As has been said, Kinnison rode the blow of the blackjack forward and
downward, thus robbing it of some of its power. It struck him hard
enough so that the thug did not suspect the truth; he thought that he
had all but taken the Lensman's life. And, for all the speed with which
the Tellurian had yielded before the blow, he was hurt; but he was not
stunned. Therefore, although he made no resistance when the two bullies
rolled him over, lashed his feet together, tied his hands behind him,
and lifted him into a car, he was fully conscious throughout the
proceedings.
When the cab was perhaps half an hour upon its way the Lensman
struggled back, quite realistically, to consciousness.
"Take it easy, pal," the larger of his thought-screened captors
advised, dandling the blackjack suggestively before his eyes. "One yelp
out of you, or a signal, if you've got one of them Lenses, and I bop
you another one."
"What the blinding blue hell's coming off here?" demanded the
dock-walloper, furiously. "Wha'd'ya think you're doing, you
lop-eared--" and he cursed the two, viciously and comprehensively.
"Shut up or he'll knock you kicking," the smaller thug advised from the
driver's seat, and Kinnison subsided. "Not that it bothers me any, but
you're making too much noise."
"But what's the matter?" Kinnison asked, more quietly. "What'd you slug
me for and drag me off? I ain't done nothing and I ain't got nothing."
"I don't know nothing," the big agent replied. "The boss will tell you
all you need to know when we get to where we're going. All I know is
the boss says to bop you easylike and bring you in alive if you don't
act up. He says to tell you not to yell and not to use no Lens. If you
yell we burn you out. If you use any Lens, the boss he's got his eyes
on all the bases and space-ports and everything, and if any help starts
to come this way he'll tell us and we burn you out. Then we buzz off.
We can kill you and flit before any help can get near you, he says."
"Your boss ain't got the brains of a fontema," Kinnison growled. He
knew that boss, wherever he was, could hear every word. "Hell's hinges,
if I was a Lensman you think I'd be walloping junk on a dock? Use your
head, cully, if you got one."
"I wouldn't know nothing about that," the other returned, stolidly.
"But I ain't got no Lens!" the dock-walloper stormed, in exasperation.
"Look at me--frisk me! You'll see I ain't!"
"All that ain't none of my dish." The thug was entirely unmoved. "I
don't know nothing and I don't do nothing except what the boss tells
me, see? Now take it easy, all nice and quietlike. If you don't," and
he flicked the blackjack lightly against the Lensman's knee, "I'll
put out your landing-lights. I'll lay you like a mat, and I don't mean
maybe. See?"
Kinnison saw, and relapsed into silence. The automobile rolled along.
And, flitting industriously about upon its delivery duties, but never
much more or less than one measured mile distant, a panel job pursued
its devious way. Oddly enough, its chauffeur was a Lensman. Here and
there, high in the heavens, were a few airplanes, gyros, and copters;
but they were going peacefully and steadily about their business--even
though most of them happened to have Lensmen as pilots.
And, not at Base at all, but high in the stratosphere and so thoroughly
screened that a spy-ray observer could not even tell that his gaze was
being blocked, Base's swiftest cruiser, Lensman-commanded, rode poised
upon flare-baffled, softly hissing under jets. And, equally high and
as adequately protected against observation, a keen-eyed Lensman sat
at the controls of a speedster, jazzing her muffled jets and peering
eagerly through a telescopic sight. As far as the Patrol was concerned,
everything was on the trips.
The car approached the gates of a suburban estate and stopped. It
waited. Kinnison knew that the Boskonian within was working his every
beam, alert for any sign of Patrol activity; knew that if there were
any such sign the car would be off in an instant. But there was no
activity. Kinnison sent a thought to Gerrond, who relayed micro-metric
readings of the objective to various Lensmen. Still everyone waited.
Then the gate opened of itself, the two thugs jerked their captive out
of the car to the ground, and Kinnison sent out his signal.
* * * * *
Base remained quiet, but everything else erupted at once. The airplanes
wheeled, cruiser and speedster plummeted downward at maximum blast.
The panel job literally fell open, as did the cage within it, and four
ravening cateagles, with the silent ferocity of their kind, rocketed
toward their goal.
Although the oglons were not as fast as the flying ships they did not
have nearly as far to go, wherefore they got there first. The thugs
had no warning whatever. One instant everything was under control; in
the next the noiselessly arrowing destroyers struck their prey with
the mad fury that only a striking cateagle can exhibit. Barbed talons
dug viciously into eyes, faces, mouths; tearing, rending, wrenching;
fierce-driven fangs tore deeply, savagely into defenseless throats.
Once each the thugs screamed in mad, lethal terror, but no warning was
given; for by that time every building upon that pretentious estate had
disappeared in the pyrotechnic flare of detonating duodec. The pellets
were small, of course--the gunners did not wish either to destroy the
nearby residences or to injure Kinnison--but they were powerful enough
for the purpose intended. Mansion and outbuildings disappeared, and not
even the most thoroughgoing spy-ray search revealed the presence of
anything animate or structural where those buildings had been.
The panel job drove up and Kinnison, perceiving that the cateagles
had done their work, sent them back into their cage. The Radeligian
Lensman, after securely locking cage and truck, cut the Earthman's
bonds.
"QX, Kinnison?" he asked.
"QX, Barknett--thanks," and the two Lensmen, one in the panel truck and
the other in the gangsters' car, drove back to Base. There Kinnison
recovered his package.
"This has got me all of a soapy lather, but you have called the turn
on every play yet," Winstead told the Tellurian, later. "Is this all
of the big shots, do you think, or are there some more of them around
here?"
"Not around here, I'm pretty sure," Kinnison replied. "No, two main
lines is all they would have had, I think--this time. Next time--"
"There won't be any next time," Winstead declared.
"Not on this planet, no. Knowing what to expect, you fellows can handle
anything that comes up. I was thinking then of my next step."
"Oh. But you'll get 'em, Gray Lensman!"
"I hope so"--soberly.
"Luck, Kinnison!"
"Clear ether, Winstead!" and this time the Tellurian really did flit.
As his speedster ripped through the void Kinnison did more thinking,
but he was afraid that his Arisian mentor would have considered
the product muddy, indeed. He couldn't seem to get to the first
check station. One thing was limpidly clear; this line of attack or any
very close variation of it would never work again. He'd have to think
up something new. So far, he had got away with his stuff because he had
kept one lap ahead of them, but how much longer could he manage to keep
up the pace?
Bominger had been no mental giant, of course; but this other lad
was nobody's fool and this next higher-up, with whom he had had an
interview via Bominger, would certainly prove to be a really shrewd
number.
"'The higher the fewer,'" he repeated to himself the old saying,
adding, "and in this case, the smarter." He had to put out some jets,
but where he was going to get the fuel he had no idea.
* * * * *
Again the trip to Tellus was uneventful, and the Gray Lensman, the
symbol of his rank again flashing upon his wrist, sought interview with
Haynes.
"Send him in, certainly--send him in!" Kinnison heard the communicator
crackle, and the receptionist passed him along. He paused in surprise,
however, at the doorway of the office, for Chief Surgeon Lacy and a
Posenian were in conference with the Port Admiral.
"Come in, Kinnison," Haynes invited. "Lacy wants to see you a minute,
too. Dr. Phillips--Lensman Kinnison, Unattached. His name is not
Phillips, of course; that is merely one we gave him in self-defense.
His real name is utterly unpronounceable."
Phillips, the Posenian, was as tall as Kinnison, and heavier. His
figure was somewhat human in shape, but not in detail. He had four arms
instead of two, each arm had two opposed hands, and each hand had two
thumbs, one situated about where a little finger would be expected. He
had no eyes, not even vestigial ones. He had two broad, flat noses and
two toothful mouths; one of each in what would ordinarily be called the
front of his round, shining, hairless head; the other in the back. Upon
the sides of his head were large, volute, highly dirigible ears. And,
like most races having the faculty of perception instead of that of
sight, his head was relatively immobile, his neck being short, massive,
and tremendously strong.
"You look well, very well," Lacy reported, after feeling and prodding
vigorously the members which had been in splints and casts so long.
"Have to take a picture, of course, before saying anything definite.
No, we won't, either, now. Phillips, look at his"--an interlude of
technical jargon--"and see what kind of a recovery he has made." Then,
while the Posenian was examining Kinnison's interior mechanisms, the
Chief Surgeon went on:
"Wonderful diagnosticians and surgeons, these Posenians--can see into
the patient without taking him apart. In another few centuries every
doctor will have to have the sense of perception. Phillips is doing a
research in neurology--more particularly a study of the neural synapse
and the proliferation of neural dendrites--"
"La--cy-y-y!" Haynes drawled the word in reproof. "I've told you a
thousand times to talk English when you're talking to me. How about it,
Kinnison?"
"It might be more comprehensible, although we must admit that any
scientist likes to speak with precision, which he cannot do in the
ordinary language of the layman."
"Right, boy--surprisingly and pleasingly right!" Lacy exclaimed. "Why
can't you adopt that attitude, Haynes, and learn enough words so that
you can understand what a man is talking about? But to reduce it to
monosyllabic simplicity, Phillips is studying a thing that has baffled
us for centuries--yes, for millennia. The lower forms of cells are able
to regenerate themselves; wounds heal, bones knit. Higher types, such
as nerve cells, regenerate imperfectly, if at all; and the highest
type, the brain cells, do not do so under any conditions." He turned a
reproachful gaze upon Haynes. "This is terrible. Those statements are
pitiful--inadequate--false. Worse than that--practically meaningless.
What I wanted to say, and what I'm going to say, is that--"
"Oh, no you aren't, not in this office," his old friend interrupted.
"We got the idea perfectly. The question is, why can't human beings
repair nerves or spinal cords, or grow new ones? If such a worthless
beastie as a starfish can grow a whole new body to one leg, including
a brain, if any, why can't a really intelligent victim of simple
infantile paralysis--or a ray--recover the use of a leg that is
otherwise in perfect shape?"
"Well, that's something like it, but I hope you can aim closer than
that at a battleship," Lacy grunted. "We'll buzz off now, Phillips, and
leave these two war horses alone."
* * * * *
"Here is my report in detail." Kinnison placed the package upon the
Port Admiral's desk as soon as the room was sealed behind the visitors.
"I talked to you direct about most of it--this is for the record."
"Of course. Mighty glad you found Medon, for our sake as well as
theirs. They have things that we need, badly."
"Where did they put them? I suggested a sun near Sol, so as to have
them handy to Prime Base."
"Right next door--Alpha Centauri. Didn't get to do much scouting, did
you?"
"I'll say we didn't. Boskonia owns that Galaxy; lock, stock, and
barrel. Maybe some other independent planets--bound to be, of course;
probably a lot of them--but it's too dangerous, hunting them at this
stage of the game. But at that, we did enough, for the time being. We
proved our point. Boskone, if there is any such being, is certainly in
the Second Galaxy. However, it will be a long time before we're ready
to carry the war there to him, and in the meantime we've got a lot to
do. Check?"
"To nineteen decimals."
"It seems to me, then, that while you are rebuilding our first-line
ships, super-powering them with Medonian insulation and conductors,
I had better keep on tracing Boskone along the line of drugs. I have
proved to my own satisfaction that they are back of almost all of that
drug business."
"And in some ways their drugs are more dangerous to Civilization than
their battleships. More insidious and, ultimately, more fatal."
"I'm convinced of it. And since I am perhaps as well equipped as any
of the other Lensmen to cope with that particular problem--" Kinnison
paused, questioningly.
"That certainly is no overstatement," the Port Admiral replied, dryly.
"You're the _only_ one equipped to cope with it."
"None of the other boys except Worsel, then? I heard that a couple--"
"They thought that they had a call, but they didn't. All they had was a
wish. They came back."
"Too bad--but I can see how that would be. A man has to know exactly
what he needs, and his brain must be ready to take it, or it burns
it out. It almost does, anyway--mind is a funny thing. But that isn't
getting us anywhere. Can you take time to let me talk at you a few
minutes?"
"I certainly can. You have what is perhaps the most important
assignment in the Galaxy, and I would like to know more about it, if
it's anything you can pass on."
"Nothing that need be sealed from any Lensman. The main object of all
of us, as you know, is to push Boskonia out of this Galaxy. From a
military standpoint they practically _are_ out. Their drug syndicate,
however, is very decidedly in, and getting in deeper all the time.
Therefore, we next push the zwilniks out. They have peddlers and such
small fry, who deal with distributors and so on. These, as it were,
form the bottom layer. Above them are the secret agents, the observers,
and the wholesale handlers; runners and importers. All these folks
are directed and controlled by one man, the boss of each planetary
organization. Thus, Bominger was the boss of all zwilnik activities on
the whole planet of Radelix.
"In turn the planetary bosses report to, and are synchronized and
controlled by, a Regional Director, who supervises the activities of a
couple of hundred or so planetary outfits. I got a line on the one over
Bominger, you know--Prellin, the Kalonian. By the way, you knew, didn't
you, that Helmuth was a Kalonian, too?"
"I got it from the tape. Smart people, they must be, but not my idea of
good neighbors."
"I'll say not. Well, that's all I really _know_ of their organization.
It seems logical to suppose, though, that the structure is coherent
all the way up. If so, the Regional Directors would be under some
higher-up, possibly a Galactic Director, who in turn might be under
Boskone himself--or one of his cabinet officers, at least. Perhaps the
Galactic Director might even be a cabinet officer in their government,
whatever it is?"
"An ambitious program you've got mapped out for yourself. How are you
figuring on swinging it?"
* * * * *
"That's the rub--I don't know," Kinnison confessed, ruefully. "But if
it's done at all, that's the way I've got to go about it. Any other way
would take a thousand years and more men than we'll ever have. This way
works fine, when it works at all."
"I can see that--lop off the head and the body dies," Haynes agreed.
"That's the way it works--especially when the head keeps detailed
records and books covering the activities of all the members of his
body. With Bominger and the others gone, and with full transcripts
of his accounts, the boys mopped up Radelix in a hurry. From now on
it will be simple to keep it clean, except of course, for the usual
bootleg trickle, and that can be reduced to a minimum. Similarly, if we
can put this Prellin away and take a good look at his ledgers, it will
be easy to clear up his two hundred planets. And so on."
"Very clear, and quite simple--in theory." The older man was thoughtful
and frankly dubious. "In practice, difficult in the extreme."
"But necessary," the younger insisted.
"I suppose so," Haynes assented finally. "Useless to tell you not to
take chances--you'll have to--but for all of our sakes, if not for your
own, be as careful as you can."
"I'll do that, chief. I think a lot of me, really. You know that story
about the guy who was all right in his place, but the place hadn't been
dug yet? Well, I don't want anybody digging my proper place for a long
time to come."
Haynes laughed, but the concern did not leave his features. "Anything
special you want done?" he asked.
"Yes, very special," Kinnison surprised him by answering in the
affirmative. "You know that the Medonians developed a scrambler for
a detector-nullifier. Hotchkiss and the boys developed a new line of
attack on that--against long-range stuff we're probably safe--but
they haven't been able to do a thing on electromagnetics. Well, the
Boskonians, beginning with Prellin, are going to start wondering what
has been happening. Then, if I succeed in getting Prellin, they are
bound to start doing things. One thing they will do will be to fix up
their headquarters so that they will have about five hundred percent
overlap on their electros. Perhaps they will have outposts, too, close
enough together to have the same thing there--possibly two or three
hundred even on visuals."
"In that case, I would say that you'd stay out."
"Not necessarily. What do electros work on?"
"Iron, I suppose--they did when I went to school last."
"The answer, then, is to build me a speedster that is inherently
indetectable--absolutely non-ferrous. Berylumin and other alloys for
all the structural parts--"
"But you've got to have silicon-steel cores for your electrical
equipment!"
"I was coming to that. Have you? I was reading in the 'Transactions'
the other day that force fields had been used in big units, and were
more efficient. Some of the smaller units, instruments and so on, might
have to have some iron, but wouldn't it be possible to so saturate
those small pieces with a dense field of detector frequencies that they
wouldn't react?"
"I don't know. Never thought of it. Would it?"
"I don't know, either--I'm not telling you, I'm just making
suggestions. I do know one thing, however. We've got to keep ahead of
them--think of things first and oftenest, and be ready to abandon them
for something else as soon as we have used them once."
"Except for those primary projectors." Haynes grinned wryly. "They
can't be abandoned--even with Medonian power we haven't been able to
develop a screen that will stop them cold. We've got to keep them
secret from Boskone--and in that connection I want to compliment you
on the suggestion of having Velantian Lensmen as mind readers wherever
those projectors are even being thought of."
"You caught spies, then? How many?"
"Not many--three or four in each Base--but enough to have done the
damage. Now, I believe, for the first time in history, we can be _sure_
of our entire personnel."
"I think so. The Arisian said that the Lens was enough, if we used it
properly. That's up to us."
"But how about visuals?" Haynes was still worrying, and to good purpose.
* * * * *
"Well, we have a black coating now that is ninety-nine percent
absorptive, and I don't need ports or windows. At that, though, one
percent reflection would be enough to give me away at a critical time.
How'd it be to put a couple of the boys on that job? Have them put a
decimal point after the ninety-nine and see how many nines they can
tack on behind it?"
"That's a thought, Kinnison, and they have lots of time to work on it
while the engineers are trying to fill your specifications as to a
speedster. But you're right, dead right, in everything you have said.
We--or rather, you--have got to out-think them; and it certainly is
up to us to do everything that can be done to build the apparatus to
put your thoughts into practice. And it is not at some vague time in
the future that Boskone is going to start thinking seriously about you
and what you have done. It is now; or even more probably, a week or so
ago. In fact, if there were any way of learning the truth, I think we
should find that they have begun acting already, instead of waiting
until you abate the nuisance which is Prellin, the Kalonian. But you
haven't said a word yet about the really big job you have in mind."
"I've been putting that off until the last." The Gray Lensman's voice
held obscure puzzlement. "The fact is that I simply can't get a tooth
into it--can't get a grip in it anywhere. I don't know enough about
math or physics. Everything comes out negative for me; not only
inertia, but also force, velocity, and even mass itself. Final results
always contain an 'i', too, the square root of minus one. I can't
get rid of it, and I don't see how it can be built into any kind of
apparatus. It may not be workable at all, but before I give up the idea
I would like to call a conference, if it's QX with you and the Council."
"Certainly it is QX with us. You're forgetting again, aren't you,
that you're a Gray Lensman?" Haynes' voice held no reproof, he was
positively beaming with a super-fatherly pride.
"Not exactly." Kinnison blushed, almost squirmed. "I'm just too much
of a cub to be sticking my neck out so far, that's all. The idea
may be--probably is--wilder than a Radeligian cateagle. The only
kind of a conference that could even begin to handle it would cost a
young fortune, and I don't want to spend that much money on my own
responsibility."
"To date your ideas have worked out well enough so that the Council is
backing you one hundred percent," the older man said, dryly. "Expense
is no object." Then, his voice changing markedly, "Kim, have you any
idea at all of the financial resources of the Patrol?"
"Very little, sir, if any, I'm afraid," Kinnison confessed.
"Here on Tellus alone we have an expendible reserve of over ten
thousand million credits. With the restriction of government to its
proper sphere and its concentration into our organization, resulting
in the liberation of man-power into wealth-producing enterprise,
and especially with the enormous growth of inter-world commerce,
world-income increased to such a point that taxation could be reduced
to a minimum; and the lower the taxes the more flourishing business
became and the greater the income.
"Now the tax rate is the lowest in recorded history. The total income
tax, for instance, in the highest bracket, is only three point five
nine two percent. At that, however, if it had not been for the recent
slump, due to Boskonian interference with inter-systemic commerce, we
would have had to reduce the tax rate again to avoid serious financial
difficulty due to the fact that too much of the galactic total of
circulating credit would have been concentrated in the expendable funds
of the Galactic Patrol. So don't even think of money. Whether you want
to spend a thousand credits, a million, or a thousand million; go
ahead."
"Thanks, chief; glad you explained. I'll feel better now about spending
money that doesn't belong to me. Now if you'll give me, for about
a week, the use of the librarian in charge of science files and a
galactic beam, I'll quit bothering you."
"I'll do that." The Port Admiral touched a button and in a few minutes
a trimly attractive blonde entered the room. "Miss Hostetter, this is
Lensman Kinnison, Unattached. Please turn over your regular duties to
an assistant and work with him until he releases you. Whatever he says,
goes; the sky's the limit."
* * * * *
In the Library of Science Kinnison outlined his problem briefly to his
new aide, concluding:
"I want only about fifty, as a larger group could not co-operate
efficiently. Are your lists arranged so that you can skim off the top
fifty?"
"Such a group can be selected, I think." The girl stood for a moment,
lower lip held lightly between white teeth. "That is not a standard
index, but each scientist has a rating upon his card. I can set the
acceptor ... no, the rejector would be better ... to throw out all the
cards above any given rating. If we take out all ratings over seven
hundred we will have only the highest of the geniuses."
"How many, do you suppose?"
"I have only a vague idea--a couple of hundred, perhaps. If too many,
we can run them again at a higher level, say seven ten. But there won't
be very many, since there are only two galactic ratings higher than
seven fifty. There will be duplications, too--such people as Sir Austin
Cardynge will have two or three cards in the final rejects."
"QX--we'll want to hand-pick the fifth, anyway. Let's go!"
Then for hours, bale after bale of cards went through the machine;
thousands of records per minute. Occasionally one card would flip out
into a rack, rejected. Finally:
"That's all, I think. Mathematicians, physicists," the librarian
ticked off upon pink fingers. "Astronomers, philosophers, and this new
classification, which has not been named yet."
"The H.T.T.'s." Kinnison glanced at the label, lightly lettered in
pencil, fronting the slim packet of cards. "Aren't you going to run
them through, too?"
"No. These are the two I mentioned a minute ago--the only ones rating
over seven hundred fifty."
"A choice pair, eh? Sort of a _crème de la crème_? Let's look 'em
over," and he extended his hand. "What do the initials stand for?"
"I'm awfully sorry, sir, really," the girl flushed in embarrassment as
she relinquished the cards in high reluctance. "If I'd had any idea,
we wouldn't have dared--we call you, among ourselves, the 'High-Tension
Thinkers.'"
"Us!" It was the Lensman's turn to flush. Nevertheless, he took the
packet and read sketchily the facer: "Class XIX--Unclassifiable at
present--lack of adequate methods--minds of range and scope far
beyond any available indices--Ratings above high genius (750)--yet
no instability--power beyond any heretofore known--assigned rating
tentative and definitely minimum."
He then read the cards.
"Worsel, Velantia, eight hundred five."
And:
"Kimball Kinnison, Tellus, nine hundred twenty-five!"