But Kinnison's mind, while slower than his daughter's and in many
respects less able, was sure. The four Boskonians in the control room
were screened against his every mental force and it was idle even to
hope for another such lucky break as he had just had. One was QX and
to be received thankfully, but coincidences simply did not happen.
They were armored by this time and they had both machine rifles and
semiportable projectors. They were entrenched; evidently intending
to fight a delaying and defensive battle, knowing that if they could
keep the aggressor at bay until the pseudospace of the tube had been
traversed, the Lensman would not have a chance. Armed with all they
could use of the most powerful mobile weapons aboard and being four to
one, they undoubtedly thought that they could win easily enough.
Kinnison thought otherwise. Since he could not use his mind against
them he would use whatever he could find, and this ship, having come
upon such a mission, would be carrying plenty of weapons--and those
four men certainly hadn't had time to tamper with them all. He might
even find some negative-matter bombs.
Setting up a spy-ray block, he proceeded to rummage. They couldn't see
him, and, if any one of them had a sense of perception and cut his
screen for even a fraction of a second to use it, the battle would end
then and there. And, if they decided to rush him, so much the better.
They remained, however, forted up, as he had thought that they would,
and he rummaged in peace. Various death-dealing implements, invitingly
set up, he ignored after one cursory glance into their interiors. He
knew weapons--these had been fixed. He went on to the armory.
He did not find any negabombs, but he found plenty of untouched
weapons like those now emplaced in the control room. The rifles were
beauties, high-caliber, water-cooled things, each with a heavy dureum
shield-plate and a single-ply screen. Each had also a beam, but
machine-rifle beams weren't so hot. Conversely, the semiportables had
lots of screen, but very little dureum. Kinnison lugged one rifle and
two semiportables, by easy stages, into the room next to the control
room; so placing them that the control panels would be well out of the
line of fire.
What gave Kinnison his chance was the fact that the enemies' weapons
were set to cover the door. Apparently they had not considered the
possibility that the Lensman would attempt to flank them by blasting
through an inch and a half of alloy. Kinnison did not know whether he
could do it fast enough to mow them down from the side before they
could reset their magnetic clamps, or not; but he'd give it the good
old college try. It was bound to be a mighty near thing, and the
Lensman grinned wolfishly behind the guard plates of his helmet as he
arranged his weapons to save every possible fractional second of time.
Aiming one at a spot some three feet above the floor, the other a
little lower, Kinnison cut in the full power of his semiportables
and left them on. He energized the rifle's beam--every little bit
helped--set the defensive screens at "full", and crouched down into the
saddle behind the dureum shield. He had checked the feeds long since;
he had plenty of rounds.
Two large spots and a small one smoked briefly, grew red. They turned
bright red, then yellow, merged into one blinding spot. Metal melted,
sluggishly at first, then thinly, then flaring, blowing out in raging
coruscations of sparks as the fiercely-driven beams ate in. Through!
The first small opening appeared directly in line between the muzzle of
Kinnison's rifle and one of the guns of the enemy, and in the moment of
its appearance the Patrolman's weapon began its stuttering, shattering
roar. The Boskonians had seen the hot spot upon the wall, had known
instantly what it meant, and were working frantically to swing their
gun mounts around so as to interpose their dureum shields and to bring
their own rifles to bear. They had almost succeeded. Kinnison caught
just the bulge of one suit of armor in his sights, but that was enough.
The kinetic energy of the stream of metal tore him out of the saddle;
he was literally riddled while still in air. Two savage bursts took
care of the semiportables and their operators--as has been intimated,
the shields of the semis were not designed to withstand the type of
artillery Kinnison was using.
That made it cannon to cannon, one to one; and the Lensman knew that
those two identical rifles could hammer at each other's defenses for
an hour without doing any serious damage. He had, however, one big
advantage. Being closer to the bulkhead he could depress his line of
fire more than could the Boskonian. He did so, aiming at the clamps,
which were not built to take very much of that sort of punishment. One
front clamp let go, then the other, and the Lensman knew what to do
about the rear pair, which he could not reach. He directed his fire
against the upper edge of the dureum plate. Under the awful thrust
of that terrific storm of steel the useless front clamps lifted from
the floor. The gun mount, restrained from sliding by the unbreakable
grip of the rear clamps, reared up. Over it went, straight backward,
exposing the gunner to the full blast of Kinnison's fire. That,
definitely, was that.
* * * * *
Kathryn heaved a sigh of relief; as far as she could "see", the tube
was still empty. "That's my Pop!" she applauded inaudibly to herself.
"Now," she breathed, "if the darling has just got jets enough to figure
out what may be coming at him down this tube--and sense enough to run
back home before it can catch him!"
Kinnison had no suspicion at all that any danger to himself might lie
within the tube. He had no desire, however, to land alone in a strange
and possibly half-crippled enemy ship in the exact center of an enemy
base, and no intention whatever of doing so. Moreover, he had once come
altogether too close to permanent immolation in a foreign space because
of the discontinuance of a hyperspatial tube while he was in it, and
once was once too many. Also, he had just got done leading with his
chin, and once of that, too, was once too many. Therefore, his sole
thought was to get back into his own space as fast as he could get
there, so as soon as the opposition was silenced he hurried into the
control room and reversed the vessel's drive.
Behind him, Kathryn flipped her speedster end for end and led the
retreat. She left the tube before--"before" is an extremely loose and
inaccurate word in this connection, but it conveys the idea better than
any other ordinary term--she got back to Base. She caused an officer to
broadcast an "evacuation" warning, then hung poised high above Base,
watching intently. She knew that Kinnison could not leave the tube
except at its terminus, hence would have to materialize inside Base
itself. She had heard of what happened when two dense, hard solids
attempted to occupy the same three-dimensional space at the same time;
but to view that occurrence was not her purpose in lingering. She did
not actually know whether there was anything in the tube or not; but
she did know that if there were, and if it or they should follow her
father out into normal space, even she would have need of every jet she
could muster.
Kinnison, maneuvering his Boskonian cruiser to a halt just at the
barest perceptible threshold of normal space, in the intermediate
zone in which nothing except dureum was solid in either space or
pseudospace, had already given a great deal of thought to the problem
of disembarkation. The ship was small, as spaceships go, but even so
it was a lot bigger than any corridor of Base. Those corridor walls
and floors were thick and contained a lot of steel; the ship's walls
were solid alloy. He had never seen metal materialize within metal and,
frankly, he didn't want to be around, even inside D-armor, when it
happened. Also, there were a lot of explosives aboard, and atomic power
plants, and the chance of touching off a loose atomic vortex in the
very middle of Base and within a few feet of himself was not one to be
taken lightly.
He had already rigged a line to a master switch. Power off, with the
ship's dureum catwalk as close to the floor of the corridor as the
dimensions of the tube permitted, he reversed the controls and poised
himself for the running headlong dive. He could not feel Radeligian
gravitation, of course, but he was pretty sure that he could leap far
enough to get through the interface. He took a short run, jerked the
line, and hurled himself through the spaceship's immaterial wall. The
ship disappeared.
Going through that interface was more of a shock than the Lensman
had anticipated. Even taken very slowly, as it customarily is,
interdimensional acceleration brings malaise to which no one has ever
become accustomed, and taking it so rapidly fairly turned Kinnison
inside out. He was going to land with the rolling impact which
constitutes perfect technique in such armored maneuvering. As it was,
he never did know how he landed, except that he made a boiler-shop
racket and that he brought up against the far wall of the corridor
with a climactic clang. Beyond the addition of a few more bruises and
contusions to his already abundant collection, however, he was not
harmed.
As soon as he could collect himself he leaped to his feet and rapped
out orders. "Tractors--pressors--shears! Heavy stuff, to anchor, not to
clamp! Hipe!" He knew what he was up against now, and, if they'd just
come back, he'd yank them out of that tube so fast it'd break their
neck!
* * * * *
And Kathryn, still watching intently, smiled. Her Dad was a pretty
smart old duck, but he wasn't using his noggin now--he was cockeyed as
Trenco's ether in thinking that they might come back. If anything at
all erupted from that hypercircle, it would be something against which
the stuff he was mustering would be precisely as effective as so much
thin air. And she _still_ had no concrete idea of what she so
feared. It would not be essentially physical, she was pretty sure. It
would almost have to be mental. But who or what could possibly put it
across? And how? And above all, what could she do about it if they did?
Eyes narrowed, brow furrowed in concentration, she thought as she had
never thought before; and the harder she thought the more clouded the
picture became. For the first time in her triumphant life she felt
small--weak--impotent. It was in that hour that Kathryn Kinnison really
grew up.
The tube vanished; she heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. They,
whoever they were, having failed to bring Kinnison to them--this
time--were not coming after him--this time. Not an important enough
game to play to the end? No, that wasn't it. Maybe they weren't ready.
But the next time--
Mentor the Arisian had told her bluntly, the last time she had seen
him, to come to him again when she had found out that she did not know
everything there was to be known. Deep down, she had believed that that
day would never come. Now, however, it had. This escape--if it had been
an escape--had taught her much.
"Mother!" She shot a call to distant Klovia. "I'm on Radelix.
Everything's on the green. Dad has just knocked a flock of Boskonians
into an outside loop and come through QX. I've got to do a little
flit, though, before I come home. 'Bye."
* * * * *
Kinnison stood intermittent guard over Base for four days after the
hyperspatial tube had disappeared before he gave up; before he did any
very serious thinking upon what he should do next.
Could he and should he keep on as Sybly Whyte? He could and he should,
he decided. He hadn't been gone long enough for Whyte's absence to have
been noticed; nothing whatever connected Whyte with Kinnison. If he
really knew what he was doing, a more specific alias might be better;
but as long as he was merely smelling around, Whyte's was the best
identity to use. He could go anywhere, do anything, ask anything of
anybody, and all with a perfectly good excuse.
And as Sybly Whyte, then, for days that stretched into weeks, he
roamed--finding, as he had been afraid that he would find, nothing
whatever. It seemed as though all Boskonian activity of the type in
which he was most interested had ceased with his return from the
hyperspatial tube. Just what that meant he did not know. It was
unthinkable that they had given up on him--much more probably they were
hatching something brand new. And the frustration of inaction and the
trying to figure out what was coming next was driving him not-so-slowly
nuts.
Then, striking through the doldrums, came a call from Maitland.
"Kim? You told me to Lens you immediately about any off-color work.
Don't know whether this is or not. The guy may be--probably is--crazy.
Conklin, who reported him, couldn't decide--neither can I, from
Conklin's report. Do you want to send somebody special, take over
yourself, or what?"
"I'll take over," Kinnison decided instantly. If neither Conklin nor
the Vice Co-ordinator, Gray Lensmen both, could decide, there was no
point in sending anyone else. "Where and who?"
"Planet, Meneas II, not too far from where you are now. City,
Meneateles; 116-3-29, 45-22-17. Place, Jack's Haven, a meteor miner's
hangout at the corner of Gold and Sapphire Streets. Person, a man
called 'Eddie'."
"Thanks. I'll check." Maitland did not send, and Kinnison did not want,
any additional information. Both knew that since the Co-ordinator was
going to investigate this thing himself, he should get his facts, and
particularly his impressions, unprejudiced and at first hand.
To Meneas II, then, and to Jack's Haven, Sybly Whyte went, notebook
very much in evidence. An ordinary enough space-dive Jack's turned
out to be--higher-toned than that Radeligian space-dock saloon of
Bominger's; much less flamboyant than notorious Miners' Rest on far
Euphrosyne.
"I wish to interview a person named Eddie," he announced, as he bought
a bottle of wine. "I have been informed that he has had deep-space
adventures worthy of incorporation into one of my novels."
"Eddie? Haw!" The barkeeper laughed raucously. "That space-louse?
Somebody's been kidding you, mister. He's nothing but a broken-down
meteor miner--you know what a space-louse is, don't you?--that we let
clean cuspidors and do such-like odd jobs for his keep. We don't throw
him out, like we do the others, because he's kind of funny in one way.
Every hour or so he throws a fit, and that amuses people."
Whyte's eager-beaver attitude did not change; his face reflected
nothing of what Kinnison thought of this callous speech. For Kinnison
did know exactly what a space-louse was. More, he knew exactly what
turned a man into one. Ex-meteor miner himself, he knew what the
awesome depths of space, the ever-present dangers, the privations, the
solitude, the frustrations, did to any mind not adequately integrated.
He knew that only the strong survived; that the many weak succumbed.
From sickening memory he knew just what pitiful wrecks those many
became. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that the information was not
necessary:
"Where is this Eddie now?"
"That's him, over there in the corner. By the way he's acting, he'll
have another fit pretty quick now."
The shambling travesty of a man accepted avidly the invitation to table
and downed at a gulp the proffered drink. Then, as though the mild
potion had been a trigger, his wracked body tensed and his features
began to writhe.
"Cateagles!" he screamed; eyes rolling, breath coming in hard, frantic
gasps. "Gangs of cateagles! Thousands! They're clawing me to bits!
And the Lensman! He's sicking them on! OW!! Yow!!!" He burst into
unintelligible screams and threw himself to the floor. There, rolling
convulsively over and over, he tried the impossible feat of covering
simultaneously with his two clawlike hands his eyes, ears, nose, mouth,
and throat.
Ignoring the crowding spectators, Kinnison invaded the helpless mind
before him. He winced mentally as he photographed upon his own brain
the whole atrocious enormity of what was there. Then, while Whyte
busily scribbled notes, he shot a thought to distant Klovia.
* * * * *
"Cliff! I'm here in Jack's Haven, and I've got Eddie's data. What did
you and Conklin make of it? You agree, of course, that the Lensman is
the crux."
"Definitely. Everything else is hop-happy space-drift. The fact that
there are not--there _can't_ be--any such Lensman as Eddie
imagined, makes him space-drift, too, in our opinion. We called you in
on the millionth chance--sorry that we sent you out on a false alarm,
but you said we had to be sure."
"You needn't be sorry." Kinnison's thought was the grimmest Clifford
Maitland had ever felt. "Eddie isn't an ordinary space-louse. You see,
I happen to know one thing that you and Conklin don't, since you've
never been there. Did you happen to notice a woman in the picture? Very
faint; decidedly in the background?"
"Now that you mention her--yes, there was one. So far in the background
and so faint that it never occurred to either Conklin or me that she
could be connected. How can she possibly have any bearing, Kim? Most
every spaceman has a woman--or a lot of different ones--more or less on
his mind all the time, you know. Definitely immaterial and not germane,
I'd say."
"So would I, maybe, except for the fact that she isn't really a woman
at all, but a Lyranian--"
"A LYRANIAN!" Maitland interrupted. Kinnison could feel the racing of
his assistant's thoughts. "That complicates things. But how in Palain's
purple hells, Kim, could Eddie ever have got to Lyrane--and if he did,
how did he get away alive?"
"I don't know, Cliff." Kinnison's mind, too, was working fast. "But you
haven't got all the dope yet. Not only is she a Lyranian, but I know
her personally--she's that airport manager who tried her level best to
kill me all the time I was on Lyrane II."
"Hm-m-m." Maitland tried to digest that undigestible bit. Tried, and
failed. "That would seem to make the Lensman real, too, then--real
enough, at least, to investigate--much as I hate to think of the
possibility of a Lensman going that far off the beam." Maitland's
convictions died hard. "Unless--could there be any possibility of
coincidence?"
"Coincidence is out. Don't think it's a trap, either--hasn't got the
right earmarks."
"You'll handle this yourself, then?"
"Check. At least, I'll help. There may be people better qualified than
I am to do the heavy work. I'll get them at it. Thanks, Cliff--clear
ether."
He lined a thought to his wife; and after a short, warmly intimate
contact, he told her everything that had happened.
"So you see, Beautiful," he concluded, "your wish is coming true. I
couldn't keep you out of this if I wanted to. So check with the girls,
put on your Lens, take off your clothes, and go to work."
"I'll do that." Clarrissa laughed and her soaring spirit flooded his
mind. "Thanks, my dear."
[Illustration: KIT KINNISON]
Then and only then did Kimball Kinnison, master therapist, pay any
further attention to that which lay contorted upon the floor. But
when Whyte folded up his notebook and left the place, the derelict
was resting quietly; and in a space of time long enough so that the
putative writer of space operas would not be connected with the cure,
those fits would end. Moreover, Eddie would return, whole, to the void:
he would become what he had never before been--a successful meteor
miner.
Lensmen pay their debts; even to spiders and to worms.