XIII.
A powerful fleet had been sent to rescue those of theBrittania'screw who might have managed to stay out of the clutches of the pirates. The wildly enthusiastic celebration inside Prime Base was over. Outside the force walls of the reservation, however, it was just beginning. Thorndyke, VanBuskirk, and the Velantians were in the thick of it. No one on Earth, except a few planetographers, had ever heard of Velantia, and those highly intelligent reptilian beings knew even less of Tellus. Nevertheless, simply because they had aided the patrolmen, the visitors were practically given the keys to the planet, and they were enjoying the experience tremendously.
"We want Kinnison! We want Kinnison!" the festive crowd, led by Universal Telenews men, had been yelling; and finally the Lensman came out. But after one pose before a lens and a few words into a microphone, he pleaded, "There's my call, now—urgent!" and fled back inside Reservation. Then the milling tide of celebrants rolled back toward the city, taking with it every patrolman who could get leave.
Engineers and designers were swarming through and over the pirate ship Kinnison had driven home, each armed with a sheaf of blue prints already prepared from the long-cherished data spool, each directing a corps of mechanics in dismantling some mechanism of the great space rover. It was to this hive of bustling activity that Kinnison had been called. He stood there, answering as best he could the multitude of questions being fired at him from all sides, until he was rescued by no less a personage than Port Admiral Haynes.
"You gentlemen can get your information from the data sheets better than you can from Kinnison," he remarked with a smile, "and I want to take his report without any more delay."
Hand under arm, the old Lensman led the young one away. But once inside his private office he summoned neither secretary nor recorder. Instead, he pushed the buttons which set up a complete-coverage shield and spoke.
"Now, son, open up. Out with it—everything that you have been holding back ever since you landed. I got your signal."
"Well, yes, I have been holding back," Kinnison admitted. "I haven't got enough jets to be sticking my neck out in fast company, even if it were something to be discussed in public, which it is not. I'm glad you could give me this time so soon. I want to go over an idea with you, and withno one else. It may be as cockeyed as Trenco's ether—you are to be the sole judge as to that—but you will know, no matter how goofy it is, that I mean well."
"That certainly is not an overstatement," Haynes replied, dryly. "Go ahead."
"The great peculiarity of space combat is that we fly free, but fight inert," Kinnison began, apparently irrelevantly, but choosing his phraseology with care. "To force an engagement one ship locks to the other first with tracers, then with tractors, and goes inert. Thus, relative speed determines the ability to force or to avoid engagement; but it is relative power that determines the outcome. Heretofore, the pirates——
"And by the way, we are belittling our opponents and building up a disastrous overconfidence in ourselves by calling them pirates. It has been thought before that they were not pirates, and now we know definitely that they are not. It is more than a race or a system. It is actually a galaxy-wide culture. It is an absolute despotism, holding its authority by means of a rigid system of rewards and punishments. In our eyes it is fundamentally wrong, but it works.Howit works! It is organized just as we are, and is apparently as strong in bases, vessels and personnel. In my own mind I have been calling the whole culture 'Boskonia,' since no one seems to know who or what Boskone really is. Perhaps Boskone reallyisthe name of the entire organization?
"But to get on with the thought. Boskonia has had all the best of it, both in speed—except for theBrittania'smomentary advantage—and in power. That advantage is now lost to them. We will have, then, two immense powers, each galactic in scope, each tremendously powerful in arms, equipment, and personnel; each having exactly the same weapons and defenses, and each determined to wipe out the other. A stalemate is inevitable; an absolute deadlock; a sheerly destructive war of attrition which will go on for centuries and which must end in the annihilation of both Boskonia and civilization."
"But our new shears and screens!" protested the older man. "They give us an overwhelming advantage. We can force or avoid engagement, as we please. You know the plan to crush them. You helped to develop it."
"Yes, I know the plan. I also know that we will not crush them. So do you. We both know that our advantage will be only temporary." The young Lensman, unimpressed, was in deadly earnest.
The admiral did not reply for a time. Deep down, he himself had felt the doubt; but neither he nor any other of his school had ever mentioned the thing that Kinnison had now so boldly put into words. He knew that whatever one side had, of weapon or armor or of equipment, would sooner or later become the property of the other—as was witnessed by the desperate venture which Kinnison himself had so recently and so successfully concluded. He knew that the devices installed in the vessels captured upon Velantia had been destroyed before falling into the hands of the enemy, but he also knew that with entire fleets so equipped the new arms could not be kept secret indefinitely.
Therefore, he finally replied: "That may be true." He paused, then went on like the indomitable veteran that he was, "But we have the advantage now and we'll drive it while we've got it. After all, wemaybe able to hold it long enough."
"I've just thought of one more thing that would help: communication." Kinnison did not argue the previous point, but went ahead. "It seems to be impossible to drive any kind of a communicator beam through the double interference——"
"Seemsto be!" barked Haynes. "Itisimpossible! Nothing but a thought——"
"That's it exactly—thought!" interrupted Kinnison in turn. "The Velantians can do things with a Lens that nobody would believe possible. Why not examine some of them for Lensmen? I'm sure that Worsel could pass, and probably many others. They can drive thoughts through anything except their own thought-screens—and what communicators they would make!"
"That idea has distinct possibilities and will be followed up. However, it is not what you wanted to discuss. G.A.!"
"QX," Kinnison went into Lens-to-Lens communication. "I want some kind of a shield or screen that will neutralize or nullify a detector. I asked Hotchkiss, the communications expert, about it—under seal. He said that it had never been investigated, even as an academic problem in research, but that it was theoretically possible."
"This room is shielded, you know." Haynes was surprised at the use of the Lenses. "Is itthatimportant?"
"I don't know. As I said before, I may be cockeyed; but if my idea is any good at all that nullifier is the most important thing in the universe, and if word of it gets out it will be absolutely useless. You see, sir, over the long route, the only really permanent advantage that we have over Boskonia, the one thing that they cannot get, is the Lens. There must be some way to use it. If that nullifier is possible, and if we can keep it a secret, I believe that I have found it. At least, I want to try something. It may not work—probably it won't; it's a mighty slim chance—but if it does, we may be able to wipe out Boskonia in a few months, instead of carrying on forever a war of attrition. First, I want to go to——"
"Hold on!" Haynes snapped. "I've been thinking, too. I can't see any possible relation between such a device and any real military weapon, or the Lens, either. If I can't, not many others can, and that's a point in your favor. If there is anything at all in your idea, it is too big to share with any one, even me. Keep it yourself."
"But it's a peculiar hook-up, and may not be any good at all," protested Kinnison. "You might want to cancel it."
"No danger of that," came the positive statement. "You know more about the pirates—pardon me, about Boskonia—than any other patrolman. You believe that your idea has some slight chance of success. Very well—that fact is enough to put every resource of the patrol back of you. Put your idea on a tape and seal the spool in your private box in the vault, so that it will not be lost in case of your death. Then go ahead. If it is possible to develop that nullifier, you shall have it. Hotchkiss will take charge of it, and have any other Lensmen he wants. No one except Lensmen will work on it or know anything about it. Only one will be made and no records will be kept. It will not even exist until you yourself release it to us."
"Thanks, sir." And Kinnison left the room.
Then for weeks Prime Base was the scene of an activity furious indeed. New apparatus was designed and tested; shears for tracers and tractors, generators of screens against cosmic-energy intake, scramblers for the communicators of the enemy, and many other things. Each item was designed and tested, redesigned and retested, until even the most skeptical of the patrol's engineers could no longer find in it anything to criticize. Then, throughout the galaxy, the ships of the patrol were called into their sector bases to be rebuilt.
There were to be two great classes of vessels. Those of the first were to have speed and defense—nothing else. They were to be the fastest things in space, and able to defend themselves against attack. That was all. Vessels of the second class had to be built from the keel upward, since nothing even remotely like them had theretofore been conceived. They were to be huge, ungainly, slow—simply storehouses of incomprehensibly vast powers of offense. They carried projectors of a size and power never before set upon movable foundations, nor were they dependent upon cosmic energy. They carried their own, in bank upon stupendous bank of Gargantuan accumulators. In fact, each of these monstrous floating fortresses was to be able to generate screens of such design and power that no vessel anywhere near them could receive cosmic energy!
This, then, was the bolt which civilization was preparing to hurl against Boskonia. In theory the thing was simplicity itself. The ultra-fast cruisers would catch the enemy, lock on with tractors, and go inert, thus anchoring in space. Then, while absorbing and dissipating everything that the opposition could send, they would put out a peculiarly patterned interference, the center of which could easily be located. The mobile fortresses would then come up, cut off the Boskonians' power intake, and finish up the job.
Not soon was that bolt forged; but in time civilization was ready to launch its stupendous and, it was generally hoped and believed, conclusive attack upon Boskonia. Every sector base and sub-base was ready; the zero hour had been set.
At Prime Base Kimball Kinnison, the youngest Tellurian ever to wear the four silver stripes of captain, sat at the conning plate of the cruiserBrittania II, so named at his own request. He thrilled inwardly as he thought of her speed. Such was her force of drive that, streamlined to the ultimate degree although she was, she had special wall shields, and special dissipators to radiate into space the heat of friction of the medium through which she tore so madly. Otherwise she would have destroyed herself in an hour of full blast, even in the hard vacuum of interstellar space!
And in his office Port Admiral Haynes watched a chronometer. Minutes to go—then seconds.
"Clear ether and light landings." His deep voice was gruff with unexpressed emotion. "Five seconds.... QX.... Lift!" And the fleet shot into the air.
The first objective of this solarian fleet was twofold, and this first hop was to be a short one indeed. For the Boskonians had established bases upon both Pluto and Neptune, right here in the solarian system. So close to Prime Base were these bases that only intensive screening and constant vigilance had kept their spy rays out; so powerful were they that the ordinary battleships of the patrol had been impotent against them. Now they were to be removed. Therefore the fleet, cruisers and "maulers" alike, divided into two parts; one part flashing toward Neptune, the other toward slightly more distant Pluto.
Short as was the time necessary to traverse any interplanetary distance, the solarians were detected and were met in force by the ships of Boskone. But scarcely had battle been joined when the enemy began to realize that this was to be a battle the like of which they had never before seen; and when they began to understand it, it was too late. They could not run, and all space was so full of interference that they could not even report to Helmuth what was going on. These first, peculiarly teardrop-shaped vessels of the patrol did not fight at all. They simply held on like bulldogs, taking without response everything that the white-hot projectors could hurl into them.
Their defensive screens radiated fiercely, high into the violet, under the appalling punishment being dealt out to them by the batteries of ship and shore, but they did not go down. Nor did the grip of a single tractor loosen from its anchorage. And in minutes the squat and monstrous maulers came up. Out went their cosmic-energy blocking screens, out shot their tractor beams, and out from the refractory throats of their stupendous projectors there raved the most terrifically destructive forces generable by man.
Boskonian outer screens scarcely even flickered as they went down before the immeasurable, the incredible violence of that thrust. The second course offered a briefly brilliant burst of violet radiance as it gave way. The inner screen resisted stubbornly as it ran the spectrum in a wildly coruscant display of pyrotechnic splendor; but it, too, went through the ultra-violet and into the black.
Now the wall shield itself—that inconceivably rigid fabrication of pure force, which only the instantaneous detonation of twenty metric tons of "duodec" had ever been known to rupture—was all that barred from the base metal of Boskonian walls the utterly indescribable fury of the maulers' beams. Now force was streaming from that shield in veritable torrents.
So terrible were the conflicting energies there at grips that their neutralization was actually visible and tangible. In sheets and masses, in terrific, ether-racking vortices, and in miles-long, pillaring streamers and flashes, those energies were being hurled away—hurled to all the points of the sphere's full compass, filling and suffusing all near-by space.
The Boskonian commanders stared at their instruments, first in bewildered amazement and then in sheer, stark, unbelieving horror as their power intake dropped to zero and their wall shields began to fail—and still the attack continued in never-lessening power. Surely that beamingmustslacken down soon. No conceivable mobile plant could throw such a load for long!
But those mobile plants could—and did. The attack kept up, at the extremely high level upon which it had begun. No ordinary storage cells fed those mighty projectors; along no ordinary busbars were their Titanic amperages borne. Those maulers were designed to do just one thing—tomaul—and that one thing they did well, relentlessly and thoroughly.
Higher and higher into the spectrum the defending wall shields began to radiate. At the first blast they had leaped almost through the visible spectrum, in one unbearably fierce succession of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo, up to a sultry, coruscating, blindingly hard violet. Now the doomed shields began leaping erratically into the ultra-violet. To the eye they were already invisible; upon the recorders they were showing momentary flashes of black.
Soon they went down; and in the instant of each failure one vessel of Boskonia was no more. For, that last defense gone, nothing save unresisting metal was left to withstand the ardor of those ultra-powerful, ravening beams. As has already been said, no substance, however refractory or resistant or inert, can endure even momentarily in such a field of force. Therefore, every atom, alike of vessel and of contents, went to make up the searing, seething burst of brilliant, incandescently luminous vapor which suffused all circumambient space.
Thus passed out of the scheme of things the vessels of the solarian detachment of Boskonia. Not a single vessel escaped; the cruisers saw to that. And then the attack thundered on to the bases themselves. Here the cruisers were useless; they merely formed an observant fringe, the while continuing to so blanket all channels of communication that the doomed bases could send out no word of what was happening to them. The maulers moved up and grimly, doggedly, methodically went to work.
Since a base is always much more powerfully armored than is a battleship, the reduction of these fortresses took longer than had the destruction of the fleet. But the bases could no longer draw power from the Sun or from any other heavenly body, and their other sources of power were comparatively weak. Therefore, their defenses also failed under that never-ceasing assault. Course after course their screens went down, and with the last one went the base. The maulers' beams went through metal and masonry as effortlessly as steel-jacketed bullets go through butter, and bored on, deep into the planet's bedrock, before their frightful force was spent.
Then around and around they spiraled, until nothing whatever was left of the Boskonian works; until only a seething, white-hot lake of molten lava in the midst of the planet's frigid waste was all that remained to show that anything had ever been built there.
Surrender had not been thought of. Quarter or clemency had not been asked, nor offered. Victory, of itself, was not enough. This was, and of stern necessity had to be, a war of utter, complete, and merciless extinction.
XIV.
The enemy strongholds so insultingly close to Prime Base having been obliterated, the solarian fleet sailed on into space. For a few weeks game was plentiful enough. Hundreds of raiding vessels were overtaken and held by the patrol cruisers, then blasted to vapor by the maulers.
Many Boskonian bases were also reduced. The locations of most of these had long been known to the intelligence service; others were detected or discovered by the fast-flying cruisers themselves. Marauding vessels revealed the sites of others by succeeding in reaching them before being overtaken by the cruisers. Others were found by the tracers and loops of the signal corps.
Very few of these bases were hidden or in any way difficult of access, and most of them fell before the blasts of a single mauler. But if one mauler was not enough, others were summoned until it did fall. One fortress, a hitherto unknown and surprisingly strong Sector Base, required the concentration of every mauler of the solarian fleet; but they were brought up and the fortress fell. As has been said, this was a war of extinction and every pirate base that was found was reduced.
But one day a cruiser found a base which had not even a spy-ray shield up, and a cursory inspection showed it to be completely empty. Machinery, equipment, stores, and personnel had all been evacuated. Suspicious, the patrol vessels stood off and beamed it from afar, but there were no untoward occurrences. The structures simply slumped down into lava, and that was all.
Every base discovered thereafter was in the same condition, and at the same time the ships of Boskone, formerly so plentiful, disappeared utterly from space. Day after day the cruisers sped hither and thither throughout the vast reaches of the void, at the peak of their unimaginably high pace, without finding a trace of any Boskonian vessel. More remarkable still, and for the first time in years, the ether was absolutely free from Boskonian interference.
Following an impulse, Kinnison asked and received permission to take his ship on scouting duty. At maximum blast, he drove toward the Velantian system, to the point at which he had picked up Helmuth's communication line. Along that line he drove for twenty-two solid days, halting only when a considerable distance outside the galaxy. Ahead of him there was nothing whatever except one or two distant and nebulous star clusters. Behind him there extended the immensity of the galactic lens in all its splendor. But Captain Kinnison had no eye for astronomical beauty that day.
He held theBrittania IIthere for an hour, while he mulled over in his mind what the apparent facts could mean. He knew that he had covered the line, from the point of determination out beyond the galaxy's edge. He knew that his detectors, operating as they had been in clear and undistorted ether, could not possibly have missed a thing as large as Helmuth's base must be, if it had been anywhere near that line; that their effective range was immensely greater than the largest possible error in the determination or the following of the line. There were, he concluded, three possible explanations, and only three.
First, Helmuth's base might also have been evacuated. This was almost unthinkable. From what he himself knew of Helmuth that base would be as nearly impregnable as anything could be made, and it was no more apt to be vacated than was the Prime Base of the patrol. Second, Helmuth might already have the device he himself wanted so badly, and upon which Hotchkiss and the other experts had been at work so long—a detector nullifier. This was possible, distinctly so. Possible enough, at least, to warrant filing the idea for future consideration. Third, that base might not be in the galaxy at all, but in that star cluster out there straight ahead of theBrittania II, or possibly in one even farther away. That idea seemed the best of the three. It would necessitate ultra-powerful communicators, of course, but Helmuth could very well have them. It squared up in other ways. Its pattern fitted into the matrix very nicely.
But if that base were out there—it could stay there—for a while. TheBrittania IIjust wasn't enough ship for that job. Too much opposition out there, and not—enough—ship. Or too much ship? But he wasn't ready, yet, anyway. He needed, and would get, another line on Helmuth's base. Therefore, shrugging his shoulders, he whirled his vessel about and set out to rejoin the fleet.
While a full day short of junction, Kinnison was called to his plate, to see upon its lambent surface the visage of Port Admiral Haynes.
"Did you find out anything on your trip?" he asked.
"Nothing definite, sir. Just a couple of things to think about, is all. But I can say that I don't like this at all. I don't like anything about it or any part of it."
"No more do I," agreed the admiral. "It looks very much as though your forecast of a stalemate might be about to eventuate. Where are you headed for now?"
"Back to the fleet."
"Don't do it. Stay on scouting duty for a while longer. And, unless something more interesting turns up, report back here to base. We have something that may interest you. The boys have been——"
The admiral's picture was broken up into flashes of blinding light and his words became a meaningless, jumbled roar of noise. A distress call had begun to come in, only to be blotted out by a flood of the Boskonian static interference, of which the ether had for so long been clear.
"Got its center located?" Kinnison barked at his communications officer. "They're close—right in our laps!"
"Yes, sir!" And the radio man snapped out numbers.
"Blast!" the captain commanded, unnecessarily; for the alert pilot had already set the course and his levers were even then flashing across their arcs. "I don't know what we can do, since we haven't got a thing to do anything with, if that baby is what I think it is. But believe me, we'll try!"
Toward the center of disturbance shotBrittania II, herself emitting now a scream of peculiarly patterned interference which was not only a scrambler of all possible communication throughout that whole sector of the galaxy, but also an imperative call for any mauler within that sector. So close had theBrittania IIbeen to the scene of depredation that for her to reach it required only minutes.
There lay the merchantman and her Boskonian assailant. Emboldened by the cessation of piratical activities, some shipping concern had sent out a freighter, loaded probably with highly "urgent" cargo; and this was the result. The marauder, inert, had gripped her with his tractors and was beaming her into submission. She was resisting, but feebly now; it was apparent that her screens were failing. Her crew must soon open ports in token of surrender, or roast to a man; and they would probably prefer to roast.
Thus the situation in one instant. The next instant it was changed; the Boskonian discovering suddenly that his beams, instead of boring through the weak defenses of the freighter, were not even exciting to a glow the mighty protective envelopes of a cruiser of the patrol.
He switched from the diffused heat beam he had been using upon the merchantman to the hardest, hottest, most penetrating beam of annihilation he mounted—with but little more to show for it and with no better results. For theBrittania II'sscreens had been designed to stand up almost indefinitely against the most potent beams of any space ship, and they stood up. Increase power as he would, to whatever ruinous overload, the pirate could not break down Kinnison's screens; nor, dodge as he would, could he again get in position to attack his former prey. And eventually the mauler arrived; fortunately it, too, had been fairly close by. Out reached its mighty tractors. Out raved one of its tremendous beams, striking the Boskonian's defenses squarely amidships.
That beam struck and the pirate ship disappeared—but not in a hazily incandescent flare of volatilized metal. The raider disappeared bodily, and still all in one piece. He had put out shears of his own, snapping even the mauler's tractors like threads; and the velocity of his departure was due almost as much to the pressor effect of the patrol beam as it was to the thrust of his own powerful drivers.
It was the beginning of the stalemate Kinnison had foreseen.
"I was afraid of that," the young captain muttered; and, paying no attention whatever to the merchantman, he called the commander of the mauler. At this close range, of course, no possible ether scrambler could interfere with visual apparatus, and there on his plate he saw the face of Clifford Maitland, the man who graduated No. 2 in his own class.
"Hi, Kim, you old space flea!" Maitland exclaimed in delight. "Oh, pardon me, sir," he went on in mock deference, with an exaggerated salute. "To a guy with four jets, I should say——"
"Seal that, Cliff, or I'll climb up you like a squirrel, first chance I get!" Kinnison retorted. "So they've got you skippering one of the big battle wagons, huh? Lucky stiff! Think of a mere infant like you being let play with so much high power. But what'll we do about this heap here?"
"Damn if I know. It isn't covered, so you'll have to tell me, captain."
"Who am I to be passing out orders? As you say, it isn't covered in the book. It's against G I regs for them to be cutting our tractors. But he's all yours, not mine. I've got to flit. You might find out what he's carrying, from where, to where, and why. Then, if you want to, you can escort him either back where he came from or on to where he's going, whichever you think best. If this interference dies out, you'd better report to Prime Base and get some real orders. If it doesn't, use your own judgment, if any. Clear ether, Cliff, I've got to buzz along."
"Free landings, space hound!"
"Now, Vic"—Kinnison turned to his pilot—"we've got urgent business at base. And when I say 'urgent' I don't mean perchance. Let's see you burn a hole in the ether." And that worthy snapped his levers over to maximum blast.
TheBrittania IImade the run to Prime Base in a few days, and scarcely had she touched ground when Kinnison was summoned to the office of the port admiral. As soon as he was announced, Haynes brusquely cleared his office and sealed it against any possible form of intrusion or eavesdropping before he spoke. He had aged noticeably since these two had had that memorable conference in this same room. His face was lined and careworn; his eyes and his entire mien bore witness to days and nights of sleeplessly continuous work.
"You were right, Kinnison," he began, abruptly. "A stalemate it is, a hopeless deadlock. I called you in to tell you that Hotchkiss has your nullifier done, and that it works perfectly against all long-range stuff. It works fairly well on vision, except at close range. Against electromagnetics, however, it is not very effective. About all that can be done, it seems, is to shorten the range; it has not been possible, as yet, to develop a screen against magnetism. Perhaps we expected too much."
"I can get by with that, I think. I will be out of electromagnetic range most of the time, and nobody watches their electros very close, anyway. Thanks a lot. It's ready to install?"
"Doesn't need installation. It's such a little thing you can put it in your pocket. It's self-contained and will work anywhere."
"Better and better. In that case I'll need two of them—and a ship. I would like to have one of those new automatic speedsters.[4]Lots of legs, cruising range, and screens. Only one beam, but I probably won't use even that one so——"
"Goingalone?" interrupted Haynes. "Better take a battle cruiser, at least. I don't like the idea of your going out there alone."
"I don't particularly relish the prospect, either. But it's got to be that way. The whole fleet, maulers and all, isn't enough to do by force what's got to be done, and even two men are too many to do it in the only way it can be done. You see, sir——"
"No explanations, please. It's on the spool, where we can get it if we need it. Are you informed as to the latest developments?"
"No, sir. I heard a little coming in, but not much."
"We are almost back where we were before you took off in theBrittania II. Commerce is almost at a standstill, all over the galaxy. All shipping firms are practically idle. But that is neither all of it nor the worst of it. You may not realize how important interstellar trade is; but as a result of its stoppage general business has slowed down tremendously. As is only to be expected, perhaps, complaints are coming in by the thousand because we have not already blasted the pirates out of space, and demands that we do so at once. They do not understand the true situation, nor realize that we are doing all that we can do. We cannot send a mauler with every freighter and liner, and mauler-escorted vessels are the only ones to arrive at their destinations."
"But why? With tractor shears on all ships, how can they hold them?" asked Kinnison.
"Magnets!" snorted Haynes. "Plain, old-fashioned electromagnets. No pull to speak of, at a distance, of course, but with the raider running free, a millionth of a dyne is enough. Close up—lock on—board and storm—all done!"
"Hm-m-m. That changes things. I've got to find a pirate ship. I was planning on following a freighter or liner out toward Alsakan. But if there aren't any to follow—I'll have to hunt around some——"
"That is easily arranged. Lots of them want to go. We will let one go, with a mauler accompanying her, but well outside detector range."
"That covers everything, then, except the assignment. I can't very well ask for leave, but maybe I could be put on special assignment, reporting direct to you?"
"Something better than that." And Haynes smiled broadly, in genuine pleasure. "Everything is fixed. Your release has been entered in the books. Your commission as captain has been canceled, so leave your uniform in your former quarters. Here is your credit book and here is the rest of your kit. You are now an unattached Lensman."
The release! The goal toward which all Lensmen strive, but which so comparatively few attain, even after years of work! He was now a free agent, responsible to no one and to nothing save his own conscience. He was no longer of Earth, nor of the solarian system, but of the galaxy as a whole. He was no longer a tiny cog in the immense machine of the Galactic Patrol; wherever he might go, throughout the immensity of the entire island universe, hewould bethe Galactic Patrol!
"Yes, it's real." The older man was enjoying the youngster's stupefaction at his release, reminding him as it did of the time, long years ago, when he had won his own. "You go anywhere you please and do anything you please, for as long as you please. You take anything you want, whenever you want it, with or without giving reasons—although you will usually give a thumb-printed credit slip in return. You report if, as, when, where, how, and to whom you please—or not, as you please. You don't even get a salary any more. You help yourself to that, too, wherever you may be—as much as you want, whenever you want it."
"But, sir—I—you——I mean—that is——" Kinnison gulped three times before he could speak coherently. "I'm not ready, sir. Why, I'm nothing but a kid. I haven't got enough jets to swing it. Just the bare thought of it scares me into hysterics!"
"It would. It always does." The admiral was very much in earnest now, but it was a glad, proud earnestness. "You are to be as nearly absolutely free an agent as it is possible for a living, flesh-and-blood creature to be. To the man on the street that would seem to spell a condition of perfect bliss. Only a gray Lensman knows what a frightful load it really is; but it is a load that such a Lensman is glad and proud to carry."
"Yes, sir, he would be, of course, if he——"
"That thought will bother you for a time—if it did not, you would not be here—but do not worry about it any more than you can help. All I can say is that in the opinion of those who should know, not only have you proved yourself ready for release, but also you have earned it."
"How do they figure that out?" Kinnison demanded, hotly. "All that saved my bacon on that trip was luck—a burned-out Bergenholm—and at the time I thought that it was bad luck, at that. And VanBuskirk and Worsel and the other boys and Heaven knows who else pulled me out of jam after jam. I'd like awfully well to believe that I'm ready, sir, but I'm not. I can't take credit for pure dumb luck and for other men's abilities."
"Well, coöperation is to be expected, and we like to make gray Lensmen out of the lucky ones." Haynes laughed deeply. "It may make you feel better, though, if I tell you two more things: first, that so far you have made the best showing of any man yet graduated from Wentworth Hall; second, that we of the court believe you would have succeeded in that almost impossible mission without VanBuskirk, without Worsel, and without the lucky failure of the Bergenholm. In a different, and now, of course, unguessable fashion, but succeeded, nevertheless. Nor is this to be taken as in any sense a belittlement of the very real abilities of those others, nor a denial that luck, or chance, does exist. It is merely our recognition of the fact that you have what it takes to be an unattached Lensman.
"Seal it now, and buzz off!" he commanded, as Kinnison tried to say something; and, clapping him on the shoulder, he turned him around and gave him a gentle shove toward the door. "Clear ether, lad!"
"Same to you, sir—all of it there is. I still think that you and all the rest of the court are cockeyed; but I'll try not to let you down." And the newly unattached Lensman blundered out. He stumbled over the threshold, bumped against a stenographer who was hurrying along the corridor, and almost barged into the jamb of the entrance door instead of going through the opening. Outside he regained his physical poise and walked on air toward his quarters; but he never could remember afterward what he did or whom he met on that long, fast hike. Over and over the one thought pounded in his brain: unattached!Unattached!!UNATTACHED!!
And behind him, in the port admiral's office, that high official sat and mused, smiling faintly with lips and eyes, staring unseeingly at the still-open doorway through which Kinnison had staggered. The boy had measured up in every particular. He would be a good man. He would marry. He did not think so now, of course—in his own mind his life was consecrate—but he would. If necessary, the patrol itself would see to it that he did. There were ways, and such stock was altogether too good not to be propagated. And, fifteen years or so from now—if he lived—when he was no longer fit for the grinding, grueling life to which he now looked forward so eagerly, he would select the Earthbound job for which he was best fitted and would become a good executive. For such were the executives of the patrol. But this daydreaming was getting him nowhere, fast; he shook himself and plunged again into his work.
Kinnison reached his quarters at last, realizing with a thrill that they were no longer his. He now had no quarters, no residence, no address. Wherever he might be, throughout the whole of illimitable space, there was his home. But, instead of being dismayed by the thought of the life he faced, he was filled by a fierce eagerness to be actually living it.
There was a tap at his door and an orderly entered, carrying a bulky package.
"Your grays, sir," he announced, with a crisp salute.
"Thanks." Kinnison returned the salute as smartly; and, almost before the door had closed, he was stripping off the space black-and-silver gorgeousness of the captain's uniform he wore, and was donning gray.
The gray—the unadorned, neutral-colored leather that was the proud garb of that branch of the patrol to which he was thenceforth to belong. It had been tailored to his measurements, and he could not help studying with approval his reflection in the mirror: the round, almost visorless cap, heavily and softly quilted in protection against the helmet of his armor; the heavy goggles, opaque to all radiation harmful to the eyes; the short jacket, emphasizing broad shoulders and narrow waist; the trim breeches and high-laced boots, incasing powerful, tapering legs.
"What an outfit—whatan outfit!" he breathed. "And maybe I ain't such a bad-looking ape, at that, in these grays!" He did not then, and never did realize that he was wearing the plainest, drabbest, most strictly utilitarian uniform in the known universe; for to him, as to all others who knew it, the sheer, stark simplicity of the unattached Lensman's plain gray leather transcended by far the gaudy trappings of the other branches of the service. He admired himself boyishly, as men do, feeling a trifle ashamed in so doing; but he did not then and never did appreciate what a striking figure of a man he really was as he strode out of quarters and down the wide avenue toward theBrittania II'sdock.
He was glad indeed that there had been no ceremony or public show connected with this, his real and only important graduation. For as his fellows—not only his own crew, but also his friends from all over the Reservation—thronged about him, mauling and pummeling him in congratulation and acclaim, he knew that he couldn't stand much more. If there were to be much more of it, he discovered suddenly, he would either pass out cold or cry like a baby. He didn't quite know which.
That whole howling, chanting mob clustered about him; and, considering it an honor to carry the least of his personal belongings, formed a yelling, cap-tossing escort. Traffic meant nothing whatever to that pleasantly mad crew, nor, temporarily, did regulations. Let traffic detour; let pedestrians, no matter how august, cool their heels; let cars, trucks, yes, even trains, wait until they got past; let everything wait, or turn around and go back, or go some other way. Here comes Kinnison! Kinnison, gray Lensman! Make way! And way was made—from theBrittania II'sdock clear across base to the slip in which the Lensman's new speedster lay.
And what a ship this little speedster was! Trim, trig, streamlined to the ultimate she lay there, quiescent but surcharged with power. Almost sentient she was, this power-packed, ultra-racy little fabrication of space-toughened alloy, instantly ready at his touch to liberate those tremendous energies which were to hurl him through the infinite reaches of the cosmic void.
None of the mob came aboard, of course. They backed off, still frantically waving and throwing whatever came closest to hand; and as Kinnison touched a button and shot into the air he swallowed several times in a vain attempt to dispose of an amazing lump which had somehow appeared in his throat.
XV.
It so happened that for many long weeks there had been lying in New York space port an urgent shipment for Alsakan. And not only was that urgency a one-way affair. For, with the possible exception of a few packets, whose owners had locked them in vaults and would not part with them at any price, there was not a single Alsakanite cigarette left on Earth!
Luxuries, then as now, soared feverishly in price with scarcity. Only the rich smoked Alsakanite cigarettes, and to those rich the price of anything they really wanted was a matter of almost complete indifference. And plenty of them wanted, and wanted badly, their Alsakanite cigarettes. There was no doubt of that.
The current market report upon them was: "Bid, one thousand credits per packet of ten. Offered, none at any price."
With that ever-climbing figure in mind, a merchant prince named Matthews had been trying to get an Alsakanbound ship into the ether. He knew that one cargo of Alsakanite cigarettes safely landed in any Tellurian space port would yield more profit than could be made by his entire fleet in ten years of normal trading. Therefore, he had for weeks been pulling every wire, and even every string, that he could reach—political, financial, even at times verging altogether too close for comfort upon the criminal—but without results.
For, even if he could find a crew willing to take the risk, to launch the ship without an escort would be out of the question. There would be no profit in a ship that did not return to Earth. The ship was his, to do with as he pleased, but the escorting maulers were assigned solely by the Galactic Patrol, and that patrol would not give his ship an escort.
In answer to his first request, he had been informed that only cargoes classed as necessary were being escorted at all regularly; that seminecessary loads were escorted occasionally, when of a particularly useful or desirable commodity and if opportunity offered; that luxury loads, such as his, were not being escorted at all; that he would be notified if, as, and when thePrometheuscould be given escort. Then the merchant prince began his siege.
Politicians of high rank, local and national, sent in "requests" of varying degrees of diplomacy. Financiers first offered inducements, then threatened to "bear down," then put on all the various kinds of pressure known to their pressure-loving ilk. Pleas, demands, threats, and pressures were alike, however, futile. The patrol could not be coaxed or bullied, cajoled, bribed, or cowed; and all further communications upon the subject, from whatever source originating, were ignored.
Having exhausted his every resource of diplomacy, politics, guile, and finance, the merchant prince resigned himself to the inevitable and stopped trying to get his ship off the ground.
Then, like the proverbial bolt from the blue, New York sub-base received from Prime Base an open message, not even coded, which read:
Authorize space shipPrometheusto clear for Alsakan at will, escorted by patrol ship B 42 TC 838, whose present orders are hereby canceled. Signed, Haynes.
Authorize space shipPrometheusto clear for Alsakan at will, escorted by patrol ship B 42 TC 838, whose present orders are hereby canceled. Signed, Haynes.
A demolition bomb dropped into that sub-base would not have caused greater excitement than did that message. Neither the base commander, the captain of the mauler, the captain of thePrometheus, nor the highly pleased but equally surprised Matthews could explain it; but all of them did whatever they could to expedite the departure of the freighter. She was, and had been for a long time, practically ready to sail.
As the base commander and Matthews sat in the office, shortly before the scheduled time of departure, Kinnison arrived—or, more correctly, let them know that he was there. He invited them both into the control room of his speedster; and invitations from gray Lensmen were accepted without question or demur.
"I suppose that you are wondering what this is all about," he began. "I'll make it as short as I can. I asked you in here because this is the only convenient place in which Iknowthat what we say will not be overheard. There are lots of spy rays around here, whether you know it or not. ThePrometheusis to be allowed to go to Alsakan, because that is where pirates seem to be most numerous, and we do not want to waste time hunting all over space to find one.
"Your vessel was selected, Mr. Matthews, for three reasons, and in spite of the attempts you have been making to obtain special privileges, not because of them: first, because there is no necessary or seminecessary freight waiting for clearance into that region; second, because we do not want your firm to fail. We do not know of any other large shipping line in such a shaky position as yours, nor of any firm anywhere to which one single cargo would make such an immense financial difference."
"You are certainly right there, Lensman!" Matthews agreed, whole-heartedly. "It means bankruptcy on the one hand and a fortune on the other."
"Here's what is to happen. The ship and the mauler blast off on schedule, fourteen minutes from now. They get about to Valeria, when they are both recalled—urgent orders for the mauler to go on rescue work. The mauler comes back, but your captain will, in all probability, keep on going, saying that he started out for Alsakan and that's where he's going——"
"But he wouldn't. He wouldn'tdare!" gasped the ship owner.
"Sure he would," Kinnison insisted, cheerfully enough. "That is the third good reason your vessel is being allowed to set out: because it certainly will be attacked. You didn't know it until now, but your captain and over half of your crew are pirates themselves, and——"
"What? Pirates!" Matthews bellowed. "I'll go down there and——"
"You'll do nothing whatever, Mr. Matthews, except watch things, and you will do that from here. The situation is entirely under control."
"But my ship! My cargo!" the shipper wailed. "We'll be ruined if——"
"Let me finish, please," the Lensman interrupted. "As soon as the mauler turns back it is practically certain that your captain will send out a message, letting the pirates know that he is easy prey. Within a minute after sending that message, he dies. So does every other pirate aboard. Your ship lands on Valeria and takes on a crew of space-fighting wildcats, headed by Peter VanBuskirk. Then it goes on toward Alsakan. When the pirates board that ship, after its prearranged, half-hearted resistance and easy surrender, they are going to think that all hell's out for noon. Especially since the mauler, back from her 'rescue work,' will be tagging along, not too far away."
"Then my ship will really go to Alsakan, and back, safely?" Matthews was almost dazed. Matters were entirely out of his hands, and things had moved so rapidly that he hardly knew what to think. "But if my own crews are pirates, some of them may——But I can, of course, get police protection if necessary."
"Unless something entirely unforseen happens, thePrometheuswill make the round trip in safety, cargoes and all—under mauler escort all the way. You will, of course, have to take the other matter up with your local police."
"When is the attack to take place, sir?" asked the base commander.
"That's what the mauler skipper wanted to know when I told him what was ahead of him." Kinnison grinned. "He wanted to sneak up a little closer about that time. I'd like to know, myself, but unfortunately that will have to be decided by the pirates after they get the signal. It will be on the way out, though, because the cargo she has aboard now is a lot more valuable to Boskone than a load of Alsakanite cigarettes would be."
"But do you think you can take the pirate ship that way?" asked the commander, dubiously.
"No. But he will cut down his personnel to such an extent that he will have to head back for base."
"And that's what you want—the base. I see."
He did not see—quite—but the Lensman did not enlighten him further.
There was a brilliant double flare as freighter and mauler lifted into the air. Kinnison showed the ship owner out.
"Hadn't I better be going, too?" asked the commander. "Those orders, you know."
"A couple of minutes yet. I have another message for you—official. Matthews won't need a police escort long—if any. When that ship is attacked it is to be the signal for cleaning out every pirate in Greater New York—the worst pirate hotbed on Tellus. Neither you nor your force will be in on it directly, but you might pass the word around, so that our own men will be informed ahead of the Telenews outfits."
"Good! That has needed doing for a long time."
"Yes. But you know it takes a long time to line up every man in such a big organization. They want to get them all, without getting any innocent by-standers."
"Who's doing it? Prime Base?"
"Yes. Enough men will be thrown in here to do the whole job in an hour."
"Thatisgood news. Clear ether, Lensman!" And the base commander went back to his post.
As the air-lock toggles rammed home, sealing the exit behind the departing visitor, Kinnison eased his speedster into the air and headed for Valeria. Since the two vessels ahead of him had left atmosphere inertialess, as would he, and since several hundred seconds had elapsed since their take-off, he was, of course, some ten thousand miles off their line as well as being uncounted millions of miles behind them. But the larger distance meant no more than the smaller, and neither of them meant anything at all to the patrol's finest speedster. Kinnison, on easy touring blast, caught up with them in minutes. Closing up to less than one light year, he slowed his pace to match theirs and held his distance.
Any ordinary ship would have been detected instantly—long since, in fact—but Kinnison rode no ordinary ship. His speedster was immune to all detection save electromagnetic or visual, and, therefore, even at that close range—the travel of half a minute for even a slow space ship in open space—he was safe. For electromagnetics are useless at that distance; and visual apparatus, even with subether converters, is reliable only up to a few mere thousands of miles, unless the observer knows exactly what to look for and where to look for it.
Kinnison, then, closed up and followed thePrometheusand her mauler escort; and as they approached the Valerian solar system, sure enough, the recall messages came booming in. Also, as had been expected, the renegade captain of the freighter sent back, first his defiant answer, and then his message to the pirate high command. The mauler turned back; the merchantman kept on. Suddenly, however, she stopped, inert, and from her ports were ejected discrete bits of matter—probably the bodies of the Boskonian members of her crew. Then thePrometheus, again inertialess, flashed directly toward the planet Valeria.
An inertialess landing is, of course, highly irregular, and is made only when the ship is to take off again immediately. It saves all the time ordinarily lost in spiraling and deceleration, and saves the computation of a landing orbit, which is no task for an amateur computer. It is, however, dangerous.
It takes power, plenty of it, to maintain the force which neutralizes the inertia of mass, and if that force fails, even for an instant, while a ship is upon a planet's surface, the consequences are usually highly disastrous. For in the neutralization of inertia there is no magic, no getting of something for nothing, no violation of Nature's law of the conservation of matter and energy. The instant that force becomes inoperative the ship possesses exactly the same velocity, momentum, and inertia that it possessed at the instant the force took effect.
Thus, if a space ship takes off from Earth, with its orbital velocity of about eighteen and one half miles per second relative to the Sun, goes free, dashes to Mars, lands free, and then goes inert, its original velocity, both in speed and in direction, is instantly restored, with consequences better imagined than described. Such a velocity, of course,mighttake the ship harmlessly into the air; but it probably would not.
But thePrometheuslanded free, and so did Kinnison. He stepped out, fully armored against Valeria's extremely heavy atmosphere and laboring a trifle under its terrific gravitation, to be greeted cordially byLieutenantVanBuskirk, whose fighting men were already streaming aboard the freighter.
"Hi, chief!" the Dutchman called, gayly. "Everything went off like clockwork. Won't hold you up long—be blasting off in ten minutes."
"Ho, Lefty!" the Lensman acknowledged, as cordially, but saluting the newly commissioned officer with an exaggerated formality. "Say, Bus, I've been doing some thinking. Why wouldn't it be a good idea to——"
"Uh-uh, it wouldnot," denied the fighter, positively. "I know what you're going to say—that you want in on this party—but don't say it."
"But I——" Kinnison began to argue.
"Nix," the Valerian declared flatly. "You've got to stay with your speedster. No room for her inside, as she's full to the last meter with cargo and with my men. You can't clamp on outside, as that would give the whole thing away. And besides, for the first and last time in my life I've got a chance to give a gray Lensman orders. Those orders are to stay out of and away from this ship—and I'll see to it that you do, too, you little Tellurian wart! Boy, what a kick I get out of that!"
"You would, you big, dumb Valerian ape. You always were a small-souled type!" Kinnison retorted. "Piggy-piggy——Haynes, huh?"
"Uh-huh." VanBuskirk nodded. "How else could I talk so rough toyouand get away with it? However, don't feel too bad. You aren't missing a thing, really. This thing is in the cans already, and your fun is up ahead somewhere. And by the way, Kim, congratulations. You had it coming. We're all behind you, from here to the next universe and back."
"Thanks. And the same to you, Bus, and many of 'em. Well, if you won't let me stow away, I'll tag along behind, I guess. Clear ether—or rather, I hope it's full of pirates by to-morrow morning. Won't be, though, probably; don't imagine they'll move until we're almost there."
And tag along Kinnison did, through thousands and thousands of parsecs of uneventful voyage.
Part of the time he spent in the speedster, dashing hither and yon. Most of it, however, he spent in the vastly more comfortable mauler; to the armored side of which his tiny vessel clung with its magnetic clamps while he slept and ate, gossiped and read, exercised and played with the mauler's officers and crew, in deep-space comradery. It so happened, however, that when the long-waited attack developed he was out in his speedster, and thus saw and heard everything from the beginning.
Space was filled with the old, familiar interference. The raider flashed up, locked on with magnets, and began to beam. Not heavily—scarcely enough to warm up the defensive screens—and Kinnison probed into the pirate with his spy ray.
"Terrestrials—and Americans!" he exclaimed, half aloud, startled for an instant. "But naturally they would be, since this is a put-up job and over half the crew were New York gangsters."
"The blighter's got his spy-ray screens up," the pilot was grumbling to his captain. The fact that he spoke in English was immaterial to the Lensman; he would have understood equally well any other possible form of communication or of thought exchange. "That wasn't part of the plan, was it?"
If Helmuth, or one of the able minds at his base, had been directing that attack it would have stopped right there. The pilot had shown a flash of feeling that, with a little encouragement, might have grown into a suspicion.
But the captain was not an imaginative man. Therefore: "Nothing was said about it, either way," he replied. "Probably the mate's on duty. He is not one of us, you know. All the better if he is. The captain will open up. If he doesn't do it pretty quick, I'll open her up myself. There, the port's opening. Slide a little forward.... Hold it! Go get 'em, men!"
Then men, hundreds of them, armed and armored, swarmed through the freighter's locks. But as the last man of the boarding party passed the portal something happened that was most decidedly not on the program: the outer port slammed shut and its toggles drove home!
"Blast those screens! Knock them down! Get in there with a spy ray!" barked the pirate captain. He was not one of those hardy and valiant souls who, like Gildersleeve, led, in person, the attacks of his cutthroats. He emulated, instead, the higher Boskonian officials and directed his raids from the safety of his control room; but, as has been intimated, he was unlike those officials in that he lacked directorial ability. Thus it was only after it was too late that he became suspicious. "I wonder if somebody could have double-crossed us? Hi-jackers?"
"We'll soon know," the pilot growled, and even as he spoke the spy ray got through, revealing a very shambles.
For VanBuskirk and his Valerians had not been caught napping, nor were they a crew—unarmored, partially armed, and rendered even more impotent by internal mutiny, strife, and slaughter—such as the pirates had expected to find.
Instead of such a crew the boarders met a force that was overwhelmingly superior to their own—not only in point of numbers, but even more markedly in the strength and agility of its units. Also, the defenders were more capably armed than were the attackers, since, in addition to the efficient armor of the patrol and its ultra-deadly portable weapons, at least one of those terrific semiportable projectors commanded every corridor of the freighter. In the blasts of those projectors most of the pirates died instantly, not knowing what struck them, not even knowing that they died.
They were the fortunate ones. The others knew what was coming and saw it as it came, for the Valerians did not even draw their DeLameters. They knew that the pirates' armor could withstand for many minutes any hand weapon's beams, and they disdained to remount the heavy semiportables. They came in with their space axes, and at the sight the pirates broke and ran screaming in panic fear. But they could not escape. The toggles of the exit port were not only in their sockets, but they were also locked in them.
Therefore, the storming party died to the last man; and, as VanBuskirk had foretold, it was scarcely even a struggle. For any ordinary space armor is just so much tin against a Valerian swinging a space ax.
The spy ray of the pirate captain got through just in time to see the ghastly finale of the massacre, and his face turned first purple, then white.
"The patrol!" he gasped. "Valerians—a whole company of them! I'll say we've been double-crossed!"
"Right-o—we've jolly well been," the pilot agreed. "You don't know the half of it yet, either. Somebody's coming, and it isn't a boy scout. If a mauler should suck us in, we'd be very much a spent force, what?"
"Cut out the conversation!" snapped the captain. "Is it a mauler, or not?"
"A bit too far away yet to say, but it probably is. They wouldn't have sent those jaspers out without cover, old bean. They knew that we can burn that freighter's screens down in an hour. Better cut the beams and get ready to run, what?"
The commander did so, wild thoughts racing through his mind. If a mauler got close enough to him to use magnets, he was done. Cutting arcs would burn through his armor like cheese, and he had no fighting men left. And even if he had—even a full crew of the most savage fighters known would have to be inescapably cornered before they would mix it with what that mauler had aboard. He would have to go back to base, anyway——
"Tally ho, old fruit!" The pilot slammed his levers over to maximum blast. "It's a mauler and we've been bloody well jobbed. Back to base?"
"Yes." And the discomfited captain energized his communicator, to report to his immediate superior the humiliating outcome of the supposedly carefully planned coup.
XVI.
As the pirate fled into space Kinnison followed, matching his quarry in course and speed. He then cut in the automatic controller on his drive, the automatic recorder on his plate, and began to tune in his beam tracer; only to be brought up short by the realization that the spy ray's point would not stay in the pirate's control room without constant attention and manual adjustment. He had known that, too. Even the most precise of automatic controllers, driven by the most carefully stabilized electronic currents, are prone to slip twenty feet or so at even such close range as ten million miles, especially in the bumpy ether near solar systems, and there was nothing to correct the slip. He had not thought of that before; the pilot always made those minor corrections as a matter of course.
But now he was torn between two desires. He wanted to listen to the conversation that would ensue as soon as the pirate captain got into communication with his superior officers; and, especially should Helmuth put in his beam, he very much wanted to trace it and thus secure another line on the headquarters he was so anxious to locate. He now feared that he could not do both—a fear that soon was to prove well-grounded—and wished fervently that for a few minutes he could be two men—or at least a Velantian; they had eyes and hands and separate brain compartments enough so that they could do half a dozen things at once and do each one well. He could not; but he could try. Maybe he should have brought one of the boys along, at that. No, that would wreck everything, later on; he would have to do the best he could.
Communication was established and the pirate captain began to make his report. By using one hand on the ray and the other on the tracer, Kinnison managed to get a partial line and to record scraps of the conversation. He missed, however, the essential part of the entire episode, that part in which the base commander turned the unsuccessful captain over to Helmuth himself. Therefore, Kinnison was surprised indeed at the disappearance of the beam he was so laboriously tracing, and to hear Helmuth conclude his castigation of the unlucky captain with:
"—not entirely your fault. We will not punish you at all severely this time. Report to our base on Aldebaran I. Turn your vessel over to base commander there and do anything he tells you to do for thirty of the days of that planet."
Frantically, Kinnison drew back his tracer and searched for Helmuth's beam; but before he could synchronize with it the message of the pirates' high chief was finished and his beam was gone. The Lensman sat back in thought.
Aldebaran! Practically next door to his own solarian system, from which he had come so far. How had they possibly managed to keep concealed, or to re-establish, a base so close to Sol, through all the intensive searching that had been done? But theyhad. That was the important thing. Anyway, he knew where he was going, and that helped.
One other thing he hadn't thought of—and one that might have spoiled everything—was the fact that he couldn't stay awake indefinitely to follow that ship! He had to sleep sometime, and while he was asleep his quarry was bound to escape. He, of course, had a CRX tracer, which would hold a ship without attention as long as it was anywhere within even extreme range; and it would have been a simple enough matter to have had a photo-cell relay put in between the plate of the CRX and the automatic controls of the spacer and driver—but he had not asked for it. Well, luckily, he now knew where he was going, and the trip to Aldebaran would be long enough for him to build a dozen such controls. He had all the necessary parts and plenty of tools. It would give him something to do to break the monotony of the voyage.
Therefore, following the pirate ship easily as it tore through space, Kinnison built his automatic "chaser," as he called it. During each of the first four or five "nights" he lost the vessel he was pursuing, but found it without any great difficulty upon awakening. Thereafter he held it continuously, improving day by day the performance of his apparatus until it could do almost anything except talk.
After that he devoted his time to an intensive study of the general problem before him. His results were highly unsatisfactory; for in order to solve any problem one must have enough data to set it up, either in actual equations or in logical sequences, and Kinnison found that he did not have enough data. He had altogether too many unknowns and not enough knowns.
The first specific problem was that of getting into the pirate base. Since the searchers of the patrol had not found it, that base must be very well hidden indeed. And hiding anything as large as a base on Aldebaran I, as he remembered it, would be quite a feat in itself. He had been in that system only once, but——
Alone in his ship, and in deep space although he was, he blushed painfully as he remembered what had happened to him during that visit. He had chased a couple of dope runners to Aldebaran II, and there he had encountered the most vividly, the most flawlessly, the most remarkably and intriguingly beautiful girl he had ever seen. He had seen beautiful girls and women, of course, before and in plenty. He had seen beauties amateur and professional—social butterflies, dancers, actresses, models, and posturers, both in the flesh and in Telenews plates—but he had never supposed that such an utterly ravishing creature as she was could exist outside of a thionite dream. As a timidly innocent damsel in distress she had been perfect, and if she had held that pose a little longer Kinnison shuddered to think of what might have happened.
But, having known too many dope runners and too few patrolmen, she misjudged entirely, not only the cadet's sentiments, but also his reactions. For, even as she came amorously into his arms, he had known that there was something screwy. Women like that did not play that kind of game for nothing. She must be mixed up with the two he had been chasing. He got away from her, with only a couple of scratches, just in time to capture her confederates as they were making their escape. He had been afraid of beautiful women ever since. He'd like to see that Aldebaranian hell-cat again—just once. He'd been just a kid then, but now——
But that line of thought was getting him nowhere, fast. It was Aldebaran I that he had better be thinking of: barren, lifeless, desolate, airless, waterless; bare as his hand, covered with extinct volcanoes, cratered, jagged, and torn. To hide a base on that planet would take plenty of doing, and, conversely, it would be correspondingly difficult of approach. If on the surface at all, which he doubted very strongly, it would be covered.
In any event, all its approaches would be thoroughly screened and equipped with lookouts on the ultra-violet and on the infra-red, as well as on the visible. His detector nullifier wouldn't help him much there. Those screens and lookouts were bad—very, very bad. Question: couldanythingget into that base without setting off an alarm?
His speedster could not even get close; that was certain. Could he, alone? He would have to wear armor, of course, to hold his air, and it would radiate. Not necessarily—he could land out of range and walk, without power; but there were still the screens and the lookouts. If the pirates were on their toes it simply wasn't in the cards; and he had to assume that they would be alert.
What, then, could pass those barriers? Prolonged consideration of every facet of the situation gave definite answer and marked out clearly the course he must take. Something admitted by the pirates themselves was the only thing that could get in. The vessel ahead of his was going in. Therefore, he must and would enter that base within the pirate vessel itself. With that point decided there remained only the working out of a method, which proved to be almost ridiculously simple.
Once inside the base, what should he—or rather, whatcouldhe—do? For days he made and discarded plans, but finally he tossed them all out of his mind. So much depended upon the location of the base, its personnel, its arrangement, and its routine, that he could develop not even the rough draft of a working plan. He knew what he wanted to do, but he had not even the remotest idea as to how he could go about doing it. Of the opening that appeared, he would have to choose the most feasible and fit his actions to whatever situation then and there obtained.
So deciding, he shot his spy ray toward the planet and studied it with care. It was, indeed, as he had remembered it—or worse. Bleakly, hotly arid, it had no soil whatever, its entire surface being composed of igneous rock, lava, and pumice. Stupendous ranges of mountains crisscrossed and intersected each other at random, each range a succession of dead volcanic peaks and blown-off craters. Mountainside and rocky plain, crater wall and valley floor, alike and innumerably were pock-marked with subcraters and with immensely yawning shell holes, as though the whole planet had been, throughout geologic ages, the target of an incessant cosmic bombardment.
Over its surface and through and through its volume he drove his spy ray, finding nothing. He bored into its substance with his detectors and his tracers, with results completely negative. Of course, closer up, his electromagnetics would report iron—plenty of it—but that information would also be meaningless. Practically all planets had iron cores.