Worsel knew his council of scientists, as well he might, since it
developed that he himself ranked high in that select circle. True to
his promises, the largest space port of the planet was immediately
emptied of its customary personnel, which was replaced the following
morning by an entirely new group of workmen.
Nor were these replacements ordinary laborers. They were young, keen,
and highly trained, taken, to a man, from behind the thought-screens of
the scientists. It is true that they had no inkling of what they were
to do, since none of them had ever dreamed of the possibility of such
engines as they were to be called upon to construct.
But, upon the other hand, they were well versed in the fundamental
theories and operations of mathematics, and from pure mathematics to
applied mechanics is but a step. Furthermore, they had _brains_--knew
how to think logically, coherently, and effectively, and needed neither
driving nor supervision--only instruction. And best of all, practically
every one of the required mechanisms already existed, in miniature,
within the _Brittania's_ lifeboat, ready at hand for their dissection,
analysis, and enlargement. It was not lack of understanding which
was to slow up the work; it was simply that the planet did not boast
machine tools and equipment large enough or strong enough to handle the
necessarily huge and heavy parts and members required.
While the construction of this heavy machinery was being rushed
through, Kinnison and VanBuskirk devoted their efforts to the
fabrication of an ultra-sensitive receiver, tunable to the pirates'
scrambled wave bands. With their exactly detailed knowledge, and with
the cleverest technicians and the choicest equipment of Velantia at
their disposal, the set was soon completed.
Kinnison was giving its exceedingly delicate coils their final
alignment when Worsel wriggled blithely into the radio laboratory.
"Hi, Kimball Kinnison of the Lens!" he called gayly. Throwing some
twenty feet of his serpent's body in lightning loops about a convenient
pillar, he made a horizontal bar of the rest of himself and dropped
one wing tip to the floor. Then, nonchalantly upside down, he thrust
out three or four eyes and curled their stalks over the Lensman's
shoulder, the better to inspect the results of the mechanics' efforts.
Gone was the morose, pessimistic, death-haunted Worsel who had wrought
and fought beside the armored pair upon fantastically inimical Delgon.
This was a new Worsel entirely; gay, happy, carefree, and actually
frolicsome--if you can imagine a thirty-foot-long, crocodile-headed,
leather-winged python as being frolicsome!
"Hi, your royal snakeship!" Kinnison retorted in kind. "Still here,
huh? Thought you'd be back on Delgon by this time, cleaning up the rest
of that mess."
"The equipment is not ready, but there's no hurry about that." The
playful reptile unwrapped ten or twelve feet of tail from the pillar
and waved it airily about. "Their power is broken; their race is done.
You are about to try out the new receiver?"
"Yes--going out after them right now." Kinnison began deftly to
manipulate the micrometric verniers of his dials.
* * * * *
Eyes fixed upon meters and gauges, he listened--listened--increased
his power and listened again. More and more power he applied to his
apparatus, listening continually. Suddenly he stiffened, his hands
becoming rock-still. He listened, if possible even more intently than
before; and as he listened his face grew grim and granite-hard. Then
the micrometers began again, crawlingly, to move, as though he were
tracing a beam.
"Bus! Hook on the focusing beam antenna!" he snapped. "It's going to
take every milliwatt of power we've got in this hook-up to tap his
beam, but I think that I've got Helmuth direct, instead of through a
pirate-ship relay!"
Again and again he checked the readings of his dials and of the
directors of his antenna; each time noting the exact time of the
Velantian day.
"There! As soon as we get some time, Worsel, I'd like to work out these
figures with some of your astronomers. They'll give me a right line
through to Helmuth's headquarters--I hope. Some day, if I'm spared,
I'll get another!"
"What kind of news did you get?" asked VanBuskirk.
"Good and bad both," replied the Lensman. "Good in that Helmuth
doesn't believe that we stayed with his ship as long as we did. He's a
suspicious devil, you know, and is pretty well convinced that we tried
to run the same kind of a blazer on him that we did the other time.
Since he hasn't got enough ships on the job to work the whole line,
he's concentrating on the other end. That means that we've got plenty
of days left. The bad part of it is that they've got four of our boats
already and are bound to get more. Lord, how I wish I could call the
rest of them! Some of them could certainly make it here before they got
caught."
"Might I then offer a suggestion?" asked Worsel, suddenly diffident.
"Surely!" the Lensman replied in surprise. "Your ideas have never been
any kind of poppycock. Why so bashful all at once?"
"Because this one is so--ah--so peculiarly personal, since you men
regard so highly the privacy of your minds. Our two sciences, as you
have already observed, are vastly different. You are far beyond us in
mechanics, physics, chemistry, and the other applied sciences. We, on
the other hand, have delved much deeper than have you into psychology
and the other introspective studies. For that reason I know positively
that the Lens you wear is capable of enormously greater things than
you are at present able to perform. Of course, I cannot use your Lens
directly, since it is attuned to your own ego. However, if the idea
appeals to you, I could, with your consent, occupy your mind and
use your Lens to put you _en rapport_ with your fellows. I have not
volunteered the suggestion before because I know how averse your mind
is to any foreign control."
"Not necessarily to foreign control," Kinnison corrected him. "Only to
_enemy_ control. The idea of friendly control never occurred to me.
That would be an entirely different breed of cats. Go to it!"
* * * * *
Kinnison relaxed his mind completely, and that of the Velantian came
welling in, wave upon friendly, surging wave of benevolent power. And
not only--or not precisely--power. It was more than power; it was a
calm, cool, placid _certainty_, a depth and clarity of perception that
Kinnison in his most cogent moments had never dreamed a possibility.
The possessor of that mind knew things, cameo-clear in microscopic
detail, which the keenest minds of Earth could perceive only as
chaotically indistinct masses of mental light and shade, of no
recognizable pattern whatever!
"Give me the thought pattern of him with whom you wish first to
converse," came Worsel's thought, this time from deep within the
Lensman's own brain.
Kinnison felt a subtle thrill of uneasiness at that new and
ultra-strange dual personality, but thought back steadily, "Sorry--I
can't."
"Excuse me, I should have known that you cannot think in our patterns.
Think, then, of him as a person--an individual. That will give me, I
believe, sufficient data."
Into the Earthman's mind there leaped a picture of Henderson, sharp and
clear. He felt his Lens actually tingle and throb as a concentration of
vital force such as he had never known poured through his whole being
and into that almost-living creation of the Arisians, and immediately
thereafter he was in full mental communication with the chief pilot of
the ill-fated _Brittania_! And there, seated across the tiny mess table
of their lifeboat, was Thorndyke, the master technician.
Henderson came to his feet with a yell as the telepathic message
bombarded into his brain, and it required several seconds to convince
him that he was not the victim of space insanity or suffering from any
other form of hallucination. Once convinced, however, he acted. His
lifeboat shot toward far Velantia at maximum blast.
Then: "Nelson! Allerdyce! Thompson! Jenkins! Uhlenhuth! Smith!
Chatway----" Kinnison called the roll of the survivors.
Nelson, the _Brittania's_ communications officer, answered his
captain's call. So did Allerdyce, the juggling quartermaster. So did
Uhlenhuth, a technician. So did those in three other boats. Two of
these three were apparently well within the danger zone, and might get
nipped in their dash, but their crews elected without hesitation to
take the chance. Four boats, it was already known, had been captured by
the pirates. The remaining eight were either so distant as to be out of
range of even the Worsel-driven Lens, or they had been taken by pirates
who had not yet reported to Helmuth.
"Eight out of twenty," Kinnison mused. "Not so good, but it could have
been a lot worse. They might very well have taken us all by this time."
Then he turned to the Velantian, who had withdrawn his mind as soon as
its task was done. "Thanks, Worsel," he said simply. "Some of those
lads coming in have got plenty of just what it takes, and _how_ we can
use them!"
* * * * *
One by one the lifeboats of the _Brittania_ came into port, where their
crews were welcomed briefly, but feelingly, before they were put to
work. Nelson, the communications officer, among the last to arrive, was
to the Lensman particularly welcome.
"Nels, we need you badly," Kinnison informed him as soon as greetings
had been exchanged. "The pirates have a beam, carrying a peculiarly
scrambled wave that they can receive and decode through any kind of
ordinary blanketing interference, and you're the best man of us all to
study their system. Some of these Velantian scientists can probably
help you a lot on that--any race that can develop a screen against
thought figures to know more than somewhat about vibration in general.
We've got working models of the pirates' instruments, so that you can
figure out their patterns and formulas. That ought to be simple.
"When you've done that, I want you and your Velantians to design
something that will scramble all the pirates' communicator beams in
space, from here to the near rim of the galaxy. If you can fix things
so that they can't talk, any more than we can, it'll help a lot,
believe me!"
"QX, chief, we'll give it the works." And the radio man called for
tools, apparatus and electricians.
Then throughout the great space port the many Velantians and the
handful of patrolmen labored mightily, side by side, and to very
good effect indeed. Slowly, the port became ringed about by, and
studded everywhere with, monstrous mechanisms. Everywhere there were
projectors: refractory-throated demons ready to vomit forth every force
known to the expert technicians of the patrol. There were absorbers,
too, backed by their bleeder resistors, air gaps, ground rods, and
racks for discharged accumulators. There, too, were receptors and
converters for the cosmic energy which was to empower many of the
devices. There were, of course, atomic motor generators by the score,
and battery upon battery of gigantic accumulators. And Nelson's
high-powered scrambler was ready to go to work.
These machines appeared crude, rough, unfinished; for neither time
nor labor had been wasted upon nonessentials. But inside each one the
moving parts fitted with micrometric accuracy and with hair-spring
balance. All, without exception, functioned perfectly.
At Worsel's call, Kinnison climbed up out of a great beamproof pit, the
top of whose wall was practically composed of tractor-beam projectors.
Pausing only to make sure that a sticking switch on one of the
screen-dome generators had been replaced, he hurried to the heavily
armored control room, where his little force of fellow patrolmen
awaited him.
"They're coming, boys," he announced. "You all know what to do. There
are a lot more things that we could have done if we'd had more time,
but as it is we'll just go to work on them with what we've got." And
Kinnison, again all brisk captain, bent over his instruments.
In the ordinary course of events the pirate would have flashed up
to the planet with spy rays out and issuing a peremptory demand for
the planet to show a clean bill of health or to surrender instantly
such fugitives as might lately have landed upon it. But Kinnison did
not--could not--wait for that. The spy rays, he knew, would reveal the
presence of his armament; and such armament most certainly did not
belong to this planet. Therefore, the instant that the pirate ship
came within range of his detectors he acted; and forthwith everything
happened at once, with furious swiftness.
A tracer lashed out, the pilot ray of the rim battery of
extraordinarily powerful tractors. Under the urge of those beams the
inertialess ship flashed toward their center of action, which was the
geometrical center of the space port's deep rayproof pit. At the same
moment Nelson's scrambler burst into activity, a dome-screen against
cosmic-energy intake, and a full circle of super-powered attacking rays.
* * * * *
All these things occurred in the twinkling of an eye, and the vessel
was being slowed down by the atmosphere of Velantia before her startled
commander could even realize that he was being attacked. Only the
presence of automatically reacting defensive screens saved that ship
from instant destruction; but they did so save it and in seconds the
pirates' every weapon was furiously ablaze.
In vain. The defenses of that pit could take it. They were driven by
mechanisms easily able to absorb the output of any equipment mountable
upon a mobile base, and to his consternation the pirate found that his
cosmic-energy intake was at, and remained at, zero. He sent out call
after call for help, but could not make contact with any other pirate
station. Ether and subether alike were closed to him; his signals were
blanketed completely. Nor could his drivers, even though operating
at ruinous overload, move him from the geometrical center of that
incandescently flaming pit, so inconceivably rigid were the tractors'
clamps upon him.
And soon his power began to fail. His vessel, designed to operate
upon cosmic-energy intake, carried only enough accumulators for
stabilization of power flow, an amount ridiculously inadequate for a
combat as profligate of energy as this. But, strangely enough, as his
defense weakened, so lessened the power of the attack. It was no part
of the Lensman's plan to destroy this superdreadnaught of the void.
"That was one good thing about the old _Brittania_," he gritted as he
cut down, step by step, the power of his beams, "nobody could block her
off from what power she had!"
Soon the stored-up energy of the battleship was exhausted and she lay
there, quiescent. Then giant pressers went into action and she was
lifted over the wall of the pit, to settle down in an open space beside
it--open, but still under the domes of force.
Kinnison had no needle rays as yet, the time at his disposal having
been sufficient only for the construction of the absolutely essential
items of equipment. Now, while he was debating with his fellows as
to what part of the vessel to destroy in order to wipe out its crew,
the pirates themselves ended the debate. Ports yawned in the vessel's
armored side and they came out fighting.
For they were not a breed to die like rats in a trap, and they knew
that to remain inside their vessel was to die whenever and however
their captors willed. They knew also that die they must if they could
not conquer. Their surrender, even if it should be accepted, would mean
only a somewhat later death in the lethal chambers of the law. In the
open, they could at least take some of their foes with them.
Furthermore, not being men as we know men, they had nothing in common
with either human beings or Velantians. Both of them were vermin,
as they themselves were to the beings manning this surprisingly
impregnable fortress here in this waste corner of the galaxy.
Therefore, space-hardened veterans all, they fought, with the insane
ferocity and desperation of the ultimately last stand; but they did not
conquer. Instead, and to the last man, they died.
* * * * *
As soon as the battle was over, before the interference blanketing the
pirates' communicators was cut off, Kinnison went through the captured
vessel, destroying the headquarters visiplates and every automatic
sender which could transmit any kind of a message to any pirate base.
Then the interference was stopped; the domes were released; the ship
was removed from the field of operations. Then, while Thorndyke
and his reptilian aides--themselves now radio experts of no mean
attainments--busied themselves at installing a high-powered scrambler
aboard her, Kinnison and Worsel scanned space in search of more prey.
Soon they found it, more distant than the first one had been--two solar
systems away--and in an entirely different direction. Tracers and
tractors and interference and domes of force again became the order of
the day. Projectors again raved out in their incandescent might, and
soon another immense cruiser of the void lay beside her sister ship.
Another and another; then, for a long time, space was blank.
The Lensman then energized his ultra-receiver, pointing his antenna
carefully into the galactic line to Helmuth's base, as laid down
for him by the Velantian astronomers. Again, so tight and hard was
Helmuth's beam, he had to drive his apparatus so unmercifully that the
tube noise almost drowned out the signals, but again he was rewarded by
hearing faintly the voice of the pirate director of operations.
"--four vessels, all within or near one of those five solar systems,
have ceased communicating; each cessation being accompanied by a period
of blanketing interference of a pattern never before registered.
You two vessels who are receiving these orders are instructed to
investigate that region with the utmost care. Go with screens out and
everything on the trips, and with automatic recorders set on me here.
"It is not believed that the patrol has anything to do with this, as
ability has been shown transcending anything it has been known to
possess. As a working hypothesis it is assumed that one of those solar
systems, hitherto practically unexplored and unknown, is, in reality,
the seat of a highly advanced race, which perhaps has taken offense at
the attitude or conduct of our first ship to visit them. Therefore,
proceed with extreme caution, with a thorough spy-ray search at extreme
range before approaching at all. If you land, use tact and diplomacy
instead of the customary tactics. Find out whether our ships and crews
have been destroyed, or are only being held. And remember, automatic
reporters on at all times. Helmuth, speaking for Boskone--off!"
For minutes Kinnison manipulated his micrometer in vain. He could not
get another sound.
"What are you trying to get, Kim?" asked Thorndyke. "Wasn't that
enough?" The message had been re-broadcast to the minds of the others
by Worsel, as fast as it had entered the Lensman's ears.
"No, that's only half of it," Kinnison returned. "Helmuth's nobody's
fool. He's certainly trying to plot the boundaries of our interference,
and I want to see how he's coming out with it. But no dice. He's so far
away and his beam's so hard that I can't work him unless he happens to
be talking almost directly toward us. Well, it won't be long now until
we'll give him some real interference to plot. Now we'll see what we
can do about those two other ships that are heading this way. On your
toes, everybody."
* * * * *
Carefully as those two ships investigated, and sedulously, as they
sought to obey Helmuth's instructions, all their precautions amounted
to exactly nothing. As ordered, they began a spy-ray survey at extreme
range; but even at that range Kinnison's tracers were effective and
those two ships also ceased communicating in a blaze of interference.
Then recent history repeated itself. The details were changed somewhat,
since there were two vessels instead of one; but the pit was of ample
size to accommodate two ships, and the tractors could hold two as well
and as rigidly as one. The conflict was a little longer, the beaming
a little hotter and more coruscant, but the ending was the same.
Scramblers were quickly installed and Kinnison addressed his men,
already in the ships.
"Well, we're about ready to shove off again. Running away has worked
twice so far, with very good results--once in the old _Brittania_, and
once in the pirate's own ships. It should work again, if we can ring in
enough variations on the theme to keep Helmuth guessing a while longer.
Maybe, if the supply of pirate ships keeps up, we'll be able to make
Helmuth furnish us transportation all the way back to base!
"Here's the idea. We've got six ships, and there's enough of us to
drive them. Some of the younger Velantians have joined us, in spite of
the fact that I've told them the chances are against them ever getting
back. Enough of them, in fact, to make up almost full crews of us all.
But six ships isn't enough of a squadron to fight through the fleets
that Helmuth will have organized if we go in a body. So we'll spread
out radially, covering thousands of parsecs before we get halfway to
base, and broadcasting every watt of interference we can put out all
along the way, in as many different shapes and powers as our apparatus
will permit. We can't talk to each other, of course, but nothing
else can talk anywhere in the same sector of the galaxy, either,
and that will give us the edge. Each ship will be on its own, as we
were before in the boats; the big difference being that we'll be in
superdreadnaughts instead of lifeboats.
"Now, Worsel, if the pirates check up and follow the disturbance we
are going to make sure they won't bother you folks at all. In fact, if
they ever succeed in finding the center of that interference there will
be nothing there except empty space. But if they don't follow us--and
Helmuth is apt to insist upon a thorough study of this region before he
does anything else--you folks are due for an inspection; and the next
inspection will mean a real battle instead of a slaughter. The first
spy ray will reveal this stuff here. But I don't suppose you want to
hide it or destroy it?"
"We do not," the Velantian replied, positively. "Let them come, in
whatever force they care to bring. The more that attack here, the
less there will be to halt your progress. This armament represents
the best of that possessed by both your patrol and the pirates, with
improvements developed by your scientists and ours in full coöperation.
We understand thoroughly its construction, operation, and maintenance.
You may rest assured that the pirates will never levy tribute upon
us, and that any pirate visiting this system will remain in it,
permanently!"
"'At-a-snake, Worsel--long may you wiggle!" Kinnison exclaimed. Then,
more seriously, "Maybe, after this is all over, I'll see you again
sometime. If not, good-by. Good-by, all Velantia! All set, boys? Clear
ether and light landings to you all! Blast off!"
Six ships, once pirate craft, now vessels of the Galactic Patrol,
hurled themselves into and through Velantian air, into and through
interplanetary space, out into the larger, wider, more unobstructed
emptiness of the interstellar void. Six, each broadcasting with
prodigious power and volume an all-inclusive interference through which
no pirate communicator or visiray beam could possibly be driven!