In the meantime the more warlike forces of the _Dauntless_ had not
been idle. In the instant of the opening of the cavern's doors Captain
Craig erupted orders, and as soon as the Lyranian was out of the line
of fire, keen-eyed needle-ray men saw to it that those doors were in no
mechanical condition to close. The _Dauntless_ settled downward;
landed in front of the entrance to the cavern. The rocky, broken
terrain meant nothing to her; the hardest, jaggedest boulders crumbled
instantly to dust as her enormous mass drove the file-hard, inflexible
armor of her midzone deep into the ground. Then, while alert beamers
watched the entrance and while spy-ray experts combed the interior
for other openings which Kinnison and Worsel were already practically
certain did not exist, the forces of Civilization formed for the attack.
Worsel was fairly shivering with eagerness for the fray. His was, and
with plenty of reason, the bitterest by far of all the animosities
there present against the Overlords. For Delgon and his own native
planet, Velantia, were neighboring worlds, circling about the same
sun. Since the beginning of Velantian space flights, the Overlords
of Delgon had preyed upon the Velantians; in fact, the Overlords had
probably caused the first Velantian spaceship to be built. They had
called them, in a never-ending stream, across the empty gulf of space.
They had pinned them against their torture screens, had flayed them
and had tweaked them to bits, had done them to death in every one of
the numberless slow and hideous fashions which had been developed by a
race of sadists who had been specializing in the fine art of torture
for thousands upon thousands of years. Then, in the last minutes of the
long-drawn-out agony of death, the Overlords were wont to feed, with a
passionate, greedy, ineradicably ingrained lust utterly inexplicable to
any civilized mind, upon the life forces which the mangled bodies could
no longer contain.
This horrible parasitism went on for ages. The Velantians fought
vainly; their crude thought-screens were almost useless until after
the coming of the Patrol. Then, with screens that were of real use,
and with ships of power and with weapons of might, Worsel himself had
taken the lead in the clean-up of Delgon. He was afraid, of course.
Any Velantian was and is frightened to the very center of his being
by the mere thought of an Overlord. He cannot help it; it is in his
heredity, bred into the innermost chemistry of his body; the cold grue
of a thousand thousand fiendishly tortured ancestors simply will not be
denied or cast aside.
Many of the monsters had succeeded in fleeing Delgon, of course.
Some departed in the ships which had ferried their victims to the
planet, some were removed to other solar systems by the Eich. The
rest were slain; and as the knowledge that a Velantian _could_
kill an Overlord gained headway, the emotions toward the oppressors
generated within minds such as the Velantians' became literally
indescribable. Fear was there yet, and in abundance--it simply could
not be eradicated. Horror and revulsion. Sheer, burning hatred; and,
more powerful than all, amounting almost to an obsession, a clamoring,
shrieking, driving urge for revenge which was almost tangible. All
these, and more, Worsel felt as he waited, twitching.
* * * * *
The Valerians wanted to go in because it meant a hand-to-hand fight.
Fighting was their business, their sport, and their pleasure; they
loved it for its own sweet sake, with a simple, whole-hearted
devotion. To die in combat was a Valerian soldier's natural and
much-to-be-desired end; to die in any peaceful fashion was a disgrace
and a calamity. They did and do go into battle with very much the same
joyous abandon with which a sophomore goes to meet his date in Lovers'
Lane. And now, to make physical combat all the nicer and juicier, they
carried semiportable tractors and pressors, for the actual killing was
not to take place until after the battle proper was over. Blasting the
Overlords out of existence would have been simplicity itself; but they
were not to die until after they had been forced to divulge whatever
they might have of knowledge or of information.
Nadreck of Palain wanted to go in solely to increase his already vast
store of knowledge. His thirst for facts was a purely scientific
one; the fashion in which it was to be satisfied was the veriest,
the most immaterial detail. Indeed, it is profoundly impossible to
portray to any human intelligence the serene detachment, the utterly
complete indifference to suffering exhibited by practically all
of the frigid-blooded races, even those adherent to Civilization,
especially when the suffering is being done by an enemy. Nadreck did
know, academically and in a philological sense, from his reading, the
approximate significance of such words as "compunction," "sympathy" and
"squeamishness"; but he would have been astounded beyond measure at any
suggestion that they would apply to any such matter-of-fact business
as the extraction of data from the mind of an Overlord of Delgon, no
matter what might have to be done to the unfortunate victim in the
process.
Tregonsee went in simply because Kinnison did--to be there to help out
in case the Tellurian should need him.
Kinnison went in because he felt that he had to. He knew full well
that he was not going to get any kick at all out of what was going to
happen. He was not going to like it, any part of it. Nor did he. In
fact, he wanted to be sick--violently sick--before the business was
well started. And Nadreck perceived his mental and physical distress.
"Why stay, Friend Kinnison, when your presence is not necessary?" he
asked, with the slightly pleased, somewhat surprised, hellishly placid
mental immobility which Kinnison was later to come to know so well.
"Even though my powers are admittedly small, I feel eminently qualified
to cope with such minor matters as the obtainment and the accurate
transmittal of that which you wish to know. I cannot understand your
emotions, but I realize fully that they are essential components of
that which makes you what you fundamentally are. There can be no
justification for your submitting yourself needlessly to such stresses,
such psychic traumata."
And Kinnison and Tregonsee, realizing the common sense of the
Palainian's statement and very glad indeed to have an excuse for
leaving the outrageous scene, left it forthwith.
* * * * *
There is no need to go into detail as to what actually transpired
within that cavern's dark and noisome depths. It took a long time, nor
was any of it gentle. The battle itself, before the Overlords were
downed, was bad enough in any Tellurian's eyes. Clad in armor of proof
although they were, more than one of the Valerians died. Worsel's armor
was shattered and rent, his almost steel-hard flesh was slashed, burned
and mangled before the last of the monstrous forms was pinned down and
helpless. Nadreck alone escaped unscathed--he did so, he explained
quite truthfully, because he did not go in there to fight, but only to
learn.
What followed the battle, however, was infinitely worse. The
Delgonians, as has been said, were hard, cold, merciless, even among
themselves; they were pitiless and unyielding and refractory in the
extreme. It need scarcely be emphasized then, that they did not yield
to persuasion either easily or graciously; that their own apparatus
and equipment had to be put to its fullest grisly use before those
stubborn minds gave up the secrets so grimly and so implacably
sought. Worsel, the raging Velantian, used those torture tools with a
vengeful savagery and a snarling ferocity which are at least partially
understandable; but Nadreck employed them with a calm capability, a
coldly, emotionlessly efficient callousness the mere contemplation of
which made icy shivers chase each other up and down Kinnison's spine.
At long last the job was done. The battered Patrol forces returned
to the _Dauntless_, bringing with them their spoils and their
dead. The cavern and its every molecule of contents were bombed
out of existence. The two ships took off; Cartiff's heavily armed
"merchantman" to do the long flit back to Tellus, the _Dauntless_
to drop Helen and her plane off at her airport and then to join her
sister superdreadnoughts which were already beginning to assemble in
Rift 94.
"Come down here, will you please, Kim?" came Clarrissa's thought.
"I've been keeping her pretty well blocked out, but she wants to talk
to you--in fact, she insists upon it--before she leaves the ship."
"Hm-m-m--now that _is_ something!" the Lensman exclaimed, and
hurried to the nurse's cabin.
There stood the Lyranian queen; a full five inches taller than Mac's
five feet six, a good thirty-five pounds heavier than Mac's not
inconsiderable one hundred and forty-five. Hard, fine, supple; erectly
poised she stood there, an exquisitely beautiful statue of pale bronze,
her flaming hair a gorgeous riot. Head held proudly high, she stared
only slightly upward into the Earthman's quiet, understanding eyes.
"Thanks, Kinnison, for everything that you and yours have done for me
and mine," she said simply, and held out her right hand in what she
knew was the correct Tellurian gesture.
"Uh-uh, Helen," Kinnison denied, gently, making no motion to grasp the
proffered hand--which was promptly and enthusiastically withdrawn.
"Nice, and it's really big of you, but don't strain yourself." This was
neither slang nor sarcasm; he meant precisely and only what he said.
"Don't overdrive in trying to force yourself to like us men too much
or too soon; you must get used to us gradually. We like you a lot, and
we respect you even more, but we have been around and you haven't.
You can't be feeling friendly enough yet to enjoy shaking hands with
me--you certainly haven't got jets enough to swing _that_ load--so
this time we'll take the thought for the deed. Keep trying, though,
Toots old girl, and you'll make it yet. In the meantime we're all
pulling for you, and if you ever need any help, shoot us a beam on the
communicator Chris is giving you. Clear ether, ace!"
"Clear ether, MacDougall and Kinnison!" Helen's eyes were softer than
either of the Tellurians had ever seen them before. "There is, I think,
something of wisdom, of efficiency, in what you have said. It may
be ... that is, there is a possibility ... you of Civilization are,
perhaps, persons--of a sort that is--after all. Thanks--_really_
thanks, I mean, this time. Good-by."
Helen's plane had already been unloaded. She disembarked and stood
beside it; watching, with a peculiarly untranslatable expression, the
huge cruiser until it was out of sight.
"It was just like pulling teeth for her to be civil to me," Kinnison
grinned at his fiancée, "but she finally made the lift. She's a grand
girl, that Helen, in her peculiar, poisonous way."
"Why, Kim!" Mac protested. "She's nice, really, when you get to know
her. And she's so stunningly, so ravishingly beautiful!"
"Uh-huh," Kinnison agreed, without a trace of enthusiasm. "Cast her in
chilled stainless steel--she'd just about do as she is, without any
casting--and she'd make a mighty fine statue."
"Kim! Shame on you!" the girl exclaimed. "Why, she's the most perfectly
_beautiful_ thing I ever saw in my whole life!" Her voice
softened. "I wish that I looked like that," she added wistfully.
"She's beautiful enough--in her way--of course," the man admitted,
entirely unimpressed. "But, then, so is a Radeligian cateagle, so is
a spire of frozen helium, and so is a six-foot-long, armor-piercing
punch. As for you wanting to look like her--I'm terrifically glad that
you don't. That's sheer tripe, Chris, and you know it. If you want to
look at something _really_ beautiful, get a mirror--beside you,
all the Helens that ever lived, with Cleopatra, Dessa Desplaines and
Illona Potter thrown in, wouldn't make a baffled flare--"
That was, of course, what she wanted him to say; and what followed is
of no particular importance here.
* * * * *
Shortly after the _Dauntless_ cleared the stratosphere, Nadreck
reported that he had finished assembling and arranging the data,
and Kinnison called the Lensmen together in his con room for an
ultraprivate conference. Worsel, it appeared, was still in the surgery.
"'Smatter, doc?" Kinnison asked, casually. He knew that there was
nothing really serious the matter--Worsel had come out of the cavern
under his own power, and a Velantian recovers with startling rapidity
from any wound which does not kill him outright. "Having trouble with
your stitching?"
"I'll say we are!" the surgeon grunted. "Have to bore holes with
an electric drill and use linemen's pliers. Just about done now,
though--he'll be with you in a couple of minutes," and in a very little
more than the stipulated time the Velantian joined the other Lensmen.
He was bandaged and taped, and did not move at his customary headlong
pace, but he fairly radiated self-satisfaction, bliss and contentment.
He felt better, he declared, than he had at any time since he cleaned
out the last cavern upon Delgon.
Kinnison stopped the interplay of thoughts by starting up his
Lensman's projector. This mechanism was something like the ordinary
three-dimensional color-and-sound machine, except instead of emitting
sounds it radiated thoughts. Sometimes the thoughts of one or more
Overlords, at other times the thoughts of the Eich or other beings
as registered upon the minds of the Overlords, at still others the
thoughts of Nadreck or of Worsel explaining or amplifying a preceding
thought passage or some detail which was being shown at the moment.
The spool of tape now being run, with others, formed the Lensmen's
record of what they had done. This record would go to Prime Base under
Lensman's Seal; that is, only a Lensman could handle it or see it.
Later, after the emergency had passed, copies of it would go to various
Central Libraries and thus become available to properly accredited
students. Indeed, it is only from such records, made upon the scene and
at the time by keen-thinking, logical, truth-seeking Lensmen, that such
a factual, minutely detailed history as this can be compiled; and your
historian is supremely proud that he was the first person other than a
Lensman to be allowed to study a great deal of this priceless data.
Worsel knew the gist of the report, Nadreck the compiler knew it all;
but to Kinnison, Mac and Tregonsee the unreeling of the tape brought
shocking news. For, as a matter of fact, the Overlords had known more,
and there was more in the Lyranian solar system to know than Kinnison's
wildest imaginings had dared to suppose. That system was one of the
main focal points for the zwilnik business of an immense volume of
space; Lyrane II was the meeting place, the dispatcher's office, the
nerve center from which thousands of invisible, immaterial lines
reached out to thousands of planets peopled by warm-blooded oxygen
breathers. Menjo Bleeko had sent to Lyrane II not one expedition, but
hundreds of them; the affair of Illona and her escorts had been the
veriest, the most trifling incident.
The Overlords, however, did not know of any Boskonian in the Second
Galaxy. They had no superiors, anywhere. The idea of anyone or anything
anywhere being superior to an Overlord was unthinkable. They did,
however, co-operate with--here came the really stunning fact--certain
of the Eich who lived upon eternally dark Lyrane VIII, and who
managed things for the frigid-blooded, poison-breathing Boskonians
of the region in much the same fashion as the Overlords did for the
warm-blooded, light-loving races. To make the co-operation easier and
more efficient, the two planets were connected by a hyperspatial tube.
"Just a sec!" Kinnison interrupted, as he stopped the machine for
a moment. "The Overlords were kidding themselves a bit there, I
think--they must have been. If they didn't report to or get orders from
the Second Galaxy or some other higher-up office, the Eich must have;
and since the records and plunder and stuff were not in the cavern,
they must be upon Eight. Therefore, whether they realized it or not,
the Overlords must have been inferior to the Eich and under their
orders. Check?"
"Check," Nadreck agreed. "Worsel and I concluded that they knew the
facts, but were covering up even in their own minds, to save face. Our
conclusions, and the data from which they were derived, are in the
introduction--another spool. Shall I get it?"
"By no means--just glad to have the point cleared up, is all. Thanks--"
and the showing went on.
The principal reason why the Lyranian system had been chosen for that
important headquarters was that it was one of the very few outlying
solar systems, completely unknown to the scientists of the Patrol,
in which both the Eich and the Overlords could live in their natural
environments. Lyrane VIII was, of course, intensely, bitterly cold.
This quality is not rare, since all No. 8 planets are; its uniqueness
lay in the fact that its atmosphere was almost exactly like that of
Jarnevon.
And Lyrane II suited the Overlords perfectly. Not only did it have the
correct temperature, gravity and atmosphere, but also it offered that
much rarer thing without which no cavern of Overlords would have been
content for long--a native life form possessing strong and highly vital
minds upon which they could prey.
There was more, much more; but the rest of it was not directly
pertinent to the immediate question. The tape ran out, Kinnison snapped
off the projector, and the Lensmen went into a five-way.
Why was not Lyrane II defended? Worsel and Kinnison had already
answered that one. Secretiveness and power of mind, not armament,
had always been the natural defenses of all Overlords. Why hadn't
the Eich interfered? That was easy, too. The Eich looked after
themselves--if the Overlords couldn't, that was just too bad. The
two ships that had come to aid and had remained to revenge had
certainly not come from Eight--their crews had been oxygen breathers.
Probably a rendezvous--immaterial, anyway. Why wasn't the whole solar
system ringed with outposts and screens? Too obvious. Why hadn't the
_Dauntless_ been detected? Because of her nullifiers; and if she
had been spotted by any short-range stuff she had been mistaken for
another zwilnik ship. They hadn't detected anything out of the way
upon Eight because it had not occurred to anybody to swing an analyzer
upon that particular planet. They would find that Eight was defended
plenty. Had the Eich had time to build defenses? They must have had,
or they wouldn't be there--they certainly were not taking that kind
of chances. And, by the way, hadn't they better do a bit of snooping
near Lyrane VIII before they went back to join the _Z9M9Z_ and the
Fleet? They had.
Thereupon the _Dauntless_ faced about and retraced her path toward
the now highly important system of Lyrane. In their previous approaches
the Patrolmen had observed the usual precautions to avoid revealing
themselves to any zwilnik vessel which might have been on the prowl.
Those precautions were now intensified to the limit, since they knew
that Lyrane VIII was the site of a base manned by the Eich themselves.
As the big cruiser crept toward her goal, nullifiers full out and every
instrument of detection and reception as attentively outstretched as
the whiskers of a tomcat slinking along a black alley at midnight, the
Lensmen again pooled their brains in conference.
* * * * *
The Eich. This was going to be _no_ push-over. Even the approach
would have to be figured to a hair; because, since the Boskonians had
decided that it would be poor strategy to screen in their whole solar
system, it was a cold certainty that they would have their own planet
guarded and protected by every device which their inhuman ingenuity
could devise. The _Dauntless_ would have to stop just outside
the range of the electromagnetic detection, for the Boskonians would
certainly have a five-hundred-percent overlap. Their nullifiers would
hash up the electros somewhat, but there was no use in taking too many
chances. Previously, on right-line courses to and from Lyrane II, that
had not mattered, for two reasons--not only was the distance extreme
for accurate electro work, but also it would have been assumed that
their ship was a zwilnik. Laying a course for Eight, though, would be
something else entirely. A zwilnik would take the tube, and they would
not, even if they had known where it was.
That left the visuals. The cruiser was a mighty small target at
interplanetary distances; but there were such things as electronic
telescopes, and the occultation of even a single star might prove
disastrous. Kinnison called the chief pilot.
"Stars must be thin in certain regions of the sky out here, Hen.
Suppose you can pick us out a line of approach along which we will
occult no stars and no bright nebulae?"
"I should think so, chief--just a sec; I'll see--Yes, easily. There is
a lot of black background, especially to the nadir"--and the conference
continued.
They would have to go through the screens of electros in Kinnison's
inherently indetectable black speedster. QX, but she was nobody's
fighter--she didn't have a beam hot enough to light a match. And
besides, there were the thought-screens and the highly probable other
stuff about which the Lensmen could know nothing.
Kinnison quite definitely did not relish the prospect. He remembered
all too vividly what had happened when he had scouted the Eich's base
upon Jarnevon; when it was only through Worsel's aid that he had
barely--_just_ barely--escaped with his life. And Jarnevon's
defenders had probably been exerting only routine precautions, whereas
these fellows were undoubtedly cocked and primed for _the_
Lensman. He would go in, of course, but he'd probably come out feet
first--he didn't know any more about their defenses than he had known
before, and that was nothing, flat.
"Excuse the interruption, please," Nadreck's thought apologized, "but
it would seem to appear more desirable, would it not, to induce the one
of them possessing the most information to come out to us?"
"Huh?" Kinnison demanded. "It would, of course--but how in all your
purple hells do you figure on swinging _that_ load?"
"I am, as you know, a person of small ability," Nadreck replied in
his usual circuitous fashion. "Also, I am of almost negligible mass
and strength. Of what is known as bravery I have no trace--in fact,
I have pondered long over that, to me, incomprehensible quality and
have decided that it has no place in my scheme of existence. I have
found it much more efficient to perform the necessary tasks in the
easiest possible manner, which is usually by means of stealth, deceit,
indirection and other cowardly artifices."
"Any of those, or all of them, would be QX with me," Kinnison assured
him. "Anything goes, with gusto and glee, as far as the Eich are
concerned. What I don't see is how we can put it across."
* * * * *
"Thought-screens interfered so seriously with my methods of procedure,"
the Palainian explained, "that I was forced to develop a means of
puncturing them without upsetting their generators. The device is not
generally known, as it is still in a very crude, experimental form; but
it does function, in a meager, unsatisfactory way. Might I suggest that
the four of you put on heated armor and come with me to my vessel in
the hold? It will take some little time to transfer my apparatus and
equipment to your speedster."
"Is it nonferrous--undetectable?" Kinnison asked.
"Of course," Nadreck replied in surprise. "I work, as I told you, by
stealth. My vessel is, except for certain differences necessitated by
racial considerations, a duplicate of your own."
"Why didn't you say so?" Kinnison wanted to know. "Why bother to move
the gadget? Why not use your speedster?"
"Because I was not asked. We should not bother. The only reason for
using your vessel is so that you will not suffer the discomfort of
wearing armor," Nadreck replied, categorically.
"Cancel it, then," Kinnison directed. "You've been wearing armor all
the time you were with us--turn about for a while will be QX. Better
that way, anyway, as this is very definitely your party, not ours. Not?"
"As you say; and with your permission," Nadreck agreed. "Also it may
very well be that you will be able to suggest improvements in my device
whereby its efficiency may be increased."
"I doubt it." The Tellurian's already great respect for this retiring,
soft-spoken, "cowardly" Lensman was increasing constantly. "But we
would like to study it, and perhaps copy it, if you so allow."
"Gladly."
And so it was arranged.
The _Dauntless_ crept among a black backgrounded pathway and
stopped. Nadreck, Worsel and Kinnison--three were enough and neither
Mac nor Tregonsee insisted upon going--boarded the Palainian speedster.
Away from the mother ship it sped upon muffled jets, and through the
far-flung, heavily overlapped electromagnetic detector zones. Through
the outer thought-screens. Then, ultra-slowly, as space speeds go, the
speedster moved forward, feeling for whatever other blocking screens
there might be.
All three of those Lensmen were in fact detectors themselves--their
Arisian-imparted special senses made ethereal, even sub-ethereal,
vibrations actually visible or tangible--but they did not depend only
upon their bodily senses. That speedster carried instruments unknown
to space pilotry, and the Lensmen used them unremittingly. When they
came to a screen they opened it, so insidiously that its generating
mechanisms gave no alarms. Even a meteorite screen, which was supposed
to forbid the passage of any material object, yielded without protest
to Nadreck's subtle manipulation.
Slowly, furtively, a perfectly absorptive black body sinking through
blackness so intense as to be almost palpable, the Palainian speedster
settled downward toward the Boskonian fortress of Lyrane VIII.