Helmuth sat at his desk, thinking--thinking with all the coldly
analytical precision of which he was capable.
This Lensman was, in truth, a foeman worthy of his steel. The
cosmic-energy drive, developed by the science of a world which
the patrol did not know existed, was Boskone's one great item of
superiority. If the patrol could be kept in ignorance of that drive
the struggle would be over in a year; the culture of the iron hand
would be unchallenged throughout the galaxy. If, however, the patrol
did manage to learn the secret of power, to all intents and purposes
unlimited, the war between the two cultures might well be prolonged
indefinitely. This Lensman knew that secret and was still at large, of
that he was all too certain. Therefore, the Lensman must be destroyed.
And that brought up the Lens.
What was it? A peculiar bauble indeed, simple of ultimate quantitative
analysis, but actually impossible of duplication because of some
subtlety of intra-atomic arrangement. Also, it was of peculiar and
dire potentiality. Not a man of his force could even wear one; he had
watched several of them die horribly in attempting to do so. It must
account in some way for the outstanding ability of the Lensmen, and it
must tie in, somehow, both with Arisia and with the thought-screens.
This Lens was the one thing possessed by the patrol which his own
forces did not have. He must and would have it, for it was undoubtedly
a powerful arm. Not to be compared, of course, with their own monopoly
of cosmic energy--but that monopoly was now threatened, and seriously.
That Lensman _must be destroyed_.
But how? It was easy to say "Comb Trenco, inch by inch," but doing it
would prove a Herculean task. Suppose that the Lensman should again
escape, in that volume of so fantastically distorted media? He had
already escaped twice, in much clearer ether than Trenco's. However, if
this information should never get back to Prime Base, little harm would
be done. Ships could and would be thrown around the solarian system in
such numbers that not even a grain-of-dust meteorite could pass that
screen without detection. Nothing--nothing whatever--would be allowed
to enter that system until this whole affair had been settled. There
were other patrol bases, of course, but with the Prime Base isolated,
nothing really serious could happen. So much for the Lensman. Now about
getting the secret of the Lens.
Again, how? There was something upon Arisia, and that something was
connected in some way with the Lens and with thought--possibly also
with the new thought-screens. Whatever it was, it had mental power, of
that there was no doubt. Out of the full sphere of space, what was the
mathematical probability that the pilot of that death ship would have
set, by accident, his course so exactly upon this planet? Vanishingly
small. Treachery would not explain the facts. The pilot had been
insane when he had laid the course. As an explanation, mental force
alone seemed fantastic, but none other as yet presented itself as a
possibility. Also, it was supported by the unbelievable, the absolutely
definite refusal of Gildersleeve's normally fearless crew even to
approach the planet. It would take an unheard-of mental force so to
affect such crime-hardened veterans.
Helmuth was not one to underestimate an enemy. Was there a man beneath
that dome, save himself, of sufficient mental caliber to undertake the
now necessary mission to Arisia? There was not. He himself had the
finest mind on the planet; else that other had deposed him long since
and had sat at the control desk himself. He was sublimely confident
that no outside thought could break down _his_ definitely opposed
will--and besides, there were the thought-screens, his own personal
property as yet. Of no other will could he say the same; no other would
he trust with those screens. Of all his force, he was the only one whom
he could be _sure_ of. Therefore, he would go himself.
It has already been made clear that Helmuth was not a fool. No more
was he a coward. If he himself could best of all his force do a thing,
that thing he did, with the coldly ruthless efficiency that marked
alike his every action and his every thought.
* * * * *
How should he go? Should he accept that challenge, and take
Gildersleeve's rebellious crew of cutthroats to Arisia? No. In the
event of an outcome short of complete success, it would not do to lose
face before that band of ruffians. Moreover, the idea of such a crew
going insane behind him was not one to be relished. He would go alone.
"Wolmark, come to the center," he ordered. When that worthy appeared,
he went on, "Be seated, as this is a serious conference. I have watched
with admiration and appreciation, as well as some mild amusement, the
development of your lines of information, particularly those covering
affairs which are most distinctly not in your department. They are,
however, efficient. You already know exactly what has happened." A
definite statement this, is no wise a question.
"Yes, sir," Wolmark said quietly. He was somewhat taken aback, but not
at all abashed.
"That is the reason you are here now. I thoroughly approve of you. I am
leaving the planet for approximately twenty days, and you are the best
man in the organization to take charge in my absence."
"I suspected that you would be leaving, sir."
"I know you did. But I am now informing you, merely to make sure that
you develop no peculiar ideas in my absence, that there are at least a
few things which you do not suspect at all. That safe, for instance,"
Helmuth said, nodding toward a peculiarly shimmering globe of force
anchoring itself in air. "Even your highly efficient spy system has
not been able to learn a thing about that."
"No, sir, we have not--yet," he could not forbear adding.
"Nor will you, with any skill or force known to man. But keep on
trying; it amuses me. I know, you see, of all your attempts. But to
get on. I now say, and for your own good I advise you to believe,
that failure upon my part to return to this desk will prove highly
unfortunate for you."
"I believe that, sir. Any man of intelligence would make some such
arrangement, if he could. But sir, suppose that the Arisians----"
"If your 'if he could' implies a doubt, act upon it and learn wisdom,"
Helmuth advised him coldly. "You should know by this time that I
neither gamble nor bluff. I have made arrangements to protect myself,
both from enemies, such as the Arisians and the patrol, and from
friends, such as ambitious youngsters who are making arrangements to
supplant me. If I were not entirely confident of getting back here
safely, my dear Wolmark, I would not go."
"You misunderstood me, sir. Really, I have no idea of supplanting you."
"Not until you get a good opportunity, you mean. I understand you
thoroughly; and, as I have said before, I approve of you. Go ahead with
all your plans. I have kept at least one lap ahead of you so far, and
if the time should ever come when I can no longer do so, I shall no
longer be fit to speak for Boskone. You understand, of course, that the
most important matter now in work is the search for the Lensman, of
which the combing of Trenco and the screening of the solarian system
are only two phases."
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. I can, I think, leave matters in your hands. If anything
really serious comes up, such as a development in the Lensman case, let
me know at once. Otherwise do not call me. Take the desk." Helmuth
strode away.
He was whisked to the space port, where his special speedster awaited
him.
* * * * *
For him the trip to Arisia was neither long nor tedious. The little
racer was fully automatic, and as it tore through space he worked as
coolly and efficiently as he was wont to do at his desk. Indeed, more
so, for here he could concentrate without interruption. Many were the
matters he planned and the decisions he made, the while his portfolio
of notes grew thicker and thicker.
As he neared his destination he put away his work, actuated his special
mechanisms, and waited. When the speedster struck the barrier and
stopped, Helmuth wore a faint, hard smile; but that smile disappeared
with a snap as a thought crashed into his supposedly shielded brain.
"You are surprised that your thought-screens are not effective?" The
thought was coldly contemptuous. "Wherever, think you, originated those
screens? We did not foresee your theft of them from Velantia, but think
you that we would allow to remain at large a thing which we could not
neutralize?
"Know, fool, once and for all, that Arisia does not want and will not
tolerate uninvited visitors. Your presence is particularly distasteful,
representing as you do a despotic, degrading, and antisocial culture.
Evil and good are, of course, purely relative, so it cannot be said
in absolute terms that your culture is evil. It is, however, based
upon greed, hatred, corruption, violence, and fear. Justice it does
not recognize, nor mercy, nor truth except as a scientific utility. It
is basically opposed to liberty. Now liberty--of person, of thought,
of action--is the basis and the goal of civilization to which you are
opposed, and with which any really philosophical mind must find itself
in accord.
"Inflated overweeningly by your warped and perverted ideas, by your
momentary success in dominating your handful of minions, tied to you by
bonds of greed, of passion, and of crime, you come here to wrest from
us the secret of the Lens--from us, who were already an ancient race
when the remotest ancestors of your own were still wriggling in their
planet's primordial slime.
"You consider yourself cold, hard, ruthless. Comparatively you are
weak, soft, tender as a child unborn. That you may learn and appreciate
that fact is one reason why you are living at this present moment. Your
lesson will now begin."
Then Helmuth, starkly rigid, unable to move a muscle, felt delicate
probes enter his brain. One at a time they pierced his innermost being,
each to a definitely selected center. It seemed that each thrust
carried with it the ultimate measure of exquisitely poignant anguish
possible of endurance, but each successive needle carried with it an
even more keenly unbearable thrill of agony.
Helmuth was not calm and cold now. He would have screamed in wild
abandon; but even that relief was denied him. He could not even scream;
all he could do was sit there and suffer.
Then he began to see things. There, actually materializing in the
empty air of the speedster, he saw, in endless procession, things he
had done, either in person or by proxy, both during his ascent in
his present high place in the pirates' organization and since the
attainment of that place. Long was the list, and black. As it unfolded
his torment grew more and ever more intense; until finally, after an
interval that might have been a fraction of a second or might have been
untold hours, he could stand no more. He fainted, sinking beyond the
reach of pain into a sea of black consciousness.
* * * * *
He awakened white and shaking, wringing wet with perspiration and so
weak that he could scarcely sit erect, but with a supremely blissful
realization that, for the time being at least, his punishment was over.
"This, you will observe, has been a very mild treatment," the cold
Arisian accents went on inside his brain. "Not only do you still live,
you are even still sane. We now come to the second reason why you have
not been destroyed. Your destruction by us would not be good for that
struggling young civilization which you oppose.
"We have given that civilization an instrument by virtue of which it
should become able to destroy you and everything for which you stand.
If it cannot do so, it is not yet ready to become a civilization and
your obnoxious culture shall be allowed to conquer and to flourish for
a time.
"Now go back to your dome. Do not return. We well know that you will
not have the temerity to do so in person. Do not attempt to do so by
any form whatever of proxy."
There were no threats, no warnings, no mention of consequences; but the
level and incisive tone of the Arisian put a fear into Helmuth's cold
heart the like of which he had never before known.
He whirled his speedster about and hurled her at full blast toward his
home planet. It was only after many hours that he was able to regain
even a semblance of his customary poise, and days elapsed before he
could think coherently enough to consider, as a whole, the shocking,
the unbelievable thing that had happened to him.
He wanted to believe that the creature, whatever it was, had been
bluffing--that it could not kill him, that it had done its worst. In a
similar case he would have killed without mercy, and that course seemed
to him the only logical one to pursue. His cold reason, however, would
not allow him to entertain that comforting belief. Deep down he _knew_
that the Arisian could have killed him as easily as it had slain the
lowest member of his band, and the thought chilled him to the marrow.
What could he do? What _could_ he do? Endlessly, as the miles and light
years reeled off behind his hurtling racer, this question reiterated
itself; and when his home planet loomed close it was still unanswered.
* * * * *
Since Wolmark believed implicitly Helmuth's statement that it would be
poor technique to oppose his return, the planet's screens went down at
Helmuth's signal. His first act was to call all the department heads to
the center, for an extremely important council of war.
There he told them everything that had happened, calmly and concisely,
concluding: "They are aloof, disinterested, unpartisan to a degree
I find it impossible to understand. They disapprove of us on purely
philosophical grounds, but they will take no active part against us
as long as we stay away from their solar system. Therefore, we cannot
obtain knowledge of the Lens by direct action, but there are other
methods which shall be worked out in due course.
"The Arisians do approve of the patrol, and have helped them to the
extent of giving them the Lens. There, however, they stop. If the
Lensmen do not know how to use their Lenses efficiently--and I gather
that they do not--we 'shall be allowed to conquer and to flourish for
a time.' We _will_ conquer, and we will see to it that the time of our
flourishing will be a long one indeed.
"The whole situation, then, boils down to this: our cosmic energy
against the Lens of the patrol. Ours is the much more powerful arm,
but our only hope of immediate success lies in keeping the patrol in
ignorance of our cosmic-energy receptors and converters. One Lensman
already has that knowledge. Therefore, gentlemen, it is very clear
that the death of that Lensman has now become absolutely imperative.
We _must_ find him, if it means the abandonment of our every other
enterprise throughout the galaxy. Give me a full report upon the
screening of the solarian system."
"It is done, sir," came the quick reply. "That system is completely
blockaded. Ships are spaced so closely that even the electromagnetic
detectors have a five-hundred-per-cent overlap. Visual detectors have
at least two-hundred-fifty-per-cent overlap. Nothing as large as one
centimeter in any dimension can get through without detection and
observation."
"And how about the search of Trenco?"
"Results are still negative. One of our ships, a Rigellian, with papers
all in order, visited Trenco space port openly. No one was there except
the regular force of Rigellians. Our captain was in no position to be
too inquisitive, but the missing ship was certainly not in the port
and he gathered that he was the first visitor they had had in a month.
We learned on Rigel IV that Tregonsee, the Lensman actually there, has
been there for a month and will not be relieved for another month. He
was the only Lensman there. We are, of course, carrying on the search
for the rest of the planet. About half the personnel of each vessel to
land has been lost. But they started with double crews and replacements
are being sent."
"The Lensman Tregonsee's story may or may not be true," Helmuth mused.
"It makes little difference. It would be impossible to hide that ship
in the Trenco space port from even a casual inspection, and if the ship
is not there the Lensman is not. He may be hiding somewhere else on the
planet, but I doubt it. Continue to search, nevertheless. There are
many things he may have done. I will have to consider them, one by one."
But Helmuth had very little time to consider what Kinnison might have
done, for the Lensman had left Trenco long since. Because of the
flare baffles upon his driving projectors his pace was slow; but to
compensate for this condition the distance to be covered was short.
Therefore, even as Helmuth was cogitating upon what next to do, the
Lensman and his able crew were approaching the far-flung screen of
Boskonian war vessels investing the entire solar system.
To approach that screen undetected was a physical impossibility, and
before Kinnison realized that he was in a danger zone six tractors had
flicked out, had seized his ship, and had jerked it up to combat range.
But the Lensman was ready for anything, and again everything happened
at once.
* * * * *
Warnings screamed into the distant pirate base and Helmuth, tense at
his desk, took personal charge of his mighty fleet. On the field of
action Kinnison's screens flamed out in stubborn defense; tracers and
tractors snapped under his slashing shears; the baffles disappeared
in an incandescent flare as he shot maximum blast into his drive; and
space again became suffused with the output of his now ultra-powered
multiplex scrambler.
And through that murk the Lensman directed a thought toward Earth, with
the full power of mind and Lens.
"Port Admiral Haynes--Prime Base! Port Admiral Haynes--Prime Base!
Urgent! Kinnison calling from the direction of Sirius--urgent!" he sent
out the fiercely-driven message.
It so happened that at Prime Base it was deep night, and Port Admiral
Haynes was sound asleep. But his ever-vigilant Lens received the
message, and like the trigger-nerved old space cat that he was, the
admiral came instantly awake. Scarcely had an eye flicked open than his
answer had been hurled back: "Haynes acknowledging. Send it, Kinnison!"
"Coming in, in a pirate ship--VanBuskirk, Thorndyke, and I, and a crew
of Velantians. All the pirates in space are on our necks. But we're
coming in, in spite of hell and high water! Don't send up any ships to
help us down. They could blast you out of space in a second, but they
can't stop us. Get ready. It won't be long now!"
Then, after the port admiral had sounded the emergency alarm, Kinnison
went on: "Our ship carries no markings, but there's only one of us and
you'll know which one it is. We'll be doing the dodging. They'd be
crazy to follow us down to base, with all the stuff you've got, but
they act crazy enough to do almost anything. If they do follow us down,
get ready to give 'em everything you've got. Here we are!"
Pursued and pursuers had touched the outermost fringe of the
stratosphere; and, slowed down to optical visibility by even that
highly rarefied atmosphere, the battle raged in incandescent splendor.
One ship was spinning, twisting, looping, gyrating, jumping and darting
hither and thither--performing every weird maneuver that the fertile
and agile mind of the Lensman could improvise--to shake off the horde
of attackers.
The pirates, on the other hand, were desperately determined that,
whatever the cost, that Lensman should not land. Tractors would not
hold and the inertialess ship could not be rammed. Therefore, their
strategy was that which had worked so successfully four times before in
similar case--to englobe the ship completely and thus beam her down.
And while attempting this englobement they so massed their forces as
to drive the Lensman's vessel as far as possible away from the grim
and tremendously powerful fortifications of the patrol's Prime Base,
almost directly below them.
* * * * *
But those four other patrol-manned pirate ships which the pirates had
recaptured had not been driven by Lensmen; and in this ship Kinnison,
the Lensman, was now calling upon his every resource of instantaneous
nervous reaction, of brilliant brain and of lightning hand, to avoid
that fatal trap. And avoid it he did, by series after series of
fantastic maneuvers never set down in any manual of space combat.
Powerful as were the weapons of Prime Base, in that thick atmosphere
their effective range was less than fifty miles. Therefore the gunners,
idle at their controls, and the officers of the superdreadnaughts,
chained by definite orders to the ground, fumed and swore as, powerless
to help their battling fellows, they stood by and watched in their
plates the furious engagement so high overhead.
But slowly, _so_ slowly, Kinnison won his way downward, keeping as
close over base as he could without being englobed. Finally he managed
to get within range of the gigantic projectors of the patrol. Only
the heaviest of the fixed-mount guns could reach that mad whirlpool
of ships, but each one of them raved out against the same spot at
precisely the same instant. In the inferno which that spot instantly
became, not even a full-driven wall shield could endure, and a vast
hole yawned where pirate ships had been. The beams flicked off, and,
timed by his Lens, Kinnison shot his ship through that hole before it
could be closed, and arrowed downward toward base at maximum blast.
Ship after ship of the pirate horde followed him down in madly suicidal
last attempts to blast him out, down toward the terrific armament
of the base. Prime Base itself, the most dreaded, the most heavily
armed, the most impregnable fortress of the Galactic Patrol! Nothing
afloat could even threaten that citadel. The overbold attackers simply
disappeared in brief flashes of coruscant vapor.
Kinnison flashed to ground in a free landing and called his commander.
"Did any of the other boys beat us in, sir?" he asked.
"No, sir," came the curt response. Congratulations, felicitations, and
celebration would come later; he was now the port admiral receiving an
official report.
"Then, sir, I have the honor to report that the expedition has
succeeded." And he could not help adding informally, youthfully
exultant at the success of his first real mission, "We've brought home
the bacon!"