Approaching Cavenda in his dead-black, converted scout-ship,
Virgil Samms cut his drive, killed his atomics, and turned on
his super-powered detectors. For five full detets in every
direction--throughout a spherical volume over ten detets in
diameter--space was void of ships. Some activity was apparent upon the
planet dead ahead, but the First Lensman did not worry about that. The
drug-runners would of course have atomics in their plants, even if
there were no space-ships actually on the planet--which there probably
were. What he did worry about was detection. There would be plenty of
detectors, probably automatic; not only ordinary sub-ethereals, but
electros and radars as well.
He flashed up to within one and a quarter detets, stopped, and
checked again. Space was still empty. Then, after making a series of
observations, he went inert and established an intrinsic velocity
which, he hoped, would be close enough. He again shut off his atomics
and started the sixteen-cylinder Diesel engine which would do its best
to replace them.
That best was none too good, but it would do. Besides driving the
Bergenholm it could furnish enough kilodynes of thrust to produce a
velocity many times greater than any attainable by inert matter. It
used a lot of oxygen per minute, but it would not run for very many
minutes. With her atomics out of action his ship would not register
upon the plates of the long-range detectors universally used. Since she
was nevertheless traveling faster than light, neither electromagnetic
detector-webs nor radar could "see" her. Good enough.
Samms was not the System's best computer, nor did he have the System's
finest instruments. His positional error could be corrected easily
enough; but as he drove nearer and nearer to Cavenda, keeping, toward
the last, in line with its one small moon, he wondered more and more as
to how much of an allowance he should make for error in his intrinsic,
which he had set up practically by guess. And there was another
variable, the cut-off. He slowed down to just over one light; but even
at that comparatively slow speed an error of one millisecond at cut-off
meant a displacement of two hundred miles! He switched the spotter into
the Berg's cut-off circuit, set it for three hundred miles, and waited
tensely at his controls.
The relays clicked, the driving force expired, the vessel went inert.
Samms' eyes, flashing from instrument to instrument, told him that
matters could have been worse. His intrinsic was neither straight
up, as he had hoped, nor straight down, as he had feared, but almost
exactly half-way between the two--straight out. He discovered that fact
just in time; in another second or two he would have been out beyond
the moon's protecting bulk and thus detectable from Cavenda. He went
free, flashed back to the opposite boundary of his area of safety, went
inert, and put the full power of the bellowing Diesel to the task of
bucking down his erroneous intrinsic, losing altitude continuously.
Again and again he repeated the maneuver; and thus, grimly and
stubbornly, he fought his ship to ground.
He was very glad to see that the surface of the satellite was rougher,
rockier, ruggeder, and more cratered even than that of Earth's Luna.
Upon such a terrain as this, it would be next to impossible to spot
even a moving vessel--if it moved carefully.
By a series of short and careful inertialess hops--correcting his
intrinsic velocity after each one by an inert collision with the
ground--he maneuvered his vessel into such a position that Cavenda's
enormous globe hung directly overhead. Breathing a profoundly deep
breath of relief he killed the big engine, cut in his fully-charged
accumulators, and turned on detector and spy-ray. He would see what he
could see.
His detectors showed that there was only one point of activity on the
whole planet. He located it precisely; then, after cutting his spy-ray
to minimum power, he approached it gingerly, yard by yard. Stopped!
As he had more than half expected, there was a spy-ray block. A big
one, almost two miles in diameter. It would be almost directly beneath
him--or rather, almost straight overhead--in about three hours.
Samms had brought along a telescope, considerably more powerful than
the telescopic visiplate of his scout. Since the surface gravity
of this moon was low--scarcely one-fifth that of Earth--he had no
difficulty in lugging the parts out of the ship or in setting the thing
up.
But even the telescope did not do much good. The moon was close
to Cavenda, as astronomical distances go--but really worth-while
astronomical optical instruments simply are not portable. Thus the
Lensman saw something that, by sufficient stretch of the imagination,
could have been a factory; and, eyes straining at the tantalizing
limit of visibility, he even made himself believe that he saw a
toothpick-shaped object and a darkly circular blob, either of which
could have been the space-ship of the outlaws. He was sure, however, of
two facts. There were no real cities upon Cavenda. There were no modern
spaceports, or even air-fields.
He dismounted the 'scope, stored it, set his detectors, and waited. He
had to sleep at times, of course; but any ordinary detector rig can
be set to sound off at any change in its status--and Samms' was no
ordinary rig. Wherefore, when the drug-mongers' vessel took off, Samms
left Cavenda as unobtrusively as he had approached it, and swung into
that vessel's line.
Samms' strategy had been worked out long since. On his Diesel, at a
distance of just over one detet, he would follow the outlaw as fast as
he could; long enough to establish his line. He would then switch to
atomic drive and close up to between one and two detets; then again go
onto Diesel for a check. He would keep this up for as long as might
prove necessary.
As far as any of the Lensmen knew, Spaceways always used regular liners
or freighters in this business, and this scout was much faster than
any such vessel. And even if--highly improbable thought!--the enemy
ship was faster than his own, it would still be within range of _those_
detectors when it got to wherever it was that it was going. But how
wrong Samms was!
At his first check, instead of being not over two detets away the
quarry was three and a half; at the second the distance was four and a
quarter; at the third, almost exactly five. Scowling, Samms watched the
erstwhile brilliant point of light fade into darkness. That circular
blob that he had almost seen, then, had been the space-ship, but it
had not been a sphere, as he had supposed. Instead, it had been a
tear-drop; sticking, sharp tail down, in the ground. Ultra-fast. This
was the result. But ideas had blown up under him before, they probably
would again. He resumed atomic drive and made arrangements with the
Port Admiral to rendezvous with him and the _Chicago_ at the earliest
possible time.
"What is there along that line?" he demanded of the superdreadnaught's
Chief Pilot, even before junction had been made.
"Nothing, sir, that we know of," that worthy reported, after studying
his charts.
He boarded the gigantic ship of war, and with Kinnison pored over those
same charts.
"Your best bet is Eridan, I think," Kinnison concluded finally. "Not
too near your line, but they could very easily figure that a one-day
dogleg would be a good investment. And Spaceways owns it, you know,
from core to planetary limits--the richest uranium mines in existence.
Made to order. Nobody would suspect a uranium ship. How about throwing
a globe around Eridan?"
Samms thought for minutes. "No ... not yet, at least. We don't know
enough yet."
"I know it--that's why it looks to me like a good time and place
to learn something," Kinnison argued. "We know--almost know, at
least--that a super-fast ship, carrying thionite, has just landed
there. This is the hottest lead we've had. I say englobe the planet,
declare martial law, and not let anything in or out until we find it.
Somebody there must know something, a lot more than we do. I say hunt
him out and make him talk."
"You're just popping off, Rod. You know as well as I do that nabbing a
few of the small fry isn't enough. We can't move openly until we can
strike high."
"I suppose not," Kinnison grumbled. "But we know so _damned_ little,
Virge!"
"Little enough," Samms agreed. "Of the three main divisions, only
the political aspect is at all clear. In the drug division, we know
where thionite comes from and where it is processed, and Eridan
may be--probably is--another link. On the other end, we know a lot
of peddlers and a few middlemen--nobody higher. We have no actual
knowledge whatever as to who the higher-ups are or how they work; and
it's the bosses we want. Concerning the pirates, we know even less.
'Murgatroyd' may be no more a man's name than 'zwilnik' is...."
"Before you get too far away from the subject, what are you going to do
about Eridan?"
"Nothing, for the moment, would be best, I believe. However, Knobos
and DalNalten should switch their attention from Spaceways' passenger
liners to the uranium ships from Eridan to all three of the inner
planets. Check?"
"Check. Particularly since it explains so beautifully the
merry-go-round they have been on so long--chasing the same packages of
dope backwards and forwards so many times that the corners of the boxes
got worn round. We've got to get the top men, and they're smart. Which
reminds me--Morgan as Big Boss does not square up with the Morgan that
you and Fairchild smacked down so easily when he tried to investigate
the Hill. A loud-mouthed, chiseling politician might have a lock-box
full of documentary evidence about party bosses and power deals and
chorus girls and Martian tekkyl coats, but the man we're after very
definitely would not."
"You're telling me?" This point was such a sore one that Samms relapsed
into idiom. "The boys should have cracked that box a week ago, but they
struck a knot. I'll see if they know anything yet. Tune in, Rod. Ray!"
He Lensed a thought at his cousin.
"Yes, Virge?"
"Have you got a spy-ray into that lock-box yet?"
"Glad you called. Yes, last night. Empty. Empty as a sub-deb's
skull--except for an atomic-powered gimmick that it took Bergenholm's
whole laboratory almost a week to neutralize."
"I see. Thanks. Off." Samms turned to Kinnison. "Well?"
"Nice. A mighty smart operator." Kinnison gave credit ungrudgingly.
"Now I'll buy your picture--what a man! But now--and I've got my ears
pinned back--what was it you started to say about pirates?"
"Just that we have very little to go on, except for the kind of stuff
they seem to like best, and the fact that even armed escorts have not
been able to protect certain types of shipments of late. The escorts,
too, have disappeared. But with these facts as bases, it seems to me
that we could arrange something, perhaps like this...."
* * * * *
A fast, sleek freighter and a heavy battle-cruiser bored steadily
through the inter-stellar void. The merchantman carried a fabulously
valuable cargo: not bullion or jewels or plate of price, but things
literally above price--machine tools of highest precision, delicate
optical and electrical instruments, fine watches and chronometers. She
also carried First Lensman Virgil Samms.
And aboard the war-ship there was Roderick Kinnison; for the first time
in history a mere battle-cruiser bore a Port Admiral's flag.
As far as the detectors of those two ships could reach, space was
empty of man-made craft; but the two Lensmen knew that they were not
alone. One and one-half detets away, loafing along at the freighter's
speed and paralleling her course, in a hemispherical formation open to
the front, there flew six tremendous tear-drops; super-dreadnaughts
of whose existence no Tellurian or Colonial government had even an
inkling. They were the fastest and deadliest craft yet built by
man--the first fruits of Operation Bennett. And they, too, carried
Lensmen--Costigan, Jack Kinnison, Northrop, Dronvire of Rigel Four,
Rodebush, and Cleveland. Nor was there need of detectors: the eight
Lensmen were in as close communication as though they had been standing
in the same room.
"On your toes, men," came Samms' quiet thought. "We are about to
pass within a few light-minutes of an uninhabited solar system. No
Tellurian-type planets at all. This may be it. Tune to Kinnison on one
side and to your captains on the other. Take over, Rod."
At one instant the ether, for one full detet in every direction, was
empty. In the next, three intensely brilliant spots of detection
flashed into being, in line with the dead planet so invitingly close at
hand.
This development came as a surprise, since only two raiders had been
expected: a battleship to take care of the escort, a cruiser to take
the merchantman. The fact that the pirates had become cautious or
suspicious and had sent three super-dreadnaughts on the mission,
however, did not operate to change the Patrol's strategy; for Samms
had concluded, and Dronvire and Bergenholm and Rularion of Jupiter had
agreed, that the real commander of the expedition would be aboard the
vessel that attacked the freighter.
In the next instant, then--each Lensman saw what Roderick Kinnison
saw, in the very instant of his seeing it--six more points of hard,
white light sprang into being upon the plates of guileful freighter and
decoying cruiser.
"Jack and Mase, take the leader!" Kinnison snapped out the thought.
"Dronvire and Costigan, right wing--he's the one that's going after the
freighter. Fred and Lyman, left wing. Hipe!"
The pirate ships flashed up, filling ether and sub-ether alike with
a solid mush of interference through which no call for help could be
driven; two super-dreadnaughts against the cruiser, one against the
freighter. The former, of course, had been expected to offer more
than a token resistance. Battle cruisers of the Patrol were powerful
vessels, both on offense and defense, and it was a known and recognized
fact that the men of the Patrol were _men_. The pirate commander who
attacked the freighter, however, was a surprised pirate indeed. His
first beam, directed well forward, well ahead of the precious cargo,
should have wrought the same havoc against screens and wall-shields and
structure as a white-hot poker would against a pat of luke-warm butter.
Practically the whole nose-section, including the control room, should
have whiffed outward into space in gobbets and streamers of molten and
gaseous metal. But nothing of the sort happened--this merchantman was
_no_ push-over!
No ordinary screens protected that particular freighter and the person
of First Lensman Samms--Roderick Kinnison had very thoroughly seen to
that. In sheer mass her screen generators out-weighed her entire cargo,
heavy as that cargo was, by more than two to one. Thus the pirate's
beams stormed and struck and clawed and clung--uselessly. They did not
penetrate. And as the surprised attacker shoved his power up and up,
to his absolute ceiling of effort, the only result was to increase
the already tremendous pyrotechnic display of energies cascading in
all directions from the fiercely radiant defenses of the Tellurian
freighter.
And in a few seconds the commanding officers of the other two attacking
battleships were also surprised. The battle-cruiser's screens did not
go down, even under the combined top effort of two super-dreadnaughts!
And she did not have a beam hot enough to light a match--she must be
_all screen_! But before the startled outlaws could do anything about
the realization that they, instead of being the trappers, were in
cold fact the trapped, all three of them were surprised again--the
last surprise that any of them was ever to receive. Six mighty
tear-drops--vastly bigger, faster, more powerful than their own--were
rushing upon them, blanketing all channels of communication as
efficiently and as enthusiastically as they themselves had been doing
an instant before.
Being out simply and ruthlessly to kill, and not to capture, four of
the newcomers from Bennett polished off the cruiser's two attackers
in very short order. They simply flashed in, went inert at the four
corners of an imaginary tetrahedron, and threw everything they had--and
they had plenty. Possibly--just barely possibly--there may have been,
somewhere, a space-battle shorter than that one; but there certainly
was never one more violent.
Then the four set out after their two sister-ships and the one
remaining pirate, who was frantically devoting his every effort to the
avoidance of engagement. But with six ships, each one of which was of
vastly greater individual power than his own, at the six corners of an
octahedron of which he was the geometrical center, his ability to cut
tractor beams and to "squirt out" from between two opposed pressors did
him no good whatever. He was englobed; or, rather, to apply the correct
terminology to an operation involving so few units, he was "boxed".
To blow the one remaining raider out of the ether would have been
easy enough, but that was exactly what the Patrolmen did not want
to do. They wanted information. Wherefore each of the Patrol ships
directed a dozen or so beams upon the scintillating protective screens
of the enemy; enough so that every square yard of defensive web was
under direct attack. As rapidly as it could be done without losing
equilibrium or synchronization, the power of each beam was stepped
up until the wildly violet incandescence of the pirate screen showed
that it was hovering on the very edge of failure. Then, in the
instant, needle-beamers went furiously to work. The screen was already
loaded to its limit; no transfer of defensive energy was possible.
Thus, tremendously overloaded locally, locally it flared through the
ultra-violet into the black and went down; and the fiercely penetrant
daggers of pure force stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
The engine room went first, even though the needlers had to gnaw a
hundred-foot hole straight through the pirate craft in order to find
the vital installations. Then, enough damage done so that spy-rays
could get in, the rest of the work was done with precision and
dispatch. In a matter of seconds the pirate hulk lay helpless, and the
Patrolmen peeled her like an orange--or, rather, more like an amateur
cook very wastefully peeling a potato. Resistless knives of energy
sheared off tail-section and nose-section, top and bottom, port and
starboard sides; then slabbed off the corners of what was left, until
the control room was almost bared to space.
Then, as soon as the intrinsic velocities could possibly be matched,
board and storm! With Dronvire of Rigel Four in the lead, closely
followed by Costigan, Northrop, Kinnison the Younger, and a platoon of
armed and armored Space Marines!
Samms and the two scientists did not belong in such a melee as that
which was to come, and knew it. Kinnison the Elder did not belong,
either, but did not know it. In fact, he cursed fluently and bitterly
at having to stay out--nevertheless, out he stayed.
Dronvire, on the other hand, did not like to fight. The very thought
of actual, bodily, hand-to-hand combat revolted every fiber of his
being. In view of what the spy-ray men were reporting, however, and of
what all the Lensmen knew of pirate psychology, Dronvire had to get
into that control room first, and he had to get there _fast_. And if
he _had_ to fight, he could; and, physically, he was wonderfully well
equipped for just such activity. To his immense physical strength, the
natural concomitant of a force of gravity more than twice Earth's,
the armor which so encumbered the Tellurian battlers was a scarcely
noticeable impediment. His sense of perception, which could not be
barred by any material substance, kept him fully informed of every
development in his neighborhood. His literally incredible speed enabled
him not merely to parry a blow aimed at him, but to bash out the brains
of the would-be attacker before that blow could be more than started.
And whereas a human being can swing only one space-axe or fire only two
ray-guns at a time, the Rigellian plunged through space toward what
was left of the pirate vessel, swinging not one or two space-axes, but
four; each held in a lithe and supple, but immensely strong, tentacular
"hand".
Why axes? Why not Lewistons, or rifles, or pistols? Because the space
armor of that day could withstand almost indefinitely the output of two
or three hand-held projectors; because the resistance of its defensive
fields varied directly as the cube of the velocity of any material
projectile encountering them. Thus, and strangely enough, the advance
of science had forced the re-adoption of that long-extinct weapon.
Most of the pirates had died, of course, during the dismemberment of
their ship. Many more had been picked off by the needle-beam gunners.
In the control room, however, there was a platoon of elite guards,
clustered so closely about the commander and his officers that needles
could not be used; a group that would have to be wiped out by hand.
If the attack had come by way of the only doorway, so that the pirates
could have concentrated their weapons upon one or two Patrolmen, the
commander might have had time enough to do what he was under compulsion
to do. But while the Patrolmen were still in space a plane of force
sheared off the entire side of the room, a tractor beam jerked the
detached wall away, and the attackers floated in en masse.
Weightless combat is not at all like any form of gymnastics known to
us ground-grippers. It is much more difficult to master, and in times
of stress the muscles revert involuntarily and embarrassingly to
their wonted gravity-field techniques. Thus the endeavors of most of
the battlers upon both sides, while earnest enough and deadly enough
of intent, were almost comically unproductive of result. In a matter
of seconds frantically-struggling figures were floating from wall to
ceiling to wall to floor; striking wildly, darting backward from the
violence of their own fierce swings.
The Tellurian Lensmen, however, had had more practice and remembered
their lessons better. Jack Kinnison, soaring into the room, grabbed
the first solid thing he could reach; a post. Pulling himself down to
the floor, he braced both feet, sighted past the nearest foeman, swung
his axe, and gave a tremendous shove. Such was his timing that in the
instant of maximum effort the beak of his atrociously effective weapon
encountered the pirate's helmet--and that was that. He wrenched his axe
free and shoved the corpse away in such a direction that the reaction
would send him against a wall at the floor line, in position to repeat
the maneuver.
Since Mason Northrop was heavier and stronger than his friend, his
technique was markedly different. He dove for the chart-table, which
of course was welded to the floor. He hooked one steel-shod foot
around one of the table's legs and braced the other against its top.
Weightless but inert, it made no difference whether his position was
vertical or horizontal or anywhere between; from this point of vantage,
with his length of body and arm and axe, he could cover a lot of room.
He reached out, hooked bill of axe into belt or line-snap or angle of
armor, and pulled; and as the helplessly raging pirate floated past
him, he swung and struck. And that, too, was that.
Dronvire of Rigel Four did not rush to the attack. He had never
been and was not now either excited or angry. Indeed, it was only
empirically that he knew what anger and excitement were. He had
never been in any kind of a fight. Therefore he paused for a couple
of seconds to analyze the situation and to determine his own most
efficient method of operation. He would not have to be in physical
contact with the pirate captain to go to work on his mind, but he would
have to be closer than this and he would have to be free from physical
attack while he concentrated. He perceived what Kinnison and Costigan
and Northrop were doing, and knew why each was working in a different
fashion. He applied that knowledge to his own mass, to his own
musculature, to the length and strength of his arms--each one of which
was twice as long and ten times as strong as the trunk of an elephant.
He computed forces and leverages, actions and reactions, points of
application, stresses and strains.
He threw away two of his axes. The two empty arms reached out, each
curling around the neck of a pirate. Two axes flashed, grazing each
pinioning arm so nearly that it seemed incredible that the sharp
edges did not shear away the Rigellian's own armor. Two heads floated
away from two bodies and Dronvire reached for two more. And two--and
two--and two. Calm and dispassionate, but not wasting a motion or a
millisecond, Dronvire accomplished more, in less time, than all the
Tellurians in the room.
"Costigan, Northrop, Kinnison--attend!" he launched a thought. "I
have no time to kill more of them. The commander is dying of a
self-inflicted wound and I have important work to do. See to it,
please, that these remaining creatures do not attack me while I am
doing it."
Dronvire tuned his mind to that of the pirate and probed. Although
dying, the pirate captain offered fierce resistance, but the Rigellian
was not alone. Attuned to his mind, working smoothly with it, giving
it strengths and qualities which no Rigellian ever had had or ever
would have, were the two strongest minds of Earth: that of Rod the
Rock Kinnison, with the driving force, the indomitable will, the
transcendent urge of all human heredity; and that of Virgil Samms, with
all that had made him First Lensman.
"TELL!" that terrific triple mind demanded, with a force which simply
could not be denied. "WHERE ARE YOU FROM? Resistance is useless; yours
or that of those whom you serve. Your bases and powers are smaller and
weaker than ours, since Spaceways is only a corporation and we are the
Galactic Patrol. TELL! WHO ARE YOUR BOSSES? TELL--TELL!"
Under that irresistible urge there appeared, foggily and without any
hint of knowledge of name or of spatial co-ordinates, an embattled
planet, very similar in a smaller way to the Patrol's own Bennett, and--
Even more foggily, but still not so blurred but that their features
were unmistakeably recognizable, the images of two men. That of
Murgatroyd, the pirate chief, completely strange to both Kinnison and
Samms; and--
Back of Murgatroyd and above him, that of--
BIG JIM TOWNE!