Space-suited complete, except for helmets, and with those ready at
hand, Kinnison and VanBuskirk sat in the tiny control room of their
lifeboat as it drifted inert through interstellar space. Kinnison
was poring over charts taken from the _Brittania's_ pilot room; the
sergeant gazed idly into a detector plate.
"No clear ether yet, I don't suppose," the captain remarked, as he
rolled up a chart and tossed it aside.
"No let-up for a second; they're not taking any chances at all. Found
out where we are? Alsakan ought to be hereabouts somewhere, hadn't it?"
"I've got our coördinate roughly. Alsakan would be fairly close for
a ship, but it's out of the question for us. Nothing much inhabited
around here, either, apparently; to say nothing of being civilized.
Scarcely one to the block. Don't think I've been out here before. Have
you?"
"Off my beat entirely. How long do you figure it'll be before it's
safe for us to blast off?"
"Can't start blasting until your plates are clear. Anything we can
detect can detect us as soon as we start putting out power."
"We may be in for a spell of waiting then----" VanBuskirk broke off
suddenly and his tone changed to one of tense excitement. "Great blasts
of fire! Look at that!"
"Blinding blue blazes!" Kinnison exclaimed, staring into the plate.
"With all macro-universal space and all the time in eternity to play
around in, the blind god of chance had to bring her back here and now!"
For there, right in their laps, not a hundred miles away, lay the
_Brittania_ and her two pirate captors!
"Better go free, hadn't we?" whispered VanBuskirk.
"Daren't!" grunted Kinnison. "At this range they'd spot us in a split
second. Acting like a hunk of loose metal's our only chance. We'll be
able to dodge any flying chunks, I think. There she goes!"
From their coign of vantage the two patrolmen saw their gallant ship's
terrific end, saw the one pirate vessel suffer collision with the
flying fragment, saw the other escape inertialess, saw her disappear.
The inert pirate vessel had now almost exactly the same velocity as the
lifeboat, both in speed and in direction; only very slowly were the
large craft and the small approaching each other. Kinnison stood rigid,
staring into his plate, his nervous hands grasping the switches whose
closing, at the first sign of detection, would render them inertialess
and would pour full blast into their driving projectors. But minute
after minute passed and nothing happened.
"Why don't they do something?" he burst out, finally. "They know we're
here. There isn't a detector made that could be badly enough out of
order to miss us at this distance. Why, they can _see_ us from there,
with no detectors at all!"
"Asleep, unconscious, or dead," VanBuskirk diagnosed. "And they
certainly are not asleep. And believe me, Kim, that ship was nudged.
It's quite possible that she was hit hard enough to lay out most of
her crew cold--anyway enough of them to put her out of control. And
say, it's a practical certainty that she has a standard emergency inlet
port. How about it, huh?"
* * * * *
Kinnison's mind leaped eagerly at the daring suggestion of his
subordinate, but he did not reply at once. Their first, their _only_
duty, concerned the safety of two spools of tape. But if the lifeboat
lay there inert until the pirates regained control of their craft,
detection and capture were certain. The same fate was as certain
should they attempt flight with all near-by space so full of enemy
fliers. Therefore, hare-brained though it appeared at first glance,
VanBuskirk's wild idea was actually the safest course!
"All right, Bus, we'll try it. We'll take a chance on going free and
using a tenth of a dyne of drive for a hundredth of a second. Get into
the lock with your magnets."
The lifeboat flashed against the pirate's armored side and the
sergeant, by deftly manipulating his two small hand magnets, worked it
rapidly along the steel plating toward the driving jets. There, in the
conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors, was
indeed the emergency inlet port, with its galactic-standard controls.
[Illustration: _There--in the conventional location just forward of
the main driving projectors--was the emergency inlet port._]
In a few minutes the two warriors were inside, dashing toward the
control room. There Kinnison glanced at the board and heaved a sigh of
relief.
"Fine! Same type as the one we studied. Same race, too," he went on,
eyeing the motionless forms scattered about the floor. Seizing one of
the bodies, he propped it against a panel, thus obscuring a multiple
lens.
"That's the eye overlooking the control room," he explained
unnecessarily. "We can't cut their headquarters visibeams without
creating suspicion, but we don't want them looking around in here until
after we have done a little stage setting for them."
"But they'll get suspicious anyway when we go free," VanBuskirk
protested.
"Sure, but we'll arrange for that later. First thing we've got to do is
to make sure that all the crew, except possibly one or two in here, are
really dead. Don't beam unless you have to; we want to make it look as
though everybody got killed or fatally injured in the crash."
A complete tour of the vessel, with a grim and distasteful
accompaniment, was made. Not all of the pirates were dead, or even
disabled; but, unarmored as they were and taken completely by surprise,
the survivors could offer but little resistance. A cargo port was
opened and the _Brittania's_ lifeboat was drawn inside. Then back to
the control room, where Kinnison picked up another body and strode to
the main panels.
"This fellow," he announced, "was hurt badly, but managed to get to
the board. He threw in the free switch, like this, and then full-blast
drive, so. Then he pulled himself over to the steering globe and tried
to lay the pointers back toward headquarters, but couldn't quite make
it. He died with the course set right there. Not exactly toward the
solar system, you notice--that would be too much of a coincidence--but
close enough to help a lot. His bracelet got caught in the guard, like
this. There is clear evidence as to exactly what happened. Now we'll
get out of range of that eye, and let the body that's covering it float
away naturally."
"Now what?" asked VanBuskirk, after the two had hidden themselves.
"Nothing whatever until we have to," was the reply. "Wish we could
go on like this for a couple of weeks, but there's not a chance.
Headquarters will get curious pretty quick as to why we're shoving off."
* * * * *
Even as he spoke a furious burst of noise erupted from the
communicator; a noise which meant:
"Vessel F47U596! Where are you going, and why? Report!"
At that brusque command one of the still forms struggled weakly to its
knees and tried to frame words, but fell back dead.
"Perfect!" Kinnison breathed into VanBuskirk's ear. "Couldn't have been
better. Now they'll probably take their time about rounding us up.
Listen, here comes some more."
The communicator was again sending. "See if you can get a direction on
their transmitter!"
"If there are any survivors able to report, do so at once!" Kinnison
understood the dynamic cone to say. Then the voice moderating, as
though the speaker had turned from his microphone to someone near-by,
it went on, "No one answers, sir. This, you know, is the ship that was
lying closest to the new patrol ship when she exploded; so close that
her navigator did not have time to go free before collision with the
débris. The crew were apparently all killed or incapacitated by the
shock."
"If any of the officers survive have them brought in for trial," a more
distant voice commanded, savagely. "Boskone has no use for bunglers
except to serve as examples. Have the ship seized and returned here as
soon as possible."
"Could you trace it, Bus?" Kinnison demanded. "Even one line on their
headquarters would be mighty useful."
"No, it came in scrambled--couldn't separate it from the rest of the
static out there. Now what?"
"Now we eat and sleep. Particularly and most emphatically, we sleep."
"Watches?"
"No need; I'll be awakened in plenty of time if anything happens. My
Lens, you know."
They ate ravenously and slept prodigiously; then ate and slept again.
Rested and refreshed, they studied charts, but VanBuskirk's mind was
very evidently not upon the maps before them.
"You understand that jargon, and it doesn't even sound like a language
to me," he pondered. "It's the Lens, of course. Maybe it's something
that shouldn't be talked about?"
"No secret--not among us, at least," Kinnison assured him. "The Lens
receives as pure thought any pattern of force which represents, or is
in any way connected with, thought. My brain receives this thought in
English, since that is my native language. At the same time my ears
are practically out of circuit, so that I actually hear the English
language instead of whatever noise is being made. I do not hear the
foreign sounds at all. Therefore, I haven't the slightest idea what the
pirates' language sounds like, since I have never heard any of it.
"Conversely, when I want to talk to some one who doesn't know any
language I do, I simply think into the Lens and direct its force at
him. He thinks I'm talking to him in his own mother tongue. Thus, you
are hearing me now in perfect Valerian Dutch, even though you know
that I can speak only a dozen or so words of it, and those with a vile
American accent. Also, you are hearing it in my voice, even though you
know I am actually not saying a word, since you can see that my mouth
is wide open and that neither my lips, tongue, nor vocal cords are
moving. If you were a Frenchman you would be hearing this in French;
or, if you were a Manarkan and couldn't talk at all, you would be
getting it as regular Manarkan telepathy."
"Oh--I see--I think," the astounded Dutchman gulped. "Then why couldn't
you talk back to them through their phones?"
"Because the Lens, although a mighty fine and versatile thing, is not
omnipotent," Kinnison replied, dryly. "It sends out only thought;
and thought waves, lying below the level of the ether, cannot affect
a microphone. The microphone, not being itself intelligent, cannot
receive thought. Of course, I can broadcast a thought--everybody does;
more or less--but even with the full amplification of the Lens the
range is very limited. In Lens-to-Lens communication we can cover real
distances, but without a Lens at the other end I can cover only a few
thousand kilometers. Of course, power increases with practice, and I'm
not very good at it yet."
"You can receive a thought----Everybody broadcasts----Then you can
read minds?" VanBuskirk stated, rather than asked.
"When I so will it, yes. That was what I was doing while we were
mopping up. I demanded the galactic coördinates of their base from
every one of them alive, but none of them knew them. I got a lot of
pictures and descriptions of the buildings, layout, arrangements and
personnel of the base, but not a hint as to its location in space. The
navigators were all dead, and not even the Arisians understand death.
But that's getting pretty deeply into philosophy and it's time to eat
again. Let's go!"
* * * * *
Days passed uneventfully, but finally the communicator again began to
talk. Two pirate ships were closing in upon the supposedly derelict
cruiser, discussing with each other the exact point of convergence of
the three courses.
"I was hoping that we'd be able to communicate with base before they
caught up with us," Kinnison remarked. "But I guess it's no dice--the
ether's as full of interference as ever. They're a suspicious bunch,
and they aren't going to let us get away with a single thing if
they can help it. You've got that duplicate of their communications
unscrambler built?"
"Yes. That was it you just listened to. I built it out of our own
stuff, and I've gone over the whole ship with a cleaner. As far as
I can see there isn't a trace, not even a fingerprint, to show that
anybody except her own crew has ever been aboard."
"Good work! This course takes us right through a planetary system in
a few minutes and we'll have to unload there. Let's see. This chart
marks planets two and three as inhabited, but with a red reference
number, twenty-seven. That means practically unexplored and unknown. No
patrol representation or connection--no commerce--state of civilization
unknown--visited only once, in the Third Galactic Survey. That was
in the days of the semi-inert drive, when it took years to cross the
galaxy. Not so good, apparently--but maybe all the better for us, at
that. Anyway, it's a forced landing, so get ready to shove off."
They boarded their lifeboat, placed it in the cargo lock, opened
the outer port upon its automatic block, and waited. At their awful
galactic speed the diameter of a solar system would be traversed in
such a small fraction of a second that observation would be impossible,
to say nothing of computation. They would have to act first and compute
later.
They flashed into the strange system. A planet loomed terrifyingly
close--at their frightful velocity almost invisible even upon their
ultra-vision plates. The lifeboat shot out, becoming inert as it passed
the screen. The cargo port swung shut. Luck had been with them; the
planet was scarcely a million miles away. While VanBuskirk drove toward
it, Kinnison made hasty observations.
"Could have been better--but could have been a lot worse," he reported.
"This is Planet 4. Uninhabited, which is very good. Three, though, is
clear over across the Sun, and Two isn't any too close for a space-sun
flight--better than eighty million miles. Easy enough as far as
distance goes--we've all made longer hops in our suits--but we'll be
open to detection for at least twenty minutes. Can't be helped, though.
Here we are!"
"Going to land her free, huh?" VanBuskirk whistled. "What a chance!"
"It'd be a bigger one to take the time to land her inert. Her power
will hold--I hope. We'll inert her and match velocities with her when
we come back. We'll have more time then."
* * * * *
The lifeboat stopped instantaneously, in a free landing, upon the
uninhabited, desolate, rocky soil of the strange world. Without a word
the two men leaped out, carrying fully packed knapsacks. A portable
projector was then dragged out and its fierce beam directed into the
base of the hill beside which they had landed. A cavern was quickly
made, and while its glassy walls were still smoking-hot the lifeboat
was driven within it. With their DeLameters the two wayfarers then
undercut the hill, so that a great slide of soil and rock obliterated
every sign of the visit. Kinnison and VanBuskirk could find their
vessel again, from their accurately taken bearings; but, they hoped, no
one else could.
[Illustration: _With their DeLameters they undercut the hill--so that
a great slide of soil and rock obliterated every sign of their visit._]
Then, still without a word, the two adventurers flashed upward. The
atmosphere of the planet, tenuous and cold though it was, nevertheless,
so sorely impeded their progress, that minutes of precious time
were required for the driving projectors of their suits to force
them through its thin layer. Eventually, however, they were in
interplanetary space and were flying at quadruple the speed of light.
Then VanBuskirk spoke.
"Landing the boat, hiding it, and this trip are the danger spots. Heard
anything yet?"
"No, and I don't believe we will. I think probably we've lost them
completely. Won't know definitely, though, until after they catch the
ship, and that won't be for ten minutes yet. We'll be landed by then."
A world now loomed beneath them, a pleasant, Earthly-appearing world of
scattered clouds, green forests, rolling plains, wooded and snow-capped
mountain ranges, and rolling oceans. Here and there were to be seen
what looked like cities, but Kinnison gave them a wide berth, electing
to land upon an open meadow in the shelter of a towering black and
glassy cliff.
"Ah, just in time; they're beginning to talk," Kinnison announced.
"Unimportant stuff yet, opening the ship and so on. I'll relay the
talk as nearly verbatim as possible when it gets interesting." He fell
silent, then went on in a singsong tone, as though he were reciting
from memory, which, in effect, he was:
"'Captains of ships P4J263 and EQ769B47 calling Helmuth! We have
stopped and have boarded the F47U569. Everything is in order and as
deduced and reported by your observers. Every one aboard is dead. They
did not all die at the same time, but they all died from the effects of
the collision. There is no trace of outside interference and all the
personnel are accounted for.'
"'Helmuth, speaking for Boskone. Your report is inconclusive. Search
the ship minutely for tracks, prints, scratches. Note any missing
supplies or misplaced items of equipment. Study carefully all
mechanisms, particularly converters and communicators, for signs of
tampering or dismantling.'
"Whew!" whistled Kinnison. "They'll find where you took that
communicator apart, Bus, just as sure as hell's a man-trap!"
"No, they won't," declared VanBuskirk as positively. "I did it with
rubber-nosed pliers, and if I left a scratch or a scar or a print on it
I'll eat it, tubes and all!"
A pause.
"'We have studied everything most carefully, O Helmuth, and find no
trace of tampering or visit.'
"Helmuth again: 'Your report is still inconclusive. Whoever did what
has been done is probably a Lensman, and certainly has _brains_. Give
me the present recorded serial number of all port openings, and the
exact number of times you have opened each port.'
"Ouch!" groaned Kinnison. "If that means what I think it does, all
hell's out for noon. Did you see any numbering recorders on those
ports? I didn't. Of course, neither of us thought of such a thing. Shut
up, here comes some more stuff.
"'Port-opening recorder serial numbers are as follows.' They don't mean
a thing to us. 'We have opened the emergency inlet port once and the
starboard lock twice. No other port at all.'
"And here's Helmuth again: 'Ah, as I thought. The emergency port was
opened once by outsiders, and the starboard cargo port twice. The
Lensman came aboard, headed the ship toward Sol, took his lifeboat
aboard, listened to us, and departed at his leisure. And this in the
very midst of our fleet, the entire personnel of which was supposed to
be looking for him! How supposedly intelligent spacemen could be guilty
of such utter and indefensive stupidity?'
"He's tellin' 'em plenty, Bus, but there's no use repeating it. The
tone can't be reproduced, and it's simply taking the hide right off
their backs. Here's some more: 'General broadcast! Ship F47U596 in its
supposedly derelict condition flew from the point of destruction of
the patrol ship, on course longitude three five one point two seven
degrees, latitude five point two three degrees, distance twenty-four
thousand seven hundred parsecs. Cancel all previous orders and
investigate.' No use repeating it, Bus, he's simply giving directions
for scouring our whole line of flight. Fading out--they're going on,
or back. This outfit, of course, is good for only the closest kind of
close-up work."
"And we're out of the frying pan into the fire, huh?"
"Oh, no; we're a lot better off than we were. We're on a planet and not
using any power that they can trace. Also, they've got to cover so much
territory that they can't comb it very fine, and that gives the rest
of the fellows a break. Furthermore----"
* * * * *
A crushing weight descended upon his back, and the two found themselves
fighting for their lives. From the bare, supposedly safe rock face
of the cliff there had emerged rope-tentacled monstrosities in a
ravenously attacking swarm. In the raving blasts of DeLameters hundreds
of the gargoyle horde vanished in vivid flashes of radiance, but on
they came, by thousands and, it seemed, by millions, dashing madly
toward them.
Eventually, the batteries energizing the projectors became exhausted.
Then flailing coil met shearing steel, fierce-driven parrot beaks
clanged against space-tempered armor, bulbous heads pulped under
hard-swung axes; but not for the fractional second necessary for
inertialess flight could the two patrolmen win clear. Then Kinnison
sent out his S O S.
"A Lensman calling help! A Lensman calling help!" he broadcast with the
full power of mind and Lens.
Immediately a high, girlish voice poured into his brain: "Coming,
wearer of the Lens! Coming at speed to the cliff of the Catlats. Hold
until I come! I arrive in thirty----"
Thirty what? What possible intelligible relative measure of that
unknown and unknowable concept, time, can be conveyed by thought alone?
"Keep slugging, Bus!" Kinnison panted. "Help is on the way. A local
cop--voice sounds like a woman--will be here in thirty somethings.
Don't know whether it's thirty minutes or thirty days; but we'll still
be here."
"Maybe so and maybe not," grunted the Dutchman. "Something's coming
besides help. Look up and see if you see what I think I do."
Kinnison did. Through the air from the top of the cliff there was
hurtling downward toward them a veritable dragon: a nightmare's horror
of hideously reptilian head, of leathern wings, of viciously fanged
jaws, of frightfully taloned feet, of multiple knotty arms, of long,
sinuous, heavily scaled serpent's body. In fleeting glimpses through
the writhing tentacles of his opponents Kinnison perceived, little
by little, the full picture of that unbelievable monstrosity; and,
accustomed as he was to the outlandish denizens of worlds even yet
scarcely known to man, his very senses reeled at the sight.
* * * * *
As the quasi-reptilian organism descended, the cliff dwellers went mad.
Their attack upon the two patrolmen, already vicious, became insanely
frantic. Abandoning the gigantic Dutchman entirely, every Catlat within
reach threw himself upon Kinnison and so enwrapped the Lensman's head,
arms, and torso that he could scarcely move a muscle. Then entwining
captors and helpless man moved slowly toward the largest of the
openings in the cliff's obsidian face.
Upon that slowly moving mélange VanBuskirk hurled himself, deadly space
ax swinging. But, hew and smite as he would, he could neither free his
chief from the grisly horde enveloping him nor impede, measurably, that
horde's progress toward its goal. However, he could and did cleave away
the comparatively few cables confining Kinnison's legs.
"Clamp a leg lock around my waist, Kim," he directed, the flashing
thought in no whit interfering with his prodigious ax play, "and as
soon as I get a chance, before the real tussle comes, I'll couple us
together with all the belt snaps I can reach. Wherever we're going
we're going together! Wonder why they haven't ganged up on me, too, and
what that lizard is doing? Been too busy to look, but thought he'd have
been on my back before this."
"He won't be on your back. That's Worsel, the lad who answered my call.
I told you his voice was funny? They can't talk or hear--use telepathy,
like the Manarkans. He's cleaning them out in great shape. If you can
hold me for three minutes, he'll have the lot of them whipped."
"I can hold you for three minutes against all the vermin between here
and Andromeda," VanBuskirk declared. "There, I've got four snaps on
you."
"Not too tough, Bus," Kinnison cautioned. "Leave enough slack so that
you can cut me loose if you have to. Remember that the spools are more
important than any one of us. Once inside that cliff we'll all be
washed up--even Worsel can't help us there--so drop me rather than go
in yourself."
"Um," grunted the Dutchman, non-committally. "There, I've tossed my
spool out onto the ground. Tell Worsel that if they get us he is to
pick it up and carry on. We'll go ahead with yours, inside the cliff if
necessary."
"I said cut me loose if you can't hold me!" Kinnison snapped, "and I
meant it. That's an official order. Remember it!"
"Official order be damned!" snorted VanBuskirk, still plying his
ponderous mace. "They won't get you into that hole without breaking me
in two, and that will be a job of breaking in anybody's language. Now
shut your pan," he concluded grimly. "We're here, and I'm going to be
too busy, even to think, very shortly."
He spoke truly. He had already selected his point of resistance, and as
he reached it he thrust the head of his mace into the crack behind the
open trap-door, jammed its shaft into the shoulder socket of his armor,
set blocky legs and Herculean arms against the side of the cliff,
arched his mighty back, and held. And the surprised Catlats, now inside
the gloomy fastness of their tunnel, thrust anchoring tentacles in the
wall and pulled harder, ever harder.
Under the terrific stress Kinnison's heavy armor creaked as its
air-tight joints accommodated themselves to their new and unusual
positions. That armor, of space-tempered alloy, would, of course, not
give way--but what of its human anchor?
* * * * *
Well it was for Kimball Kinnison that day, and well for our present
civilization, that the _Brittania's_ quartermaster selected Peter
VanBuskirk for the Lensman's mate; for death, inevitable and horrible,
resided within that cliff, and no human frame of Earthly upbringing,
however armored, could have borne, for even a fraction of a second, the
violence of the Catlats' pull.
But Peter VanBuskirk, although of Earthly Dutch ancestry, had been
born and reared upon the planet Valeria, and that massive planet's
gravity--over two and one half times Earth's--had given him a physique
and a strength almost inconceivable to us life-long dwellers upon
small, green Terra. His head, as has been said, towered seventy-eight
inches above the ground; but at that he appeared squatty because of his
enormous spread of shoulder and his startling girth. His bones were
elephantine--they had to be, to furnish adequate support and leverage
for the incredible masses of muscle overlaying and surrounding them.
But even VanBuskirk's Valerian strength was now being taxed to the
uttermost.
The anchoring chains hummed and snarled as the clamps bit into the
rings. Muscles writhed and knotted; tendons stretched and threatened
to snap; sweat rolled down his mighty back. His jaws locked in agony
and his eyes started from their sockets with the effort; but still
VanBuskirk held.
"Cut me loose!" commanded Kinnison at last. "Even you can't take much
more of that. No use letting them break your back. _Cut_, I tell you. I
said _cut_, you big, dumb, Valerian ape!"
But if VanBuskirk heard or felt the savagely voiced commands of
his chief, he gave no heed. Straining to the very ultimate fiber
of his being, exerting every iota of loyal mind and every atom of
Brobdingnagian frame, grimly, tenaciously, stubbornly the gigantic
Dutchman held.
Held while Worsel of Velantia, that grotesquely hideous, that
fantastically reptilian ally, plowed toward the two patrolmen through
the horde of Catlats; a veritable tornado of rending fang and shearing
talon, of beating wing and crushing snout, of mailed hand and trenchant
tail.
Held while that demon incarnate drove closer and closer, hurling entire
Catlats and numberless dismembered fragments of Catlats to the four
winds as he came.
Held while the raging tumult, whose center was Worsel, swept over his
rigid body like an ocean wave breaking over an immovable rock.
Held until Worsel's snakelike body, a supple and sentient cable of
living steel, tipped with its double-edged, razor-keen, scimitarlike
sting, slipped into the tunnel beside Kinnison and wrought grisly havoc
among the Catlats close-packed there!
As the terrific tension upon him was suddenly released VanBuskirk's
own efforts hurled him away from the cliff. He fell to the ground, his
overstrained muscles twitching uncontrollably, and on top of him fell
the fettered Lensman. Kinnison, his hands now free, unfastened the
clamps linking his armor to that of VanBuskirk and whirled to confront
the foe. But the fighting was over. The Catlats had had enough of
Worsel of Velantia; and, shrieking in baffled rage, the last of them
were disappearing into their caves. He turned back to VanBuskirk, who
was getting shakily to his feet.
"Thanks a lot, Worsel; we were just about to run out of time----"
VanBuskirk began, only to be silenced by an insistent thought from the
grotesque stranger.
"Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you cannot screen your
minds!" came the urgent mental commands. "These Catlats are a very
minor pest of this planet Delgon. There are others worse by far.
Fortunately, your thoughts are upon a frequency never used here--if
I had not been so very close to you I would not have heard you at
all--but should the Overlords have a listener upon that band, your
unshielded thinking may already have done irreparable harm. Follow me.
I will slow my speed to yours, but hurry all possible!"
[Illustration: _"Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you
cannot screen your mind," came the mental command._]
"You tell 'im, chief," VanBuskirk said, and fell silent; his mind as
nearly a perfect blank as his iron will could make it.
"This is a screened thought, through my Lens," Kinnison took up the
conversation. "You don't need to slow down on our account. We can
develop any speed you wish. Lead on!"
* * * * *
The Velantian leaped into the air and flashed away in headlong
flight. Much to his surprise, the two human beings kept up with him
effortlessly upon their inertialess drives, and after a moment Kinnison
directed another thought.
"If time is an object, Worsel, know that my companion and I can carry
you anywhere you wish to go at a speed hundreds of times greater than
this that we are using," he vouchsafed.
It developed that time was of the utmost possible importance and the
three closed in. Mighty wings folded back, hands and talons gripped
armor chains, and the group, inertialess all, shot away at a pace
that Worsel of Velantia had never even imagined in his wildest dreams
of speed. Their goal, a small, featureless tent of thin sheet metal,
occupying a barren spot in a writhing, crawling expanse of lushly green
jungle, was reached in a space of minutes. Once inside, Worsel sealed
the opening and turned to his armored guests.
"We can now think freely in open converse. This wall is the carrier of
a screen through which no thought can make its way."
"This world you call by a name I have interpreted as Delgon," Kinnison
began, slowly. "You are a native of Velantia, a planet now beyond the
Sun. Therefore, I assumed that you were taking us to your space ship.
Where is that ship?"
"I have no ship," the Velantian replied, composedly, "nor have I need
of one. For the remainder of my life--which is now to be measured in a
few of your hours--this tent is my only----"
"No ship!" VanBuskirk broke in. "I hope we won't have to stay on this
God-forsaken planet forever--and I'm not very keen on going much
farther in that lifeboat, either."
"We may not have to do either of those things," Kinnison reassured his
sergeant. "Worsel comes of a long-lived tribe, and the fact that he
thinks his enemies are going to get him in a few hours doesn't make it
true, by any means. There are three of us to reckon with now. Also,
when we need a space ship we'll get one, if we have to build it. Now,
let's find out what this is all about. Worsel, start at the beginning
and don't skip a thing. Between us we can surely find a way out, for
all of us."
* * * * *
Then the Velantian told his story. There was much repetition, much
roundabout thinking, as some of the concepts were so bizarre as to defy
transmission, but finally the Earthman had a fairly complete picture of
the situation within that strange solar system.
The inhabitants of Delgon were bad, being characterized by a type and
a depth of depravity impossible for a mind of Earth to visualize. Not
only were the Delgonians enemies of the Velantians in the ordinary
sense of the word; not only were they pirates and robbers; not only
were they their masters, taking them both as slaves and as food
cattle; but there was something more, something deeper and worse,
something only partially transmissible from mind to mind--a horribly
and repulsively Saturnalian type of mental and intellectual, as well as
biological, parasitism. This relationship had gone on for ages.
Finally, however, a thought-screen had been devised, behind which
Velantia developed a high science of her own. The students of this
science lived with but one purpose in life: to free Velantia from the
tyranny of the Overlords of Delgon. Each student, as he reached the
zenith of his mental power, went to Delgon, to study and if possible
destroy the tyrants. And after disembarking upon the soil of that
dread planet no Velantian, whether student or scientist or private
adventurer, had ever returned to Velantia.
"But why don't you lay a complaint against them before the council?"
demanded VanBuskirk. "They'd straighten things out in a hurry."
"We have not heretofore known, save by the most unreliable and
roundabout reports, that such an organization as your Galactic Patrol
really exists," the Velantian replied, obliquely. "Nevertheless, many
years since, we launched a space ship toward its nearest reputed base.
However, since that trip requires three normal lifetimes, with deadly
peril in every moment, it will be a miracle if the ship ever completes
it.
"Furthermore, even if the ship should reach its destination, our
complaint will probably not even be considered, because we have not
a single shred of real evidence with which to support it. No living
Velantian has ever seen a Delgonian, nor can any one testify to the
truth of anything I have told you. While we believe that that is the
true condition of affairs, our belief is based, not upon evidence
admissible in a court of law, but upon deductions from occasional
thoughts radiated from this planet. Nor were these thoughts alike in
tenor----"
"Skip that for a minute--we'll take the picture as correct," Kinnison
broke in. "Nothing you have said so far shows any necessity for you to
die in the next few hours."
"The only object in life for a trained Velantian is to liberate his
planet from the horrors of subjection to Delgon. Many such have come
here, but not one has found a workable idea; not one has either
returned to or even communicated with Velantia after starting work
here. I am a Velantian. I am here. Soon I shall open that door and get
in touch with the enemy. Since better men than I am have failed, I do
not expect to succeed. Nor shall I return to my native planet. As soon
as I start to work the Delgonians will command me to come to them. In
spite of myself I will obey that command, and very shortly thereafter I
shall die, in what fashion I do not know."
* * * * *
"Snap out of it, Worsel!" barked Kinnison, roughly. "That's the rankest
kind of defeatism, and you know it. Nobody ever got to the first check
station on that kind of fuel."
"You are talking about something now about which you know nothing
whatever." For the first time Worsel's thoughts showed passion. "Your
thoughts are idle--ignorant--vain. You know nothing whatever of the
mental power of the Delgonians."
"Maybe not--I make no claim of being a mental giant--but I do know that
mental power alone cannot overcome a definitely and positively opposed
_will_. An Arisian could probably break my will, but I'll stake my life
that no other mentality in the known universe can do it!"
"You think so, Earthling?" And a seething sphere of mental force
encompassed the Tellurian's brain. Kinnison's senses reeled at the
terrific impact; but he shook off the attack and smiled.
"Come again, Worsel. That one jarred me to the heels, but it didn't
quite ring the bell."
"You flatter me," the Velantian declared in surprise. "I could scarcely
touch your mind--could not penetrate even its outermost defenses, and
I exerted all my force. But that fact gives me hope. My mind is, of
course, inferior to theirs, but since I could not influence you at all,
even in direct contact and at full power, you may be able to resist
the minds of the Delgonians. Are you willing to hazard the stake you
mentioned a moment ago? Or rather, I ask you, by the Lens you wear, so
to hazard it--with the liberty of an entire people dependent upon the
outcome."
"Why not? The spools come first, of course--but without you our spools
would both be buried now inside the cliff of the Catlats. Fix it so
that your people will find these spools and carry on with them in case
we fail, and I'm your man. There--now tell me what we're apt to be up
against, and then let loose your dogs."
"That I cannot do. I know only that they will direct against you
mental forces such as you never even imagined. I cannot forewarn you
in any respect whatever as to what forms those forces may appear to
assume. I know, however, that I shall succumb to the first bolt of
force. Therefore, bind me with these chains before I open the shield.
Physically, I am extremely strong, as you know; therefore, be sure to
put on enough chains so that I cannot possibly break free, for if I can
break away I shall undoubtedly kill both of you."
"How come all these things here, ready to hand?" asked VanBuskirk,
as the two patrolmen so loaded the passive Velantian with chains,
manacles, handcuffs, leg irons and straps that he could not move even
his tail.
"It has been tried before, many times," Worsel replied bleakly, "but
the rescuers, being Velantians, also succumbed to the force and took
off the irons. Now I caution you, with all the power of my mind--no
matter what you see, no matter what I may command you or beg of you, no
matter how urgently you yourself may wish to do so--_do not liberate me
under any circumstances_ unless and until things appear exactly as they
do now and that door is shut. Know fully and ponder well the fact that
if you release me while that door is open it will be because you have
yielded to Delgonian force, and that not only will all three of us die,
lingeringly and horribly, but also, and worse, that our deaths will not
have been of any benefit to civilization. Do you understand? Are you
ready?"
"I understand. I am ready," thought Kinnison and VanBuskirk as one.
"Open that door."
* * * * *
Kinnison did so. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then
three-dimensional pictures began to form before their eyes--pictures
which they knew existed only in their own minds, yet which were
composed of such solid substance that they obscured from vision
everything else in the material world. At first hazy and indistinct,
the scene--for it was in no sense now a picture--became clear and
sharp. And, piling horror upon horror, sound was added to sight. And
directly before their eyes, blotting out completely even the solid
metal of the wall only a few feet distant from them, the two outlanders
saw and heard something which can be represented only vaguely by
imagining Dante's Inferno an actuality and raised to the _n_th power!
In a dull and gloomy cavern there lay, sat, and stood hordes of
_things_. These beings--the "nobility" of Delgon--had reptilian bodies,
somewhat similar to Worsel's, but they had no wings and their heads
were distinctly apish rather than crocodilian. Every greedy eye in the
vast throng was fixed upon an enormous screen which, like that in a
motion-picture theater, walled off one end of the stupendous cavern.
Slowly, shudderingly, Kinnison's mind began to take in what was
happening upon that screen. And it was really happening, Kinnison was
sure of that. This was not a picture any more than this whole scene was
an illusion. It was all an actuality--somewhere.
Upon that screen there were stretched out victims. Hundreds of these
were Velantians, more hundreds were winged Delgonians, and scores were
creatures whose like Kinnison had never seen. And all these were being
tortured; tortured to death both in fashions known to the Inquisitors
of old and ways of which even those experts had never an inkling.
Some were being twisted outrageously in three-dimensional frames.
Others were being stretched upon racks. Many were being pulled horribly
apart, chains intermittently but relentlessly extending each helpless
member. Still others were being lowered into pits of constantly
increasing temperatures or were being attacked by gradually increasing
concentrations of some foully corrosive vapor which ate away their
tissues, little by little. And, apparently the pièce de résistance of
the hellish exhibition, one luckless Velantian, in a spot of hard, cold
light, was being pressed out flat against the screen, as an insect
might be pressed between two panes of glass. Thinner and thinner he
became, under the influence of some awful, invisible force, in spite
of every exertion of inhumanely powerful muscles driving body, tail,
wings, arms, legs, and head in every frantic maneuver which grim and
imminent death could call forth.
Physically nauseated, brainsick at the atrocious visions blasting his
mind and at the screaming of the damned assailing his ears, Kinnison
strove to wrench his mind away, but was curbed savagely by Worsel.
"You _must_ stay! You _must_ pay attention!" commanded the Velantian.
"This is the first time any living being has seen so much! You _must_
help me now! They have been attacking me from the first; but, braced
by the powerful negatives in your mind, I have been able to resist and
have transmitted a truthful picture so far. But they are surprised at
my resistance and are concentrating more force. I am slipping fast. You
_must_ brace my mind! And when the picture changes--as change it must,
and soon--do not believe it. Hold fast, brothers of the Lens, for your
own lives and for the people of Velantia. There is more--and worse!"
Kinnison stayed. So did VanBuskirk, fighting with all his stubborn
Dutch mind. Revolted, outraged, nauseated as they were at the sights
and sounds, they stayed. Flinching with the victims as they were fed
into the hoppers of slowly turning mills; wincing at the unbelievable
acts of the boilers, the beaters, the scourgers, the flayers; suffering
themselves every possible and many apparently impossible nightmares.
The light in the cavern now changed to a strong, greenish-yellow glare;
and in that hard illumination it was to be seen that each dying being
was surrounded by a palely glowing aura. And now, crowning horror of
that unutterably horrible orgy of sadism resublimed, from the eyes of
each one of the monstrous audience there leaped out visible beams of
force. These beams touched the aura of the dying prisoners--touched and
clung. And as they clung the aura shrank and disappeared.
The Overlords of Delgon were actually _feeding_ upon the ebbing life
forces of their tortured, dying victims!