Although Kinnison left Bronseca, abandoning that line of attack
completely--thereby, it might be thought, forfeiting all the work
he had theretofore done upon it--the Patrol was not idle, nor was
Prellin-Wembleson of Cominoche, the Boskonian Regional Director,
neglected. Lensman after Lensman came and went, unobtrusively, but
grimly determined. There came Tellurians, Manarkans, Borovans; Lensmen
of every human breed, any of whom might have been, as far as the
minions of Boskone knew, the one foe whom they had such good cause to
fear.
Rigellian Lensmen came also, and Poenians, and Ordoviks;
representatives, in fact, of almost every available race possessing any
type or kind of extrasensory perception, came to test out their skill
and cunning. Even Worsel of Velantia came, hurled for days his mighty
mind against those screens, and departed.
Whether or not business went on as usual no one could say, but the
Patrol was certain of three things. First, that while the Boskonians
might be destroying some of their records, they were moving none away,
by air, land, or tunnel; second, that there was no doubt in any zwilnik
mind that the Lensmen were there to stay until they won, in one way or
another; and third, that Prellin's life was not a happy one!
And while his brothers of the Lens were so efficiently pinch-hitting
for him--even though they were at the same time trying to show him
up and thereby win kudos for themselves--in mentally investing the
Regional stronghold of Boskone, Kinnison was establishing an identity
as a wandering hellion of the asteroid belts.
There would be no slips this time. He would _be_ a meteor miner
in every particular, down to the last, least detail. To this end
he selected his equipment with the most exacting care. It must be
thoroughly adequate and dependable, but neither new nor of such
outstanding quality or amount as to cause comment.
His ship, a stubby, powerful space-tug with an oversized air
lock, was a used job--hard-used, too--some ten years old. She was
battered, pitted, and scarred; but it should be noted here, perhaps
parenthetically, that when the technicians finished their rebuilding
she was actually as stanch as a battleship. His space-armor, Spalding
drills, DeLameters, tractors and pressors, and "spee-gee"--torsion
specific-gravity apparatus--were of the same grade. All bore
unmistakable evidence of years of hard use, but all were in perfect
working condition. In short, his outfit was exactly that which
a successful meteor miner--even such a one as he was going to
become--would be expected to own.
He cut his own hair, and his whiskers, too, with ordinary shears, as
was good technique. He learned the polyglot of the trade; the language
which, made up of words from each of hundreds of planetary tongues,
was and is the everyday speech of human or near-human meteor miners,
wherever found. By "near-human" is meant a six-place classification
of A A point A A A A--meaning erect, bifurcate, warm-blooded,
oxygen-breathing, bilaterally duo-symmetrical, and possessing eyes.
For, even in meteor-mining, like has a tendency to run with, and
especially to play with, like. Thus, warm-blooded oxygen-breathers
find neither welcome nor enjoyment in a pleasure-resort operated by
and for such a race, say, as the Trocanthers, who are cold-blooded,
quasi-reptilian beings who abhor light of all kinds and who breath a
gaseous mixture not only paralyzingly cold in temperature but also
chemically fatal to man.
Above all, he had to learn how to drink strong liquors and how to take
drugs, for he knew that no drink that had ever been distilled, and
no drug, with the possible exception of thionite, could enslave the
mind he then had. Thionite was out, anyway. It was too scarce and too
expensive for meteor miners; they simply didn't go for it. Hadive,
heroin, opium, nitrolabe, bentlam--that was it, bentlam. He could get
it anywhere, all over the Galaxy, and it was very much in character.
Easy to take, potent in results, and not as damaging--if you didn't
become a real addict--to the system as most of the others. He would
become a bentlam-eater.
* * * * *
Bentlam, known also to the trade by such nicknames as "benny,"
"benweed," "happy-sleep," and others, is a shredded, moistly fibrous
material of about the same consistency and texture as fine-cut chewing
tobacco. Through his friends in Narcotics the Gray Lensman obtained a
supply of "the clear quill, first chop, in the original tins" from a
prominent bootlegger, and had it assayed for potency.
The drinking problem required no thought; he would learn to drink, and
apparently to like, anything and everything that would pour. Meteor
miners did.
Therefore, coldly, deliberately, dispassionately, and with as complete
a detachment as though he were calibrating a burette or analyzing an
unknown solution, he set about the task. He determined his capacity
as impersonally as though his physical body were a volumetric flask;
he noted the effect of each measured increment of high-proof beverage
and of habit-forming drug as precisely as though he were studying a
chemical reaction in which he himself was not concerned save as a
purely scientific observer.
He detested the stuff. Every fiber of his being rebelled at the
sensations evoked--the loss of co-ordination and control, the
inflation, the aggrandizement, the falsity of values, the sheer
hallucinations--nevertheless he went through with the whole program,
even to the extent of complete physical helplessness for periods of
widely varying duration. And when he had completed his researches he
was thoroughly well informed.
He knew to a nicety, by feel, how much active principle he had
taken, no matter how strong, how weak, or how adulterated the liquor
or the drug had been. He knew to a fraction how much more he could
take; or, having taken too much, almost exactly how long he would be
incapacitated. He learned for himself what was already widely known,
that it was better to get at least moderately illuminated before taking
the drug; that bentlam rides better on top of liquor than vice versa.
He even determined roughly the rate of increase with practice of his
tolerances. Then, and only then, did he begin working as a meteorite
miner.
Working in an asteroid belt of one solar system might have been enough,
but the Gray Lensman took no chances at all of having his new identity
traced back to its source. Therefore he worked, and caroused, in five;
approaching step-wise to the solar system of Borova which was his goal.
Arrived at last, he gave his chunky space-boat the average velocity of
an asteroid belt just outside the orbit of the fourth planet, shoved
her down into it, turned on his Bergenholm, and went to work. His first
job was to "set up"; to install in the extra-large air lock, already
equipped with duplicate controls, his tools and equipment. He donned
space-armor, made sure that his DeLameters were sitting pretty--all
meteor miners go armed as routine, and the Lensman had altogether too
much at stake in any case to forgo his accustomed weapons--pumped the
air of the lock back into the body of the ship, and opened the outer
port. For meteor miners do not work inside their ships. It takes too
much time to bring the metal in through the air locks. It also wastes
air, and air is precious; not only in money, although that is no minor
item, but also because no small ship, stocked for a six-weeks' run, can
carry any more air than is really needed.
Set up, he studied his electros and flicked his tractor beams out
to a passing fragment of metal, which flashed up to him, almost
instantaneously. Or, rather, the inertialess tugboat flashed across
space to the comparatively tiny, but inert, bit of metal which he was
about to investigate. With expert ease Kinnison clamped the meteorite
down and rammed into it his Spalding drill, the tool which in one
operation cuts out and polishes a cylindrical sample exactly one inch
in diameter and exactly one inch long. Kinnison took the sample,
placed it in the jaw of his spee-gee, and cut his Berg. Going inert
in an asteroid belt is dangerous business, but it is only one of a
meteor miner's hazards and it is necessary; for the torsiometer is
the quickest and simplest means of determining the specific gravity
of metal out in space, and no torsion instrument will work upon
inertialess matter.
He read the scale even as he turned on the Berg. Seven point nine.
Iron. Worthless. Big operators could use it--the asteroid belts had
long since supplanted the mines of the worlds as sources of iron--but
it wouldn't do him a bit of good. Therefore, tossing it aside, he
speared another. Another, and another. Hour after hour, day after
day; the back-breaking, lonely labor of the meteor miner. But very
few of the bona-fide miners had the Gray Lensman's physique or his
stamina, and not one of them all had even a noteworthy fraction of his
brain. And brain counts, even in meteor-mining. Hence Kinnison found
pay-metal; quite a few really good, although not phenomenally dense,
pieces.
* * * * *
Then one day there happened a thing which, if it was not in actual
fact premeditated, was as mathematically improbable, almost, as the
formation of a planetary solar system; an occurrence that was to
exemplify in startling and hideous fashion the doctrine of tooth and
fang which is the only law of the asteroid belts. Two tractor beams
seized, at almost the same instant, the same meteor! Two ships,
flashing up to zone contact in the twinkling of an eye, the inoffensive
meteor squarely between them! And in the air lock of the other tug
there were two men, not one; two men already going for their guns with
the practiced ease of space-hardened veterans to whom the killing of a
man was the veriest bagatelle!
[Illustration: _In the air lock of the other meteor miner, two men--not
one--were going for their DeLameters_--]
They must have been hijackers, killing and robbing as a business,
Kinnison concluded, afterward. Bona-fide miners almost never work two
to a boat, and the fact that they actually beat him to the draw, and
yet were so slow in shooting, argued that they had not been taken by
surprise, as had he. Indeed, the meteor itself, the bone of contention,
might very well have been a bait.
He could not follow his natural inclination to let go, to let them
have it. The tale would have spread far and wide, branding him as a
coward and a weakling. He would have had to kill, or been killed by,
any number of lesser bullies who would have attacked him on sight. Nor
could he have taken over their minds quickly enough to have averted
death. One, perhaps, but not two; he was no Arisian. These thoughts,
as has been intimated, occurred to him long afterward. During the
actual event there was no time to think at all. Instead, he acted;
automatically and instantaneously.
Kinnison's hands flashed to the worn grips of his DeLameters, sliding
them from the leather and bringing them to bear at the hip with one
smoothly flowing motion that was a marvel of grace and speed. But, fast
as he was, he was almost too late. Four bolts of lightning blasted,
almost as one. The two desperadoes dropped, cold; the Lensman felt a
stab of agony sear through his shoulder and the breath whistled out of
his mouth and nose as his spacesuit collapsed. Gasping terribly for air
that was no longer there, holding onto his senses doggedly and grimly,
he made shift to close the outer door of the lock and to turn a valve.
He did not lose consciousness--quite--and as soon as he recovered
the use of his muscles he stripped off his suit and examined himself
narrowly in a mirror.
Eyes, plenty bloodshot. Nose, bleeding copiously. Ears bleeding, but
not too badly; drums not ruptured, fortunately--he had been able to
keep the pressure fairly well equalized. Felt like some internal
bleeding, but he could see nothing really serious. He hadn't breathed
space long enough to do any permanent damage, he guessed.
Then, baring his shoulder, he treated the wound with Zinmaster
burn-dressing. This was no trifle, but at that, it wasn't so bad. No
bone gone--it'd heal in two or three weeks. Lastly, he looked over his
suit. If he'd only had his G-P armor on--but that, of course, was out
of the question. He had a spare suit, but he'd rather--Fine, he could
replace the burned section easily enough. QX.
He donned his other suit, re-entered the air lock, neutralized the
screens, and crossed over; where he did exactly what any other meteor
miner would have done. He divested the bloated corpses of their
spacesuits and shoved them off into space. He then ransacked the ship,
transferring from it to his own, as well as four heavy meteors, every
other item of value which he could move and which his vessel could
hold. Then inerting her, he gave her a couple of notches of drive
and cut her loose, for so a real miner would have done. It was not
compunction or scruple that would have prevented any miner from taking
the ship, as well as the supplies. Ships were registered, and otherwise
were too hot to be handled except by organized criminal rings.
As a matter of routine he tested the meteor which had been the
innocent cause of all this strife--or had it been a bait?--and found
it worthless iron. Also as routine he kept on working. He had almost
enough metal now, even at Miners' Rest prices, for a royal binge, but
he couldn't go in until his shoulder was well. And a couple of weeks
later he got the shock of his life.
* * * * *
He had brought in a meteor; a mighty big one, over four feet in its
smallest diameter. He sampled it, and as soon as he cut the Berg and
flicked the sample experimentally from hand to hand, his skilled
muscles told him that that metal was astoundingly dense. Heart racing,
he locked the test-piece into the spee-gee; and that vital organ
almost stopped beating entirely as the indicator needle went up and
up and up--stopping at a full twenty-two, and the scale went only to
twenty-four!
"Klono's brazen hoofs and diamond-tipped horns!" he ejaculated.
He whistled stridently through his teeth, then measured his find
as accurately as he could. Then, speaking aloud, "Just about
thirty thousand kilograms of something noticeably denser than pure
platinum--thirty million credits or I'm a Zabriskan fontema's maiden
aunt. What to do?"
This find, as well it might, gave the Gray Lensman pause. It upset his
calculations. It was unthinkable to take that meteor to such a fence's
hide-out as Miners' Rest. Men had been murdered, and would be again,
for a thousandth of its value. No matter where he took it, there would
be publicity galore, and that wouldn't do. If he called a Patrol ship
to take the white elephant off his hands he might be seen; and he had
put in too much work on this identity to jeopardize it. He would have
to bury it, he guessed--he had maps of the System, and the fourth
planet was close by.
He cut off a chunk of a few pounds' weight and made a nugget--a tiny
meteor--of it, then headed for the planet, a plainly visible disk some
fifteen degrees from the Sun. He had a fairly large-scale chart of the
System, with notes. Borova IV was uninhabited, except by low forms
of life, and by outposts. Cold. Atmosphere thin--good, that meant no
clouds. No oceans. No volcanic activity. Very good! He'd look it over,
and the first striking landmark he saw, from one diameter out, would be
his cache.
He circled the planet once at the equator, observing a formation of
five mighty peaks arranged in a semicircle, cupped toward the world's
north pole. He circled it again, seeing nothing as prominent, and
nothing else resembling it at all closely. Scanning his plate narrowly,
to be sure nothing was following him, he drove downward in a screaming
dive toward the middle mountain.
It was an extinct volcano, he discovered, with a level-floored crater
more than a hundred miles in diameter. Practically level, that is,
except for a smaller cone which reared up in the center of that vast,
desolate plain of craggy, tortured lava. Straight down into the cold
vent of the inner cone the Lensman steered his ship; and in its exact
center he dug a hole and buried his treasure. He then lifted his
tugboat fifty feet and held her there, poised on her raving underjets,
until the lava in the little crater again began sluggishly to flow, and
thus to destroy all evidence of his visit. This detail attended to, he
shot out into space and called Haynes, to whom he reported in full.
"I'll bring the meteor in when I come--or do you want to send somebody
out here after it? It belongs to the Patrol, of course."
"No, it doesn't, Kim--it belongs to you."
"Huh? Isn't there a law that any discoveries made by any employees of
the Patrol belong to the Patrol?"
"Nothing as broad as that, that I know of. Certain scientific
discoveries, by scientists assigned to an exact research, yes. But
you're forgetting again that you're an Unattached Lensman, and as
such are accountable to no one in the Universe. Even the ten percent
treasure-trove law couldn't touch you. Besides, your meteor is not in
that category, as you are its first owner, as far as we know. If you
insist I will mention it to the Council, but I know in advance that the
Patrol can claim none of it, even if we wanted to--which we definitely
do not."
"QX, chief--thanks," and the connection was broken.
There, that was that. He had got rid of the white elephant, yet it
wouldn't be wasted. If the zwilniks got him, the Patrol would dig it
up; if he lived long enough to retire to a desk job he wouldn't have to
take any more of the Patrol's money as long as he lived. Financially,
he was all set.
And physically, he was all set for his first real binge as a
meteor miner. His shoulder and arm were as good as new. He had a lot
of metal; enough so that its proceeds would finance, not only his
next venture into space, but also a really royal celebration in any
spaceman's resort, even the one he had already picked out.
For the Lensman had devoted a great deal of thought to that item. For
his purpose, the bigger the resort the better. The man he was after
would not be a small operator, nor would he deal directly with such.
Also, the big kingpins did not murder drugged miners for their ships
and outfits, as the smaller ones sometimes did. The big ones realized
that there was more long-pull profit in repeat business.
Therefore, Kinnison set his course toward the great asteroid Euphrosyne
and its festering hell-hole, Miners' Rest. Miners' Rest, to all highly
moral citizens the disgrace not only of a solar system but of a sector;
the very name of which was--and is--a byword and a hissing to the
blue-noses of twice a hundred inhabited and civilized worlds.