"You've gotthat, indubitably! I get goose-flesh yet every time I think of that trial."
"You think that I'm proof against recognition, then, as long as I don't use my Lens?" Kinnison stuck to the issue.
"Absolutely so. You're here, then, on thionite?" No other issue, Gerrond knew, could be grave enough to account for this man's presence. "But your wrist? I studied it. You can't have worn your Lens there for months—those Tellurian bracelets leave white streaks an inch wide."
"I tanned it with a pencil beam. Nice job, eh? But what I want to ask you about is a little co-operation. As you supposed, I'm here to work on this drug ring."
"Surely—anything we can do. But Narcotics is handling that, not us—but you know that, as well as I do—" the officer broke off, puzzled.
"I know. That's why I want you—that and because you handle the secret service. Frankly, I'm scared to death of leaks. For that reason I'm not saying anything to anyone except Lensmen, and I'm having no dealings with anyone connected with Narcotics. I have as unimpeachable an identity as Haynes could furnish—"
"There's no question as to its adequacy, then," the Radeligian interposed.
"I would like to have you pass the word around among your boys and girls that you know who I am and that I'm safe to play with. That way, if Boskone's agents spot me, it will be for an agent of Haynes, and not for what I really am. That's the first thing. Can do?"
"Easily and gladly. Consider it done. Second?"
"To have a boatload of good, tough marines on hand if I should call you. There are some Valerians coming over later, but I may need help in the meantime. I may want to start a fight—quite possibly even a riot."
"They'll be ready, and they'll be big, tough, and hard. Anything else?"
"Not just now, except for one question. You know Countess Avondrin, the woman I was dancing with a while ago. Got any dope on her?"
"Certainly not—what do you mean?"
"Huh? Don't you know even that she's a Boskonian agent of some kind?"
"Man, you're crazy! She isn't an agent, she can't be. Why, she's the daughter of a Planetary Councillor, the wife of one of our most loyal officers."
"She would be. That's the type they like to get hold of."
"Prove it!" the Admiral snapped. "Prove it or retract it!" He almost lost his poise, almost looked toward the distant corner in which the bewhiskered gentleman was sitting so idly.
"QX. If she isn't an agent, why is she wearing a thought-screen? You haven't tested her, of course."
Of course not. The amenities, as has been said, demanded that certain reserves of privacy remain inviolate. The Tellurian went on: "You didn't, but I did. On this job I can recognize nothing of good taste, of courtesy, of chivalry, or even of ordinary common decency. I suspecteveryonewho does not wear a Lens."
"A thought-screen!" exclaimed Gerrond. "How could she, without armor?"
"It's a late model—brand new. Just as good and just as powerful as the one I myself am wearing," Kinnison explained. "The mere fact that she's wearing it gives me a lot of highly useful information."
"What do you want me to do about her?" the Admiral asked. He was mentally asquirm, but he was a Lensman.
"Nothing whatever—except possibly, for our own information, to find out how many of her friends have become thionite-sniffers lately. If you do anything, you may warn them, although I know nothing definite about which to caution you. I'll handle her. Don't worry too much, though; I don't think she's anybody we really want. Afraid she's small fry—no such luck as that I'd get hold of a big one so soon."
"I hope she's small fry." Gerrond's thought was a grimace of distaste. "I hate Boskonia as much as anybody does, but I don't relish the idea of having to put that girl into the Chamber."
"If my picture is half right she can't amount to much," Kinnison replied. "A good lead is the best I can expect. I'll see what I can do."
For days, then, the searching Lensman pried into minds: so insidiously that he left no trace of his invasions. He examined men and women, of high and of low estate. Waitresses and ambassadors, flunkies and bankers, ermined prelates and truck drivers. He went from city to city. Always, but with only a fraction of his brain, he played the part of Chester Q. Fordyce; ninety-nine percent of his stupendous mind was probing, searching and analyzing. Into what charnel pits of filth and corruption he delved, into what fastnesses of truth and loyalty and high courage and ideals, must be left entirely to the imagination; for the Lensman never has spoken and never will speak of these things.
He went back to Ardith and, late at night, approached the dwelling of Count Avondrin. A servant arose and admitted the visitor, not knowing then or ever that he did so. The bedroom door was locked from the inside, but what of that? What resistance can any mechanism offer to a master craftsman, plentifully supplied with tools, who can perceive every component part, however deeply buried?
The door opened. The countess was a light sleeper, but before she could utter a single scream one powerful hand clamped her mouth, another snapped the switch of her supposedly carefully concealed thought-screen generator. What followed was done very quickly.
A throttling hand clamped over her mouth even as she awoke, and in the same instant her thought-screen flicked off.
A throttling hand clamped over her mouth even as she awoke, and in the same instant her thought-screen flicked off.
A throttling hand clamped over her mouth even as she awoke, and in the same instant her thought-screen flicked off.
Mr. Fordyce strolled back to his hotel and Lensman Kinnison directed a thought at Vice-Admiral Gerrond.
"Better fake up some kind of an excuse for having a couple of guards or policemen in front of Count Avondrin's town house at eight twenty-five this morning. The countess is going to have a brainstorm."
"Whathave... what will she do?" Gerrond mastered his emotions sufficiently to keep from swearing.
"Nothing much. Scream a bit, rush out of doors half dressed, and fight anything and everybody that touches her. Warn the officers that she'll kick, scratch, and bite. There are plenty of signs of a prowler having been in her room, but if they can find him they're good—verygood. She'll have all the signs and symptoms, even to the puncture, of having been given a shot in the arm of some brand-new drug, which the doctors won't be able to find or to identify. But there will be no question raised of insanity or of any other permanent damage—she'll be right as rain in a couple of months."
"Oh, that mind-ray machine of yours again, eh? And that's all you're going to do to her?"
"That's all. I can let her off easy and still be just, I think. She's helped me a lot. She'll be a good girl from now on, too; I've thrown a scare into her that will last her the rest of her life."
"Thanks, Gray Lensman! What else?"
"I'd like to have you at the Tellurian Ambassador's Ball day after tomorrow, if it's convenient."
"I've been planning on it, since it's on the 'must' list. Shall I bring anything or anyone special?"
"No. I just want you on hand to give me any information you can on a person who will probably be there to investigate what happened to the countess."
"I'll be there," and he was.
It was a gay and colorful throng, but neither of the two Lensmen was in any mood for gaiety. They acted, of course. They neither sought nor avoided each other but, somehow, they were never alone together.
"Man or woman?" asked Gerrond.
"I don't know. All I've got is the recognition."
The Radeligian did not ask what that recognition was to be. He knew that that information might prove dangerous indeed to any unauthorized possessor. He did not want to know it; he was glad that the Tellurian had not thrust it upon him.
Suddenly the Vice-Admiral's attention was wrenched toward the doorway, to see the most marvelously, the most flawlessly beautiful woman he had ever seen. But not long did he contemplate that beauty, for the Tellurian Lensman's thoughts were fairly seething, despite his iron control.
"Do you mean ... you can't mean—" Gerrond faltered.
"Yes—definitely!" Kinnison rasped. "She looks like an angel, but take it from me,she isn't. She's one of the slimiest snakes that ever lived—she's so low that she could put on a tall silk hat and walk under a duck. I know she's beautiful. She's a riot, a seven-sector callout, a thionite dream. So what? She is also Dessa Desplaines, formerly of Aldebaran II. Does that mean anything to you?"
"Not a thing, Kinnison."
"She's in it, clear to her neck. I had a chance to wring her neck once, too, damn it all, and didn't. She's got a brazen crust, coming here now, with all our Narcotics on the job—Wonder if they think they've got Enforcement so badly whipped that they can get away with stuff as rough as this—Sure you don't know her, or know of her?"
"I never saw her before, or heard of her."
"Perhaps she isn't known, out this way. Or maybe they think they're ready for a show-down ... or don't care. Her being here ties me up hand and foot, anyway.She'llrecognize me, for all the tea in China. Gerrond! You know the Narcotics' Lensmen, don't you?"
"Certainly."
"Call one of them right now. Tell him that Dessa Desplaines, the zwilnik[1]houri, is right here on the floor—What! He doesn't know her, either! And none of our boys are Lensmen! Make it a three-way. Lensman Winstead? Kinnison of Sol III—unattached. Sure that none of you recognize this picture?" and he transmitted a perfect image of the ravishing creature then moving regally across the floor. "Nobody does? Good! Maybe that's why she's here, after all—thinks she can get away with it. Anyway, she's your meat. Here's the chance for a real capture. Come and get her."
"You will appear against her, of course?"
"If necessary—but it won't be necessary. As soon as she sees that the game's up, all hell will be out for noon."
As soon as the connection had been broken, Kinnison realized that the thing could not be done that way; that he could not stay out of it. No man alive save himself could prevent her from flashing a warning—badly as he hated it, he had to do it. Gerrond glanced at him curiously: he had received a few of those racing thoughts.
"Tune in on this," Kinnison grinned wryly. "If the last meeting I had with her is any criterion, it ought to be good. S'pose anybody around here understands the language of Aldebaran II?"
"Never heard it mentioned if they do."
The Tellurian walked blithely up to the radiant visitor, held out his hand in Earthly—and Aldebaranian—greeting, and spoke: "Madam Desplaines would not remember Chester Q. Fordyce, of course. It is of the piteousness that I should be so accursedly of the ordinariness; for to see madam but the one time, as I did at the New Year's ball in High Altamont, is to remember her forever."
"Such a flatterer!" The woman laughed. "I trust that you will forgive me, Mr. Fordyce, but one meets so many interesting—" Her eyes widened in surprise, an expression which changed rapidly to one of flaming hatred, not unmixed with fear.
"So you do recognize me, you bedroom-eyed, Aldebaranian hell-cat," he remarked, evenly. "I rather expected that you would."
"Yes, you sweet, uncontaminated sissy, you overgrown super-Boy Scout, I do," she hissed, malevolently, and made a quick motion toward her corsage. These two, as has been intimated, were friends of old.
Quick though she was, the man was quicker. His left hand darted out to seize her left wrist; his right, flashing around her body, grasped her right and held it rigidly in the small of her back. Thus they walked away.
"Stop!" she flared. "You're making a spectacle of me!"
"Now isn't that something to worry about?" His lips smiled, for the benefit of the observers, but his eyes held no glint of mirth. "These folks will think that this is the way all Aldebaranian friends walk together. If you think for a second that I'm going to give you a chance to touch that sounder you're wearing you haven't got the sense of a Zabriskan fontema. Stop wriggling!" he counseled, sharply. "Even if you can do enough hula-hula shimmying to work it, before it contacts once I'll crush your brain to a pulp, right here and right now!"
Outside, in the grounds, "Oh, Lensman, let's sit down and talk this over!" and the girl brought into play everything she had. It was a distressing scene, but it left the Lensman cold.
"Save your breath," he advised her finally, wearily. "To me you're just another zwilnik, no more and no less. A female louse is still a louse; and calling a zwilnik a louse is sheerest flattery."
He said that; and, saying it, knew it to be the exact and crystal truth: but not even that knowledge could mitigate in any iota the recoiling of his every fiber from the deed which he was about to do. He could not even pray, with immortal Merritt'sDwayanu:
"Luka—turn your wheel so I need not slay this woman!"
It had to be. Why in all the nine hells of Valeria did he have to be a Lensman? Why did he have to be the one to do it? But it had to be done, and soon; they'd be here shortly.
"There's just one thing you can do to make me believe that you're even partially innocent," he ground out, "that you have even one decent thought or one decent instinct anywhere in you."
"What is that, Lensman? I'll do it, whatever it is!"
"Release your thought-screen and send out a call to the Big Shot."
The girl stiffened. This big cop wasn't so dumb—he reallyknewsomething. He must die, and at once. How could she get word to—
Simultaneously Kinnison perceived that for which he had been waiting; the Narcotics men were coming.
He tore open the woman's gown, flipped the switch of her thought-screen, and invaded her mind. But, fast as he was, he was late—almost too late altogether. He could get neither direction line nor location; but only, and faintly, a picture of a space-dock saloon, of a repulsively obese man in a luxuriously furnished back room. Then her mind went completely blank and her body slumped down, bonelessly.
Thus Narcotics found them; the woman inert and flaccid upon the bench, the man staring down at her in black abstraction.
VI.
"Suicide? Or did you—" Gerrond paused, delicately. Winstead, the Lensman of Narcotics, said nothing, but looked on intently.
"Neither," Kinnison replied, still studying. "I would have had to, but she beat me to it."
"What d'you mean, 'neither'? She's dead, isn't she? How did it happen?"
"Not yet, and unless I'm more cockeyed even than usual, she won't be. She isn't the type to rub herself out—ever, under any conditions. As to 'how,' that was easy. A hollow false tooth. Simple, but new—and clever. But why? WHY?" Kinnison was thinking to himself more than addressing his companions. "If they had killed her, yes. As it is, it doesn't make any kind of sense—any of it."
"But the girl's dying!" protested Gerrond. "What're you going todo?"
"I wish to Klono I knew." The Tellurian was puzzled, groping. "No hurry doing anything about her—what was done to her has been done, and no one this side of Hades can undo it—unless I can fit these pieces together into some kind of a pattern I'll never know what it's all about—none of it makes sense—" He shook himself and went on: "One thing is plain. She won't die. If they had intended to kill her, she would have died almost instantly. They figure she's worth saving; in which I agree with them. At the same time, they certainly are not planning on letting me tap her knowledge. They may be planning on taking her away from us. Therefore, as long as she stays alive—or even not dead, the way she is now—guard her so heavily that an army can't get her. If she should happen to die, don't leave her body unguarded for a second until she's been autopsied, and you know she'llstaydead. The minute she recovers, day or night, call me. Might as well take her to the hospital now, I guess."
The call came soon that the patient had indeed recovered.
"She's talking, but I haven't answered her," Gerrond reported. "There's something strange here, Kinnison."
"There would be—bound to be. Hold everything until I get there," and he hurried to the hospital.
"Good morning, Dessa," he greeted her in Aldebaranian. "You are feeling better, I hope?"
Her reaction was surprising. "You really know me?" she almost shrieked, and flung herself into the Lensman's arms. Not deliberately; not with her wonted, highly effective technique of bringing into play the s.a. equipment with which she was so overpoweringly armed. No; this was the utterly innocent, the wholly unselfconscious abandon of a very badly frightened young girl. "What happened?" she sobbed, frantically, "Where am I? Why are all these strangers here?"
Her wide, childlike, tear-filled eyes sought his; and as he probed them, deeper and deeper into the brain behind them; his face grew set and hard. Mentally, she nowwasa young and innocent girl! Nowhere in her mind, not even in the deepest recesses of her subconscious, was there the slightest inkling that she had even existed since her fifteenth year. It was staggering; it was unheard of; but it was indubitably a fact. For her, now, the intervening time had lapsed instantaneously—five or six years of her life had disappeared so utterly as never to have been!
"You have been very ill, Dessa," he told her gravely, "and you are no longer a child." He led her into another room and up to a triple mirror. "See for yourself."
"But that isn't I?" she protested. "It can't be! Why, she's beautiful!"
"You're all of that," the Lensman agreed, casually. "You've had a bad shock. Your memory will return shortly, I think. Now you must go back to bed."
She did so, but not to sleep. Instead, she went into a trance; and so, almost, did Kinnison. For over an hour he lay intensely asprawl in an easy-chair, the while he engraved, day by day, a memory of missing years into that bare storehouse of knowledge. And finally the task was done.
"Sleep, Dessa," he told her then. "Sleep. Waken in eight hours; whole."
"Lensman, you're aman!" Gerrond realized vaguely what had been done. "You didn't give her the truth, of course?"
"Far from it. Only that she was married and is a widow. The rest of it is highly fictitious—just enough like the real thing so that she can square herself with herself, if she meets old acquaintances. Plenty of lapses, of course, but they're covered by shock."
"But the husband?" queried the curious Radeligian.
"That's her business," Kinnison countered, callously. "She'll tell you, if she ever feels like it. One thing I did do, though—they'll never use her again. The next man that tries to hypnotize her will be lucky if he gets away alive."
The advent of Dessa Desplaines, however, and his curious adventure with her, had altered markedly the Lensman's situation. No one else in the throng had worn a screen, but there might have been agents—anyway, the observed facts would enable the higher-ups to link Fordyce up with what had happened—they would know, of course, that the real Fordyce hadn't done it—he could be Fordyce no longer.
Wherefore the real Chester Q. Fordyce took over and a strange Unattached Lensman appeared. A Posenian, supposedly, since against the air of Radelix he wore that planet's unmistakable armor. No other race of even approximately human shape could "see" through a helmet of solid, opaque metal.
And in this guise Kinnison continued his investigations. That place and that man must be on this planet somewhere; the sending outfit worn by the Desplaines woman could not possibly reach any other. He had a good picture of the room and a fair picture—several pictures, in fact—of the man. The room was an actuality; all he had had to do was to fill in the details which definitely, by unmistakable internal evidence, belonged there. The man was different. How much of the original picture was real, and how much of it was the girl's impression?
She was, he knew, physically fastidious almost to an extreme. He knew that no possible hypnotism could nullify completely the basic, the fundamental characteristics of the subconscious. The intrinsic ego could not be changed. Was the man really such a monster, or was the picture in the girl's mind partially or largely the product of her physical revulsion?
For hours he had sat at a recording machine, covering yard after yard of tape with every possible picture of the man he wanted. Pictures ranging from a man almost of normal build up to a thing duplicating in every detail the woman's mental image.
Now he ran the tape again, time after time. The two extremes, he concluded, were highly improbable. Somewhere in between—the manwasfat, he guessed. Fat, and had a mean pair of eyes. And, no matter how Kinnison changed the man's physical shape he had found it impossible to eradicate a personality that was definitely bad.
"The guy's a louse," Kinnison decided, finally. "Needs killing. Glad of that—if I have to keep on fighting women much longer I'll go completely nuts. Got enough dope to identify him now, I think."
And again the Tellurian Lensman set out to comb the planet, city by city. Since he was not now dealing with Lensmen, every move he made had to be carefully planned and as carefully concealed. It was heartbreaking; but at long last he found a bartender who had once seen his quarry. Hewasfat, Kinnison discovered, and he was a bad egg. From that point on, progress was rapid. He went to the indicated city, which was, ironically enough, the very Ardith from which he had set out; and, from a bit of information here and a bit there, he tracked down his man. He found the room first, and then the man. The girl wasn't so far wrong, at that. Her aversion was somewhat worse than the actuality, but not too much.
Now what to do? The technique he had used so successfully upon Boyssia II and in other bases could not succeed here; there were thousands of people instead of dozens, and someone would certainly catch him at it. Nor could he work at a distance. He was no Arisian, he had to be right beside his job. He would have to turn dock-walloper.
Therefore a dock-walloper he became. Not like one, but actually one. He labored prodigiously, his fine hands and his entire being becoming coarse and hardened. He ate prodigiously, and drank likewise. But, wherever he drank, his liquor was poured from the bartender's own bottle or from one of similarly innocuous contents; for then, as now, bartenders did not themselves imbibe the corrosively potent distillates in which they dealt. Nevertheless, Kinnison became intoxicated—boisterously, flagrantly, and pugnaciously so, as did his fellows.
He lived scrupulously within his dock-walloper's wages. Eight credits per week went to the company, in advance, for room and board; the rest he spent over the fat man's bar or gambled away at the fat man's crooked games—for Bominger, although engaged in vaster commerce far, nevertheless, allowed no scruple to interfere with his esurient rapacity. Money was money, whatever its amount or source or however despicable its means of acquirement.
The Lensman knew that the games were crooked, certainly. He could see, however they were concealed, the crooked mechanisms of the wheels. He could see the crooked workings of the dealers' minds as they manipulated their crooked decks. He could read as plainly as his own the cards his crooked opponents held. But to win or to protest would have set him apart, hence he was always destitute before pay day. Then, like his fellows, he spent his spare time loafing in the same saloon, vaguely hoping for a free drink or for a stake at cards, until one of the bouncers threw him out.
But in his every waking hour, working, gambling, or loafing, he studied Bominger and Bominger's various enterprises. The Lensman could not pierce the fat man's thought-screen, and he could never catch him without it. However, he could and did learn much. He read volume after volume of locked account books, page by page. He read secret documents, hidden in the deepest recesses of massive vault. He listened in on conference after conference; for a thought-screen of course, does not interfere with either sight or sound. The Big Shot did not own—legally—the saloon, nor the ornate, almost palatial back room which was his office. Nor did he own the dance hall and boudoirs upstairs, nor the narrow, cell-like rooms in which addicts of twice a score of different noxious drugs gave themselves over libidinously to their addictions. Nevertheless, they were his; and they were only a part of that which was his.
Kinnison detected, traced, and identified agent after agent. With his sense of perception he followed passages, leading to other scenes, utterly indescribable here. One comparatively short gallery, however, terminated in a different setting altogether; for there, as here and perhaps everywhere, ostentation and squalor lie almost back to back. Nalizok's Café, the high-life hot-spot of Radelix! Downstairs was innocuous enough; nothing rough—that is, too rough—was ever pulled there. Most of the robbery there was open and above-board, plainly written upon the checks. But there were upstairs rooms, and cellar rooms, and back rooms. And there were addicts, differing only from those others in wearing finer raiment and being of a self-styled higher stratum. Basically they were the same.
Men, women, girls ever were there, in the rigid muscle-lock of thionite. Teeth hard-set, every muscle tense and staring, eyes jammed closed, fists clenched, faces white as though carved from marble, immobile in the frenzied emotion which characterized the ultimately passionate fulfillment of every suppressed desire; in the release of their every inhibition crowding perilously close to the dividing line beyond which lay death from sheer ecstasy. That was the technique of the thionite-sniffer—to take every microgram that he could stand, to come to, shaken and too weak even to walk; to swear that he would never so degrade himself again; to come back after more as soon as he had recovered strength to do so; and finally, with an irresistible craving for stronger and ever stronger thrills, to take a larger dose than his rapidly-weakening body could endure, and so to cross the fatal line.
There also were the idiotically smiling faces of the hadive smokers, the twitching members of those who preferred the Centralian nitrolabe-needle, the helplessly stupefied eaters of bentlam—but why go on? Suffice it to say that in that one city block could be found every vice and every drug enjoyed by Radeligians and the usual run of visitors; and if perchance you were an unusual visitor, desiring something unusual, Bominger could get it for you—at a price.
Kinnison studied, perceived, and analyzed. Also, he reported, via Lens, daily and copiously, to Narcotics, under Lensman's Seal.
"But Kinnison!" Winstead protested one day. "How much longer are you going to make us wait?"
"Until I get what I came after or until they get onto me," Kinnison replied, flatly. For weeks his Lens had been hidden in the side of his shoe, in a flat sheath of highly charged metal, proof against any except the most minutely searching spy-ray inspection; but this new location did not in any way interfere with its functioning.
"Any danger of that?" the Narcotics head asked, anxiously.
"Plenty—and getting worse every day. More actors in the drama. Some day I'll make a slip—I can't keep this up forever."
"Let us go, then," Winstead urged. "We've got enough now to blow this ring out of existence, all over the planet."
"Not yet. You're making good progress, aren't you?"
"Yes, but considering—"
"Don't consider it yet. Your present progress is normal for your increased force. Any more would touch off an alarm. You could take this planet's drug personnel, yes, but that isn't what I'm after. I want big game, not small fry. So sit tight until I give you the g.a. QX?"
"Got to be QX if you say so, Kinnison. Be careful!"
"I am. Won't be long now, I'm sure. Bound to break very shortly, one way or the other. If possible, I'll give you and Gerrond warning."
Kinnison had everything lined up except the one thing he had come after. This was, in fact, the headquarters of the drug syndicate for the entire planet of Radelix. He knew where the stuff came in, and when, and how. He knew who received it, and the principal distributors of it. He knew almost all of the secret agents of the ring, and not a few even of the small-fry peddlers. He knew where the remittances went, and how much, and what for. But every lead had stopped at Bominger. Apparently the fat man was the absolute head of the drug syndicate; and that appearance didn't make sense—ithadto be false. Bominger and the other planetary lieutenants—themselves only small fry if the Lensman's ideas were only half right—mustget orders from, and send reports and, in probability, payments to some Boskonian authority; of that Kinnison felt certain, but he had not been able to get even the slightest trace of that higher-up.
That the communication would be established upon a thought-beam the Tellurian was equally certain. The Boskonian would not trust any ordinary, tappable communicator beam, and he certainly would not be such a fool as to send any written or taped or otherwise permanently recorded message, however coded. No, that message, when it came, would come as thought, and to receive it the fat man would have to release his screen. Then, and not until then, could Kinnison act. Action at that time might not prove simple—judging from the precautions Bominger was taking already, he would not release his screen without taking plenty more—but until then the Lensman could do nothing.
That screen had not yet been released, Kinnison could swear to that. True, he had had to sleep at times, but he had slept in a very hair-trigger, with his subconscious and his Lens set to guard that screen and to give the alarm at its first sign of weakening.
As the Lensman had foretold, the break came soon. Not in the middle of the night, as he had half-thought that it would come; nor yet in the quiet of the daylight hours. Instead, it came well before midnight, while revelry was at its height. It did not come suddenly, but was heralded by a long period of gradually increasing tension, of a mental stress very apparent to the mind of the watcher.
Agents of the drug baron came in, singly and in groups, to an altogether unprecedented number. Some of them were their usual viciously self-contained selves, others were slightly but definitely ill at ease. Kinnison, seated alone at a small table, playing a game of Radeligian solitaire, divided his attention between the big room as a whole and the office of Bominger; in neither of which was anything definite happening.
Then a wave of excitement swept over the agents as five men wearing thought-screens entered the room and, sitting down at a reserved table, called for cards and drinks; and Kinnison thought it time to send his warning.
"Gerrond! Winstead! Three-way! It's going to break soon, now, I think—tonight. Agents all over the place—five men with thought-screens here on the floor. Nervous tension high. Lots more agents outside, for blocks. General precaution, I think, not specific. Not suspicious of me, at least not exactly. Afraid of spies with a sense of perception—Rigellians or Posenians or such. Just killed an Ordovik on general principles, over on the next block. Get your gangs ready, but don't come too close—just close enough so that you can be here in thirty seconds after I call you."
"What do you mean 'not exactly suspicious'? What have you done?"
"Nothing that I know of—any one of a million possible small slips I may have made. Nothing serious, though, or they wouldn't have let me hang around this long."
"You're in danger. No armor, no DeLameter, no anything. Better come out while you can."
"And miss what I've spent all this time building up? Not a chance; I'll be able to take care of myself, I think—Here comes one of the boys in a screen, to talk to me. I'll leave my Lens open, so that you can sort of look on."
Just then Bominger's screen went down and Kinnison invaded his mind; taking complete possession of it. Under his domination the fat man reported to the Boskonian, reported truly and fully. In turn, he received orders and instructions. Had any inquisitive stranger been around, or anyone on the planet using any kind of a mind-ray machine since that quadruply-accursed Lensman had held that trial? (Oh, that was what had touched them off! Kinnison was glad to know it.) No, nothing unusual at all—
And just at that critical moment, when the Lensman's mind was so busy with its task, the stranger came up to his table and stared down at him dubiously, questioningly.
"Well, what's onyourmind?" Kinnison growled. He could not spare much of his mind just then, but it did not take much of it to play his part as a dock-walloper. "You another of these smoking house-numbers, snooping around to see if I'm trying to run a blazer on myself? By the devil and his imps, if I hadn't lost so much money here already I'd tear up this deck and go over to Croleo's andnevercome near this crummy joint again—his rotgut can't be any worse than yours is."
"Don't burn out a jet, pal." The agent, apparently reassured, adopted a conciliatory tone.
"Who in hell ever said you was a pal of mine, you Radelig-gig-gigian pimp?" The supposedly three quarters drunken, certainly three quarters naked, Lensman got up, wobbled a little, and sat down again, heavily. "Don't 'pal' me, ape—I'm partic-hic-hicular about who I pal with."
"That's all right, big fellow; no offense intended," soothed the other. "Come on, I'll buy you a drink."
"Don't want no drink until after I've finished this game," Kinnison grumbled, and took an instant to flash a thought via Lens. "All set, boys? Thing's moving fast. If I have to take this drink—it's doped, of course—I'll bust this bird wide open. When I yell, shake the lead out of your pants!"
"Of course you want a drink!" the pirate urged. "Come and get it—it's on me, you know."
"And who are you to be buying me, a Tellurian gentleman, a drink?" the Lensman roared, flaring into one of the sudden, senseless rages of the character he had cultivated so assiduously. "Did I ask you for a drink? I'm educated, I am, and I've got money, I have. I'll buy myself a drink when I want one." His rage mounted higher and higher, visibly. "Did Ieverask you for a drink, you—" (unprintable here for the space of two long breaths).
This was the blow-off. If the fellow was even half honest, there would be a fight, which Kinnison could make as long as necessary. If he did not start slugging after what Kinnison had just called him, he was not what he seemed and the Lensman was surely suspected; for the Earthman had dredged out the noisomest depths of the foulest vocabularies in space for the terms he had just employed.
"If you weren't drunk I'd break every bone in your laxlo-soaked carcass." The other man's anger was sternly suppressed, but he looked at the dock-walloper with no friendship in his eyes. "I don't ask lousy spaceport bums to drink with me every day, and when I do, they do—or else. Do you want to take that drink now or do you want a couple of the boys to work you over first? Barkeep! Bring two glasses of laxlo over here!"
Now the time was short, indeed, but Kinnison would not—could not—act yet. Bominger's conference was still on; the Lensman didn't know enough yet. The fellow wasn't very suspicious, certainly, or he would have made a pass at him before this. Bloodshed meant less than nothing to these gentry; the stranger did not want to incur Bominger's wrath by killing a steady customer. The fellow probably thought the whole mind ray story was hocus-pocus, anyway—not a chance in a million of it being true. Besides, he needed a machine, and Kinnison couldn't hide a thing, let alone anything as big as that mind-ray machine had been, because he didn't have clothes enough on to flag a handcar with. But that free drink was certainly doped—Oh, they wanted to question him. It would be a truth-dope in the laxlo, then—he certainly couldn't takethatdrink!
Then came the all-important second; just as the bartender set the glasses down Bominger's interview ended. At the signing off, Kinnison got additional data, just as he had thought that he would; and in that instant, before the drugmaster could restore his screen, the fat man died—his brain literally blasted. And in that same instant Kinnison's Lens fairly throbbed with the power of the call he sent out to his allies.
But not even Kinnison could hurl such a mental bolt without some outward sign. His face stiffened, perhaps, or his eyes may have lost their drunken, vacant stare, to take on momentarily the keen, cold ruthlessness that was for the moment his. At any rate, the enemy agent was now definitely suspicious.
"Drink that, bum, and drink it quick—or burn!" he snapped, DeLameter out and poised.
Kinnison looked up at the stranger blearily. "Drink that, bum, and drink it quick—or burn!" the gunman snapped.
Kinnison looked up at the stranger blearily. "Drink that, bum, and drink it quick—or burn!" the gunman snapped.
Kinnison looked up at the stranger blearily. "Drink that, bum, and drink it quick—or burn!" the gunman snapped.
The Tellurian's hand reached out for the glass, but his mind also reached out, and faster by a second, to the brains of two nearby agents. Those worthies drew their own weapons and, with wild yells, began firing. Seemingly indiscriminately, yet in those blasts two of the thought-screened minions died. For a fraction of a second even the hard-schooled mind of Kinnison's opponent was distracted, and that was long enough for the Gray Lensman's instantaneous nervous reactions and his mighty muscles.
A quick flick of the wrist sent the potent liquor into the Boskonian's eyes; a lightning thrust of the knee sent the little table hurtling against his gun-hand, flinging the weapon afar. Simultaneously, the Lensman's hamlike fist, urged by all the strength and all the speed of his two hundred and sixteen pounds of rawhide and whalebone, drove forward. Not for the jaw. Not for the head or the face. Lensmen know better than to mash bare hands, break fingers and knuckles, against bone. For the solar plexus. The big Patrolman's fist sank forearm-deep. The stricken zwilnik uttered one shrieking grunt, doubled up, and collapsed; never to rise again. Kinnison leaped for the fellow's DeLameter—too late, he was already hemmed in.
One—two—three—four of the nearest men died without having received a physical blow; again and again Kinnison's heavy fists and far heavier feet crashed deep into vital spots. One thought-screened enemy dived at him bodily in a Tomingan donganeur, to fall with a broken neck as the Lensman opposed instantly the only possible parry—a savage chop, edge-handed, just below the base of the skull; the while he disarmed the surviving thought-screened stranger with an accurately-hurled chair. The latter, feinting a swing, launched a vicious French kick. The Lensman, expecting anything, perceived the foot coming. His big hands shot out like striking snakes, closing and twisting savagely in the one fleeting instant, then jerking upward and backward. A hard and heavy dock-walloper's boot crashed thuddingly to a mark. A shriek rent the air and that foeman, too, was done.
Not fair fighting, no; nor cluvvy. Lensmen did not and do not fight according to the tenets of the late Marquis of Queensberry. They use the weapons provided by Mother Nature only when they must; but they can, and do use them with telling effect indeed, when body-to-body brawling becomes necessary. For they are skilled in the art—every Lensman has a completely detailed knowledge of all the lethal tricks of foul combat known to all the dirty fighters of ten thousand planets for twice ten thousand years.
And then the doors and windows crashed in, admitting those whom no other bifurcate race has ever faced willingly in hand-to-hand combat—full-armed Valerians, swinging their space-axes!
The gangsters broke then, and fled in panic disorder; but escape from Narcotics' fine-meshed net was impossible. They were cut down to a man.
"QX, Kinnison?" came two hard, sharp thoughts. The Lensmen did not see the Tellurian, but Lieutenant Peter van Buskirk did. That is, he saw him, but did not look at him.
"Hi, Kim, you little Tellurian wart!" That worthy's thought was a yell. "Ain't we got fun?"
"QX fellows—thanks," to Gerrond and to Winstead, and—
"Ho, Bus! Thanks, you big, Valerian ape!" to the gigantic Dutch-Valerian with whom he had shared so many experiences in the past. "A good clean-up, fellows?"
"One hundred per cent, thanks to you. We'll put you—"
"Don't, please. You will probably clog my jets if you do. I don't appear in this anywhere—it's just one of your good, routine jobs of mopping up. Clear ether, fellows, I've got to do a flit."
"Where?" all three wanted to ask, but they didn't—the Gray Lensman was gone.
VII.
Kinnison did start his flit, but he did not get far. In fact, he did not even reach his squalid room before cold reason told him that the job was only half done—yes, less than half. He had to give Boskone credit for having brains, and it was not at all likely that even such a comparatively small unit as a planetary headquarters would have only one string to its bow. They certainly would have been forced to install duplicate controls of some sort or other by the trouble they had had after Helmuth's supposedly impregnable Grand Base had been destroyed.
There were other straws pointing the same way. Where had those five strange thought-screened men come from? Bominger hadn't known of them apparently. If that idea was sound, the other headquarters would have a spy ray on the whole thing. Both sides used spy rays freely, of course, and to block them was, ordinarily, worse than to let them come. The enemies' use of the thought-screen was different. They realized that it made it easy for the unknown Lensman to discover their agents, but they were forced to use it because of the deadliness of the supposed mind-ray. Why hadn't he thought of this sooner, and had the whole area blocked off? Too late to cry about it now, though.
Assume the idea correct. They certainly knew now that he was a Lensman; probably were morally certain that he wastheLensman. His instantaneous change from a drunken dock-walloper to a cold-sober, deadly-skilled rough-and-tumble brawler—and the unexplained deaths of half-a-dozen agents, as well as that of Bominger himself—this was bad. Very,verybad—a flare lit tip-off, if there ever was one. Their spy rays would have combed him, millimeter by plotted cubic millimeter: they knew exactly where his Lens was, as well as he did himself. He had put his tail right into the wringer—wrecked the whole job right at the start—unless he could get that other headquarters outfit, too, and get them before they reported in detail to Boskone.
In his room, then, he sat and thought, harder and more intensely than he had ever thought before. No ordinary method of tracing would do. It might be anywhere on the planet, and it certainly would have no connection whatever with the thionite gang. It would be a small outfit; just a few men, but under smart direction. Their purpose would be to watch the business end of the organization, but not to touch it save in an emergency. All that the two groups would have in common would be recognition signals, so that the reserves could take over in case anything happened to Bominger—as it already had. They had him, Kinnison, cold—What to do?What to do?
The Lens. That must be the answer—ithadto be. The Lens—what was it, really, anyway? Simply an aggregation of crystalloids. Not really alive; just a pseudolife, a sort of a reflection of his own life—he wondered—great Klono's brazen teeth and tail, couldthatbe it? An idea had struck him, an idea so stupendous in its connotations and ramifications that he gasped, shuddered, and almost went faint at the shock. He started to reach for his Lens, then forced himself to relax and shot a thought to Base.
"Gerrond! Send me a portable spy-ray block, quick!"
"But that would give everything away!" protested the vice-admiral. "That's why we haven't been using them."
"Are you telling me?" the Lensman demanded. "Shoot it along—I'll explain while it's on the way." He went on to tell the Base commander everything that he thought it well for him to know, concluding: "So you see, it's a virtual certainty that I am already as wide open as intergalactic space, and that nothing but fast and sure moves will do us a bit of good."
The block arrived, and as soon as the messenger had departed Kinnison set it going. He was now the center of a sphere into which no spy-ray beam could penetrate. He was also an object of suspicion to anyone using a spy ray, but that fact made no difference, then. He snatched off his shoe, took out his Lens, and tossed that ultra-precious fabrication across the room. Then, just as though he still wore it, he directed a thought at Winstead.
"All serene, Lensman?" he asked, quietly.
"Everything's on the beam," came instant reply. "Why?"
"Just checking, is all." Kinnison did not specify exactly what it was that he was checking!
He then did something which, so far as he knew, no Lensman had ever before even thought of doing. Although he felt stark naked without his Lens, he hurled a thought three quarters of the way across the Galaxy to that dread planet Arisia; a thought narrowed down to the exact pattern of that gigantic, fearsome Brain who had been his mentor and his sponsor.
"Ah, 'tis Kimball Kinnison, of Earth," that entity responded, in precisely the same modulation it had employed once before. "You have perceived, then, youth, that the Lens is not the supremely important thing you have supposed it to be?"
"I ... you ... I mean—" The flustered Lensman, taken completely aback, was cut off by a sharp rebuke.
"Stop! You are thinking muddily—conduct ordinarily inexcusable! Now, youth, to redeem yourself, you will explain the phenomenon to me, instead of asking me to explain it to you. I realize that you have just discovered another facet of the Cosmic Truth, I know what a shock it has been to your immature mind; hence for this once it may be permissible for me to overlook your crime. But strive not to repeat the offense; for I tell you again in all possible seriousness—I cannot urge upon you too strongly the fact—that in clear and precise thinking lies your only safeguard through that which you are attempting. Confused, wandering thought will assuredly bring disaster inevitable and irreparable."
"Yes, sir," Kinnison replied meekly; a small boy reprimanded by his teacher. "It must be this way. In the first stage of training the Lens is a necessity; just as is the crystal ball or some other hypnotic object in a séance. In the more advanced stage the mind is able to work without aid. The Lens, however, may be—in fact, it must be—endowed with uses other than that of a symbol of identification; uses about which I as yet know nothing. Therefore, while I can work without it, I should not do so except when it is absolutely necessary, as its help will be imperative if I am to advance to any higher stage. It is also clear that you were expecting my call. May I ask if I am on time?"
"You are—your progress has been highly satisfactory. Also, I note with approval that you are not asking for help in your admittedly difficult present problem."
"I know that it wouldn't do me any good—and why." Kinnison grinned wryly. "But I'll bet that Worsel, when he comes up for his second treatment, will know on the spot what it has taken me all this time to find out."
"You deduce truly. He did."
"What? He has been back there already? And you told me—"
"What I told you was true and is. His mind is more fully developed and more responsive than yours; yours is of vastly greater latent capacity, capability, and force—" and the line of communication snapped.
Calling a conveyance, Kinnison was whisked to Base, the spy-ray block full on all the way. There, in a private room, he put his heavily-insulated Lens and a full spool of tape into a ray-proof container, sealed it, and called in the Base commander.
"Gerrond, here is a package of vital importance," he informed him. "Among other things, it contains a record of everything I have done to date. If I don't come back to claim it myself, please send it to Prime Base for personal delivery to Port Admiral Haynes. Speed will be no object, but safety very decidedly of the essence."
"QX—we'll send it in by special messenger."
"Thanks a lot. Now I wonder if I could use your visiphone a minute? I want to talk to the zoo."
"Certainly."
"Zoological Gardens?" and the image of an elderly, white-bearded man appeared upon the plate. "Lensman Kinnison of Tellus—Unattached. Have you as many as three oglons, caged together?"
"Yes. In fact, we have four of them in one cage."
"Better yet. Will you please send them over here to Base at once? Vice-admiral Gerrond, here, will confirm."
"It is most unusual, sir—" the gray-beard began, but broke off at a curt word from Gerrond. "Very well, sir," he agreed, and disconnected.
"Oglons?" the surprised commander demanded. "Oglons!"
For the oglon, or Radeligian cateagle, is one of the fiercest, most intractable beasts of prey in existence; it assays more concentrated villainy and more sheerly vicious ferocity to the gram than any other creature known to science. It is not a bird, but a winged mammal; and is armed not only with the gripping, tearing talons of the eagle, but also with the heavy, cruel, needle-sharp fangs of the wildcat. And its mental attitude toward all other forms of life is anti-social to the nth degree.
"Oglons." Kinnison confirmed, shortly. "I can handle them."
"You can, of course. But—" Gerrond stopped. This Gray Lensman was forever doing amazing, unprecedented, incomprehensible things. But, so far, he had produced eminently satisfactory results, and he could not be expected to spend all his time in explanations.
"But you think I'm screwy, huh?"
"Oh, no, Kinnison, I wouldn't say that. I only ... well ... after all, there isn't much real evidence that we didn't mop up one hundred percent."
"Much? Real evidence? There isn't any," the Tellurian assented, cheerfully enough. "But you've got the wrong slant entirely on these people. You are still thinking of them as gangsters, desperadoes, renegade scum of our own civilization. They are not. They are just as smart as we are; some of them are smarter. Perhaps I am taking too many precautions; but, if so, there is no harm done. On the other hand, there are two things at stake which, to me at least, are extremely important; this whole job of mine and my life: and remember this—the minute I leave this Base both of those things are in your hands."
To that, of course, there could be no answer.
While the two men had been talking and while the oglons were being brought out, two trickling streams of men had been passing, one into and one out of the spy ray shielded confines of Base. Some of these men were heavily bearded, some were shaven clean, but all had two things in common. Each one was human in type and each one in some respect or other resembled Kimball Kinnison.
"Now remember, Gerrond," the Gray Lensman said impressively as he was about to leave. "They're probably right here in Ardith, but they may be anywhere on the planet. Keep a spy ray on me wherever I go, and trace theirs if you can. That will take some doing, as the head one is bound to be an expert. Keep those oglons at least a mile—thirty seconds flying time—away from me; get all the Lensmen you can on the job; keep a cruiser and a speedster hot, but not too close. I may need one of them, or all, or none of them, I can't tell; but I do know this—if I need anything at all, I'll need it fast. Above all, Gerrond, by the Lens you wear, do nothing whatever, no matter what happens around me or to me, until I give you the word. QX?"
"QX, Gray Lensman. Clear ether!"
Kinnison took a ground-cab to the mouth of the narrow street upon which was situated his dock-walloper's mean lodging. This was a desperate, a fool-hardy trick—but in its very boldness, in its insolubly paradoxical aspects, lay its strength. Probably Boskone could solve its puzzles, but—he hoped—this ape, not being Boskone, couldn't. And, paying off the cabman, he thrust his hands into his tattered pockets and, whistling blithely if a bit raucously through his stained teeth, he strode off down the narrow way as though he did not have a care in the world. But he was doing the finest job of acting of his short career; even though, for all he really knew, he might not have any audience at all. For, inwardly, he was strung to highest tension. His sense of perception, sharply alert, was covering the full hemisphere around and above him; his mind was triggered to jerk any muscle of his body into instantaneous action.
Meanwhile, in a heavily guarded room, there sat a manlike being, faintly but definitely blue; not only as to eyes, but also as to hair, teeth, and complexion. For two hours he had been sitting at his spy ray plate, studying with ever-growing uneasiness the human beings so suddenly and so surprisingly numerously having business at the Patrol's Base. For minutes he had been studying minutely a man in a ground-cab, and his uneasiness reached panic heights.
"Itisthe Lensman!" he burst out. "It'sgotto be, Lens or no Lens. Who else would have the cold nerve to go back there when he knows that he has exposed himself?"
"Well, get him, then," advised his companion. "All set, aren't you?"
"But itcan'tbe!" the chief went on, reversing himself in mid-flight. "A Lensman without a Lens is unthinkable, and invisible Lens is preposterous. And this fellow has not now, and never has had, a mind-ray machine. He hasn't gotanything! And besides, the Lensman we're after wouldn't think of doing a thing like this—he always disappears the instant a job is finished, whether or not there is any chance of his having been discovered."
"Well, drop him and chase somebody else, then," the lieutenant advised, unfeelingly.
"But there's nobody nearly enough like him!" snarled the chief, in desperation. He was torn by doubt and indecision. This whole situation was a mess—it didn't add up right, from any possible angle. "It's got to be him—itcan'tbe anybody else. I've checked and rechecked him. Itishim, and not a double. He thinks that he's safe enough; he doesn't suspect that we're here at all. Besides, his only good double, Fordyce—andhe'snot good enough to stand the inspection I just gave him—hasn't appeared anywhere."
"Probably inside Base yet. Maybe this is a better double. Perhaps thisisthe real Lensman pretending he isn't, or maybe the real Lensman is slipping out while you're watching the man in the cab," the junior suggested, helpfully.
"Shut up!" the superior yelled. He started to reach for a switch, but paused, hand in air.
"Go ahead. That's it, call District and toss it into their laps, if it's too hot for you to handle. I think myself that whoever did this job is a warm number—plenty warm."
"And get my ears bunted off with that 'your report is neither complete nor conclusive' of his?" the chief sneered. "And get reduced for incompetence besides? No, we've got to do it ourselves, and do it right—but that man there isn't the Lensman—he can't be!"
"Well, you'd better make up your mind—you haven't got all day. And nix on that 'we' stuff. It'syouthat's got to do it—you're the boss, not me," the underling countered, callously. For once, he was really glad that he was not the one in command. "And you'd better get busy and do it, too."
"I'll do it," the chief declared, grimly. "There's a way."
There was a way. One only. He must be brought in alive and compelled to divulge the truth. There was no other way.
The blue man touched a stud and spoke. "Don't kill him—bring him in alive. If you kill him even accidentally, I'll kill both of you, myself."
The Gray Lensman made his carefree way down the alleylike thoroughfare, whistling inharmoniously and very evidently at peace with the Universe.
It takes something, friends, to walk knowingly into a trap; without betraying emotion or stress even while a blackjack, wielded by a strong arm, is descending toward the back of your head. Something of quality, something of fiber. But whatever it took, Kinnison in ample measure had.
He did not wink, flinch, or turn an eye as the billy came down. Only as it touched his hair did he act, exerting all his marvelous muscular control to jerk forward and downward, with the weapon and ahead of it, to spare himself as much as possible of the terrific blow.