Kinnison's wounds, being superficial, healed rapidly. He passed the
examination handily. He should have; since, although it was rigorous
and comprehensive, Traska Gannel himself could have passed it and
Kinnison, as well as knowing practically everything that the Thralian
had ever learned, had his own vast store of knowledge upon which to
draw. Also, if necessary, he could have read the answers from the minds
of the examiners.
As a captain, the real Gannel would have been a hard and brilliant
commander, noticeable even among the select group of tried and
fire-polished veterans who officered the Guards. Hence Kinnison
became so; in fact, considerably more so than most. He was harsh, he
was relentless and inflexible; but he was absolutely fair. He did
not punish a given breach of discipline with twenty lashes one time
and with a mere reprimand the next; fifteen honest, scarring strokes
it became for each and every time, whoever the offender. Whatever
punishment a man deserved by the book he got, promptly and mercilessly;
whatever reward was earned was bestowed with equal celerity,
accompanied by a crisply accurate statement of the facts in each case,
at the daily parade review.
His men hated him, of course. His noncoms and lieutenants, besides
hating him, kept on trying to cut him down. All, however, respected him
and obeyed him without delay and without question, which was all that
any Boskonian officer could expect and which was far more than most of
them ever got.
Having thus consolidated his position, Kinnison went blithely to work
to undermine and to supplant the major. Since Alcon, like all dictators
everywhere, was in constant fear of treachery and of revolution, war
games were an almost constant form of drill. The general himself
planned and various officers executed the mock attacks, by space,
air, and land; the Royal Guards and Alcon's personal troops, heavily
outnumbered, always constituted the defense. An elaborate system
of scoring had been worked out long since, by means of which the
staff officers could study in detail every weak point that could be
demonstrated.
"Captain Gannel, you will have to hold Passes 25, 26, and 27,"
the obviously worried major told Kinnison, the evening before a
particularly important sham battle was to take place.
The Lensman was not surprised. He himself had insinuated the idea into
his superior's mind. Moreover, he already knew, from an intensive job
of spying, that his major was to be in charge of the defense, and that
the colonel, who was to direct the attacking forces, had decided to
route his main column through Pass 27.
"Very well, sir," Kinnison acknowledged. "I wish to protest formally,
however, against those orders. It is manifestly impossible, sir, to
hold all three of those passes with two platoons of infantry and one
squadron of speedsters. May I offer a suggestion--"
"You may not," the major snapped. "We have deduced that the real attack
is coming from the north, and that any activity in your section will be
merely a feint. Orders are orders, captain!"
"Yes, sir," Kinnison replied, meekly, and signed for the thick sheaf of
orders which stated in detail exactly what he was to do.
* * * * *
The next evening, after Kinnison had won the battle by disregarding
every order he had been given, he was summoned to the meeting of the
staff. He had expected that, too, but he was not at all certain of
how it was coming out. It was in some trepidation, therefore, that he
entered the lair of the big brass hats.
"Har-rumph!" he was greeted by the adjutant. "You have been called--"
"I know why I was called," Kinnison interrupted, brusquely. "Before
we go into that, however, I wish to prefer charges before the general
against Major Delios of stupidity, incompetence, and inefficiency."
Sheer astonishment resounded throughout the room in a ringing silence,
broken finally by the general.
"Those are serious charges indeed, Captain Gannel; but you may state
your case."
"Thank you, sir. First, stupidity: He did not perceive, at even as late
a time as noon, when he took all my air away from me to meet the feint
from the north, that the attack was not to follow any orthodox pattern.
Second, incompetence. The orders he gave me could not possibly have
stopped any serious attack through any one of the passes I was supposed
to defend. Third, inefficiency: No efficient commander refuses to
listen to suggestions from his officers, as he refused to listen to me
last night."
"Your side, major?" And the staff officers listened to a defense based
upon blind, dumb obedience to orders.
"We will take this matter under advisement," the general announced
then. "Now, captain, what made you suspect that the colonel was coming
through Pass 27?"
"I didn't," Kinnison replied, mendaciously. "To reach any one of those
passes, however, he would have to come down this valley"--tracing it
with his forefinger upon the map. "Therefore I held my whole force back
here at Hill 562, knowing that, warned by my air of his approach, I
could reach any one of the passes before he could."
"Ah. Then, when your air was sent elsewhere?"
"I commandeered a flitter--my own, by the way, and sent it up so high
as to be indetectable. I then ordered motorcycle scouts out, for the
enemy to capture; to make the commander of any possible attacking or
reconnaissance force think that I was blind."
"Ah--smart work. And then?"
"As soon as my scout reported troop movements in the valley, I got
my men ready to roll. When it became certain that Pass 27 was the
objective, I rushed everything I had into preselected positions
commanding every foot of that pass. Then, when the colonel walked
into the trap, I wiped out most of his main column. However, I had a
theoretical loss of three-quarters of my men in doing it"--bitterly.
"If I had been directing the defense, I would have wiped out the
colonel's entire force, ground and air both, with a loss of less than
two percent."
This was strong talk. "Do you realize, Captain Gannel, that this is
sheer insubordination?" the general demanded. "That you are in effect
accusing me also of stupidity in planning and in ordering such an
attack?"
"Not at all, sir," Kinnison replied instantly. "It was quite evident,
sir, that you did it deliberately, to show all of us junior officers
the importance of thought. To show us that, while unorthodox attacks
may possibly be made by unskilled tacticians, any such attack is of
necessity fatally weak if it be opposed by good tactics. In other
words, that orthodox strategy is the only really good strategy. Was not
that it, sir?"
Whether it was or not, that viewpoint gave the general an out, and he
was not slow in taking advantage of it. He decided then and there, and
the always subservient staff agreed with him, that Major Delios had
indeed been stupid, incompetent, and inefficient; and Captain Gannel
forthwith became Major Gannel.
* * * * *
Then the Lensman took it easy. He wangled and phenagled various and
sundry promotions and replacements, until he was once more surrounded
by a thoroughly subsidized personal staff and in good position to go to
work upon the colonel. Then, however, instead of doing so, he violated
another Boskonian precedent by having a frank talk with the man whom
normally he should have been trying to displace.
"You have found out that you can't kill me, colonel," he told his
superior, after making sure that the room was really shielded. "Also
that I can quite possibly kill you. You know that I know more than you
do--that all my life, while you other fellows were helling around, I
have been working and learning--and that I can, in a fairly short time,
take your job away from you without killing you. However, I don't want
it."
"You don't _want_ it!" The colonel stared, narrow-eyed. "What
_do_ you want, then?" He knew, of course, that Gannel wanted
something.
"Your help," Kinnison admitted, candidly. "I want to get onto Alcon's
personal staff, as adviser. With my experience and training, I figure
that there's more in it for me there than here in the Guards. Here's
my proposition--if I help you, by showing you how to work out your
field problems and in general building you up however I can instead of
tearing you down, will you use your great influence with the general
and Prime Minister Fossten to have me transferred to the Household?"
"Will I? I'll say I will!" the colonel agreed, with fervor. He did not
add "if I cannot kill you first"--that was understood.
And Kinnison did build the colonel up. He taught him things about the
military business which that staff officer had never even suspected;
he sounded depths of strategy theretofore completely unknown to the
zwilnik. And the more Kinnison taught him, the more eager the colonel
became to get rid of him. He had been suspicious and only reluctantly
co-operative at first; but as soon as he realized that he could not
kill his tutor and that if the latter stayed in the Guards it would
be only a matter of days--at most of weeks--until Gannel would force
himself into the colonelcy by sheer force of merit, he pulled in
earnest every wire that he could reach.
Before the actual transfer could be effected, however, Kinnison
received a call from Nadreck.
"Excuse me, please, for troubling you," the Palainian apologized, "but
there has been a development in which you may perhaps be interested.
This Kandron has been given orders by Alcon to traverse a hyperspatial
tube, the terminus of which will appear at co-ordinates 217-493-28 at
hour eleven of the seventh Thralian day from the present."
"Fine business! And you want to chase him, huh?" Kinnison jumped at the
conclusion. "Sure--go ahead. I'll meet you there. I'll fake up some
kind of an excuse to get away from here and we'll run him ragged--"
"I do not," Nadreck interrupted, decisively. "If I leave my work here,
it will all come undone. Besides, it would be dangerous--and foolhardy.
Not knowing what lies at the other end of that tube, we could make no
plans and could have no assurance of safety, or even of success. You
should not go, either--that is unthinkable. I am reporting this matter
in view of the possibility that you may think it significant enough
to warrant the sending of some observer whose life is of little or no
importance."
"Oh ... uh-huh ... I see. Thanks, Nadreck." Kinnison did not allow any
trace of his real thought to go out before he broke the line. Then:
"Funny ape, Nadreck," he cogitated, as he called Haynes. "I don't get
his angle at all--I simply can't figure him out. Haynes? Kinnison"--and
he reported in full.
"The _Dauntless_ has all the necessary generators and equipment,
and the place is far enough out so that she can make the approach
without any trouble," the Lensman concluded. "We'll burn whatever
is at the other end of that tube clear out of the ether. Send along
as many of the old gang as you can spare. Wish we had time to get
Cardynge--he'll howl like a wolf at being left out--but we've got only
a week--"
"Cardynge is here," Haynes broke in. "He has been working out some
stuff for Thorndyke on the sunbeam. He is finished now, though, and
will undoubtedly want to go along."
"Fine!"
And explicit arrangements for the rendezvous were made.
* * * * *
It was not unduly difficult for Kinnison to make his absence from duty
logical, even necessary. Scouts and observers reported inexplicable
interferences with certain communications lines. With thoughts of
_the_ Lensman suffusing the minds of the higher-ups, and because
of Gannel's already demonstrated prowess and keenness, he scarcely had
to signify a willingness to investigate the phenomena in order to be
directed to do so.
Nor did he pick a crew of his own sycophants. Instead, he chose the
five highest-ranking privates of the battalion to accompany him upon
this supposedly extremely dangerous mission; apparently completely
unaware two of them belonged to the colonel, two to the general, and
one to the captain who had taken his place.
The colonel wished Major Gannel good luck, verbally, even while hoping
fervently that _the_ Lensman would make cold meat of him in a
hurry; and Kinnison gravely gave his well-wisher thanks as he set out.
He did not, however, go near any communications lines; although his
spying crew did not realize the fact. They did not realize anything;
they did not know even that they became unconscious within five minutes
after leaving Thrale.
They remained unconscious while the speedster in which they were was
drawn into the _Dauntless'_ capacious hold. In the Patrol ship's
sick bay, under expert care, they remained unconscious during the
entire duration of their stay on board.
The Patrol pilots picked up Kandron's flying vessel with little
difficulty; and, nullifiers full out, followed it easily. When the
zwilnik ship slowed down to feel for the vortex, the _Dauntless_
slowed also, and baffled her driving jets as she sneaked up to the very
edge of electrodetector range. When the objective disappeared from
three-dimensional space the point of vanishment was marked precisely,
and up to that point the Patrol ship flashed in seconds.
The regular driving blasts were cut off, the special generators were
cut in. Then, as the force fields of the ship reacted against those of
the Boskonian "shore" station, the Patrolmen felt again in all their
gruesome power the appallingly horrible sensation of interdimensional
acceleration. For that sensation is, literally, indescribable. A man in
good training can overcome seasickness, airsickness, and spacesickness.
He can overcome the nausea and accustom himself to the queasily
terrifying endless-fall sensation of weightlessness. He can, and does,
become so inured to as to regard as perfectly normal the outrages
to the sensibilities incident to inertialessness in its crudest
forms. No man has, however, been able to get used to interdimensional
acceleration.
It is best likened to a compression; not as a whole, but atom by atom.
A man feels as though he were being twisted--cork-screwed in some
monstrously obscure fashion which permits him neither to move from his
place nor to remain where he is. It is a painless but utterly revolting
transformation, progressing in a series of waves; a rearrangement, a
writhing, crawling distortion, an incomprehensibly impossible extrusion
of each ultimate particle of his substance in an unknowable, ordinarily
nonexistent direction.
* * * * *
The period of acceleration over, the _Dauntless_ traveled at
uniform velocity along whatever course it was that the tube took and
the men, although highly uncomfortable and uneasy, could once more move
about and work. Sir Austin Cardynge in particular was actually happy
and eager as he flitted from one to another of the automatic recording
instruments upon his special panel. He resembled more closely than ever
a lean, gray tomcat, Kinnison thought--he almost expected to see him
begin to lick his whiskers and pur.
"You see, my ignorant young friend"--the scientist almost did pur as
one of the recording pens swung widely across the ruled paper--"it
is as I told you--the lack of exact data upon even one tiny factor
of this extremely complex phenomenon is calamitous. While my
notes were apparently complete and were certainly accurate, our
experimental tubes did not function perfectly. The time factor was
irreconcilable--completely so, in every aspect, even that of departure
from and return to normal space--and it is unthinkable that time, one
of the fundamental units, is or can be intrinsically variable--"
"You think so?" Kinnison broke in. "Look at that"--pointing to the
ultimate of timepieces, Cardynge's own triplex chronometer. "No. 1
says that we have been in this tube for an hour, No. 2 says a little
over nine minutes, and according to No. 3 we won't be starting for
twenty minutes yet--it must be running backward--let's see you comb
_that_ out of your whiskers!"
"Oh-h ... ah ... a-hum." But only momentarily was Sir Austin taken
aback. "Ah, I was right all the time!" he cackled gleefully. "I thought
it practically impossible for me to commit an error or to overlook any
possibilities, and I have now proved that I did not. Time, in this
hyperspatial region or condition, _is_ intrinsically variable, in
major degree!"
"And what does that get you?" Kinnison asked, pointedly.
"Much, my impetuous youngster, much," Cardynge replied. "We observe, we
note facts. From the observations and facts we theorize and we deduce;
thus arriving very shortly at the true inwardness of time."
"You hope," the Lensman snorted, dubiously; and in his skepticism he
was right and Sir Austin was wrong. For the actual nature and mechanism
of time remained, and still constitute, a mystery, or at least an
unsolved problem. The Arisians--perhaps--understand time; no other race
does.
To some of the men, then, and to some of the clocks and other
time-measuring devices, the time seemed--or actually was?--very long;
to other and similar beings and mechanisms it seemed--or was--short.
Short or long, however, the _Dauntless_ did not reach the
Boskonian end of the hyperspatial tube.
* * * * *
In midflight there came a crunching, twisting _cloonk!_ and
an abrupt reversal of the inexplicably horrible interdimensional
acceleration--a deceleration as sickeningly disturbing, both physically
and mentally, as the acceleration had been.
While within the confines of the hyperspatial tube every eye of the
_Dauntless_ had been blind. To every beam upon every frequency,
visible or invisible, ether-borne or carried upon the infinitely faster
waves of the sub-ether, the murk was impenetrable. Every plate showed
the same mind-numbing blankness; a vague, eerily shifting, quasi-solid
blanket of formless, textureless grayness. No lightness or darkness,
no stars or constellations or nebulae, no friendly, deep-space
blackness--nothing.
Deceleration ceased; the men felt again the wonted homeliness and
comfort of normal pseudoinertia. Simultaneously the gray smear of the
visiplates faded away into commonplace areas of jetty black, pierced
the brilliantly dimensionless varicolored points of light which were
the familiar stars of their own familiar space.
But were they familiar? Was that our galaxy, or anything like it? They
were not. It was not. Kinnison stared into his plate, aghast.
He would not have been surprised to have emerged into three-dimensional
space anywhere within the Second Galaxy. In that case, he would have
seen a Milky Way; and from its shape, apparent size, and texture he
could have oriented himself fairly closely in a few minutes. But the
_Dauntless_ was not within any lenticular galaxy--nowhere was
there any sign of a Milky Way!
He would not have been really surprised to have found himself and his
ship out in open intergalactic space. In that case he would have seen
a great deal of dead-black emptiness, blotched with a hundred or so
lenticular bodies which were in fact galaxies. Orientation would then
have been more difficult; but, with the aid of the Patrol charts, it
could have been accomplished. But here there were no galaxies--no
nebulae of any kind!