And when he reached his destination he found out that it was. The planet was seething. Its business and its everyday activities seemed to be almost paralyzed. Martial law had been declared; the streets were practically deserted except for thick-clustered groups of heavily-armed guards. What few people were abroad were furtive and sly; slinking hastily along with their fear-filled eyes trying to look in all directions at once.
"QX, Wainwright, go ahead," Kinnison directed brusquely when, alone with the escorting Patrol officers in a shielded car, he was being taken to the Capitol grounds. "There's been too much secrecy—pussyfooting—about the whole affair. Spill it, please."
"Very well, sir," and Wainwright told his tale. Things had been happening for months. Little things, but disturbing. Then murders and kidnapings and unexplained disappearances had begun to increase. The police forces had been falling farther and farther behind. The usual cries of incompetence and corruption had been raised, only further to confuse the issue. Circulars—dodgers—hand-bills appeared all over the planet; from where nobody knew. The keenest detectives could find no clue to papermakers, printers, or distributors. The usual inflammatory, subversive propaganda—"Down with the Patrol!" "Give us back our freedom!" and so on—but, because of the high tension already prevailing, the stuff had been unusually effective in breaking down the morale of the citizenry as a whole.
"Then this last thing. For two solid weeks the whole world was literally plastered with the announcement that at midnight on the thirty-fourth of Dreel—you're familiar with our calendar, I think?—President Renwood would disappear. Two weeks warning—daring us." Wainwright got that far and stopped.
"Well, go on. He disappeared, I know. How? What did you fellows do to prevent it? Why all the secrecy?"
"If you insist, I'll have to tell you, of course, but I'd rather not." Wainwright flushed uncomfortably. "You wouldn't believe it. Nobody could. I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't been there. I'd rather you'd wait, sir, and let the Vice President tell you, in the presence of the Treasurer and the others who were on duty that night."
"Um-m-m ... I see ... maybe." Kinnison's mind raced. "That's why nobody would give me details? Afraid I wouldn't believe it ... that I'd think they'd been—" He stopped. "Hypnotized" would have been the next word, but that would have been jumping at conclusions. Even if true, there was no sense in airing that hypothesis—yet.
"Not afraid, sir. Theyknewthat you wouldn't believe it."
After entering Government Reservation they went, not to the president's private quarters, but into the Treasury and down into the subbasement housing the most massive, the most utterly impregnable vault of the planet. There the nation's most responsible officers told Kinnison, with their entire minds as well as their tongues, what had happened.
Upon that black day business had been suspended. No visitors of any sort had been permitted to enter the Reservation. No one had been allowed to approach the president except old and trusted officers about whose loyalty there could be no question. Airships and spaceships had filled the sky. Troops, armed with semiportables or manning fixed-mount heavy stuff, had covered the grounds. At five minutes before midnight Renwood, accompanied by four secret service men, had entered the vault, which was thereupon locked by the treasurer. All the cabinet members saw them go in, as did the attendant corps of specially-selected guards. Nevertheless, when the treasurer opened the vault at five minutes after midnight, the five men were gone. No trace of any one of them had been found from that time on.
"And that—every word of it—is TRUE!" the assembled minds yelled as one, all unconsciously, into the mind of the Lensman.
During all this telling Kinnison had been searching mind after mind; inspecting each minutely for the telltale marks of mental surgery. He found none. No hypnosis. This thing had happened, exactly as they told it. Now, convinced of that fact, his eyes clouded with foreboding, he sent out his sense of perception and studied the vault itself. Millimeter by cubic millimeter he scanned the innermost details of its massive structure—the concrete, the neo-carballoy, the steel, the heat-conductors and the closely-spaced gas cells. He traced the intricate wiring of the networks of alarms. Everything was sound. Everything functioned. Nothing had been disturbed.
The sun of this system, although rather on the small side, was intensely hot; this planet, Four, was a long way out. Pretty close to Cardynge's limit ... or the Boskonians had improved their technique—tightened up their controls. A tube, of course ... for all the tea in China it had to be a tube. Kinnison sagged; for the first time in his life the indomitable Gray Lensman showed his years and more.
"I know that it happened." His voice was grim, quiet, as he spoke to the still protesting men. "I also know how it was done, but that's all."
"HOW?" they demanded, practically in one voice.
"A hyperspatial tube," and Kinnison went on to explain, as well as he could, the functioning of a thing which could not be grasped intrinsically by any nonmathematical three-dimensional mind.
"But what can we or you or anybody elsedoabout it?" the treasurer asked, numbly.
"Nothing whatever." Kinnison's voice was flat. "When it's gone, it's gone. Where does the light go when a lamp goes out? No more trace. No more way—no way whatever—of tracing it. Hundreds of millions of planets in this galaxy, as many in the Second. Millions and millions of galaxies. All that in one Universe—our own universe. And there are an infinite number—too many to be expressed, let alone to be grasped—of universes, side by side, like pages in a book except thinner, in the hyperdimension. So you can figure out for yourselves the chances of ever finding either President Renwood or the Boskonians who took him—so close to zero as to be indistinguishable from zero absolute."
The treasurer was crushed. "Do you mean to say that there is no protection at all from this thing? That they can keep on doing away with us just as they please? The nation is going mad, sir, day by day—one more such occurrence and we will be a planet of maniacs."
"Oh, no—I didn't say that." The tension lightened. "Just that we can't do anything about the president and his aides. The tube can be detected while it is in place, and anyone coming through it can be shot as soon as he can be seen. What you need is a couple of Rigellian Lensmen, or Ordoviks. I'll see to it that you get them. I don't think, with them here, that they will even try to repeat." He did not add what he knew somberly to be a fact, that the enemy would go elsewhere, to some other planet not protected by a Lensman able to perceive the intangible structure of a sphere of pure force.
Frustrated, the Lensman again took to space. It was terrible, this thing of having everything happening where he wasn't, and when he got there having nothing left to work on. Hit-and-run—stab-in-the-back—how could a man fight something that he couldn't see or sense or feel or find? But this chewing his fingernails to the elbow wasn't getting him anywhere, either; he'd have to find something that hecouldstick a tooth into. What?
All former avenues of approach were blocked; he was sure of that. The Boskonians, who were now in charge of things, could really think. No underling would know anything about any one of them except at such times and places as the directors chose, and those conferences would be as nearly detection-proof as they could be made. What to do?
Easy. Catch a big operator in the act. He grinned wryly to himself. Easy to say, but not—However, it wasn't impossible. The Boskonians were not supermen—they didn't have any more jets than he did. Put himself in the other fellow's place—what would he do if he were a Boskonian big shot? He had had quite a lot of experience in the role. Were there any specific groups of crimes which revealed techniques similar to those which he himself would use in like case?
He, personally, preferred to work direct and to attack in force. At need, however, he had done a smooth job of boring from within. In the face of the Patrol's overwhelming superiority of armament, especially in the First Galaxy, they would have to bore from within. How? By what means? He was a Lensman; they were not. Jet back! Or were they, perhaps? How did he know that they weren't? Maybe they were, by this time. Fossten the renegade Arisian—No use kidding himself; Fossten might have known as much about the Lens as Mentor himself, and might have developed an organization that even Mentor didn't know anything about. Or Mentor might be figuring that it would be good for what ailed a certain fat-headed Gray Lensman to have to dope this out for himself. QX.
He shot a call to Vice Co-ordinator Maitland, who was now in complete charge of the office which Kinnison had temporarily abandoned.
"Cliff? Kim. Just gave birth to an idea." He explained rapidly what the idea was. "Maybe nothing to it, but we'd better get up on our toes and find out. You might suggest to the boys that they check up here and there, particularly around the rough spots. If any of them find any trace anywhere of off-color, sour, or even slightly rancid Lensmanship, with or without a Lens appearing in the picture, burn a hole in space getting it to me. QX?... Thanks."
Viewed in this new perspective, Renwood of Antigan IV might have been neither a patriot nor a victim, but a saboteur. The tube could have been a prop, used deliberately to cap the mysterious climax. The four honest and devoted guards were the real casualties. Renwood—or whoever he was—having accomplished his object of undermining and destroying the whole planet's morale, might simply have gone elsewhere to continue his nefarious activities. It was fiendishly clever. That spectacularly theatrical finale was certainly one for the book. The whole thing, though, was very much of a piece in quality of workmanship with what he had done in becoming the Tyrant of Thrale. Farfetched? No. He had already denied in his thoughts that the Boskonian operators were supermen. Conversely, he wasn't, either. He would have to admit that they might very well be as good as he was; to deny them the ability to do anything which he himself could do would be sheer stupidity.
Where did that put him? On Radelix, by Klono's golden gills! A good-sized planet. Important enough, but not too much so. People human. Comparatively little hell being raised there—yet. Very few Lensmen, and Gerrond the top. Hm-m-m. Gerrond. Not too bright, as Lensmen went, and inclined to be a bit brass-hattish. To Radelix, by all means, next.
He went to Radelix, but not in theDauntlessand not in gray. He was a passenger upon a luxury liner, a writer in search of local color for another saga of the spaceways. Sybly Whyte—one of the Patrol's most carefully-established figments—had a bulletproof past. His omnivorous interest and his uninhibited nosiness were the natural attributes of his profession—everything is grist which comes to an author's mill.
Sybly Whyte then prowled about Radelix. Industriously and, to some observers, pointlessly. He and his red-leather notebook were apt to be seen anywhere at any time, day or night. He visited spaceports, he climbed through freighters, he lost small sums in playing various games of so-called chance in spacemen's dives. Upon the other hand, he truckled assiduously to the social elite and attended all functions into which he could wangle or could force his way. He made a pest of himself in the offices of politicians, bankers, merchant princes, tycoons of business and manufacture, and all other sorts of greats.
He was stopped one day in the outer office of an industrial potentate. "Get out and stay out," a peg-legged guard told him. "The boss hasn't read any of your stuff, but I have, and neither of us wants to talk to you. Data, huh? What do you need of data on atomic cats and bulldozers to write them space operas of yours? Why don't you get a roustabout job on a freighter and learn something about what you're trying to write about? Get yourself a real space tan instead of that imitation you got under a lamp; work some of that lard off of your carcass!" Whyte was definitely fatter than Kinnison had been; and, somehow, softer; he peered owlishly through heavy lenses which, fortunately, did not interfere with his sense of perception. "Then maybe some of your tripe will be half-fit to read—beat it!"
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir; very much, sir." Kinnison bobbed obsequiously and scurried out, writing industriously in his notebook the while. He had, however, found out what he wanted to know. The boss was nobody he was looking for.
Nor was an eminent statesman whom he buttonholed at a reception. "I fail to see, sir, entirely, any point in your interviewingme," that worthy informed him, frigidly. "I am not, I am ... uh ... sure, suitable material for any opus upon which you may be at work."
"Oh, you can't ever tell, sir," Kinnison said. "You see, I never know who or what is going to get into any of my stories until after I start to write it, and sometimes not even then." The statesman glared and Kinnison retreated in disorder.
To stay in character Kinnison actually wrote a story while upon Radelix; a story which was later acclaimed as one of Sybly Whyte's best.
"Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmexlike snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across.Slurp! Slurp!At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship's plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall—" Kinnison was tapping merrily and verbosely along, at a cento a word, when his first real clue developed.
A yellow "attention" light gleamed upon his visiphone panel, a subdued chime gave notice that a message of importance was about to be broadcast to the world. Kinnison-Whyte flipped his switch and the stern face of the Provost Marshal appeared upon the screen.
"Attention, please," the image spoke. "Every citizen of Radelix is urged to be upon the lookout for the source of certain inflammatory and subversive literature which is beginning to appear in various cities of this planet. Our officers cannot be everywhere at once; you citizens are. It is hoped that by the aid of your vigilance this threat to our planetary peace and security can be removed before it becomes really serious; that we can avoid the imposition of martial law."
This message, while not of extreme or urgent import to most Radeligians, held for Kinnison a profound and unique meaning. He was right. He had deduced the thing one hundred percent. He knew what was going to happen next, and how; he knew that neither the law-enforcement officers of Radelix nor its massed citizenry could stop it. They could not even impede it. A force of Lensmen could stop it—but that would not get the Patrol anywhere unless they could capture or kill the beings really responsible for what was done. To alarm them would not do.
Whether or not he could do much of anything before the grand climax depended upon a lot of factors. Upon what that climax was; upon who was threatened with what; upon whether or not the threatened one was actually a Boskonian. A great deal of investigation was indicated.
If the enemy were going to repeat, as seemed probable, the president would be the victim. If he, Kinnison, could not get a line upon the higher-ups before the plot came to a head, he would have to let it develop right up to the point of disappearance; and for Whyte to appear upon the scene at that time would be to attract undesirable attention. No—by that time he must already have been kicking around underfoot long enough to have become an unnoticeable fixture.
Wherefore he moved into quarters as close to the Executive Offices as he could possibly get; and in those quarters he worked openly and wordily at the bringing of the affair of Qadgop and the beautiful-but-dumb Cynthia to a satisfactory conclusion.
IV.
In order to understand these and subsequent events it is necessary to cut back briefly some twenty-odd years, to the momentous interview upon chill, dark Onlo between monstrous Kandron and his superior in affairs Boskonian, the unspeakable Alcon, Tyrant of Thrale. At almost the end of that interview, when Kandron had suggested the possibility that his own base had perhaps been vulnerable to Star A Star's insidious manipulations:
"Do you mean to admit thatyoumay have been invaded and searched—tracelessly?" Alcon fairly shrieked the thought.
"Certainly," Kandron replied, coldly. "While I do not believe that it has been done, the possibility must be conceded. What we could do we have done, but what science can do science can circumvent. It is a virtual certainty that it is not Onlo and I who are their prime objectives, but Thrale and you. Especially you."
"You may be right. With no data whatever upon who or what Star A Star really is, with no tenable theory as to how he could have done what actually has been done, speculation is idle." Thus Alcon ended the conversation and, almost immediately, went back to Thrale.
After the Tyrant's departure Kandron continued to think, and the more he thought the more uneasy he became. It was undoubtedly true that Alcon and Thrale were the Patrol's prime objectives. But, those objectives attained, was it reasonable to suppose that he and Onlo would be spared? It was not. Should he warn Alcon further? He should not. If the Tyrant, after all that had been said, could not see the danger he was in, he was not worth saving. If he preferred to stay and fight it out, that was his lookout. Kandron would take no chances with his own extremely valuable life.
Should he warn his own men? How could he? They were able and hardened fighters all; no possible warning could make them defend their fortresses and their lives any more efficiently than they were already prepared to do; nothing he could say would be of any use in preparing them for a threat whose basic nature, even, was completely unknown. Furthermore, this hypothetical invasion probably had not happened and very well might not happen at all, and to flee from an imaginary foe would not rebound to his credit.
No. As a personage of large affairs, not limited to Onlo, he would be called elsewhere. He would stay elsewhere until after whatever was going to happen had happened. If nothing happened during the ensuing few weeks, he would return from his official trip and all would be well.
He inspected Onlo thoroughly, he cautioned his officers repeatedly and insistently to keep alert against every conceivable emergency while he was so unavoidably absent. Then he departed, with a fleet of vessels manned by hand-picked crews, to a long-prepared and hitherto secret retreat.
From that safe place he watched, through the eyes and the instruments of his skilled observers, everything that occurred. Thrale fell, and Onlo. The Patrol triumphed. Then, knowing the full measure of the disaster and accepting it with the grim passivity so characteristic of his breed, Kandron broadcast certain signals and one of his—and Alcon's—superiors got in touch with him. He reported concisely. They conferred. He was given orders which were to keep him busy for over twenty Tellurian years.
He knew now that Onlo had been invaded, tracelessly, by some feat of mentality beyond comprehension and almost beyond belief. He knew that Onlo had fallen without any of its defenders having energized a single one of their gigantic engines of war. The fall of Thrale, and the manner of that fall's accomplishment, were plain enough. Human stuff. The work, undoubtedly, of human Lensmen; perhaps the work of the human Lensman who was so frequently associated with Star A Star.
But Onlo! Kandron himself had set those snares along those intricately zigzagged communications lines; he knew their capabilities. Kandron himself had installed Onlo's blocking and shielding screens; he knew their might. He knew, since no other path existed leading to Thrale, that those lines had been followed and those screens had been penetrated, and all without setting off a single alarm. Those things had actually happened. Hence Kandron set his stupendous mind to the task of envisaging what the being must be, mentally, who could do them; what the mind of this Star A Star—it could have been no one else—must in actuality be.
He succeeded. He deduced Nadreck of Palain VII, practicallyin toto; and for the Star A Star thus envisaged he set traps throughout both galaxies. They might or might not kill him. Killing him immediately, however, was not really of the essence; that matter could wait until he could give it his personal attention. The important thing was to see to it that Star A Star could never, by any possible chance, discover a true lead to any high Boskonian.
Sneeringly, gloatingly, Kandron issued orders; then flung himself with all his zeal and ability into the task of reorganizing the shattered fragments of the Boskonian Empire into a force capable of wrecking Civilization.
Thus it is not strange that for more than twenty years Nadreck of Palain VII made very little progress indeed. Time after time he grazed the hot edge of death. Indeed, it was only by the exertion of his every iota of skill, power, and callous efficiency that he managed to survive. He struck a few telling blows for Civilization, but most of the time he was strictly upon the defensive. Every clue that he followed, it seemed, led subtly into a trap; every course he pursued ended, always figuratively and all too often literally, in a cul-de-sac filled with semiportable projectors all agog to blast him out of the ether.
Year by year he became more conscious of some imperceptible, indetectable, but potent foe, an individual enemy obstructing his every move and determined to make an end of him. And year by year, as material accumulated, it became more and more certain that the inimical entity was in fact Kandron, once of Onlo.
When Kit went into space, then, and Kinnison called Nadreck into consultation the usually reticent and unloquacious Palainian was ready to talk. He told the Gray Lensman everything he knew, everything he deduced or suspected about the ex-Onlonian chieftain.
"Kandron of Onlo!" Kinnison exploded, so violently as to sear the subether through which the thought passed. "Holy Klono's brazen bowels! And you can sit there on your spiny tokus and tell me that Kandron got away from you back there? And that you knew it, and not only didn't do a thing about it yourself, but didn't even tell me or anybody else about it, so that we could take steps?"
"Certainly. Why take steps before they become necessary?" Nadreck was entirely unmoved by the Tellurian's passion. "My powers are admittedly small, my intellect feeble. However, even to me it was clear then and it is clear now that Kandron was then of no importance. My assignment was to reduce Onlo. I reduced it. Whether or not Kandron was there at the time did not then have and cannot now have anything to do with that task. Kandron, personally, is another, an entirely distinct problem."
Kinnison swore a blistering deep-space oath; then, by main strength, shut himself up. Nadreck wasn't human; there was no use even trying to judge him by human or near-human standards. He was fundamentally, incomprehensibly, and radically different. And it was just as well for humanity that he was. For if his hellishly able race had possessed the characteristically human abilities, in addition to their own, Civilization would of necessity have been basically Palainian instead of basically human, as it now is. "QX, ace," he growled, finally. "Skip it."
"But Kandron has been hampering my activities for years, and, now that you also have become interested in his operations against us, he has become a factor of which cognizance should be taken," Nadreck went imperturbably on. He could no more understand Kinnison's viewpoint than the Tellurian could understand his. "With your permission, therefore, I shall find—and slay—this Kandron."
"Go to it, little chum," Kinnison sighed, bitingly and uselessly. "Clear ether."
While this conference was taking place, Kandron reclined in a bitterly cold, completely unlighted room of his headquarters and indulged in a little gloating concerning the predicament in which he was keeping Nadreck of Palain VII, who was, in all probability, the once-dreaded Star A Star of the Galactic Patrol. It was true that THE Lensman was still alive. He would probably, Kandron mused quite pleasurably, remain alive until he himself could find the time to attend to him in person. He was an able operator, but one presenting no real menace, now that he was known and understood. There were other things more pressing, just as there had been ever since the fall of Thrale. The revised Plan was going nicely, and as soon as he had resolved that human thing—The Ploorans had suggested ... could it be possible, after all, that Nadreck of Palain was not he who had been known so long only as Star A Star? That the human factor was actually—
Through the operation of some unknowable sense Kandron knew that it was time for his aide to be at hand to report upon those human affairs. He sent out a signal and another Onlonian scuttled in.
"That unknown human element," Kandron radiated harshly. "I assume that you are not reporting that it has been resolved?"
"Sorry, Supremacy, but your assumption is correct," the creature radiated back, in no very conciliatory fashion. "The trap at Antigan IV was set particularly for him; specifically to match the man whose mentality you computed and diagramed for us. Was it too obvious, think you, Supremacy? Or perhaps not quite obvious enough? Or, the Galaxy being large, is it perhaps that he simply did not learn of it in time? In the next attempt, what degree of obviousness should I employ and what degree of repetition is desirable?"
"The technique of the Antigan affair was flawless," Kandron decided. "He did not learn of it, as you suggest, or we should have caught him. He is a master workman, always concealed by his very obviousness until after he has done his work. Thus we can never, save by merest chance, catch him before the act; we must make him come to us. We must keep on trying until he does come to us. It is of no great moment, really, whether we catch him now or five years hence. This work must be done in any event—it is simply a fortunate coincidence that the necessary destruction of Civilization upon its own planets presents such a fine opportunity of trapping him.
"As to repeating the Antigan technique, we should not repeat it exactly ... or, hold! It might be best to do just that. To repeat a process is, of course, the mark of an inferior mind; but if that human can be made to believe that our minds are inferior, so much the better. Keep on trying; report as instructed. Remember that he must be taken alive, so that we can take from his living brain the secrets we have not yet been able to learn. Forget, in the instant of leaving this room, everything about me and about any connections between us until I force recollection upon you. Go."
The minion went, and Kandron set out to do more of the things which he could best do. He would have liked to take Nadreck's trail himself; he could catch and he could kill that evasive entity and the task would have been a pleasant one. He would have liked to supervise the trapping of that enigmatic human Lensman who might—or might not—be that frequently and copiously damned Star A Star. That, too, would be an eminently pleasant chore. There were, however, other matters more pressing by far. If the Great Plan were to succeed, and it absolutely must and would, every Boskonian must perform his assigned duties. Nadreck and his putative accomplice were side issues. Kandron's task was to set up and to direct certain psychoses and disorders; a ghastly train of mental ills of which he possessed such supreme mastery, and which were surely and safely helping to destroy the foundation upon which Galactic Civilization rested. That part was his, and he would do it to the best of his ability. The other things, the personal and nonessential matters, could wait.
Kandron set out then, and traveled fast and far; and wherever he went there spread still further abroad the already widespread blight. A disgusting, a horrible blight with which no human physician or psychiatrist, apparently, could cope; one of, perhaps the worst of, the corrosive blights which had been eating so long at Civilization's vitals.
And L2 Nadreck, having decided to find and slay the ex-ruler of Onlo, went about it in his usual unhurried but eminently thorough fashion. He made no effort to locate him or to trace him personally. That would be bad—foolish. Worse, it would be inefficient. Worst, it would probably be impossible. No, he would find out where Kandron would be at some suitable future time, and wait for him in that place.
To that end Nadreck collected a vast mass of data concerning the occurrences and phenomena which the Big Four had discussed so thoroughly. He analyzed each item, sorting out those which bore the characteristic stamp of the arch-foe whom by now he had come to know so well. The internal evidence of Kandron's craftsmanship was unmistakable; and, not now to his surprise, Nadreck discerned that the number of the Onlonian's dark deeds was legion.
There was the affair of the Prime Minister of DeSilva III, who at a cabinet meeting shot and killed his sovereign and eleven chiefs of state before committing suicide. The President of Viridon, who at his press conference, ran amuck with a scimitar snatched from a wall, hewed unsuspecting reporters to gory bits until he was overpowered, and then swallowed poison.
A variant of the theme, but still plainly Kandron's doing, was the interesting episode in which Galactic Counselor Edmundson, while upon an ocean voyage, threw fifteen women passengers overboard, then leaped after them dressed only in a life jacket stuffed with lead. Another out of the same whimsical mold was that of Dillway, the highly respected Operations Chief of Central Spaceways. That potentate called his secretaries one by one into his sixtieth floor office and unconcernedly tossed them, one by one, out of the window. He danced a jig upon a coping before diving after them to the street.
A particularly juicy and entertaining bit, Nadreck thought, was the case of Narkor Base Hospital, in which four of the planet's most eminent surgeons decapitated every other person in the place—patients, nurses, orderlies, and all, with a fine disregard of age, sex, or condition—arranged the several heads, each upright and each facing due north, upon the tiled floor to spell the word "Revenge," and then hacked each other to death with scalpels.
These, and a thousand or more other events of similar technique, Nadreck tabulated and subjected to statistical analysis. Scattered so widely throughout such a vast volume of space, they had created little or no general disturbance; indeed, they had scarcely been noticed by Civilization as a whole. Collected, they made a truly staggering, a revolting and appalling total. Nadreck, however, was inherently incapable of being staggered, revolted, or appalled. That repulsive summation, a thing which in its massed horror would have shaken to the core—shocked almost into paralysis—any being possessing any shred of sympathy or tenderness, was to Nadreck simply an interesting and not too difficult problem in psychology and mathematics.
He placed each episode in space and in time, correlating each with all of its fellows in a space-time matrix. He determined the locus of centers and derived the equations of its most probable motion. He extended it by extrapolation in accordance with that equation. Then, assuring himself that his margin of error was as small as he could make it, he set out for a planet which Kandron would most probably visit at a time far enough in the future to enable him to receive the Onlonian.
That planet, being inhabited by near-human beings, was warm, brightly sun-lit, and had an atmosphere rich in oxygen. Nadreck detested it, since his ideal of a planet was precisely the opposite. Fortunately, however, he would not have to land upon it until after Kandron's arrival—possibly not then—and the fact that his proposed quarry was, like himself, a frigid-blooded poison-breather, made the task of detection a simple one.
Nadreck set his indetectable speedster into a circular orbit around the planet, far enough out to be comfortable, and sent out course after course of delicate, extremely sensitive screen. Precision of pattern-analysis was, of course, needless. The probability was that all legitimate movement of personnel to and from the planet would be composed of warm-blooded oxygen-breathers; that any visitor not so classified would be Kandron. Any frigid-blooded visitor had at least to be investigated, hence his analytical screens had to be capable only of differentiating between two types of beings as far apart as the galactic poles in practically every respect. Nadreck knew that no supervision would be necessary to perform such an open-and-shut separation as that; he would have nothing more to do until his electronic announcers should warn him of Kandron's approach—or until the passage of time should inform him that the Onlonian was not coming to this particular planet.
Being a mathematician, Nadreck knew that any datum secured by extrapolation is of doubtful value. He thus knew that the actual probability of Kandron's coming was less, by some indeterminable amount, than the mathematical one. Nevertheless, having done all that he could do, he waited with the monstrous, unhuman patience known only to such races as his.
Day by day, week by week, the speedster circled the planet and its big, hot sun; and as it circled, the lone voyager studied. He analyzed more data more precisely; he drew deeper and deeper upon his store of knowledge to determine what steps next to take in the event that this attempt should end, as so many previous ones had ended, in failure.
V.
Kinnison, the author, toiled manfully at his epic of space whenever he was under any sort of observation, and enough at other times to avert any suspicion. Indeed, he worked as much as Sybly Whyte, an advertisedly temperamental writer, had ever worked. Besides interviewing the high and the low, and taking notes everywhere, he attended authors' teas, at which he cursed his characters fluently and bitterly for their failure to co-operate with him. With short-haired women and long-haired men he bemoaned the perversity of a public which compelled them to prostitute the real genius of which each was the unique possessor. He sympathized particularly with a fat woman writer of whodunits, whose extremely unrealistic yet amazingly popular Gray Lensman hero had lived through ten full-length novels and twenty million copies.
Even though her real field was the drama, she wasn't writing the kind of detective tripe that most of these crank-turners ground out, she confided to Kinnison. She had known lots of Gray Lensmenveryintimately, andherstories were drawn from real life in every particular!
Thus Kinnison remained in character; and thus he was enabled to work completely unnoticed at his real job of finding out what was going on, how the Boskonians were operating to ruin Radelix as they had ruined Antigan IV.
His first care was to investigate the planet's president. That took doing, but he did it. He examined that mind line by line and channel by channel, with no results whatever. No scars, no sign of tampering. Calling in assistance, he searched the president's past even more rigidly than Fossten had searched that of Traska Gannel. Still no soap. Everything checked, even to widely distributed boyhood pictures. Boring from within, then, was out. His first hypothesis was wrong; this invasion and this sabotage were being done from without. How?
Those first leaflets were followed by others, each batch more vitriolic in tone than the preceding one. Apparently they came from empty stratosphere; at least, no ships were to be detected in the neighborhood after any shower of the hand-bills had appeared. But that was not surprising. With its inertialess drive any spaceship could have been parsecs away before the papers touched atmosphere. Or they could have been bombed in from almost any distance. Or, as Kinnison thought most reasonable, they could have been simply dumped out of the mouth of a hyperspatial tube. In any event the method was immaterial. The results only were important; and those results, the Lensman discovered, were entirely disproportionate to the ostensible causes. The subversive literature had some effect, of course, but essentially it must be a blind. No possible tonnage of anonymous printing could cause that much sheer demoralization.
Crackpot societies of all kinds sprang up everywhere, advocating everything from absolutism to anarchy. Queer cults arose, preaching free love, the imminent end of the world, and almost every other conceivable departure from the norm of thought. The Authors' League, of course, was affected more than any other organization of its size, because of its relatively large content of strong and intensely opinionated minds. Instead of becoming one radical group it split into a dozen.
Kinnison joined one of those "Down with Everything!" groups, not as a leader, but as a follower. Not too sheeplike a follower, but just inconspicuous enough to retain his invisibly average status; and from his place of concealment in the middle of the front rank he studied the minds of each of his fellow anarchists. He watched those minds change, he found out who was doing the changing. When Kinnison's turn came he was all set for trouble. He expected to battle a powerful mentality. He would not have been overly surprised to encounter another mad Arisian, hiding behind a zone of hypnotic compulsion. He expected anything, in fact, except what he found—which was a very ordinary Radeligian therapist. The guy was a clever enough operator, of course, but he could not work against even the feeblest opposition. Hence the Gray Lensman had no trouble at all, either in learning everything the fellow knew or, upon leaving him, in implanting within his mind the knowledge that he had made Sybly Whyte into exactly the type of anarchist desired.
The trouble was that the therapist didn't know a thing. This not entirely unexpected development posed Kinnison three questions. Did the higher-ups ever communicate with such small fry, or did they just give them one set of orders and cut them loose? Should he stay in this Radeligian's mind until he found out? If he was in control of the therapist when a big shot took over, did he have jets enough to keep from being found out? Risky business; better scout around first, anyway. He'd do a flit.
He drove his black speedster a million miles. He covered Radelix like a blanket, around the equator and from pole to pole. Everywhere he found the same state of things. The planet was literally riddled with the agitators; he found so many that he was forced to a black conclusion. There could be no connection or communication between such numbers of saboteurs and any higher authority. They must have been sent with one set of do-or-die instructions—whether they did or died was immaterial. Experimentally, Kinnison had a few of the ringleaders taken into custody. As each was arrested another took his place.
Martial law was finally declared, but this measure succeeded only in driving the conspirators underground. What the subversive societies lost in numbers they more than made up in desperation and violence. Crime raged unchecked and uncheckable, murder became an everyday commonplace, insanity waxed rife. And Kinnison, knowing now that no channel to important prey would be opened until the climax, watched grimly while the rape of the planet went on.
The president of Radelix and Lensman Gerrond sent message after message to Prime Base and to Klovia, imploring help. The replies to these pleas were all alike. The matter had been referred to the Galactic Council and to the Co-ordinator. Everything that could be done was being done. Neither office would say anything else, except that, with the galaxy in such a disturbed condition, each planet must do its best to solve its own problems.
The thing built up toward its atrocious finale. Gerrond invited the president to a conference in a downtown hotel room, and there, eyes glancing from moment to moment at the dials of a complete little test-kit held open upon his lap:
"I have just had some startling news, sir," Gerrond said, abruptly. "Kinnison has been here on Radelix for weeks."
"What? Kinnison? Where is he? Why didn't he—?"
"Yes, Kinnison. Kinnison of Klovia. The Co-ordinator himself. I don't know where he is, or was. I didn't ask him." The Lensman smiled fleetingly. "One doesn't, you know. He discussed the situation with me at length. I am still amazed—"
"Why doesn't he stop it, then?" the president demanded. "Or can't he stop it?"
"That's what I've got to explain to you. He can, but the time won't be ripe until the last act."
"Why not? I tell you, if this thing can be stopped it'sgotto be stopped, and no matter what has to be done it'sgotto be—"
"Just a minute!" Gerrond snapped. "I know that you're out of control—I don't like to see Radelix torn apart any better than you do—but you ought to know by this time that Galactic Co-ordinator Kimball Kinnison is in a better position to know what to do than any other man in the universe. Furthermore, his word is the last word. What he says, goes."
"Of course," the president apologized. "I am overwrought ... but to see our entire world pulled down around us and upon us, our institutions, the work of centuries, destroyed, millions of lives lost ... all needlessly—"
"It won't come to that, he says, if we all do our parts. And you, sir, are very much in the picture."
"I? How?"
"Are you familiar with exactly what happened upon Antigan IV?"
"Why, no. They had some trouble over there, I recall, but—"
"That's it. That's why this must go on. No planet cares particularly about what happens to any other planet, but the Co-ordinator cares about them all, as a whole. If this trouble is headed off now, it will simply spread to other planets; if it is allowed to come to a climax there is a good chance that we can put an end to the whole trouble, for good."
"But what has that to do with me? What can I, personally, do?"
"Much. The last act upon Antigan IV, the thing that made it a planet of maniacs, was the kidnaping of Planetary President Renwood. It is supposed that he was murdered, since no trace of him has ever been found."
"Oh." The older man's hands clenched, then loosened. "I am willing ... provided—Is the Co-ordinator fairly certain that my death will enable him—"
"It won't get that far, sir. He intends to stop it just before that. He and his associates—I don't know who they are—have been listing every enemy agent they can find, and they will all be taken care of at once. He believes that Boskone will publish in advance a definite time at which they will take you away from us. That was the way it went at Antigan."
"Even from the Patrol?"
"From Base itself. Co-ordinator Kinnison is pretty sure that they can do it, except for something that he can bring into play only at the last moment. Incidentally, that is why we are having this meeting here, with this detector which he gave me. He is afraid that Base is porous."
"In that case ... what can he—" The president fell silent.
"All that I know is that we are to dress you in a certain suit of armor and have you in my private office in Base a few minutes before the time they set. We and the guards leave the office at minus two minutes and walk down the corridor, just fast enough so that at minus one minute we are exactly in front of Room Twenty-four. We are to rehearse it until our timing is perfect. I have no idea what is going to happen then, but I know that something will. We are not to discuss this again, even via Lens, as he is pretty sure that you will very shortly be under surveillance every minute."
Time passed; the Boskonian infiltration progressed strictly according to plan. Upon the surface it appeared that Radelix was going in almost the same fashion in which Antigan IV had gone. Below the surface, however, there was one great difference. Every ship, whether liner or freighter or tramp, which docked at any spaceport of Radelix, brought at least one man who did not leave. Some of these visitors were tall and lithe, some were short and fat. Some were old, some were young. Some were pale, some were burned to the complexion of ancient leather by the fervent rays of space. They were alike only in the "look of eagles" in their steady, quiet eyes. Each landed and went about his ostensible business, interesting himself not at all in any of the others.
Again the Boskonians declared their contempt of the Patrol by setting the exact time at which the president was to be taken. Again the appointed hour was midnight.
Vice Admiral Lensman Gerrond was, as Kinnison had intimated frequently, somewhat of a brass hat. He did not, he simply could not believe that his Base was as pregnable as the Co-ordinator had assumed it to be. Kinnison, knowing that all ordinary defenses would be useless, had not even mentioned them. Gerrond, unable to believe that his hitherto invincible and invulnerable weapons and defenses were all of a sudden useless, mustered them of his own volition.
All leaves had been canceled. Every detector, every beam, every device of defense and of offense was fully manned. Every man was keyed up and alert. And Gerrond, while the least bit apprehensive that something was about to happen which was not in the book, was pretty sure in his stout old war-dog's soul that he and his men had stuff enough.
At two minutes before midnight the armored president and his escorts left Gerrond's private office. One minute later they were passing the door of the specified room. A bomb exploded shatteringly behind them, armored men rushed yelling out of a branch corridor in their rear. Everybody stopped and turned to look. So, the hidden Kinnison assured himself, did an unseen observer in an invisibly hovering, three-dimensional hypercircle.
Kinnison threw the door open, flashed an explanatory thought at the president, yanked him into the room and into the midst of a corps of Lensmen armed with devices not usually encountered even in Patrol bases. The door snapped shut and Kinnison stood where the president had stood an instant before, clad in armor identical with that which the president had worn. The exchange had required less than one second: it had been observed by no one.
"QX, Gerrond and you fellows!" Kinnison drove the thought. "The president is safe—I'm taking over. Double time straight ahead—hipe! Get into the clear—give us a chance to use our stuff!"
The unarmored men broke into a run, and as they did so the door of Room Twenty-four swung open and stayed open. Weapons snouted out, shoved by armored men. Armored men and heavy weapons erupted from other doors and from more branch corridors. The hypercircle, which was, in fact, the terminus of a hyperspatial tube, began to thicken toward visibility.
It did not, however, materialize. Only by the intensest effort of vision could it be discerned as the sheerest wisp, more tenuous than the thinnest fog. The men within the ship, if ship it was, were visible only as striations in air are visible, and no more to be made out in detail. Instead of a full materialization, the only thing that was or became solid or tangible was a dead-black thing which reached purposefully outward and downward toward Kinnison, a thing combined of tongs and coarse-meshed, heavy net.
Kinnison's DeLameters flamed at maximum intensity and minimum aperture. Useless. The stuff was dureum; that unbelievably dense and ultimately refractory synthetic which, saturated with pure force, is the only known substance which can exist as an actuality both in normal space and in that pseudospace which composes the hyperspatial tube. The Lensman flicked on his neutralizer and shot away inertialess; but that maneuver, too, had been foreseen. The Boskonian engineers matched every move he made, within a split second after he made it; the tong-net gripped and closed.
Semiportables flamed then—heavy stuff—but they might just as well have remained cold. Their beams could not cut the dureum linkages; they slid harmlesslypast—not through—the wraithlike, figmental invaders at whom they were timed. Kinnison was hauled aboard the Boskonian vessel; its structure and its furnishings and its crew becoming ever firmer and more substantial to his senses as he went from normal into pseudospace.
As the pseudoworld became real, the reality of the base behind him thinned into unreality. In seconds it disappeared utterly, and Kinnison knew that to the senses of his fellow human beings he had vanished without leaving a trace. This ship, though, was real enough. So were his captors.
The net opened, dumping the Lensman ignominiously to the floor. Tractor beams wrenched his blazing DeLameters out of his grasp—whether or not hands and arms came with them was entirely his own lookout. Tractors and pressors jerked him upright, slammed him against the steel wall of the room, held him motionless against it.
Furiously he launched his ultimately lethal weapon, the Worsel-designed, Thorndyke-built, mind-controlled projector of thought-borne vibrations which decomposed the molecules without which thought and life itself could not exist. Nothing happened. He explored, finding that even his sense of perception was stopped a full foot away from every part of every one of those humanoid bodies. He settled down then and thought. A great light dawned; a shock struck sickeningly home.
No such elaborate and super-powered preparations would have been made for the capture of any civilian. Presidents were old men, physically weak and with no extraordinary powers of mind. No—this whole chain of events had been according to plan—a high Boskonian's plan. Ruining a planet was, of course, a highly desirable feature in itself, but it could not have been the main feature.
Somebody with a real brain was out after the four Second-Stage Lensmen and he wasn't fooling. And if Nadreck, Worsel, Tregonsee and himself were all to disappear, the Patrol would know that it had been nudged. But jet back—which of the four other than himself would have taken that particular bait? Not one of them. Weren't they out after them, too? Sure they were—they must be. Oh, if he could only warn them—but after all, what good would it do? They had all warned each other repeatedly to watch out for traps; all four had been constantly on guard. What possible foresight could have avoided a snare set so perfectly to match every detail of a man's physical and mental make-up?
But he wasn't licked yet. They had to know what he knew, how he had done what he had done, whether or not he had any superiors and who they were. Therefore they had had to take him alive, just as he had had to take various Boskonian chiefs. And they'd find out that as long as he was alive he'd be a dangerous buzzsaw to monkey with.
The captain, or whoever was in charge, would send for him; that was a foregone conclusion. He would have to find out what it was that he had caught; he would have to make a preliminary report of some kind. And somebody would slip. One hundred percent vigilance was impossible, and Kinnison would be on his toes to take advantage of that slip, whatever or however slight it might be.
But the captors did not take Kinnison to the captain. Instead, accompanied by half-a-dozen armored men, that worthy came to Kinnison.
"Start talking, fellow, and talk fast," the Boskonian directed crisply in the lingua franca of deep space as the armored soldiers strode out. "I want to know who you are, what you are, what you've done, and everything about you and the Patrol. So talk—or do you want me to pull you apart with these tractors, armor and all?"
Kinnison paid no attention, but drove at the commander with his every mental force and weapon. Blocked. This ape too had a full-body, full-coverage screen.
There was a switch, at the captain's hip, handy for finger-tip control. If he could only move! It would besoeasy to flip that switch! Or if he could throw something, or make one of those other fellows brush against him just right, or if the guy happened to sit down a little too close to the arm of a chair, or if there were a pet animal of any kind around, or a spider or a worm or even a gnat—
VI.
Second-Stage Lensman Tregonsee of Rigel IV did not rush madly out into space in quest of something or anything Boskonian in response to Kinnison's call. To hurry was not Tregonsee's way. He could move fast upon occasion, but before he would move at all he had to know exactly how, where, and why he should move.
He conferred with his three fellows, he furnished them with all the data he possessed, he helped integrate the totaled facts into one composite. That composite pleased the others well enough so that they went to work, each in his own fashion, but it did not please Tregonsee. He could not visualize any coherent whole from the available parts. Therefore, while Kinnison was investigating the fall of Antigan IV, Tregonsee was sitting—or rather, standing—still and thinking. He was still standing still and thinking when Kinnison went to Radelix.
Finally he called in an assistant to help him think. He had more respect for the opinions of Camilla Kinnison than for those of any other entity, outside of Arisia, of the two galaxies. He had helped train all five of the Kinnison children, and in Cam he had found a kindred soul. Possessing a truer sense of values than any of his fellows, he alone realized that the pupils had long since passed their tutors; and it is a measure of his quality that the realization brought into Tregonsee's tranquil soul no tinge of rancor, but only wonder. What those incredible Children of the Lens had he did not know, but he knew that they—particularly Camilla—had extraordinary gifts.
In the mind of this scarcely grown woman he perceived depths which he could not plumb, extensions and vistas the meanings of which he could not even vaguely grasp. He did not try either to plumb the abysses or to survey the expanses; he made no slightest effort, ever, to take from any of the children anything which the child did not first offer to reveal. In his own mind he tried to classify theirs; but, realizing in the end that that task was and always would be beyond his power, he accepted that fact as calmly as he accepted the numberless others of Nature's inexplicable facts. Tregonsee came the closest of any Second-Stage Lensman to the real truth, but even he never did suspect the existence of the Eddorians.
Camilla, as quiet as her twin sister Constance was boisterous, parked her speedster in one of the capacious holds of the Rigellian's spaceship and joined him in the control room.
"You believe, I take it, that Dad's logic is faulty, his deductions erroneous?" the girl thought; after a casual greeting. "I'm not surprised. So do I. He jumped at conclusions. But then, he does that, you know."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, exactly. However, it seems to me," Tregonsee replied carefully, "that he did not have sufficient basis in fact to form any definite conclusion as to whether or not Renwood of Antigan was a Boskonian operative. It is that point which I wish to discuss with you first."
Cam concentrated. "I don't see that it makes any difference, fundamentally, whether he was or not," she decided, finally. "A difference in method only, not in motivation. Interesting, perhaps, but immaterial. It is virtually certain in either case that Kandron of Onlo or some other entity is the motive force and is the one who must be destroyed."
"Of course, my dear, but that is only the first differential. How about the second, and the third? Method governs. Nadreck, concerning himself only with Kandron, tabulated and studied only the Kandronesque manifestations. He may—probably will—eliminate Kandron. It is by no means assured, however, that that step will be enough. In fact, from my preliminary study, I would risk a small wager that the larger and worse aspects would remain untouched. I would, therefore, suggest that we ignore, for the time being, Nadreck's findings and examine anew all the data available."
"I wouldn't bet you a millo on that." Camilla caught her lower lip between white, even teeth. "Check. The probability is that Renwood was a loyal citizen. Let us consider every possible argument for and against that assumption—"
They went into a contact of minds so close that the separate thoughts simply could not be resolved into terms of speech. They remained that way, not for the period of a few minutes which would have exhausted any ordinary brain, but for four solid hours; and at the end of that conference they had arrived at a few tentative conclusions.
Kinnison had said that there was no possibility of tracing a hyperspatial tube after it had ceased to exist. There were millions of planets in the two galaxies. There was an indefinite, quite possibly an infinite number of coexistent parallel spaces, into any one of which the tube might have led. Knowing these things, Kinnison had decided that the probability was infinitesimally small that any successful investigation could be made along those lines.
Tregonsee and Camilla, starting with the same facts, arrived at entirely different results. There were many spaces, true, but the inhabitants of any one space belonged to that space and would not be interested in the conquest or the permanent taking over of any other. Foreign spaces, then, need not be considered. Civilization had only one significant enemy: Boskonia. Boskonia, then, captained possibly by Kandron of Onlo, was the attacker. The tube itself could not be traced and there were millions of planets, yes, but those facts were not pertinent.
Why not? Because "X," who might or might not be Kandron, was not operating from a fixed headquarters, receiving reports from subordinates who did the work. A rigid philosophical analysis, of which few other minds would have been capable, showed that "X" was doing the work himself, and was moving from solar system to solar system to do it. Those mass psychoses in which entire garrisons went mad all at once, those mass hysterias in which vast groups of civilians went reasonably out of control, could not have been brought about by any ordinary mind. Of all Civilization, only Nadreck of Palain VII had the requisite ability; was it reasonable to suppose that Boskonia had many such minds? No. "X" was either singular or a small integer.
Which? Could they decide the point? With some additional data, they could. Their linked minds wenten rapportwith Worsel, with Nadreck, with Kinnison, and with the principal statistician at Prime Base.
In addition to Nadreck's locus, they determined two more—one of all inimical manifestations, the other of those which Nadreck had not used in his computations. Their final exhaustive analysis showed that there were at least two, and very probably only two, prime intelligences directing those Boskonian activities. They made no attempt to identify either of them. They communicated to Nadreck their results and their conclusions.
"I am working on Kandron," the Palainian replied, flatly. "I made no assumptions as to whether or not there were other prime movers at work, since the point has no bearing. Your information is very interesting, and may perhaps prove valuable, and I thank you for it—but my present assignment is to find and to kill Kandron of Onlo."
Tregonsee and Camilla, then, set out to find "X"; not any definite actual or deduced entity, but the perpetrator of certain closely related and highly characteristic phenomena, viz., mass psychoses and mass hysterias. Nor did they extrapolate. They visited the last few planets which had been affected, in the order in which the attacks had occurred. They studied every phase of every situation. They worked slowly, but—they hoped and they believed—surely. Neither of them had any idea then that behind "X" lay Ploor, and beyond Ploor, Eddore.
Having examined the planet latest to be stricken, they made no effort to pick out definitely the one next to be attacked. It might be any one of ten worlds, or possibly even twelve. Hence, neglecting entirely the mathematical and logical probabilities involved, they watched them all, each taking six. Each flitted from world to world, with senses alert to perceive the first sign of subversive activity. Tregonsee was a retired magnate, spending his declining years in seeing the galaxy; Camilla was a Tellurian business girl on vacation.