As Haynes and the Galactic Council had already surmised, Boskonia was
now entirely upon the defensive. She had made her supreme bid in the
effort which had failed so barely to overcome the defenses of hard-held
Tellus. It was, as has been seen, a very near thing indeed, but the
zwilnik chieftains did not and could not know that. Communication
through the hyperspatial tube was impossible, no ordinary communicator
beam could be driven through the Patrol's scramblers, no Boskonian
observers could be stationed near enough to the scene of action to
perceive or to record anything that had occurred, and no single zwilnik
ship or entity survived to tell of how nearly Tellus had come to
extinction.
And, in fine, it would have made no difference in the mind of Alcon
of Thrale if he had known. A thing which was not a full success was a
complete failure; to be almost a success meant nothing. The invasion
of Tellus had failed. They had put everything they had into that
gigantically climactic enterprise. They had shot the whole wad, and
it had not been enough. They had, therefore, abandoned for the nonce
humanity's galaxy entirely, to concentrate their every effort upon the
rehabilitation of their own depleted forces and upon the design and
construction of devices of hitherto unattempted capability and power.
But they simply had not had enough time to prepare properly to meet
the invading Grand Fleet of Civilization. It takes time--lots of
time--to build such heavy stuff as maulers and flying fortresses, and
they had not been allowed to have it. They had plenty of lighter stuff,
since the millions of Boskonian planets could furnish upon a few hours'
notice more cruisers, and even more first-line battleships, than could
possibly be used in Grand Fleet formation, but their backbone of brute
force and firing power was woefully weak.
Since the destruction of a solid center of maulers was, theoretically,
improbable to the point of virtual impossibility, neither Boskonia nor
the Galactic Patrol had built up any large reserve of such structures.
Both would now build up such a reserve as rapidly as possible, of
course, but half-built structures could not fight.
The zwilniks had many dirigible planets, but they were _too_ big.
Planets, as has been seen, are too cumbersome and unwieldy for use
against a highly mobile and adequately controlled fleet.
Conversely, humanity's Grand Fleet was up to its maximum strength and
perfectly balanced. It had suffered staggering losses in the defense of
Prime Base, it is true; but those losses were of comparatively light
craft, which Civilization's inhabited worlds could replace as easily
and as quickly as could Boskonia's. Very few maulers had been lost,
and those empty places were filled by substitutes withdrawn from minor
bases or other stations at which they were not imperatively necessary.
Hence, Boskonia's fleet was at a very serious disadvantage as it
formed to defy humanity just outside the rim of its galaxy. At two
disadvantages, really, for Boskonia then had neither Lensmen nor a
_Z9M9Z_; and Haynes, canny old master strategist that he was,
worked upon them both.
Grand Fleet so far had held to one right-line course, and upon this
line the zwilnik defense had been built. Now Haynes swung aside,
forcing the enemy to re-form--they had to engage him, he did not have
to engage them. Then, as they shifted--raggedly, as he had supposed
and had hoped that they would--he swung again. Again, and again; the
formation of the enemy becoming more and more hopelessly confused with
each shift.
The scouts had been reporting constantly; in the seven-hundred foot
lenticular tank of the _Directrix_ there was spread in exact
detail the disposition of every unit of the foe. Four Rigellian
Lensmen, now thoroughly trained and able to perform the task almost
as routine, condensed the picture--summarized it--in Haynes' ten-foot
tactical tank. And finally, so close that another swerve could not be
made, and with the line of flight of his solid fighting core pointing
straight through the loosely disorganized nucleus of the enemy, Haynes
gave the word to engage.
The scouts, remaining free, flashed aside into their pre-arranged
observing positions. Everything else went inert and bored ahead. The
light cruisers and the cruising bombers clashed first, and a chill
struck at Haynes' stout old heart as he learned that the enemy did have
negative-matter bombs.
Upon that point there had been much discussion. One view was that
the Boskonians would have them, since they had seen them in action
and since their scientists were fully as capable as were those of
Civilization. The other was that, since it had taken all the massed
intellect of the Conference of Scientists to work out a method of
handling and of propelling such bombs, and since the Boskonians were
probably not as co-operative as were the civilized races, they could
not have them.
Approximately half of the light cruisers of Grand Fleet were bombers.
This was deliberate, for in the use of the new arm there were involved
problems which theoretical strategy could not solve definitely.
Theoretically, a bomber could defeat a conventional light cruiser of
equal tonnage one hundred percent of the time, _provided_--here
was the rub!--that the conventional cruiser did not blast her out of
the ether before she could get her bombs into the vitals of the foe,
in order to accommodate the new equipment, something of the old had to
be decreased--something of power, of armament, of primary or secondary
beams, or of defensive screen. Otherwise the size and mass must be so
increased that the ship would no longer be a light cruiser, but a heavy
one.
And the Patrol's psychologists had had ideas, based upon facts which
they had gathered from Kinnison and from Illona and from various and
sundry spools of tape--ideas by virtue of which it was eminently
possible that the conventional light cruisers of Civilization, with
their heavier screen and more and hotter beams, could vanquish the
light cruisers of the foe, even though they should turn out to be
negative-matter bombers.
Hence the fifty-fifty division of types; but, since Haynes was not
thoroughly sold upon either the psychologists or their ideas, the
commanders of his standard light cruisers had received very explicit
and definite orders. If the Boskonians should have bombs and if the
high-brows' ideas did not pan out, they were to turn tail and run, at
maximum and without stopping to ask questions or to get additional
instructions.
Haynes had not really believed that the enemy would have negabombs,
they were so new and so atrociously difficult to handle. He wanted--but
was unable--to believe implicitly in the psychologists' findings.
Therefore, as soon as he saw what was happening, he abandoned his tank
for a moment to seize a plate and get into full touch with the control
room of one of the conventional light cruisers then going into action.
He watched it drive boldly toward a Boskonian vessel which was in the
act of throwing bombs. He saw that the agile little vessel's tractor
zone was out. He watched the bombs strike that zone and bounce. He
watched the tractor men go to work and he saw the psychologists' idea
bear splendid fruit. For what followed was a triumph, not of brute
force and striking power, but of morale and manhood. The brain men had
said, and it was now proved, that the Boskonian gunners, low class as
they were and driven to their tasks like the slaves they were, would
hesitate long enough before using tractor beams as pressors so that the
Patrolmen could take their own bombs away from them!
For negative matter, it must be remembered, is the exact opposite of
ordinary matter. It is built up of negative _mass_; in every
equation of physics and mechanics where mass appears, a minus sign
appears when negative matter is concerned. To it a pull is, or becomes,
a push; the tractor beam which pulls ordinary matter toward its
projector actually pushes negative matter away.
The "boys" of the Patrol knew that fact thoroughly. They knew all about
what they were doing, and why. They were there because they wanted to
be, as Illona had so astoundingly found out, and they worked with their
officers, not because of them. With the Patrol's gun crews it was a
race to see which crew could capture the first bomb and the most.
* * * * *
Aboard the Boskonian how different it was! There the dumb cattle had
been told what to do, but not why. They did not know the fundamental
mechanics of the bomb tubes they operated by rote, did not know that
they were essentially tractor beam projectors. They did know, however,
that tractor beams pulled things toward them; and when they were
ordered to swing their ordinary tractors upon the bombs which the
Patrolmen were so industriously taking away from them, they hesitated
for seconds, even under the lash.
This hesitation was fatal. Haynes' gleeful gunners, staring through
their special finders, were very much on their toes; seconds were
enough. Their fierce-driven tractors seized the inimical bombs in
midspace, and before the Boskonians could be made to act in the only
possible opposition hurled them directly backward against the ship
which had issued them. Ordinary defensive screen did not affect them;
repulsor screen, meteorite and wall shields only sucked them inward the
faster.
And ordinary matter and negative matter cannot exist in contact. In
the instant of touching, one atom of negative matter and one of normal
matter unite and disappear. One negabomb was enough to put any cruiser
out of action, but here there were usually three or four at once.
Sometimes as many as ten; enough, almost, to consume the total mass of
a ship.
A bomb struck; ate in. Through solid armor it melted. Atmosphere rushed
out, to disappear en route--for air is normal matter. Along beams and
trusses the hellish hypersphere traveled freakishly, although usually
in the direction of greatest mass. It clung, greedily. Down stanchions
it flowed; leaving nothing in its wake, flooding all circumambient
space with lethal emanations. Into and through converters. Into
pressure tanks which blew up enthusiastically. Men's bodies it did not
seem to favor--not massive enough, perhaps--but even them it did not
refuse if offered. A Boskonian, gasping frantically for air which was
no longer there and already half mad, went completely mad as he struck
savagely at the thing and saw his hand and his arm to the shoulder
vanish instantaneously, as though they had never been.
Satisfied, Haynes wrenched his attention back to his tank. Most of his
light cruisers were through and in the clear; they were reporting by
thousands. Losses were very small. The conventional-type cruisers had
won either by using the enemies' own bombs, as he had seen them used,
or by means of their heavier armor and armament. The bombers had won
in almost every case; not by superior force, for in arms and equipment
they were to all intents and purposes identical with their opponents,
but because of their infinitely higher quality of personnel. To brief
it, scarcely a handful of Boskonia's light cruisers were able to flee
the fatal scene.
The heavy cruisers came up, broke formation, and went doggedly to
work. They were the blockers. Each took one ship--a heavy cruiser or a
battleship--out of the line, and held it out. It tried to demolish it
with every weapon it could swing, but even if it could not vanquish its
foe, it could and did hang on until some big bruiser of a battleship
could come up and administer the _coup de grâce_.
And battleships and superdreadnoughts were coming up in the thousands
and the myriads. All of them, in fact, but those enough to form a tight
globe, packed screen to screen, around the _Z9M9Z_.
Slowly, ponderously, inert, the war head of maulers came crawling
up. The maulers and fortresses of the Boskonians were hopelessly
outnumbered and were badly scattered in position. Hence this meeting of
the ultra-heavies was not really a battle at all, but a slaughter. Ten
or more of Haynes' gigantic structures could concentrate their entire
combined fire power upon any luckless one of the enemy; with what awful
effect it would be superfluous to enlarge upon.
When the mighty fortresses had done their work they englobed the
_Directrix_, enabling the guarding battleships to join their
sister moppers-up; but there was very little left to do. Civilization
had again triumphed; and, this time, at very little cost. Some of the
pirates had escaped, of course; observers from afar might very well
have had scanners and recorders upon the entire conflict; but, whatever
of news was transmitted or how, Alcon of Thrale and Boskonia's other
master minds would or could derive little indeed of comfort from the
happenings of this important day.
"Well, that is that--for a while, at least, don't you think?" Haynes
asked his Council of War.
It was decided that it was; that if Boskonia could not have mustered
a heavier center for her defensive action here, she would be in no
position to make any really important attack for months to come.
* * * * *
Grand Fleet, then, was reformed; this time into a purely defensive and
exploratory formation. In the center, of course, was the _Z9M9Z_.
Around her was a close-packed quadruple globe of maulers. Outside
of them in order, came sphere after sphere of superdreadnoughts, of
battleships, of heavy cruisers, and of light cruisers. Then, not in
globe at all, but ranging far and wide, were the scouts. Into the edge
of the nearest spiral arm of the Second Galaxy the stupendous formation
advanced, and along it it proceeded at dead-slow blast--dead-slow, to
enable the questing scouts to survey thoroughly each planet of every
solar system as they came to it.
And finally an Earthlike planet was found. Several approximately
Tellurian worlds had been previously discovered and listed as
possibilities; but this one was so perfect that the search ended then
and there. Apart from the shape of the continents and the fact that
there was somewhat less land surface and a bit more salt water, it was
practically identical with Tellus. As was to be expected, its people
were human to the limit of classification. Entirely unexpectedly,
however, the people of Klovia--which is as close as English can come to
the native name--were not zwilniks. They had never heard of, nor had
they ever been approached by, the Boskonians. Space travel was to them
only a theoretical possibility, as was atomic energy.
They had no planetary organization, being still divided politically
into sovereign states which were all too often at war with each other.
In fact, a world war had just burned itself out, a war of such savagery
that only a fraction of the world's population remained alive. There
had been no victor, of course. All had lost everything--the survivors
of each nation, ruined as they were and without either organization or
equipment, were trying desperately to rebuild some semblance of what
they had once had.
Upon learning these facts the psychologists of the Patrol breathed
deep sighs of relief. This kind of thing was made to order; civilizing
this planet would be simplicity itself. And it was. The Klovians did
not have to be overawed by a show of superior force. Before this last,
horribly internecine war, Klovia had been a heavily industrialized
world, and as soon as the few remaining inhabitants realized what
Civilization had to offer, that no one of their neighboring competitive
states was to occupy a superior position, and that full, world-wide
production was to be resumed as soon as was humanly possible, their
relief and joy were immeasurable.
Thus the Patrol took over without difficulty. But they were, the
Lensmen knew, working against time. As soon as the zwilniks could get
enough heavy stuff built they would attack, grimly determined to blast
Klovia and everything upon it out of space. Even though they had known
nothing about the planet previously, it was idle to hope that they were
still in ignorance either of its existence or of what was in general
going on there.
Haynes' first care was to have the heaviest metalry of the Galactic
Patrol--loose planets, sunbeams, fortresses, and the like--rushed
across the void to Klovia at maximum. Then, as well as putting every
employable of the new world to work, at higher wages than he had ever
earned before, the Patrol imported millions upon millions of men, with
their women and families, from hundreds of Earthlike planets in the
First Galaxy.
They did not, however, come blindly. They came knowing that Klovia was
to be primarily a military base, the most supremely powerful base that
had ever been built. They knew that it would bear the brunt of the most
furious attacks that Boskone could possibly deliver; they knew full
well that it might fall. Nevertheless, men and women, they came in
their multitudes. They came with high courage and high determination,
glorying in that which they were to do. People who could and did so
glory were the only ones who came; which fact accounts in no small part
for what Klovia is today.
People came, and worked, and stayed. Ships came, and trafficked. Trade
and commerce increased tremendously. And further and further abroad,
as there came into being upon that formerly almost derelict planet
some seventy-odd gigantic defensive establishments, there crept out
an ever-widening screen of scout ships, with all their high-powered
feelers hotly outstretched.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Kinnison and frigid-blooded Nadreck had worked their line,
leg by tortuous leg, to Onlo and thence to Thrale. A full spool should
be devoted to that working alone; but, unfortunately, as space here
must be limited to the barest essentials, it can scarcely be mentioned.
As Kinnison and Haynes had foreseen, that line was heavily trapped.
Luckily, however, it had not been moved so radically that the searchers
could not rediscover it; the zwilniks were, as Haynes had promised,
very busily engaged with other and more important matters. All of those
traps were deadly, and many of them were ingenious indeed--so ingenious
as to test to the utmost the "cowardly" Palainian's skill and mental
scope. All, however, failed. The two Lensmen held to the line in spite
of the pitfalls and followed it to the end. Nadreck stayed upon or near
Onlo, to work in its frightful environment against the monsters to whom
he was biologically so closely allied, while the Tellurian went on to
Thrale, to try conclusions with that planet's physically human tyrant,
Alcon.
Again he had to build up an unimpeachable identity and here there
were no friendly thousands to help him do it. He had to get
close--_really_ close--to Alcon, without antagonizing him or in
any way arousing his hair-trigger suspicions. Kinnison had studied that
problem for days. Not one of his previously used artifices would work,
even had he dared to repeat a procedure. Also, time was decidedly of
the essence.
There was a way. It was not an easy way, but it was fast and, if it
worked at all, it would work perfectly. Kinnison would not have risked
it even a few months back, but now he was pretty sure that he had jets
enough to swing it.
He needed a soldier of about his own size and shape--details were
unimportant. The man should not be in Alcon's personal troops, but
should be in a closely allied battalion, from which promotion into that
select body would be logical. He should be relatively inconspicuous,
yet with a record of accomplishment, or at least of initiative, which
would square up with the rapid promotions which were to come.
The details of that man hunt are interesting, but not of any real
importance here, since they did not vary in any essential from
other searches which have been described at length. He found him--a
lieutenant in the Royal Guard--and the ensuing mind study was as
assiduous as it was insidious. In fact, the Lensman memorized
practically every memory chain in the fellow's brain. Then the officer
took his regular furlough and started for home--but he never got there.
Instead, it was Kimball Kinnison who wore the Thralian's gorgeous
full-dress uniform and who greeted in exactly appropriate fashion the
Thralian's acquaintances and lifelong friends. A few of these, who
chanced to see the guardsman first, wondered briefly at his changed
appearance or thought that he was a stranger. Very few, however, and
very briefly; for the Lensman's sense of perception was tensely alert
and his mind was strong. In moments, then, those chance few forgot
that they had ever had the slightest doubt concerning this soldier's
identity; they knew calmly and as a matter of fact that he was the
Traska Gannel whom they had known so long.
Living minds presented no difficulty except for the fact that of course
he could not get in touch with everyone who had ever known the real
Gannel. However, he did his best. He covered plenty of ground and he
got most of them--all that could really matter.
Written records, photographs, and tapes were something else again.
He had called Worsel in on that problem long since, and the purely
military records of the Royal Guards were QX before Gannel went on
leave. Although somewhat tedious, that task had not proved particularly
difficult. Upon a certain dark night a certain light circuit had gone
dead, darkening many buildings. Only one or two sentries or guards had
put their flashlights upon either Worsel or Kinnison, and they never
afterward recalled having done so. And any record that has ever been
made can be remade to order by the experts of the Secret Service of the
Patrol!
* * * * *
And thus it was also with the earlier records. Gannel had been born in
a hospital. QX--that hospital was visited, and thereafter Gannel's
baby footprints were actually those of infant Kinnison. He had gone to
certain schools--those schools' records also were made to conform to
the new facts.
Little could be done, however, about pictures. No man can possibly
remember how many times he has had his picture taken, or who has the
negatives, or to whom he had given photographs, or in what papers,
books, or other publications his likeness has appeared.
The older pictures, Kinnison decided, did not count. Even if the
likenesses were good, he looked enough like Gannel so that the boy
or the callow youth might just about as well have developed into
something that would pass for Kinnison in a photograph as into the man
which he actually did become. Where was the dividing line? The Lensman
decided--or rather, the decision was forced upon him--that it was at
his graduation from the military academy.
There had been an annual, in which volume appeared an individual
picture, fairly large, of each member of the graduating class. About
a thousand copies of the book had been issued, and now they were
scattered all over space. Since it would be idle even to think of
correcting them all, he could not correct any of them. Kinnison
studied that picture for a long time. He didn't like it very well.
The cub was just about grown up, and this photo looked considerably
more like Gannel than it did like Kinnison. However, the expression
was self-conscious, the pose strained--and, after all, people hardly
ever looked at old annuals. He'd have to take a chance on that.
Later poses--formal portraits, that is; snapshots could not be
considered--would have to be fixed up.
Thus it came about that certain studios were raided very
surreptitiously. Certain negatives were abstracted and were deftly
re-retouched. Prints were made therefrom, and in several dozens of
places in Gannel's home town, in albums and in frames, stealthy
substitutions were made.
The furlough was about to expire. Kinnison had done everything that he
could do. There were holes, of course--there couldn't help but be--but
they were mighty small and, if he played his cards right, they would
never show up. Just to be on the safe side, however, he'd have Worsel
stick around for a couple of weeks or so, to watch developments and to
patch up any weak spots that might develop. The Velantian's presence
upon Thrale would not create any suspicion--there were lots of such
folks flitting from planet to planet--and if anybody did get just a
trifle suspicious of Worsel, it might be all the better.
So it was done, and Lieutenant Traska Gannel of the Royal Guard went
back to duty.