., the crew had
no idea that it was anything except a routine job. The only Wheelman who
would have known differently, the one at the lookout board, was the
other whom Kinnison had to keep under control. The scow went out, got
its load, and came back. Then, while the Lensman was flying out into
space, the scow dropped down the shaft. So quietly was the whole thing
done that not a creature in that whole establishment knew that anything
was wrong until it was too late to act--and then none of them knew
anything at all. Not even the crew of the scow realized that they were
dropping too fast.

Kinnison did not know what would happen if a mind--to say nothing of two
of them--died while in his mental grasp, and he did not care to find
out. Therefore, a fraction of a second before the crash, he jerked free
and watched.

The explosion and its consequences did not look at all impressive from
the Lensman's coign of vantage. The mountain trembled a little, then
subsided noticeably. From its summit there erupted an unimportant little
flare of flame, some smoke, and an insignificant shower of rock and
debris.

However, when the scene had cleared there was no longer any shaft
leading downward from that crater; a floor of solid rock began almost at
its lip. Nevertheless the Lensman explored thoroughly all the region
where the stronghold had been, making sure that the clean-up had been
one hundred percent effective.

Then, and only then, did he point the speedster's streamlined nose
toward star cluster AC 257-4736.

                         *    *    *    *    *

In his hidden retreat so far from the galaxy's crowded suns and worlds,
Helmuth was in no enviable or easy frame of mind. Four times he had
declared that that accursed Lensman, whoever he might be, must be
destroyed; and had mustered his every available force to that end; only
to have his intended prey slip from his grasp as effortlessly as a
droplet of mercury eludes the clutching fingers of a child.

That Lensman, with nothing except a speedster and a bomb, had taken and
had studied one of Boskone's new battleships, thus obtaining for his
Patrol the secret of cosmic energy. Abandoning his own vessel, then
crippled and doomed to capture or destruction, he had stolen one of the
ships searching for him and in it he had calmly sailed to Velantia right
through Helmuth's screen of blockading vessels. He had in some way so
fortified Velantia as to capture six Boskonian battleships. In one of
those ships he had won his way back to Prime Base, with information of
such immense importance that it had robbed the Boskonian organization of
its then overwhelming superiority. More, he had found or had developed
new items of equipment which, save for Helmuth's own success in
obtaining them, would have given the Patrol a definite and decisive
superiority over Boskonia. Now both sides were equal, except for that
Lensman and.... the Lens.

Helmuth still quailed inwardly whenever he thought of what he had
undergone at the Arisian barrier, and he had given up all thought of
securing the secret of the Lens by force or from Arisia. But there must
be other ways of getting it....

And just then there came in the urgent call from Boyssia II, followed by
the stunningly successful revolt of the hitherto innocuous Blakeslee,
culminating as it did in the destruction of Helmuth's every Boyssian
device of vision or of communication. Blue-white with fury, the
Boskonian flung his net abroad to take the renegade; but as he settled
back to await results a thought struck him like a blow from a fist.
Blakeslee _was_ innocuous. He never had had, did not now have and never
would have, the cold nerve and the sheer, dominating power he had just
shown. Toward what conclusion did that fact point?

The furious anger disappeared from Helmuth's face as though it had been
wiped therefrom with a sponge, and he became again the cold calculating
mechanism of flesh and blood that he ordinarily was. This conception
changed matters entirely. This was not an ordinary revolt of an ordinary
subordinate. The man had done something which he could not possibly do.
So what? The Lens again.... again that accursed Lensman, the one who
had somehow learned really to _use_ his Lens!

"Wolmark, call every vessel at Boyssia base," he directed crisply. "Keep
on calling them until someone answers. Get whoever is in charge there
now and put him on me here."

A few minutes of silence followed, then Vice-Commander Krimsky reported
in full everything that had happened and told of the threatened
destruction of the base.

"You have an automatic speedster there, have you not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Turn over command to the next in line, with orders to move to the
nearest base, taking with him as much equipment as is possible. Caution
him to leave on time, however, for I very strongly suspect that it is
now too late to do anything to prevent the destruction of the base. You,
alone, take the speedster and bring away the personal files of the men
who went with Blakeslee. A speedster will meet you at a point to be
designated later and relieve you of the records."

An hour passed. Two, then three.

"Wolmark! Blakeslee and the hospital ship have vanished, I presume?"

"They have." The underling, expecting a verbal flaying, was greatly
surprised at the mildness of his chief's tone and at the studious
serenity of his face.

"Come to the center." Then, when the lieutenant was seated, "I do not
suppose that you as yet realize what--or rather, who--it is that is
doing this?"

"Why, Blakeslee is doing it, of course."

"I thought so, too, at first. That was what the one who really did it
wanted us to think."

"It must have been Blakeslee. We saw him do it, sir--how could it have
been anyone else?"

"I do not know. I do know, however, and so should you, that he could not
have done it. Blakeslee, of himself, is of no importance whatever."

"We'll catch him, sir, and make him talk. He can't get away."

"You will find that you will not catch him and that he can get away.
Blakeslee alone, of course, could not do so, any more than he could have
done the things he apparently did do. No. Wolmark, we are not dealing
with Blakeslee."

"Who then, sir?"

"Haven't you deduced that yet? The Lensman, fool--the same Lensman who
has been thumbing his nose at us ever since he took one of our
first-class battleships with a speed-boat and a firecracker."

"But--how _could_ he?"

"Again I admit that I do not know--yet. The connection, however, is
quite evident. Thought. Blakeslee was thinking thoughts utterly beyond
him. The Lens comes from Arisia. The Arisians are masters of thought--of
mental forces and processes incomprehensible to any of us. These are the
elements which, when fitted together, will give us the complete
picture."

"I don't see how they fit."

"Neither do I--yet. However, surely he can't trace...."

"Just a moment! The time has come when it is no longer safe to say what
that Lensman can or cannot do. Our communicator beams are hard and
tight, yes. But any beam can be tapped if enough power be applied to it,
and any beam that can be tapped can be traced. I expect him to visit us
here, and we shall be prepared for his visit. That is the reason for
this conference with you. Here is a device which generates a field
through which no thought can penetrate. I have had this device for some
time, but for obvious reasons have not released it. Here are the
diagrams and complete constructional data. Have a few hundred of them
made with all possible speed, and see to it that every being upon this
planet wears one continuously. Impress upon everyone, and I will also,
that it is of the utmost importance that absolutely continuous
protection be maintained, even while changing batteries.

"Experts have been working for some time upon the problem of protecting
the entire planet with a screen, and there is some little hope of
success in the near future; but individual protection will still be of
the utmost importance. We cannot impress it too forcibly upon everyone
that every man's life is dependent upon each one maintaining his
thought-screen in full operation at all times. That is all."

When the messenger brought in the personal files of Blakeslee and the
other deserters, Helmuth and his psychologists went over them with
minutely painstaking care. The more they studied them the clearer it
became that the chief's conclusion was the correct one, THE Lensman
could read minds.

Reason and logic told Helmuth that the Lensman's only purpose in
attacking the Boyssian base was to get a line on Grand Base; that
Blakeslee's flight and the destruction of the base were merely
diversions to obscure the real purpose of the visit; that the Lensman
had staged that theatrical performance especially to hold him, Helmuth,
while his beam was being traced, and that that was the only reason why
the visiset was not sooner put out of action; and finally, that the
Lensman had scored another clean hit.

He, Helmuth himself, had been caught flat-footed; and his face hardened
and his jaw set at the thought. But he had not been taken in. He was
forewarned and he would be ready, for he was coldly certain that Grand
Base and he himself were the real objectives of the Lensman. That
Lensman knew full well that any number of ordinary bases, ships, and men
could be destroyed without damaging materially the Boskonian cause.

Steps must be taken to make Grand Base as impregnable to mental forces
as it already was to physical ones. Otherwise, it might well be that
even Helmuth's own life would presently be at stake--a thing precious
indeed. Therefore council after council was held, every contingency that
could be thought of was brought up and discussed, every possible
precaution was taken. In short, every resource of Grand Base was devoted
to the warding off of any possible mental threat which might be
forthcoming.

                         *    *    *    *    *

Kinnison approached that star cluster with care. Small though it was, as
cosmic groups go, it yet was composed of some hundreds of stars and an
unknown number of planets. Any one of those planets might be the one he
sought, and to approach it unknowingly might prove disastrous. Therefore
he slowed down to a crawl and crept up, light-year by light-year, with
his ultra-powered detectors fanning out before him to the limit of their
unimaginable reach.

He had more than half expected that he would have to search that
cluster, world by world; but in that, at least, he was pleasantly
disappointed. One corner of one of his plates began to show a dim glow
of detection. A bell tinkled and Kinnison directed his most powerful
master plate into the region indicated. This plate, while of very narrow
field, had tremendous resolving power and magnification; and in it he
saw that there were eighteen small centers of radiation surrounding one
vastly larger one.

There was no doubt then as to the location of Helmuth's base, but there
arose the question of approach. The Lensman had not considered the
possibility of a screen of lookout ships--if they were close enough
together so that the electromagnetics had even a fifty percent overlap,
he might as well go back home. What were those outposts, and exactly how
closely were they spaced? He observed, advanced, and observed again;
computing finally that, whatever they were, they were so far apart that
there could be no possibility of any electro overlap at all. He could
get between them easily enough--he wouldn't even have to baffle his
flares. They could not be guards at all, Kinnison concluded, but must be
simply outposts, set far outside the solar system of the planet they
guarded; not to ward off one-man speedsters, but to warn Helmuth of the
possible approach of a force large enough to threaten Grand Base.

Closer and closer Kinnison flashed; discovering that the central object
was indeed a base, startling in its immensity and completely and
intensively fortified; and that the outposts were huge, floating
fortresses, practically stationary in space relative to the sun of the
solar system they surrounded. The Lensman aimed at the center of the
imaginary square formed by four of the outposts and drove in as close to
the planet as he dared. Then, going inert, he set his speedster into an
orbit--he did not care particularly about its shape, provided that it
was not too narrow an ellipse--and cut off all his power. He was now
safe from detection. Leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes, he
hurled his sense of perception into and through the massed
fortifications of Grand Base.

For a long time he did not find a single living creature. Hundreds of
miles he traversed, perceiving only automatic machinery, bank after
towering, miles-square bank of accumulators, and remote-controlled
projectors and other weapons and apparatus. Finally, however, he came to
Helmuth's dome; and in that dome he received another severe shock. The
personnel in that dome were to be numbered by the hundreds, but he could
not make mental contact with any one of them. He could not touch their
minds at all; he was stopped cold. Every member of Helmuth's band was
protected by a thought-screen as effective as the Lensman's own!

Around and around the planet the speedster circled, while Kinnison
struggled with this new and entirely unexpected setback. This looked as
though Helmuth knew what was coming. Helmuth was nobody's fool, Kinnison
knew; but how could he possibly have suspected that a mental attack was
in the book? Perhaps he was just playing safe. If so, the Lensman's
chance would come. Men would be careless; batteries weakened and would
have to be changed.

But this hope was also vain, as continued watching revealed that each
battery was listed, checked, and timed. Nor was any screen released,
even for an instant, when its battery was changed; the fresh power
source being slipped into service before the weakening one was
disconnected.

"Well, that tears it--Helmuth _knows_," Kinnison cogitated, after
watching vainly several such changes. "He's a wise old bird. The guy
really has jets--I still don't see what I did that could have put him
wise to what was going on."

Day after day the Lensman studied every detail of construction,
operation, and routine of that base, and finally an idea began to dawn.
He shot his attention toward a barracks he had inspected frequently of
late, but stopped, irresolute.

"Uh uh, Kim, maybe better not," he advised himself. "Helmuth's mighty
quick on the trigger, to figure out that Boyssian thing so fast...."

His projected thought was sheared off without warning, thus settling the
question definitely. Helmuth's big apparatus was at work, the whole
planet was screened against thought.

"Oh well, probably better, at that," Kinnison went on arguing with
himself. "If I'd tried it out maybe he'd've got onto it and laid me a
stymie next time, when I really need it."

He went free and hurled his speedster toward Earth, now distant indeed.
Several times during that long trip he was sorely tempted to call Haynes
through his Lens and get things started; but he always thought better of
it. This was altogether too important a thing to be sent through so much
sub-ether, or even to be thought about except inside an absolutely
thought-tight room. And besides, every waking hour of even that long
trip could be spent very profitably in digesting and correlating the
information he had obtained and in mapping out the salient features of
the campaign that was to come. Therefore, before time began to drag,
Kinnison landed at Prime Base and was taken directly to Port Admiral
Haynes.

"Mighty glad to see you, son," Haynes greeted the young Lensman
cordially as he sealed the room thought-tight. "Since you came in under
your own power, I assume that you are here to make a constructive
report?"

"Better than that, sir--I'm here to start something in a big way. I know
at last where their Grand Base is, and have detailed plans of it. I
think I know who and where Boskone is. I know where Helmuth is, and I
have worked out a plan whereby, if it works, we can wipe out that base.
Boskone, Helmuth, and all the lesser master minds, at one wipe."

"Mentor _did_ come through, huh?" For the first time since Kinnison had
known him the old man lost his poise. He leaped to his feet and seized
Kinnison by the arm. "I knew you were good, but not _that_ good! He gave
you what you wanted?"

"He sure did," and the younger man reported as briefly as possible
everything that had happened.

"I'm just as sure that Helmuth is Boskone as I can be of anything that
can't be proved," Kinnison continued, unrolling a sheaf of drawings.
"Helmuth speaks for Boskone, and nobody else ever does, not even Boskone
himself. None of the other big shots know anything about Boskone or ever
heard him speak; but they all jump through their hoops when Helmuth,
'speaking for Boskone,' cracks the whip. And I couldn't get a trace of
Helmuth ever taking anything up with any higher-ups. Therefore I'm dead
certain that when we get Helmuth we get Boskone.

"But that's going to be a job of work. I scouted his headquarters from
stem to gudgeon, as I told you; and Grand Base is absolutely impregnable
as it stands. I never imagined anything like it--it makes Prime Base
here look like a deserted cross-roads after a hard winter. They've got
screens, pits, projectors, accumulators, all on a gigantic scale. In
fact, they've got everything--but you can get all that from the tape and
these sketches. They simply can't be taken by any possible direct
frontal attack. Even if we used every ship and mauler we've got they
could stand us off. And they can match us, ship for ship--we'd never get
near Grand Base at all if they knew we were coming...."

"Well, if it's such an impossible job, what...."

"I'm coming to that. It's impossible as it stands; but there's a good
chance that I'll be able to soften it up," and the young Lensman went on
to outline the plan upon which he had been working so long. "You know,
like a worm--bore from within. That's the only possible way to do it.
You'll have to put detector nullifiers on every ship assigned to the
job, but that'll be easy. We'll need everything we've got."

"The important thing, as I gather it, is timing."

"Absolutely. To the minute, since I won't be able to communicate, once I
get inside their thought-screens. How long will it take to assemble our
stuff and put it in that cluster?"

"Seven weeks--eight at the outside."

"Plus two for allowances. QX--at exactly hour 20, ten weeks from today,
let every projector of every vessel you can possibly get there cut loose
on that base with everything they can pour in. There's a detailed
drawing in here somewhere.... here--twenty-six main objectives, you
see. Blast them all, simultaneously to the second. If they all go down,
the rest will be possible--if not, it'll be just too bad. Then work
along these lines here, straight from those twenty-six stations to the
dome, blasting everything as you go. Make it last exactly fifteen
minutes, not a minute more or less. If, by fifteen minutes after twenty,
the main dome hasn't surrendered by cutting its screen, blast that, too,
if you can--it'll take a lot of blasting, I'm afraid. From then on you
and the five-star admirals will have to do whatever is appropriate to
the occasion."

"Your plan doesn't cover that, apparently. Where will you be--how will
_you_ be fixed--if the main dome does not cut its screens?"

"I'll be dead, and you'll be just starting the damnedest war that this
galaxy ever saw."

CHAPTER  23                                    _Tregonsee Turns Zwilnik_

While servicing and checking the speedster required only a couple of
hours, Kinnison did not leave Earth for almost two days. He had
requisitioned much special equipment, the construction of one item of
which--a suit of armor such as had never been seen before--caused almost
all of the delay. When it was ready the greatly interested Port Admiral
accompanied the young Lensman out to the steel-lined, sand-filled
concrete dugout, in which the suit had already been mounted upon a
remote-controlled dummy. Fifty feet from that dummy there was a heavy,
water-cooled machine rifle, with its armored crew standing by. As the
two approached the crew leaped to attention.

"As you were," Haynes instructed, and:

"You checked those cartridges against those I brought in from Aldebaran
I?" asked Kinnison of the officer in charge, as, accompanied by the Port
Admiral, he crouched down behind the shields of the control panel.

"Yes, sir. These are twenty-five percent over, as you specified."

"QX--commence firing!" Then, as the weapon clamored out its stuttering,
barking roar, Kinnison made the dummy stoop, turn, bend, twist, and
dodge, so as to bring its every plate, joint, and member into that hail
of steel. The uproar stopped.

"One thousand rounds, sir," the officer reported.

"No holes--no dents--not a scratch or a scar," Kinnison reported, after
a minute examination, and got into the thing. "Now give me two thousand
rounds, unless I tell you to stop. Shoot!"

Again the machine rifle burst into its ear-shattering song of hate; and,
strong as Kinnison was and powerfully braced by the blast of his
drivers, he could not stand against the awful force of those bullets.
Over he went, backward, and the firing ceased.

"Keep it up!" he snapped. "Think they're going to quit shooting at me
because I fall down?"

"But you had had nineteen hundred!" protested the officer.

"Keep on pecking until you run out of ammunition or until I tell you to
stop," ordered Kinnison. "I've got to learn how to handle this thing
under fire," and the storm of metal again began to crash against the
reverberating shell of steel.

It hurled the Lensman down, rolled him over and over, slammed him
against the back-stop. Again and again he struggled upright, only to be
hurled again to ground as the riflemen, really playing the game now,
swung their leaden hail from part to part of the armor, and varied their
attack from steady fire to short but savage bursts. But finally, in
spite of everything the gun crew could do, Kinnison learned his
controls.

Then, drivers flaring, he faced that howling, chattering muzzle and
strode straight into the stream of smoke- and flame-enshrouded steel.
Now the air was literally full of metal. Bullets and fragments of
bullets whined and shrieked in mad abandon as they ricocheted in all
directions off that armor. Sand and bits of concrete flew hither and
yon, filling the atmosphere of the dugout. The rifle yammered at
maximum, with its sweating crew laboring mightily to keep its voracious
maw full-fed. But, in spite of everything, Kinnison held his line and
advanced. He was barely six feet from that yelling, steel-vomiting
muzzle when the firing again ceased.

"Twenty thousand, sir," the officer reported, crisply. "We'll have to
change barrels before we can give you any more."

"That's enough!" snapped Haynes. "Come out of there!"

Out Kinnison came. He removed heavy ear-plugs, swallowed four times,
blinked and grimaced. Finally he spoke.

"It works perfectly, sir, except for the noise. 'Sa good thing I've got
a Lens--in spite of the plugs I won't be able to hear anything for three
days!"

"How about the springs and shock-absorbers? Are you bruised anywhere?
You took some real bumps."

"Perfect--not a bruise. Let's look her over."

Every inch of that armor's surface was now marked by blurs, where the
metal of the bullets had rubbed itself off upon the shining alloy, but
that surface was neither scratched, scored, nor dented.

"QX, boys--thanks," Kinnison dismissed the riflemen. They probably
wondered how any man could see out through a helmet built up of
inches-thick laminated alloys, with neither window nor port through
which to look; but if so, they made no mention of their curiosity. They,
too, were Patrolmen.

"Is that thing an armor or a personal tank?" asked Haynes. "I aged ten
years while that was going on; but at that I'm glad you insisted on
testing it. You can get away with anything now."

"It's much better technique to learn things among friends than enemies,"
Kinnison laughed. "It's heavy, of course--pretty close to a ton. I won't
be walking around in it, though; I'll be flying it. Well, sir, since
everything's all set, I think I'd better fly it over to the speedster
and start flitting, don't you? I don't know exactly how much time I'm
going to need on Trenco."

"Might as well," the Port Admiral agreed, as casually, and Kinnison was
gone.

"What a man!" Haynes stared after the monstrous figure until it vanished
in the distance, then strolled slowly toward his office, thinking as he
went.

Nurse MacDougall had been highly irked and incensed at Kinnison's casual
departure, without idle conversation or formal leave-takings. Not so
Haynes. That seasoned campaigner knew that Gray Lensmen--especially
young Gray Lensmen--were prone to get that way. He knew, as she would
one day learn, that Kinnison was no longer of Earth.

He was now only of the galaxy, not of any one tiny dust-grain of it. He
was of the Patrol. He _was_ the Patrol, and he was taking his new
responsibilities very seriously indeed. In his fierce zeal to drive his
campaign through to a successful end he would use man or woman, singly
or in groups; ships; even Prime Base itself; exactly as he had used
them: as pawns, as mere tools, as means to an end. And, having used
them, he would leave them as unconcernedly and as unceremoniously as he
would drop pliers and spanner, and with no more realization that he had
violated any of the nicer amenities of life as it is lived!

And as he strolled along and thought, the Port Admiral smiled quietly to
himself. He knew, as Kinnison would learn in time, that the universe was
vast, that time was long, and that the Scheme of Things, comprising the
whole of eternity and the Cosmic All, was a something incomprehensibly
immense indeed: with which cryptic thought the space-hardened veteran
sat down at his desk and resumed his interrupted labors.

But Kinnison had not yet attained Haynes' philosophic viewpoint, any
more than he had his age, and to him the trip to Trenco seemed
positively interminable. Eager as he was to put his plan of campaign to
the test, he found that mental urgings, or even audible invective, would
not make the speedster go any faster than the already incomprehensible
top speed of her drivers' maximum blast. Nor did pacing up and down the
little control room help very much. Physical exercise he had to perform,
but it did not satisfy him. Mental exercise was impossible; he could
think of nothing except Helmuth's base.

Eventually, however, he approached Trenco and located without difficulty
the Patrol's space-port. Fortunately, it was then at about eleven
o'clock, so that he did not have to wait long to land. He drove downward
inert, sending ahead of him a thought:

"Lensman of Trenco Space-port--Tregonsee or his relief? Lensman Kinnison
of Sol III asking permission to land."

"It is Tregonsee," came back the thought. "Welcome, Kinnison. You are on
the correct line. You have, then, perfected an apparatus to see truly in
this distorting medium?"

"I didn't perfect it--it was given to me."

The landing-bars lashed out, seized the speedster, and eased her down
into the lock; and, as soon as she had been disinfected, Kinnison went
into consultation with Tregonsee. The Rigellian was a highly important
factor in the Tellurian's scheme; and, since he was also a Lensman, he
was to be trusted implicitly. Therefore Kinnison told him briefly what
occurred and what he had it in mind to do, concluding:

"So you see, I need about fifty kilograms of thionite. Not fifty
milligrams, or even grams, but fifty _kilograms_; and, since there
probably isn't that much of the stuff loose in the whole galaxy, I came
over here to ask you to make it for me."

Just like that. Calmly asking a Lensman whose duty it was to kill any
being even attempting to gather a single Treconian plant, to make for
him more of the prohibited drug than was ordinarily processed throughout
the galaxy during a Solarian month! It would be just such an errand were
one to walk into the Treasury Department at Washington and inform the
Chief of the Narcotics Bureau, quite nonchalantly, that he had dropped
in to pick up ten tons of heroin! But Tregonsee did not flinch or
question--he was not even surprised. This was a Gray Lensman.

"That should not be too difficult," Tregonsee replied, after a moment's
study. "We have several thionite processing units, confiscated from
zwilnik outfits and not yet sent in; and all of us are of course
familiar with the technique of extracting and purifying the drug."

He issued orders and shortly Trenco Space-port presented the astounding
spectacle of a full crew of the Galactic Patrol devoting its every
energy to the whole-hearted breaking of the one law it was supposed most
rigidly, and without fear or favor, to enforce!

It was a little after noon, the calmest hour of Trenco's day. The wind
had died to "nothing"; which, on the planet, meant that a strong man
could stand against it; could even, if he were agile as well as strong,
walk about in it. Therefore Kinnison donned his light armor and was soon
busily harvesting broad-leaf, which, he had been informed, was the
richest source of thionite.

He had been working for only a few minutes when a flat came crawling up
to him; and, after ascertaining that his armor was not good to eat, drew
off and observed him intently. Here was another opportunity for practice
and in a flash the Lensman availed himself of it. Having practiced for
hours upon the minds of various Earthly animals, he entered this mind
easily enough, finding that the trenco was considerably more intelligent
than a dog. So much so, in fact, that the race had already developed a
fairly comprehensive language. Therefore it did not take long for the
Lensman to learn to use his subject's peculiar limbs and other members,
and soon the flat was working as though he were in the business for
himself. And, since he was ideally adapted to his wildly raging
Trenconian environment, he actually accomplished more than all the rest
of the force combined.

"It's a dirty trick I'm playing on you, Spike," Kinnison told his helper
after a while. "Come on into the receiving room and I'll see if I can
square it with you."

Since food was the only logical tender, Kinnison brought out from his
speedster a small can of salmon, a package of cheese, a bar of
chocolate, a few lumps of sugar, and a potato, offering them to the
Trenconian in order. The salmon and cheese were both highly acceptable
fare. The morsel of chocolate was a delightfully surprising delicacy.
The lump of sugar, however, was what really rang the bell--Kinnison's
own mind felt the shock of pure ecstasy as that wonderful substance
dissolved in the trenco's mouth. He also ate the potato, of course--any
Trenconian animal will, at any time, eat practically anything--but it
was merely food; nothing to rave about.

Knowing now what to do, Kinnison led his assistant out into the howling,
shrieking gale and released him from control, throwing a lump of sugar
up-wind as he did so. The trenco seized it in the air, ate it, and went
into a very hysteria of joy.

"More! More!" he insisted, attempting to climb up the Lensman's armored
leg.

"You must work for more of it, if you want it," Kinnison explained.
"Break off broad-leaf plants and carry them over into that empty thing
over there, and you get more."

This was an entirely new idea to the native, but after Kinnison had
taken hold of his mind and had shown him how to do consciously that
which he had been doing unconsciously for an hour, he worked willingly
enough. In fact, before it started to rain, thereby putting an end to
the labor of the day, there were a dozen of them toiling at the harvest
and the crop was coming in as fast as the entire crew of Rigellians
could process it. And even after the space-port was sealed they crowded
up, paying no attention to the rain, bringing in their small loads of
leaves and plaintively asking admittance.

It took some little time for Kinnison to make them understand that the
day's work was done, but that they were to come back tomorrow morning.
Finally, however, he succeeded in getting the idea across; and the last
disconsolate turtle-man swam reluctantly away. But sure enough, next
morning, even before the mud had dried, the same twelve were back on the
job; and the two Lensmen wondered simultaneously--how _could_ those
trencos have found the space-port? Or had they stayed near it through
the storm and flood of the night.

"I don't know," Kinnison answered the unasked question, "but I can find
out." Again and more carefully he examined the minds of two or three of
them. "No, they didn't follow us," he reported then. "They're not as
dumb as I thought they were. They have a sense of perception, Tregonsee,
about the same thing, I judge, as yours--perhaps even more so.
I wonder.... why couldn't they be trained into mighty efficient
police assistants on this planet?"

"The way _you_ handle them, yes. I can converse with them a little, of
course, but they have never before shown any willingness to cooperate
with us."

"You never fed them sugar," Kinnison laughed. "You have sugar, of
course--or do you? I was forgetting that many races do not use it at
all."

"We Rigellians are one of those races. Starch is so much tastier and so
much better adapted to our body chemistry that sugar is used only as a
chemical. We can, however, obtain it easily enough. But there is
something else--you can tell these trencos what to do and make them
really understand you. I can not."

"I can fix that up with a simple mental treatment that I can give you in
five minutes. Also, I can let you have enough sugar to carry on with
until you can get in a supply of your own."

In the few minutes during which the Lensman had been discussing their
potential allies, the mud had dried and the amazing coverage of
vegetation was springing visibly into being. So incredibly rapid was its
growth that in less than an hour some species were large enough to be
gathered. The leaves were lush and rank in color or a vivid crimsonish
purple.

"These early morning plants are the richest of any in thionite--much
richer than broad-leaf--but the zwilniks can never get more than a
handful of them because of the wind," remarked the Rigellian. "Now, if
you will give me that treatment, I will see what I can do with the
flats."

Kinnison did so, and the trencos worked for Tregonsee as industriously
as they had for Kinnison--and ate his sugar as rapturously.

"That's enough," decided the Rigellian presently. "This will finish your
fifty kilograms and to spare."

He then paid off his now enthusiastic helpers, with instructions to
return when the sun was directly overhead, for more work and more sugar.
And this time they did not complain, nor did they loiter around or bring
in unwanted vegetation. They were learning fast.

Well before noon the last kilogram of impalpable, purplish blue powder
was put into its impermeable sack. The machinery was cleaned; and
untouched leaves, the waste, and the contaminated air were blown out of
the space-port; and the room and its occupants were sprayed with
antithionite. Then and only then did the crew remove their masks and
air-filters. Trenco Space-port was again a Patrol post, no longer a
zwilnik's paradise.

"Thanks, Tregonsee and all you fellows...." Kinnison paused, then
went on, dubiously, "I don't suppose that you will...."

"We will not," declared Tregonsee. "Our time is yours, as you know,
without payment; and time is all that we gave you, really."

"Sure--that and a thousand million credits' worth of thionite."

"That, of course, does not count, as you also know. You have helped us,
I think, even more than we have helped you."

"I hope I've done you some good, anyway. Well, I've got to flit. Thanks
again--I'll see you again sometime, maybe," and again the Tellurian
Lensman was on his way.

CHAPTER   24                                _Kinnison Bores from Within_

Kinnison approached star cluster AC 257-4736 warily, as before; and as
before he insinuated his speedster through the loose outer cordon of
guardian fortresses. This time, however, he did not steer even remotely
near Helmuth's world. He would be there too long--there was altogether
too much risk of electromagnetic detection to set his ship into any kind
of an orbit around _that_ planet. Instead, he had computed a long,
narrow, elliptical orbit around its sun; well inside the zone guarded by
the maulers. He could compute it only approximately, of course, since he
did not know exactly either the masses involved or the perturbing
forces; but he thought that he could find his ship again with an
electro. If not, she would not be an irreplaceable loss. He set the
speedster, then, into the outward leg of that orbit and took off in his
new armor.

He knew that there was a thought-screen around Helmuth's planet, and
suspected that there might be other screens as well. Therefore, shutting
off every watt of power, he dropped straight down into the night side,
almost halfway around the planet from Grand Base. His flares were of
course heavily baffled, but even so he did not put on his brakes until
it was absolutely necessary. He landed heavily, then sprang away in
long, free hops, until he reached his previously-selected destination; a
great cavern thickly shielded with iron ore and within working range of
his objective. Deep within the cavern he hid himself, then searched
intently for any sign that his approach had been observed. There was no
such sign--so far, so good.

But during his search he had perceived with a slight shock that Helmuth
had tightened his defenses even more. Not only was every man in the dome
screened against thought, but also each was now wearing full armor. Had
he protected the dogs, too? Or killed them? No real matter if he
had--any kind of a pet animal would do; or, in a pinch, even a wild
rock-lizard! Nevertheless he shot his perception into the particular
barracks he had noted so long before, and found with some relief that
the dogs were still there, and that they were still unprotected. It had
not occurred, even to Helmuth's cautious mind, that a dog could be a
source of mental danger.

With all due precaution against getting even a single grain of the stuff
into his own system, Kinnison transferred his thionite into the special
container in which it was to be used. Another day sufficed to observe
and to memorize the personnel of the gateway observers, their positions,
and the sequence in which they took the boards. Then the Lensman, still
almost a week ahead of schedule, settled down to wait the time when he
should make his next move. Nor was this waiting unduly irksome; now that
everything was ready he could be as patient as a cat on duty at a
mousehole.

The time came to act. Kinnison took over the mind of the dog, which at
once moved over to the bunk in which one particular observer lay asleep.
There would be no chance whatever of gaining control of any observer
while he was actually on the board, but here in barracks it was almost
ridiculously easy. The dog crept along on soundless paws--a long, slim
nose reached out and up--sharp teeth closed delicately upon a battery
lead--out came the plug. The thought-screen went down, and instantly
Kinnison was in charge of the fellow's mind.

And when that observer went on duty his first act was to let Kimball
Kinnison, Gray Lensman, into Boskone's Grand Base! Low and fast Kinnison
flew, while the observer so placed his body as to shield from any chance
passer-by the all too revealing surface of his visiplate. In a few
minutes the Lensman reached a portal of the dome itself. That door also
opened--and closed behind him. He released the mind of the observer and
watched briefly. Nothing happened. All was still well!

Then, in every barracks save one, using whatever came to hand in the way
of dog or other unshielded animal, Kinnison wrought briefly but
effectively. He did not slay by mental force--he did not have enough of
that to spare--but the mere turn of an inconspicuous valve would do just
as well. Some of those now idle men would probably live to answer
Helmuth's call to extra duty, but not too many--nor would those who
obeyed that summons live long thereafter.

Down stairway after stairway he dove, down to the compartment in which
was housed the great air-purifier. Now let them come! Even if they had a
spy-ray on him now it would be too late to do them a bit of good. And
now, by Klono's golden gills, that fleet had better be out there,
getting ready to blast!

It was. From all over the galaxy Grand Fleet had come; every Patrol base
had been stripped of almost everything mobile that could throw a beam.
Every vessel carried either a Lensman or some other highly trusted
officer; and each such officer had two detector nullifiers--one upon his
person, the other in his locker--either of which would protect his whole
ship from detection.

In long lines, singly and at intervals, those untold thousands of ships
had crept between the vessels guarding Grand Base. Nor were the outpost
crews to blame. They had been on duty for months, and not even an
asteroid had relieved the monotony. Nothing had happened or would. They
watched their plates steadily enough--and, if they did nothing more, why
should they have? And what could they have done? How could they suspect
that such a thing as a detector nullifier had been invented?

The Patrol's Grand Fleet, then, was already massing over its primary
objectives, each vessel in a rigidly assigned position. The pilots,
captains, and navigators were chatting among themselves; jerkily and in
low tones, as though even to raise their voices might reveal prematurely
to the enemy the concentration of the Patrol forces. The firing officers
were already at their boards, eyeing hungrily the small switches which
they could not throw for so many long minutes yet.

And far below, beside the pirates' air-purifier, Kinnison released the
locking toggles of his armor and leaped out. To burn a hole in the
primary duct took only a second. To drop into that duct his container of
thionite; to drench that container with the reagent which would in sixty
seconds dissolve completely the container's substance without affecting
either its contents or the metal of the duct; to slap a flexible
adhesive patch over the hole in the duct; and to leap back into his
armor: all these things required only a trifle over one minute. Eleven
minutes to go--QX.

In the nearest barracks, even while the Lensman was arrowing up the
stairways, a dog again deprived a sleeping man of his thought-screen.
That man, however, instead of going to work, took up a pair of pliers
and proceeded to cut the battery leads of every sleeper in the barracks;
severing them so closely that no connection could be made without
removing the armor.

As those leads were severed men woke up and dashed into the dome. Along
catwalk after catwalk they raced, and apparently that was all they were
doing. But each runner, as he passed a man on duty, flicked a battery
plug out of its socket; and that observer, at Kinnison's command, opened
the face-plate of his armor and breathed deeply of the now drug-laden
atmosphere.

Thionite, as has been intimated, is perhaps the worst of all known
habit-forming drugs. In almost infinitesimal doses it gives rise to a
state in which the victim seems actually to experience the gratification
of his every desire, whatever that desire may be. The larger the dose,
the more intense the sensation, until--and very quickly--the dosage is
reached at which he passes into an ecstasy so unbearable that death
ensues forthwith.

Thus there was no alarm, no outcry, no warning. Each observer sat or
stood entranced, holding exactly the pose he had been in at the instant
of opening his face-plate. But now, instead of paying attention to his
duty, he was plunging deeper and deeper into the paroxysmally ecstatic
profundity of a thionite debauch from which there was to be no
awakening. Therefore half of that mighty dome was unmanned before
Helmuth even realized that anything out of order was going on.

As soon as he realized that something was amiss, however, he sounded the
"all hands on duty" alarm and rapped out instructions to the officers in
the barracks. But the cloud of death had arrived there first, and to his
consternation not one-quarter of those officers responded. Quite a
number of men did get into the dome, but every one of them collapsed
before reaching the catwalks. And three-fourths of his working force
died before he located Kinnison's speeding messengers.

"Blast them down!" Helmuth shrieked, pointing, gesticulating madly.

Blast whom down? The minions of the Lensmen were themselves blasting
away now, right and left, shouting contradictory but supposedly
authoritative orders.

"Blast those men not on duty!" Helmuth's raging voice now filled the
dome. "You, at board 479! Blast that man on catwalk 28, at board 495!"

With such detailed instructions, Kinnison's agents one by one ceased to
be. But as one was beamed down another took his place, and soon every
one of the few remaining living pirates in the dome was blasting
indiscriminately at every other one. And then, to cap the Saturnalian
climax, came the zero second.

                         *    *    *    *    *

The Galactic Patrol's Grand Fleet had assembled. Every cruiser, every
battleship, every mauler hung poised above its assigned target. Every
vessel was stripped for action. Every accumulator cell was full to its
ultimate watt, every generator and every arm was tuned and peaked to its
highest attainable efficiency. Every firing officer upon every ship sat
tensely at his board; his hand hovering near, but not touching, his
firing key; his eyes fixed glaringly upon the second-hand of his
precisely synchronized timer; his ears scarcely hearing the droning,
soothing voice of Port Admiral Haynes.

For the Old Man had insisted upon giving the firing order himself, and
he now sat at the master timer, speaking into the master microphone.
Beside him sat von Hohendorff, the grand old Commandant of Cadets. Both
of these veterans had thought long since that they were done with
space-war forever, but only an order of the full Galactic Council could
have kept either of them at home. They were grimly determined that they
were going to be in at the death, even though they were not at all
certain whose death it was to be. If it should turn out that it was to
be Helmuth's, well and good--everything would be on the green. If, on
the other hand, young Kinnison had to go, they would in all probability
have to go, too--and so be it.

"Now, remember, boys, keep your hands off of these keys until I give you
the word," Haynes' soothing voice droned on, giving no hint of the
terrific strain he himself was under. "I'll give you lots of warning....
I am going to count the last five seconds for you. I know that
you all want to shoot the first bolt, but remember that I personally
will strangle any and every one of you who beats my signal by a
thousandth of a second. It won't be long now, the second hand is
starting around on its last lap.... Keep your hands off of those
keys.... keep away from them, I tell you, or I'll smack you down....
fifteen seconds yet.... stay away, boys, let 'em alone....
going to start counting now." His voice dropped lower and lower.
"Five--four--three--two--one--FIRE!" he yelled.

Perhaps some of the boys did beat the gun a trifle; but not many, or
much. To all intents and purposes it was one simultaneous blast of
destruction that flashed down from a hundred thousand projectors, each
delivering the maximum blast of which it was capable. There was no
thought now of service life of equipment or of holding anything back for
a later effort. They had to hold that blast for only fifteen minutes;
and if the task ahead of them could not be done in those fifteen minutes
it probably could not be done at all.

Therefore it is entirely useless even to attempt to describe what
happened then, or to portray the spectacle that ensued when beam met
screen. Why try to describe pink to a man born blind? Suffice it to say
that those Patrol beams bored down, and that Helmuth's automatic screens
resisted to the limit of their ability. Nor was that resistance small.

Had Helmuth's customary staff of keen-eyed, quick-witted lieutenants
been at their posts, to reenforce those primary screens with the
practically unlimited power which could have been put behind them, his
defense would not have failed under even the unimaginable force of that
Titanic thrust; but those lieutenants were not at their posts. The
screens of the twenty-six primary objectives failed, and the twenty-six
stupendous flotillas moved slowly, grandly, voraciously, each along its
designated line.

                         *    *    *    *    *

Every alarm in Helmuth's dome had burst into frantic warning as the
massed might of the Galactic Patrol was hurled against the twenty-six
vital points of Grand Base, but those alarms clamored in vain. No hands
were raised to the switches whose closing would unleash the hellish
energies of Boskone's irresistible projectors, no eyes were upon the
sighting devices which would align them against the attacking ships of
war. Only Helmuth, in his inner-shielded control compartment, was left;
and Helmuth was the directing intelligence, the master mind, and not a
mere operator. And, now that he had no operators to direct, he was
utterly helpless. He could see the stupendous fleet of the Patrol, he
could understand fully its dire menace; but he could neither stiffen his
screens nor energize a single beam. He could only sit, grinding his
teeth in helpless fury, and watch the destruction of the armament which,
if it could only have been in operation, would have blasted those
battleships and maulers from the skies as though they had been so many
fluffy bits of thistledown.

Time after time he leaped to his feet, as if about to dash across to one
of the control stations, but each time he sank back into his seat at the
desk. One firing-station would be little, if any, better than none at
all. Besides, that accursed Lensman was back of this. He was--must
be--right here in the dome, somewhere. He _wanted_ him to leave this
desk--that was what he was waiting for! As long as he stayed at the desk
he himself was safe. For that matter, this whole dome was safe. The
projector had never been mounted that could break down _those_ screens.
No--no matter what happened, he would stay at the desk!

Kinnison, watching, marveled at his fortitude. He himself could not have
stayed there, he knew; and he also knew now that Helmuth was going to
stay. Time was flying; five of the fifteen minutes were gone. He had
hoped that Helmuth would leave that well-protected inner sanctum, with
its unknown potentialities; but if the pirate would not come out, the
Lensman would go in. The storming of that inner stronghold was what his
new armor was for.

In he went, but he did not catch Helmuth napping. Even before he crashed
the screens his own defensive zones burst into furiously coruscant
activity, and through that flame there came tearing the metallic slugs
of a high-power machine rifle.

Ha! There _was_ a rifle, even though he had not been able to find it!
Clever guy, that Helmuth! And what a break that he had taken time to
learn how to hold this suit up against the trickiest kind of
machine-rifle fire!

Kinnison's screens were almost those of a battleship; his armor almost,
relatively, as strong. And he could hold that armor upright. Therefore
through the raging beam of the semi-portable projector he plowed and
straight up that torrent of raging steel he drove his way. And now from
his own mighty projector, against Helmuth's armor, there raved out a
beam scarcely less potent than that of a semi-portable. The Lensman's
armor did not mount a water-cooled machine rifle--there was a limit to
what even that powerful structure could carry--but grimly, with every
faculty of his newly enlarged mind concentrated upon that
thought-screened, armored head behind the belching gun, Kinnison held
his line and forged ahead.

Well it was that the Lensman _was_ concentrating upon that screened
head; for when the screen weakened slightly and a thought began to seep
through it toward an enigmatically sparkling ball of force, Kinnison was
ready. He blanketed the thought savagely, before it could take form, and
attacked the screen so viciously that Helmuth had either to restore full
coverage instantly or die then and there. For the Lensman had studied
that ball long and earnestly. It was the one thing about the whole base
that he could not understand; the one thing, therefore, of which he had
been afraid.

But he was afraid of it no longer. It was operated, he now knew, by
thought; and, no matter how terrific its potentialities might be, it now
was and would remain perfectly harmless; for if the pirate chief
softened his screen enough to emit a thought, he would never think
again.

Therefore he rushed. At full blast he hurdled the rifle and crashed full
against the armored figure behind it. Magnetic clamps locked and held;
and, driving projectors furiously ablaze, he whirled around and forced
the madly struggling Helmuth back, toward the line along which the
bellowing rifle was still spewing forth a continuous storm of metal.

Helmuth's utmost efforts sufficed only to throw the Lensman out of
balance, and both figures crashed to the floor. And now the madly
fighting armored pair rolled over and over--straight into the line of
fire.

First Kinnison; the bullets whining, shrieking off the armor of his
personal battleship and crashing through or smashing ringingly against
whatever happened to be in the ever-changing line or ricochet. Then
Helmuth; and as the fierce-driven metal slugs tore in their multitudes
through his armor and through and through his body, riddling his every
vital organ, that was    THE END






[End of Galactic Patrol, by E. E. "Doc" Smith]
