This is perhaps as good a place as any to glance in passing at the
fashion in which the planet Lonabar was brought under the aegis of
Civilization. No attempt will or can be made to describe it in any
detail, since any adequate treatment of it would fill a volume--indeed,
many volumes have already been written concerning various phases of the
matter--and since it is not strictly germane to the subject in hand.
However, some knowledge of the modus operandi in such cases is highly
desirable for the full understanding of this history, in view of the
vast number of planets which Co-ordinator Kinnison and his associates
did have to civilize before the Second Galaxy was made secure.
Scarcely had Cartiff-Kinnison moved out than the Patrol moved in. If
Lonabar had been heavily fortified, a fleet of appropriate size and
power would have cleared the way. As it was, the fleet which landed was
one of transports, not of battleships, and all the fighting from then
on was purely defensive.
Propagandists took the lead; psychologists; Lensmen skilled not only
in languages but also in every art of human relationships. The case
of Civilization was stated plainly and repeatedly, the errors and the
fallacies of autocracy were pointed out. A nucleus of government was
formed; not of Civilization's imports, but of solid Lonabarian citizens
who had passed the Lensmen's tests of ability and trustworthiness.
Under this local government a pseudodemocracy began haltingly to
function. At first its progress was painfully slow; but as more and
more of the citizens perceived what the Patrol actually was doing, it
grew apace. Not only did the invaders allow--yes, foster--free speech
and statutory liberty; they suppressed ruthlessly any person or any
faction seeking to build a new dictatorship, whatever its nature, upon
the ruins of the old. _That_ news traveled fast; and laboring
always and mightily upon Civilization's side were the always-present,
however deeply buried, urges of all intelligent entities toward
self-expression.
There was opposition, of course. Practically all of those who had waxed
fat upon the old order were very strongly in favor of its continuance.
There were the hordes of the down-trodden who had so long and so dumbly
endured oppression that they could not understand anything else; in
whom the above-mentioned urges had been beaten and tortured almost out
of existence. They themselves were not opposed to Civilization--for
them it meant at worst only a change of masters--but those who sought
by the same old wiles to re-enslave them were foes indeed.
Menjo Bleeko's sycophants and retainers were told to work or starve.
The fat hogs could support the new order--or else. The thugs had to
choose between honest co-operation with their fellow men and flitting
to some zwilnik planet. Those who tried to prey upon and exploit the
dumb masses were extirpated, one and all.
Little could be done, however, about the dumb themselves, for in them
the spark was feeble indeed. The new government nursed that spark
along, the while ruling them as definitely, although not as harshly,
as had the old; the Lensmen backing the struggling young Civilization
knowing full well that in the children or in the children's children of
these unfortunates the spark would flame up into a great, white light.
It is seen that this government was not, and could not for many years
become, a true democracy. It was in fact a benevolent semiautocracy;
autonomous in a sense, yet controlled by the Galactic Council through
its representatives, the Lensmen. It was, however, so infinitely more
liberal than anything theretofore known by the Lonabarians as to be a
political revelation, and since corruption, that cosmos-wide curse of
democracy, was not allowed a first finger-hold, the principles of real
democracy and of Civilization took deeper root year by year.
* * * * *
To get back into the beam of narrative, Nadreck's blackly indetectable
speedster settled to ground far from the Boskonians' central dome; well
beyond the far-flung screens. The Lensmen knew that no life existed
outside that dome and they knew that no possible sense of perception
could pierce those defenses. They did not know, however, what other
resources of detection, of offense or of defense the foe might
possess; hence the greatest possible distance at which they could work
efficiently was the best distance.
"I realize that it is useless to caution any active mind not to think
at all," Nadreck remarked as he began to manipulate various and sundry
controls, "but you already know from the nature of our problem that
any extraneous thought will wreak untold harm. For that reason I beg
of you to keep your thought-screens up at all times, no matter what
happens. It is, however, imperative that you be kept informed, since I
may require aid or advice at any moment. To that end I ask you to hold
these electrodes, which are connected to a receptor. Do not hesitate
to speak freely to each other or to me; but please use only a spoken
language, as I am averse even to Lensed thoughts at this juncture. Are
we agreed? Are we ready?"
They were agreed and ready. Nadreck actuated his peculiar drill--a
tube of force somewhat analogous to a Q-type helix except in that it
operated within the frequency range of thought--and began to increase,
by almost infinitesimal increments, its power. Nothing, apparently,
happened; but finally the instruments upon the speedster's board
registered the fact that it was through.
"This is none too safe, friends," the Palainian announced from one part
of his multicompartmented brain, without distracting any part of his
attention from the incredibly delicate operation he was performing.
"Might I suggest, Kinnison, in my cowardly way, that you place yourself
at the controls and be ready to take us away from this planet at speed
and without notice?"
"I'll say you may!" and the Tellurian complied, with alacrity. "I'd a
lot rather be a live coward than a dead hero!"
But through course after course of screen the hollow drill gnawed its
cautious way without giving alarm; until at length there began to come
through the interloping tunnel a vague impression of foreign thought.
Nadreck stopped the helix, then advanced it by tiny steps until the
thoughts came in coldly clear--the thoughts of the Eich going about
their routine businesses. In the safety of their impregnably shielded
dome the proudly self-confident monsters did not wear their personal
thought-screens; which, for Civilization's sake, was just as well.
It had been decided previously that the mind they wanted would be
that of a psychologist; hence the thought sent out by the Palainian
was one which would appeal only to such a mind; in fact, one
practically imperceptible to any other. It was extremely faint;
wavering uncertainly upon the very threshold of perception. It was so
vague, so formless, so inchoate that it required Kinnison's intensest
concentration even to recognize it as a thought. Indeed, so starkly
unhuman was Nadreck's mind and that of his proposed quarry that it
was all the Tellurian Lensman could do to so recognize it. It dealt,
fragmentarily and in the merest glimmerings, with the nature and the
mechanisms of the First Cause; with the fundamental ego, its _raison
d'étre_, its causation, its motivation, its differentiation; with
the stupendously awful concepts of the Prime Origin of all things ever
to be.
Unhurried, monstrously patient, Nadreck neither raised the power of
the thought nor hastened its slow tempo. Stolidly, for minute after
long minute he held it, spraying it throughout the vast dome as mist
is sprayed from an atomizer nozzle. And finally he got a bite. A mind
seized upon that wistful, homeless, incipient thought; took it for its
own. It strengthened it, enlarged upon it, built it up. And Nadreck
followed it.
He did not force it; he did nothing whatever to cause any suspicion
that the thought was or ever had been his. But as the mind of the Eich
busied itself with that thought he all unknowingly let down the bars to
Nadreck's invasion.
Then, perfectly in tune, the Palainian subtly insinuated into the mind
of the Eich the mildly disturbing idea that he had forgotten something,
or had neglected to do some trifling thing. This was the first really
critical instant, for Nadreck had no idea whatever of what his victim's
duties were or what he could have left undone. It had to be something
which would take him out of the dome and toward the Patrolmen's
concealed speedster, but what it was, the Eich would have to develop
for himself: Nadreck could not dare to attempt even a partial control
at this stage and at this distance.
* * * * *
Kinnison clenched his teeth and held his breath, his big hands
clutching fiercely the pilot's bars; Worsel unheedingly coiled his
supple body into an ever smaller, ever harder and more compact bale.
"Ah!" Kinnison exhaled explosively. "It worked!" The psychologist, at
Nadreck's impalpable suggestion, had finally thought of the thing. It
was a thought-screen generator which had been giving a little trouble
and which really should have been checked before this.
Calmly, with the mild self-satisfaction which comes of having
successfully recalled to mind a highly elusive thought, the Eich
opened one of the dome's unforcible doors and made his unconcerned way
directly toward the waiting Lensmen; and as he approached, Nadreck
stepped up by logarithmic increments the power of his hold.
"Get ready, please, to cut your screens and to synchronize with me in
case anything slips and he tries to break away," Nadreck cautioned; but
nothing slipped.
The Eich came up unseeing to the speedster's side and stopped. The
drill disappeared. A thought-screen encompassed the group narrowly.
Kinnison and Worsel released their screens and also tuned in to the
creature's mind. And Kinnison swore briefly, for what they found was
meager enough. It was well, however, that they got what they did when
they did; for, as has been seen, even that little was very shortly
thereafter to be removed.
He knew a great deal concerning the zwilnik doings of the First Galaxy;
but so did the Lensmen; they were not interested in them. Neither
were they interested, at the moment, in the files or in the records.
Regarding the higher-ups, he knew of two, and only two, personalities.
By means of an intergalactic communicator he received orders from,
and reported to, a clearly defined, somewhat Eichlike entity known to
him as Kandron; and vaguely, from occasional stray and unintentional
thoughts of this Kandron, he had visualized as being somewhere in the
background a human being named Alcon. He supposed that the planets upon
which these persons lived were located in the Second Galaxy, but he was
not certain, even of that. He had never seen either of them; he was
pretty sure that none of his group ever would be allowed to see them.
He had no means of tracing them and no desire whatsoever to do so. The
only fact he really knew was that at irregular intervals Kandron got
into communication with this base of the Eich.
That was all. Kinnison and Worsel let go and Nadreck, with a minute
attention to detail which would be wearisome here, jockeyed the
unsuspecting monster back into the dome. The native knew fully where
he had been, and why. He had inspected the generator and had found it
in good order. Every second of elapsed time was accounted for exactly.
He had not the slightest inkling that anything out of the ordinary had
happened to him or anywhere around him.
* * * * *
As carefully as the speedster had approached the planet, she departed
from it. She rejoined the _Dauntless_, in whose control room
Kinnison lined out a solid communicator beam to the _Z9M9Z_ and to
Port Admiral Haynes. He reported crisply, rapidly, everything that had
transpired.
"So our best bet, chief, is for you and the Fleet to get out of here
as fast as Klono will let you," he concluded. "Go straight out Rift
94, staying as far away as possible from both the spiral arm and the
Galaxy proper. Unlimber every spotting screen you've got--put them to
work along the line between Lyrane and the Second Galaxy. Plot all the
punctures, extending the line as fast as you can. We'll join you at max
and transfer to the _Z9M9Z_--her tank is just what the doctors
ordered for the job we've got to do."
"Well, if you say so, I suppose that's the way it's got to be," Haynes
grumbled. He had been growling and snorting under his breath ever since
it had become evident what Kinnison's recommendation was to be. "I
don't like this thing of standing by and letting zwilniks thumb their
noses at us, like Prellin did on Bronseca. That once was once too
damned often."
"Well, you got him, finally, you know," Kinnison reminded, quite
cheerfully, "and you can have these Eich, too--sometime."
"I hope," Haynes acquiesced, something less than sweetly. "QX,
then--but put out a few jets. The quicker you get out here the sooner
we can get back and clean out this hooraw's nest."
Kinnison grinned as he cut his beam. He knew that it would be some time
before the port admiral could hurl the metal of the Patrol against
Lyrane VIII; but even he did not realize just how long a time it was to
be.
What occasioned the delay was not the fact that the communicator was in
operation only at intervals: so many screens were out, they were spaced
so far apart, and the punctures were measured and aligned so accurately
that the periods of non-operation caused little or no loss of time. Nor
was it the vast distance involved; since, as has already been pointed
out, the matter in the intergalactic void is so tenuous that spaceships
are capable of enormously greater velocities than any attainable in the
far denser medium filling interstellar space.
No; what gave the Boskonians of Lyrane VIII their greatly lengthened
reprieve was simply the direction of the line established by the
communicator-beam punctures. Reasoning from analogy, the Lensmen had
supposed that it would lead them into a star cluster, fairly well away
from the main body of the Galaxy in either the zenith or the nadir
direction. Instead of that, however, when the Patrol surveyors got
close enough to the Second Galaxy so that their cone of possible error
was very small in comparison with the gigantic lens of the island
universe which they were approaching, it became clear that their
objective lay deep within the Galaxy itself. At least, the prolongation
of their line led well into it, and that fact gave the Lensmen to pause.
* * * * *
"I don't like this line a bit, chief," Kinnison told the admiral then.
"Maybe it runs into a cluster on this side, but we can't figure on it.
It'd smell like Limburger to have a fleet of this size and power nosing
into their home territory, along what must be one of the hottest lines
of communication they've got."
"Check," Port Admiral Haynes agreed. "QX so far, but it would begin
to stink pretty quick now. We've got to assume that they know about
spotting screens, whether they really do or not. If they do, they'll
have this line trapped from stem to gudgeon, and the minute they detect
us they'll cut this line out entirely. Then where'll you be?"
"Right back where I started from--that's what I'm yapping about. And to
make matters worse, it's a thousand to one that the ape we are looking
for is not going to be anywhere near the end of this line."
"Huh? How do you dope that out?" Haynes demanded.
"Logic. We're getting up now to where these zwilniks can really think.
You have already assumed that they know that we can trace their beam,
and we know that they know about our detector nullifiers. Go further.
Assume that they have deduced, from things we have already done, that
we have ships--one or two, at least--that are inherently indetectable
and almost perfectly absorptive. Where does that land you?"
"Hm-m-m. I see. Since they can't change the nature of the beam, they
would run it through a series of relays, with each leg trapped with
everything they could think of, and at the first sign of interference
with any one of them they would switch to another, maybe halfway across
the Galaxy. Also, they might very well move it around once in a while,
anyway, just on general principles."
"Check. That's why you had better take the Fleet back home, leaving
Nadreck and me to work the rest of this line with our speedsters."
"Don't be silly, son--I thought you could think"--and Haynes gazed
quizzically at the younger man.
"What else? Where am I overlooking a bet?" Kinnison demanded.
"It is elementary tactics, young man," the admiral instructed, "to
cover up any small, quiet operation with a large and noisy one. Thus,
if I want to make an exploratory sortie in one sector I should always
attack in force in another."
"But what would it get us?" Kinnison expostulated. "What's the
advantage to be gained, to make up for the unavoidable losses?"
"Don't be dumb. Advantage? Listen!" Haynes' bushy gray hair fairly
bristled in eagerness. "We've been on the defensive long enough. They
must be weak, after their losses at Tellus; and now, before they can
rebuild, is the time to strike. It's good tactics, as I said, to make
a diversion to cover you up, but I want to do more than that. I think
that we had better start an actual, serious invasion, right now. When
you can swing it, the best possible defense--even in general--is a
powerful offense, and we're all set to go. We will begin it with this
fleet, and then, as soon as we are sure that they haven't got enough
power to counter-invade, we will bring up everything we have except
for some purely defensive stuff, such as sunbeams and so on, around
Tellus and the other most important bases. We'll hit them so hard that
they won't be able to worry about such a little thing as a communicator
line."
"Hm-m-m. Never thought of it from that angle, but it'd be nice. We are
coming over here sometime, anyway--why not now? I suppose that you'll
start on the edge, or in a spiral arm, just as though you were going
ahead with the conquest of the whole Galaxy?"
"Not 'just as though,'" Haynes declared. "We _are_ going through
with it. Find a planet on the outer edge of a spiral arm, as nearly
like Tellus as possible--"
"Make it nearly enough like Tellus and maybe I can use it for our
headquarters on this 'co-ordinator' thing." And Kinnison grinned.
"More truth than poetry in that, fellow. We find it and take it over.
Comb out the zwilniks with a fine-tooth comb. Make it the biggest,
toughest base the Universe ever saw--like Jarnevon, only more so.
Bring in everything we've got and expand from that planet as a center,
cleaning everything out as we go. We'll civilize 'em!"
And so, after considerable ultrarange communicator work, it was decided
that the Galactic Patrol would forthwith assume the offensive.
* * * * *
Haynes assembled the Fleet. Then, while the two black speedsters kept
unobtrusively on with the task of plotting the line, Civilization's
mighty armada moved a few thousand parsecs aside and headed at normal
touring blast for the nearest out-cropping of the Second Galaxy.
There was nothing of stealth in this maneuver, nothing of finesse,
excepting in the arrangements of the units. First, far in the van,
flew the prodigious, irregular cone of scout cruisers. They were
comparatively small, not heavily armed or armored, but they were
ultrafast and were provided with the most powerful detectors, spotters
and locators known. They adhered to no rigid formation, but at the
will of their individual commanders, under the direct supervision of
Grand Fleet Operations in the _Z9M9Z_, flashed hither and thither
ceaselessly--searching, investigating, mapping, reporting.
Backing them up came the light cruisers and the cruising bombers--a
new type, this latter, designed primarily to bore in to close quarters
and to hurl bombs of negative matter. Third in order were the heavy
defensive cruisers. These ships had been developed specifically for
hunting down Boskonian commerce raiders within the Galaxy. They wore
practically an impenetrable screen, so that they could lock to and
hold even a superdreadnought. They had never before been used in Grand
Fleet formation; but since they were now equipped with tractor zones
and bomb tubes, theoretical strategy found a good use for them in this
particular place.
Next came the real war head--a solidly packed phalanx of maulers.
All the ships up ahead had, although in varying degrees, freedom of
motion and of action. The scouts had practically nothing else; fighting
was not their business. They could fight, a little, if they had to;
but they always ran away if they could, in whatever direction was
most expedient at the time. The cruising bombers could either take
their fighting or leave it alone, depending upon circumstances--in
other words, they fought light cruisers, but ran away from big stuff,
stinging as they ran. The heavy cruisers would fight anything short of
a mauler, but never in formation: they always broke ranks and fought
individual dog fights, ship-to-ship.
But that terrific spearhead of maulers had no freedom of motion
whatever. It knew only one direction--straight ahead. It would swerve
aside for an inert planet, but for nothing smaller; and when it
swerved it did so as a whole, not by parts. Its function was to blast
through--straight through--any possible opposition, if and when that
opposition should have been successful in destroying or dispersing
the screens of lesser vessels preceding it. A sunbeam was the only
conceivable weapon with which that stolid, power-packed mass of metal
could not cope; and, the Patrolmen devoutly hoped, the zwilniks didn't
have any sunbeams--yet.
A similar formation of equally capable maulers, meeting it head-on,
could break it up, of course. Theoretical results and war game
solutions of this problem did not agree, either with each other or
among themselves, and the thing had never been put to the trial of
actual battle. Only one thing was certain--when and if that trial did
come there was bound to be, as in the case of the fabled meeting of the
irresistible force with the immovable object, a lot of very interesting
by-products.
Flanking the maulers, streaming gracefully backward from their massed
might in a parabolic cone, were arranged the heavy battleships and
the superdreadnoughts; and directly behind the bulwark of flying
fortresses, tucked away inside the protecting envelope of big battle
wagons, floated the _Z9M9Z_--the brains of the whole outfit.
There were no free planets, no negaspheres of planetary antimass, no
sunbeams. Such things were useful either in the defense of a Prime
Base or for an all-out, ruthlessly destructive attack upon such a
base. Those slow, cumbersome, supremely powerful weapons would come
later, after the Patrol had selected the planet which they intended
to hold against everything which the Boskonians could muster. This
present expedition had as yet no planet to defend, it sought no planet
to destroy. It was the vanguard of Civilization, seeking a suitable
foothold in the Second Galaxy and thoroughly well equipped to argue
with any force mobile enough to bar its way.
* * * * *
While it has been said that there was nothing of stealth in this
approach to the Second Galaxy, it must not be thought that it was
unduly blatant or obvious--any carelessness or ostentation would have
been very poor tactics indeed. Civilization's Grand Fleet advanced
in strict formation, with every routine military precaution. Its
nullifiers were full on, every blocking screen was out, every plate
upon every ship was hot and was being scanned by alert and keen-eyed
observers.
But every staff officer from Port Admiral Haynes down, and practically
every line officer as well, knew that the enemy would locate the
invading fleet long before it reached even the outer fringes of the
galaxy toward which it was speeding. That stupendous tonnage of ferrous
metal could not be disguised; nor could it by any possible artifice be
made to simulate any normal tenant of the space which it occupied.
The gigantic flares of the heavy stuff could not be baffled, and the
combined grand flare of Grand Fleet made a celestial object which would
certainly attract the electronic telescopes of plenty of observatories.
And the nearest such 'scopes, instruments of incredible powers of
resolution, would be able to pick them out, almost ship by ship,
against the relatively brilliant background of their own flares.
The Patrolmen, however, did not care. This was, and was intended to
be, an open, straightforward invasion; the first wave of an attack
which would not cease until the Galactic Patrol had crushed Boskonia
throughout the entire Second Galaxy.
Grand Fleet bored serenely on. Superbly confident in her awful might,
grandly contemptuous of whatever she was to face, she stormed along;
uncaring that at that very moment the foe was massing his every
defensive arm to hurl her back or to blast her out of existence.