"No let-up for a second; they're not taking any chances at all. Found out where we are? Alsakan ought to be hereabouts somewhere, hadn't it?"
"I've got our coördinate roughly. Alsakan would be fairly close for a ship, but it's out of the question for us. Nothing much inhabited around here, either, apparently; to say nothing of being civilized. Scarcely one to the block. Don't think I've been out here before. Have you?"
"Off my beat entirely. How long do you figure it'll be before it's safe for us to blast off?"
"Can't start blasting until your plates are clear. Anything we can detect can detect us as soon as we start putting out power."
"We may be in for a spell of waiting then——" VanBuskirk broke off suddenly and his tone changed to one of tense excitement. "Great blasts of fire! Look at that!"
"Blinding blue blazes!" Kinnison exclaimed, staring into the plate. "With all macro-universal space and all the time in eternity to play around in, the blind god of chance had to bring her back here and now!"
For there, right in their laps, not a hundred miles away, lay theBrittaniaand her two pirate captors!
"Better go free, hadn't we?" whispered VanBuskirk.
"Daren't!" grunted Kinnison. "At this range they'd spot us in a split second. Acting like a hunk of loose metal's our only chance. We'll be able to dodge any flying chunks, I think. There she goes!"
From their coign of vantage the two patrolmen saw their gallant ship's terrific end, saw the one pirate vessel suffer collision with the flying fragment, saw the other escape inertialess, saw her disappear.
The inert pirate vessel had now almost exactly the same velocity as the lifeboat, both in speed and in direction; only very slowly were the large craft and the small approaching each other. Kinnison stood rigid, staring into his plate, his nervous hands grasping the switches whose closing, at the first sign of detection, would render them inertialess and would pour full blast into their driving projectors. But minute after minute passed and nothing happened.
"Why don't they do something?" he burst out, finally. "They know we're here. There isn't a detector made that could be badly enough out of order to miss us at this distance. Why, they canseeus from there, with no detectors at all!"
"Asleep, unconscious, or dead," VanBuskirk diagnosed. "And they certainly are not asleep. And believe me, Kim, that ship was nudged. It's quite possible that she was hit hard enough to lay out most of her crew cold—anyway enough of them to put her out of control. And say, it's a practical certainty that she has a standard emergency inlet port. How about it, huh?"
Kinnison's mind leaped eagerly at the daring suggestion of his subordinate, but he did not reply at once. Their first, theironlyduty, concerned the safety of two spools of tape. But if the lifeboat lay there inert until the pirates regained control of their craft, detection and capture were certain. The same fate was as certain should they attempt flight with all near-by space so full of enemy fliers. Therefore, hare-brained though it appeared at first glance, VanBuskirk's wild idea was actually the safest course!
"All right, Bus, we'll try it. We'll take a chance on going free and using a tenth of a dyne of drive for a hundredth of a second. Get into the lock with your magnets."
The lifeboat flashed against the pirate's armored side and the sergeant, by deftly manipulating his two small hand magnets, worked it rapidly along the steel plating toward the driving jets. There, in the conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors, was indeed the emergency inlet port, with its galactic-standard controls.
There—in the conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors—was the emergency inlet port.
There—in the conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors—was the emergency inlet port.
There—in the conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors—was the emergency inlet port.
In a few minutes the two warriors were inside, dashing toward the control room. There Kinnison glanced at the board and heaved a sigh of relief.
"Fine! Same type as the one we studied. Same race, too," he went on, eyeing the motionless forms scattered about the floor. Seizing one of the bodies, he propped it against a panel, thus obscuring a multiple lens.
"That's the eye overlooking the control room," he explained unnecessarily. "We can't cut their headquarters visibeams without creating suspicion, but we don't want them looking around in here until after we have done a little stage setting for them."
"But they'll get suspicious anyway when we go free," VanBuskirk protested.
"Sure, but we'll arrange for that later. First thing we've got to do is to make sure that all the crew, except possibly one or two in here, are really dead. Don't beam unless you have to; we want to make it look as though everybody got killed or fatally injured in the crash."
A complete tour of the vessel, with a grim and distasteful accompaniment, was made. Not all of the pirates were dead, or even disabled; but, unarmored as they were and taken completely by surprise, the survivors could offer but little resistance. A cargo port was opened and theBrittania'slifeboat was drawn inside. Then back to the control room, where Kinnison picked up another body and strode to the main panels.
"This fellow," he announced, "was hurt badly, but managed to get to the board. He threw in the free switch, like this, and then full-blast drive, so. Then he pulled himself over to the steering globe and tried to lay the pointers back toward headquarters, but couldn't quite make it. He died with the course set right there. Not exactly toward the solar system, you notice—that would be too much of a coincidence—but close enough to help a lot. His bracelet got caught in the guard, like this. There is clear evidence as to exactly what happened. Now we'll get out of range of that eye, and let the body that's covering it float away naturally."
"Now what?" asked VanBuskirk, after the two had hidden themselves.
"Nothing whatever until we have to," was the reply. "Wish we could go on like this for a couple of weeks, but there's not a chance. Headquarters will get curious pretty quick as to why we're shoving off."
Even as he spoke a furious burst of noise erupted from the communicator; a noise which meant:
"Vessel F47U596! Where are you going, and why? Report!"
At that brusque command one of the still forms struggled weakly to its knees and tried to frame words, but fell back dead.
"Perfect!" Kinnison breathed into VanBuskirk's ear. "Couldn't have been better. Now they'll probably take their time about rounding us up. Listen, here comes some more."
The communicator was again sending. "See if you can get a direction on their transmitter!"
"If there are any survivors able to report, do so at once!" Kinnison understood the dynamic cone to say. Then the voice moderating, as though the speaker had turned from his microphone to someone near-by, it went on, "No one answers, sir. This, you know, is the ship that was lying closest to the new patrol ship when she exploded; so close that her navigator did not have time to go free before collision with the débris. The crew were apparently all killed or incapacitated by the shock."
"If any of the officers survive have them brought in for trial," a more distant voice commanded, savagely. "Boskone has no use for bunglers except to serve as examples. Have the ship seized and returned here as soon as possible."
"Could you trace it, Bus?" Kinnison demanded. "Even one line on their headquarters would be mighty useful."
"No, it came in scrambled—couldn't separate it from the rest of the static out there. Now what?"
"Now we eat and sleep. Particularly and most emphatically, we sleep."
"Watches?"
"No need; I'll be awakened in plenty of time if anything happens. My Lens, you know."
They ate ravenously and slept prodigiously; then ate and slept again. Rested and refreshed, they studied charts, but VanBuskirk's mind was very evidently not upon the maps before them.
"You understand that jargon, and it doesn't even sound like a language to me," he pondered. "It's the Lens, of course. Maybe it's something that shouldn't be talked about?"
"No secret—not among us, at least," Kinnison assured him. "The Lens receives as pure thought any pattern of force which represents, or is in any way connected with, thought. My brain receives this thought in English, since that is my native language. At the same time my ears are practically out of circuit, so that I actually hear the English language instead of whatever noise is being made. I do not hear the foreign sounds at all. Therefore, I haven't the slightest idea what the pirates' language sounds like, since I have never heard any of it.
"Conversely, when I want to talk to some one who doesn't know any language I do, I simply think into the Lens and direct its force at him. He thinks I'm talking to him in his own mother tongue. Thus, you are hearing me now in perfect Valerian Dutch, even though you know that I can speak only a dozen or so words of it, and those with a vile American accent. Also, you are hearing it in my voice, even though you know I am actually not saying a word, since you can see that my mouth is wide open and that neither my lips, tongue, nor vocal cords are moving. If you were a Frenchman you would be hearing this in French; or, if you were a Manarkan and couldn't talk at all, you would be getting it as regular Manarkan telepathy."
"Oh—I see—I think," the astounded Dutchman gulped. "Then why couldn't you talk back to them through their phones?"
"Because the Lens, although a mighty fine and versatile thing, is not omnipotent," Kinnison replied, dryly. "It sends out only thought; and thought waves, lying below the level of the ether, cannot affect a microphone. The microphone, not being itself intelligent, cannot receive thought. Of course, I can broadcast a thought—everybody does; more or less—but even with the full amplification of the Lens the range is very limited. In Lens-to-Lens communication we can cover real distances, but without a Lens at the other end I can cover only a few thousand kilometers. Of course, power increases with practice, and I'm not very good at it yet."
"You can receive a thought——Everybody broadcasts——Then you can read minds?" VanBuskirk stated, rather than asked.
"When I so will it, yes. That was what I was doing while we were mopping up. I demanded the galactic coördinates of their base from every one of them alive, but none of them knew them. I got a lot of pictures and descriptions of the buildings, layout, arrangements and personnel of the base, but not a hint as to its location in space. The navigators were all dead, and not even the Arisians understand death. But that's getting pretty deeply into philosophy and it's time to eat again. Let's go!"
Days passed uneventfully, but finally the communicator again began to talk. Two pirate ships were closing in upon the supposedly derelict cruiser, discussing with each other the exact point of convergence of the three courses.
"I was hoping that we'd be able to communicate with base before they caught up with us," Kinnison remarked. "But I guess it's no dice—the ether's as full of interference as ever. They're a suspicious bunch, and they aren't going to let us get away with a single thing if they can help it. You've got that duplicate of their communications unscrambler built?"
"Yes. That was it you just listened to. I built it out of our own stuff, and I've gone over the whole ship with a cleaner. As far as I can see there isn't a trace, not even a fingerprint, to show that anybody except her own crew has ever been aboard."
"Good work! This course takes us right through a planetary system in a few minutes and we'll have to unload there. Let's see. This chart marks planets two and three as inhabited, but with a red reference number, twenty-seven. That means practically unexplored and unknown. No patrol representation or connection—no commerce—state of civilization unknown—visited only once, in the Third Galactic Survey. That was in the days of the semi-inert drive, when it took years to cross the galaxy. Not so good, apparently—but maybe all the better for us, at that. Anyway, it's a forced landing, so get ready to shove off."
They boarded their lifeboat, placed it in the cargo lock, opened the outer port upon its automatic block, and waited. At their awful galactic speed the diameter of a solar system would be traversed in such a small fraction of a second that observation would be impossible, to say nothing of computation. They would have to act first and compute later.
They flashed into the strange system. A planet loomed terrifyingly close—at their frightful velocity almost invisible even upon their ultra-vision plates. The lifeboat shot out, becoming inert as it passed the screen. The cargo port swung shut. Luck had been with them; the planet was scarcely a million miles away. While VanBuskirk drove toward it, Kinnison made hasty observations.
"Could have been better—but could have been a lot worse," he reported. "This is Planet 4. Uninhabited, which is very good. Three, though, is clear over across the Sun, and Two isn't any too close for a space-sun flight—better than eighty million miles. Easy enough as far as distance goes—we've all made longer hops in our suits—but we'll be open to detection for at least twenty minutes. Can't be helped, though. Here we are!"
"Going to land her free, huh?" VanBuskirk whistled. "What a chance!"
"It'd be a bigger one to take the time to land her inert. Her power will hold—I hope. We'll inert her and match velocities with her when we come back. We'll have more time then."
The lifeboat stopped instantaneously, in a free landing, upon the uninhabited, desolate, rocky soil of the strange world. Without a word the two men leaped out, carrying fully packed knapsacks. A portable projector was then dragged out and its fierce beam directed into the base of the hill beside which they had landed. A cavern was quickly made, and while its glassy walls were still smoking-hot the lifeboat was driven within it. With their DeLameters the two wayfarers then undercut the hill, so that a great slide of soil and rock obliterated every sign of the visit. Kinnison and VanBuskirk could find their vessel again, from their accurately taken bearings; but, they hoped, no one else could.
With their DeLameters they undercut the hill—so that a great slide of soil and rock obliterated every sign of their visit.
With their DeLameters they undercut the hill—so that a great slide of soil and rock obliterated every sign of their visit.
With their DeLameters they undercut the hill—so that a great slide of soil and rock obliterated every sign of their visit.
Then, still without a word, the two adventurers flashed upward. The atmosphere of the planet, tenuous and cold though it was, nevertheless, so sorely impeded their progress, that minutes of precious time were required for the driving projectors of their suits to force them through its thin layer. Eventually, however, they were in interplanetary space and were flying at quadruple the speed of light. Then VanBuskirk spoke.
"Landing the boat, hiding it, and this trip are the danger spots. Heard anything yet?"
"No, and I don't believe we will. I think probably we've lost them completely. Won't know definitely, though, until after they catch the ship, and that won't be for ten minutes yet. We'll be landed by then."
A world now loomed beneath them, a pleasant, Earthly-appearing world of scattered clouds, green forests, rolling plains, wooded and snow-capped mountain ranges, and rolling oceans. Here and there were to be seen what looked like cities, but Kinnison gave them a wide berth, electing to land upon an open meadow in the shelter of a towering black and glassy cliff.
"Ah, just in time; they're beginning to talk," Kinnison announced. "Unimportant stuff yet, opening the ship and so on. I'll relay the talk as nearly verbatim as possible when it gets interesting." He fell silent, then went on in a singsong tone, as though he were reciting from memory, which, in effect, he was:
"'Captains of ships P4J263 and EQ769B47 calling Helmuth! We have stopped and have boarded the F47U569. Everything is in order and as deduced and reported by your observers. Every one aboard is dead. They did not all die at the same time, but they all died from the effects of the collision. There is no trace of outside interference and all the personnel are accounted for.'
"'Helmuth, speaking for Boskone. Your report is inconclusive. Search the ship minutely for tracks, prints, scratches. Note any missing supplies or misplaced items of equipment. Study carefully all mechanisms, particularly converters and communicators, for signs of tampering or dismantling.'
"Whew!" whistled Kinnison. "They'll find where you took that communicator apart, Bus, just as sure as hell's a man-trap!"
"No, they won't," declared VanBuskirk as positively. "I did it with rubber-nosed pliers, and if I left a scratch or a scar or a print on it I'll eat it, tubes and all!"
A pause.
"'We have studied everything most carefully, O Helmuth, and find no trace of tampering or visit.'
"Helmuth again: 'Your report is still inconclusive. Whoever did what has been done is probably a Lensman, and certainly hasbrains. Give me the present recorded serial number of all port openings, and the exact number of times you have opened each port.'
"Ouch!" groaned Kinnison. "If that means what I think it does, all hell's out for noon. Did you see any numbering recorders on those ports? I didn't. Of course, neither of us thought of such a thing. Shut up, here comes some more stuff.
"'Port-opening recorder serial numbers are as follows.' They don't mean a thing to us. 'We have opened the emergency inlet port once and the starboard lock twice. No other port at all.'
"And here's Helmuth again: 'Ah, as I thought. The emergency port was opened once by outsiders, and the starboard cargo port twice. The Lensman came aboard, headed the ship toward Sol, took his lifeboat aboard, listened to us, and departed at his leisure. And this in the very midst of our fleet, the entire personnel of which was supposed to be looking for him! How supposedly intelligent spacemen could be guilty of such utter and indefensive stupidity?'
"He's tellin' 'em plenty, Bus, but there's no use repeating it. The tone can't be reproduced, and it's simply taking the hide right off their backs. Here's some more: 'General broadcast! Ship F47U596 in its supposedly derelict condition flew from the point of destruction of the patrol ship, on course longitude three five one point two seven degrees, latitude five point two three degrees, distance twenty-four thousand seven hundred parsecs. Cancel all previous orders and investigate.' No use repeating it, Bus, he's simply giving directions for scouring our whole line of flight. Fading out—they're going on, or back. This outfit, of course, is good for only the closest kind of close-up work."
"And we're out of the frying pan into the fire, huh?"
"Oh, no; we're a lot better off than we were. We're on a planet and not using any power that they can trace. Also, they've got to cover so much territory that they can't comb it very fine, and that gives the rest of the fellows a break. Furthermore——"
A crushing weight descended upon his back, and the two found themselves fighting for their lives. From the bare, supposedly safe rock face of the cliff there had emerged rope-tentacled monstrosities in a ravenously attacking swarm. In the raving blasts of DeLameters hundreds of the gargoyle horde vanished in vivid flashes of radiance, but on they came, by thousands and, it seemed, by millions, dashing madly toward them.
Eventually, the batteries energizing the projectors became exhausted. Then flailing coil met shearing steel, fierce-driven parrot beaks clanged against space-tempered armor, bulbous heads pulped under hard-swung axes; but not for the fractional second necessary for inertialess flight could the two patrolmen win clear. Then Kinnison sent out his S O S.
"A Lensman calling help! A Lensman calling help!" he broadcast with the full power of mind and Lens.
Immediately a high, girlish voice poured into his brain: "Coming, wearer of the Lens! Coming at speed to the cliff of the Catlats. Hold until I come! I arrive in thirty——"
Thirty what? What possible intelligible relative measure of that unknown and unknowable concept, time, can be conveyed by thought alone?
"Keep slugging, Bus!" Kinnison panted. "Help is on the way. A local cop—voice sounds like a woman—will be here in thirty somethings. Don't know whether it's thirty minutes or thirty days; but we'll still be here."
"Maybe so and maybe not," grunted the Dutchman. "Something's coming besides help. Look up and see if you see what I think I do."
Kinnison did. Through the air from the top of the cliff there was hurtling downward toward them a veritable dragon: a nightmare's horror of hideously reptilian head, of leathern wings, of viciously fanged jaws, of frightfully taloned feet, of multiple knotty arms, of long, sinuous, heavily scaled serpent's body. In fleeting glimpses through the writhing tentacles of his opponents Kinnison perceived, little by little, the full picture of that unbelievable monstrosity; and, accustomed as he was to the outlandish denizens of worlds even yet scarcely known to man, his very senses reeled at the sight.
As the quasi-reptilian organism descended, the cliff dwellers went mad. Their attack upon the two patrolmen, already vicious, became insanely frantic. Abandoning the gigantic Dutchman entirely, every Catlat within reach threw himself upon Kinnison and so enwrapped the Lensman's head, arms, and torso that he could scarcely move a muscle. Then entwining captors and helpless man moved slowly toward the largest of the openings in the cliff's obsidian face.
Upon that slowly moving mélange VanBuskirk hurled himself, deadly space ax swinging. But, hew and smite as he would, he could neither free his chief from the grisly horde enveloping him nor impede, measurably, that horde's progress toward its goal. However, he could and did cleave away the comparatively few cables confining Kinnison's legs.
"Clamp a leg lock around my waist, Kim," he directed, the flashing thought in no whit interfering with his prodigious ax play, "and as soon as I get a chance, before the real tussle comes, I'll couple us together with all the belt snaps I can reach. Wherever we're going we're going together! Wonder why they haven't ganged up on me, too, and what that lizard is doing? Been too busy to look, but thought he'd have been on my back before this."
"He won't be on your back. That's Worsel, the lad who answered my call. I told you his voice was funny? They can't talk or hear—use telepathy, like the Manarkans. He's cleaning them out in great shape. If you can hold me for three minutes, he'll have the lot of them whipped."
"I can hold you for three minutes against all the vermin between here and Andromeda," VanBuskirk declared. "There, I've got four snaps on you."
"Not too tough, Bus," Kinnison cautioned. "Leave enough slack so that you can cut me loose if you have to. Remember that the spools are more important than any one of us. Once inside that cliff we'll all be washed up—even Worsel can't help us there—so drop me rather than go in yourself."
"Um," grunted the Dutchman, non-committally. "There, I've tossed my spool out onto the ground. Tell Worsel that if they get us he is to pick it up and carry on. We'll go ahead with yours, inside the cliff if necessary."
"I said cut me loose if you can't hold me!" Kinnison snapped, "and I meant it. That's an official order. Remember it!"
"Official order be damned!" snorted VanBuskirk, still plying his ponderous mace. "They won't get you into that hole without breaking me in two, and that will be a job of breaking in anybody's language. Now shut your pan," he concluded grimly. "We're here, and I'm going to be too busy, even to think, very shortly."
He spoke truly. He had already selected his point of resistance, and as he reached it he thrust the head of his mace into the crack behind the open trap-door, jammed its shaft into the shoulder socket of his armor, set blocky legs and Herculean arms against the side of the cliff, arched his mighty back, and held. And the surprised Catlats, now inside the gloomy fastness of their tunnel, thrust anchoring tentacles in the wall and pulled harder, ever harder.
Under the terrific stress Kinnison's heavy armor creaked as its air-tight joints accommodated themselves to their new and unusual positions. That armor, of space-tempered alloy, would, of course, not give way—but what of its human anchor?
Well it was for Kimball Kinnison that day, and well for our present civilization, that theBrittania'squartermaster selected Peter VanBuskirk for the Lensman's mate; for death, inevitable and horrible, resided within that cliff, and no human frame of Earthly upbringing, however armored, could have borne, for even a fraction of a second, the violence of the Catlats' pull.
But Peter VanBuskirk, although of Earthly Dutch ancestry, had been born and reared upon the planet Valeria, and that massive planet's gravity—over two and one half times Earth's—had given him a physique and a strength almost inconceivable to us life-long dwellers upon small, green Terra. His head, as has been said, towered seventy-eight inches above the ground; but at that he appeared squatty because of his enormous spread of shoulder and his startling girth. His bones were elephantine—they had to be, to furnish adequate support and leverage for the incredible masses of muscle overlaying and surrounding them. But even VanBuskirk's Valerian strength was now being taxed to the uttermost.
The anchoring chains hummed and snarled as the clamps bit into the rings. Muscles writhed and knotted; tendons stretched and threatened to snap; sweat rolled down his mighty back. His jaws locked in agony and his eyes started from their sockets with the effort; but still VanBuskirk held.
"Cut me loose!" commanded Kinnison at last. "Even you can't take much more of that. No use letting them break your back.Cut, I tell you. I saidcut, you big, dumb, Valerian ape!"
But if VanBuskirk heard or felt the savagely voiced commands of his chief, he gave no heed. Straining to the very ultimate fiber of his being, exerting every iota of loyal mind and every atom of Brobdingnagian frame, grimly, tenaciously, stubbornly the gigantic Dutchman held.
Held while Worsel of Velantia, that grotesquely hideous, that fantastically reptilian ally, plowed toward the two patrolmen through the horde of Catlats; a veritable tornado of rending fang and shearing talon, of beating wing and crushing snout, of mailed hand and trenchant tail.
Held while that demon incarnate drove closer and closer, hurling entire Catlats and numberless dismembered fragments of Catlats to the four winds as he came.
Held while the raging tumult, whose center was Worsel, swept over his rigid body like an ocean wave breaking over an immovable rock.
Held until Worsel's snakelike body, a supple and sentient cable of living steel, tipped with its double-edged, razor-keen, scimitarlike sting, slipped into the tunnel beside Kinnison and wrought grisly havoc among the Catlats close-packed there!
As the terrific tension upon him was suddenly released VanBuskirk's own efforts hurled him away from the cliff. He fell to the ground, his overstrained muscles twitching uncontrollably, and on top of him fell the fettered Lensman. Kinnison, his hands now free, unfastened the clamps linking his armor to that of VanBuskirk and whirled to confront the foe. But the fighting was over. The Catlats had had enough of Worsel of Velantia; and, shrieking in baffled rage, the last of them were disappearing into their caves. He turned back to VanBuskirk, who was getting shakily to his feet.
"Thanks a lot, Worsel; we were just about to run out of time——" VanBuskirk began, only to be silenced by an insistent thought from the grotesque stranger.
"Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you cannot screen your minds!" came the urgent mental commands. "These Catlats are a very minor pest of this planet Delgon. There are others worse by far. Fortunately, your thoughts are upon a frequency never used here—if I had not been so very close to you I would not have heard you at all—but should the Overlords have a listener upon that band, your unshielded thinking may already have done irreparable harm. Follow me. I will slow my speed to yours, but hurry all possible!"
"Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you cannot screen your mind," came the mental command.
"Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you cannot screen your mind," came the mental command.
"Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you cannot screen your mind," came the mental command.
"You tell 'im, chief," VanBuskirk said, and fell silent; his mind as nearly a perfect blank as his iron will could make it.
"This is a screened thought, through my Lens," Kinnison took up the conversation. "You don't need to slow down on our account. We can develop any speed you wish. Lead on!"
The Velantian leaped into the air and flashed away in headlong flight. Much to his surprise, the two human beings kept up with him effortlessly upon their inertialess drives, and after a moment Kinnison directed another thought.
"If time is an object, Worsel, know that my companion and I can carry you anywhere you wish to go at a speed hundreds of times greater than this that we are using," he vouchsafed.
It developed that time was of the utmost possible importance and the three closed in. Mighty wings folded back, hands and talons gripped armor chains, and the group, inertialess all, shot away at a pace that Worsel of Velantia had never even imagined in his wildest dreams of speed. Their goal, a small, featureless tent of thin sheet metal, occupying a barren spot in a writhing, crawling expanse of lushly green jungle, was reached in a space of minutes. Once inside, Worsel sealed the opening and turned to his armored guests.
"We can now think freely in open converse. This wall is the carrier of a screen through which no thought can make its way."
"This world you call by a name I have interpreted as Delgon," Kinnison began, slowly. "You are a native of Velantia, a planet now beyond the Sun. Therefore, I assumed that you were taking us to your space ship. Where is that ship?"
"I have no ship," the Velantian replied, composedly, "nor have I need of one. For the remainder of my life—which is now to be measured in a few of your hours—this tent is my only——"
"No ship!" VanBuskirk broke in. "I hope we won't have to stay on this God-forsaken planet forever—and I'm not very keen on going much farther in that lifeboat, either."
"We may not have to do either of those things," Kinnison reassured his sergeant. "Worsel comes of a long-lived tribe, and the fact that he thinks his enemies are going to get him in a few hours doesn't make it true, by any means. There are three of us to reckon with now. Also, when we need a space ship we'll get one, if we have to build it. Now, let's find out what this is all about. Worsel, start at the beginning and don't skip a thing. Between us we can surely find a way out, for all of us."
Then the Velantian told his story. There was much repetition, much roundabout thinking, as some of the concepts were so bizarre as to defy transmission, but finally the Earthman had a fairly complete picture of the situation within that strange solar system.
The inhabitants of Delgon were bad, being characterized by a type and a depth of depravity impossible for a mind of Earth to visualize. Not only were the Delgonians enemies of the Velantians in the ordinary sense of the word; not only were they pirates and robbers; not only were they their masters, taking them both as slaves and as food cattle; but there was something more, something deeper and worse, something only partially transmissible from mind to mind—a horribly and repulsively Saturnalian type of mental and intellectual, as well as biological, parasitism. This relationship had gone on for ages.
Finally, however, a thought-screen had been devised, behind which Velantia developed a high science of her own. The students of this science lived with but one purpose in life: to free Velantia from the tyranny of the Overlords of Delgon. Each student, as he reached the zenith of his mental power, went to Delgon, to study and if possible destroy the tyrants. And after disembarking upon the soil of that dread planet no Velantian, whether student or scientist or private adventurer, had ever returned to Velantia.
"But why don't you lay a complaint against them before the council?" demanded VanBuskirk. "They'd straighten things out in a hurry."
"We have not heretofore known, save by the most unreliable and roundabout reports, that such an organization as your Galactic Patrol really exists," the Velantian replied, obliquely. "Nevertheless, many years since, we launched a space ship toward its nearest reputed base. However, since that trip requires three normal lifetimes, with deadly peril in every moment, it will be a miracle if the ship ever completes it.
"Furthermore, even if the ship should reach its destination, our complaint will probably not even be considered, because we have not a single shred of real evidence with which to support it. No living Velantian has ever seen a Delgonian, nor can any one testify to the truth of anything I have told you. While we believe that that is the true condition of affairs, our belief is based, not upon evidence admissible in a court of law, but upon deductions from occasional thoughts radiated from this planet. Nor were these thoughts alike in tenor——"
"Skip that for a minute—we'll take the picture as correct," Kinnison broke in. "Nothing you have said so far shows any necessity for you to die in the next few hours."
"The only object in life for a trained Velantian is to liberate his planet from the horrors of subjection to Delgon. Many such have come here, but not one has found a workable idea; not one has either returned to or even communicated with Velantia after starting work here. I am a Velantian. I am here. Soon I shall open that door and get in touch with the enemy. Since better men than I am have failed, I do not expect to succeed. Nor shall I return to my native planet. As soon as I start to work the Delgonians will command me to come to them. In spite of myself I will obey that command, and very shortly thereafter I shall die, in what fashion I do not know."
"Snap out of it, Worsel!" barked Kinnison, roughly. "That's the rankest kind of defeatism, and you know it. Nobody ever got to the first check station on that kind of fuel."
"You are talking about something now about which you know nothing whatever." For the first time Worsel's thoughts showed passion. "Your thoughts are idle—ignorant—vain. You know nothing whatever of the mental power of the Delgonians."
"Maybe not—I make no claim of being a mental giant—but I do know that mental power alone cannot overcome a definitely and positively opposedwill. An Arisian could probably break my will, but I'll stake my life that no other mentality in the known universe can do it!"
"You think so, Earthling?" And a seething sphere of mental force encompassed the Tellurian's brain. Kinnison's senses reeled at the terrific impact; but he shook off the attack and smiled.
"Come again, Worsel. That one jarred me to the heels, but it didn't quite ring the bell."
"You flatter me," the Velantian declared in surprise. "I could scarcely touch your mind—could not penetrate even its outermost defenses, and I exerted all my force. But that fact gives me hope. My mind is, of course, inferior to theirs, but since I could not influence you at all, even in direct contact and at full power, you may be able to resist the minds of the Delgonians. Are you willing to hazard the stake you mentioned a moment ago? Or rather, I ask you, by the Lens you wear, so to hazard it—with the liberty of an entire people dependent upon the outcome."
"Why not? The spools come first, of course—but without you our spools would both be buried now inside the cliff of the Catlats. Fix it so that your people will find these spools and carry on with them in case we fail, and I'm your man. There—now tell me what we're apt to be up against, and then let loose your dogs."
"That I cannot do. I know only that they will direct against you mental forces such as you never even imagined. I cannot forewarn you in any respect whatever as to what forms those forces may appear to assume. I know, however, that I shall succumb to the first bolt of force. Therefore, bind me with these chains before I open the shield. Physically, I am extremely strong, as you know; therefore, be sure to put on enough chains so that I cannot possibly break free, for if I can break away I shall undoubtedly kill both of you."
"How come all these things here, ready to hand?" asked VanBuskirk, as the two patrolmen so loaded the passive Velantian with chains, manacles, handcuffs, leg irons and straps that he could not move even his tail.
"It has been tried before, many times," Worsel replied bleakly, "but the rescuers, being Velantians, also succumbed to the force and took off the irons. Now I caution you, with all the power of my mind—no matter what you see, no matter what I may command you or beg of you, no matter how urgently you yourself may wish to do so—do not liberate me under any circumstancesunless and until things appear exactly as they do now and that door is shut. Know fully and ponder well the fact that if you release me while that door is open it will be because you have yielded to Delgonian force, and that not only will all three of us die, lingeringly and horribly, but also, and worse, that our deaths will not have been of any benefit to civilization. Do you understand? Are you ready?"
"I understand. I am ready," thought Kinnison and VanBuskirk as one.
"Open that door."
Kinnison did so. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then three-dimensional pictures began to form before their eyes—pictures which they knew existed only in their own minds, yet which were composed of such solid substance that they obscured from vision everything else in the material world. At first hazy and indistinct, the scene—for it was in no sense now a picture—became clear and sharp. And, piling horror upon horror, sound was added to sight. And directly before their eyes, blotting out completely even the solid metal of the wall only a few feet distant from them, the two outlanders saw and heard something which can be represented only vaguely by imagining Dante's Inferno an actuality and raised to thenth power!
In a dull and gloomy cavern there lay, sat, and stood hordes ofthings. These beings—the "nobility" of Delgon—had reptilian bodies, somewhat similar to Worsel's, but they had no wings and their heads were distinctly apish rather than crocodilian. Every greedy eye in the vast throng was fixed upon an enormous screen which, like that in a motion-picture theater, walled off one end of the stupendous cavern.
Slowly, shudderingly, Kinnison's mind began to take in what was happening upon that screen. And it was really happening, Kinnison was sure of that. This was not a picture any more than this whole scene was an illusion. It was all an actuality—somewhere.
Upon that screen there were stretched out victims. Hundreds of these were Velantians, more hundreds were winged Delgonians, and scores were creatures whose like Kinnison had never seen. And all these were being tortured; tortured to death both in fashions known to the Inquisitors of old and ways of which even those experts had never an inkling.
Some were being twisted outrageously in three-dimensional frames. Others were being stretched upon racks. Many were being pulled horribly apart, chains intermittently but relentlessly extending each helpless member. Still others were being lowered into pits of constantly increasing temperatures or were being attacked by gradually increasing concentrations of some foully corrosive vapor which ate away their tissues, little by little. And, apparently the pièce de résistance of the hellish exhibition, one luckless Velantian, in a spot of hard, cold light, was being pressed out flat against the screen, as an insect might be pressed between two panes of glass. Thinner and thinner he became, under the influence of some awful, invisible force, in spite of every exertion of inhumanely powerful muscles driving body, tail, wings, arms, legs, and head in every frantic maneuver which grim and imminent death could call forth.
Physically nauseated, brainsick at the atrocious visions blasting his mind and at the screaming of the damned assailing his ears, Kinnison strove to wrench his mind away, but was curbed savagely by Worsel.
"Youmuststay! Youmustpay attention!" commanded the Velantian. "This is the first time any living being has seen so much! Youmusthelp me now! They have been attacking me from the first; but, braced by the powerful negatives in your mind, I have been able to resist and have transmitted a truthful picture so far. But they are surprised at my resistance and are concentrating more force. I am slipping fast. Youmustbrace my mind! And when the picture changes—as change it must, and soon—do not believe it. Hold fast, brothers of the Lens, for your own lives and for the people of Velantia. There is more—and worse!"
Kinnison stayed. So did VanBuskirk, fighting with all his stubborn Dutch mind. Revolted, outraged, nauseated as they were at the sights and sounds, they stayed. Flinching with the victims as they were fed into the hoppers of slowly turning mills; wincing at the unbelievable acts of the boilers, the beaters, the scourgers, the flayers; suffering themselves every possible and many apparently impossible nightmares.
The light in the cavern now changed to a strong, greenish-yellow glare; and in that hard illumination it was to be seen that each dying being was surrounded by a palely glowing aura. And now, crowning horror of that unutterably horrible orgy of sadism resublimed, from the eyes of each one of the monstrous audience there leaped out visible beams of force. These beams touched the aura of the dying prisoners—touched and clung. And as they clung the aura shrank and disappeared.
The Overlords of Delgon were actuallyfeedingupon the ebbing life forces of their tortured, dying victims!
VI.
Gradually and so insidiously that the Velantian's dire warnings might as well never have been uttered, the scene changed. Or rather, the scene itself did not change, but the observers' perception of it slowly underwent such a radical transformation that it was in no sense the same scene it had been a few minutes before; and they felt almost abjectly apologetic as they realized how unjust their previous ideas had been.
For the cavern was not a torture chamber, as they had supposed. It was, in reality, a hospital, and the beings they had thought victims of brutalities unspeakable were, in reality, patients undergoing treatments and operations for various ills. In proof whereof the patients—who should have been dead by this time were the early ideas well-founded—were now being released from the screenlike operating theater. And not only was each one completely whole and sound in body, but he was also possessed of a mental clarity, power, and grasp undreamed of before his hospitalization and treatment by Delgon's super surgeons!
Also, the intruders had misunderstood completely the audience and its behavior. They were really medical students, and the beams which had seemed to be devouring rays were simply visibeams, by means of which each student could follow, in close-up detail, each step of the operation in which he was most interested. The patients themselves were living, vocal witnesses of the visitors' mistakenness, for each, as he made his way through the assemblage of students, was voicing his thanks for the marvelous results of his particular treatment or operation.
Kinnison now became acutely aware that he himself was in need of immediate surgical attention. His body, which he had always regarded so highly, he now perceived to be sadly inefficient; his mind was in even worse shape than his physique; and both body and mind would be improved immeasurably if he could get to the Delgonian hospital before the surgeons departed. In fact, he felt an almost irresistible urge to rush away toward that hospital instantly, without the loss of a single precious second. And, since he had had no reason to doubt the evidence of his own senses, his conscious mind was not aroused to active opposition. However, in his subconscious, or his essence, or whatever you choose to call that ultimate something of his that made him a Lensman, a "dead, slow bell" began to sound.
"Release me and we'll all go, before the surgeons leave the hospital," came an insistent thought from Worsel. "But hurry—we haven't much time!"
VanBuskirk, completely under the influence of the frantic compulsion, leaped toward the Velantian, only to be checked bodily by Kinnison, who was foggily trying to isolate and identify one thing about the situation that did not ring quite true.
"Just a minute, Bus. Shut that door first!" he commanded.
"Never mind the door!" Worsel's thought came in a roaring crescendo. "Release me instantly! Hurry, or it will be too late, for all of us!"
"All this terrific rush doesn't make any kind of sense at all," Kinnison declared, closing his mind resolutely to the clamor of the Velantian's thoughts. "I want to go just as badly as you do, Bus, or maybe more so—but I can't help feeling that there's something screwy somewhere. Anyway, remember the last thing Worsel said, and let's shut the door before we unsnap a single chain."
Then something clicked in the Lensman's mind.
"Hypnotism, through Worsel!" he barked, opposition now aflame. "So gradual that it never occurred to me to build up a resistance. Holy rackets, what a fool I've been! Fight 'em, Bus—fight 'em!Don't let 'em kid you any more, and pay no attention to anything Worsel sends at you!" Whirling around, he leaped toward the open door of the tent.
But as he leaped his brain was invaded by such a concentration of force that he fell flat upon the floor, physically out of control. He mustnotshut the door. Hemustrelease the Velantian. Theymustgo to the Delgonian cavern. Fully aware now, however, of the source of the waves of compulsion, he threw the sum total of his mental power into an intense negation and struggled, inch-wise, toward the opening.
Upon him now, in addition to the Delgonians' compulsion, beat at point-blank range the full power of Worsel's mighty mind, demanding release and compliance. Also, and worse, he perceived that some powerful mentality was being exerted to make VanBuskirk kill him. One blow of the Valerian's ponderous mace would shatter helmet and skull, and all would be over. Once more the Delgonians would have triumphed. But the stubborn Dutchman, although at the very verge of surrender, was still fighting. He would take one step forward, bludgeon poised aloft, only to throw it convulsively backward.
Again and again VanBuskirk repeated his futile performance, while the Lensman struggled nearer and nearer the door. Finally, he reached it and kicked it shut. Instantly, the mental turmoil ceased and the two white and shaking patrolmen released the limp, unconscious Velantian from his bonds.
"Wonder what we can do to help him revive," gasped Kinnison. But his solicitude was unnecessary; the Velantian recovered consciousness as he spoke.
"Thanks to your wonderful power of resistance, I am alive, unharmed, and know more of our foes and their methods than any other of my race has ever learned," Worsel thought, feelingly. "But it is of no value whatever unless I can send it back to Velantia. The thought-screen is carried only by the metal of these walls; and if I make an opening in the wall to think through, however small, it will now mean death. Of course, the science of your patrol has not perfected an apparatus to drive through such a screen."
"No. Anyway, it seems to me that we'd better be worrying about something besides thought-screens," Kinnison suggested. "Surely, now that they know where we are, they'll be coming out here after us, and we haven't got much of any defense."
"They don't know where we are, or care——" began the Velantian.
"Why not?" broke in VanBuskirk. "Any spy ray capable of such scanning as you showed us—I never saw anything like it before—would certainly be as easy to trace as an out-and-out gas blast!"
"I sent out no spy ray or anything of the kind," Worsel thought, carefully. "Since our science is so foreign to yours, I am not sure that I can explain satisfactorily, but I shall try to do so. First, as to what you saw. When that door is open, no barrier to thought exists. I merely broadcast a thought, placing myselfen rapportwith the Delgonian Overlords in their retreat. This condition established, of course I heard and saw exactly what they heard and saw—and so, equally of course, did you, since you were alsoen rapportwith me. That is all."
"That'sall!" echoed VanBuskirk. "What a system! You can do a thing like that, without apparatus of any kind, and yet say 'that's all'!"
"It is results that count," Worsel reminded him gently. "While it is true that we have done much—this is the first time in history that any Velantian has encountered the mind of a Delgonian Overlord and lived. It is equally true that it was the will power of you patrolmen that made it possible, not my mentality. Also, it remains true that we cannot leave this room and live."
"Why won't we need weapons?" asked Kinnison, returning to his previous line of thought.
"Thought screens are the only defense we will require," Worsel stated, positively, "for they use no weapons except their minds. By mental power alone they make us come to them; and, once there, their slaves do the rest. Of course, if my race is ever to rid the planet of them, we must employ offensive weapons of power. We have such, but we have never been able to use them. For, in order to locate the enemy, either by telepathy or by spy ray, we must open our metallic shields—and the instant we release those screens we are lost. From those conditions there is no escape," Worsel concluded, hopelessly.
"Don't be such a pessimist," Kinnison commanded. "There are a lot of things not tried yet. For instance, from what I have seen of your generator equipment and that screen, you don't need a metallic conductor any more than a snake needs hips. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think we're a bit ahead of you there. If a DeVilbiss projector can handle that screen—and I think it can, with special tuning—VanBuskirk and I can fix things in an hour so that all three of us can walk out of here in perfect safety—from mental interference, at least. While we're trying it out, tell us all the new stuff you got on them just now, and anything else that, by any possibility, may prove useful. And remember you said this is the first time any of you had been able to cut them off. That fact ought to make them sit up and take notice. Probably they'll stir around more than they ever did before. Come on, Bus—let's tear into it!"
The DeVilbiss projectors were rigged and tuned. Kinnison had been right; they worked. Then plan after plan was made, only to be discarded as its weaknesses were pointed out.
"Whichever way we look there are too many 'ifs' and 'buts' to suit me," Kinnison summed up the situation finally. "Ifwe can find them, andifwe can get up close to them without losing our minds to them, we could clean them outifwe had some power in our accumulators. So I'd say the first thing for us to do is to get our batteries charged. We saw some cities from the air, and cities always have power. Lead us to power, Worsel—almostanykind of power—and we'll soon have it in our guns."
"There are cities, yes"—Worsel was not at all enthusiastic—"dwelling places of the ordinary Delgonians, the people you saw being eaten in the cavern of the Overlords. As you saw, they resemble us Velantians to a certain extent. Since they are of a lower culture and are much weaker in life force than we are, however, the Overlords prefer us to their own slave races.
"To visit any city of Delgon is out of the question. Every inhabitant of every city is an abject slave and his brain is an open book. Whatever he sees, whatever he thinks, is communicated instantly to his master. And I now perceive that I may have misinformed you as to the Overlords' ability to use weapons. While the situation has never arisen, it is only logical to suppose that as soon as we are seen by any Delgonian the controllers will order all the inhabitants of the city to capture us and bring us to them."
"What a guy!" interjected VanBuskirk. "Did you ever see his top for looking at the bright side of life?"
"Only in conversation," the Lensman replied. "When the ether gets crowded, you notice, he's right in here, blasting away and not saying a word. But there's one thing we haven't thought of: power. I've got only eight minutes of free flight left in my battery; and with your mass, you must be about out. Come to think of it, didn't you land a trifle hard when we sat down here?"
"Practically inert."
"That means we'vegotto get some power. Well, it's not so bad, at that; there's a city right close."
"Yes, but as far as I'm concerned it might as well be on Mars. You know as well as I do what's between here and there. You can take my batteries and I'll wait here."
"On your emergency food, water, and air? That's out!"
"What else, then?"
"I can spread my field to cover all three of us," proposed Kinnison. "That will give us at least one minute of free flight—almost, if not quite, enough to clear the jungle. They have night here; and, like us, the Delgonians are night sleepers. We start at dusk, and to-night we recharge our batteries."
The following hour, during which the huge, hot Sun dropped to the horizon, was spent in intense discussion, but no significant improvement upon the Lensman's plan could be devised.
"It is time to go," Worsel announced, curling out one extensile eye toward the vanishing orb. "I have recorded all my findings. Already I have lived longer and, through you, have accomplished more, than any one believed possible. I am ready to die. I should have been dead long since."
"Living on borrowed time's a lot better than not living at all," Kinnison replied, with a grin. "Link up. Ready? Go!"
He snapped his switches and the close-linked group of three shot into the air and away. As far as the eye could reach in any direction extended the sentient, ravenous growth of the jungle; but Kinnison's eyes were not upon that fantastically inimical green carpet. His whole attention was occupied by two all-important meters and by the task of so directing their flight as to gain the greatest possible horizontal distance with the power at his command.
Fifty seconds of flashing flight, then: "All right, Worsel, get out in front and get ready to pull!" Kinnison snapped. "Ten seconds of drive left, but I can hold us free for five seconds after my driver quits. Pull!"
Kinnison's driver expired, its small accumulator completely exhausted; and Worsel, with his mighty wings, took up the task of propulsion. Inertialess still, with Kinnison and VanBuskirk grasping his tail, each beat a mile-long leap, he struggled on. But all too soon the battery powering the neutralizers also went dead and the three began to plummet downward at a sharper and sharper angle, in spite of the Velantian's Herculean efforts to keep them aloft.
Some distance ahead of them the green of the jungle ended in a sharply cut line, beyond which there was a heavy growth of fairly open forest. A couple of miles of this and there was the city, their objective—so near and yet so far!
"We'll either just make the timber or we just won't," Kinnison, mentally plotting the course, announced dispassionately. "Just as well if we land in the jungle, I think. It'll break our fall, anyway; and hitting solid ground inert at this speed might be pretty serious."
"If we land in the jungle we will never leave it"—Worsel's thought did not slow the incredible tempo of his prodigious pinions—"but it makes little difference whether I die now or later."
"It does to us, you pessimistic croaker!" flared Kinnison. "Forget that dying complex of yours for a minute! Remember the plan and follow it! We're going to strike the jungle, about ninety or a hundred meters in. If you come in with us you die at once, and the rest of our scheme is all shot to pieces. So when we let go, you go ahead and land in the woods. We'll join you there, never fear; our armor will hold long enough for us to cut our way through a hundred meters of any jungle that ever grew—even this one. Get ready, Bus. Leggo!"
They dropped. Through the lush succulence of close-packed upper leaves and tentacles they crashed—through the heavier, wooded main branches below, through to the ground. And there they fought for their lives; for those voracious plants nourished themselves not only upon the soil in which their roots were embedded, but also upon anything organic unlucky enough to come within reach. Flabby but tough tentacles encircled them; ghastly sucking disks, exuding a potent corrosive, slobbered wetly at their armor; knobbed and spiky bludgeons whanged against tempered steel as the monstrous organisms began dimly to realize that these particular titbits were encased in something more resistant far than skin, scales, or bark.
But the Lensman and his giant companion were not quiescent. They came down oriented and fighting. VanBuskirk, in the van, swung his frightful space ax as a reaper swings his scythe—one solid, short step forward with each swing. And close behind the Valerian strode Kinnison, his own flying ax guarding the giant's head and back.
Masses of that obscene vegetation crashed down upon their heads from above, revolting cupped orifices sucking and smacking; and they were showered continually with floods of the opaque, corrosive sap to the action of which even their armor was not entirely immune. But, hampered as they were and almost blinded, they struggled indomitably on; while behind them an ever-lengthening corridor of demolition marked their progress.
"Ain't we got fun?" grunted the Dutchman, in time with his swing. "But we're quite a team at that, chief—brains and brawn, huh?"
"Uh-huh," dissented Kinnison, his flying weapon a solid disk of steel to the eye. "Grace and poise; or, if you want to be really romantic, ham and eggs."
"Rack and ruin will be more like it if we don't break out before this confounded goo eats through our armor. But we're making it—the stuff's thinning out and I think I can see trees up ahead."
"It is well if you can," came a cold, clear thought from Worsel, "for I am sorely beset. Hasten or I perish!"
At that thought the two patrolmen forged ahead in a burst of furious activity. Crashing through the thinning barriers of the jungle's edge, they wiped their lenses partially clear, glanced quickly about, and saw the Velantian. That worthy was "sorely beset" indeed. Six animals—huge, reptilian, but lithe and active—had him down. So helplessly immobile was Worsel that he could scarcely move his tail, and the monsters were already beginning to gnaw at his scaly, armored hide.
"I'll put a stop to that, Worsel!" called Kinnison, referring to the fact, well known to all us moderns, that any real animal, no matter how savage, can be controlled by any wearer of the Lens. For, no matter how low in the scale of intelligence the animal is, the Lensman can get in touch with whatever mind the creature has and reason with it.
But these monstrosities, as Kinnison learned immediately, were not really animals. Even though of animal form and mobility, they were purely vegetable in motivation and behavior, reacting only to the stimuli of food and of reproduction. Weirdly and completely inimical to all other forms of created life, they were so utterly noisome, so completely alien that the full power of mind and Lens failed entirely to gain rapport.
Upon that confusedly writhing heap the patrolmen flung themselves, terrible axes destructively a-swing. In turn, they were attacked viciously; but this battle was not long to endure. VanBuskirk's first terrific blow knocked one adversary away, almost spinning end over end. Kinnison took out one, the Dutchman another, and the remaining three were no match at all for the humiliated and furiously raging Velantian. But it was not until the monstrosities had been gruesomely carved and torn apart, literally limb from hideous limb, that they ceased their insensately voracious attacks.
"They took me by surprise," explained Worsel, unnecessarily, as the three made their way through the night toward their goal, "and six of them at once were too much for me. I tried to hold their minds, but apparently they have none."
"How about the Overlords?" asked Kinnison. "Suppose they have received any of our thoughts? We patrolmen at least have been doing a lot of unguarded radiating lately."
"No," Worsel made positive reply. "The thought-screen batteries, while small and of very little actual power, have, nevertheless, a very long service life. Now let us again go over the next steps of our plan of action."
Since no more untoward events marred their progress toward the Delgonian city, they soon reached it. It was for the most part dark and quiet, its somber buildings merely blacker blobs against a background of black. Here and there, however, were to be seen automotive vehicles moving about, and the three invaders crouched against a convenient wall, waiting for one to come along the "street" in which they were. Eventually one did.
As it passed them Worsel sprang into headlong, gliding flight, Kinnison's heavy knife in one gnarled fist. And as he sailed he struck—lethally. Before that luckless Delgonian's brain could radiate a single thought it was in no condition to function at all; for the head containing it was bouncing in the gutter. Worsel backed the peculiar conveyance along the curb and his two companions leaped into it, lying flat upon its floor and covering themselves from sight as best they could.
Worsel, familiar with things Delgonian and looking enough like a native of the planet to pass a casual inspection in the dark, drove the car. Streets and thoroughfares he traversed at reckless speed, finally drawing up before a long, low building, entirely dark. He scanned his surroundings with care, in every direction. Not a creature was in sight.
"All is clear, friends," he thought, and the three adventurers sprang to the building's entrance. The door—it had a door, of sorts—was locked, but VanBuskirk's ax made short work of that difficulty. Inside, they braced the wrecked door against intrusion. Then Worsel led the way into the unlighted interior. Soon he flashed his lamp about him and stepped upon a black, peculiarly marked tile set into the floor; whereupon a harsh, white light illuminated the room.
"Cut it, before somebody takes alarm!" snapped Kinnison.
"No danger of that," replied the Velantian. "There are no windows in any of these rooms; no light can be seen from outside. This is the control room of the city's power plant. If you can convert any of this power to your uses, help yourselves to it. In this building is also Delgon's closest approximation to a munitions plant. Whether or not anything in it can be of service to you is, of course, for you to say. I am now at your disposal."
While the Velantian was thinking these things Kinnison had been studying the panels and instruments. Now he and VanBuskirk tore open their armor—they had already learned that the atmosphere of Delgon, while not as wholesome for them as that in their suits, would, for a time at least, support human life—and wrought diligently with pliers, screw drivers, and other tools of the electrician. Soon their exhausted batteries were upon the floor beneath the instrument panel, greedily absorbing the electrical fluid from the busbars of the Delgonians.
"Now, while they're getting filled up, let's see what they mean by 'munitions' in these parts," Kinnison ordered. "Lead on, Worsel!"
VII.
With Worsel in the lead, the three interlopers hastened along a corridor, past branching and intersecting hallways, to a distant wing of the structure. There, it was evident, manufacturing of weapons was carried on; but a quick study of the queer-looking devices and mechanisms upon the benches and inside the storage racks lining its walls convinced Kinnison that the room could yield them nothing of permanent benefit. There were high-powered beam projectors, it was true; but they were so heavy that they were not even semiportable. There were also hand weapons of various peculiar patterns, but without exception they were ridiculously inferior to the DeLameters of the patrol in every respect of power, range, controllability, and storage capacity. Nevertheless, after testing them out sufficiently to make certain of the above findings, Kinnison selected an armful of the most powerful models and turned to his companions.
"Let's go back to the power room," he urged. "I'm nervous as a cat. I feel stark naked without my batteries; and if any one should happen to drop in there and do away with them, we'd be sunk without a trace."
Loaded down with Delgonian weapons, they hurried back the way they had come. Much to Kinnison's relief he found that his forebodings had been groundless; the batteries were still there, still absorbing myriawatt hour after myriawatt hour from the Delgonian generators. Staring fixedly at the innocuous-looking containers, he frowned in thought.
"Better we insulate those leads a little heavier and put the cans back in our armor," he suggested finally. "They'll charge just as well in place, and it doesn't stand to reason that this drain of power can go on for the rest of the night withoutsomebodynoticing it. And when that happens those Overlords are bound to take plenty of steps—the nature of none of which we can even guess at."
"We must have power enough now so that we can all fly away from any possible trouble," Worsel suggested.
"But that's just exactly what we arenotgoing to do!" Kinnison declared, with finality. "Now that we've found a good charger, we aren't going to leave it until our accumulators are chocka-block. It's coming in faster than full draft will take it out, and we're going to get a full charge if we have to stand off all the vermin of Delgon to do it."
Far longer than Kinnison had thought possible they were unmolested, but finally a couple of Delgonian engineers came to investigate the unprecedented shortage in the output of their completely automatic generators. At the entrance they were stopped, for no ordinary tools could force the barricade VanBuskirk had erected behind that portal. With leveled weapons the patrolmen stood, awaiting the expected attack. But none developed. Hour by hour the long night wore away, uneventfully. At daybreak, however, a storming party appeared and massive battering-rams were brought into play.
As the dull, heavy concussions reverberated throughout the building the patrolmen each picked up two of the weapons piled before them and Kinnison addressed the Velantian.
"Drag a couple of those metal benches across that corner and coil up behind them," he directed. "They'll be enough to ground any stray charges. If they can't see you they won't know you're here, so probably nothing much will come your way direct."
The Velantian demurred, declaring that he would not hide while his two companions were fighting his battle.
But Kinnison silenced him fiercely. "Don't be a fool!" the Lensman snapped. "One of these beams would fry you to a crisp in ten seconds, whereas the defensive fields of our armor could neutralize a thousand of them, from now on. Do as I say, and do it quick, or I'll beam you unconscious and toss you in there myself!"
Realizing that Kinnison meant exactly what he said, and knowing that, unarmored as he was, he was utterly unable to resist either the Tellurian or their common foe, Worsel unwillingly erected his metallic barrier and coiled his sinuous length behind it. He hid himself just in time.
The outer barricade had fallen, and now a wave of reptilian forms flooded into the control room. Nor was this any ordinary investigation. The Overlords had studied the situation from afar, and this wave was one of heavily armed—for Delgon—soldiery. On they came, projectors fiercely aflame, confident in their belief that nothing could stand before their blasts.
But how wrong they were! The two repulsively erect bipeds before them neither burned nor fell. Beams, no matter how powerful, did not reach them.