The Lensman landed, and made his way to Harkleroy's inner office in what seemed to be an ordinary enough, if somewhat oversize, suit of light space-armor. But it was no more ordinary than it was light. It was a powerhouse, built of dureum a quarter of an inch thick. Kinnison was not walking in it; he was merely the engineer of a battery of two-thousand-horsepower motors. Unaided, he could not have lifted one leg of that armor off the ground.
As he had expected, everyone he encountered wore a thought-screen; nor was he surprised at being halted by a blaring loud-speaker in the hall, since the zwilnik's search-beams were being stopped four feet away from his armor.
"Halt! Cut your screens or we'll blast you where you stand!"
"Yeah? Act your age, Harkleroy. I told you I had a lot of stuff up my sleeve besides my arm, and I meant it. Either I come as I am or I flit somewhere else, to do business with somebody who wants this stuff bad enough to act like half a man. 'Smatter—afraid you ain't got blasters enough in there to handle me?"
This taunt bit deep, and the visitor was allowed to proceed. As he entered the private office, however, he saw that Harkleroy's hand was poised near a switch, whose closing would signal a score or more of concealed gunners to burn him down. They supposed that the stuff was either on his person or in his speedster just outside. Time was short.
"I abase myself—that's the formula you insist on, ain't it?" Kinnison sneered, without bending his head a millimeter.
Harkleroy's finger touched the stud.
"Dauntless!Come down!" Kinnison snapped out the order.
Hand, stud, and a part of the desk disappeared in the flare of Kinnison's beam. Wall-ports opened; projectors and machine rifles erupted vibratory and solid destruction. Kinnison leaped toward the desk; the attack slowing down and stopping as he neared and seized the big shot. One fierce, short blast reduced the thought-screen generator to blobs of fused metal. Harkleroy screamed to his gunners to resume fire, but before bullet or beam took the zwilnik's life, Kinnison learned what he most wanted to know.
The ape did know something about Black Lensmen. He didn't know where the Lenses came from, but he did know how the men were chosen. More, he knew a Lensman personally—one Melasnikov, who had his office in Cadsil, on Kalonia III itself.
Kinnison turned and ran—the alarm had been given and they were bringing up stuff too heavy for even his armor to handle. But theDauntlesswas landing already; smashing to rubble five city blocks in the process. She settled; and as the dureum-clad Gray Lensman began to fight his way out of Harkleroy's fortress, Major Peter VanBuskirk and a full battalion of Valerians, armed with space-axes and semiportables, began to hew and to blast their way in.
XV.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, Kinnison fought his way back along the corpse-littered corridor. Under the ravening force of the attacker's beams his defensive screens flared into pyrotechnic splendor, but they did not go down. Fierce-driven metallic slugs spanged and whanged against the unyielding dureum of his armor, but that, too, held. Dureum is incredibly massive, unbelievably tough, unimaginably hard—against these qualities and against the thousands of horsepower driving that veritable tank and energizing its screens the zwilniks might just as well have been shining flashlights at him and throwing confetti. His immediate opponents could not touch him, but the Boskonians were bringing up reserves that he didn't like a little bit; mobile projectors with whose energies even his screens could not cope.
He had, however, one great advantage over his enemies. He had the sense of perception; they did not. He could see them, but they could not see him. All he had to do was to keep at least one opaque wall between them until he was securely behind the mobile screens, powered by the stupendous generators of theDauntless, which VanBuskirk and his Valerians were so earnestly urging toward him. If a door was handy in the moment of need, he used it. If not, he went through a wall.
The Valerians were fighting furiously and were coming fast. Those two words, when applied to members of that race, mean something starkly incredible to anyone who has never seen Valerians in action. They average little less than seven feet in height; something over four hundred pounds in weight; and are muscled, boned, and sinewed against a normal gravitational force of almost three times that of Earth. VanBuskirk's weakest warrior could do, in full armor, a standing high jump of fourteen feet against one Tellurian gravity; he could handle himself and the thirty-pound monstrosity which was his space-ax with a blinding speed and a devastating efficiency literally appalling to contemplate. They are the deadliest hand-to-hand fighters ever known; and, unbelievable as it may seem to any really highly advanced intelligence, they did and still do fairly revel in that form of combat.
The Valerian tide reached the battling Gray Lensman—closed around him.
"Hi ... you little ... Tellurian ... wart!" Major Peter VanBuskirk boomed this friendly thought, a yell of pure joy, in cadence with the blows of his utterly irresistible weapon. His rhythm broke—his frightful ax was stuck. Not even dureum-inlaid armor could bar the inward course of those furiously driven beaks; but sometimes it made it fairly difficult to get them out. The giant pulled, twisted—put one red-splashed boot on the battered breastplate—bent his mighty back—heaved viciously. The weapon came free with a snap that would have broken any ordinary man's arms, but the Valerian's thought rolled smoothly on: "Ain't we got fun?"
"Ho, Bus, you big Valerian baboon!" Kinnison thought back in kind. "Thought maybe we would need you and your gang—thanks for the ride. But back, now, and fast!"
Although the Valerians did not like to retreat, after even a successful operation, they knew how to do it. Hence in a matter of minutes all the survivors—and their losses had been surprisingly small—were back inside theDauntless.
"You picked up my speedster, Frank." It was a statement, not a question, directed at the young Lensman standing beside the Chief Pilot's board.
"Of course, sir. They're massing fast, and without any hostile demonstration, as you said they would." He nodded unconcernedly at the plate, which showed the sky dotted with warlike shapes.
"No maulers?"
"None detectable as yet."
"QX. Original orders stand. At detection of one mauler, execute Operation Able without further instructions. Tell everybody that, while the announcement of Operation Able will put me out of control instantly and automatically, until such announcement I will give instructions. What they will be like I haven't the foggiest notion. It depends on what His Nibs upstairs decides to do—it's his move next."
As though the last phrase were a cue, a burst of noise rattled from the speaker—of which only the words "Bradlow Thyron" were intelligible to the un-Lensed members of the crew. That name, however, explained why they were not being attacked—yet. Kalonia had heard much of that intransigent and obdurate pirate and of the fabulous prowess of his ship; and Kinnison was pretty sure that they were much more interested in his ship than in him.
"I can't understand you!" The Gray Lensman barked, in the polyglot language he had so lately learned. "Talk pidgin!"
"Very well. I see that you are indeed Bradlow Thyron, as we were informed. What do you mean by this outrageous attack? Surrender! Disarm your men, take off their armor, and march them out of your vessel, or we will blast you as you lie there—Mendonai, vice admiral, speaking!"
"I abase myself." Kinnison-Thyron did not sneer—exactly—and he did incline his stubborn head perhaps one millimeter; but he made no move to comply with the orders so summarily issued. Instead:
"What kind of planet is this, anyway?" he demanded, hotly. "I come here to see this louse Harkleroy because a friend of mine tells me that he's a big shot and so interested in my line that we can do a lot of business with each other. I give the lug fair warning, too—tell him plain that I've been around plenty and that if he tries to give me the works I'll rub him out like a pencil mark. So what happens? In spite of what I just tell him he tries dirty work on me, and I go to work on him—which he certainly has got coming to him. Then you and your flock of little tin boats come barging in as though I'd busted a law or something. Who do you think you are, anyway? What license you got to be butting into a private business deal?"
"Ah, I had not heard that version." Vision came on; the face upon the plate was typically Kalonian—blue, cold, cruel, and keen. "Harkleroy was warned, you say? Definitely?"
"I warned him plenty definitely. Ask any of the zwilniks in that private office of his. Most of them are still alive, and they all must of heard it."
The plate fogged, the speaker again gave out gibberish. The Lensmen knew, however, that the commander of the cruisers above them was indeed questioning the dead zwilnik's guards. They knew that Kinnison's story was being corroborated in full.
"You interest me." The Boskonian's language again became intelligible to the group at large. "We will forget Harkleroy—stupidity brings its own reward and the property damage is of no present concern. From what I have been able to learn of you, you have never belonged to that so-called Civilization. I know for a fact that you are not, and never have been, one of us. How have you been able to survive? And why do you work alone?"
"'How' is easy enough—by keeping one jump ahead of the other guy, like I did with your pal here, and by being smart enough to have good engineers put into my ship everything that any other one ever had and everything they could dream up besides. As to 'why,' that's simple, too. I don't trust anybody except myself. If nobody except myself ever knows what I'm going to do, or when, nobody except myself is ever going to be able to stick a knife into me when I ain't looking—see? So far, it's paid off big. I'm still around, and still healthy, while them that trusted other guys ain't."
"I see. Crude, but graphic. The more I study you, the more convinced I become that you would be a worth-while addition to our force—"
"No deal, Mendonai," Kinnison interrupted, shaking his unkempt head positively. "I never yet took orders from no boss, and I ain't going to, never."
"You misunderstand me, Thyron." The zwilnik was queerly patient and much too forbearing. Kinnison's insulting omission of his title should have touched him off like a rocket. "I was not thinking of you in any minor capacity, but as an ally. An entirely independent ally, working with us in certain mutually advantageous undertakings."
"Such as?" Kinnison allowed himself to betray his first sign of interest. "You may be talking sense now, brother, but what's in it for me? Believe me, there's got to be plenty."
"There will be plenty. With the ability you have already shown, and with our vast resources back of you, you will take more every week than you have been taking in a year."
"Yeah? People like you just love to do things like that for people like me. What doyoufigure on getting out of it?" Kinnison wondered, and Lensed a sharp thought to his junior at the board.
"On your toes, Frank. He's stalling for something, and I'm betting it's maulers."
"None detectable yet, sir."
"We stand to gain, of course," the pirate admitted, smoothly. "For instance, there are certain features of your vessel which might—just possibly, you will observe, and speaking only to mention an example—be of some interest to our naval designers. Also, we have heard that you have an unusually hot battery of primary beams. You might tell me about some of those things now; or at least refocus your plate so that I can see something besides your not unattractive face."
"I might not, too. What I've got here is my own business, and stays mine."
"Is that what we are to expect from you in the way of co-operation?" The commander's voice was still low and level, but now bore a chill of deadly menace.
"Co-operation!" The cutthroat chief was unimpressed. "I'll maybe tell you a thing or two—eat out of your dish—after I get good and sold on your proposition, whatever it is, but not one second sooner!"
The commander glared. "I weary of this. You probably are not worth the trouble, after all. I might as well blast you out now as later. You know that I can, of course, as well as I do."
"Do I?" Kinnison did sneer, this time. "Act your age, pal. As I told that fool Harkleroy, this ain't the first planet I ever sat down on, and it won't be the last. And don't call no maulers," as the Boskonian officer's hand moved almost imperceptibly toward a row of buttons. "If you do,Istart blasting as soon as we spot one on our plates—and they're full out right now."
"Youwould start blasting?" The zwilnik's surprise—almost amazement—was plain, but the hand stopped its motion.
"Yeah—me. Them heaps of scrap metal you got up there don't bother me a bit, but maulers I can't handle, and I ain't afraid to tell you so because you probably know it already. I can't stop you from calling 'em, if you want to, but bend both ears to this—I can outrun 'em, and I'll guarantee that you personally won't be alive to see me run. Why? Because your ship will be the first one I'll whiff on the way out. And if the rest of your heaps stick around long enough to try to stop me, I'll whiff twenty-five or thirty more of them before your maulers can get close enough so that I'll have to flit. Now, if your brains are made out of the same kind of thick, blue mud that Harkleroy's was, start something!"
This was an impasse. Kinnison knew what he wanted the other to do, but he could not give him a suggestion, or even a hint, without tipping his hand. The officer, quite evidently, was in a quandary. He did not want to open fire upon this tremendous, this fabulous ship. Even if he could destroy it, such a course would be unthinkable—unless, indeed, the very act of destruction would brand as false rumor the tales of invincibility and invulnerability which had heralded its coming, and thus would operate in his favor at the court-martial so sure to be called. He was very much afraid, however, that those rumors were not false—a view which was supported very strongly both by Thyron's undisguised contempt for the Boskonian warships threatening him and by his equally frank declaration of his intention to avoid engagement with craft of really superior force. Finally, however, the Boskonian perceived one thing that did not quite fit.
"If you are as good as you claim to be, why aren't you doing a flit right now?" Mendonai asked, smoothly. "If you could get away, I should think that you'd be doing it. We've got stuff, you know, that's both heavy and fast."
"Because I don'twantto flit, that's why. Use your head, pal." This was better. Mendonai had shifted the conversation into a line upon which the Lensman could do a bit of steering. "I had to leave the First Galaxy because it got too hot for me, and I got no connections at all, yet, here in the Second. You folks need certain kinds of stuff that I've got, and I need other kinds, that you've got. So we could do a nice business, if you wanted to. That was what I had in mind with Harkleroy, but he got greedy. I don't mind saying that I'd like to do business with you, but I just got bit pretty bad, and I'll have to have some kind of solid guarantee that you mean business, and not monkey business, before I take a chance again. See?"
"I see. The idea is good, but its execution may prove difficult. I could give you my word, which I assure you has never been broken."
"Don't make me laugh." Kinnison snorted. "Would you take mine?"
"The case is different. I would not. Your point, however, is well taken. How about the protection of a high court of law? I will bring you an unalterable writ from any court you name."
"Uh-huh," the Gray Lensman dissented. "There never was no court yet that didn't take orders from the big shots who kept the fat cats fat, and lawyers are the crookedest crooks in the whole Universe. You'll have to do better than that, pal."
"Well, then, how about a Lensman? You know about Lensmen, don't you?"
"A Lensman!" Kinnison gasped. He shook his head violently. "Are you completely nuts, or do you think I am? Idoknow Lensmen—a Lensman chased me from Alsakan to Vandemar once, and if I hadn't had a dose of Hell's own luck, he'd have got me. Lensmen chased me out of the First Galaxy—why else do you think I'm here? Use your brain, mister, use your brain!"
"You're thinking of Civilization's Lensmen—particularly of Gray Lensmen." The officer was manifestly enjoying Thyron's passion. "Ours—the Black Lensmen—are different—entirely different. They have as much power, or more, but they use it as it should be used. They work with us right along. In fact, they have been bumping Gray Lensmen off right and left lately."
"You mean that he could open up, for instance, your mind and mine, so that we could see that the other guy wasn't figuring on running in no stacked decks? And that he'd stand by and sort of referee this business deal we got on the fire? And do you know one yourself—personally?"
"He could, and would, do all that. Yes, I know one personally. His name is Melasnikov, and his office is on Kalonia III, not an hour's flit from here. He may not be there at the moment, but he will come in if I call. How about it—shall I call him now?"
"Don't work up a sweat. Sounds like it might work, if we can figure out an approach. I don't suppose that you and him would come out to me in space?"
"Hardly. After the way you have acted, you wouldn't expect us to, would you?"
"It wouldn't be very bright of you. And since I want to do business, I guess I got to meet you part way. How would this be? You pull your ships away, out of range. My ship takes station right above this here Lensman's office. I go down in my speedster, like I did here, and go inside to meet him and you. I'll wear my armor—and when I say it's real armor I ain't just snapping my choppers, neither."
"I can see only one slight flaw." The Boskonian was really trying to work out a mutually satisfactory solution. "The Lensman will open our minds to you in proof, however, that we will have no intention of bringing up our maulers or other heavy stuff while we are in conference."
"Right then he'll show you that you hadn't better, too." Kinnison grinned, wolfishly.
"What do you mean?" The officer demanded.
"I mean that I've got enough good big superatomic bombs aboard to blow the planet apart, and that the boys'll drop 'em all if you start playing dirty. I've got to take a little chance, of course, to start doing business, but it's a small one. If you ain't smart enough to know that what would happen would be mighty poor business, your Lensman will be—especially when it won't get you any dope on what makes this ship of mine tick the way she does. And the clincher is that even if you bring up everything you've got, I never did figure on living forever, and going out in an atomic blast of that size, together with your fleet and half your planet and you and your Lensman and seven hundred million other people, is as good a way as I can think of."
"If the Lensman's examination bears that out, it will constitute an absolute guarantee," the officer agreed. Hard as he was, he could not conceal the fact that he had been shaken: "Everything, then, is satisfactory?"
"On the green. Are you ready to flit?"
"We are ready."
"Call your Lensman, then, and lead the way. Boys, take her upstairs!"
XVI.
Karen Kinnison was worried. She, who had always been so steady, so sure of herself, had for weeks been conscious of a gradually increasing ... what was it, anyway? Not exactly a loss of control ... achange... a something that manifested itself in increasingly numerous fits of senseless—sheerly idiotic—stubbornness. And always and only it was directed at—of all the people in the universe—her brother. She got along with her sisters perfectly; their tiny tiffs barely rippled the surface of any of their minds. But any time her path of action crossed Kit's, it seemed, the profoundest depths of her being flared into opposition like exploding duodec. Worse than senseless and idiotic, it was inexplicable, for the feeling which the Five had for each other was much deeper than that felt by ordinary brothers and sisters.
She didn't want to fight with Kit. Shelikedhim! She liked to feel his minden rapportwith hers, just as she liked to dance with him; their bodies as completely in accord as were their minds. No change of step or motion, however suddenly conceived and executed or however bizarre, had ever succeeded in taking the other by surprise or in marring by a millimeter the effortless precision of their performance. She could do things with Kit that would tie any other man into knots and break half of his bones. All other men were lumps. Kit was so far ahead of any other man in existence that there was simply no comparison. If she were Kit she would give her a going-over that would ... or could even he—
At the thought she turned cold inside. He could not. Even Kit, with all his tremendous power, would hit that solid wall and bounce. Well, there was one—not a man, but an entity—who could. He might kill her, but even that would be better than to allow the continued growth within her mind of this monstrosity which she could neither control nor understand. Where was she, and where was Lyrane, and where was Arisia? Good—not too far off line. She would stop off at Arisia en route.
She did so, and made her way to Mentor's quiet office on the hospital grounds. She told her story.
"Fighting with Kit was bad enough," she concluded, "but when I start defyingyou, Mentor, it's high time that something was done about it. Why didn't Kit ever knock me into a spiral? Why didn't you work me over? You called Kit in, with the distinct implication that he needed more education—why didn't you pull me in here, too, and pound some intelligence into me?"
"Concerning you, Christopher had definite instructions, which he obeyed. I did not touch you for the same reason that I did not ask you to come to me; neither course would have been of any use. Your mind, daughter Karen, is unique. One of its prime characteristics—the one, in fact, which is to make you an all-important player in the drama which is to come—is a yieldlessness very nearly absolute. Your mind might, just conceivably, be broken; but it cannot be bent by any imaginable external force, however applied. Thus it was inevitable from the first that nothing could be done about the untoward manifestations of this characteristic until you yourself should recognize the fact that your development was not complete. It would be idle for me to say that during adolescence you have not been more than a trifle trying. I was not speaking idly when I said that the development of you has been a tremendous task. It is with equal seriousness, however, that I now tell you that the reward is commensurate with the magnitude of the undertaking. It is impossible to express the satisfaction I feel—the fulfillment, the completion, the justification—as you children come, one by one, each in his proper time, for final instruction."
"Oh—you mean, then, that there's nothing really the matter with me?" Hard as Karen was, she trembled as her awful tension eased. "That I wassupposedto act that way? And can I tell Kit, right away?"
"No need. Your brother now knows that it was a passing phase; he shall know very shortly that it has passed. It is not that you were 'supposed' to act as you acted. You could not help it. Nor could your brother, nor I. From now on, however, you shall be completely the mistress of your own mind. Come fully, daughter Karen, into mine."
She did so, and in a matter of time her "formal education" was complete.
"There is one thing that I don't quite understand—" she began, before she boarded her speedster.
"Consider it, and I am sure that you will," Mentor assured her. "Explain it, whatever it is, to me."
"QX—I'll try. It's about Fossten and Dad." Karen cogitated. "Fossten was, of course, an Eddorian—your making Dad believe him to be an insane Arisian was a masterpiece. I see, of course, how you did that—principally by making Fossten's 'real' shape exactly like the one he saw of you in Arisia. But his physical actions as Fossten—"
"Go on, daughter. I am sure that your visualization will be sound."
"While acting as Fossten he had to act as a Thralian would have acted," Kay decided with a rush. "He was watched everywhere he went, and knew it. To display his real power would have been disastrous. Just like you Arisians, they have to keep in the background to avoid setting up an inferiority complex that will ruin everything for them. Fossten's actions, then, were constrained. Just as they were when he was Gray Roger, so long ago—except that then he did make a point of unhuman longevity, deliberately to put an insoluble problem up to First-Lensman Samms and his men. Just as you—youmusthave ... youdidcoach Virgil Samms, Mentor, and some of you Arisians were there, as men!"
"We were. We wrought briefly as men, and died as men. Up to the present moment, no one has ever been the wiser."
"But you weren't Virgil Samms, please!" Kay almost begged. "Not that it would break me if you were, but even I would much rather you hadn't been."
"No, none of us was Samms," Mentor assured her. "Nor Cleveland, nor Rodebush, nor Costigan, nor even Clio Marsden. We worked with—'coached,' as you express it—those persons and others from time to time in certain small matters, but we were at no time integral with any of them. One of us was, however, Dr. Bergenholm. The full inertialess space-drive became necessary at that time, and it would have been poor technique to have had either Rodebush or Cleveland develop so suddenly the ability to perfect the device as Bergenholm did perfect it."
"QX. Bergenholm isn't important—he was just an inventor. To get back onto the subject of Fossten: When he was there on the flagship with Dad, and in position to throw his full weight around, it was too late—you Arisians were on the job. You'll have to take it from there, though; I'm out beyond my depth."
"Because you lack data. Know, then, daughter, that the planet Eddore is screened as heavily as is our own Arisia; by screens which can be extended at will to any desired point in space. In those last minutes the Eddorian knew that Kimball Kinnison was neither alone nor unprotected. He called instantaneously for help, but help did not come. It could not. Eddore's screens were being attacked at every point by every force generable by the massed intellect of Arisia; they were compressed almost to the planet's surface. If the Eddorians had weakened those screens sufficiently to have sent through them a helping thought, every one of them would in that instant have perished. Nor could Fossten escape from the form of flesh he was then energizing. I myself saw to that." Karen had never before felt the Arisian display emotion, but his thought was grim and cold. "From that form, which your father never did perceive, he passed into the next plane of existence."
Karen shivered. "It served him right. That clears everything up, I think. But are yousure, Mentor, that you can't—or rather, shouldn't—teach me any more than you have? It's just about time for me to go, and I feel ... well, 'incompetent' is putting it very mildly indeed."
MENTOR illus15
MENTOR illus15
"To a mind of such power and scope as yours, in its present state of development, such a feeling is inevitable. Nor can anyone except yourself do anything about it. Cold comfort, perhaps, but it is the stark truth that from now on your development is your own task. Yours alone. As I have already told Christopher and Kathryn, and will very shortly tell Camilla and Constance, you have had your last Arisian treatment. I will be on call to any of you at any instant of any day, to aid you or to guide you or to reinforce you at need; but of formal instruction there can be no more."
Karen left Arisia and drove for Lyrane, her thoughts in a turmoil. The time was too short by far; she deliberately cut her vessel's speed and took a long detour so that the vast and chaotic library of her mind could be reduced to some semblance of order before she landed.
She reached Lyrane II, and there, again to all outward seeming a happy, carefree girl, she hugged her mother rapturously. Nor was this part of it acting in any sense—as has been said, those four girls loved each other and their mother and their father and their brother with a depth and fervor impossible to portray intelligibly in words.
"You're the mostwonderfulthing, Mums!" Karen exclaimed. "It's simply marvelous, seeing you again in the flesh."
"Now why bringthatup?" Clarrissa had—just barely—become accustomed to working undraped, in the Lyranian fashion.
"I didn't mean it that way at all, and you know I didn't." Kay snickered. "Shame on you—fishing for compliments, and at your age, too!" Ignoring the older woman's attempt at protest she went on: "All kidding aside, Mums, you're a mighty smart-looking hunk of woman. I approve of you exceedingly much. In fact, we're a keen pair, and I like both of us. I've got one advantage over you, of course, in that I never did care a particle whether I ever had a stitch of clothes on or not, anywhere, and you still do, a little. But what I was going to ask, though, was how are you doing?"
"Not so well—of course, though, I haven't been here very long." Clarrissa, forgetting her undressedness, frowned. "I haven't found Helen, and I haven't found out yet why she retired. I can't quite decide whether to put pressure on now, or wait a while longer. Ladora, the new Elder Person, is ... that is, I don't know—Oh, here she comes now. I'm glad—I want you to meet her."
If Ladora was glad to meet Karen, however, she did not show it. Instead, for an inappreciable instant of time which was nevertheless sufficient for the acquirement of full information, each studied the other. Like Helen—the former Queen of the matriarchy of Lyrane II—Ladora was tall, beautifully proportioned, flawless of skin and feature, hard and fine. But so, and in most respects even more so, to Ladora's astonishment and quickly-mounting wrath, was this pink-tanned stranger. Practically instantaneously, therefore, she hurled a vicious mental bolt—only to get the surprise of her life. She had not yet crossed wills in a serious enough way with this strange person, Clarrissa, to find out what she had in the way of equipment, but it certainly couldn't be much. She had never tried to do her harm, nor ever seemed to resent her studied and arrogant aloofness; and therefore her daughter, younger and less experienced, of course, would be easy enough prey.
But Ladora's bolt, the heaviest she could send, did not pierce even the outermost fringes of her intended victim's defenses, and so vicious was the almost simultaneous counterthrust that it went through the Lyranian's hard-held block in nothing flat. Inside her brain, it wrought such hellishly poignant punishment that the matriarch, forgetting everything, tried only and madly to scream. She could not. She could not move a muscle of her face or of her body. She could not even fall. And the one brief glimpse she had into the stranger's mind showed it to be such a blaze of incandescent fury that she, who had never feared in the slightest any living creature, knew now in full measure what fear was.
"I'd like to give that alleged brain of yours a real massage, just for fun." Karen forced her emotion to subside to a mere seething rage, and Ladora watched her do it. "But since this whole stinking planet is my mother's dish, not mine, she'd blast me to a cinder—she's done it before—if I dip in." She cooled further—visibly. "At that, I don't suppose you're too bad an egg, in your own poisonous way—you just don't know any better. So maybe I'd better warn you, you poor fool, since you haven't got sense enough to see it, that you're playing with a live fuse when you push my mother around like you've been doing. About one more millimeter of it and she'll get mad—like I did a second ago except more so—and you'll wish to Klono you had never been born. She'll never make a sign until she blows up, but I'm telling you that she's as much harder and tougher than I am as she is older, and what she always does to people who cross her I wouldn't want to watch happen again, even to a snake. Want to know what she'll do to you first? She'll pick you up, curl you into a perfect circle, pull off your arms, shove both your legs down your throat to the knees, and roll you down that chute there into the ocean. After that I don't know what she'll do—depends on how much pressure she develops before she blows up. One thing, though, she's always sorry afterward—why, she even attends the funeral, sometimes, and insists on paying the expenses!"
With which outrageous thought she kissed Clarrissa an enthusiastic good-by. "Told you I couldn't stay a minute. Got to do a flit—'see a man about a dog.' Came a million parsecs to squeeze you, Mums, but it was worth it. Clear ether!"
She was gone; and it was a dewy-eyed and rapt mother, not a Lensman, who turned to the still completely disorganized Lyranian. Clarrissa had perceived nothing whatever of what had happened—Karen had very carefully seen to that.
"My daughter," Clarrissa mused, as much to herself as to Ladora. "One of four. The four dearest, finest, sweetest girls that ever lived. I often wonder how a woman of my limitations, of my faults, could possibly have borne such children."
And Ladora of Lyrane, humorless and literal as all Lyranians are, took those thoughts at their face value and correlated their every connotation and implication with what she herself had perceived in that "dear, sweet" daughter's mind; with what that daughter had done and had said. The nature and quality of this hellish person's "limitations" and "faults" became eminently clear, and as she perceived what she thought was the truth, the Lyranian literally cringed.
"As you know, I have been in doubt as to whether or not to support you actively, as you wish," Ladora offered, as the two walked together across the field, toward the line of ground-cars. "On the one hand, the certainty that the safety, and perhaps the very existence, of my race will be at hazard; on the other the possibility that you are right in saying that the situation will continue to deteriorate if we do nothing. The decision has not been an easy one to make." Ladora was no longer aloof. She was just plain scared. She had been talking against time, and hoping that the help for which she had long since called would arrive in time. "I have touched only the outer surfaces of your mind. Will you allow me, without offense, to test its inner quality before deciding definitely?" she asked, and in the instant of asking sent out an exploratory tentacle of thought which was in actuality a full-driven probe.
"I will not." Ladora's beam struck a barrier which seemed to her exactly like the daughter's. None of her race had developed anything like it. She had never seen ... yes, she had, too—years ago, when she was a child, that time in the assembly hall—that utterly hated male, Kinnison of Tellus! This visitor, then, was not a real person at all, but afemale—Kinnison's female—the Red Lensman, of whom even Lyrane had heard—and that pers ... thatthingwas their offspring! But behind that impenetrable block there might very well be—there probably was—exactly the kind of mind that the offspring had described. A creature who was physically a person, but mentally that inconceivable monstrosity, afemale, might be anything and might do anything. Ladora temporized.
"Excuse me; I did not mean to intrude against your will," she apologized, smoothly enough. "Since your attitude makes it extremely difficult for me to co-operate with you, I can make no promises as yet. What is it that you wish to know first?"
"I wish to interview your predecessor Elder Person, the one we called Helen." Strangely refreshed, in a sense galvanized by the brief personal visit with her dynamic daughter, it was no longer Mrs. Kimball Kinnison who faced the Lyranian Queen. Instead, it was the Red Lensman; a full-powered Second-Stage Lensman who had finally decided that, since appeals to reason, logic, and common sense had no perceptible effect upon this stiff-necked near-woman, the time had come to bear down. "Furthermore, I intend to interview her now, and not at some such indefinite future time as your whim may see fit to allow."
Ladora sent out a final desperate call for help and mustered her every force against the interloper. Fast and strong as her mind was, however, the Red Lensman's was faster and stronger. The Lyranian's defensive structure was wrecked in the instant of its building, the frantically struggling mind was taken overin toto. Help arrived—uselessly; since, although Clarrissa's newly enlarged mind had not been put to warlike use, it was brilliantly keen and ultimately sure. Nor, in times of stress, did the softer side of her nature operate to stay mind or hand. While carrying Lensman's Load she contained no more of ruth for Civilization's foes than did abysmally frigid Nadreck himself.
Head thrown back, taut and tense, gold-flecked tawny eyes flashing, she stood there for a moment and took on her shield everything that those belligerent persons could send. More, she returned it in kind, plus; and under those withering blasts of force more than one of her attackers ceased to live. Then, still holding her block, she and her unwilling captive raced across the field toward the line of peculiar little fabric-and-wire machines which were still the last word in Lyranian air transport.
Clarrissa knew that the Lyranians had no modern offensive or defensive weapons. They did, however, have some fairly good artillery at that airport; and she hoped fervently as she ran that she could put out jets enough to spoil the aim and fusing—luckily, they hadn't developed proximity fuses yet!—of what ack-ack they could bring to bear on her crate during the few minutes she would have to use it. Fortunately, there was no artillery at the small, unimportant airport on which her speedster lay.
"Here we are. We'll take this tripe—it's the fastest thing here!"
Clarrissa could operate the triplane, of course—any knowledge or ability that Ladora had ever had was now and permanently the Lensman's. She started the queer engines; and as the powerful little plane screamed into the air, hanging from its props, she devoted what of her mind she could spare to the problem of antiaircraft fire. She could not handle all the guncrews; but she could and did command the most important members of most of them. Thus, nearly all of the shells either went wide or exploded too soon. Since she knew every point of aim of the few guns with whose operations she could not interfere, she avoided their missiles by not being at any one of those points at the predetermined instant of functioning.
Thus plane and passengers escaped unscathed and in a matter of minutes arrived at their destination. The Lyranians there had been alerted, of course; but they were few in number and they had not been informed that it would take physical force, not mental, to keep that red-headed pseudoperson from boarding her outlandish ship of space.
In a few more minutes, then, Clarrissa and her captive, safe in the speedster, were high in the stratosphere. Clarrissa sat Ladora down—hard—in a seat and fastened the safety straps.
"Stay in that seat and keep your thoughts to yourself," she directed, curtly. "If you don't, you'll never again either move or think in this life." She opened a sliding door, put on a couple of wisps of Manarkan glamourette, reached for a dress, and paused. Eyes glowing, she gazed hungrily at a suit of plain gray leather; a costume which she had not as yet so much as tried on. Should she wear it, or not?
She could work efficiently—at service maximum, really—in ordinary clothes. Ditto, although she didn't like to, unclothed. In Gray, though, she could hit absolute max if she had to. Nor had there ever been any question of right involved; the only barrier had been her own hypersensitivity.
For over twenty years she herself had been the only one to deny her right. What license, she was wont to ask, did an imitation or synthetic or amateur or "Red" Lensman have to wear the garb which meant so much to so many? Over those years, however, it had become increasingly widely known that hers was one of the five finest and most powerful minds in the entire Gray Legion; and when Co-ordinator Kinnison recalled her to active duty in Unattached status, that Legion passed by unanimous vote a resolution asking her to join them in Gray. Psychics all, they knew that nothing less would suffice; that if there was any trace of resentment or of antagonism or of feeling that she did not intrinsically belong, she would never don the uniform which every adherent of Civilization so revered and for which, deep down, she had always so intensely longed. The Legion had sent her these Grays. Kit had convinced her that she did actually deserve them.
She really should wear them. She would.
She put them on, thrilling to the core as she did so, and made the quick little gesture she had seen Kim make so many times. Lensman's Seal. No one, however accustomed, has ever donned or ever will don unmoved the plain gray leather of the Unattached Lensman of the Galactic Patrol.
Hands on hips, she studied herself minutely and approvingly, both in the mirror and by means of her vastly more efficient sense of perception. She wriggled a little, and giggled inwardly as she remembered deploring as "exhibitionistic" this same conduct in her oldest daughter.
The Grays fitted her perfectly. A bit revealing, perhaps, but her figure was still good—very good, as a matter of fact. Not a speck of dirt or tarnish. Her DeLameters were fully charged. Her tremendous Lens flamed brilliantly upon her wrist. She looked—and felt—ready. She could hit absolute max in a fraction of a microsecond. If she had to get really tough, she would. She sent out a call.
"Helen of Lyrane! I know they've got you around here somewhere, and, if any of your guards try to screen outthisthought, I'll burn their brains out. Clarrissa of Sol III calling. Come in, Helen!"
"Clarrissa!" This time there was no interference. A world of welcome was in every nuance of the thought. "Where are you?"
"High up, at—" Clarrissa gave her position. "I'm in my speedster, so can get to anywhere on the planet in minutes. More important, where are you? And why?"
"In jail, in my own—the Elder Person's—office." Queens should have palaces, but Lyrane's ruler did not. Everything was strictly utilitarian. "The tower on the corner, remember? On the top floor. 'Why' is too long to discuss now—I'd better tell you as much as possible of what you should know, while there is time."
"Time? Are you in danger?"
"Yes. Ladora would have killed me long ago if it had dared. My following grows less daily, the Boskonians stronger. The guards have already summoned help. They are coming now, to take me."
"That's whattheythink!" Clarrissa had already reached the scene. She had exactly the velocity she wanted. She slanted downward in a screaming dive. "Can you tell whether they're limbering up any of that ack-ack around the office, or not?"
"I don't believe so—I don't feel any such thoughts."
"QX. Get away from the window." If they hadn't started already, they never would start, the Red Lensman was deadly sure of that.
She came within range—her range—of the guns. She was in time. Several gunners were running toward their stations. None of them arrived. The speedster leveled off and stuck its hard nose into and almost through the indicated room; reinforced concrete, steel bars, and glass showering abroad as it did so. The port snapped open. As Helen leaped in, Clarrissa practically threw Ladora out.
"Bring Ladora back!" Helen demanded. "I shall have its life!"
"Nix!" Clarrissa snapped. "I know everything that she does. We've other fish to fry, my dear."
The massive door clanged shut. The speedster darted forward, straight through the solid concrete wall. That small vessel, solidly built of beryllium alloys, had been designed to take brutal punishment. She took it.
Out in open space, Clarrissa went free, leaving the artificial gravity at normal. Helen stood up, took Clarrissa's hand, and shook it gravely and strongly; a gesture at which the Red Lensman almost choked.
Helen of Lyrane had changed even less than had the Earthwoman. She was still six feet tall; erect, taut, springy, and poised. She didn't weigh a pound more than the one-eighty she had scaled twenty-odd years ago. Her vivid auburn hair showed not one strand of gray. Her eyes were as clear and as proud; her skin almost as fine and firm.
"You are, then, alone?" In spite of her control, Helen's thought showed relief.
"Yes. My hus ... Kimball Kinnison is very busy elsewhere." Clarrissa understood perfectly. Helen, after twenty years of thinking things over, really liked her; but she still simply couldn't stand a male, not even Kim; any more than Clarrissa could ever adapt herself to the Lyranian habit of using the neuter pronoun "it" when referring to one of themselves. She couldn't. Anybody who ever got a glimpse of Helen would have to think of her as "she"! But enough of this wool-gathering—which had taken perhaps one millisecond of time.
"There's nothing to keep us from working together perfectly," Clarrissa's thought flashed on. "Ladora didn't know much, and you do. So tell me all about things, so that we can decide where to begin!"
XVII.
When Kandron called his minion in that small and nameless base to learn whether or not he had succeeded in trapping the Palainian Lensman, Nadreck's relay station functioned so perfectly, and Nadreck was so completely in charge of his captive's mind, that the caller could feel nothing out of the ordinary. Ultra-suspicious though Kandron was, there was nothing whatever to indicate that anything had changed at, or pertaining to, that base since he had last called its commander. That individual's subconscious mind reacted properly to the key stimulus. The conscious mind took over, remembered, and answered properly a series of trick questions.
These things occurred because the Base Commander was still alive. His ego, the pattern and matrix of his personality, was still in existence and had not been changed. What Kandron did not and could not suspect was that that ego was no longer in control of the commander's mind, brain, or body; that it was utterly unable of its own volition, either to think any iota of independent thought or to stimulate any single physical cell. The Onlonian's ego was present—just barely present—but that was all. It was Nadreck who, using that ego as a guide and, in a sense, as a helplessly impotent transformer, received the call. Nadreck made those exactly correct replies. Nadreck was now ready to render a detailed and fully documented—and completely mendacious—report upon his own destruction!
Nadreck's special tracers were already out, determining line and intensity. Strippers and analyzers were busily at work on the fringes of the beam, dissecting out, isolating, and identifying each of the many scraps of extraneous thought accompanying the main beam. These side-thoughts, in fact, were Nadreck's prime concern. The Second-Stage Lensmen had learned that no being—except possibly an Arisian—could narrow a beam of thought down to one single, pure sequence. Only Nadreck, however, recognized in those side-bands a rich field; only he had designed and developed mechanisms with which to work that field.
The stronger and clearer the mind, the fewer and less complete were the extraneous fragments of thought; but Nadreck knew that even Kandron's brain would carry quite a few such nongermane accompaniments, and from each of those bits he could reconstruct an entire sequence as accurately as a competent paleontologist reconstructs a prehistoric animal from one fossilized piece of bone.
Thus Nadreck was completely ready when the harshly domineering Kandron asked his first real question.
"I do not suppose that you have succeeded in killing the Lensman?"
"Yes, Your Supremacy, I have." Nadreck could feel Kandron's start of surprise; could perceive without his instruments Kandron's fleeting thoughts of the hundreds of unsuccessful previous attempts upon his life. It was clear that the Onlonian was not at all credulous.
"Report in detail!" Kandron ordered.
Nadreck did so, adhering rigidly to the truth up to the moment in which his probes of force had touched off the Boskonian alarms. Then:
"Spy-ray photographs taken at the instant of alarm show an indetectable speedster, with one, and only one occupant, as Your Supremacy anticipated. A careful study of all the pictures taken of that occupant shows: first, that he was definitely alive at that time, and was neither a projection nor an artificial mechanism; and second, that his physical measurements agree in every particular with the specifications furnished by Your Supremacy as being those of Nadreck of Palain VII.
"Since Your Supremacy personally computed and supervised the placement of those projectors," Nadreck went smoothly on, "you know that the possibility is vanishingly small that any material thing, free or inert, could have escaped destruction. As a check, I caused to be taken seven hundred twenty-nine—three to the sixth power—samples of the circumambient space, statistically at random, for analysis. After appropriate allowances for the exactly-observed elapsed times of sampling, diffusion of droplets and molecular and atomic aggregates, temperatures, pressures, and all other factors known or assumed to be operating, I determined that there had been present in the center of action of our beams a mass of approximately four thousand six hundred seventy-eight point one metric tons. This value, Your Supremacy will note, is in close agreement with the most efficient mass of an indetectable speedster designed for long-distance work."
That figure was in fact closer than close. It was an almost exact statement of the actual mass of Nadreck's ship.
"Exact composition?" Kandron demanded.
Nadreck recited a rapid-fire string of elements and figures. They, too, were correct within the experimental error of a very good analyst. The Base Commander could not possibly have known them; but it was well within the bounds of possibility that the insidious Kandron would. He did. He was now practically certain that his ablest and bitterest enemy had been destroyed at last, but there were still a few lingering shreds of doubt.
"Let me look over your work," Kandron directed.
"Yes, Your Supremacy." Nadreck the Thorough was ready for even that extreme test. Through the eyes of the ultimately enslaved Base Commander Kandron checked and rechecked Nadreck's pictures, Nadreck's charts and diagrams, Nadreck's more than four hundred pages of mathematical, physical, and chemical notes and determinations; all without finding a single flaw.
In the end Kandron was ready to believe that Nadreck had in fact ceased to exist. However, he himself had not done the work. There was no corpse. If he himself had killed the Palainian, if he himself had actually felt the Lensman's life depart in the grasp of his own tentacles, then, and only then, would he haveknownthat Nadreck was dead. As it was, even though the work had been done in exact accordance with his own instructions, there remained an infinitesimal uncertainty. Wherefore:
"Shift your field of operations to cover X-174, Y-240, Z-16. Do not relax your vigilance in the slightest because of what has happened." He considered briefly the idea of allowing his minion to call him, in case anything happened, but decided against it. "Are the men standing up?"
"Yes, Your Supremacy, they are in very good shape indeed."
And so on. "Yes, Your Supremacy, the psychologist is doing a very fine job. Yes, Your Supremacy ... yes ... yes ... yes—"
Very shortly after the characteristically Kandronesque ending of that interview, Nadreck had learned everything he needed to know. He knew where Kandron was and what he was doing. He knew much of what Kandron had done during the preceding twenty years; and, since he himself figured prominently in many of those sequences, they constituted invaluable checks upon the validity of his other reconstructions. He knew the construction, the armament, and the various ingenious mechanisms, including the locks, of Kandron's vessel; he knew more than any other outsider had ever known of Kandron's private life. He knew where Kandron was going next, and what he was going to do there. He knew in broad what Kandron intended to do during the coming century.
Thus well informed, Nadreck set his speedster into a course toward the planet of Civilization which was Kandron's next objective. He did not hurry; it was no part of his plan to interfere in any way in the horrible program of planet-wide madness and slaughter which Kandron had in mind. It simply did not occur to him to try to save the planet as well as to kill the Onlonian; Nadreck, being Nadreck, took without doubt or question the safest and surest course.
Nadreck knew that Kandron would set his vessel into an orbit around the planet, and that he would take a small boat—a flitter—for the one personal visit necessary to establish his lines of communication and control. Vessel and flitter would be alike indetectable, of course; but Nadreck found the one easily enough and knew when the other left its mother-ship. Then, using his lightest, stealthiest spy rays, the Palainian set about the exceedingly delicate business of boarding the Boskonian craft.
That undertaking could be made a story in its own right, for Kandron did not leave his ship unguarded. However, merely by thinking about his own safety, Kandron had all unwittingly given away the keys to his supposedly impregnable fortress. While Kandron was wondering whether or not the Lensman was really dead, and especially after he had been convinced that he most probably was, the Onlonian's thoughts had touched fleetingly upon a multitude of closely-related subjects. Would it be safe to abandon some of the more onerous precautions he had always taken, and which had served him so well for so many years? And as he thought of them, each one of his safeguards flashed at least partially into view; and for Nadreck, any significant part was practically as good as the whole. Kandron's protective devices, therefore, did not protect. Projectors, designed to flame out against intruders, remained cold. Ports opened; and as Nadreck touched sundry buttons, various invisible beams, whose breaking would have produced unpleasant results, ceased to exist. In short, Nadreck knew all the answers. If he had not been coldly certain that his information was complete, he would not have acted at all.
After entry, his first care was to send out spotting devices which would give ample warning in case the Onlonian should return unexpectedly soon. Then, working in the service-spaces behind instrument boards and panels, in junction boxes, and in various other out-of-the-way places, he cut into lead after lead, ran wire after wire, and installed item after item of apparatus and equipment upon which he had been at work for weeks. He finished his work undisturbed. He checked and rechecked the circuits, making absolutely certain that every major one of the vessel's controlling leads ran to or through at least one of the things he had just installed. With painstaking nicety he obliterated every visible sign of his visit. He departed as carefully as he had come; restoring to full efficiency as he went each one of Kandron's burglar alarms.
Kandron returned, entered his ship as usual, stored his flitter, and extended a tentacular member toward the row of switches on his panel.
"Don't touch anything, Kandron," he was advised by a thought as cold and as deadly as any one of his own; and upon the Onlonian equivalent of a visiplate there appeared the one likeness which he least expected and least desired to perceive.
"Nadreck of Palain VII—Star A Star—THE Lensman!" The Onlonian was physically and emotionally incapable of gasping, but the idea is appropriate. "You have, then, wired and mined this ship."
There was a subdued clicking of relays. The Bergenholm came up to speed, the speedster spun about and darted straight away from the planet under a couple of kilodynes of drive.
"I am Nadreck of Palain VII, yes. One of the group of Lensmen whose collective activities you have ascribed to Star A Star andtheLensman. Your ship is, as you have deduced, mined. The only reason you did not die as you entered it is that I wish to be absolutely certain; and not merely statistically so, that it is actually Kandron of Onlo, and not someone else, who dies."
"That unutterable fool!" Kandron quivered in helpless rage. "Oh, that I had taken the time and killed you myself!"
"If you had done your own work, the techniques I used here could not have been employed, and you might have been in no danger at the present moment," Nadreck admitted, equably enough. "My powers are small, my intellect feeble, and what might have been has no present bearing. I am inclined, however, to question the validity of your conclusions, due to the known fact that you have been directing a campaign against me for over twenty years without success; whereas I have succeeded against you in less than half a year. My analysis is now complete. You may now touch any control you please. By the way, you do not deny that you are Kandron of Onlo, do you?"
Neither of those monstrous beings asked, suggested, or even thought of mercy. In neither of their languages was there any word for or concept of such a thing.
"That would be idle. You have a record of my life pattern, of course, just as I have one of yours. But I cannot understand how you got through that—"
"It is not necessary that you should. Do you wish to close one of those switches or shall I?"
Kandron had been thinking for minutes, studying every aspect of his predicament. Knowing Nadreck, he knew just how desperate the situation was. However, there was one very small chance—just one. The way he had come was clear. He knew that that was theonlyclear way. Wherefore, to gain an extra instant of time, he reached out toward a switch; but even while he was reaching he put every ounce of his tremendous strength into a leap which hurled him across the room toward his flitter.
No luck. One of Nadreck's minor tentacles was already curled around a switch, tensed and ready. Kandron had not moved a foot when a relay snapped shut and four canisters of duodec detonated as one. Duodecaplylatomate, that frightful detonant whose violence is exceeded only by that of nuclear disintegration itself!
There was an appalling flash of viciously white light, which expanded in microseconds into an enormous globe of incandescent gas. Cooling and darkening as it expanded rapidly into the near-vacuum of interplanetary space, the gases and vapors soon became invisible. Through and throughout the entire volume of volatilization Nadreck drove analyzers and detectors, until it was a mathematical certainty that no particle of material substance larger in diameter than five microns remained of either Kandron or his spaceship. He then called the Gray Lensman.
"Kinnison. Nadreck of Palain VII calling, to report that my assignment has been completed. I have destroyed Kandron of Onlo."
"Good! Fine business, ace! What kind of a picture did you get? He must have known something about the higher echelons—or did he? Was he just another dead end?"
"I did not go into that."
"Huh? Why not?" Kinnison demanded, exasperation in every line of his thought.
"Because it was not included in the project," Nadreck explained, patiently. "You already know that one must concentrate in order to work efficiently. To secure the requisite minimum of information it was necessary to steer his thoughts into one, and only one, set of channels. There were some foreign side-bands, of course, and it may be that some of them touched upon this new subject which you have now, too late, introduced ... no, there were no such."
"Damnation!" Kinnison exploded; then by main strength shut himself up. "QX, ace; skip it. But listen, my spiny and murderous friend. Get this—engrave it in big type right on the top-side inside of your thick skull—what we want is INFORMATION, not mere liquidation. Next time you get hold of such a big shot as Kandron must have been, don't kill him until either: first, you get some leads as to who or what the real head of the outfit is; or, second, you make sure that he doesn't know. Then kill him all you want to, but FIND OUT WHAT HE KNOWS FIRST. Have I made myself clear this time?"
"You have, and as Co-ordinator your instructions should and will govern. I point out, however, that the introduction of a multiplicity of objectives into a problem not only destroys its unity, but also increases markedly both the time necessary for, and the actual personal danger involved in, its solution."
"So what?" Kinnison countered, as evenly as he could. "That way, we may be able to get the answer some day. Your way, we never will. But the thing's done—there's no use yapping and yowling about it now. Have you any ideas as to what you should do next?"
"No. Whatever you wish, that I shall try to do."
"I'll check with the others." He did so, receiving no helpful ideas until he consulted his wife.
"Hi, Kim, my dear!" came Clarrissa's buoyant thought; and, after a brief but intense greeting: "Glad you called. Nothing definite enough yet to report to you officially, but there are indications that Lyrane IX may be an important—"
"Nine?" Kinnison interrupted. "Not Eight again?"
"Nine," she confirmed. "A new item. So I may be doing a flit over there one of these days."
"Uh-uh," he denied. "Lyrane IX would be none of your business. Stay away from it."
"Says who?" she demanded. "We went into this once before, Kim, about you telling me what I could and couldn't do."
"Yeah, and I came out second best." Kinnison grinned. "But now, as the Co-ordinator, I make suggestions to even Second-Stage Lensmen, and they follow them—or else. I, therefore, suggest officially that you stay away from Lyrane IX on the grounds that since it is colder than a Palainian's heart, it is definitely not your problem, but Nadreck's. And personally, I am adding that if you don't behave yourself I'll come over there and administer appropriate physical persuasion."
"Come on over—that would be fun!" Clarrissa giggled, then sobered quickly. "But seriously, you win, I guess—this time. You'll keep me informed?"
"I'll do that. Clear ether, Chris!" and he turned back to the Palainian.
"... so you see this is your problem. Go to it, little chum."
"I go, Kinnison."
XVIII.
For hours Camilla Kinnison and Tregonsee wrestled separately and fruitlessly with the problem of the elusive "X." Then, after she had studied the Rigellian's mind in a fashion which he could neither detect nor employ, Camilla broke the mental silence.
"Uncle Trig, my conclusions frighten me. Can you conceive of the possibility that it was contact withmymind, not yours, that made 'X' run away?"
"That is the only tenable conclusion. I know the limitations of my own mind, but I have never been able to guess at the capabilities of yours. I fear that I, at least, underestimated our opponent."
"I know that I did, and I was terribly wrong. I shouldn't have tried to fool you, either, even a little bit. There are some things about me that I justcan'tshow to most people, but you are different—you'resucha wonderful person!"
"Thanks, Camilla, for your trust." Understandingly, he did not go on to say that he would keep on being worthy of it. "I accept the fact that you Five, being children of two Second-Stage Lensmen, are basically beyond my comprehension. There are indications that you do not as yet thoroughly understand yourself. You have, however, decided upon a course of action."
"Oh—I'msorelieved! Yes, I have. But before we go into that, I haven't been able to solve the problem of 'X.' More, I have proved that I cannot solve it without more data. Therefore, you can't, either. Check?"
"I had not yet reached that conclusion, but I accept your statement as truth."
"One of those uncommon powers of mine, to which you referred a while ago, is a wide range of perception, from large masses down to extremely tiny components. Another, or perhaps a part of the same one, is that, after resolving and analyzing these fine details, I can build up a logical and coherent whole by processes of interpolation and extrapolation."
"I can believe that such things would be possible to such a mind as yours must be. Go on."
"Well, that is how I know that I underestimated Mr. 'X.' Whoever or whatever he is, I am completely unable to resolve the structure of his thought. I gave you all I got of it. Look at it again, please—hard. What can you make of it now?"
"It is exactly the same as it was before; a fragment of a simple and plain introductory thought to an audience. That is all."
"That's all I can see, too, and that's what surprises me so." The hitherto imperturbable and serene Camilla got up and began to pace the floor. "That thought is apparently absolutely solid; and since that is a definitely impossible condition, the truth is that its structure is so fine that I cannot resolve it into its component units. This fact shows that I am not nearly so competent as I thought I was. When you and Dad and the others reached that point, you each went to Arisia. I have decided to do the same thing."
"That decision seems eminently sound."
"Thanks, Uncle Trig—that was what I hoped you would say. I have never been there, you know, and the idea scared me a little. Clear ether!"
There is no need to go into detail as to Camilla's bout with Mentor. Her mind, like Karen's, had had to mature of itself before any treatment could be really effective; but once mature, she took as much in one session as Kathryn had taken in all her many. She had not suggested that the Rigellian accompany her to Arisia; they both knew that he had already received all that he could take. Upon her return she greeted him as casually as though she had been gone only a matter of hours.
"What Mentor did to me, Uncle Trig, shouldn't have been done to a Delgonian catlat. It doesn't show too much, though, I hope—does it?"
"Not at all." He scanned her narrowly, both physically and mentally. "I can perceive no change in detail. In general, however, you have changed. You have developed."
"Yes, more than I would have believed possible. I can't do much with my present very poor transcription of that thought, since the all-important fine detail is missing. We'll have to intercept another one. I'll get itall, this time, and it will tell us a lot."
"But you did something with this one, I am sure. There must have been some developable features—a sort of latent-image effect?"
"A little. Practically infinitesimal compared to what was really there. Physically, his classification to four places is TUUV; quite a bit like the Nevians, you notice. His home planet is big, and practically covered with liquid. No real cities, just groups of half-submerged, temporary structures. Mentality very high, but we knew that already. Normally, he thinks upon a very short wave, so short that he was then working at the very bottom of his range. His sun is a fairly hot main-sequence-star, of spectral class somewhere around F, and it's probably more or less variable, because there was quite a distinct implication of change. But that's normal enough, isn't it?"
Within the limits imposed by the amount and kind of data available, Camilla's observations and analyses had been perfect, her reconstruction flawless. She did not then have any idea, however, that "X" was in fact a spring-form Plooran. More, she did not even know that such a planet as Ploor existed, except for Mentor's one mention of it.
"Of course. Peoples of planets of variable suns think that such suns are the only kind fit to have planets. You cannot reconstruct the nature of the change?"
"No. Worse, I can't find even a hint of where his planet is in space—but then, I probably couldn't, anyway, even with a whole, fresh thought to study."
"Probably not. 'Rigel Four' would be an utterly meaningless thought to anyone ignorant of Rigel; and, except when making a conscious effort, as in directing strangers, I never think of its location in terms of galactic co-ordinates. I suppose that the location of a home planet is always taken for granted. That would seem to leave us just about where we were before in our search for 'X,' except for your implied ability to intercept another of his thoughts, almost at will. Explain, please."