Before the _Dauntless_ was serviced for the flight into the unknown
Kinnison changed his mind. He was vaguely troubled about the trip. It
was nothing as definite as a "hunch"; hunches are, the Gray Lensman
knew, the results of the operation of an extrasensory perception
possessed by all of us in greater or lesser degree. It was probably
not an obscure warning to his super-sense from another, more pervasive
dimension. It was, he thought, a repercussion of the doubt in Xylpic's
mind that the fading out of the men's bodies had been due to simple
invisibility.
"I think I'd better go alone, chief," he informed the Port Admiral one
day. "I'm not quite as sure as I was as to just what they've got."
"What difference does that make?" Haynes demanded.
"Lives," was the terse reply.
"_Your_ life is what I'm thinking about. You'll be safer with the big
ship, you can't deny that."
"We-ll, perhaps. But I don't want--"
"What you want is immaterial."
"How about a compromise? I'll take Worsel and Van Buskirk. When the
Overlords hypnotized him that time it made Bus so mad that he's been
taking treatments from Worsel. Nobody can hypnotize him now, Worsel
says, not even an Overlord."
"No compromise. I can't order you to take the _Dauntless_, since your
authority is transcendent. You can take anything you like. I can,
however, and shall, order the _Dauntless_ to ride your tail wherever
you go."
"QX, I'll have to take her then." Kinnison's voice grew somber. "But
suppose half the crew don't get back--and that I do?"
"Isn't that what happened on the _Brittania_?"
"No," came flat answer. "We were all taking the same chance then--it
was the luck of the draw. This is different."
"How different?"
"I've got better equipment than they have. I'd be a murderer, cold."
"Not at all, no more than then. You had better equipment then, too,
you know, although not as much of it. Every commander of men has that
same feeling when he sends men to death. But put yourself in my place.
Would you send one of your best men, or let him go alone on a highly
dangerous mission when more men or ships would improve his chances?
Answer that, honestly."
"Probably I wouldn't," Kinnison admitted, reluctantly.
"QX. Take all the precautions you can--but I don't have to tell you
that. I know you will."
* * * * *
Therefore it was the _Dauntless_ in which Kinnison set out a day or two
later. With him were Worsel and Van Buskirk, as well as the vessel's
full operating crew of Tellurians. As they approached the region of
space in which Xylpic's vessel had been attacked every man in the crew
got his armor in readiness for instant use, checked his side arms, and
took his emergency battle station. Kinnison turned then to Worsel.
"How d'you feel, fellow old snake?" he asked.
"Scared," the Velantian replied, sending a rippling surge of power the
full length of the thirty-foot-long cable of supple, although almost
steel-hard flesh that was his body. "Scared to the tip of my tail. Not
that they can treat me as they did before--we three, at least, are safe
from their minds--but at what they will _do_. Whatever it is to be, it
will not be what we expect. They certainly will not do the obvious."
"That's what's clogging my jets." The Lensman agreed. "As a flapper
told me once, I'm getting the screaming meamies."
"That's what you mugs get for being so brainy," Van Buskirk put in.
With a flick of his massive wrist he brought his thirty-pound spaceax
to the "ready" as lightly as though it were a Tellurian dress saber.
"Bring on your Overlords--squish! Just like that!" and a whistling
sweep of his atrocious weapon was illustration enough.
"May be something in that, too, Bus," he laughed. Then, to the
Velantian, "About time to tune in one of 'em, I guess."
He was in no doubt whatever as to Worsel's ability to reach them. He
knew that that incredibly powerful mind, without Lens or advanced
Arisian instruction, had been able to cover eleven solar systems: he
knew that, with his present ability, Worsel could cover half of space!
Although every fiber of his being shrieked protest against contact with
the hereditary foe of his race, the Velantian put his mind en rapport
with the Overlords and sent out his thought. He listened for seconds,
motionless, then glided across the room to the thought-screened pilot
and hissed directions. The pilot altered his course sharply and gave
her the gun.
"I'll take her over now," Worsel said, presently. "It'll look better
that way--more as though they had us all under control."
He cut the Bergenholm, then set everything on zero--the ship hung,
inert and practically motionless, in space. Simultaneously twenty
unscreened men--volunteers--dashed toward the main air lock, overcome
by some intense emotion.
"Now! Screens on! Scramblers!" Kinnison yelled; and at his words a
thought-screen enclosed the ship; high-powered scramblers--within whose
fields no invisibility apparatus could hold--burst into action. Then
the vessel was, right beside the _Dauntless_, a Boskonian in every line
and member!
"Fire!"
But even as she appeared, before a firing-stud could be pressed, the
enemy craft almost disappeared again; or rather, she did not really
appear at all, except as the veriest wraith of what a good, solid ship
of space-alloy ought to be. She was a ghost ship, as unsubstantial
as fog. Mist, tenuous, immaterial; the shadow of a shadow. A dream
ship, built of the gossamer of dreams, manned by figments of horror
recruited from sheerest nightmare. Not invisibility this time, Kinnison
knew with a profound shock. Something else--something entirely
different--something utterly incomprehensible. Xylpic had said it as
nearly as it could be put into understandable words--the Boskonian ship
was _leaving_, although it was standing still! It was monstrous--it
_couldn't be done_!
Then, at a range of only feet instead of the usual "point-blank" range
of hundreds of miles, the tremendous secondaries of the _Dauntless_
cut loose. At such a ridiculous range as that--why, the screens
themselves kept anything farther away from them than that ship
was--they _couldn't_ miss. Nor did they; but neither did they hit.
Those ravening beams went through and through the tenuous fabrication
which should have been a vessel, but they struck nothing whatever. They
went _past_--entirely harmlessly past--both the ship itself and the
wraithlike but unforgettable figures which Kinnison recognized at a
glance as Overlords of Delgon. His heart sank with a thud. He knew when
he had had enough; and this was altogether too much.
"Go free!" he rasped. "Give 'er the oof!"
Energy poured into and through the great Bergenholm, but nothing
happened; ship and contents remained inert. Not exactly inert, either,
for the men were beginning to feel a new and unique sensation.
Energy raved from the driving jets, but still nothing happened. There
was none of the thrust, none of the reaction of an inert start; there
was none of the lashing, quivering awareness of speed which affects
every mind, however hardened to free flight, in the instant of change
from rest to a motion many times faster than that of light.
"Armor! Thought-screens! Emergency stations all!" Since they could not
run away from whatever it was that was coming, they would face it.
* * * * *
And something was happening now, there was no doubt of that. Kinnison
had been seasick and airsick and spacesick. Also, since cadets must
learn to be able to do without artificial gravity, pseudo-inertia, and
those other refinements which make space liners so comfortable, he had
known the nausea and the queasily terrifying endless-fall sensations of
weightlessness, as well as the even worse outrages of the sensibilities
incident to inertialessness in its crudest, most basic applications. He
thought that he was familiar with all the untoward sensations of every
mode of travel known to science. This, however, was something entirely
new.
He felt as though he were being compressed; not as a whole, but atom
by atom. He was being twisted--cork-screwed in a monstrously obscure
fashion which permitted him neither to move from his place nor to
remain where he was. He hung there, poised, for hours--or was it for
a thousandth of a second? At the same time he felt a painless, but
revolting transformation progress in a series of waves throughout his
entire body; a rearrangement, a writhing, crawling distortion, an
incomprehensibly impossible extrusion of each ultimate corpuscle of his
substance in an unknowable and non-existent direction!
As slowly--or as rapidly--as the transformation had waxed, it waned.
He was again free to move. As far as he could tell, everything was
almost as before. The _Dauntless_ was about the same; so was the
almost-invisible ship attached to her so closely. There was, however, a
difference. The air seemed thick--familiar objects were seen blurrily,
dimly--distorted--outside the ship there was nothing except a vague
blur of grayness--no stars, no constellations.
A wave of thought came beating into his brain. He had to leave the
_Dauntless_. It was most vitally important to go into that dimly-seen
companion vessel without an instant's delay! And even as his mind
instinctively reared a barrier, blocking out the intruding thought, he
recognized it for what it was--the summons of the Overlords!
But how about the thought-screens, he thought in a semidaze, then
reason resumed accustomed sway. He was no longer in space--at least,
not in the space he knew. That new, indescribable sensation had been
one of _acceleration_--when they attained constant velocity it stopped.
Acceleration--velocity--in what? To what? He did not know. Out of space
as he knew it, certainly. Time was distorted, unrecognizable. Matter
did not necessarily obey the familiar laws. Thought? QX--thought, lying
in the subether, probably was unaffected. Thought-screen generators,
however, being material might not--in fact, did not--work. Worsel, Van
Buskirk, and he did not need them, but those other poor devils--
He looked at them. The men--all of them, officers and all--had thrown
off their armor, thrown away their weapons, and were again rushing
toward the lock. With a smothered curse Kinnison followed them, as did
the Velantian and the giant Dutch-Valerian. Into the lock. Through it,
into the almost invisible spacetube, which, he noticed, was floored
with a much denser-appearing substance. The air felt heavy; dense,
like water, or even more like metallic mercury. It breathed, however,
QX. Into the Boskonian ship, along corridors, into a room which was
precisely such a torture chamber as Kinnison had described. There they
were, ten of them; ten of the dragonlike, reptilian Overlords of Delgon!
* * * * *
They moved slowly, sluggishly, as did the Tellurians, in that thick,
dense medium which was not, could not be, air. Ten chains were thrown,
like pictures in slow motion, about ten human necks; ten entranced men
were led unresistingly to anguished doom. This time the Gray Lensman's
curse was not smothered--with a blistering deep-space oath he pulled
his DeLameter and fired--once, twice, thrice. No soap--he knew it,
but he had to try. Furious, he launched himself. His taloned fingers,
ravening to tear, went past, not around, the Overlord's throat; and the
scimitared tail of the reptile, fierce-driven, apparently went through
the Lensman, screens, armor, and brisket, but touched none of them in
passing. He hurled a thought a more disastrous bolt by far than he
had sent against any mind since he had learned the art. In vain--the
Overlords, themselves masters of mentality, could not be slain or even
swerved by any forces at his command.
Kinnison reared back then in thought. There must be some ground, some
substance common to the planes or dimensions involved, else they could
not be here. The deck, for instance, was as solid to his feet as it
was to the enemy. He thrust out a hand at the wall beside him--it
was not there. The chains, however, held his suffering men, and the
Overlords held the chains. The knives, also and the clubs, and the
other implements of torture being wielded with such peculiarly horrible
slowness.
To think was to act. He leaped forward, seized a maul, and made as
though to swing it in terrific blow; only to stop, shocked. The maul
did not move! Or rather, it moved, but _so_ slowly, as though he were
hauling it through putty! He dropped the handle, shoving it back, and
received another shock, for it kept on coming under the urge of his
first mighty heave--kept coming, knocking him aside as it came!
Mass! Inertia! The stuff must be a hundred times as dense as platinum!
"Bus!" he flashed a thought to the staring Valerian. "Grab one of these
clubs here--a little one, even _you_ can't swing a big one--and get to
work!"
As he thought, he leaped again; this time for a small, slender knife,
almost a scalpel, but with a long, keenly thin blade. Even though it
was massive as a dozen broadswords he could swing it and he did so;
plunging lethally as he swung. A full-arm sweep--razor-edge shearing,
crunching through plated, corded throat--grisly head floating one way,
horrid body the other!
Then an attack in waves of his own men! The Overlords knew what was
toward. They commanded their slaves to abate the nuisance, and the Gray
Lensman was buried under an avalanche of furious, although unarmed,
humanity.
"Chase 'em off me, will you, Worsel?" Kinnison pleaded. "You're husky
enough to handle 'em all--I'm not. Hold 'em off while Bus and I polish
off this crowd, huh?" And Worsel did so.
Van Buskirk, scorning Kinnison's advice, had seized the biggest thing
in sight, only to relinquish it sheepishly--he might as well have
attempted to wield a bridge-girder! He finally selected a tiny bar,
only half an inch in diameter and scarcely six feet long; but he found
that even this sliver was more of a bludgeon than any spaceaxe he had
ever swung.
Then the armed pair went joyously to war, the Tellurian with his knife,
the Valerian with his magic wand. When the Overlords saw that a fight
to the finish was inevitable they also seized weapons and fought with
the desperation of the cornered rats they were. This, however, freed
Worsel from guard duty, since the monsters were fully occupied in
defending themselves. He seized a length of chain, wrapped six feet
of tail in an unbreakable anchorage around a torture rack, and set
viciously to work.
Thus again the intrepid three, the only minions of civilization
theretofore to have escaped alive from the clutches of the Overlords
of Delgon, fought side by side. Van Buskirk particularly was in his
element. He was used to a gravity almost three times Earth's; he was
accustomed to enormously heavy, almost viscous air. This stuff, thick
as it was, tasted infinitely better than the vacuum that Tellurians
liked to breathe. It let a man _use_ his strength; and the gigantic
Dutchman waded in happily, swinging his frightfully massive weapon
with devastating effect. _Crunch! Splash! THWUCK!_ When that bar
struck it did not stop. It went through; blood, brains, smashed heads
and dismembered limbs flying in all directions. And Worsel's lethal
chain, driven irresistibly at the end of the twenty-five-foot lever of
his free length of body, clanked, hummed, and snarled its way through
reptilian flesh. And, while Kinnison was puny indeed in comparison with
his two brothers-in-arms, he had selected a weapon which would make his
skill count; and his wicked knife stabbed, sheared, and trenchantly bit.
And thus, instead of dealing out death, the Overlords died.