XXI.

Boskonia's Grand Fleet was, as has been said, enormous. It was not as

large as the Patrol in total number of ships, since no ordinary brain

nor any possible combination of such brains could have co-ordinated and

directed the activities of so vast a number of units. Its center was,

however, heavier; composed of a number and a tonnage of supermaulers

which made it self-evidently irresistible.

In his training of his Grand Fleet operations staff, Kinnison had

not overlooked a single bet, had not made a single move which by its

falsity might have excited Premier Fossten's all-too-ready suspicions.

They had handled Grand Fleet as a whole in vast, slow maneuvers;

plainly the only kind possible to so tremendous a force. Kinnison and

his officers had in turn harshly and thoroughly instructed the subfleet

commanders in the various arts and maneuvers of conquering units equal

to or smaller than their own.

That was all; and to the Boskonians, even to Fossten, that had been

enough. That was obviously all that was possible. Not one of them

realized that Tyrant Gannel very carefully avoided any suggestion that

there might be any intermediate tactics, such as that of three or

four hundred subfleets, too widely spread in space and too numerous to

be handled by any ordinary mind or apparatus to inglobe and to wipe

out simultaneously perhaps fifty subfleets whose commanders were not

even in communication with each other. This technique was as yet the

exclusive property of the Patrol and the _Z9M9Z_.

And in that exact operation, a closed book to the zwilniks,

lay--supposedly and tactically--the Patrol's overwhelming advantage.

For Haynes, through his four highly specialized Rigellian Lensmen and

thence through the two hundred Rigellian operator-computers, could

perform maneuvers upon any intermediate scale he pleased. He could

handle his whole vast Grand Fleet and its every component part--he

supposed--as effectively, as rapidly, and almost as easily as a skilled

chess player handles his pieces and his pawns. Neither Kinnison nor

Haynes can be blamed, however, for the fact that their suppositions

were somewhat in error; it would have taken an Arisian to deduce that

this battle was not to be fought exactly as they had planned it.

Haynes had another enormous advantage in knowing the exact number,

rating, disposition, course, and velocity of every main unit of the

aggregation to which he was opposed. And third, he had the sunbeam,

concerning which the enemy knew nothing at all and which was now in

good working order.

It is needless to say that the sunbeam generators were already set to

hurl that shaft of irresistible destruction along the precisely correct

line, or that Haynes' Grand Fleet formation had been made with that

particular weapon in mind. It was not an orthodox formation; in any

ordinary space battle it would have been sheerly suicidal. But the port

admiral, knowing for the first time in his career every pertinent fact

concerning his foe, knew exactly what he was doing.

His fleet, instead of driving ahead to meet the enemy, remained inert

and practically motionless well within the limits of Klovia's solar

system. His heavy stuff, instead of being massed at the center, was

arranged in a vast ring. There was no center except for a concealing

screen of heavy cruisers.

When the far-flung screens of scout cruisers came into engagement,

then, the Patrol scouts near the central line did not fight, but sped

lightly aside. So did the light and heavy cruisers and the battleships.

The whole vast center of the Boskonians drove onward, unopposed,

into--nothing.

* * * * *

Nevertheless they kept on driving. They could, without orders, do

nothing else, and no orders were forthcoming from the flagship.

Commanders tried to get in touch with Grand Fleet operations, but could

not; and, in failing, kept on under their original instructions. They

had, they could have, no suspicion that any minion of the Patrol was

back of what had happened to their admirals. The flagship had been in

the safest possible position and no attack had as yet been made. They

probably wondered futilely as to what kind of a mechanical breakdown

could have immobilized and completely silenced their High Command,

but that was--strictly--none of their business. They had had orders,

very definite orders, that no matter what happened they were to go on

to Klovia and to destroy it. Thus, however wondering, they kept on.

They were on the line. They would hold to it. They would blast out of

existence anything and everything which might attempt to bar their way.

They would reach Klovia and they would reduce it to its component atoms.

Unresisted, then, the Boskonian center bored ahead into nothing, until

Haynes, through his Rigellians, perceived that it had come far enough.

Then Klovia's brilliantly shining sun darkened almost to the point of

going out entirely. Along the line of centers, through the space so

peculiarly empty of Patrol ships, there came into being the sunbeam--a

bar of quasi-solid lightning into which there had been compressed

all the energy of well over four million tons _per second_ of

disintegrating matter.

Scouts and cruisers caught in that ravening beam flashed briefly,

like sparks flying from a forge, and vanished. Battleships and

superdreadnoughts the same. Even the solid war head of fortresses and

maulers was utterly helpless. No screen has ever been designed capable

of handling that hellish load; no possible or conceivable substance can

withstand, save momentarily, the ardor of a sunbeam. For the energy

liberated by the total annihilation of four million tons per second of

matter is in fact as irresistible as it is incomprehensible.

The armed and armored planets did not disappear. They contained too

much sheer mass for even that inconceivably powerful beam to volatilize

in any small number of seconds. Their surfaces, however, melted and

boiled. The controlling and powering mechanisms fused into useless

pools of molten metal. Inert, then, inactive and powerless, they no

longer constituted threats to Klovia's well-being.

The negaspheres also were rendered ineffective by the beam. Their

antimasses were not decreased of course--in fact, they were probably

increased a trifle by the fervor of the treatment--but, with the

controlling super-structures volatilized away, they became more of

menace to the Boskonian forces than to those of Civilization. Indeed,

several of the terrible things were drawn into contact with ruined

planets. Then negasphere and planet consumed each other, flooding all

nearby space with intensely hard and horribly lethal radiation.

The beam winked out, Klovia's sun flashed on. The sunbeam was--and

is--clumsy, unwieldy, quite definitely not rapidly maneuverable. But

it had done its work; now the component parts of Civilization's Grand

Fleet started in to do theirs.

* * * * *

Since the Battle of Klovia--it was and still is called that, as though

it were the only battle which that warlike planet has ever seen--has

been fought over in the classrooms of practically every civilized

planet of two galaxies, it would be redundant to discuss it in detail

here.

It was, of course, unique. No other battle like it has ever been

fought, either before or since--and let us hope that no other such ever

will be. It is studied by strategists, who have so far offered many

thousands of widely variant profundities as to what Port Admiral Haynes

should have done. Its profound emotional appeal, however, lies only and

sheerly in its unorthodoxy. For in the technically proper space battle

there is no hand-to-hand fighting, no purely personal heroism, no

individual deeds of valor. It is a thing of logic and mathematics and

of science, the massing of superior fire power against a well-chosen

succession of weaker opponents. When the screens of a spaceship go down

that ship is done, her personnel only memories.

But here how different! With the supposed breakdown of the lines of

communication to the flagship, the subfleets carried on in formation.

With the destruction of the entire center, however, all semblance

of organization or of co-operation was lost. Every staff officer

knew that no more orders would emanate from the flagship. Each knew

chillingly that there could be neither escape nor succor. The captain

of each vessel, thoroughly convinced that he knew vastly more than

did his fleet commander, proceeded to run the war to suit himself. The

outcome was fantastic, so utterly bizarre that the _Z9M9Z_ and her

trained co-ordinating officers were useless. Science and tactics and

the million lines of communication could do nothing against a foe who

insisted upon making it a ship-to-ship, yes, man-to-man affair!

The result was the most gigantic dog fight in the annals of military

science. Ships--Civilization's perhaps as eagerly as Boskonia's--cut

off their projectors, cut off their screens, the better to ram, to

board, to come to grips personally with the enemy. Scout to scout,

cruiser to cruiser, battleship to battleship, the insane contagion

spread. Haynes and his staff men swore fulminantly, the Rigellians

hurled out orders, but those orders simply could not be obeyed. The

dog fight spread until it filled a good sixth of Klovia's entire solar

system.

Board and storm! Armor--DeLameters--axes! The mad blood lust of

hand-to-hand combat, the insensately horrible savagery of our pirate

forebears, multiplied by millions and spread out to fill a million

million cubic miles of space!

Haynes and his fellows wept unashamed as they stood by helpless,

unable to avoid or to prevent the slaughter of so many splendid men,

the gutting of so many magnificent ships. It was ghastly--it was

appalling--it was WAR!

* * * * *

And far from this scene of turmoil and of butchery lay Boskonia's

great flagship, and in her control room Kinnison began to recover his

strength. He sat up groggily. He gave his throbbing head a couple of

tentative shakes. Nothing rattled. Good--he was QX, he guessed, even if

he did feel as limp as nine wet dish rags. Even his Lens felt weak; its

usually refulgent radiance was sluggish, wan, and dim. This had taken

plenty out of them, he reflected soberly; but he was mighty lucky to be

alive. But he'd better get his batteries charged. He couldn't drive a

thought across the room, the shape he was in now, and he knew of only

one brain in the Universe capable of straightening out _this_ mess.

After assuring himself that the highly inimical brain would not be

able to function normally for a long time to come, the Lensman made

his way to the galley. He could walk without staggering already--fine!

There he fried himself a big, thick, rare steak--his never-failing

remedy for all the ills to which flesh is heir--and brewed a pot of

the coffeelike beverage affected by Thralians; making it viciously,

almost corrosively strong. And as he ate and drank, his head cleared

magically. Strength flowed back into him in waves. His Lens flamed into

its normal splendor. He stretched prodigiously; inhaled gratefully a

few deep breaths. He was QX.

Back in the control room, after again checking up on the still

quiescent brain--he wouldn't trust this Fossten as far as he could

spit--he hurled a thought to far-distant Arisia and to Mentor, its

ancient sage.

"What's an Arisian doing in this Second Galaxy, working _against_

the Patrol? Just what is somebody trying to pull off?" he demanded

heatedly, and in a second of flashing thought reported what had

happened.

"Truly, Kinnison of Tellus, my mind is far from capable," the deeply

resonant, slow simulacrum of a voice resounded within the Lensman's

brain. The Arisian never hurried; nothing whatever, apparently, not

even such a cataclysmic upheaval as this, could fluster or excite

him. "It does not seem to be in accord with the visualization of the

Cosmic All which I hold at the moment that any one of my fellows is in

fact either in the Second Galaxy or acting antagonistically to the

Galactic Patrol. It is, however, a truism that hypotheses, theories,

and visualizations must fit themselves to known or observed facts,

and even your immature mind is eminently able to report truly upon

actualities. But before I attempt to revise my Cosmos to conform to

this admittedly peculiar circumstance, we must be very sure indeed of

our facts. Are you certain, youth, that the being whom you have beaten

into unconsciousness is actually an Arisian?"

"Certainly I'm certain!" Kinnison snapped. "Why, he's enough like you

to have been hatched out of half of the same egg. Take a look!"--and he

knew that the Arisian was studying every external and internal detail,

part, and organ of the erstwhile prime minister of Thrale.

"Ah, it would appear to be an Arisian, at that, youth," Mentor finally

agreed. "I do not know him, however, and I have been quite confident

that I am acquainted with each member of my race. He is old, as

you said--as old, perhaps, as I am. This will require some little

thought--allow me therefore, please, a moment of contemplation." The

Arisian fell silent, presently to resume:

"I have it now. Many millions of your years ago--so long ago that

it was with some little difficulty that I recalled it to mind--when

I was scarcely more than an infant, a youth but little older than

myself disappeared from Arisia. It was determined then that he was

aberrant--insane--and since only an unusually capable mind can predict

truly the illogical workings of a diseased and disordered mind for even

one year in advance, it is not surprising that in my visualization that

unbalanced youth perished long ago. Nor is it surprising that I do not

recognize him in the creature before you, for at the time of vanishment

no permanent pattern had as yet been formed."

"Well, aren't you surprised that I could get the best of him?" Kinnison

asked naïvely. He had really expected that Mentor would compliment him

upon his prowess, he figured that he had earned a few pats on the back;

but here the old fellow was mooning about his own mind and his own

philosophy, and acting as though knocking off an Arisian were something

to be taken in stride. And it wasn't, by half!

"No," came the flatly definite reply. "You have a force of will, a

totalizable and concentratable power, a mental and psychological drive

that no mind in the macrocosmic universe can break. I perceived those

latent capabilities when I assembled your Lens, and developed them

when I developed you. It was their presence which made it certain that

you would return here for that development; they made you what you

intrinsically are."

"QX, then--skip it. What shall I do with him? It's going to be a real

job of work, any way you figure it, for us to keep him alive and

harmless until we can get him back there to Arisia."

"We do not want him here," Mentor replied without emotion. "He has no

present or future place within our society. Nor, however I consider

the matter, can I perceive that he has any longer a permissible or

condonable place in the all-inclusive Scheme of Things. He has served

his purpose. Destroy him, therefore, forthwith, before he so much as

recovers consciousness; lest much and grievous harm befall you."

"I believe you, chief. You chirped it then, if anybody ever did.

Thanks"--and communication ceased.

* * * * *

The Lensman's ray gun flamed briefly and what was mortal of Fossten the

prime minister became a smoking, shapeless heap.

Kinnison noticed then that a call light was shining brightly upon a

communicator panel. This thing must have taken longer than he had

supposed. The battle must be over, otherwise all space would still

be filled with interference through which no long-range communicator

beam could have been driven. Or--could Boskonia have--No, that was

unthinkable. The Patrol _must_ have won. This must be Haynes,

calling him--

It was. The frightful Battle of Klovia was over. While many of the

Patrol ships had yielded, either by choice or by necessity, to the

Boskonians' challenge, most of them had not. And the majority of those

who did so yield, came out victorious.

While fighting in any kind of recognized formation against such

myriads of independently operating, widely spaced individual ships

was, of course, out of the question, Haynes and his aids had been

able to work out a technique of sorts. General orders were sent out

to subfleet commanders, who in turn relayed them to the individual

captains by means of visual beams. Single vessels, then, locked to

equal or inferior craft--avoiding carefully anything larger than

themselves--with tractor zones and held grimly on. If they could defeat

the foe, QX. If not, they hung on; until shortly one of the Patrol's

maulers--who had no opposition of their own class to face--would

come lumbering up. And when the dreadful primary batteries of one of

_those_ things cut loose that was, very conclusively, that.

Thus Boskonia's mighty fleet vanished from the skies.

The all-pervading interference was cut off and Port Admiral Haynes,

brushing aside a communications officer, sat down at his board and

punched a call. Time after time he punched it. Finally he shoved it in

and left it in; and as he stared, minute after minute, into the coldly

unresponsive plate his face grew gray and old.

With a long, slightly tremulous sigh he was turning away from the plate

when suddenly it lighted up to show the smiling, deeply space-tanned

face of the one for whom he had just about given up hope.

"Thank God!" The commander in chief's exclamation was wholly reverent;

his strained old face lost twenty years in half that many seconds.

"Thank God you are safe. You did it, then?"

"I managed it, Pop, but just by the skin of my teeth--I didn't have

half a jet to spare. It was Old Man Boskone himself, in person. And

you?"

"Clean-up--one hundred point oh, oh, oh, oh percent."

"Fine business!" Kinnison exulted. "Everything's on the exact center of

the green, then--come on!"

And Civilization's Grand Fleet went.

* * * * *

The _Z9M9Z_ flashed up to visibility, inerted, and with furious

driving blasts full ablaze, matched her intrinsic velocity to that

of the Boskonian flagship--the only Boskonian vessel remaining in

that whole vast volume of space. Tractors and pressors were locked

on and balanced. Flexible--or, more accurately, not ultimately

rigid--connecting tubes were pushed out and sealed. Hundreds,

yes--thousands, of men--men in full Thralian uniform--strode through

those tubes and into the Thralian ship. The _Directrix_ unhooked

and a battleship took her place. Time after time the maneuver was

repeated, until it seemed as though Kinnison's vessel, huge as she was,

could not possibly carry the numbers of men who marched aboard.

Those men were all human or approximately so--nearly enough human, at

least, to pass as Thralians under a casual inspection. More peculiarly,

that army contained an astounding number of Lensmen. So many Lensmen,

it is certain, had never before been gathered together into so small

a space. But the fact that they were Lensmen was not apparent; their

Lenses were not upon their wrists, but were high upon their arms,

concealed from even the most prying eyes within the heavy sleeves of

their tunics.

Then the captured flagship, her Bergenholms again at work, the

_Z9M9Z_, and the battleships which had already assumed the

intrinsic velocity possessed originally by the Boskonians, spread out

widely in space. Each surrounded itself with a globe of intensely vivid

red light. Orders as to course and power flashed out. The word was

given and spectacular fire flooded space as that vast host of ships,

guided by those red beacons and by the ever-watchful observers of the

_Directrix_, matched in one prodigious and beautiful maneuver its

intrinsic velocity to theirs.

Finally, all the intrinsics in exact agreement, Grand Fleet formation

was remade. The term "remade" is used advisedly, since this was not to

be a battle formation. For Traska Gannel had long since sent a message

to his capital; a terse and truthful message which was, nevertheless,

utterly misleading. It was:

"My forces have won, my enemy has been wiped out to the last man.

Prepare for a two-world broadcast, to cover both Thrale and Onlo, at

hour ten today of my palace time."

The formation, then, was not one of warfare, but of boasting triumph.

It was the consciously proud formation of a Grand Fleet which, secure

in the knowledge that it has blasted out of the ether everything which

can threaten it, returns victoriously to its Prime Base to receive as

its just due the plaudits and the acclaim of the populace.

Well in the van--alone in the van, in fact, and strutting--was the

flagship. She, having originated upon Thrale and having been built

specifically for a flagship, would be recognized at sight. Back of

her came, in gigantic co-axial cones, the subfleets; arranged now not

class by class of ships, but world by world of origin. One mauler,

perhaps, or two; from four or five to a dozen or more battleships; an

appropriate number of cruisers and of scouts; all flying along together

in a tight little group.

But not all of the Patrol's armada was in that formation. It would

have been very poor technique indeed to have had Boskonia's Grand

Fleet come back to home ether forty percent larger than it had set

out. Besides, the _Directrix_ simply could not be allowed to come

within detector range of any Boskonian lookout. She was utterly unlike

any other vessel ever to fly: she would not, perhaps, be recognized

for what she really was, but it would be evident to the most casual

observer that she was not and could not be of Thrale or of Boskonia.

The _Z9M9Z_, then, hung back--far back--escorted and enveloped by

the great number of warships which could not be made to fit into the

roll call of the Tyrant's original Grand Fleet.

The subfleet which was originally from Thrale could land without

any trouble; without arousing any suspicion. Boskonian and Patrol

designs were not identical, of course; but the requirements of sound

engineering dictated that externals should be essentially the

same. The individual ships now bore the correct identifying symbols

and insignia. The minor differences could not be perceived until

after the vessels had actually landed, and that would be--for the

Thralians--entirely too late.

* * * * *

Thralian hour ten arrived. Kinnison, after a long, minutely searching

inspection of the entire room, became again in every millimeter Traska

Gannel, the Tyrant of Thrale. He waved a hand. The scanner before

him glowed: for a full minute he stared into it haughtily, to give

his teeming millions of minions ample opportunity to gaze upon the

inspiring countenance of His Supremacy the Feared.

He knew that the scanner revealed clearly every detail of the control

room behind him, but everything there was QX. There was not even a

chance that some person would fail to recognize a familiar face at any

post, for not a single face except his own would be visible. Not a head

back of him would turn, not even a rear quarter profile would show:

it would be _lese majeste_ of the most intolerable for any face,

however inconspicuous, to share the limelight with that of the Tyrant

of Thrale while his supremacy was addressing his subjects. Serenely and

assuredly enough, then, Kinnison as Tyrant Gannel spoke:

"My people! As you have already been told, my forces have won the

complete victory which my foresight and my leadership made inevitable.

This milestone of progress is merely a repetition upon a grander scale

of those which I have already accomplished upon a somewhat smaller; as

extension and a continuation of the carefully considered procedure by

virtue of which I shall see to it that My Great Plan succeeds.

"As one item in that scheduled procedure I removed the weakling

Alcon, and in the stead of his rule of oppression, short-sightedness,

corruption, favoritism, and greed, I substituted my beneficent regime

of fair play, of mutual co-operation for the good of all.

"I have now accomplished the next major step in my program; the

complete destruction of the armed forces which might be, which would be

employed to hamper and to nullify the development and the fruition of

My Plan.

"I shall take the next step immediately upon my return to my palace.

There is no need to inform you now as to the details of what I have

in mind. In broad, however, it pleases me to inform you that, having

crushed all opposition, I am now able to institute and shall proceed

at once to institute certain changes in policy, in administration,

and in jurisdiction. I assure you that all of these changes will be,

ultimately, for the best good of all, save the enemies of society.

"I caution you therefore to co-operate fully and willingly with my

officers who may shortly come among you with instructions; some of

these, perhaps, of a nature not hitherto promulgated upon Thrale. Those

of you who do so co-operate will live and will prosper; you who do

not will die in the slowest, most hideous fashions which hundreds of

generations of Thralian torturers have been able to devise."