In the library of the Port Admiral's richly comfortable home, a room
as heavily guarded against all forms of intrusion as was his private
office, two old but active Lensmen sat and grinned at each other like
the two conspirators which in fact they were. One took a squat, red
bottle of fayalin from a cabinet and filled two small glasses. The
glasses clinked, rim to rim.
"Here's to love!" Haynes gave the toast.
"Ain't it grand!" Surgeon General Lacy responded.
"Down the hatch!" they chanted in unison, and action followed word.
"You aren't asking if everything stayed on the beam." This from Lacy.
"No need. I had a spy ray on the whole performance."
"You would--you're the type. However, I would have, too, if I
had a panel full of them in _my_ office. Well, say it, you old
space-hellion!" Lacy grinned again, albeit a trifle wryly.
"Nothing to say, sawbones. You did a grand job, and you've got nothing
to blow a jet about."
"No? How would you like to have a red-headed spitfire who's scarcely
dry behind the ears yet tell you to your teeth that you've got
softening of the brain? That you had the mental capacity of a gnat, the
intellect of a Zabriskan fontema? And to have to take it, without even
heaving the insubordinate young jade into the can for about twenty-five
well-earned black spots?"
"Oh, come, now, you're just blasting. It wasn't that bad."
"Perhaps not quite--but it was bad enough."
"She'll grow up, some day, and realize that you were foxing her six
ways from the origin."
"Probably. In the meantime, it's all part of the bigger job. Thank God
I'm not young any more. They suffer so."
"Check. _How_ they suffer!"
"But you saw the ending and I didn't. How did it turn out?" Lacy asked.
"Partly good, partly bad." Haynes slowly poured two more drinks and
thoughtfully swirled the crimson, pungently aromatic liquid around and
around in his glass before he spoke again. "Hooked--but she knows it,
and I'm afraid she'll do something about it."
"She's a smart girl--I told you she was. She doesn't fox herself about
anything. Hm-m-m. And separation is indicated, it would seem."
"Check. Can you send out a hospital ship somewhere, so as to get rid of
her for two or three weeks?"
"Can do. Three weeks be enough? We can't send him anywhere, you know."
"Plenty. He'll be gone in two." Then, as Lacy glanced at him
questioningly, Haynes continued: "Ready for a shock? He's going to
Lundmark's Nebula."
"But he _can't_! That would take years! Nobody has ever got back from
there yet, and there's this new job of his. Besides, this separation is
only supposed to last until you can spare him for a while!"
"If it takes very long he's coming back. The idea has always been, you
know, that intergalactic matter may be so thin--one atom per liter
or so--that such a flit won't take one tenth the time supposed. We
recognize the danger. He's going well heeled."
"How well?"
"The best that we can give him."
"I hate to clog their jets this way, but it's got to be done. We'll
give her a raise when I send her out--make her sector chief. Huh?"
"Did I hear any such words lately as 'spitfire,' 'hussy,' and 'jade,'
or did I dream them?" Haynes asked, quizzically.
"She's all of them, and more--but she's one of the best nurses and one
of the finest women this side of Hades, too!"
"QX, Lacy, give her her raise. Of course she's good, or she wouldn't
be in on this deal at all. In fact, they're about as fine a couple of
youngsters as old Tellus has produced."
"They are that. Man, _what_ a pair of skeletons!"
* * * * *
And in the Nurses' Quarters a young woman with a wealth of
red-bronze-auburn hair and tawny eyes was staring at her own reflection
in a mirror.
"You half-wit, you ninny, you lug!" she stormed, bitterly if almost
inaudibly, at that reflection. "You lame-brained moron, you red-headed,
idiotic imbecile, you microcephalic dumbbell, you _clunker_! Of all the
men in this whole cockeyed galaxy, you _would_ have to make a dive at
Kimball Kinnison, the one man who never has realized that you are even
alive. At a Gray Lensman--" Her expression changed and she whispered
softly: "A ... Gray ... Lensman. He _can't_ love any woman as long as
he's carrying that load. They can't let themselves be human--quite;
perhaps loving him will be enough--"
She straightened up, shrugged, and smiled; but even that pitiful
travesty of a smile could not long endure. Shortly it was buried in
waves of pain and the girl threw herself down upon her bed.
"Oh Kim, Kim!" she sobbed. "I wish ... why can't you--Oh, why did I
ever have to be born!"
* * * * *
Three weeks later, far out in space, Kimball Kinnison was thinking
thoughts entirely foreign to his usual pattern. He was in his bunk,
smoking dreamily, staring unseeing at the metallic ceiling. He was not
thinking of Boskone.
When he had thought of Mac, back there at that dance, he had, for the
first time in his life, failed to narrow down his beam to the exact
thought being sent. Why? The explanation he had given the girl was
totally inadequate. For that matter, why had he been so glad to see her
there? And why, at every odd moment, did visions of her keep coming
into his mind--her form and features, her eyes, her lips, her startling
hair?
She was beautiful, of course, but not nearly such a seven-sector
callout as that thionite dream he had met on Aldebaran II--and his only
thought of _her_ was an occasional faint regret that he had not half
wrung her lovely neck. Why, she wasn't really as good-looking as, and
didn't have half the _je ne sais quoi_ of, that blond heiress--what was
her name?--oh, yes, Forrester--
There was only one answer, and it jarred him to the core--he would not
admit it, even to himself. He couldn't love anybody--it just simply was
not in the cards. He had a job to do. The Patrol had spent a million
credits making a Lensman out of him, and it was up to him to give them
some kind of a run for their money. No Lensman had any business with a
wife, especially a Gray Lensman. He couldn't sit down anywhere, and she
couldn't flit with him. Besides, nine out of every ten Gray Lensmen got
killed before they finished their jobs, and the one that did happen to
live long enough to retire to a desk was almost always half machinery
and artificial parts--
No, not in seven thousand years. No woman deserved to have her life
made into such a hell on earth as that would be--years of agony, of
heartbreaking suspense, climaxed by untimely widowhood; or, at best,
the wasting of the richest part of her life upon a husband who was half
steel, rubber, and phenoline plastic. Red in particular was much too
splendid a person to be let in for anything like that--
But hold on--jet back! What made him think that he rated any such girl?
That there was even a possibility--especially in view of the way he
had behaved while under her care in Base Hospital--that she would ever
feel like being anything more to him than a strictly impersonal nurse?
Probably not. He had Klono's own brazen gall to think that she would
marry him, under any conditions, even if he made a full-power dive at
her.
Just the same, she might. Look at what women did fall in love with,
sometimes. So he would never make any kind of a dive at her; no, not
even a pass. She was too sweet, too fine, too vital a woman to be
tied to any space-louse; she deserved happiness, not heartbreak. She
deserved the best there was in life, not the worst; the whole love of
a whole man for a whole lifetime, not the fractions which were all
that he could offer any woman. As long as he could think a straight
thought he wouldn't make any motions toward spoiling her life. In fact,
he hadn't better see Reddy again. He wouldn't go near any planet she
was on, and if he saw her out in space he'd go somewhere else at ten
gravities.
With a bitter imprecation Kinnison sprang out of his bunk, hurled his
half-smoked cigarette at an ash tray, and strode toward the control
room.
* * * * *
The ship he rode was of the Patrol's best. Superbly powered for flight,
defense, and offense, she was withal a complete space-laboratory and
observatory; and her personnel, over and above her regular crew, was
as varied as her equipment. She carried ten Lensmen--a circumstance
unique in the annals of space, even for such a trouble-shooting battle
wagon as the _Dauntless_ was; a scientific staff which was practically
a cross section of the Tree of Knowledge. She carried Lieutenant
Peter van Buskirk and his company of Valerian wild cats; Worsel of
Velantia and threescore of his reptilian kinsmen; Tregonsee, the blocky
Rigellian Lensman, and a dozen or so of his fellows; Master Technician
LaVerne Thorndyke and his crew. She carried three Master Pilots, Prime
Base's best--Henderson, Schermerhorn, and Watson.
The _Dauntless_ was an immense vessel. She had to be, in order to
carry, in addition to the men and the things requisitioned by Kinnison,
the personnel and the equipment which Port Admiral Haynes had insisted
upon sending with him.
"But great Klono, chief, think of what a hole you're making in Prime
Base if we don't get back!" Kinnison had protested.
"You're coming back, Kinnison," the Port Admiral had replied gravely.
"That is why I am sending these men and this stuff along--to be as sure
as I possibly can that you _do_ get back."
Now they were out in intergalactic space, and the Gray Lensman, lying
flat upon his back with his eyes closed, sent his sense of perception
out beyond the confining iron walls and let it roam the void. This
was better than a visiplate; with no material barriers or limitations
he was feasting upon a spectacle scarcely to be pictured in the most
untrammeled imaginings of man. There were no planets, no suns, no
stars, no meteorites, no particles of cosmic débris. All nearby space
was empty, with an indescribable perfection of emptiness at the very
thought of which the mind quailed in uncomprehending horror. And,
accentuating that emptiness, at such mind-searing distances as to be
dwarfed into buttons, and yet, because of their intrinsic massiveness,
starkly apparent in their three-dimensional relationships, there hung
poised and motionlessly stately the component galaxies of a universe.
Behind the flying vessel the First Galaxy was a tiny, brightly shining
lens, so far away that such minutiae as individual solar systems were
invisible, so distant that even the gigantic masses of its accompanying
globular star clusters were merged indistinguishably into its sharply
lenticular shape. In front of her, to right and to left of her, above
and beneath her were other galaxies, never explored by man or by any
other beings subscribing to the code of Galactic Civilization. Some,
edge on, were thin, waferlike. Others appeared as full disks, showing
faintly or boldly the prodigious, mathematically inexplicable spiral
arms by virtue of whose obscure functioning they had come into being.
Between these two extremes there was every possible variant in angular
displacement.
Utterly incomprehensible although the speed of the space-flyer was,
yet those galaxies remained relatively motionless, hour after hour.
What distances! What magnificence! What grandeur! What awful, what
poignantly solemn calm!
Despite the fact that Kinnison had gone out there expecting to behold
that very scene, he felt awed to insignificance by the overwhelming,
the cosmic immensity of the spectacle. What business had he, a
sub-electronic midge from an ultra-microscopic planet, venturing
out into macro-cosmic space, a demesne comprehensible only to the
omniscient and omnipotent Creator?
* * * * *
He got up, shaking off the futile mood. This wouldn't get him to the
first check station, and he had a job to do. And, after all, wasn't
man as big as space? Could he have come out here, otherwise? He was.
Yes, man was bigger even than space. Man, by his very envisionment of
macro-cosmic space, had already mastered it.
Besides, the Boskonians, whoever they might be, had certainly mastered
it; he was now certain that they were operating upon an intergalactic
scale. Even after leaving Tellus he had hoped and had really expected
that his line would lead to a stronghold in some star cluster belonging
to his own Galaxy, so distant from it, or perhaps so small, as to have
escaped the notice of the chartmakers; but such was not the case. No
possible error in either the determination or the following of that
line placed it anywhere near any such cluster. It led straight to and
only to Lundmark's Nebula; and that Galaxy was, therefore, his present
destination.
Man was certainly as good as the pirates; probably better, on the basis
of past performance. Of all the races of the Galaxy, man had always
taken the initiative, had always been the leader and commander. And,
with the exception of the Arisians, man had the best brain in the
Galaxy.
The thought of that eminently philosophical race gave Kinnison pause.
His Arisian sponsor had told him that by virtue of the Lens the Patrol
should be able to make Civilization secure throughout the Galaxy. Just
what did that mean--that it could not go outside? Or did even the
Arisians suspect that Boskonia was in fact intergalactic? Probably. The
mentor had said that, given any one definite fact, a really competent
mind could envisage the entire Universe; even though he had added
carefully that his own mind was not a really competent one.
But this, too, was idle speculation, and it was time to receive and to
correlate some more reports. Therefore, one by one, he got in touch
with scientists and observers.
The density of matter in space, which had been lessening steadily,
was now approximately constant at one atom per four hundred cubic
centimeters. Their speed was therefore about a hundred thousand parsecs
per hour; and, even allowing for the slowing up at both ends due to the
density of the medium, the trip should not take over ten days.
The power situation, which had been his gravest care, since it was
almost the only factor not amenable to theoretical solution, was even
better than anyone had dared hope; the cosmic energy available in space
had actually been increasing as the matter content decreased--a fact
which seemed to bear out the contention than energy was continually
being converted into matter in such regions. It was taking much less
excitation of the intake screens to produce a given flow of power than
any figure ever observed in the denser media within the Galaxy.
Thus, the atomic motors which served as exciters had a maximum power
of four hundred pounds an hour; that is, each exciter could transform
that amount of matter into pure energy and employ the output usefully
in energizing the intake screen to which it was connected. Each
screen, operating normally on a hundred-thousand-to-one ratio, would
then furnish its receptor on the ship with energy equivalent to the
annihilation of four million pounds per hour of material substance. Out
there, however, it was being observed that the intake-exciter ratio,
instead of being less than a hundred thousand to one, was actually
almost a million to one.
* * * * *
It would serve no useful purpose here to go further into the details
of any more of the reports, or to dwell at any great length upon the
remainder of the journey to the Second Galaxy. Suffice it to say that
Kinnison and his highly trained crew observed, classified, recorded,
and conferred; and that they approached their destination with every
possible precaution. Detectors full out, observers were at every plate,
the ship was as immune to detection as Hotchkiss' nullifiers could
make it.
Up to the Second Galaxy the _Dauntless_ flashed, and into it. Was
this island universe essentially like the First Galaxy as to planets
and peoples? If so, had they been won over or wiped out by the horrid
culture of Boskonia or was the struggle still going on?
"If we assume, as we must, that the line we followed was the trace
of Boskone's beam," argued the sagacious Worsel, "the probability is
very great that the enemy is in virtual control of this entire Galaxy.
Otherwise--if they were in a minority or were struggling seriously for
dominion--they could neither have spared the forces which invaded our
Galaxy, nor would they have been in condition to rebuild their vessels
as they did to match the new armaments developed by the Patrol."
"Very probably true," agreed Kinnison, and that was the consensus of
opinion. "Therefore we want to do our scouting very quietly. But in
some ways that makes it all the better. If they are in control, they
won't be unduly suspicious."
And thus it proved. A planet-bearing sun was soon located, and while
the _Dauntless_ was still light-years distant from it, several ships
were detected. At least, the Boskonians were not using nullifiers!
Spy rays were sent out. Tregonsee, the Rigellian Lensman, exerted to
the full his powers of perception, and Kinnison hurled downward to the
planet's surface a mental viewpoint and communications center. That
the planet was Boskonian was soon learned, but that was all. It was
scarcely fortified: no trace could be found of a beam communicating
with Boskone.
Solar system after solar system was found and studied, with like
result. But finally, out in space, one of the screens showed activity;
a beam was in operation between a vessel then upon the plates and
some other station. Kinnison tapped it quickly; and, while observers
were determining its direction, hardness, and power, a thought flowed
smoothly into the Lensman's brain.
"--proceed at once to relieve vessel P4K730. Eichlan, speaking for
Boskone, ending message."
"Follow that ship, Hen!" Kinnison directed, crisply. "Not too close,
but don't lose him!" He then relayed to the others the orders which had
been intercepted.
"The same formula, huh?" Van Buskirk roared, and "Just another
lieutenant, that sounds like, not Boskone himself." Thorndyke added.
"Perhaps so, perhaps no." The Gray Lensman was merely thoughtful. "It
doesn't prove a thing except that Helmuth was not Boskone, which was
already fairly certain. If we can prove that there is such a being as
Boskone, and that he is not in this Galaxy--well, in that case, we'll
go somewhere else," he concluded, with grim finality.
* * * * *
The chase was comparatively short, leading toward a yellowish star
around which swung eight average-sized planets. Toward one of these
flew the unsuspecting pirate, followed by the Patrol vessel, and it
soon became apparent that there was a battle going on. One spot upon
the planet's surface, either a city or a tremendous military base, was
domed over by a screen which was one blinding glare of radiance. And
for miles in every direction ships of space were waging spectacularly
devastating warfare.
Kinnison shot a thought down into the fortress, and with the least
possible introduction or preamble, got into touch with one of its high
officers. He was not surprised to learn that those people were more or
less human in appearance, since the planet was quite similar to Tellus
in age, climate, atmosphere, and mass.
"Yes, we are fighting Boskonia," the answering thought came coldly
clear. "We need help, and badly. Can you--"
"We're detected!" Kinnison's attention was seized by a yell from the
board. "They're all coming at us at once!"
Whether the scientists of Boskone developed the detector-nullifier
before or after Helmuth's failure to deduce the Lensman's use of such
an instrument is a nice question, and one upon which a great deal has
been said. While interesting, the point is really immaterial here; the
facts remaining the same--that the pirates not only had it at the time
of the Patrol's first visit to the Second Galaxy, but had used it to
such good advantage that the denizens of that recalcitrant planet had
been forced, in the sheer desperation of self-preservation, to work
out a scrambler for that nullification and to surround their world
with its radiations. They could not restore perfect detection, but the
conditions for complete nullification were so critical that it was a
comparatively simple matter to upset it sufficiently so that an image
of a sort was revealed. And, at that close range, any sort of an image
was enough.
The _Dauntless_, approaching the planet, entered the zone of scrambling
and stood revealed plainly enough upon the plates of enemy vessels.
They attacked instantly and viciously; within a second after the
lookout had shouted his warning the outer screens of the Patrol ship
were blazing incandescent under the furious assaults of a dozen
Boskonian beams.