I.

"Stop, youth!" The voice of that nameless, incredibly ancient Arisian

who was Kinnison's instructor and whom he had thought of and spoken of

simply as "Mentor" thundered silently, deep within the Lensman's brain.

He stopped convulsively, almost in midstride, and at the rigid, absent

awareness in his eyes Nurse MacDougall's face went white.

"This is not merely the loose and muddy thinking of which you have all

too frequently been guilty in the past," the deeply resonant, soundless

voice went on, "it is simply not thinking at all. At times, Kinnison of

Tellus, we almost despair of you. Think, youth, _think_! For know,

Lensman, that upon the clarity of your thought and upon the trueness

of your perception depends the whole future of your Patrol and of your

Civilization; more so now by far than at any time in the past."

"Wha'dy'mean, 'think'?" Kinnison snapped back, thoughtlessly. His

mind was a seething turmoil, his emotions an indescribable blend of

surprise, puzzlement and incredulity.

For moments, as Mentor did not reply, the Gray Lensman's mind raced.

Incredulity--becoming tinged with apprehension--turning rapidly into

rebellion.

"Oh, Kim!" Clarrissa choked. A queer-enough tableau they made, these

two, had any been there to see; the two uniformed figures standing

there so strainedly, the nurse's two hands gripping those of the

Lensman. She, completely en rapport with him, had understood his every

fleeting thought. "Oh, Kim! They _can't_ do that to us--"

"I'll say they can't!" Kinnison flared. "By Klono's tungsten teeth, I

won't do it! We have a right to happiness, you and I, and we'll--"

"We'll what?" she asked, quietly. She knew what they had to face; and,

strong-souled woman that she was, she was quicker to face it squarely

than was he. "You were just blasting off, Kim, and so was I."

"I suppose so," glumly. "Why in all the nine hells of Valeria did I

have to be a Lensman? Why couldn't I have stayed a--"

"Because you are you," the girl interrupted, gently. "Kimball Kinnison,

the man I love. You couldn't do anything else." Chin up, she was

fighting gamely. "And if I rate Lensman's Mate I can't be a sissy,

either. It won't last forever, dear. Just a little longer to wait,

that's all."

Eyes, steel-gray now, stared down into eyes of tawny, gold-flecked

bronze. "QX, Chris? _Really_ QX?" What a world of meaning there

was in that cryptic question!

"Really, Kim." She met his stare unfalteringly. If not entirely

unafraid, at least with whole-hearted determination. "On the beam and

on the green, Gray Lensman, all the way. Every long, last millimeter.

There, wherever it is--to the very end of whatever road it has to

be--and back again. Until it's over. I'll be here. Or somewhere, Kim.

Waiting."

The man shook himself and breathed deep. Hands dropped apart--both

knew consciously as well as subconsciously that the less of physical

demonstration the better for two such natures as theirs--and Kimball

Kinnison, Unattached Lensman, came to grips with his problem.

He began really to think; to think with the full power of his

prodigious mind; and as he did so he began to see what the Arisian

could have--what he must have--meant. He, Kinnison, had gummed up the

works. He had made a colossal blunder in the Boskonian campaign. He

knew that the Brain, although silent, was still en rapport with him;

and as he coldly, grimly, thought the thing through to its logical

conclusion he knew, with a dull, sick certainty, what was coming next.

It came:

"Ah, you perceive at last some portion of the truth. You see that your

confused, superficial thinking has brought about almost irreparable

harm. I grant that, in specimens so young of such a youthful race,

emotion has its place and its function; but I tell you now in all

solemnity that for you the time of emotional relaxation has not yet

come. _Think_, youth--_THINK_!" and the ancient sage of

Arisia snapped the telepathic line.

* * * * *

As one, without a word, nurse and Lensman retraced their way to the

room they had left so shortly before. Port Admiral Haynes and Surgeon

General Lacy still sat upon the nurse's davenport, scheming roseate

schemes having to do with the wedding they had so subtly engineered.

"Back so soon? Forget something, MacDougall?" Lacy asked, amiably.

Then, as both men noticed the couple's utterly untranslatable

expression:

"What happened? Break it out, Kim!" Haynes commanded.

"Plenty, chief," Kinnison answered, quietly. "Mentor--my Arisian, you

know--stopped us before we got to the elevator. Told me that I'd put

my foot in it clear up to the hip joint on that Boskonian thing. That

instead of being all buttoned up, my fool blundering has put us further

back than we were when we started."

"Mentor!"

"Your Arisian!"

"_Told_ you!"

"Put us back!"

It was an entirely unpremeditated, unconscious duet. The two old

officers were completely dumfounded. Arisians never had come out of

their shells, they never would. Infinitely less disturbing would have

been the authentic tidings that a brick house had fallen upstairs.

They had nursed this romance along _so_ carefully, had timed

it so exactly, and now it had gone _p-f-f-f-t_--it had been

taken out of their hands entirely. That thought flashed through their

minds first. Then, as catastrophe follows lightning's flash, the

real knowledge exploded within their consciousnesses that, in some

unguessable fashion or other, the whole Boskonian campaign had gone

_p-f-f-f-t_, too.

Port Admiral Hayes, master tactician, reviewed in his keen strategist's

mind every phase of the recent struggle, without being able to find a

flaw in it.

"There wasn't a loophole anywhere," he said aloud. "Where did they

figure we slipped up?"

"We didn't slip--_I_ slipped," Kinnison stated, flatly. "When

we took Bominger--the fat Chief Zwilnik of Radelix, you know--I took

a bop on the head to learn that Boskone had more than one string per

bow. Observers, independent, for every station at all important. I

learned that fact thoroughly then, I thought. At least, we figured

on Boskone's having lines of communication past, not through, his

Regional Directors, such as Prellin of Bronseca. Since I changed my

line of attack at that point, I did not need to consider whether or not

Crowninshield of Tressilia III was by-passed in the same way; and when

I had worked my way up through Jalte in his star cluster to Boskone

itself, on Jarnevon, I had forgotten the concept completely. Its

possibility did not even occur to me. That is where I fell down."

"I still don't see it!" Haynes protested. "Boskone was the top!"

"Yeah?" Kinnison asked, pointedly. "That's what I thought--but prove

it."

"Oh." The Port Admiral hesitated. "We had no reason to think

otherwise--looked at it in that light, this intervention would seem to

be conclusive--but before that there were no--"

"There were so," Kinnison contradicted, "but I didn't see them then.

That's where my brain went sour; I should have seen them. Little

things, mostly, but significant. Not so much positive as negative

indices. Above all, there was nothing whatever to indicate that Boskone

actually was the top. That idea was the product of my own wishful and

very low-grade thinking, with no basis or foundation in fact or in

theory. And now," he concluded bitterly, "because my skull is so thick

that it takes an idea a hundred years to filter through it--because a

sheer, bare fact has to be driven into my brain with a Valerian maul

before I can grasp it--we're sunk without a trace."

"Wait a minute, Kim, we aren't sunk yet," the girl advised, shrewdly.

"The fact that, for the first time in history, an Arisian has taken

the initiative in communicating with a human being, means something

big--_really_ big. Mentor does not indulge in what he calls 'loose

and muddy' thinking. Every part of every thought he sent carries

meaning--plenty of meaning."

"What do you mean?" As one, the three men asked substantially the same

question; the Lensman, by virtue of his faster reactions, being perhaps

half a syllable in the lead.

* * * * *

"I don't know, exactly," Clarrissa admitted. "I've got only an ordinary

mind, and it's firing on half its jets or less right now. But I do know

that his thought was 'almost' irreparable, and that he meant precisely

that--nothing else. If it had been wholly irreparable he not only would

have expressed his thought that way, but he would have stopped you

before you destroyed Jarnevon. I know that. Apparently it would have

become wholly irreparable if we had got--" she faltered, blushing, then

went on, "--if we had kept on about our own personal affairs. That's

why he stopped us. We can win out, he meant, if you keep on working.

It's your oyster, Kim--it's up to you to open it. You can do it, too--I

just know that you can."

"But why didn't he stop you before you fellows smashed Boskone?" Lacy

demanded, exasperated.

"I hope you're right, Chris--it sounds reasonable," Kinnison said,

thoughtfully. Then, to Lacy:

"That's an easy one to answer, doctor. Because knowledge that comes the

hard way is knowledge that really sticks with you. If he had drawn me

a diagram before, it wouldn't have helped, the next time I get into a

jam. This way it will. I've got to learn how to think, if it cracks my

skull.

"_Really_ think," he went on, more to himself than to the other

three. "To think so that it counts."

"Well, what are we going to do about it?" Haynes was--he had to be, to

get where he was and to stay where he was--quick on the uptake. "Or,

more specifically, what are you going to do and what am I going to do?"

"What I am going to do will take a bit of mulling over," Kinnison

replied, slowly. "Find some more leads and trace them up, is the best

that occurs to me right now. Your job and procedure are rather clearer.

You remarked out in space that Boskone knew that Tellus was very

strongly held. That statement, of course, is no longer true."

"Huh?" Haynes half pulled himself up from the davenport, then sank

back. "Why?" he demanded.

"Because we used the negasphere--a negative-matter bomb of planetary

antimass--to wipe out Jalte's planet, and because we smashed Jarnevon

between two colliding planets," the Lensman explained, concisely.

"Can the present defenses of Tellus cope with either one of those

offensives?"

"I'm afraid not--no," the port admiral admitted. "But--"

"We can admit no 'buts,' admiral," Kinnison declared, with grim

finality. "Having used those weapons, we must assume that the Boskonian

scientists--we'll have to keep on calling them 'Boskonians,' I suppose,

until we find a truer name--had recorders on them and have now

duplicated them. Tellus must be made safe against anything that we have

ever used; against, as well, everything that, by the wildest stretch of

the imagination, we can conceive of the enemy using."

"You're right--I can see that," Haynes nodded.

"We have been underestimating them right along," Kinnison went on. "At

first we thought that they were merely organized outlaws and pirates.

Then, when it was forced upon us that they could match us--overmatch

us in some things--we still would not admit that they must be as large

and as widespread as we are--galactic in scope. We know now that they

were wider-spread than we are. Intergalactic. They penetrated into our

Galaxy, riddled it, before we knew even that theirs was inhabited or

inhabitable. Right?"

"To a hair, although I never thought of it in exactly that way before."

"None of us have--mental cowardice. And they have the advantage,"

Kinnison continued, inexorably, "in knowing that our Prime Base is upon

Tellus; whereas, if Jarnevon was not in fact theirs, we have no idea

whatever where it is. And another point. Does that fleet of theirs, as

you look back on it, strike you as having been a planetary outfit?"

"Well, Jarnevon was a big planet, and the Eich were a mighty warlike

race."

"Quibbling a bit, aren't you, chief?"

"Uh-huh," Haynes admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "The probability is

very great that no one planet either built or maintained that fleet."

"And that leads us to expect what?"

"Counterattack. In force. Everything they can shove this way. However,

they've got to rebuild their fleet, besides designing and building the

new stuff. We'll have time enough, probably, if we get started right

now."

"But, after all, Jarnevon _may_ have been their vital spot," Lacy

submitted.

"Even if that were true, which it probably isn't," the now thoroughly

convinced port admiral sided in with Kinnison, "it doesn't mean a

thing, Sawbones. If they should blow Tellus out of space, it wouldn't

kill the Galactic Patrol. It would hurt it, of course, but it wouldn't

cripple it seriously. The other planets of Civilization could, and

certainly would, go ahead with it."

"My thought exactly," from Kinnison. "I check you to the proverbial

nineteen decimals."

"Well, there's a lot to do and I'd better be getting at it," and Haynes

and Lacy got up to go. Gone now was all thought of demerits or of

infractions of rules--each knew what a wrenching the young couple had

undergone. "See you in my office when convenient?"

"I'll be there directly, chief--as soon as I tell Chris, here, good-by."

* * * * *

At about the same time that Haynes and Lacy went to Nurse MacDougall's

room, Worsel the Velantian arrowed downward through the atmosphere

toward a certain flat roof. Leather wings shot out with a snap and in a

blast of wind--Velantians can stand eleven Tellurian gravities--he came

in to his customary appalling landing and dived unconcernedly down a

nearby shaft. Into a corridor, along which he wriggled blithely to the

office of his old friend, Master Technician LaVerne Thorndyke.

"Verne, I have been thinking," he announced, as he coiled all but about

six feet of his sinuous length into a tight spiral upon the rug and

thrust out half a dozen weirdly stalked eyes.

"That's nothing new," Thorndyke countered. No human mind can sympathize

with or even remotely understand the Velantian passion for solid weeks

of intense, uninterrupted concentration upon a single thought. "What

about this time? The which-ness of the why?"

"That is the trouble with you Tellurians," Worsel grumbled. "Not only

do you not know how to think, but you--"

"Hold on!" Thorndyke interrupted, unimpressed. "If you've got anything

to say, old snake, why not say it? Why circumnavigate all the stars in

space before you get to the point?"

"I have been thinking about thought--"

"So what?" The technician derided. "That's even worse. That's a dizzy

spiral if there ever was one."

"Thought--and Kinnison," Worsel declared, with finality.

"Kinnison? Oh--that's different. I'm interested--very much so. Go

ahead."

"And his weapons. His DeLameters, you know."

"No, I don't know, and you know that I don't know. What about them?"

"They are so ... so ... so _obvious_." The Velantian finally found

the exact thought he wanted. "So big, and so clumsy, and so obtrusive.

So inefficient, so wasteful of power. No subtlety--no finesse."

"But that's far and away the best hand weapon that has ever been

developed!" Thorndyke protested.

"True. Nevertheless, a millionth of that power, properly applied, could

be at least a million times as deadly."

"How?" The Tellurian, although shocked, was dubious.

"I have reasoned it out that thought, in any organic being, is and

must be connected with one definite organic compound--this one," the

Velantian explained didactically, the while there appeared within the

technician's mind the space formula of an incredibly complex molecule;

a formula which seemed to fill not only his mind, but the entire room

as well. "You will note that it is a large molecule, and one of high

molecular weight. Thus it is comparatively unstable. A vibration at the

resonant frequency of any one of its component groups would break it

down, and thought would therefore cease."

It took perhaps a minute for the full import of the ghastly thing to

sink into Thorndyke's mind. Then, every fiber of him flinching from the

idea, he began to protest.

"But he doesn't need it, Worsel. He's got a mind already that can--"

"It takes much mental force to kill," Worsel broke in, equably. "By

that method one can slay only a few at a time, and it is exhausting

work. My proposed method would require only a minute fraction of a watt

of power and scarcely any mental force at all."

"And it would _kill_--it would have to. That reaction could not be

made reversible."

"Certainly," Worsel concurred. "I never could understand why you

soft-headed, soft-hearted, soft-bodied human beings are so reluctant to

kill your enemies. What good does it do merely to stun them?"

"QX--skip it." Thorndyke knew that it was hopeless to attempt to

convince the utterly unhuman Worsel of the fundamental rightness of

human ethics. "But nothing has ever been designed small enough to

project such a wave."

"I realize that. Its design and construction will challenge your

inventive ability. Its smallness is its great advantage. He could

wear it in a ring, in the bracelet of his Lens; or, since it will be

actuated, controlled, and directed by thought, even imbedded surgically

beneath his skin."

"How about backfires?" Thorndyke actually shuddered.

"Projection--shielding--"

"Details--mere details," Worsel assured him, with an airy flip of his

scimitared tail.

"That's nothing to be running around loose," the man argued. "Nobody

could tell what killed them, could they?"

"Probably not." Worsel pondered briefly. "No. Certainly not. The

substance must decompose in the instant of death, from any cause. And

it would not be 'loose,' as you think; it should not become known,

even. You would make only the one, of course."

"Oh. You don't want one, then?"

"Certainly not. What do I need of such a thing? Kinnison only--and

only for his protection."

"Kim can handle it--but he's the only being this side of Arisia that

I'd trust with one. QX, give me the dope on the frequency, wave form,

and so on, and I'll see what I can do."