VI.

As the _Dauntless_ approached Lyrane II so nearly that the

planet showed a perceptible disk upon the plates, the observers began

to study their detectors carefully. Nothing registered, and a brief

interchange of thoughts with the Chief Person of Lyrane informed the

Lensman that the two Boskonian warships were still upon the ground.

Indeed, they were going to stay upon the ground until after the hundred

Lyranian leaders, most of whom were still safely hidden, had been found

and executed, exactly as per announcement. The strangers had killed

many persons by torture and were killing more in attempts to make

them reveal the hiding places of the leaders, but little if any real

information was being obtained.

"Good technique, perhaps, from a bullheaded, dictatorial standpoint,

but it strikes me as being damned poor tactics," grunted Malcolm Craig,

the _Dauntless'_ grizzled captain, when Kinnison had relayed the

information.

"I'll say it's poor tactics," the Lensman agreed. "If Helmuth or one of

the living military hot shots of his caliber were down there, one of

those cans would be out on guard, flitting all over space."

"But how could they be expecting trouble 'way out here, nine thousand

parsecs from anywhere?" argued Chatway, the chief firing officer.

"They ought to be--that's the point." This from Henderson. "Where do we

land, Kim? Did you find out?"

"Not exactly; they're on the other side of the planet from here, now.

Good thing we don't have to get rid of a Tellurian intrinsic this

time--it'll be a near thing as it is." And it was. Scarcely was the

intrinsic velocity matched to that of the planet when the observers

reported that the airport upon which the enemy lay was upon the

horizon. Inertialess, the _Dauntless_ flashed away, going inert

and into action simultaneously when within range of the zwilnik ships.

Within range of one of them, that is; for, short as the time had been,

the crew of one of the Boskonian vessels had been sufficiently alert to

get her away. The other one did not move; then or ever.

The Patrolmen acted with the flawless smoothness of long practice and

perfect teamwork. At the first sign of zwilnik activity as revealed

by his spy-rays, Nelson, the chief communications officer, loosed a

barrage of ethereal and sub-ethereal static interference through which

no communications beam or signal could be driven. Captain Craig barked

a word into his microphone and every dreadful primary that could be

brought to bear erupted as one weapon. Chief Pilot Henderson, after a

casual glance below, cut in the Bergenholms, tramped in his blasts, and

set the cruiser's narrow nose into his tracer's line. One glance was

enough. He needed no orders as to what to do next. It would have been

apparent to almost anyone, even to one of the persons of Lyrane, that

that riddled, slashed, three-quarters fused mass of junk never again

would be or could contain aught of menace. The Patrol ship had not

stopped: had scarcely even paused. Now, having destroyed half of the

opposition _en passant_, she legged it after the remaining half.

"Now what, Kim?" asked Captain Craig. "We can't inglobe him and he no

doubt mounts tractor shears. We'll have to use the new tractor zone,

won't we?"

Ordinarily the gray-haired four-striper would have made his own

decisions, since he and he alone fought his ship; but these

circumstances were far from ordinary. First, any Unattached Lensman,

wherever he was, was the boss. Second, the tractor zone was new; so

brand-new that even the _Dauntless_ had not as yet used it. Third,

the ship was on detached duty, assigned directly to Kinnison to do with

as he willed. Fourth, said Kinnison was high in the confidence of the

Galactic Council and would know whether or not the present situation

justified the use of the new mechanism.

"If he can cut a tractor, yes," the Lensman agreed. "Only one ship. He

can't get away and he can't communicate--safe enough. Go to it."

* * * * *

The Tellurian ship was faster than the Boskonian; and, since she

had been only seconds behind at the start, she came within striking

distance of her quarry in short order. Tractor beams reached out and

seized; but only momentarily did they hold. At the first pull they were

cut cleanly away. No one was surprised; it had been taken for granted

that all Boskonian ships would by this time have been equipped with

tractor shears.

These shears had been developed originally by the scientists of the

Patrol. Immediately following that invention, looking forward to the

time when Boskone would have acquired it, those same scientists set

themselves to the task of working out something which would be just

as good as a tractor beam for combat purposes, but which could not be

cut. They got it finally--a globular shell of force, very much like a

meteorite screen except double in phase. That is, it was completely

impervious to matter moving in either direction, instead of only to

that moving inwardly. Even if exact data as to generation, gauging,

distance, and control of this weapon were available--which they very

definitely are not--it would serve no good end to detail them here.

Suffice it to say that the _Dauntless_ mounted tractor zones, and

had ample power to hold them.

Closer up the Patrol ship blasted. The zone snapped on, well beyond the

Boskonian, and tightened. Henderson cut the Bergenholms. Captain Craig

snapped out orders and Chief Firing Officer Chatway and his boys did

their stuff.

Defensive screens full out, the pirate stayed free and tried to run. No

soap. She merely slid around upon the frictionless inner surface of the

zone. She rolled and she spun. Then she went inert and rammed. Still

no soap. She struck the zone and bounced; bounced with all of her mass

and against all the power of her driving thrust. The impact jarred the

_Dauntless_ to her very skin; but the zone's anchorage had been

computed and installed by top-flight engineers and they held. And the

zone itself held. It yielded a bit, but it did not fail and the shear

planes of the pirates could not cut it.

Then, no other course being possible, the Boskonians fought. Of course,

theoretically, surrender was possible, but it simply was not done. No

pirate ship ever had surrendered to a Patrol force, however large; none

ever would. No Patrol ship had ever surrendered to Boskone--or would.

That was the unwritten but grimly understood code of this internecine

conflict between two galaxy-wide and diametrically opposed cultures;

it was and had to be a war of utter and complete extermination.

Individuals or small groups might be captured bodily; but no ship, no

individual, even, ever, under any conditions, surrendered. The fight

was--always and everywhere--to the death.

So this one was. The enemy was well armed of her type, but her type

simply did not carry projectors of sufficient power to break down

the _Dauntless'_ hard-held defensive screens. Nor did she mount

screens heavy enough to withstand for long the furious assault of the

Patrol ship's terrific primaries.

As soon as the pirate's screens went down the firing stopped; that

order had been given long since. Kinnison wanted information, he wanted

charts, he wanted a few living Boskonians. He got nothing. Not a man

remained alive aboard the riddled hulk; the chart room contained only

heaps of fused ash. Everything which might have been of use to the

Patrol had been destroyed, either by the Patrol's own beams or by the

pirates themselves after they saw they must lose.

"Beam it out," Craig ordered, and the remains of the Boskonian warship

disappeared.

* * * * *

Back toward Lyrane II, then, the _Dauntless_ went, and Kinnison

again made contact with Helen, the Elder Sister. She had emerged from

her crypt and was directing affairs from her--"office" is perhaps the

word--upon the top floor of the city's largest building. The search for

the Lyranian leaders, the torture and murder of the citizens, and the

destruction of the city had stopped, all at once, when the grounded

Boskonian cruiser had been blasted out of commission. The directing

intelligences of the raiders had remained, it developed, within

the "safe" confines of their vessel's walls; and when they ceased

directing, their minions in the actual theater of operations ceased

operating. They had been grouped uncertainly in an open square, but at

the first glimpse of the returning _Dauntless_ they had dashed

into the nearest large building, each man seizing one or sometimes

two persons as he went. They were now inside, erecting defenses and

very evidently intending to use the Lyranians both as hostages and as

shields.

Motionless now, directly over the city, Kinnison and his officers

studied through their spy-rays the number, armament, and disposition

of the enemy force. There were one hundred and thirty of them, human

to about six places. They were armed with the usual portable weapons

carried by such parties.

Originally they had had several semiportable projectors, but since all

heavy stuff must be powered from the mother ship, it had been abandoned

long since. Surprisingly, though, they wore full armor. Kinnison had

expected only thought-screens, since the Lyranians had no offensive

weapons save those of the mind; but apparently either the pirates did

not know that or else were guarding against surprise.

Armor was--and is--heavy, cumbersome, a handicap to fast action, and a

nuisance generally; hence for the Boskonians to have dispensed with it

would not have been poor tactics. True, the Patrol _did_ attack,

but that could not have been what was expected. In fact, had such an

attack been in the cards, that Boskonian punitive party would not

have been on the ground at all. It was equally true that canny old

Helmuth, who took nothing whatever for granted, would have had his men

in armor. However, he would have guarded much more completely against

surprise--but few commanders indeed went to such lengths of precaution

as Helmuth did. Thus Kinnison pondered.

"This ought to be as easy as shooting fish down a well--but you'd

better put out space scouts just the same," he decided, as he punched a

call for Lieutenant Peter Van Buskirk. "Bus? Do you see what we see?"

"Uh-huh, we've been peeking a bit," the huge Dutch-Valerian responded,

happily.

"QX. Get your gang wrapped up in their tinware. I'll see you at the

main lower stabbard lock in ten minutes." He switched off and turned to

an orderly. "Break out my G-P cage for me, will you, Spike? And I'll

want the 'copters--tell them to get hot."

"But listen, Kim!" and:

"You can't do that, Kinnison!" came simultaneously from chief pilot and

captain, neither of whom could leave the ship in such circumstances as

these. They, the vessel's two top officers, were bound to her; while

the Lensman, although ranking both of them, even aboard ship, was not

and could not be bound by anything.

"Sure, I can--you fellows are just jealous, that's all," Kinnison

retorted, cheerfully. "I not only can, I've _got_ to go with the

Valerians. I need a lot of information, and I can't read a dead man's

brain--yet."

* * * * *

While the storming party was assembling, the _Dauntless_ settled

downward, coming to rest in the already devastated section of the town,

as close as possible to the building in which the Boskonians had taken

refuge.

One hundred and two men disembarked: Kinnison, Van Buskirk, and the

full company of one hundred Valerians. Each of those space-fighting

wild cats measured seventy-eight inches or more from sole to crown;

each was composed of four hundred or more pounds of the fantastically

powerful, rigid, and reactive brawn, bone, and sinew necessary for

survival upon a planet having a surface gravity almost three times that

of small, feeble Terra.

Because of the women held captive by the pirates, the Valerians carried

no machine rifles, no semiportables, no heavy stuff at all; only

their DeLameters and, of course, their space axes. A Valerian trooper

without his space ax? Unthinkable! A dire weapon indeed, the space

ax. A combination and sublimation of battle-ax, mace, bludgeon, and

lumberman's picaroon; thirty pounds of hard, tough, space-tempered

alloy; a weapon of potentialities limited only by the physical strength

and bodily agility of its wielder. And Van Buskirk's Valerians had

both--plenty of both. One-handed, with simple flicks of his incredible

wrist, the smallest Valerian of the _Dauntless_ boarding party

could manipulate his atrocious weapon as effortlessly as, and almost

unbelievably faster than, a fencing master handles his rapier or an

orchestra conductor waves his baton.

With machinelike precision the Valerians fell in and strode away;

Van Buskirk in the lead, the helicopters hovering overhead, the Gray

Lensman bringing up the rear. Tall and heavy, strong and agile as he

was--for a Tellurian--he had no business in that front line, and no one

knew that fact better than he did. The puniest Valerian of the company

could do in full armor a standing high jump of over fourteen feet; and

could dodge, feint, parry, and swing with a blinding speed starkly

impossible to any member of any of the physically lesser breeds of man.

Approaching the building they spread out, surrounded it; and at a

signal from a helicopter that the ring was complete, the assault began.

Doors and windows were locked, barred, and barricaded, of course; but

what of that? A few taps of the axes and a few blasts of the DeLameters

took care of things very nicely; and through the openings thus made

there leaped, dove, rolled, or strode the space black-and-silver

warriors of the Galactic Patrol. Valerians, than whom no fiercer race

of hand-to-hand fighters has ever been known--no bifurcate race, and

but very few others, however built or shaped, have ever willingly come

to grips with the armored axmen of Valeria!

Not by choice, then, but of necessity and in sheer desperation the

pirates fought. In the vicious beams of their portables the stone walls

of the room glared a baleful red; in spots even were pierced through.

Old-fashioned pistols barked, spitting steel-jacketed lead. But the

G-P suits were screened against lethal beams by generators capable of

withstanding anything of lesser power than a semiportable projector;

G-P armor was proof against any projectile possessing less energy than

that hurled by the high caliber machine rifle. Thus the Boskonian beams

splashed off the Valerian's screens in torrents of man-made lightning

and in pyrotechnic displays of multicolored splendor, their bullets

ricocheted harmlessly as spent, misshapen blobs of metal.

* * * * *

The Patrolmen did not even draw their DeLameters during their

inexorable advance. They knew that the pirates' armor was as capable as

theirs, and the women were not to die if death for them could possibly

be avoided. As they advanced the enemy fell back toward the center of

the great room; holding there with the Lyranians forming the outer ring

of their roughly circular formation; firing over the women's heads and

between their naked bodies.

Kinnison did not want those women to die. It seemed, however, that die

they must, from the sheer, tremendous reflection from the Valerians'

fiercely radiant screens, if the Patrolmen persisted in their advance.

He studied the enemy formation briefly, then flashed an order.

There ensued a startling and entirely unorthodox maneuver, one possible

only to the troopers there at work, as at Kinnison's command every

Valerian left the floor in a prodigious leap. Over the women's heads,

over the heads of the enemy; but in midleap, as he passed over, each

Patrolman swung his ax at a Boskonian helmet with all the speed and

all the power he could muster. Most of the enemy died then and there,

for the helmet has never been forged which is able to fend the diamond

beak of a space ax driven as each of those was driven. The fact that

the Valerians were nine or ten feet off the floor at the time made

no difference whatever. They were space fighters, trained to handle

themselves and their weapons in any position or situation; with or

without gravity, with or without even inertia.

"You persons--run! Get out of here! SCRAM!" Kinnison fairly shouted

the thought as the Valerians left the floor, and the matriarchs

obeyed--frantically. Through doors and windows they fled, in all

directions and at the highest possible speed.

But in their enthusiasm to strike down the foe, not one of the

Valerians had paid any attention to the exact spot upon which he was to

land; or, if he did, someone else got there either first or just barely

second. Besides, there was not room for them all in the center of the

ring. For seconds, therefore, confusion reigned and a boiler-works

clangor resounded for a mile around as a hundred and one extra-big and

extra-heavy men, a writhing, kicking, pulling tangle of armor, axes,

and equipment, jammed into a space which half their number would have

filled overfull. Sulphurous Valerian profanity and sizzling deep-space

oaths blistered the very air as each warrior struggled madly to right

himself, to get one more crack at a pirate before somebody else beat

him to it.

During this terrible melee some of the pirates released their screens

and committed suicide. A few got out of the room, but not many. Nor

far; the men in the helicopters saw to that. They had needle beams,

powered from the _Dauntless_, which went through the screens of

personal armor as a knife goes through ripe cheese.

"Save it, guys--hold everything!" Kinnison yelled as the tangled mass

of Valerians resolved itself into erect and warlike units. "No more ax

work--don't let them kill themselves--catch them ALIVE!"

They did so, quickly and easily. With the women out of the way,

there was nothing to prevent the Valerians from darting right up to

the muzzles of the foes' DeLameters. Nor could the enemy dodge, or

run, half fast enough to get away. Armored, shielded hands batted

the weapons away--if an arm or leg broke in the process, what the

hell?--and the victim was held motionless until his turn came to face

the mind-reading Kinnison.

Nothing. Nothing, flat. A string of zeros. And, bitterly silent,

Kinnison led the way back to the _Dauntless_. The men he wanted,

the ones who knew anything, were the ones who killed themselves,

of course. Well, why not? In like case, officers of the Patrol had

undoubtedly done the same. The live ones didn't know where their planet

was, could give no picture even of where it lay in the Galaxy, did not

know where they were going, nor why. Well, so what? Wasn't ignorance

the prime characteristic of the bottom layers of dictatorships

everywhere? If they had known anything, they would have been under

orders to kill themselves, too, and would have done it.

In his con room in the _Dauntless_ his black mood lightened

somewhat and he called the Elder Person.

"Helen of Troy? I suppose that the best thing we can do now, for your

peace of mind, prosperity, well-being, et cetera, is to drill out of

here as fast as Klono and Noshabkeming will let us. Right?"

"Why, I ... you ... um ... that is." The matriarch was badly flustered

at the Lensman's bald summation of her attitude. She did not want to

agree, but she certainly did not want these males around a second

longer than was necessary.

"Just as well say it, because it goes double for me--you can play it

clear across the board, toots, that if I ever see you again it will be

because I can't get out of it." Then, to his chief pilot:

"QX, Hen, give her the oof--back to Tellus."