The two repulsively erect bipeds before them neither burned nor fell. Beams—no matter how powerful—did not reach them at all——
The two repulsively erect bipeds before them neither burned nor fell. Beams—no matter how powerful—did not reach them at all——
The two repulsively erect bipeds before them neither burned nor fell. Beams—no matter how powerful—did not reach them at all——
Nor were these outlandish beings inoffensive. Utterly careless of the service life of the pitifully weak Delgonian projectors, they were using them at maximum drain and at extreme aperture—and in the resultant beams the Delgonian soldier slaves fell in scorched and smoking heaps. On came reserves, platoon after platoon, only and continuously to meet the same fate; for as soon as one projector weakened the invincibly armored man would toss it aside and pick up another. But finally the last commandeered weapon was exhausted and the beleaguered pair brought their own DeLameters—the most powerful portable weapons known to the military scientists of the Galactic Patrol—into play.
And what a difference! Inthosebeams the attacking reptiles did not smoke or burn. They simply vanished in a blaze of flaming light, so did also the near-by walls and a good share of the building beyond! The Delgonian hordes having disappeared, VanBuskirk shut off his DeLameter.
Kinnison, however, left his on, angling its beam sharply upward, blasting into fiery vapor the ceiling and roof over their heads, remarking: "While we're at it we might as well fix things so that we can make a quick get-away if we want to."
Then they waited. Waited, watching the needles of their meters creep ever closer to the "full-charge" marks; waited while, as they shrewdly suspected, the distant, cowardly hiding Overlords planned some other, more promising line of physical attack.
Nor was it long in developing. Another small army appeared, armored this time; or, more accurately, advancing behind metallic shields. Knowing what to expect, Kinnison was not surprised when the beam of his DeLameter not only failed to pierce one of those shields, but did not in any way impede the progress of the Delgonian column.
"Well, we're all done here, anyway, as far as I'm concerned." Kinnison grinned at the Dutchman as he spoke. "My cans've been showing full back pressure for the last five minutes. How about yours?"
"Same here," VanBuskirk reported, and the two leaped lightly into the Velantian's refuge. Then, inertialess all, the three shot into the air at such a pace that to the slow senses of the Delgonian slaves they simply disappeared. Indeed, it was not until the barrier had been blasted away and every room, nook, and cranny of the immense structure had been literally and minutely combed that the Delgonians—and through their enslaved minds the Overlords—became convinced that their prey had in some uncanny and unknown fashion eluded them.
Now high in the air, the three troopers traversed, in a matter of minutes, the same distance that had cost them so much time and strife the day before. Over the monster-infected forest they sped, over the deceptively peaceful green lushness of the jungle, to slant down toward Worsel's thoughtproof tent. Inside that refuge they snapped off their thought-screens and Kinnison yawned prodigiously.
"Working days and nights both is all right for a while, but it gets monotonous in time. Since this seems to be the only really safe spot on the planet, I suggest that we take a day or so off and catch up on our eats and sleeps."
They slept and ate; slept and ate again.
"The next thing on the program," Kinnison announced then, "is to clean out that den of Overlords. Then Worsel will be free to help us get going about our own business."
"You speak lightly indeed of the impossible," Worsel, again all glum despondency, reproved him. "I have already explained why the task is, and must remain, beyond our power."
"Yes, but you don't quite grasp the possibilities of the stuff we've got to work with now," the Tellurian replied. "Listen: you could never do anything because you couldn't see through or work through your thought-screens. Neither we nor you could, even now, enslave a Delgonian and make him lead us to the cavern, because the Overlords would know all about it 'way ahead of time and the slave would lead us anywhere else except to the cavern. However, one of us can cut his screen and surrender; possibly keeping just enough screen up to keep the enemy from possessing his mind fully enough to learn that the other two are coming along. The big question is—which of us is to surrender?"
"That is already decided," Worsel made instant reply. "I am the logical—in fact, theonlyone—to do it. Not only would they think it perfectly natural that they should overpower me, but also I am the only one of us three sufficiently able to control his thoughts so as to keep from them the knowledge that I am being accompanied. Furthermore, you both know that it would not be good for your minds, unaccustomed as they are to the practice, to surrender their control voluntarily to an enemy."
"I'll say it wouldn't!" Kinnison agreed, feelingly. "I might do it if I had to, but I wouldn't like it and don't think I'd ever quite get over it. I hate to put such a horrible job off onto you, Worsel, but you're undoubtedly the best equipped to handle it—and even you may have your hands full."
"Yes," the Velantian said, thoughtfully. "While the undertaking is no longer an absolute impossibility, it is difficult—very. In any event you will probably have to beam me yourselves, if we succeed in reaching the cavern. The Overlords will see to that. If so, do it without regret. Know that I expect it and am well content to die in that fashion. Thousands of better men than I am would be only too glad to be in my place, meaning what it does to all Velantia. Know also that I have already reported what is to occur, and that your welcome to Velantia is assured, whether or not I accompany you there."
"I don't think I'll have to kill you, Worsel," Kinnison replied, slowly, picturing in detail exactly what that steel-hard reptilian body would be capable of doing when, unshackled, its directing mind was completely taken over by an utterly soulless and conscienceless Overlord. "If we can't keep from going off the deep end, of course you'll get pretty tough and I know that you're hard to handle. However, as I told you back there, I think I can beam you unconscious without killing you. I may have to burn off a few scales, but I'll try not to do any damage that can't be repaired."
"If you can so stop me it will be wonderful indeed. Are we ready?"
They were ready. Worsel opened the door and in a moment was hurtling through the air, his giant wings arrowing him along at a pace no winged creature of Earth would even approach. And, following him easily at a little distance, floated the two patrolmen upon their inertialess drives.
During that long flight scarcely a thought was exchanged, even between Kinnison and VanBuskirk. To direct a thought at the Velantian was, of course, out of the question. All lines of communication with him had been cut; and, furthermore, his mind, able as it was, was being taxed to the ultimate cell in doing what he had set out to do. And the two patrolmen were reluctant to converse with each other, even upon their tight beams, radios, or sounders, for fear that some slight leakage of thought energy might reveal their presence to the ever-watchful Overlords. If this opportunity were lost, they knew, another chance to wipe out that hellish horde might never present itself.
Land was traversed, and sea; but finally a stupendous range of mountains reared before them and Worsel, folding back his tireless wings, shot downward in a screaming, full-weight dive. In his line of flight Kinnison saw the mouth of a cave, a darker spot of blackness in the black rock of the mountain's side. Upon the ledged approach there lay a Delgonian—a guard or lookout, of course.
The Lensman's DeLameter was already in his hand, and at sight of the guardian reptile he sighted and fired in one incredibly fast motion. But, rapid as it was, it was still too slow. The Overlords had seen that the Velantian had companions of whom he had been able to keep them in ignorance theretofore.
Instantly, Worsel's wings again began to beat, bearing him off at a wide angle; and, although the patrolmen were insulated against his thought, the meaning of his antics was very plain. He was telling them in every possible way that the hole below wasnotthe cavern of the Overlords, that it was over this way, that they were to keep on following him to it. Then, as they refused to follow him, he rushed upon Kinnison in mad attack.
"Beam him down, Kim!" VanBuskirk yelled. "Don't take any chances with that bird!" He leveled his own DeLameter.
"Lay off, Bus!" the Lensman snapped. "I can handle him—a lot easier out here than on the ground."
And so it proved. Inertialess as he was, the buffetings of the Velantian affected him not at all; and when Worsel coiled his supple body around him and began to apply pressure, Kinnison simply expanded his thought-screen to cover them both, thus releasing the mind of his temporarily inimical friend from the Overlord's grip. Instantly the Velantian became himself, snapped on his own shield, and the three continued, as one, their interrupted downward course.
Inertialess as he was, the buffetings of the Velantian affected him not at all——Then he simply expanded his thought-screen——
Inertialess as he was, the buffetings of the Velantian affected him not at all——Then he simply expanded his thought-screen——
Inertialess as he was, the buffetings of the Velantian affected him not at all——Then he simply expanded his thought-screen——
Worsel came to a halt upon the ledge, beside the practically incinerated corpse of the lookout, knowing, unarmored as he was, that to go farther meant sudden death. The armored pair, however, shot on into the gloomy passage. At first they were offered no opposition. The Overlords had had no time to muster an adequate defense. Scattering handfuls of slaves rushed them, only to be blasted out of existence as their hand weapons proved useless against the armor of the Galactic Patrol. Defenders became more numerous as the cavern itself was approached; but neither were they allowed to stay the patrolmen's progress. Finally, a palely shimmering barrier of metal appeared to bar their way. Its fields of force neutralized or absorbed the blasts of the DeLameters, but its material substance offered but little resistance to a thirty-pound sledge swung by one of the strongest men ever produced by any planet colonized by the humanity of Earth.
Now they were in the cavern itself—the sanctum sanctorum of the Overlords of Delgon. There was the hellish torture screen, with its burden of mental and physical pain. There was the horribly avid audience, now milling about in a mob frenzy of panic. There, upon a raised balcony, were the "big shots" of this nauseous clan; now doing their utmost to marshal some force able to cope effectively with this unheard-of violation of their age-old immunity.
A last wave of Delgonian slaves hurled themselves forward, futile projectors furiously aflame, only to disappear in the DeLameters' fans of force. The patrolmen hated to kill those mindless slaves, but it was a nasty job that had to be done. The slaves out of the way, those ravening beams bored on into the massed Overlords.
And now Kinnison and VanBuskirk killed, if not joyously, at least relentlessly, mercilessly, and with neither sign nor sensation of compunction. For this unbelievably monstrous tribe needed killing, root and branch. Not a scion or shoot of it should be allowed to survive, to continue to contaminate the civilization of the galaxy. Back and forth, to and fro, up and down swept the raging beams of the DeLameters, playing on until in all the vast volume of that gruesome chamber nothing lived save the two grim figures in its portal.
Assured of this fact, but with DeLameters still in hand, the two destroyers retraced their way to the tunnel's mouth, where Worsel anxiously awaited them. Lines of communication again established, Kinnison informed the Velantian of all that had taken place, and the latter gradually cut down the power of his thought-screen. Soon it was at zero strength and he reported jubilantly that for the first time in untold ages, the Overlords of Delgon were off the air!
"But surely the danger isn't over yet!" protested Kinnison. "We couldn't have got them all in this one raid. Some of them must have escaped, and there must be other dens of them on this planet somewhere?"
"Possibly; possibly." The Velantian waved his tail airily—the first sign of joyousness he had shown. "But their power is broken, definitely and forever. With these new screens, and with the arms and armament which, thanks to you, we can now fabricate, the task of wiping them out completely will be comparatively simple. Now you will accompany me to Velantia where, I assure, the resources of the planet will be put solidly behind you in your own endeavors. I have already summoned a space ship. In less than twelve days we will be back in Velantia and at work upon your projects. In the meantime——"
"Twelvedays! Holy jumping rockets!" VanBuskirk exploded.
Kinnison said, "Sure—you forget that they knew nothing of our free drive. We'd better hop over and get our lifeboat, I think. It's not so good, either way, but in our own boat we'll be open to detection less than two hours, as against twelve days in the Velantians'. And the pirates may be here any minute. It's as good as certain that their ship will be stopped and searched long before it gets back to Velantia, and if we were aboard it would be just too bad."
"And, since the crew knows about us, the pirates soon will, and it'll be just too bad, anyway," VanBuskirk reasoned.
"Not at all," interposed Worsel. "The few of my people who know of you have been instructed to seal that knowledge. I must admit, however, that I am greatly disturbed by your conceptions of these pirates of space. You see, until I met you I knew nothing more of the pirates than I did of your patrol."
"What a world!" VanBuskirk exclaimed. "No patrol and no pirates! But at that, life might be simpler without both of them and without the free space drive—more like it used to be in the good old airplane days that the novelists rave about."
"Of course, I could not judge as to that." The Velantian was very serious. "This in which we live seems to be an out-of-the-way section of the galaxy; or it may be that we have nothing that the pirates want."
"More likely it's simply that, like the patrol, they haven't got organized into this district yet," suggested Kinnison. "There are so many millions of solar systems in the galaxy that it will probably be thousands of years yet before the patrol gets into them all."
"But about these pirates," Worsel went back to his point. "If they have such minds as those of the Overlords, they will be able to break the seals of our minds. However, I gather from your thoughts that their minds are not of that strength?"
"Not so far as I know," Kinnison replied. "You folks have the most powerful brains I ever heard of, short of the Arisians. And speaking of mental power, you can hear thoughts a lot farther than I can, even with my Lens or with this pirate receiver I've got. See if you can find out whether there are any pirates in space around here, will you?"
While the Velantian was concentrating, VanBuskirk asked: "Why, if his mind is so strong, could the Overlords put him under so much easier than they could us 'weak-minded' humans?"
"You are confusing 'mind' with 'will,' I think. Ages of submission to the Overlords made the Velantians' will power zero, as far as the bosses were concerned. On the other hand, you and I could raise stubbornness to sell to most people. In fact, if the Overlords had succeeded in really breaking us down, back there, I believe that we would have been insane for the rest of our lives."
"Probably you're right. We break, but don't bend, huh?"
Then the Velantian was ready to report. "I have scanned space to the nearer stars—some eleven of your light years—and have encountered no intruding entities," he announced.
"Eleven light years—what a range!" Kinnison exclaimed. "However, that's only a shade over two minutes for a pirate ship at full blast. But we've got to take a chance sometime, and the quicker we get started the sooner we'll get back. We'll pick you up here, Worsel. No use in you going back to your tent—we'll be back here long before you could reach it. You'll be safe enough, I think, especially with our spare DeLameters. Let's get going, Bus!"
Again they shot into the air; again they traversed the airless depths of interplanetary space. To locate the temporary tomb of their lifeboat required only a few minutes, to disinter her only a few more. Then again they braved detection in the void; Kinnison tense at his controls, VanBuskirk in strained attention listening to and staring at his unscramblers and detectors. But the ether was still blank as they materialized in an inertialess landing beside the waiting Velantian.
"All right, Worsel, snap it up!" Kinnison called, and went on to VanBuskirk, "Now, you big, flat-footed Valerian space hound, I hope that that spaceman's god of yours will see to it that our luck holds good for just seven minutes more. We've had more luck already than we had any right to expect, but we can put a little more to most gosh-awful good use!"
"Noshabkemingdoesbring spacemen luck," insisted the giant, grimacing a peculiar salute toward a small, golden image set inside his helmet, "and the fact that you warty, runty little space fleas of Tellus haven't got sense enough to know it, doesn't change matters at all."
"That's tellin' 'em, Bus!" Kinnison applauded. "But if it helps charge your batteries, go to it. Ready to blast! Lift!"
The Velantian had come aboard; the tiny air lock was again tight, and the little vessel shot away from Delgon toward far Velantia. And still the ether remained empty as far as the detectors could reach. Nor was this fact surprising, in spite of the Lensman's fears to the contrary; for the patrolmen had given the pirates such an extremely long line to cover that many days must yet elapse before the minions of Boskone would get around to visit that unimportant, unexplored, and almost unknown solar system.
En route to his home planet Worsel got in touch with the crew of the Velantian vessel already in space, ordering them to return to port posthaste and instructing them in detail what to think and how to act should they be stopped and searched by one of Boskone's raiders. By the time these instructions had been given, Velantia loomed large beneath the flying midget. Then, with Worsel as guide, Kinnison drove over a mighty ocean upon whose opposite shore lay the great city in which Worsel lived.
"But I would like to have them welcome you as befits what you have done, and have you go to the dome!" mourned the Velantian. "Think of it! You have done a thing which for ages the massed power of the planet has been trying vainly to accomplish, and yet you insist that I alone take full and complete credit for it!"
"I don't insist on any such thing," argued Kinnison, "even though it's practically all yours, anyway. I insist only on your keeping us and the patrol out of it, and you know as well as I do why you've got to do that. Tell them anything else you want to. Say that a couple of pink-haired Chickladorians helped you and then beat it back home.Thatplanet's far enough away so that if the pirates chase them they'll get a real run for their money. After this blows over you can tell the truth—butnot until then.
"And as for us going to the dome for a grand hocus-pocus, that is completely and definitelyout. We're not going anywhere except to the biggest space yard you've got. You're not going to give us anything except a lot of material and a lot of highly trained help that can keep their thoughts sealed.
"We've got to build a lot of heavy stuff fast; and we've got to get started on it just as quickly as the gods of space will let us!"
VIII.
Worsel knew his council of scientists, as well he might, since it developed that he himself ranked high in that select circle. True to his promises, the largest space port of the planet was immediately emptied of its customary personnel, which was replaced the following morning by an entirely new group of workmen.
Nor were these replacements ordinary laborers. They were young, keen, and highly trained, taken, to a man, from behind the thought-screens of the scientists. It is true that they had no inkling of what they were to do, since none of them had ever dreamed of the possibility of such engines as they were to be called upon to construct.
But, upon the other hand, they were well versed in the fundamental theories and operations of mathematics, and from pure mathematics to applied mechanics is but a step. Furthermore, they hadbrains—knew how to think logically, coherently, and effectively, and needed neither driving nor supervision—only instruction. And best of all, practically every one of the required mechanisms already existed, in miniature, within theBrittania'slifeboat, ready at hand for their dissection, analysis, and enlargement. It was not lack of understanding which was to slow up the work; it was simply that the planet did not boast machine tools and equipment large enough or strong enough to handle the necessarily huge and heavy parts and members required.
While the construction of this heavy machinery was being rushed through, Kinnison and VanBuskirk devoted their efforts to the fabrication of an ultra-sensitive receiver, tunable to the pirates' scrambled wave bands. With their exactly detailed knowledge, and with the cleverest technicians and the choicest equipment of Velantia at their disposal, the set was soon completed.
Kinnison was giving its exceedingly delicate coils their final alignment when Worsel wriggled blithely into the radio laboratory.
"Hi, Kimball Kinnison of the Lens!" he called gayly. Throwing some twenty feet of his serpent's body in lightning loops about a convenient pillar, he made a horizontal bar of the rest of himself and dropped one wing tip to the floor. Then, nonchalantly upside down, he thrust out three or four eyes and curled their stalks over the Lensman's shoulder, the better to inspect the results of the mechanics' efforts. Gone was the morose, pessimistic, death-haunted Worsel who had wrought and fought beside the armored pair upon fantastically inimical Delgon. This was a new Worsel entirely; gay, happy, carefree, and actually frolicsome—if you can imagine a thirty-foot-long, crocodile-headed, leather-winged python as being frolicsome!
"Hi, your royal snakeship!" Kinnison retorted in kind. "Still here, huh? Thought you'd be back on Delgon by this time, cleaning up the rest of that mess."
"The equipment is not ready, but there's no hurry about that." The playful reptile unwrapped ten or twelve feet of tail from the pillar and waved it airily about. "Their power is broken; their race is done. You are about to try out the new receiver?"
"Yes—going out after them right now." Kinnison began deftly to manipulate the micrometric verniers of his dials.
Eyes fixed upon meters and gauges, he listened—listened—increased his power and listened again. More and more power he applied to his apparatus, listening continually. Suddenly he stiffened, his hands becoming rock-still. He listened, if possible even more intently than before; and as he listened his face grew grim and granite-hard. Then the micrometers began again, crawlingly, to move, as though he were tracing a beam.
"Bus! Hook on the focusing beam antenna!" he snapped. "It's going to take every milliwatt of power we've got in this hook-up to tap his beam, but I think that I've got Helmuth direct, instead of through a pirate-ship relay!"
Again and again he checked the readings of his dials and of the directors of his antenna; each time noting the exact time of the Velantian day.
"There! As soon as we get some time, Worsel, I'd like to work out these figures with some of your astronomers. They'll give me a right line through to Helmuth's headquarters—I hope. Some day, if I'm spared, I'll get another!"
"What kind of news did you get?" asked VanBuskirk.
"Good and bad both," replied the Lensman. "Good in that Helmuth doesn't believe that we stayed with his ship as long as we did. He's a suspicious devil, you know, and is pretty well convinced that we tried to run the same kind of a blazer on him that we did the other time. Since he hasn't got enough ships on the job to work the whole line, he's concentrating on the other end. That means that we've got plenty of days left. The bad part of it is that they've got four of our boats already and are bound to get more. Lord, how I wish I could call the rest of them! Some of them could certainly make it here before they got caught."
"Might I then offer a suggestion?" asked Worsel, suddenly diffident.
"Surely!" the Lensman replied in surprise. "Your ideas have never been any kind of poppycock. Why so bashful all at once?"
"Because this one is so—ah—so peculiarly personal, since you men regard so highly the privacy of your minds. Our two sciences, as you have already observed, are vastly different. You are far beyond us in mechanics, physics, chemistry, and the other applied sciences. We, on the other hand, have delved much deeper than have you into psychology and the other introspective studies. For that reason I know positively that the Lens you wear is capable of enormously greater things than you are at present able to perform. Of course, I cannot use your Lens directly, since it is attuned to your own ego. However, if the idea appeals to you, I could, with your consent, occupy your mind and use your Lens to put youen rapportwith your fellows. I have not volunteered the suggestion before because I know how averse your mind is to any foreign control."
"Not necessarily to foreign control," Kinnison corrected him. "Only toenemycontrol. The idea of friendly control never occurred to me. That would be an entirely different breed of cats. Go to it!"
Kinnison relaxed his mind completely, and that of the Velantian came welling in, wave upon friendly, surging wave of benevolent power. And not only—or not precisely—power. It was more than power; it was a calm, cool, placidcertainty, a depth and clarity of perception that Kinnison in his most cogent moments had never dreamed a possibility. The possessor of that mind knew things, cameo-clear in microscopic detail, which the keenest minds of Earth could perceive only as chaotically indistinct masses of mental light and shade, of no recognizable pattern whatever!
"Give me the thought pattern of him with whom you wish first to converse," came Worsel's thought, this time from deep within the Lensman's own brain.
Kinnison felt a subtle thrill of uneasiness at that new and ultra-strange dual personality, but thought back steadily, "Sorry—I can't."
"Excuse me, I should have known that you cannot think in our patterns. Think, then, of him as a person—an individual. That will give me, I believe, sufficient data."
Into the Earthman's mind there leaped a picture of Henderson, sharp and clear. He felt his Lens actually tingle and throb as a concentration of vital force such as he had never known poured through his whole being and into that almost-living creation of the Arisians, and immediately thereafter he was in full mental communication with the chief pilot of the ill-fatedBrittania! And there, seated across the tiny mess table of their lifeboat, was Thorndyke, the master technician.
Henderson came to his feet with a yell as the telepathic message bombarded into his brain, and it required several seconds to convince him that he was not the victim of space insanity or suffering from any other form of hallucination. Once convinced, however, he acted. His lifeboat shot toward far Velantia at maximum blast.
Then: "Nelson! Allerdyce! Thompson! Jenkins! Uhlenhuth! Smith! Chatway——" Kinnison called the roll of the survivors.
Nelson, theBrittania'scommunications officer, answered his captain's call. So did Allerdyce, the juggling quartermaster. So did Uhlenhuth, a technician. So did those in three other boats. Two of these three were apparently well within the danger zone, and might get nipped in their dash, but their crews elected without hesitation to take the chance. Four boats, it was already known, had been captured by the pirates. The remaining eight were either so distant as to be out of range of even the Worsel-driven Lens, or they had been taken by pirates who had not yet reported to Helmuth.
"Eight out of twenty," Kinnison mused. "Not so good, but it could have been a lot worse. They might very well have taken us all by this time."
Then he turned to the Velantian, who had withdrawn his mind as soon as its task was done. "Thanks, Worsel," he said simply. "Some of those lads coming in have got plenty of just what it takes, andhowwe can use them!"
One by one the lifeboats of theBrittaniacame into port, where their crews were welcomed briefly, but feelingly, before they were put to work. Nelson, the communications officer, among the last to arrive, was to the Lensman particularly welcome.
"Nels, we need you badly," Kinnison informed him as soon as greetings had been exchanged. "The pirates have a beam, carrying a peculiarly scrambled wave that they can receive and decode through any kind of ordinary blanketing interference, and you're the best man of us all to study their system. Some of these Velantian scientists can probably help you a lot on that—any race that can develop a screen against thought figures to know more than somewhat about vibration in general. We've got working models of the pirates' instruments, so that you can figure out their patterns and formulas. That ought to be simple.
"When you've done that, I want you and your Velantians to design something that will scramble all the pirates' communicator beams in space, from here to the near rim of the galaxy. If you can fix things so that they can't talk, any more than we can, it'll help a lot, believe me!"
"QX, chief, we'll give it the works." And the radio man called for tools, apparatus and electricians.
Then throughout the great space port the many Velantians and the handful of patrolmen labored mightily, side by side, and to very good effect indeed. Slowly, the port became ringed about by, and studded everywhere with, monstrous mechanisms. Everywhere there were projectors: refractory-throated demons ready to vomit forth every force known to the expert technicians of the patrol. There were absorbers, too, backed by their bleeder resistors, air gaps, ground rods, and racks for discharged accumulators. There, too, were receptors and converters for the cosmic energy which was to empower many of the devices. There were, of course, atomic motor generators by the score, and battery upon battery of gigantic accumulators. And Nelson's high-powered scrambler was ready to go to work.
These machines appeared crude, rough, unfinished; for neither time nor labor had been wasted upon nonessentials. But inside each one the moving parts fitted with micrometric accuracy and with hair-spring balance. All, without exception, functioned perfectly.
At Worsel's call, Kinnison climbed up out of a great beamproof pit, the top of whose wall was practically composed of tractor-beam projectors. Pausing only to make sure that a sticking switch on one of the screen-dome generators had been replaced, he hurried to the heavily armored control room, where his little force of fellow patrolmen awaited him.
"They're coming, boys," he announced. "You all know what to do. There are a lot more things that we could have done if we'd had more time, but as it is we'll just go to work on them with what we've got." And Kinnison, again all brisk captain, bent over his instruments.
In the ordinary course of events the pirate would have flashed up to the planet with spy rays out and issuing a peremptory demand for the planet to show a clean bill of health or to surrender instantly such fugitives as might lately have landed upon it. But Kinnison did not—could not—wait for that. The spy rays, he knew, would reveal the presence of his armament; and such armament most certainly did not belong to this planet. Therefore, the instant that the pirate ship came within range of his detectors he acted; and forthwith everything happened at once, with furious swiftness.
A tracer lashed out, the pilot ray of the rim battery of extraordinarily powerful tractors. Under the urge of those beams the inertialess ship flashed toward their center of action, which was the geometrical center of the space port's deep rayproof pit. At the same moment Nelson's scrambler burst into activity, a dome-screen against cosmic-energy intake, and a full circle of super-powered attacking rays.
All these things occurred in the twinkling of an eye, and the vessel was being slowed down by the atmosphere of Velantia before her startled commander could even realize that he was being attacked. Only the presence of automatically reacting defensive screens saved that ship from instant destruction; but they did so save it and in seconds the pirates' every weapon was furiously ablaze.
In vain. The defenses of that pit could take it. They were driven by mechanisms easily able to absorb the output of any equipment mountable upon a mobile base, and to his consternation the pirate found that his cosmic-energy intake was at, and remained at, zero. He sent out call after call for help, but could not make contact with any other pirate station. Ether and subether alike were closed to him; his signals were blanketed completely. Nor could his drivers, even though operating at ruinous overload, move him from the geometrical center of that incandescently flaming pit, so inconceivably rigid were the tractors' clamps upon him.
And soon his power began to fail. His vessel, designed to operate upon cosmic-energy intake, carried only enough accumulators for stabilization of power flow, an amount ridiculously inadequate for a combat as profligate of energy as this. But, strangely enough, as his defense weakened, so lessened the power of the attack. It was no part of the Lensman's plan to destroy this superdreadnaught of the void.
"That was one good thing about the oldBrittania," he gritted as he cut down, step by step, the power of his beams, "nobody could block her off from what power she had!"
Soon the stored-up energy of the battleship was exhausted and she lay there, quiescent. Then giant pressers went into action and she was lifted over the wall of the pit, to settle down in an open space beside it—open, but still under the domes of force.
Kinnison had no needle rays as yet, the time at his disposal having been sufficient only for the construction of the absolutely essential items of equipment. Now, while he was debating with his fellows as to what part of the vessel to destroy in order to wipe out its crew, the pirates themselves ended the debate. Ports yawned in the vessel's armored side and they came out fighting.
For they were not a breed to die like rats in a trap, and they knew that to remain inside their vessel was to die whenever and however their captors willed. They knew also that die they must if they could not conquer. Their surrender, even if it should be accepted, would mean only a somewhat later death in the lethal chambers of the law. In the open, they could at least take some of their foes with them.
Furthermore, not being men as we know men, they had nothing in common with either human beings or Velantians. Both of them were vermin, as they themselves were to the beings manning this surprisingly impregnable fortress here in this waste corner of the galaxy. Therefore, space-hardened veterans all, they fought, with the insane ferocity and desperation of the ultimately last stand; but they did not conquer. Instead, and to the last man, they died.
As soon as the battle was over, before the interference blanketing the pirates' communicators was cut off, Kinnison went through the captured vessel, destroying the headquarters visiplates and every automatic sender which could transmit any kind of a message to any pirate base.
Then the interference was stopped; the domes were released; the ship was removed from the field of operations. Then, while Thorndyke and his reptilian aides—themselves now radio experts of no mean attainments—busied themselves at installing a high-powered scrambler aboard her, Kinnison and Worsel scanned space in search of more prey. Soon they found it, more distant than the first one had been—two solar systems away—and in an entirely different direction. Tracers and tractors and interference and domes of force again became the order of the day. Projectors again raved out in their incandescent might, and soon another immense cruiser of the void lay beside her sister ship. Another and another; then, for a long time, space was blank.
The Lensman then energized his ultra-receiver, pointing his antenna carefully into the galactic line to Helmuth's base, as laid down for him by the Velantian astronomers. Again, so tight and hard was Helmuth's beam, he had to drive his apparatus so unmercifully that the tube noise almost drowned out the signals, but again he was rewarded by hearing faintly the voice of the pirate director of operations.
"—four vessels, all within or near one of those five solar systems, have ceased communicating; each cessation being accompanied by a period of blanketing interference of a pattern never before registered. You two vessels who are receiving these orders are instructed to investigate that region with the utmost care. Go with screens out and everything on the trips, and with automatic recorders set on me here.
"It is not believed that the patrol has anything to do with this, as ability has been shown transcending anything it has been known to possess. As a working hypothesis it is assumed that one of those solar systems, hitherto practically unexplored and unknown, is, in reality, the seat of a highly advanced race, which perhaps has taken offense at the attitude or conduct of our first ship to visit them. Therefore, proceed with extreme caution, with a thorough spy-ray search at extreme range before approaching at all. If you land, use tact and diplomacy instead of the customary tactics. Find out whether our ships and crews have been destroyed, or are only being held. And remember, automatic reporters on at all times. Helmuth, speaking for Boskone—off!"
For minutes Kinnison manipulated his micrometer in vain. He could not get another sound.
"What are you trying to get, Kim?" asked Thorndyke. "Wasn't that enough?" The message had been re-broadcast to the minds of the others by Worsel, as fast as it had entered the Lensman's ears.
"No, that's only half of it," Kinnison returned. "Helmuth's nobody's fool. He's certainly trying to plot the boundaries of our interference, and I want to see how he's coming out with it. But no dice. He's so far away and his beam's so hard that I can't work him unless he happens to be talking almost directly toward us. Well, it won't be long now until we'll give him some real interference to plot. Now we'll see what we can do about those two other ships that are heading this way. On your toes, everybody."
Carefully as those two ships investigated, and sedulously, as they sought to obey Helmuth's instructions, all their precautions amounted to exactly nothing. As ordered, they began a spy-ray survey at extreme range; but even at that range Kinnison's tracers were effective and those two ships also ceased communicating in a blaze of interference. Then recent history repeated itself. The details were changed somewhat, since there were two vessels instead of one; but the pit was of ample size to accommodate two ships, and the tractors could hold two as well and as rigidly as one. The conflict was a little longer, the beaming a little hotter and more coruscant, but the ending was the same. Scramblers were quickly installed and Kinnison addressed his men, already in the ships.
"Well, we're about ready to shove off again. Running away has worked twice so far, with very good results—once in the oldBrittania, and once in the pirate's own ships. It should work again, if we can ring in enough variations on the theme to keep Helmuth guessing a while longer. Maybe, if the supply of pirate ships keeps up, we'll be able to make Helmuth furnish us transportation all the way back to base!
"Here's the idea. We've got six ships, and there's enough of us to drive them. Some of the younger Velantians have joined us, in spite of the fact that I've told them the chances are against them ever getting back. Enough of them, in fact, to make up almost full crews of us all. But six ships isn't enough of a squadron to fight through the fleets that Helmuth will have organized if we go in a body. So we'll spread out radially, covering thousands of parsecs before we get halfway to base, and broadcasting every watt of interference we can put out all along the way, in as many different shapes and powers as our apparatus will permit. We can't talk to each other, of course, but nothing else can talk anywhere in the same sector of the galaxy, either, and that will give us the edge. Each ship will be on its own, as we were before in the boats; the big difference being that we'll be in superdreadnaughts instead of lifeboats.
"Now, Worsel, if the pirates check up and follow the disturbance we are going to make sure they won't bother you folks at all. In fact, if they ever succeed in finding the center of that interference there will be nothing there except empty space. But if they don't follow us—and Helmuth is apt to insist upon a thorough study of this region before he does anything else—you folks are due for an inspection; and the next inspection will mean a real battle instead of a slaughter. The first spy ray will reveal this stuff here. But I don't suppose you want to hide it or destroy it?"
"We do not," the Velantian replied, positively. "Let them come, in whatever force they care to bring. The more that attack here, the less there will be to halt your progress. This armament represents the best of that possessed by both your patrol and the pirates, with improvements developed by your scientists and ours in full coöperation. We understand thoroughly its construction, operation, and maintenance. You may rest assured that the pirates will never levy tribute upon us, and that any pirate visiting this system will remain in it, permanently!"
"'At-a-snake, Worsel—long may you wiggle!" Kinnison exclaimed. Then, more seriously, "Maybe, after this is all over, I'll see you again sometime. If not, good-by. Good-by, all Velantia! All set, boys? Clear ether and light landings to you all! Blast off!"
Six ships, once pirate craft, now vessels of the Galactic Patrol, hurled themselves into and through Velantian air, into and through interplanetary space, out into the larger, wider, more unobstructed emptiness of the interstellar void. Six, each broadcasting with prodigious power and volume an all-inclusive interference through which no pirate communicator or visiray beam could possibly be driven!
IX.
Kimball Kinnison sat at his controls, smoking a rare, festive cigarette and smiling, at peace with the entire universe. For this new picture was in every element a different one from the old. Instead of being in a pitifully weak and defenseless lifeboat, skulking and hiding, he was in one of the most powerful battleships afloat, driving boldly at full blast almost directly toward home. Instead of only two, the patrolmen were now three in number, and LaVerne Thorndyke, master technician, was a telling addition to their force. Also, they had under them almost a normal crew of alert and highly trained Velantians.
Best of all, the enemy, instead of being a close-knit group, keeping Helmuth informed moment by moment of the situation and instantly responsive to his orders, were now entirely out of communication with each other and with their headquarters, groping helplessly. Literally, as well as figuratively, the pirates were in the dark—the absolute blackness of interstellar space. Then Thorndyke entered the room, frowning slightly.
"You look like the fabled Cheshire Cat, Kim," he remarked. "I hate to spoil such perfect bliss, but I'm here to tell you that we ain't out of the woods yet, by seven thousand rows of trees."
"Maybe not," the Lensman returned, blithely, "but compared to the jam we were in a while ago we're not only sitting on top of the world; we're perched right on the exact apex of the universe. They can't send or receive reports or orders, and they can't communicate. Even their detectors are mighty lame. You know how far they can get on electromagnetic detectors and visual apparatus. Furthermore, there isn't an identification number, symbol, or name on the outside of this buzz buggy. If it ever had one the friction and attrition have worn it off, clear down to the armor. What can happen that we can't cope with?"
"These engines can happen," the technician responded, bluntly. "The Bergenholm is developing a meter jump that I don't like a little bit."
"Does she knock? Or even tick?" demanded Kinnison.
"Not yet," Thorndyke confessed, reluctantly.
"How big a jump?"
"Pretty near two thousandths maximum. Average a thousandth and a half."
"That's hardly a wiggle on the recorder line. Drivers run for months with bigger jumps than that."
"Yeah—drivers. But of all the troubles anybody ever had with Bergenholms, a meter kick was never one of them, and that's what's got me guessing as to the whichness of the why. I'm not trying to scare you—yet. I'm just telling you."
The machine referred to was the neutralizer of inertia, thesine qua nonof interstellar speed, and it was not to be wondered at that the slightest irregularity in its performance was to the technician a matter of grave concern. Day after day passed, however, and the huge converter continued to function, taking in and sending out its wonted torrents of power. It developed not even a tick, and the meter jump did not grow worse. And during those days they put an inconceivable distance behind them.
During all this time their visual instruments remained blank; to all optical apparatus space was empty save for the normal tenancy of celestial bodies. From time to time something invisible or beyond the range of vision registered upon one of the electromagnetic detectors, but so slow were these instruments that nothing came of their signals. In fact, by the time the warnings were recorded, the objects causing the disturbances were probably far astern.
One day, however, the Bergenholm quit—cold. There was no laboring, no knocking, no heating up, no warning at all. One instant the ship was speeding along in free flight; the next she was lying inert in space. She was practically motionless, for any possible velocity built up by inert acceleration is scarcely a crawl, as free space speeds go!
Then the whole crew labored like mad. As soon as they had the massive covers off, Thorndyke scanned the interior of the machine and turned to Kinnison.
"I think we can patch her up, but it'll take quite a while. Maybe you'd be of more use in the control room—this ain't quite as safe as a church, is it, lying here inert?"
"Most of the stuff is on automatic trip, but maybe I'd better keep an eye on things, at that. Let me know occasionally how you're getting along." And the Lensman went back to his controls—none too soon.
For one pirate ship was already beaming him viciously. Only the fact that his defensive armament was upon its automatic trips had saved the stolen battleship from practically instantaneous destruction.
As Kinnison had already remarked more than once, Helmuth was far from being a fool, and that new and amazingly effective blanketing of his every means of communication was a problem whose solution was of paramount importance. Almost every available ship had been, for days, upon the fringe of that interference, observing and reporting continuously. So rapidly was it moving, however, so peculiar was its apparent shape, and so contradictory were the directional readings obtained, that Helmuth's computers had been baffled.
Then Kinnison's Bergenholm failed and his ship went inert. In a space of minutes the location of one center of interference was known. Its coördinates were determined and half a dozen warships were ordered to rush that spot. The raider first to arrive had signaled, visually and audibly; then, obtaining no response, had anchored with a tractor and had loosed his bolts. Nor would the result have been different had every one aboard, instead of no one, been in the control room at the time of the signaling. Kinnison could have read the messages, but neither he nor any one else then aboard the erstwhile pirate craft could have answered them in kind.
Soon the two space ships attacking the turncoat became three, then four, and still the Lensman sat unworried at his board. His meters showed no overload; his noble craft was easily taking everything her sister ships could send.
Then Thorndyke stepped into the room, no longer a natty officer of space. Instead, he was stripped to sweat-soaked undershirt and overalls. He was covered with grease and grime, and what of his thickly smeared face was visible was almost haggard with fatigue. He opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it shut, as his eye was caught by a flaring visiplate.
"Holy jumping rockets!" he exclaimed. "At us already? Why didn't you yell?"
"How much good would that have done?" Kinnison wanted to know. "Of course, if I had known that you were loafing on the job and could have snapped it up a little, I would have. But there's no particular hurry about this. It'll take more than four of them to break us down, and I was hoping that before they can overload us you'd have us traveling. What was on your mind?"
"I came up here—one, to tell you that we're ready to blast; two, to suggest that you hit her easy at first; and three, to ask if you know where there's any grease soap. But you can cancel two and three. We don't want to play around with these boys much longer—they play too rough—and I ain't going to wash up until I see whether she holds together or not. Blast away—and won't those guys be surprised!"
"I'll say so. We were, too, when the Velantians showed us how to compute a screen that would cut a tractor like so much cheese. Here she goes!"
The Lensman twirled a couple of knobs, then punched down hard upon three buttons. As he did so the flaring plates became dark; they were again alone in space. To the dumfounded pirates, inert as they were and with their supposedly unbreakable tractors locked in full grip, it was as though their prey had slipped off into the fourth dimension. Their tractors gripped nothing whatever, their ravening beams bored unimpeded through the space occupied an instant before by resisting screens. They did not know what had happened, or how; and, being deep in the field of interference, they could neither report to nor be guided by the master mind of Boskone.
For minutes Thorndyke, VanBuskirk, and Kinnison waited tensely for they knew not what would happen; but nothing happened and the tension gradually relaxed.
"What was the matter with it?" Kinnison asked, finally.
"Overloaded," was Thorndyke's terse reply.
"Overloaded—hooey!" snapped the Lensman. "Howcouldthey overload a Bergenholm? And, even if they could, why in all the nine hells of Valeria would they want to?"
"Theycoulddo it easily enough, in just the way theydiddo it—by banking accumulators onto it in series parallel. As to why, I'll let you do the guessing. With no load on the Bergenholm you've got full inertia, with full load you've got zero inertia—you can't go any farther. It looks just plain dumb to me. But then, I think all pirates are short a few jets somewhere. If they weren't they wouldn't be pirates."
"I don't know whether you're right or not. Hope so, but afraid not. Personally, I don't believe these folks are pirates at all, in the ordinary sense of the word."
"Huh? What are they, then?"
"Piracy implies similarity of culture, I would think," the Lensman said, thoughtfully. "Ordinary pirates are usually renegades, deficient somehow, as you suggested, rebelling against a constituted authority which they themselves have at one time acknowledged and of which they are still afraid. That pattern doesn't fit into this matrix at all, anywhere."
"So what? Now I say 'hooey' right back at you. Anyway, why worry about it?"
"Not worrying about it exactly, but somebody has got to do some thinking about it, or else——"
"I don't like to think; it makes my head ache," interrupted VanBuskirk. "Besides, we're getting away from the Bergenholm."
"You'll get a real headache there"—Kinnison laughed—"because I'll bet a good Tellurian beefsteak that the pirates were trying to set up a negative inertia when they overloaded the Bergenholm; and thinking about that state of matter is enough to makeanybody'shead ache!"
"I knew that some of the dippier Ph.D.'s in higher mechanics have been speculating about it," Thorndyke offered, "but it can't be done that way, can it?"
"Nor any other way that anybody has tried yet, and if such a thing is possible the results may prove really startling. But you two had better shove off; you're dead from the neck up. The Berg's spinning like a top—as smooth as that much green velvet. You'll find a can of soap in my locker, I think."
"Maybe she'll hold together long enough for us to get some sleep." The technician eyed a meter dubiously, although its needle was not wavering a hair's breadth from the green line. "But I'll tell the cockeyed universe that that was a jury rigging we gave it, if there ever was one. You can't depend on it for an hour until after it's been pulled and gone over; and that, you know as well as I do, takes a real shop, with plenty of equipment. If you take my advice you'll sit down somewhere while you can and as soon as you can. That Bergenholm is in bad shape, believe me. We can hold her together for a while by main strength and awkwardness, but before very long she's going out for keeps—and when she goes out you don't want to find yourself fifty years from a machine shop instead of fifty minutes."
"I'll say not," the Lensman agreed. "But on the other hand, we don't want those birds jumping us the minute we land, either. Let's see, where are we? And where are the bases? Um—um—sector bases are white rings, you know, sub-sector bases red stars——" Three heads bent over charts.
"The nearest red-star marker seems to be in System 240-16-37," Kinnison finally announced. "Don't know the name of the planet—never been there and——"
"Too far," interrupted Thorndyke. "We'll never make it. Might as well try direct for Prime Base on Tellus. If you can't find a red closer than that, look for an orange or a yellow."
"Bases of any kind seem to be scarce out here," the Lensman commented. "Wish they had scattered them around a little thicker. Here's a violet star, but that wouldn't help us—just an outpost."
"Guess that purple one there's our best bet," concluded Thorndyke. "It's probably several breakdowns away, but maybe we can make it if we have to. Purples are pretty low-grade space ports, but they've got tools, anyway. What's the name of it, Kim—or is it only a number?"
"It's that very famous planet, Trenco," the Lensman announced, after looking up the reference numbers in the atlas.
"Trenco!" exclaimed Thorndyke in disgust. "The nuttiest, dopiest, wooziest planet in the galaxy! Wewoulddraw something like that to sit down on for repairs, wouldn't we? Well, I'm on minus time for sleep. Call me if we go inert before I wake up, will you?"
"I sure will; and I'll try to figure out a way of getting down to ground without bringing all the pirates in space along with us."
Then Thorndyke and VanBuskirk slept; Kinnison planned, and the mighty Bergenholm continued to hold the vessel inertialess. In fact, all three men were thoroughly rested and refreshed before the expected breakdown came. And when it did come they were more or less prepared for it. The delay was not sufficiently long to enable the pirates to find them again.
The sweating, grunting, swearing engineers made one seemingly impossible repair after another, by dint of what dodge, improvisation, and makeshift only the fertile brain of LaVerne Thorndyke ever did know. The master technician, one of the keenest and most highly trained engineers of the whole solarian system, was not used to working with his hands. Although young in years, he was wont to use only his head, in directing the labors and the energies of others.
Nevertheless, he was now working like a stevedore. He was permanently grimy and greasy—their one can of mechanics' soap had been used up long since. His finger nails were black and broken; his hands and face were burned, blistered and cracked. His muscles ached and shrieked at the unaccustomed effort, until now they were on the build. But through it all he had stuck uncomplainingly, even buoyantly, to his task. One day, during an interlude of free flight, he strode into the control room and glanced at the course-plotting goniometer, then stared into the "tank."
"Still on the original course, I see. Have you get anything doped out yet?"
"Nothing very good. That's why I'm staying on this course until we reach the point closest to Trenco. I've figured until my alleged brain back-fired on me, and here's all I can get:
"I've been shrinking and expanding our interference zone, changing its shape as much as I could with reflectors, and cutting it off entirely now and then, to cross up their surveyors as much as I could. When we come to the jumping-off place we'll simply cut off everything that is sending out traceable vibrations. The Berg will have to run, of course, but it doesn't radiate much and we can ground out practically all of that. The drive is the bad feature. It looks as though we'll have to cut down to where we can ground out the radiation."
"How about the flare?" Thorndyke took the inevitable slide rule from a pocket of his overalls and began to work it.
"I've already had the Velantians build us some baffles—we've got lots of spare tantalum, tungsten, carballoy, and refractory, you know—just in case we should want to use them."
"Radiation—detection—decrement—cosine squared theta—um—call it Point 0038," the engineer mumbled, operating his calculator. "We'll have to cut down to about ten or twelve lights. Mighty slow, but we would get there sometime—maybe. Now about the baffles." And he went into another bout with his slide rule, during which could be distinguished a few such words as "temperature—inert corpuscles—velocity—fusion point—Weinberger's Constant——"
Then he said, "It figures that at about fourteen lights your baffles go out. Pretty close check with the radiation limit. QX, I guess—but I shudder to think of what we may have to do to that Bergenholm to hold it together that long."
"It's not so hot. I don't think much of the scheme myself," admitted Kinnison frankly. "Probably you can think up something better before——"
"Who, me? What with?" Thorndyke interrupted, with a laugh. "Looks to me like our best bet. Anyway, ain't you the master mind of this outfit? Blast off!"
Thus it came about that, long later, the Lensman cut off his interference, cut off his driving power, cut off every mechanism whose operation generated vibrations which would reveal to enemy detectors the location of his cruiser. Space-suited mechanics emerged from the stern lock and fitted over the still white-hot vents of the driving projectors the baffles they had previously built.
It is, of course, well known that all ships of space are propelled by the inert projection, by means of high-potential static fields, of nascent fourth-order particles or "corpuscles," which are formed inert, inside the inertialess projector, by the conversion of some form of energy into matter. This conversion liberates some heat, and a vast amount of light. This light, or "flare," shining as it does directly upon and through the highly tenuous gas formed by the projected corpuscles, makes of a speeding space ship one of the most gorgeous spectacles known to man; and it was this very spectacular effect that Kinnison and his crew must do away with if their bold scheme was to have any chance at all of success.
The baffles were in place. Now, instead of shooting out in telltale luminescence, the light was shut in—but so, alas, was approximately three per cent of the heat. And the generation of heatmustbe cut down to a point at which the radiation-equilibrium temperature of the baffles would be below the point of fusion of the refractories of which they were composed. This would cut down their speed tremendously; but, on the other hand, they were practically safe from detection and would reach Trenco eventually—if the Bergenholm held out.
Of course, there was still the chance of visual or electromagnetic detection, but that chance was vanishingly small. The proverbial task of finding a needle in a haystack would be an easy one indeed, compared to that of seeing in a telescope or upon visiplate or magne-plate a dead-black, lightless ship in the infinity of space. No, the Bergenholm was their great, their only concern; and the engineers lavished upon that monstrous fabrication of metal a devotion to which could be likened only that of a corps of nurses attending the ailing baby of a multimillionaire.
This concentration of attention did get results. The engineers still found it necessary to sweat and to grunt and to swear, but they did somehow keep the thing running—most of the time. Nor were they detected—then.
For the attention of the pirate high command was very much taken up with that fast-moving, that ever-expanding, that peculiarly-fluctuating volume of interference—utterly enigmatic as it was, and impenetrable to their very instrument of communication. Its center was moving toward the solarian system. In that system was the Prime Base of the Galactic Patrol. Therefore, itwasthe Lensman's work—undoubtedly the same Lensman who had conquered one of their superships and, after having learned its every secret, had escaped in alifeboatthrough the fine-meshed net set to catch him! And, piling Ossa upon Pelion, this same Lensman had—musthave—captured ship after unconquerable ship of their best and was even now sailing calmly home with them!
Therefore, using as tools every pirate ship in that sector of space, Helmuth and his computers and navigators were slowly but grimly solving the equations of motion of that volume of interference. Smaller and smaller became the uncertainties. Then ship after ship bored into the subethereal murk, to match course and velocity with, and ultimately to come to grips with, each focus of disturbance as it was determined.
Thus in a sense, and although Kinnison and his friends did not then know it, it was only the failure of the Bergenholm that was to save their lives, and with those lives our present civilization.
Slowly, haltingly, and, for reasons already given, undetected, Kinnison made pitiful progress toward Trenco—impatiently cursing his ship, the crippled generator, its designer and its previous operators as he went. But at long last Trenco loomed large beneath them and the Lensman used his Lens.
"Lensman of Trenco space port, or any other Lensman within call!" he sent out clearly. "Kinnison of Tellus—Sol III—calling. My Bergenholm is almost out and I must sit down at Trenco space port for repairs. I have avoided the pirates so far, but they may be either behind me or ahead of me, or both. What is the situation there?"
"I fear that I can be of no help," came back a weak thought, without the customary identification. "I am out of control. However, Tregonsee is in the——"
Kinnison felt a poignant, unbearably agonizing mental impact that jarred him to the very core: a shock that, while of sledge-hammer force, was still of such a keenly, penetrant timbre that it almost exploded every cell of his brain.
Communication ceased, and the Lensman knew, with a sick, shuddering certainty, that while in the very act of talking to him a Lensman had died.
X.
Judged by any Earthly standards, the planet Trenco was—and is—a peculiar one indeed. Its atmosphere, which is not air, and its liquid, which is not water, are its two outstanding peculiarities and the sources of most of its others. Almost half of that atmosphere and by far the greater part of the liquid phase of the planet is a substance of extremely low latent heat of vaporization, with a boiling point such that during the daytime it is a vapor and at night a liquid. To make matters worse, the other constituents of Trenco's gaseous envelope are of very feeble blanketing power, low specific heat, and of high permeability, so that its days are intensely hot and its nights are bitterly cold.
At night, therefore, it rains. Words are entirely inadequate to describe to any one who has never been there just how it does rain during Trenco's nights. Upon Earth one inch of rainfall in an hour is a terrific downpour. Upon Trenco that amount of precipitation would scarcely be considered a mist; for along the equatorial belt, in less than thirteen Tellurian hours, it rains exactly forty-seven feet and five inches every night—no more and no less, each and every night of every year.
Also there is lightning. Not in Terra's occasional flashes, but in one continuous, blinding glare which makes night as we know it unknown there—in nerve-wracking, battering, sense-destroying discharges which make ether and subether alike impenetrable to any ray or signal short of a full-driven power beam. The days are practically as bad. The lightning is not so violent then, but the bombardment of Trenco's monstrous sun, through that outlandishly peculiar atmosphere, produces almost the same effect.
Because of the difference in pressure set up by the enormous precipitation, always and everywhere upon Trenco there is wind—and what a wind! Except at the very poles, where it is too cold for even Trenconian life to exist, there is hardly a spot in which or a time at which an Earthy gale would not be considered a dead calm; and along the equator, at every sunrise and at every sunset, the wind blows from the day side to the night side at the rate of a trifle over eight hundred miles an hour!
Through countless thousands of years wind and wave have planed and scoured the planet Trenco to a geometrically perfect oblate spheroid. It has no elevations and no depressions. Nothing fixed in an Earthly sense grows or exists upon its surface; no structure has ever been built there able to stay in one place through one whole day of the cataclysmic meteorological phenomena which constitute the natural Trenconian environment.
There live upon Trenco two types of vegetation, each type having innumerable subdivisions. One type sprouts in the mud of the morning; flourishes flatly, by dint of deeply sent and powerful roots, during the wind and the heat of the day; comes to full fruit in late afternoon; and at sunset dies and is swept away by the flood. The other type is free-floating. Some of its genera are remotely like footballs; others resemble tumbleweeds; still others thistledown; hundreds of others have not their remotest counterparts upon Earth. Essentially, however, they are alike in habits of life. They can sink in the "water" of Trenco; they can burrow in its mud, from which they derive part of their sustenance; they can emerge therefrom into the sunlight; they can, undamaged, float in or roll along before the ever-present Trenconian wind; and they can enwrap, entangle, or otherwise seize and hold anything with which they come in contact which by any chance may prove edible.
Animal life, too, while abundant and diverse, is characterized by three qualities. From lower to very highest it is amphibious; it is streamlined; and it is omnivorous. Life upon Trenco is hard, and any form of life to evolve there must of stern necessity be willing, yes, even anxious, to eat literallyanythingavailable. And for that reason all surviving forms of life, vegetable and animal, have a voracity and a fecundity almost unknown anywhere else in the galaxy.
Thionite, the noxious drug referred to earlier in this narrative, is the sole reason for Trenco's galactic importance. As chlorophyll is to Earthly vegetation, so is thionite to that of Trenco. Trenco is the only planet thus far known upon which this substance occurs, nor have our scientists even yet been able either to analyze or to synthesize it. Thionite is capable of affecting only those races who breathe oxygen and possess warm blood, red with haemoglobin.
However, the planets peopled by such races are legion, and very shortly after the drug's discovery hordes of addicts, smugglers, peddlers, and out-and-out pirates were rushing toward the new bonanza. Thousands of these adventurers died, either from each other's ray guns or under an avalanche of hungry Trenconian life; but, thionite being what it is, thousands more kept coming. Also came the patrol, to curb the evil traffic at its source by beaming down ruthlessly any being attempting to gather any Trenconian vegetation.
Thus between the patrol and the drug syndicate there rages a bitterly continuous battle to the death. Arrayed against both factions is the massed life of the noisome planet, omnivorous as it is, eternally ravenous, and of an individual power and ferocity and a collective aggregate of numbers none of which is to be despised. And eternally raging against all these contending parties are the wind, the lightning, the rain, the flood, and the hellish vibratory output of Trenco's enormous, malignant, blue-white sun.
This, then, was the planet upon which Kinnison had to land in order to repair his crippled Bergenholm—and in the end how well it was to be that such was the case!
"Kinnison of Tellus, greetings. Tregonsee of Rigel IV calling from Trenco space port. Have you ever landed on this planet before?"
"No, but what——"
"Skip that for a time; it is most important that you land here quickly and safely. Where are you in relation to this planet?"