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                         GALACTIC PATROL

      Fist serialized in "ASTOUNDING," Sep '37 - Feb '38;
           First book, Fantasy Press hardbound, 1950;


BY E. E. "DOC" SMITH

CHAPTER 1

     Graduation

Dominating twice a hundred square miles of campus, parade-ground, Airport, and
spaceport, 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 FiveYear 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 û 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 û 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 û 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 û 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 û "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 machinelike 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 û 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 war 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, yearn.
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 moat fiendishly thorough process of elimination that it has been
possible to develop.
     "Every than 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 theworlds 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 apace 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 û not only
does the Lens not glow if worn by an importer, but if a Lensman be taken alive and his
Lens removed, that Lens kills in a apace 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 Patron
     "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 û 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! 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.
     "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 -- 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 wayall 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 doe 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 Qgun. 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 well 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.
     "Now we'll go over the general plan of action. Then 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
time. 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. 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.
     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 richlyladen 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 hint, 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 cant 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
atop 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 û 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.
     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 subetheral 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 beans. 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 refractors
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 l
     "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, bung 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 apace 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 weight 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 -- 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 Valerian 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 deltaray 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 prearranged schedule.
Every control and lead, every busbar 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 diagramed.
     "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 flight 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 a
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 Brittania. The pirates are bound to catch us, and our chance in an-

other 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 -- specialist and the Valerian non-corns -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 û 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 "van-

Buskirk," 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 off, 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 tone 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 û 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."
     "Whey have atomic motors, the same as ours, just as big and just as efficient,"
Kinnison cogitated. "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 doe 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 signaled to him to disconnect his communicator.
     "Clever lad, Allerdyce!" Thorndyke whispered, with a grin. "Kinds 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 criticizing 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," be 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 fron2 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 spyscreen, 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 -- IM 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 apace 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 apace. 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?"
     "0ff 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 I"
     "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.
     "Damn!" 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, vanBus-

kirk's wild idea was actually the safest course!
     "All right, Bus, well 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, to-

ward 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 vial-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
û 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 F47U5961 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 û 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. Lets 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 well 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 terrifying 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 I"
     "Going to land her free, huh?" vanBuskirk whistled. "What a chance!"
     'It'd be a bigger one to take the time to sand 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 interplanet-

ary 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 singsong tone, as though he
were reciting from memory, which in effect he was.
     "'Captains of ships PQ263 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 mantrap I"
     "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 beltsnaps 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.
"Whey 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
seventyeight 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 û 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 hint 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 be 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 n.░ course inferior to theirs, but since I could not
influence yea 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 piece de resistance 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 novel 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 minds. And when the picture changes -- as change it must, and soon û
do not believe it. Hold fast, brothers of the Lens, for your own lives and for the people of
Velantia. There is more û 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 a 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 visibeams, by means of which each student could follow, in close-up
detail, each step of the operation in which be 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 be 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 lose 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 file 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 Worse!. "But hurry -- we haven't much time!"
     VanBuskirk, completely under the influence of the frantic compulsion, leaped
toward the Velantian, only to ix 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 l Hurry l Hurry, or it will be too late, for all of us I"
     "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 Worse! 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 Worse! sends at you I" 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
Valentia. 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 devil's
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 all"
     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 û 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? . . . . Got"
     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 !
     "Well 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, arid follow itl 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?"
     "Ooh 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," Worse! 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, screwdrivers, 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, were 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 surren-

der?"
     "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 Pd 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 bard 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 ever watchful 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 û
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 wag 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 I 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 yeti" 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 cur 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' willpower 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 I"
     "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 airlock was again tight, and the little
vessel shot away from Delgon toward far Velanda. 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. En route 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 as 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 vernier of his dials.
     Eyes fixed upon meters and gauges, he listened . listened. Increased his power
and listened again. More and more power &e 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 hookup 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 û his life-boat 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 tune-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 if 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 peremptory 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 stabilization 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 û 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 galactic line to Helmet'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 ma 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 coruscate, 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 pirateships 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, Worse!-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 sin 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 spaceship 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
signaled, 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 signaling.
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. lie opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it shut as his eye
was caught by a flaring visiplate.
     "Holy Mono'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 traveling 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 û 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 I" 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 lets 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."
     "Hub? What are they, then?"
     "Piracy implies similarity of cube, 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 Ikon, "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 û 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 û might as well try direct for
Prime Base on Tellus. If you cant 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 bold 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 bip 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 û 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 subethereal 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-center" 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 sir, 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 freeloading. Some of its genera are remotely like footballs, others resemble
tumbleweeds, still others thistledown,, 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 the races who breathe oxygen and possess warm
blood, red with hemoglobin. 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 b laming 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 parties 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 GP 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 GP 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
spaceship 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 thickheaded 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 û 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 bad 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 band-
and we've lost a lot of time al. ready. 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, hairlike 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 spaceport-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 tumble-weed-like 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 û 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 at-

mosphere, 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 wail. 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 û "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 bad 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 be 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 û 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 '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, Gill 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 doe
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 stuck something-a screen of some sort-and stopped,
something came aboard. It was . . . oh . . . ay-ay-a-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 farfetched," 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 thin 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 noting 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 pent, 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 busbars. 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 ether 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 Bashed 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 cutthroats 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 antisocial 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 bur
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 ant, 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 s0 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 farflung 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 apace-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 û 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 û 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 Britannia'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 û 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 Britannia'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 older 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
nay be able to hold it long enough."
     "I've just thought of one more thing that would help û  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."
     `'his room is shielded, you know.' Baynes 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 chalice-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 û 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 Britannia, 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 sir.
     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 teardrop-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 wallshield 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 wallshields 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 mote. 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 spiraled 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 Sector 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 Britannia 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 starcluster
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 Britannia 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 Britannia's screens had been designed to stand up almost  indefinitely against
the most potent beams of any ordinary war-ship, 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 Britannia 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 electos 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 û and a ship. I would like to
have one of those new automatic speedsters. Lots of legs, cruising range, and
screens. Only   one beam, but I probably won't use even that one . . . ."
     "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 leg 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 Britannia.
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 û 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 I"
     "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 f the Unattached Lensman's plain gray leather
transcended by far the gaudy trappings of the other branches of the Service. He had
admired him. self 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 Britannia'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 û let everything wait, or turn
around and go back, or go some other way. Here comes Kinnison ! Kimball Kinnison !
Kimball Kinnison Gray Lensmanl 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
powerpacked, 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 Spaceport
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 cigarettesthere 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 spaceport 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 shipowner.
     "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 û 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 subether 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 sir, 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 types"
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. "What 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 spray-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 3n 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 spyray'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 be 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 I 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 bad 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 derided 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 cries-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 û 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 airlock, 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 spaceship 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 û 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 airlock. 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 mediaeval 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
semiportable. 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 DeLamater 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 mightily 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 tine. 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 sir 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 Basel 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 trust 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. "Kinniston. I'm coming .
. . . . com . . . . . "
     He was done. Out, cold. Utterly spent. He had already done too much û 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 bad 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 lifelong 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 Space-hound 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, inserted
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 airlock 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 û 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 aide jets. The
speedster spun around viciously, only to be curbed, skillfully 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 be 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 û 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 hell be wanting to get up and go places and do things, and in six
hell 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 Im 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. Brownies 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 met 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
sofa, an angry color burned into the nurse's face. "I said everything is on zero. Your
speedster was inserted, 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 interne standing by û 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 I
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 be 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 fn 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 male 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 interns.
     "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 interns 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, Rim, I shouldn't have blasted off that way-I know that you're bound to
back-fire and to have brainstorms. 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 pope off about it. Roll over here, now, and I'll glue 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," se 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 û 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 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 apace. Kinnison now knew exactly what he wanted to get, and he utilized every
waking hour of that long trip fn 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.
     "Ali, 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 v 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, ft 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.
     "Resists" came the harsh command.
     "Resist! How-?" demanded the writhing, sweating Lensman. "You might as well
tell a fly to resist an inert spaceship !"
     "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 I 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 lit 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 situation. 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 photocells 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 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 storeroom, 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 -- æstubbornness', 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 son 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, all
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 eight 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
practice 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?"
     "Yea, 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 MacDougalI! 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 dumbbell. 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" be roared. "This is the first time in months that we have
made such a haul as this, and a 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 complete 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 û the ape
I'm working through, you know, Blakeslee, his name is û like poison. Go into it big û all
jets wide open. You maybe could love him, but if I get you you'll blow out your brains û if
any. You know the line û 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 û 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 redheaded 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 shriveled 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 chest-
nuts 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'd 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
aging 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 û 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 with out 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 KJ41Z 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 û 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 I"
     "Probably-that's my chief aim in life."
     "I'd like to see Helmuth'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 clinker!"

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 be 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 bomb-scow 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 û to say nothing of two of
them û 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 û or rather, who û 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 û 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, event 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 goods 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 ft 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 mot cut its screens?"
     "I'll be dead, and you'll be just starting the damndest 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 û 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 there 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. "It's a 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.
     "Q%, 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 Trench."
     "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 Trench 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 Trench 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 Trench 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 thlonite. Not fifty milligrams, or even
grams, but fifty kilograms, and, since there probably isn't that much of the stuff louse 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 Trench 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 Trench'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 trench 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 idly
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
trench'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 trench 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 spaceport 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 sir 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. Trench 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 l 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 Basel 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. Ire 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 Mono'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 rating voice now filled the dome. "You,
at board 4791 Blast that man on catwalk 28, at board 4951"
     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, eat 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 oft of those 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
far 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 an its last lap . . . .
Seep 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 yin 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 bid down, and that
Helmuth's automatic screens resisted to the limit of their ability. Nor was that resistance
small.
     Had Helmuths 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, each along its designated line.

                         *     *     *

     Every alarm in Helmuths 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 Innershielded 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 fort 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