Out in space Kinnison called the entire crew to a mass meeting, in
which he outlined to them as well as he could that which they were
about to face.
"The Boskonian ship will undoubtedly return automatically to her dock,"
he concluded. "That there is probably docking space for only one ship
is immaterial, since the _Dauntless_ will remain free. That ship is
not manned, as you know, because no one knows what is going to happen
when the fields are released in the home dock. Consequences may be
disastrous to any foreign, untreated matter within her. Some signal
will undoubtedly be given upon landing, although we have no means of
knowing what that signal will be and Sir Austin has pointed out that
there can be no communication between that ship and her base until her
generators have been cut.
"Since we also will be in hyperspace until that time, it is clear
that the generator must be cut from within the vessel. Electrical
and mechanical relays are out of the question. Therefore two of our
personnel will keep alternate watches in her control room, to pull
the necessary switches. I am not going to order any man to such a
duty, nor am I going to ask for volunteers. If the man on duty is
not killed outright--this is a distinct possibility, although not
a probability--speed in getting back here will be decidedly of the
essence. It seems to me that the best interests of the Patrol will be
served by having the two fastest members of our force on watch. Time
trials from the Boskonian panel to our air lock are, therefore, now in
order."
This was Kinnison's device for taking the job himself. He was, he knew,
the fastest man aboard, and he proved it. He negotiated the distance in
seven seconds flat, over half a second faster than any other member of
the crew. Then:
"Well, if you small, slow runts are done playing creepie-mousie, get
out of the way and let folks run that really can," Van Buskirk boomed.
"Come on, Worsel, I see where you and I are going to get ourselves a
job."
"But see here, you can't!" Kinnison protested, aghast. "I said members
of the crew."
"No, you didn't," the Valerian contradicted. "You said 'two of our
personnel,' and if Worsel and I ain't personnel, what are we? We'll
leave it to Sir Austin."
"Indubitably 'personnel,'" the arbiter decided, taking a moment from
the apparatus he was setting up. "Your statement that speed is a prime
requisite is also binding."
Whereupon the winged Velantian flew and wriggled the distance in two
seconds, and the steel-thewed Dutch-Valerian ran it in three!
"You big, knot-headed Valerian ape!" Kinnison hissed a malevolent
thought; not as the expedition's commander to a subordinate, but as an
outraged friend speaking plainly to friend. "You knew I wanted that job
myself, you clunker--damn your thick, hard crust!"
"Well, so did I, you poor, spindly little Tellurian wart, and so did
Worsel," the giant warrior shot back in kind. "Besides it's for the
good of the Patrol--you said so yourself! Comb _that_ out of your
whiskers, half-portion!" he added, with a wide and toothy grin, as he
swaggered away, lightly brandishing his ponderous mace.
The run to the point in space where the vortex had been was made on
schedule. Switches drove home, most of the fabric of the enemy vessel
went out of phase, the voyagers experienced the weirdly uncomfortable
acceleration along an impossible vector, and the familiar firmament
disappeared into an impalpable but impenetrable murk of featureless,
textureless gray.
Sir Austin was in his element. Indeed, he was in the seventh heaven of
rapture as he observed, recorded, and calculated. He chuckled over his
interferometers, he clucked over his meters, now and again he emitted
shrill whoops of triumph as a particularly abstruse bit of knowledge
was torn from its lair. He strutted, he gloated, he practically purred
as he recorded upon the tape still another momentous conclusion or
a gravid equation, each couched in terms of such incomprehensibly
formidable mathematics that no one not a member of the Conference of
Scientists could even dimly perceive its meaning.
Cardynge finished his work; and, after doing everything that could be
done to insure the safe return to Science of his priceless records,
he simply preened himself. He wasn't like an old hen, after all,
Kinnison decided. More like a lean, gray tomcat. One that has just
eaten the canary and, contemplatively smoothing his whiskers, is full
of pleasant, if somewhat sanguine visions of what he is going to do to
those other felines at that next meeting.
Time wore on. A long time? Or a short? Who could tell? What possible
measure of that unknown and intrinsically unknowable concept exists
or can exist in that fantastic region of--hyperspace? Interspace?
Pseudospace? Call it what you like.
* * * * *
Time, as has been said, wore on. The ships arrived at the enemy base,
the landing signal was given. Worsel, on duty at the time, recognized
it for what it was--with his brain that was a foregone conclusion. He
threw the switches, then flew and wriggled as even he had never done
before, hurling a thought as he came.
And as the Velantian, himself in the throes of weird deceleration, tore
through the thinning atmosphere, the queasy Gray Lensman watched the
development about them of a forbiddingly inimical scene.
They were materializing upon a landing field of sorts, a smooth and
level expanse of black igneous rock. Two suns, one hot and close, one
pale and distant, cast the impenetrable shadows so characteristic of
an airless world. Dwarfed by distance, but still massively, craggily
tremendous, there loomed the encircling rampart of the volcanic crater
upon whose floor the fortress lay.
And what a fortress! New--raw--crude--but fanged with armament of
might. There was the typically Boskonian dome of control, there were
powerful ships of war in their cradles, there beside the _Dauntless_
was very evidently the power plant in which was generated the cryptic
force which made interdimensional transit an actuality. But, and here
was the saving factor which the Lensman had dared only half hope to
find, those ultrapowerful defensive mechanisms were mounted to resist
attack from without, not from within. It had not occurred to the foe,
even as a possibility, that the Patrol might come upon them in panoply
of war through their own hyperspatial tube!
Kinnison knew that it was useless to assault that dome. He could,
perhaps, crack its screens with his primaries, but he did not have
enough stuff to reduce the whole establishment and therefore could not
use the primaries at all. Since the enemy had been taken completely by
surprise, however, he had a lot of time--at least a minute, perhaps a
trifle more--and in that time the old _Dauntless_ could do a lot of
damage. The power plant came first; that was what they had come out
here to get.
"All secondaries fire at will!" Kinnison barked into his microphone.
He was already at his conning board, every man of the crew was at his
station. "All of you who can reach twenty-seven, three-oh-eight, hit
it--hard. The rest of you do as you please."
Every beam which could be brought to bear upon the powerhouse, and
there were plenty of them, flamed out practically as one. The
building stood for an instant, starkly outlined in a raging inferno
of incandescence, then slumped down flabbily; its upper, nearer parts
flaring away in clouds of sparklingly luminous vapor even as its
lower members flowed sluggishly together in streams of molted metal.
Deeper and deeper bored the frightful beams; foundations, subcellars,
structural members and Gargantuan mechanisms uniting with the obsidian
of the crater's floor to form a lake of bubbling, frothing lava.
"QX--that's good!" Kinnison snapped. "Scatter your stuff, fellows--hit
'em!"
Kinnison then spoke to Henderson, his chief pilot. "Lift us up a bit,
Hen, to give the boys a better sight. Be ready to flit, fast; all
hell's going to be out for noon any second now!"
Ships--warships of Boskone's mightiest--caught cold. Some crewless;
some half-manned; none ready for the stunning surprise attack of the
Patrolmen. Through and through them the ruthless beams tore; leaving,
not ships, but nondescript masses of half-fused metal. Hangars, machine
shops, supply depots suffered the same fate; a good third of the
establishment became a smoking, smoldering heap of junk.
Then, one by one, the fixed-mount weapons of the enemy, by dint of
what Herculean efforts can only be surmised, were brought to bear
upon the bold invader. Brighter and brighter flamed her prodigiously
powerful defensive screens. Number One faded out; crushed flat by
the hellish energies of Boskone's projectors. Number Two flared into
ever more spectacular pyrotechnics, until soon even its tremendous
resources of power became inadequate--blotchily, in discrete areas,
clinging to existence when all the might of its Medonian generators and
transmitters, it, too, began to fall.
"Better we flit, Hen, while we're all in one piece--right now,"
Kinnison advised the pilot then. "And I don't mean loaf, either. Let's
see you burn a hole in the ether."
Henderson's fingers swept over his board, depressing to maximum and
locking down key after key. Blast after blast flared from her jets of
energies of an intensity almost to pale the brilliance of the madly
warring screens, and to Boskone's observers the immense Patrol raider
vanished from all ken.
* * * * *
At that drive, the _Dauntless_ incomprehensible maximum, there was
little danger of pursuit: for, as well as being the biggest and the
most powerfully armed, she was also the fastest thing in space.
Out in open intergalactic space--safe--discipline went by the board as
though on signal and all hands joined in a release of pent-up emotion.
Kinnison threw off his armor and, seizing the scandalized and highly
outraged Cardynge, spun him around in dizzying, though effortless
circles.
"Didn't lose a man--NOT A MAN!" he yelled, exuberantly.
He plucked the now idle Henderson from his board and wrestled with
him, only to drift lightly away, ahead of a tremendous slap aimed at
his back by Van Buskirk. Inertialessness takes most of the edge off
rough housing, but the performance did relieve the tension and soon the
ebullient youths quieted down.
The enemy base was located well outside the Galaxy. Not, as Kinnison
had feared, in the Second Galaxy, but in a star cluster not too far
removed from the first. Hence the flight to Prime Base did not take
long.
Sir Austin Cardynge was more like a self-satisfied tomcat than ever as
he gathered up his records, gave a corps of aides minute instructions
regarding the packing of his equipment, and set out, figuratively
but very evidently licking his chops, rehearsing the scene in which
he would confound his allegedly learned fellows, especially that
insufferable puppy, that upstart Weingarde.
"And that's that," Kinnison concluded his informal report to Haynes.
"They're all washed up, there, at least. Before they can rebuild, you
can wipe out the whole nest. If there should happen to be one or two
more such bases, the boys know now how to handle them. I think I'd
better be getting back onto my own job, don't you?"
"Probably so," Haynes thought for moments, then continued: "Can you use
help, or can you work better alone?"
"I've been thinking about that. The higher the tougher, and it might
not be a bad idea at all to have Worsel standing by in my speedster;
close by and ready all the time. He's pretty much of an army himself,
mental and physical. QX?"
"Can do," and thus it came about that the good ship _Dauntless_ flew
again, this time out Borova way; her sole freight a sleek black
speedster and a rusty, battered meteor-tug, her passengers a sinuous
Velantian and a husky Tellurian.
"Sort of a thin time for you, old man, I'm afraid." Kinnison
leaned unconcernedly against the towering pillar of his friend's
tail, whereupon four or five grotesquely stalked eyes curled out
at him speculatively. To these two, each other's appearance and
shape were neither repulsive nor strange. They were friends, in
the deepest, truest sense. "He's so hideous that he's positively
distinguished-looking," each had boasted more than once of the other to
friends of his own race.
"Nothing like that." The Velantian flashed out a leather wing and
flipped his tail aside in a playfully unsuccessful attempt to catch the
Earthman off balance. "Some day, if you ever learn really to think, you
will discover that a few weeks' solitary, undisturbed and concentrated
thought is a rare treat. To have such an opportunity in the line of
duty makes it a pleasure unalloyed."
"I always did think that you were slightly screwy at times, and now I
know it," Kinnison retorted, unconvinced. "Thought is--or should be--a
means to an end, not an end in itself; but if that's your idea of a
wonderful time I'm glad to be able to give it to you."
* * * * *
They disembarked carefully in far space, the complete absence of
spectators assured by the warship's fullest reach of detectors, and
Kinnison again went down to Miners' Rest. Not, this time, to carouse.
Miners were not carousing there. Instead, the whole asteroid was
buzzing with news of the fabulously rich finds which were being made in
the distant solar system of Tressilia.
Kinnison had known that the news would be there, for it was at his
instructions that those rich meteors had been placed there to be
found. Tressilia III was the home of the Regional Director with whom
the Gray Lensman had important business to transact; he had to have a
solid reason, not a mere excuse, for Bill Williams to leave Borova for
Tressilia.
The lure of wealth, then as ever, was stronger even than that of drink
or of drug. Miners came to revel, but instead they outfitted in haste
and hied themselves to the new Klondike. Nor was this anything out
of the ordinary. Such stampedes occurred every once in a while, and
Strongheart and his minions were not unduly concerned. They'd be back,
and in the meantime there was the profit on a lot of metal and an
excess profit due to the skyrocketing prices of supplies.
"You too, Bill?" Strongheart asked without surprise.
"I'll tell the Universe!" came ready answer. "If there's metal there,
I'll find it, pal." In making this declaration he was not boasting, he
was merely voicing a simple truth. By this time the meteor belts of
a hundred solar systems knew for a fact that Wild Bill Williams, of
Aldebaran II could find metal if metal was there to be found.
"If it's a bloomer, Bill, come back," the divekeeper urged. "Come back
anyway when you've worked it a couple of drunks."
"I'll do that, Strongheart old pal, I sure will," the Lensman agreed,
amiably enough. "You run a nice joint here and I like it."
Thus Kinnison went to the asteroid belts of Tressilia and there Bill
Williams found rich metal. Or, more precisely, he dumped out into
space and then recovered a very special meteor indeed--one in whose
fabrication Kinnison's own treasure-trove had played a leading part. He
did not find it the first day, of course, nor during the first week--it
would be a trifle smelly to have even Wild Bill strike it rich too
soon--but after a decent interval of time.
His Tressilian find had to be very much worth while, far too much so
to be left to chance; for Edmund Crowninshield, the Regional Director,
inhabited no such rawly obvious dive as Miners' Rest. He catered only
to the upper crust; meteor miners and other similar scum were never
permitted to enter his door.
When Kinnison repaired the Bergenholm of the Borovan spaceliner he had,
by sheerest accident, laid the groundwork of a perfect approach, and
now he was taking advantage of the circumstance. That incident had been
reported widely: it was well known that Wild Bill Williams had been a
gentleman once. If he should strike it rich--really rich--what would be
more natural than that he should forsake the noisesome space hells he
had been wont to frequent in favor of such gilded palaces of sin as the
Crown-On-Shield?
In due time, then, Kinnison "found" his special meteor, which was big
enough and rich enough so that any miner would have taken it to a
Patrol station instead of to a space robber. He disposed of his whole
load by analysis; then, with more money in the bank than William
Williams had ever dreamed of having, he hesitated visibly before
embarking upon one of the gorgeous, spectacular sprees from which he
had derived his nickname. He hesitated; then, with an effort apparent
to all observers, he changed his mind.
He had been a gentleman once, he would be again. He had his hair cut,
he had himself shaved every day. Manicurists dug away and scrubbed
away the ingrained grime from his hardened, meteor-miner's paws. His
nails, even, became pink and glossy. He bought clothes, including the
full-dress shorts, barrel-top jacket, and voluminous cloak of the
Aldebaranian gentleman, and wore them with easy grace.
And in the meantime he was drinking steadily. He drank, however, only
the choicest beverages; decorously and--for him--sparingly. Thus,
while he was seldom what could be called strictly sober, he was never
really drunk. He shunned low resorts, living in the best hotels and
frequenting only the finest taverns. The finest, that is, with one
exception, the Crown-On-Shield. Not only did he not go there, he never
spoke of or would discuss the place. It was as though for him it did
not exist.
Occasionally he escorted--oh, so correctly!--a charming companion to
supper or to the theater, but ordinarily he was alone. Alone by choice.
Aloof, austere, possibly not quite sure of himself. He rebuffed all
attempts to inveigle him into any one of the numerous cliques with
which the "upper crust" abounded. He waited for what he knew would come.
* * * * *
Underlings of gradually increasing numbers and importance came to him
with invitations to the Crown-On-Shield, but he refused them all;
curtly, definitely, and without giving reason or excuse. In the light
of what he was going to do there he could not be seen in the place
unless and until it was clear to all that the visit was not of his
design. Finally Crowninshield himself met the ex-miner as though by
accident.
"Why haven't you been out to our place, Mr. Williams?" he asked,
heartily.
"Because I didn't want to, and don't want to," Kinnison replied, flatly
and definitely.
"But why?" demanded the Boskonian Director, this time in genuine
surprise. "It's getting talked about--_everybody_ comes to the
Crown!--people are wondering why you never even look in on us."
"You know who I am, don't you?" The Lensman's voice was coldly level,
uninflected.
"Certainly. William Williams, formerly of Aldebaran II."
"No. Wild Bill Williams, meteor miner. The Crown-On-Shield boasts that
it does not solicit the patronage of men of my profession. If I go
there, some dim-wit will start blasting off about miners. Then you'll
have the job of mopping him up off the floor with a sponge and the
Patrol will be after me with a speedster. Thanks just the same, but
none of that for me."
"Oh, is _that_ all?" Crowninshield smiled in relief. "Perhaps a natural
misapprehension, Mr. Williams, but you are entirely mistaken. It is
true that practicing miners do not find our society congenial, but
you are no longer a miner and we never refer to any man's past. As an
Aldebaranian gentleman we would welcome you. And, in the extremely
remote contingency to which you refer, I assure you that you would not
have to act. Any guest so boorish would be expelled."
"In that case I would really enjoy spending a little time with you. It
has been a long time since I associated with persons of breeding," he
explained, with engaging candor.
"I'll have a boy see to the transfer of your things," and thus the Gray
Lensman allowed the zwilnik to persuade him to visit the one place in
the Universe where he most ardently wished to be.
For days in the new environment everything went on with the utmost
decorum and circumspection, but Kinnison was not deceived. They would
feel him out some way, just as effectively if not as crassly as did
the zwilniks of Miners' Rest. They would have to--this was Regional
Headquarters. At first he had been suspicious of thionite, but since
the high-ups were not wearing anti-thionite plugs in their nostrils, he
wouldn't have to either.
Then one evening a girl--young, pretty, vivacious--approached him, a
pinch of purple powder between her fingers. As the Gray Lensman he knew
that the stuff was not thionite, but as William Williams he did not.
"_Do_ have a tiny smell of thionite, Mr. Williams!" she urged,
coquettishly, and made as though to blow it into his face.
Williams reacted strangely, but instantaneously. He ducked with
startling speed and the flat of his palm smacked ringingly against the
girl's cheek. He did not slap her hard--it looked and sounded much
worse than it really was--the only actual force was in the follow-up
push that sent her flying across the room.
"Whatja mean, you? You can't slap girls around like that here!" and the
chief bouncer came at him with a rush.
This time the Lensman did not pull his punch. He struck with everything
he had, from heels to fingertips. Such was the sheer brute power of
the blow that the bouncer literally somersaulted the length of the
room, bringing up with a crash against the distant wall; so accurate
was its placement that the victim, while not killed outright, would be
unconscious for many hours to come.
Others turned then, and paused; for Williams was not running away; he
was not even giving ground. Instead, he stood lightly poised upon the
balls of his feet, knees bent the veriest trifle, arms hanging at
ready, eyes as hard and as cold as the iron meteorites of the space he
knew so well.
"Any others of you damn zwilniks want to make a pass at me?" he
demanded, and a concerted gasp arose: the word "zwilnik" was in those
circles far worse than a mere fighting word. It was absolutely taboo:
it was _never_, under any circumstance, uttered.
Nevertheless, no action was taken. At first the cold arrogance, the
sheer effrontery of the man's pose held them in check; then they
noticed one thing and remembered another, the combination of which gave
them most emphatically to pause.
No garment, even by the most deliberate intent, could possibly have
been designed as a better hiding place for DeLameters than the
barrel-topped full-dress jacket of Aldebaran II; and--
Mr. William Williams, poised there in steel-spring readiness for
action; so coldly self-confident; so inexplicably, so scornfully
derisive of that whole roomful of men not a few of whom he knew must be
armed; was also the Wild Bill Williams, meteor miner, who was widely
known as the fastest and deadliest performer with twin DeLameters who
had ever infested space!