The fashion in which the Overlords of Delgon had come under the ægis
of Boskone, while obscure for a time, was in reality quite simple and
logical; for upon distant Jarnevon the Eich had profited signally
from Eichlan's disastrous raid upon Arisia. Not exactly in the sense
suggested by Eukonidor, the Arisian guardian, it is true, but profited
nevertheless. They had learned that thought, hitherto considered only
a valuable adjunct to achievement, was actually an achievement in
itself; that it could be used as a weapon of surpassing power.
Eukonidor's homily, as he more than suspected at the time, might as
well never have been uttered, for all the effect it had upon the life
or upon the purpose in life of any single member of the race of the
Eich. Eichmil, who had been Second of Boskone, was now First; the
others were advanced correspondingly; and a new Eighth and Ninth had
been chosen to complete the roster of the council which was Boskone.
"The late Eichlan," Eichmil stated harshly after calling the new
Boskone to order--which event took place within a day after it became
apparent that the two bold spirits had departed to a bourne from which
there was to be no returning--"erred seriously, in fact fatally, in
underestimating an opponent, even though he himself was prone to harp
upon the danger of that very thing.
"We are agreed that our objectives remain unchanged; and also that
greater circumspection must be used until we have succeeded in
discovering the hitherto unsuspected potentialities of pure thought.
We will now hear from one of our new members, the Ninth, also a
psychologist, who most fortunately had been studying this situation
even before the inception of the expedition which yesterday came to
such a catastrophic end."
"It is clear," the Ninth of Boskone began, "that Arisia is at
present out of the question. Perceiving the possibility of some such
dénouement--an idea to which I repeatedly called the attention of my
predecessor psychologist, the late Eighth--I have been long at work
upon certain alternative measures.
"Consider, please, that we learned first of the thought-screens from
Helmuth; who was then of the opinion that they were first used in the
Tellurian Galaxy by the natives of Velantia. This belief was amended
later, in discredited reports, to one that said devices did in fact
originate upon Arisia. This later conclusion we may now accept as
a fact, since the Arisians could and did break such screens by the
application of mental forces either of greater magnitude than they
could withstand or of some new and as yet unknown composition or
pattern.
"Such screens were, however, and probably still are, used largely and
commonly upon the planet Velantia. Therefore they must have been both
necessary and adequate. The deduction is, I believe, defensible that
they were used as a protection against entities who were, and who
still may be, employing against the Velantians the weapons of pure
thought which we wish to investigate and to acquire.
"I propose, then, that I and a few others of my selection continue this
research, not upon Arisia, but upon Velantia and perhaps elsewhere."
To this suggestion there was no demur and a vessel set out forthwith.
The visit to Velantia was simple and created no untoward disturbance
whatever. In this connection it must be remembered that the natives
of Velantia, then in the early ecstasies of discovery by the Galactic
Patrol and the consequent acquisition of inertialess flight, were
fairly reveling in visits to and from the widely-variant peoples of
the planets of hundreds of other suns. It must be borne in mind that,
since the Eich were, if anything, physically more like the Velantians
than were the men of Tellus, the presence of a group of such entities
upon the planet would create no more interest or comment than that of
a group of human beings. Therefore that fateful visit went unnoticed
at the time, and as it was only by long and arduous research, after
Kinnison had deduced that some such visit must have been made, that it
was shown to have been an actuality.
Space forbids any detailed account of what the Ninth of Boskone and
his fellows did, although that story of itself would be no mean epic.
Suffice it to say, then, that they became well acquainted with the
friendly Velantians; they studied and they learned. Particularly did
they seek information concerning the noisome Overlords of Delgon,
although the natives did not care to dwell at any length upon the
subject.
"Their power is broken," they were wont to inform the questioners, with
airy flirtings of tail and wing. "Every known cavern of them, and not
a few hitherto unknown caverns, have been blasted out of existence.
Whenever one of them dares to obtrude his mentality upon any one of us
he is at once hunted down and slain. Even if they are not all dead,
as we think, they certainly are no longer a menace to our peace and
security."
* * * * *
Having secured all the information available upon Velantia, the Eich
went to Delgon, where they devoted all the power of their admittedly
first-grade minds and all the not inconsiderate resources of their ship
to the task of finding and uniting the remnants of what had once been a
flourishing race, the Overlords of Delgon.
The Overlords! That monstrous, repulsive, amoral race which, not
excepting even the Eich themselves, achieved the most universal
condemnation ever to have been given in the long history of the
Galactic Union. The Eich, admittedly deserving of the fate which was
theirs, had and have their apologists. The Eich were wrong-minded, all
admit. They were anti-social, blood-mad, obsessed with an insatiable
lust for power and conquest which nothing except complete extinction
could extirpate. Their evil attributes were legion. They were, however,
brave. They were organizers par excellence. They were, in their own
fashion, creators and doers. They had the courage of their convictions
and followed them to the bitter end.
Of the Overlords, however, nothing good has ever been said. They were
debased, cruel, perverted to a degree starkly unthinkable to any
normal intelligence, however housed. In their native habitat they had
no weapons, nor need of any. Through sheer power of mind they reached
out to their victims, even upon other planets, and forced them to
come to the gloomy caverns in which they had their being. There the
victims were tortured to death in numberless unspeakable fashions, and
while they died the captors _fed_, ghoulishly, upon the departing life
principle of the sufferer.
The mechanism of that absorption is entirely unknown; nor is there
any adequate evidence as to what end was served by it in the economy
of that horrid race. That these orgies were not essential to their
physical well-being is certain, since many of the creatures survived
for a long time after the frightful rites were rendered impossible.
Be that as it may, the Eich sought out and found many surviving
Overlords. The latter tried to enslave the visitors and to bend them
into their hideously sadistic purposes, but to no avail. Not only were
the Eich protected by thought-screens; they had minds of a fierce
power almost, if not quite, equal to the Overlord's own. And, after
these first overtures had been made and channels of communication
established, the alliance was a natural.
Much has been said and written of the binding power of love. That,
and other noble emotions, have indeed performed wonders. It seems to
this historian, however, that all too little has been said of the
effectiveness of pure hate as a cementing material. Probably for good
and sufficient moral reasons; perhaps because--and for the best--its
application has been of comparatively infrequent occurrence. Here,
in the case in hand, we have history's best example of two entirely
dissimilar peoples working efficiently together under the urge, not of
love or of any other lofty sentiment, but of sheer, stark, unalloyed
and corrosive, but common, hate.
Both hated civilization and everything pertaining to it. Both wanted
revenge; wanted it with a searing, furious need almost tangible;
a gnawing, burning lust which neither countenanced palliation nor
brooked denial. And above all, both hated vengefully, furiously,
esuriently--every way except blindly--an as yet unknown and
unidentified wearer of the million-times accursed Lens of the Galactic
Patrol!
The Eich were hard, ruthless, cold; not even having such words in their
language as "conscience," "mercy," or "scruple." Their hatred of the
Lensman was then a thing of an intensity unknowable to any human mind.
Even that emotion, however, grim as it was and fearsome, paled beside
the passionately vitriolic hatred of the Overlords of Delgon for the
being who had been the Nemesis of their race.
And when the sheer mental power of the Overlords, unthinkably great as
it was and operative withal in a fashion sheerly incomprehensible to us
of civilization, was combined with the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and
drive, as well as with the scientific ability of the Eich, the results
would in any case have been portentous indeed.
In this case they were more than portentous, and worse. Those
prodigious intellects, fanned into fierce activity by fiery blasts of
hatred, produced a thing incredible.