KIT KINNISON illus9
KIT KINNISON illus9
Then and only then did Kimball Kinnison, master therapist, pay any further attention to that which lay contorted upon the floor. But when Whyte folded up his notebook and left the place, the derelict was resting quietly; and in a space of time long enough so that the putative writer of space operas would not be connected with the cure, those fits would end. Moreover, Eddie would return, whole, to the void: he would become what he had never before been—a successful meteor miner.
Lensmen pay their debts; even to spiders and to worms.
IX.
Her adventure in the hyperspatial tube had taught Kathryn Kinnison much. Realizing her inadequacy and knowing what to do about it, she drove her speedster at high velocity to Arisia. Unlike the Second-Stage Lensmen, she did not even slow down as she approached the planet's barrier; but, as one sure of her welcome, merely threw out ahead of her an identifying thought.
"Ah, daughter Kathryn, again you are in time." Was there, or was there not, a trace of emotion—of welcome, even of affection?—in that usually utterly emotionless thought? "Land as usual."
She neutralized her controls as she felt the mighty beams of the landing engine take hold of her little ship. Upon previous visits she had questioned nothing—this time she was questioningeverything. Was she landing, or not? Directing her every force inwardly, she probed her own mind to its profoundest depths. Definitely, she was her own mistress throughout—no conceivable mind could takehersover so tracelessly. As definitely, then, she was actually landing.
She landed. The ground upon which she stepped was real. So was the automatic flier—neither plane nor helicopter—which whisked her from the spaceport to her familiar destination, an unpretentious residence upon the grounds of an immense hospital. The graveled walk, the flowering shrubs, and the indescribably sweet and pungent perfume were real; as were the tiny pain and the drop of blood which resulted when a needle-sharp thorn pierced her incautious finger.
Through automatically opening doors she made her way into the familiar, comfortable, book-lined room which she knew was Mentor's study. And there, at his big desk, unchanged, sat Mentor. A lot like her father, but older—much older. About ninety, she had always thought, even though he didn't look over sixty. This time, however, she drove a probe—and got the shock of her life. Her thought was stopped—cold—not by superior mental force, which she could have taken unmoved, but by a seemingly ordinary thought-screen; and her fast-disintegrating morale began visibly to crack.
"Is all this ... are you ... real, or not?" she burst out, finally. "If it isn't, I'll go mad!"
"That which you have tested—and I—are real, for the moment and as you understand reality. Your mind in its present state of advancement cannot be deceived concerning such elementary matters."
"But it all wasn't, before? Or don't you want to answer that?"
"Since the sure knowledge will affect your growth, I will answer. It was not. This is the first time that your speedster has landed physically upon Arisia."
The girl shrank, appalled. "You told me to come to you again when I had learned that I did not know everything there was to know," she finally forced herself to say. "I learned that in the tube; but I did not realize until just now that I don't knowanything. Do you really think, Mentor, that there is any use at all in going on with me?" she concluded, bitterly.
"Much," he assured her. "Your development has been eminently satisfactory, and your present mental condition is both necessary and sufficient."
"Well, I'll be a spr—" Kathryn bit off the expletive and frowned. "What were you doing to me before, then, when I thought I got everything?"
"Power of mind," he informed her. "Sheer power, and penetration, and control. Depth, and speed, and all the other factors with which you are already familiar."
"But what is left? I know there is—lots of it—but I can't imagine what."
"Scope," Mentor replied, gravely. "Each of those qualities and characteristics must be expanded to encompass the full sphere of thought. Neither words nor thoughts can give any adequate concept of what it means; a practically wide-open two-way will be necessary. This cannot be accomplished, daughter, in the adolescent confines of your present mind; therefore enter fully into mine."
She did so: and after less than a minute of that awful contact slumped to the floor.
The Arisian, unchanged, unmoved, unmoving, gazed at her until finally she began to stir.
"That ... father Mentor, that was—" she blinked, shook her head savagely, fought her way back to full consciousness. "That was a shock."
"It was," he agreed. "More so than you think. Of all the entities of your Civilization, your brother and now you are the only ones it would not kill instantly. You now know what the word 'scope' means, and are ready for your last treatment, in the course of which I shall take your mind as far along the road of knowledge as mine is capable of going."
"But that would mean ... you're implying—But my mindcan'tbe superior to yours, Mentor! Nothing could be,possibly—it's sheerly, starkly unthinkable!"
"But true, daughter, nevertheless. While you are recovering your strength from that which was but the beginning of your education, I will explain certain matters previously obscure. You have long known, of course, that you five children are not like any others. You have always known many things without having learned them. You think upon all possible bands of thought. Your senses of perception, of sight, of hearing, of touch, are so perfectly merged into one sense that you perceive at will any possible manifestation upon any possible plane or dimension of vibration. Also, although this may not have occurred to you as extraordinary, since it is not obvious, you differ physically from your fellows in some important respects. You have never experienced the slightest symptom of physical illness; not even a headache or a decayed tooth. You do not really require sleep. Vaccinations and inoculations do not 'take'. No pathogenic organism, however virulent; no poison, however potent—"
"Stop, Mentor!" Kathryn gasped, turning white. "I can't take it ... you really mean, then, that we aren't human at all?"
"Yes and no. A partial explanation, while long, may be in order. Many cycles of time ago it became apparent to our more advanced thinkers that the rise and fall of Civilizations was too rhythmic to be accidental. They studied this rhythm, but life was too short. They set out, then, deliberately to prolong their lives. Fewer and fewer in numbers, they lived longer and longer; and the longer each lived, the more he learned. Their visualizations of the Cosmic All became less tenuous, more complete. It became evident that there was some inimical force at work; a force implacably opposed to that which we know as Civilization. Like a mouse in the power of a torturing cat, any Civilization could go just so far, but no farther. For instance, that of Atlantis, upon your father's native planet, Tellus. I was personally concerned in that, and could not stop its fall." The Arisianwasshowing emotion now; his thought was bleak and bitter.
"Four of us were assigned to the problem of this opposing force. We learned that its final abatement would necessitate the development of a race superior to ours in every respect. We, therefore, selected blood lines in each of the four strongest races of the galaxy and began to eliminate as many as possible of their weaknesses and to concentrate all of their strengths. From your knowledge of genetics you realize the magnitude of the task; you know that it would take much time uselessly to go into the details of its accomplishment. Your father and your mother were the penultimates of long—verylong—lines of matings; their procreative cells were such that in their fusion practically every gene carrying any trait of weakness was rejected. Conversely, you carry the genes of every trait of strength ever known to any member of your human race. Therefore, while in outward seeming you are human, in every factor of importance you are not; you are even less human than am I myself."
"And just how human is that?" Kathryn flared, and again her most penetrant probe of force flattened out against the Arisian's screen.
"Later, daughter, not now. That knowledge will come at the end of your education, not at its beginning."
"I was afraid so." She stared at the Arisian, her eyes wide and hopeless; brimming, in spite of her efforts at control, with tears. "You're a monster, and I am ... or am going to be ... a worse one. A monster ... and I'll have to live a million years ... alone ... why?Why, Mentor, did you have to do this to me?"
"Calm yourself, daughter. The shock, while severe, will pass. You have lost nothing, have gained much."
"Gained? Bah!" The girl's thought was loaded with bitterness and scorn. "I've lost my parents—I'll still be a girl long after they have died. I've lost every possibility of ever really living. I want love ... and a husband ... and children ... and I can't have any of them, ever. Even without this, I've never seen a man I wanted, and now I can't ever love anybody. I don'twantto live a million years, Mentor—especially alone!" The thought was a veritable wail of despair.
"The time has come to stop this childish thinking." Mentor's thought, however, was only mildly reproving. "Such a reaction is only natural, but your conclusions are entirely erroneous. One single clear thought will show you that you have no present psychic, intellectual, emotional, or physical need of a complement."
"That's true—But other girls of my age—"
"Exactly," came Mentor's dry rejoinder. "Thinking of yourself as an adult Homo sapien, you were judging yourself by false standards. As a matter of fact, you are an adolescent, not an adult. In due time you will come to love a man, and he you, with a fervor and depth which you at present cannot even dimly understand."
"But that still leaves my parents," Kathryn felt much better. "I can apparently age, of course, as easily as I can put on a hat ... but I really do love them, you know, and it will simply break mother's heart to have all her daughters turn out to be—as she thinks—spinsters."
"On that point, too, you may rest at ease. I am taking care of that. Kimball and Clarrissa both know, without knowing how they know it, that your life cycle is tremendously longer than theirs. They both know that they will not live to see their grandchildren. Be assured, daughter, that before they pass from this cycle of existence into the next—about which I know nothing—they shall know that all is to be supremely well with their line; even though, to Civilization at large, it shall apparently end with you Five."
"End with us? What do you mean?"
"You have a destiny, the nature of which your mind is not yet qualified to receive. In due time the knowledge shall be yours. Suffice it now to say that the next forty or fifty years will be but a fleeting moment in the span of life which is to be yours. But time, at the moment, presses. You are now fully recovered and we must get on with this, your last period of study with me, at the end of which you will be able to bear the fullest, closest impact of my mind as easily as you have heretofore borne full contact with your sisters'. Let us proceed with the work."
Work it was, and it went on for weeks. Kathryn took and survived those shattering treatments, one after another; emerging finally with a mind whose power and scope can no more be explained to any mind below the third level than can the general theory of relativity be explained to a chimpanzee.
"It was forced, not natural, yes," the Arisian said, gravely, as the girl was about to leave. "You are many millions of your years ahead of your natural time. You realize, however, the necessity of that forcing. You also realize that I can give you no more formal instruction. I will be with you or on call at all times; I will be of aid in crises; but in larger matters your further development is in your own hands."
Kathryn shivered. "I realize that, and it scares me clear through—especially this coming conflict, at which you hint so vaguely. I wish that you would tell me at leastsomethingabout it, so that I could get ready for it!"
"Daughter, I can't." For the first time in Kathryn's experience, Mentor the Arisian was unsure. "It is certain that we have been on time; but since the Eddorians have minds of power little, if any, inferior to our own, there are many details which we cannot derive with certainty, and to advise you wrongly would be to do you irreparable harm. All I can say is that if my visualization in that respect is sound, and I am practically sure that it is, sufficient warning will be given by your learning, with no specific effort on your part and from some source other than myself, that there does in fact exist a planet named 'Ploor'—a name which to you is now only a meaningless symbol. Go now, daughter Kathryn, and work."
Kathryn went; knowing that the Arisian had said all that he would say. In truth, he had told her vastly more than she had expected him to divulge; and it chilled her to the marrow to think that she, who had always looked up to the Arisians as demigods of sorts, would from now on be expected to act as their equal—in some ways, perhaps, as their superior! As her speedster tore through space toward distant Klovia she wrestled with herself, trying to shake her new self down into a personality as well integrated as her old one had been. She had not quite succeeded when she felt a thought.
"Help! I am in difficulty with this, my ship. Will any entity receiving my call and possessing the tools of a mechanic please come to my assistance? Or, lacking such tools, possessing a vessel of power sufficient to tow mine to the place where I must immediately go?"
Kathryn was startled out of her introspective trance. That thought was on a terrifically high band; one so high that she knew of no race using it, so high that an ordinary human mind could not possibly have either sent or received it. Its phraseology, while peculiar, was utterly precise in definition—the mind behind it was certainly of precisionist grade. She acknowledged upon the stranger's wave, and sent out a locator. Good—he wasn't far away. She flashed toward the derelict, matched intrinsics at a safe distance, and began scanning, only to encounter a screen around the whole vessel! To her it was porous enough—but if the creature thought that his screen was tight, let him keep on thinking so. It was his move.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" The thought fairly snapped. "Come closer, so that I may bring you in."
"Not yet," Kathryn snapped back. "Cut your screen so that I can see what you are like. I carry equipment for many environments, but I must know what yours is and equip for it before I can come aboard. You will note that my screens are down."
"Of course. Excuse me—I supposed that you were one of our own"—there came the thought of an unspellable and unpronounceable name—"since none of the lower orders can receive our thoughts direct. Can you equip yourself to come aboard with your tools?"
"Yes." The stranger's light was fierce stuff; ninety-eight percent of its energy being beyond the visible. His lamps were beam-held atomics, nothing less, but there was very little gamma and few neutrons. She could handle it easily enough, she decided, as she finished donning her heat-armor and a helmet of practically opaque, diamond-hard plastic.
As she was wafted gently across the intervening space upon a pencil of force, Kathryn took her first good look at the precisionist himself—or herself. She—it—looked something like a Dhilian, she thought at first. There was the squat, powerful, elephantine body with its four stocky legs; the tremendous double shoulders and enormous arms; the domed, almost immobile head. But there the resemblance ended. There was only the one head—the thinking head, and that one had no eyes and was not covered with bone. There was no feeding head—the thing could neither eat nor breathe. There was no trunk. And what a skin!
It was worse than a hide, really—worse even than a Martian's. The girl had never seen anything like it. It was incredibly thick, dry, pliable; filled minutely with cells of a liquid-gaseous something which she knew to be a more perfect insulator even than the fibers of the tegument itself.
"R-T-S-L-Q-P." She classified the creature readily enough to six places, then stopped and wrinkled her forehead. "Seventh place—that incredible skin—what? S? R? T? It would have to be R."
"You have the requisite tools, I perceive," the creature greeted Kathryn as she entered the central compartment of the strange speedster, no larger than her own. "I can tell you what to do, if—"
"I know what to do." She unbolted a cover, wrought briefly with pliers and splicer, and in ten minutes was done. "It doesn't seem to make sense to me that a person of your obvious intelligence, manifestly knowing enough to make such minor repairs yourself, would go so far from home, alone in such a small ship, without any tools. Burnouts and shorts are apt to happen any time, you know."
"Not in vessels of the—." Again Kathryn felt that unpronounceable symbol. She also felt the stranger stiffen in offended dignity. "We of the higher orders, you should know, do not perform labor. We think. We direct. Others work, and do their work well, or suffer accordingly. This is the first time in nine full four-cycle periods that such a thing has happened, and it will be the last. The punishment which I shall mete out to the guilty mechanic will insure that. I shall, at end, have his life."
"Oh, come, now!" Kathryn protested. "Surely it's no life-and-death mat—"
"Silence!" came curt command. "It is intolerable that one of the lower orders should attempt to—"
"Silence yourself!" At the fierce power of the riposte the creature winced, physically and mentally. "I did this bit of dirty work for you because you apparently couldn't do it for yourself. I did not object to the matter-of-course way you accepted it, because some races are made that way and can't help it. But if you insist on keeping yourself placed five rungs above me on any ladder you can think of, I'll stop being a lady—or even a good Girl Scout—and start doing things about it, and I'll start at any signal you care to call. Get ready, and say when!"
The stranger, taken fully aback, threw out a lightning tentacle of thought; a feeler which was stopped cold a full foot from the girl's radiant armor. This was a human female—or was it? It was not. No human being had ever had, nor ever would have, a mind like that. Therefore:
"I have made a grave error," the thing apologized handsomely, "in thinking that you are not at least my equal. Will you grant me pardon, please?"
"Certainly—if you don't repeat it. But I still don't like the idea of your having that mechanic skinned alive." She thought intensely, lip caught between strong white teeth. "Perhaps there is a way. Where are you going, and when do you want to get there?"
"To my home planet," pointing out, mentally, its location in the Galaxy. "I must be there in two hundred of your G-P hours."
"I see." Kathryn nodded her head. "You can—if you promise that you will do nothing whatever to punish your mechanic. And remember that I can tell whether you really mean it or not."
"As I promise, so I do. But suppose that I do not promise?"
"In that case you'll get there in about a hundred thousand G-P years, frozen stiff. For I shall fuse your Bergenholm down so that it can't ever be fixed; then, after welding your ports solidly to the outer shell, I'll attach to your plating the generator of a screen through which you cannot think. Since you have no tools, I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Decide, now, what you wish to do."
"I promise not to harm the mechanic in any way." He surrendered stiffly, and made no undue protest at Kathryn's entrance into his mind to make sure that the promise would be kept.
Flushed by her easy conquest of a mind which she would previously have been unable to touch, and engrossed in the problem of setting her own tremendously enlarged mind to rights, why should it have occurred to the girl that there was anything worthy of investigation concealed in the depths of that chance-met stranger's mentality?
Returning to her own speedster, she shed her armor and shot away; and it was just as well for her peace of mind that she was not aware of the tight-beamed thought even then speeding from the flitter so far behind her to dread and distant Ploor.
"... but it was very definitely not a human female. I could not touch it. It may very well have been one of the accursed Arisians themselves. But since I did nothing to arouse its suspicions, I got rid of it easily enough. Spread the warning!"
X.
While Kathryn Kinnison was working with her father in the hyperspatial tube and with Mentor of Arisia, and while Camilla and Tregonsee were sleuthing the inscrutable "X", Constance was also at work. Although she lay flat upon her back, not moving a muscle, she was working as she had never worked before. Long since she had put her indetectable speedster into the control of a director-by-chance. Now, knowing nothing and caring less of where she and her vessel might be or might go, physically completely relaxed, she drove her "sensories" out to the full limit of their prodigious range and held them there for hour after hour. Worsel-like, she was not consciously listening for any particular thing; she was merely increasing her already incredibly vast store of knowledge. One hundred percent receptive, attached to and concerned with only the brain of her physical body, her mind sped at large sampling, testing, analyzing, cataloguing every item with which its most tenuous fringe came in contact. Through thousands of solar systems that mind went; millions upon millions of entities either did or did not contribute something worth while.
Suddenly there came something that jarred her into physical movement—a burst of thought upon a band so high that it was practically always vacant. She shook herself, got up, lighted an Alsakanite cigarette, and made herself a pot of coffee.
"This is important, I think," she mused. "I'd better get to work on it while it's fresh."
She sent out a thought tuned to Worsel, and was surprised when it went unanswered. She investigated, finding that the Velantian's screens were full up and held hard—he was fighting Overlords so savagely that he had not felt her thought. Should she take a hand in this brawl? She should not, she decided, and grinned fleetingly. Her erstwhile tutor would need no help in that comparatively minor chore. She would wait, rest up a bit, and eat, before she called him.
"Worsel! Con calling. What goes on there, fellow old snake?" She finally launched her thought. "You've stuck that sharp tail of yours into some of my business—I hope."
"I hope so," Worsel sent back. "Been quite a while since I saw you close up—how about coming aboard?"
"Coming at max," and she did.
Before entering theVelan, however, she put on a personal gravity damper, set at nine hundred eighty centimeters. Strong, tough, and supple as she was she did not relish the thought of the atrocious accelerations used and enjoyed by Velantians everywhere.
"What did you make of that burst of thought?" she asked by way of greeting. "Or were you having so much fun that you missed it?"
"What burst?" Then, after Constance had explained, "I was busy—butnothaving fun."
"Somebody who didn't know you might believe that," the girl derided. "This thought was important, I think—much more so than dilly-dallying with Overlords, as you were doing. It was 'way up—on this band here." She illustrated.
"So?" Worsel came as near to whistling as one of his inarticulate race could come. "What were they like? Tell me all that you can."
"VWZY, to four places." Con concentrated. "Multilegged—not exactly carapaceous, but pretty nearly. Spiny, too, I believe. The world was cold, dismal, barren; but not frigid, but he ... it ... didn't seem exactly like an oxygen-breather—more like what a warm-blooded Palainian would perhaps look like, if you can imagine such a thing. Mentality very high—precisionist grade—no thought of cities as such. The sun was a typical yellow dwarf. Does any of this ring a bell in your mind?"
"No." Worsel thought intensely for minutes. So did Constance. Neither had any idea then that the girl was describing the form assumed in their autumn by the dread inhabitants of the planet Ploor!
"This may indeed be important," Worsel broke the mental silence. "Shall we explore together?"
"We shall." They tuned to the desired band. "Give it plenty of shove, too. Go!"
Out and out and out the twinned receptors sped; to encounter finally a tenuous, weak, and utterly cryptic vibration. One touch—the merest possible contact—and it disappeared. It vanished before even Con's electronics-fast reactions could get more than a hint of directional alignment; and neither of the observers could read any part of it.
Both of these developments were starkly incredible, and Worsel's long body tightened convulsively, rock-hard, in the violence of the mental force now driving his exploring mind. Finding nothing, he finally relaxed.
"Any Lensman, anywhere, can read and understand any thought, however garbled or scrambled, or however expressed," he thought at Constance. "Also, I have always been able to get an exact line on anything I could perceive, but all I know about this one is that it seemed to come mostly from somewhere over that way. Did you do any better?"
"Not much, if any." If the thing was surprising to Worsel, it was sheerly astounding to his companion. She, knowing the measure of her power, thought to herself—not to the Velantian: "Girl, filethisone carefully away in the big black book!"
Slight as were the directional leads, theVelantore along the indicated line at maximum blast. Day after day she sped, a wide-flung mental net out far ahead and out farther still on all sides. They did not find what they sought, but they did find—something.
"What is it?" Worsel demanded of the quivering telepath who had made the report.
"I don't know, sir. Not on that ultra-band, but well below it—there. Not an Overlord, certainly, but something perhaps equally unfriendly."
"An Eich!" Both Worsel and Con exclaimed the thought, and the girl went on, "It was practically certain that we couldn't get them all on Jarnevon, of course, but none have been reported before. Where are they, anyway? Get me a chart, somebody. It's Novena, and they're on the ninth planet out—Novena IX. Tune up your heavy artillery, Worsel—it'd be nice if we could take the head man alive, but that much luck probably isn't in the cards."
The Velantian, even though he had issued instantaneously the order to drive at full blast toward the indicated planet, was momentarily at a loss. Kinnison's daughter entertained no doubts as to the outcome of the encounter she was proposing—but she had never seen an Eich close up. He had. So had her father. Kinnison had come out a very poor second in that affair, and Worsel knew that he could have done no better, if as well. However, that had been upon Jarnevon, actually inside one of its strongest citadels, and neither he nor Kinnison had been prepared.
"What's the plan, Worsel?" Con demanded, vibrantly. "How're you figuring on taking 'em?"
"Depends on how strong they are. If it's a long-established base, we'll simply have to report it to LaForge and go on about our business. If, as seems more probable from the fact that it hasn't been reported before, it is a new establishment of refugees from Jarnevon—or possibly only a grounded spaceship so far—we'll go to work on them ourselves. We'll soon be close enough to find out."
"QX," and a fleeting grin passed over Con's vivacious face. For a long time she had been working with Mentor the Arisian, specifically to develop the ability to "out-Worsel Worsel", and now was the best time she ever would have to put her hard schooling to test.
Hence, Master of Hallucination though he was, the Velantian had no hint of realization when his Klovian companion, working through a channel which he did not even know existed, took control of every compartment of his mind. Nor did the crew, in particular oren masse, suspect anything amiss when she performed the infinitely easier task of taking over theirs. Nor did the unlucky Eich, when the flyingVelanhad approached their planet closely enough to make it clear that their establishment was indeed a new one, being built around the nucleus of a crippled Boskonian battleship. Except for their commanding officer they died then and there—and Con was to regret bitterly, later, that she had made this engagement such a one-girl affair.
The battleship apparently was not in shape to meet theVelanin open space, since it did not; but it could have operated and to all seeming did operate as a formidable fortress indeed from its fixed position on the ground. Under the fierce impact of its offensive beams the Velantians saw their very wall shields flame violet. In return they saw their mighty secondary beams stopped cold by the Boskonian's inner screens, and had to bring into play the inconceivable energies of their primaries before the enemy's spaceship-fortress could be knocked out. And this much of the battle was real. Instrument- and recorder-tapes could be and were being doctored to fit; but spent primary shells could not be simulated. Nor was it thinkable that this tremendous ship and its incipient Base should be allowed to survive.
Hence, after the dreadful primaries had quieted the Eich's main batteries and had reduced the groundworks to flaming pools of lava, needle-beamers went to work on every minor and secondary control board. Then, the great vessel definitely helpless as a fighting unit, Worsel and his hard-bitten crew thought that they went—thought-screened, full-armored, armed with semiportables and DeLameters—joyously into the hand-to-hand combat which each so craved. Worsel and two of his strongest henchmen attacked the armed and armored Boskonian captain. After a satisfying terrific struggle, in the course of which all three of the Velantians—and some others—were appropriately burned and wounded, they overpowered him and carried him bodily into the control room of theVelan. This part of the episode, too, was real; as was the complete melting down of the Boskonian vessel which occurred while the transfer was being made.
Then, while Con was engaged in the exceedingly delicate task of withdrawing her mind from Worsel's without leaving any detectable trace that she had ever been in it, there happened the completely unexpected; the one thing for which she was utterly unprepared. The mind of the captive captain was wrenched from her control as palpably as a loosely-held stick is snatched from a physical hand; and at the same time there was hurled against her impenetrable barriers an attack which could not possibly have stemmed from any Eichian mind!
If her mind had been free, she could have coped with the situation, but it was not. Shehadto hold Worsel—she knew with cold certainty what would ensue if she did not. The crew? They could be blocked out temporarily—unlike the Velantian Lensman, no one of them could even suspect that he had been in a stasis unless it were long enough to be noticeable upon such timepieces as clocks. The procedure, however, occupied a millisecond or so of precious time; and a considerably longer interval was required to withdraw with the required tracelessness from Worsel's mind. Thus, before she could do anything except protect herself and the Velantian from that surprisingly powerful invading intelligence, all trace of it disappeared and all that remained of their captive was a dead body.
Worsel and Constance stared at each other, wordless, for seconds. The Velantian had a completely and accurately detailed memory of everything that had happened up to that instant, the only matter not quite clear being the fact that their hard-won captive was dead; the girl's mind was racing to fabricate a bulletproof explanation of that startling fact. Worsel saved her the trouble.
"It is, of course, true," he thought at her finally, "that any mind of sufficient power can destroy by force of will alone the entity of flesh in which it resides. I never thought about this matter before in connection with the Eich, but no detail of the experience your father and I had with them on Jarnevon would support any contention that they do not have minds of the requisite power, and today's battle, being purely physical, would not throw any light on the subject. I wonder if a thing like that could be stopped? That is, if we had been on time—?"
"That's it, I think." Con put on her most disarming, most engaging grin in preparation for the most outrageous series of lies of her long career. "And I don't think it can be stopped—at least I couldn't stop him. You see, I got into him a fraction of a second before you did, and in that instant, just like that," in spite of the fact that Worsel could not hear, she snapped her finger ringingly, "Faster even than that, he was gone. I didn't think of it until you brought it up, but you are as right as can be—he killed himself to keep us from finding out whatever it was that he knew about what is left of Boskonia."
Worsel stared at her with six eyes now instead of one, gimlet probes which glanced imperceptibly off her shield. He was not consciously trying to break down her barriers—to his fullest perception they were already down; no barriers were there. He was not consciously trying to integrate or reintegrate any detail or phase of the episode just past—no iota or trace of falsity had appeared at any point or instant. Nevertheless, deep down within those extra reaches that made Worsel of Velantia what he was, a vague disquiet refused to down. It was too ... too—Worsel's consciousness could not supply the adjective.
Had it been too easy? Very decidedly it had not. His utterly worn-out, battered and wounded crew refuted that thought. So did his own body, slashed and burned, as well as did the litter of primary shells and the heaps of smoking slag which had once been an enemy stronghold.
Also, even though he had not theretofore thought that he and his crew possessed enough force to do what had just been done, it was starkly unthinkable that anyone, even an Arisian, could have helped him do anything without his knowledge. Particularly how could this girl, daughter of Kimball Kinnison although she was, possibly have stuff enough to play unperceived the part of guardian angel to him, Worsel of Velantia?
Least able of all the Second-Stage Lensmen to appreciate what the Children of the Lens really were, he did not, then or ever, have any inkling of the real truth. But Constance, far behind her cheerfully innocent mask, shivered as she read exactly his disturbed and disturbing thoughts. For, conversely, an unresolved enigma would affect him more than it would any of his fellow L2's. He would work on it until he did resolve it, one way or another. This thing had to be settled,now. And there was a way—a good way.
"But Ididhelp you, you big lug!" she stormed, stamping her booted foot in emphasis. "I was in there every second, slugging away with everything I had. Didn't you even feel me, you dope?" She allowed a thought to become evident; widened her eyes in startled incredulity. "Youdidn't!" she accused, hotly. "You were reveling so repulsively in the thrill of body-to-body fighting, just like you were back there in that cavern of Overlords, that you couldn't have felt a thought if it was driven into you with a D2P pressor! And I'll bet credits to millos that Ididhelp you, too—that if I hadn't been in there pitching, dulling their edges here and there at critical moments, you'd've had a time getting them at all! I'm going to flit right now, and I hope Ineversee you again as long as I live!"
This vicious counterattack, completely mendacious though it was, fitted the facts so exactly that Worsel's inchoate doubts vanished. Moreover, he was even less well equipped than are human men to cope with the peculiarly feminine weapons Constance was using so effectively. Wherefore the Velantian capitulated, almost abjectly, and the girl allowed herself to be coaxed down from her high horse and to become her usual sunny and impish self.
But when theVelanwas once more on course and she had retired to her cabin, it was not to sleep. Instead, she thought. Was this intellect of the same race as the one whose burst of thought she had caught such a short time before, or not? She could not decide—not enough data. The first thought had been unconscious and quite revealing; this one simply a lethal weapon, driven with a power the very memory of which made her gasp again. They could, however, be the same—the mind with which she had beenen rapportcould very well be capable of generating the force she had felt. If they were the same, they were something that should be studied, intensively and at once; and she herself had kicked away her only chance to make that study. She had better tell somebody about this, even if it meant confessing her own bird-brained part, and get some competent advice. Who?
Kit? No. Not because he would smack her down—sheoughtto be smacked down!—but because his brain wasn't enough better than her own to do any good. In fact, it wasn't a bit better than hers.
Mentor? At the very thought she shuddered, mentally and physically. She would call him in, fast enough, regardless of consequences to herself, if it would do any good, but it wouldn't. She was starkly certain of that. He wouldn't smack her down, like Kit would, but he wouldn't help her, either. He'd just sit there and sneer at her while she stewed, hotter and hotter, in her own juice.
"In a childish, perverted, and grossly exaggerated way, Daughter Constance, you are right," the Arisian's thought rolled sonorously into her astounded mind. "You got yourself into this—get yourself out. One promising fact, however, I perceive—although seldom and late—you at last begin really to think."
In that hour Constance Kinnison grew up.
XI.
Any human or near-human Lensman would have been appalled by the sheer loneliness of Nadreck's long vigil. Almost any one of them would have cursed, fluently and bitterly, when the time came at which he was forced to concede that the being for whom he lay in wait was not going to visit that particular planet.
But utterly unhuman Nadreck was not lonely. In fact, there was no word in the vocabulary of his race even remotely resembling the term in definition, connotation, or implication. From his Galaxy-wide study he had a dim, imperfect idea of what such an emotion or feeling might be, but he could not begin to understand it. Nor was he in the least disturbed by the fact that Kandron did not appear. Instead, he held his orbit until the minute arrived at which the mathematical probability became point nine nine eight that his proposed quarry was not going to appear. Then, as matter-of-factly as though he had merely taken half an hour out for lunch, he abandoned his position and set out upon the course so carefully planned for exactly this event.
The search for further clues was long and uneventful; but monstrously, unhumanly patient Nadreck stuck to it until he found one. True, it was so slight as to be practically nonexistent—a mere fragment of a whisper of zwilnik instruction—but it bore Kandron's unmistakable imprint. The Palainian had expected no more. Kandron would not slip. Momentary leakages from faulty machines would have to occur from time to time, but Kandron's machines would not be at fault either often or long at a time.
Nadreck, however, had been ready. Course after course of the most delicate spotting screen ever devised had been out for weeks. So had tracers, radiation absorbers, and every other insidious locating device known to the science of the age. The standard detectors remained blank, of course—no more so than his own conveyance would that of the Onlonian be detectable by any ordinary instruments. And as the Palainian speedster shot away along the most probable course, some fifty delicate instruments in its bow began stabbing that entire region of space with a pattern of needles of force through which a Terrestrial barrel could not have floated untouched.
Thus the Boskonian craft—an inherently indetectable speedster—was located; and in that instant was speared by three modified CRX tracers. Nadreck then went inert and began to plot the other speedster's course. He soon learned that that course was unpredictable; that the vessel was being operated statistically, completely at random. This too, then, was a trap.
This knowledge disturbed Nadreck no more than had any more-or-less-similar event of the previous twenty-odd years. He had realized fully that the leakage could as well have been deliberate as accidental. He had at no time underestimated Kandron's ability; the future alone would reveal whether or not Kandron would at any time underestimate his. He would follow through—there might be a way in which this particular trap could be used against its setter.
Leg after leg of meaningless course Nadreck followed, until there came about that which the Palainian knew would happen in time—the speedster held a straight course for more parsecs than six-sigma limits of probability could ascribe to pure randomness. Nadreck knew what that meant. The speedster was returning to its base for servicing, which was precisely the event for which he had been waiting. It was the base he wanted, not the speedster; and that base would never, under any conceivable conditions, emit any detectable quantity of traceable radiation. To its base, then, Nadreck followed the little spaceship, and to say that he was on the alert as he approached that base is a gross understatement indeed. He expected to set off at least one, and probably many blasts of force. That would almost certainly be necessary in order to secure sufficient information concerning the enemy's defensive screens. It was unnecessary—but when those blasts arrived Nadreck was elsewhere, calmly analyzing the data secured by his instruments during the brief contact which had triggered the Boskonian projectors into action.
So light, so fleeting, and so unorthodox had been Nadreck's touch that the personnel of the now doomed base could not have known with any certainty that any visitor had actually been there. If there had been, the logical supposition would have been that he and his vessel had been resolved into their component atoms. Nevertheless Nadreck waited—as has been shown, he was good at waiting—until the burst of extra vigilance set up by the occurrence would have subsided into ordinary watchfulness. Then he began to act.
At first this action was in ultra-slow motion. One millimeter per hour his drill advanced. Drill was synchronized precisely with screen, and so guarded as to give an alarm at a level of interference far below that necessary to energize any probable detector at the generators of the screen being attacked.
Through defense after defense Nadreck made his cautious, indetectable way into the dome. It was a small base, as such things go; manned, as expected, by escapees from Onlo. Scum, too, for the most part; creatures of even baser and more violent passions than those upon whom he had worked in Kandron's Onlonian stronghold. To keep those intractable entities in line during their brutally long tours of duty, a psychological therapist had been given authority second only to that of the Base Commander. That knowledge, and the fact that there was only one populated dome, made the Palainian come as close to grinning as one of his unsmiling race can.
The psychologist wore a multiplex thought-screen, of course, as did everyone else; but that did not bother Nadreck. Kinnison had opened such screens many times; not only by means of his own hands, but also at various times by the use of a dog's jaws, a spider's legs and mandibles, and even a worm's sinuous body. Wherefore, through the agency of a quasi-fourth-dimensional life-form literally indescribable to three-dimensional man, Nadreck's ego was soon comfortably ensconced in the mind of the Onlonian.
That entity knew in detail every weakness of each of his personnel. It was his duty to watch those weaknesses, to keep them down, to condition each of his wards in such fashion that friction and strife would be minimized. Now, however, he proceeded to do exactly the opposite. One hated another. That hate became a searing obsession, requiring the concentration of every effort upon ways and means of destroying its object. One feared another. That fear ate in, searing as it went, destroying every normality of outlook and of reason. Many were jealous of their superiors. This emotion, requiring as it does nothing except its own substance upon which to feed, became a fantastically-spreading, caustically corrosive blight.
To name each ugly, noisome passion or trait resident in that dome is to call the complete roster of the vile; and calmly, mercilessly, unmovedly, ultra-efficiently, Nadreck worked upon them all. As though he were playing a Satanic organ he touched a nerve here, a synapse there, a channel somewhere else, bringing the whole group, with the lone exception of the commander, simultaneously to the point of explosion. Nor was any sign of this perfect work evident externally; for everyone there, having lived so long under the iron code of Boskonia, knew exactly the consequences of any infraction of that code.
The moment came when passion overmastered sense. One of the monsters stumbled, jostling another. That nudge became, in its recipient's seething mind, a lethal attack by his bitterest enemy. A forbidden projector flamed viciously—the offended one was sating his lust so insensately that he scarcely noticed the bolt that in turn rived away his own life. Detonated by this incident, the personnel of the Base exploded as one. Blasters raved briefly; knives and swords bit and slashed; improvised bludgeons crashed against pre-selected targets; hard-taloned appendages gouged and tore. And Nadreck, who had long since withdrawn from the mind of the psychologist, timed with a stop watch the duration of the whole grizzly affair, from the instant of the first stumble to the death of the last Onlonian outside the Commander's locked and armored sanctum. Ninety-eight and three tenths seconds. Good—a nice job.
The Base Commander, as soon as it was safe to do so, rushed out of his guarded room to investigate. Amazed, disgruntled, dismayed by the to him completely inexplicable phenomenon he had just witnessed, he fell an easy prey to the Palainian Lensman. Nadreck invaded his mind and explored it, channel by channel; finding—not entirely unexpectedly—that this Number One knew nothing whatever of interest.
Nadreck did not destroy the base. Instead, after setting up a small instrument in the Commander's office, he took that unfortunate wight aboard his speedster and drove off into space. He immobilized his captive, not by loading him with manacles, but by deftly severing a few essential nerve trunks. Then he really studied the Onlonian's mind—line by line, this time; almost cell by cell. A master—almost certainly Kandron himself—had operated here. There was not the slightest trace of tampering; no leads to or indications of what the activating stimulus would have to be; all that the fellow now knew was that it was his job to hold his Base inviolate against any and every form of intrusion and to keep that speedster flitting around all over space on a director-by-chance as much as possible of the time, leaking slightly a certain signal now and then.