As the pirate fled into space Kinnison followed, matching his quarry
in course and speed. He then cut in the automatic controller on his
drive, the automatic recorder on his plate, and began to tune in his
beam tracer; only to be brought up short by the realization that the
spy ray's point would not stay in the pirate's control room without
constant attention and manual adjustment. He had known that, too. Even
the most precise of automatic controllers, driven by the most carefully
stabilized electronic currents, are prone to slip twenty feet or so at
even such close range as ten million miles, especially in the bumpy
ether near solar systems, and there was nothing to correct the slip.
He had not thought of that before; the pilot always made those minor
corrections as a matter of course.
But now he was torn between two desires. He wanted to listen to the
conversation that would ensue as soon as the pirate captain got into
communication with his superior officers; and, especially should
Helmuth put in his beam, he very much wanted to trace it and thus
secure another line on the headquarters he was so anxious to locate.
He now feared that he could not do both--a fear that soon was to prove
well-grounded--and wished fervently that for a few minutes he could be
two men--or at least a Velantian; they had eyes and hands and separate
brain compartments enough so that they could do half a dozen things
at once and do each one well. He could not; but he could try. Maybe
he should have brought one of the boys along, at that. No, that would
wreck everything, later on; he would have to do the best he could.
Communication was established and the pirate captain began to make
his report. By using one hand on the ray and the other on the tracer,
Kinnison managed to get a partial line and to record scraps of the
conversation. He missed, however, the essential part of the entire
episode, that part in which the base commander turned the unsuccessful
captain over to Helmuth himself. Therefore, Kinnison was surprised
indeed at the disappearance of the beam he was so laboriously tracing,
and to hear Helmuth conclude his castigation of the unlucky captain
with:
"--not entirely your fault. We will not punish you at all severely this
time. Report to our base on Aldebaran I. Turn your vessel over to base
commander there and do anything he tells you to do for thirty of the
days of that planet."
Frantically, Kinnison drew back his tracer and searched for Helmuth's
beam; but before he could synchronize with it the message of the
pirates' high chief was finished and his beam was gone. The Lensman sat
back in thought.
Aldebaran! Practically next door to his own solarian system, from which
he had come so far. How had they possibly managed to keep concealed,
or to re-establish, a base so close to Sol, through all the intensive
searching that had been done? But they _had_. That was the important
thing. Anyway, he knew where he was going, and that helped.
One other thing he hadn't thought of--and one that might have spoiled
everything--was the fact that he couldn't stay awake indefinitely to
follow that ship! He had to sleep sometime, and while he was asleep
his quarry was bound to escape. He, of course, had a CRX tracer, which
would hold a ship without attention as long as it was anywhere within
even extreme range; and it would have been a simple enough matter to
have had a photo-cell relay put in between the plate of the CRX and
the automatic controls of the spacer and driver--but he had not asked
for it. Well, luckily, he now knew where he was going, and the trip to
Aldebaran would be long enough for him to build a dozen such controls.
He had all the necessary parts and plenty of tools. It would give him
something to do to break the monotony of the voyage.
* * * * *
Therefore, following the pirate ship easily as it tore through space,
Kinnison built his automatic "chaser," as he called it. During each of
the first four or five "nights" he lost the vessel he was pursuing,
but found it without any great difficulty upon awakening. Thereafter
he held it continuously, improving day by day the performance of his
apparatus until it could do almost anything except talk.
After that he devoted his time to an intensive study of the general
problem before him. His results were highly unsatisfactory; for in
order to solve any problem one must have enough data to set it up,
either in actual equations or in logical sequences, and Kinnison found
that he did not have enough data. He had altogether too many unknowns
and not enough knowns.
The first specific problem was that of getting into the pirate base.
Since the searchers of the patrol had not found it, that base must be
very well hidden indeed. And hiding anything as large as a base on
Aldebaran I, as he remembered it, would be quite a feat in itself. He
had been in that system only once, but----
Alone in his ship, and in deep space although he was, he blushed
painfully as he remembered what had happened to him during that visit.
He had chased a couple of dope runners to Aldebaran II, and there
he had encountered the most vividly, the most flawlessly, the most
remarkably and intriguingly beautiful girl he had ever seen. He had
seen beautiful girls and women, of course, before and in plenty. He had
seen beauties amateur and professional--social butterflies, dancers,
actresses, models, and posturers, both in the flesh and in Telenews
plates--but he had never supposed that such an utterly ravishing
creature as she was could exist outside of a thionite dream. As a
timidly innocent damsel in distress she had been perfect, and if she
had held that pose a little longer Kinnison shuddered to think of what
might have happened.
But, having known too many dope runners and too few patrolmen, she
misjudged entirely, not only the cadet's sentiments, but also his
reactions. For, even as she came amorously into his arms, he had known
that there was something screwy. Women like that did not play that kind
of game for nothing. She must be mixed up with the two he had been
chasing. He got away from her, with only a couple of scratches, just
in time to capture her confederates as they were making their escape.
He had been afraid of beautiful women ever since. He'd like to see that
Aldebaranian hell-cat again--just once. He'd been just a kid then, but
now----
* * * * *
But that line of thought was getting him nowhere, fast. It was
Aldebaran I that he had better be thinking of: barren, lifeless,
desolate, airless, waterless; bare as his hand, covered with extinct
volcanoes, cratered, jagged, and torn. To hide a base on that
planet would take plenty of doing, and, conversely, it would be
correspondingly difficult of approach. If on the surface at all, which
he doubted very strongly, it would be covered.
In any event, all its approaches would be thoroughly screened and
equipped with lookouts on the ultra-violet and on the infra-red, as
well as on the visible. His detector nullifier wouldn't help him much
there. Those screens and lookouts were bad--very, very bad. Question:
could _anything_ get into that base without setting off an alarm?
His speedster could not even get close; that was certain. Could he,
alone? He would have to wear armor, of course, to hold his air, and it
would radiate. Not necessarily--he could land out of range and walk,
without power; but there were still the screens and the lookouts. If
the pirates were on their toes it simply wasn't in the cards; and he
had to assume that they would be alert.
What, then, could pass those barriers? Prolonged consideration of every
facet of the situation gave definite answer and marked out clearly the
course he must take. Something admitted by the pirates themselves was
the only thing that could get in. The vessel ahead of his was going in.
Therefore, he must and would enter that base within the pirate vessel
itself. With that point decided there remained only the working out of
a method, which proved to be almost ridiculously simple.
Once inside the base, what should he--or rather, what _could_ he--do?
For days he made and discarded plans, but finally he tossed them all
out of his mind. So much depended upon the location of the base, its
personnel, its arrangement, and its routine, that he could develop
not even the rough draft of a working plan. He knew what he wanted to
do, but he had not even the remotest idea as to how he could go about
doing it. Of the opening that appeared, he would have to choose the
most feasible and fit his actions to whatever situation then and there
obtained.
So deciding, he shot his spy ray toward the planet and studied it with
care. It was, indeed, as he had remembered it--or worse. Bleakly,
hotly arid, it had no soil whatever, its entire surface being composed
of igneous rock, lava, and pumice. Stupendous ranges of mountains
crisscrossed and intersected each other at random, each range a
succession of dead volcanic peaks and blown-off craters. Mountainside
and rocky plain, crater wall and valley floor, alike and innumerably
were pock-marked with subcraters and with immensely yawning shell
holes, as though the whole planet had been, throughout geologic ages,
the target of an incessant cosmic bombardment.
* * * * *
Over its surface and through and through its volume he drove his spy
ray, finding nothing. He bored into its substance with his detectors
and his tracers, with results completely negative. Of course, closer
up, his electromagnetics would report iron--plenty of it--but that
information would also be meaningless. Practically all planets had iron
cores.
As far as his instruments could tell--and he had given Aldebaran
I a more thorough going over, by far, than any ordinary surveying
ship would have given it--there was no base of any kind upon or
within the planet. Yet he _knew_ that a base was there. So what?
So--maybe--Helmuth's base might be inside the galaxy after all,
protected from detection in the same way, probably by solid miles
of iron or of iron ore. A second line upon that base had now become
imperative. But they were approaching the system fast; he had better
get ready.
He belted on his personal equipment, including a nullifier, then
inspected his armor, checking its supplies and apparatus carefully
before he hooked it ready to his hand. Glancing into the plate, he
noted with approval that his chaser was functioning perfectly. Pursued
and pursuer were now both well inside the solar system of Aldebaran;
and, as slowed the pirate, so slowed the speedster.
Finally, the leader went inert in preparation for his spiral. But
Kinnison was no longer following. Before he went inert he flashed down
to within fifty thousand miles of the planet's forbidding surface. He
then cut his Bergenholm, threw the speedster into an almost circular
orbit, well away from the landing orbit selected by the pirate, cut off
all his power, and drifted. He stayed in the speedster, observing and
computing, until he had so exactly defined its path that he could find
it unerringly at any future instant. Then he went into the air lock,
stepped out into space, and, waiting only to be sure that the portal
had snapped shut behind him, set his course toward the pirate's spiral.
Inert now, his progress was so slow as to seem imperceptible, but he
had plenty of time. And it was only relatively that his speed was low.
He was actually hurtling through space at the rate of well over two
thousand miles an hour, and his powerful little driver was increasing
that speed constantly by an acceleration of two Earth gravities.
Soon the vessel crept up, beneath him now, and Kinnison, increasing his
drive to five gravities, shot toward it in a long, slanting dive. This
was the most ticklish minute of the trip, but the Lensman had assumed
correctly that the officers of the badly undermanned ship would be
looking ahead of them and down, not backward and up. They were, and he
made his approach unseen. The approach itself, the boarding of an inert
space ship at its frightful landing-spiral velocity, was elementary to
any competent space man--simplicity itself. There was not even a flare
to bother him or to reveal him to sight, as the braking jets were now
doing all the work. Matching course and velocity ever more closely,
he crept up--flung his magnet--pulled up, hand over hand--opened the
emergency inlet lock--and there he was.
[Illustration: _Matching course and velocity, he crept up--flung his
magnet, pulled up, hand over hand_----]
* * * * *
Unconcernedly, he made his way along the sternway and into the now
deserted quarters of the fighters. There he lay down in a hammock,
snapped the acceleration straps, and shot his spy ray into the control
room. And there, in the pirate captain's own visiplate, he observed the
rugged and torn topography of the terrain below, as the pilot fought
his ship down, mile by mile.
Tough going, this, Kinnison reflected, and the bird was doing a nice
job, even if he was taking it the hard way, bringing her down straight
on her nose instead of taking one more spiral around the planet and
then sliding in on her under jets, which were designed and placed
specifically for such work. But taking it the hard way he was, and his
vessel was bucking, kicking, bouncing, and spinning on the terrific
blast from her braking jets. Down she came, fast; and it was only after
she was actually inside one of those stupendous craters, well below the
level of its rim, that the pilot flattened her out and assumed normal
landing position.
They were still going too fast, Kinnison thought. But the pirate pilot
knew what he was doing. Five miles the vessel dropped, straight down
that Titanic shaft, before the bottom was reached. The shaft's wall was
studded with windows; in front of the craft loomed the outer gate of
a gigantic air lock. It opened; the ship was trundled inside, landing
cradle and all, and the massive gate closed behind it. This was the
pirates' base, and Kinnison was inside it!
"Men, attention!" The pirate commander snapped then. "This air is
deadly poison, so put on your armor and be sure your tanks are full.
They have rooms for us, having good air, but don't open your suits a
crack until I tell you to. Assemble! All of you that are not here in
this control room in five minutes will stay on board and take your own
chances!"
Kinnison decided instantly to assemble with the crew. He could do
nothing in the ship, and it would be inspected, of course. He had
plenty of air, but space armor all looked alike, and his Lens would
warn him in time of any unfriendly or suspicious thought. He had better
go. If they called a roll----But he would cross that bridge when he
came to it.
No roll was called; in fact, the captain paid no attention at all
to his men. They could come along or not, just as they pleased. But
since to stay in the ship meant death, every man was prompt. At the
expiration of the five minutes the captain strode away, followed by
the crowd. Through a doorway, left turn, and the captain was met by a
creature whose shape Kinnison could not make out. A pause, a straggling
forward, then a right turn.
Kinnison decided that he would not take that turn. He would stay
here, close to the shaft--where he could blast his way out if
necessary--until he had studied the whole base thoroughly enough to map
out a plan of campaign. He soon found an empty and apparently unused
room, and assured himself that through its heavy, crystal-clear window
he could indeed look out into the vastly cylindrical emptiness of the
volcanic shaft.
* * * * *
Then, with his spy ray, he watched the pirates as they were escorted to
the quarters prepared for them. Those might have been rooms of state,
but it looked to Kinnison very much as though his former shipmates were
being jailed ignominiously, and he was glad that he had taken leave
of them. Shooting his ray here and there throughout the structure, he
finally found what he was looking for: the communicator room. That room
was fairly well lighted, and at what he saw there his jaw dropped in
sheerest amazement.
He had expected to see men, since Aldebaran II, the only inhabited
planet in the system, had been colonized from Tellus and its people
were as truly human and Caucasian as those of Chicago or of Paris. But
these--these _things_----He had been around quite a bit, but he had
never seen nor heard of their like. They were wheels, really. When they
went anywhere they rolled. Heads where hubs ought to be--eyes--arms,
dozens of them, and very capable-looking hands----
"Vogenar!" a crisp thought flashed from one of the peculiar entities
to another, impinging also upon Kinnison's Lens. "Some one--some
outsider--is looking at me. Relieve me while I abate this intolerable
nuisance."
"One of those creatures from Tellus? We will teach them very shortly
that such intrusion is not to be borne for an instant."
"No, it is not one of them. The touch is similar, but the tone is
entirely different. Nor could it be one of them, for not one of them
is equipped with the instrument which is such a clumsy substitute for
the sense of perception with which all really intelligent races are
endowed in their minds. There, I will now begin to----"
Kinnison snapped on his thought-screen, but the damage had already been
done.
In the violated communications room the angry observer went on:
"--attune myself and trace the origin of that prying look. It has
disappeared now, but its sender cannot be distant, since our walls
are shielded and screened. Ah, there is a blank space which I cannot
penetrate, in the seventh room of the fourth corridor. In all
probability it is one of our guests, hiding now behind a thought
screen." Then his orders boomed out to a corps of guards. "Take him and
put him with the others!"
Kinnison had not heard the order, but he was ready for anything, and
those who came to take him found that it was easier far to issue such
orders than to carry them out.
"Halt!" snapped the Lensman, his Lens carrying the crackling command
deep into the wheelmen's minds. "I do not wish to harm you, but come no
closer!"
"You? Harm us?" came a cold, clear thought, and the creatures vanished.
But not for long. They, or others like them, were back in moments, this
time armed and armored for strife.
Again Kinnison found that rays were useless. The armor of the
foe-mounted generators as capable as his own; and, although the air in
the room soon became one intolerably glaring field of force, in which
the very walls themselves began to crumble and to vaporize, neither he
nor his attackers were harmed. Again, then, the Lensman had recourse
to his medieval weapon, sheathing his DeLameter and wading in with his
ax. Although not a VanBuskirk, he was, for an Earthman, of unusual
strength, skill, and speed; and to those opposing him he was a very
Hercules.
* * * * *
Therefore, as he struck and struck and struck again, the cell became
a gorily reeking slaughter pen, its every corner high-piled with the
shattered corpses of the wheelmen and its floor running with blood and
slime. The last few of the attackers, unwilling to face longer that
irresistible steel, wheeled away, and Kinnison thought flashingly of
what he should do next.
This trip was a bust so far. He couldn't do himself a bit of good here
now, and he'd better buzz off while he was still in one piece. How? The
door? No. Couldn't make it. He'd run out of time quick that way. Better
take out the wall. That would give those Wheelmen something else to
think about, too, while he was doing his flit.
Only a fraction of a second was taken up by these thoughts; then
Kinnison was at the wall. He set his DeLameter to minimum aperture and
at maximum blast, to throw a cutting pencil against which no material
substance could stand. Through the wall that pencil pierced--up, over,
and around.
But, fast as the Lensman had acted, he was still too late. There came
trundling into the room behind him, upon four low wheels, a truck,
bearing a squat and monstrous mechanism. Kinnison whirled to face it.
As he turned the section of the wall upon which he had been at work
blew outward with a deafening crash. The ensuing rush of escaping
atmosphere picked the Lensman up as though he had been a straw and
hurled him out through the opening and into the shaft. In the meantime
the mechanism upon the truck had begun a staccato, grinding roar, and
as it roared Kinnison felt slugs ripping through his armor and tearing
through his flesh, each as crushing, crunching, paralyzing a blow as
though it had been inflicted by VanBuskirk's space ax.
[Illustration: _The rush of escaping atmosphere picked the Lensman
up as though he had been a straw--hurled him out----_]
This was the first time that Kinnison had ever been really badly
wounded, and it made him sick. But, sick and numb, senses reeling at
the shock to his slug-torn body, his right hand flashed to the external
controller of his neutralizer. For he was falling inert. It was only
ten or fifteen meters to the bottom, as he remembered it. He had mighty
little time to waste if he were not to land inert. He snapped the
controller. Nothing happened. Something had been shot away. His driver,
too, was dead. Snapping the sleeve of his armor into its clamps he
began to withdraw his arm in order to operate the internal controls,
but he ran out of time. He crashed, on the top of a subsiding pile of
masonry which had preceded him, but which had not yet attained a state
of equilibrium, underneath a shower of similar material which rebounded
from his armor in a boiler-shop clangor of noise.
Well it was that that heap of masonry had not yet had time to settle
into form, for in some slight measure it acted as a cushion to break
the Lensman's fall. But an inert fall of forty feet, even cushioned
by rocks, is in no sense a light one. Kinnison crashed. It seemed as
though a thousand pile drivers struck him at once. Surges of almost
unbearable agony swept over him, as bones snapped and bruised flesh
gave way. He knew dimly that a merciful tide of oblivion was reaching
up to engulf his shrieking, suffering mind.
But, foggily at first in the stunned confusion of his entire being,
something stirred, that unknown and unknowable something, that
indefinable ultimate quality that had made him worthy of the Lens he
wore. He lived, and while a Lensman lived he did not quit. To quit was
to die then and there, since he was losing air fast. He had plastic
in his kit, of course, and the holes were small. He _must_ plug those
leaks, and plug them quick.
His left arm, he found, he could not move at all. It must be smashed
pretty badly. Every shallow breath was a searing pain. That meant a
rib or two gone out. Luckily, however, he was not breathing blood;
therefore, his lungs must still be intact. He could move his right arm,
although it seemed like a lump of clay or a limb belonging to some one
else.
But, mustering all his power of will, he made it move. He dragged it
out of the armor's clamped sleeve, forced the leaden hand to slide
through the welter of blood that seemed almost to fill the bulge of
his armor. He found his kit box, and, after an eternity of pain-racked
time, he compelled his sluggish hand to open it and to take out the
plastic.
* * * * *
Then, in a continuously crescendo throbbing of agony, he forced his
maimed, crushed, and broken body to writhe and to wriggle about, so
that his one sound hand could find and stop the holes through which his
precious air was whistling out and away. Find them he did, and quickly,
and sealed them tight; but when he had plugged the last one he slumped
down, spent and exhausted. He did not hurt so much, now; his suffering
had mounted to such terrific heights of intolerable keenness that the
nerves themselves, in outraged protest at carrying such a load, had
blocked it off.
There was much more to do, but he simply could not do it without a
rest. Even his iron will could not drive his tortured muscles to any
further effort until after they had been allowed to recuperate a little
from what they had gone through.
How much air did he have left, if any, he wondered, foggily and with
an entirely detached and disinterested impersonalness. Maybe his tanks
were empty. Of course, it couldn't have taken him as long to plug those
leaks as it had seemed to, or he wouldn't have had any air left at all,
in tanks or suit. He couldn't, however, have much left. He would look
at his gauges and see.
But now he found that he could not move even his eyeballs, so deep
was the coma that was enveloping him. Away off somewhere there was
a billowing expanse of blackness, utterly heavenly in its deep,
softly-cushioned comfort; and from that sea of peace and surcease there
came reaching to embrace him huge, soft, tender arms. Why suffer,
something crooned at him. It was _so_ much easier to let go!