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Title: Gray lensman

Author: E. E. Smith

Release Date: December 20, 2022 [eBook #69584]

Language: English

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRAY LENSMAN ***





                             GRAY LENSMAN

                        By E. E. SMITH, Ph. D.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Astounding Science Fiction
            October, November, December 1939, January 1940.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




                              _PROLOGUE_


This is not, strictly speaking, a biography. It is not, it cannot
be, comprehensive enough to be called that. Nor, since of necessity
it must be limited, both in length and in scope, can it be called a
history. It is, perhaps, best described as a record--the record of the
activities of Galactic Co-ordinator Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, of
Tellus, during the Boskonian War.

Nevertheless this record, what there is of it, is in essence
biographical; and the biographer of such a man as Kinnison has a
peculiar task. In one way it is easy, in two others it is difficult in
the extreme.

"Nuts!" he is wont to exclaim in answer to a direct question as to some
particular event or situation. "Why in all the nine hells of Valeria
are you still wasting time writing about _me_?" But eventually I get
the data I need, and thus it is comparatively easy to make this work
completely authentic, as far as the Gray Lensman himself is concerned.

It may be objected that I have recorded as facts certain minutiae
which, considering what happened to the planet of the Eich and in the
light of other happenings elsewhere, cannot be known so exactly by
any living entity. This objection is untenable; as profound research
upon every debatable point has shown conclusively that something very
similar to, if not in fact identical with, each such detail must have
occurred.

Of the two great difficulties, one lies in the selection of material.
The story of Kimball Kinnison easily could--and really should--fill
a dozen encyclopedic spools; it is a Galactic shame and an almost
impossible undertaking to compress it into one two-hour tape. The other
sticking point is the diversity of my audience. For in the First Galaxy
alone there are millions of planets, peopled by races as divergent in
mentality and in physique as they are far apart in space. Some races
will read this chronicle from printed pages; some will see it; some
will hear it; some will both see it and hear it; some, unable either
to see or to hear, will receive it telepathically. Still others,
in other Galaxies, will undoubtedly acquire it in fashions starkly
incomprehensible to me, its compiler.

Numberless races of intelligent beings already know Kinnison well,
since his fame has spread north, south, east, west, zenith and nadir,
to the six points of the three-dimensional galactic-inductor compasses
of two galaxies. On the other hand, many know him not at all. Many
have never even heard of Tellus, nor of Sol, our parent sun; even
though it was upon that proud planet of this, our Solarian System, that
the Galactic Patrol came into being. Indeed, it is inevitable that
this biography will in days to come be of interest to races which,
inhabiting planets not yet reached by the Cosmic Survey, have not even
heard of the Galactic Patrol, to say nothing of knowing its origin and
its history.

In view of the above inescapable facts, and after a great deal of
thought and care, I have decided to write this Prologue, which will
summarize very simply that which is already most widely known; namely,
the happenings up to and including the first phase of the Boskonian
War. Even that condensation, however, leaves me all too little space
in which to do justice to the part that Kimball Kinnison played in
enabling the civilization of the Galactic Council to triumph over the
monstrous culture of Boskone.

With the understanding, then, that the more informed mentality may skip
from here to Chapter I, I proceed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Should I begin with Arisia? That forbidding, forbidden planet
whose inhabitants, having achieved sheerly unimaginable heights of
philosophical and mental power, withdrew almost completely into
themselves, leaving traces only in Galaxy-wide folk tales and legends
of supermen and gods? Probably not. I should, it seems to me, begin
with Earth's almost prehistoric bandits and gangsters, gentry who
flourished in the days when space flight was mentioned only in
fantastic fiction.

Know, then, that for ages law enforcement lagged behind law violation
because the minions of the law were limited in their spheres of action,
while criminals were not. Thus, in the days following the invention of
the automobile, State troopers could not cross State lines. Later, when
what were then known as the "G-men" combined with the various State
constabularies to form the National Police, they could not follow the
stratosphere planes of the lawbreakers across national boundaries.

Still later, when interplanetary flight became commonplace, the
Planetary Guards were at the same old disadvantage. They had no
authority off their own worlds, while the public enemies flitted
unhampered from planet to planet. And finally, with the development of
the inertialess drive and the consequent traffic between hundreds of
thousands of solar systems, crime became so rampant as to threaten the
very foundations of civilization.

Then the Galactic Patrol came into being. At first it was a
pitiful-enough organization. It was handicapped from within by the
usual small, but utterly disastrous percentage of grafters and
criminals; from without by the fact that there was then no emblem or
credential which could not be counterfeited. No one could tell with
certainty that the man in uniform was a Patrolman and not an outlaw in
disguise.

The second difficulty was overcome first. One old-time Patrolman had
heard of the Arisians. He visited their planet and--this should be a
saga by itself--persuaded those Masters of Mentality that they should
help right against wrong, at least to the extent of furnishing a
positive means of identification. They did, and still do--The Lens.

Each being about to graduate as a Lensman is sent to Arisia; where,
although the candidate does not then know it, a Lens--a lenticular
jewel composed of thousands of tiny crystalloids--is built to match his
individual life force. While no mind other than that of an Arisian can
understand its functioning, thinking of the Lens as being synchronized
with, or in exact resonance with the life principle--personality, ego,
call it what you will--of its owner will give a rough idea of it. It is
not really alive, as we understand the term. It is, however, endowed
with a sort of pseudolife, by virtue of which it gives off its strong,
characteristically changing, polychromatic light as long as it is in
circuit with the living mentality for which it was designed. It is
inimitable, unforgettable. Anyone who has ever seen a Lens, or even a
picture of one, will never forget it; nor will he ever be deceived by
any possible counterfeit or imitation of it.

The Lens cannot be removed by anyone except its wearer without actual
dismemberment of that wearer; it shines as long as its rightful owner
wears it, and in the instant of its owner's death, it ceases forever
to shine. And not only does a Lens refuse to shine if any impostor
attempts to wear it--any Lens not in circuit with its owner kills in
a space of minutes any other who touches it, so strongly does its
pseudolife interfere with any life to which it is not attuned.

Also by virtue of that pseudolife the Lens acts as a telepath through
which its owner may communicate with any other intelligence, high or
low; even though the other entity may possess no organs either of sight
or of hearing, as we know these senses. The Lens has also many other
highly important uses, which lack of space forbids even mentioning here.

       *       *       *       *       *

Having the Lens, it was an easy matter for the Patrol to purify
itself of its few unworthy members. Standards of entrance were raised
higher and higher; and, as it became evident that it was to a man
incorruptible, it was granted more and ever more authority.

Now its power is practically unlimited; the Lensman can follow the
lawbreaker, wherever he may go. He can commandeer any material or
assistance, whenever and wherever required. The Lens is so respected
throughout the Galactic Union that any wearer of it may at any time be
called upon to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Wherever he goes,
throughout the Universe of Civilization, he not only carries the law
with him--he _is_ the law.

How are these Lensmen chosen? An Earthman myself, and proud of the fact
that Tellus was the cradle of Galactic Civilization, I will describe
only how Tellurian Lensmen are selected. Upon other planets the methods
and means vary widely; but the results are the same: Wherever he may
be found or however monstrous he may appear, a Lensman is always a
_Lensman_.

Each year one million boys are picked, by competitive examination,
from all the eighteen-year-olds of Earth. During the first year of
training, before any of them set foot inside Wentworth Hall, that
number shrinks to less than fifty thousand. Then, for four years more,
they are put through the most poignantly searching, the most pitilessly
rigid process of elimination possible to develop, during the course of
which every man who can be made to reveal any sign of unworthiness or
of weakness is dropped. Of each class, only about a hundred win through
to the Lens; but each of those few has proven repeatedly, to the cold
verge of death itself, that he is in every sense fit to wear it.

Of those who drop out alive, most are dismissed from the Patrol. There
are many splendid men, however, who for some reason not involving moral
turpitude are not quite what a Lensman must be. These men make up
the organization, from grease monkeys up to the highest commissioned
officers below the rank of Lensman. This fact explains what is already
so widely known: that the Galactic Patrol is the finest body of
intelligent beings yet to serve under one banner.

But even Lensmen are not all alike; some are more richly endowed than
others. Most Lensmen work more or less under direction; that is, they
have headquarters and, at the completion of one investigation or
project, are assigned to another by the port admiral. Occasionally,
however, a Lensman shows himself to be of such outstanding ability,
even for a Lensman, that he is given his Release. Technically, he
is now an "Unattached Lensman"; in popular parlance he is a "Gray
Lensman," from the color of the leather he wears.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Release! The goal toward which all Lensmen strive, but which so
relatively few attain, even after years of work! The Gray Lensman
is as nearly absolutely free an agent as it is possible for any
flesh-and-blood being to be. He is responsible to no one and to nothing
save his own conscience. He is no longer of Earth, nor of the Solarian
System, but of the Universe as a whole. He is no longer a cog in the
immense machine of the Galactic Patrol; wherever he may go throughout
the reaches of unbounded space, he is the Galactic Patrol:

He goes anywhere he pleases and does anything he pleases, for as
long as he pleases. He takes what he wants, when he wants it, with
or without giving reasons or anything except a thumb-printed credit
slip in return--if he chooses to do so. He reports when, where, and
to whom he pleases--or not, as he pleases. He has no headquarters, no
address; he can be reached only through his Lens. He no longer gets
even a formal salary; he takes that, too, as he goes, whatever he finds
needful.

To the man on the street that would seem to be a condition of perfect
bliss. It is not. All Lensmen strive mightily for the Release, even
though they realize dimly what it will mean--but only an Unattached
Lensman really understands what a frightful, what a man-killing load
the Release brings with it. However, Gray Lensmen being what they must
be, it is a load which they are glad and proud to bear.

Hence, to say that Kimball Kinnison ranked Number One in his graduating
class is to say a great deal--but even more revealing of his quality
is to add that he was the first to perceive that what was known as
Boskonia was not merely an organization of outlaws and pirates, but
was in fact a Galaxy-wide culture diametrically opposed in fundamental
philosophy to that of Galactic Civilization. The most illuminating
thing I can say of him in a few words, however, is this:

Of all the millions of entities who through the years had worn the
symbol of the Lens, Kinnison was the first to perceive that the
Arisians had endowed the Lens with powers theretofore undreamed of,
powers which no brain without special training could either evoke or
control. Thus, he was the first Lensman to return to Arisia for that
advanced training; and during that instruction he learned why no other
Lensman had been so trained before. It was such an ordeal that only a
mind of power sufficient to perceive of itself the real need of such
treatment could endure it without becoming starkly insane.

Shortly after Kinnison won his Lens, he was called to Prime Base by
Port Admiral Haynes, the Patrol's chief of staff. There, in a room
sealed against spy rays, an appalling situation was bared. Space
piracy, always rife enough, had become an organized force; and, under
the leadership of a half-mythical entity about whom nothing was known
save the name "Boskone," had risen to such heights of power as to
threaten seriously the Galactic Patrol itself. Indeed, in one respect,
Boskonia was ahead of the Patrol, its scientists having developed a
source of power vastly greater than any known to Galactic Civilization.
It had fighting ships of a new and extraordinary type, from which even
convoyed shipping was no longer safe. Being faster than the Patrol's
fast cruisers, and more heavily armed than its heaviest battleships,
they had been doing practically as they pleased in space.

For one particular purpose, the engineers of the Patrol had designed
and built one ship--the _Brittania_. She was the fastest thing in
space, but for offensive armament she had only one weapon, the "Q-gun."
This depended upon chemical explosives, which, in warfare at least, had
been obsolete for centuries. Nevertheless, Kinnison was put in command
of the _Brittania_ and was told to take her out, capture a pirate war
vessel of late model, learn her secrets of power, and transmit the
information to Prime Base with the least possible delay.

He was successful in finding and in defeating such a vessel. Peter van
Buskirk led the storming party of Valerians--men of remote Earth-human
ancestry, but of extraordinary size, strength and agility because
of the enormous gravitation of generations of life on the planet
Valeria--in wiping out those of the pirate crew not killed in the
combat between the two vessels.

The _Brittania's_ scientists secured the required data, but were
unable to report immediately to Prime Base, as the pirates were
blanketing all available channels of communication. Boskonian ships
were gathering for the kill, and the crippled Patrol ship could neither
run nor fight. Therefore each man was given a spool of tape bearing a
complete record of everything that had occurred; and, after setting up
a director-by-chance to make the empty ship pursue an unpredictable
course in space, and after rigging bombs to explode her at the first
touch of a ray, the Patrolmen paired off by lot and took to the
lifeboats.

The erratic course of the cruiser brought her near the lifeboat in
which Kinnison and Van Buskirk were, and there the pirates attempted
to stop her. The ensuing explosion was so violent that flying wreckage
disabled practically the entire personnel of one of the attacking
ships, which did not have time to go free--inertialess--before the
crash. The two Patrolmen captured the pirate vessel and drove her
toward Earth. They reached the solar system of Velantia before the
Boskonians blocked them off, thus compelling them again to take to
their lifeboat. They landed upon the planet Delgon, where they were
rescued from a horde of Catlats by Worsel, a highly intelligent winged
reptile, a native of the neighboring planet of Velantia.

By means of improvements upon Velantian thought-screens the three
destroyed most of the Overlords of Delgon, a sadistic race of monsters
who had been preying upon the other people of the system by sheer power
of mind. Worsel then accompanied the two Patrolmen to Velantia, where
all the resources of the planet were devoted to the preparation of
defense against the expected attack of the Boskonians. Several other of
the _Brittania's_ lifeboats reached Velantia, guided by Worsel's mind
working through Kinnison's mind and Lens.

Kinnison intercepted a message from Helmuth, who "spoke for Boskone,"
and traced his communicator beam, thus getting his first line upon
Boskonia's Grand Base. The pirates attacked Velantia, and six of
their vessels were captured. In these six ships, manned by Velantian
crews and blanketing ether and subether against the pirates' own
communicators, the Patrolmen again set out toward Earth and the Prime
Base of the Galactic Patrol.

Then Kinnison's Bergenholm broke down. The Bergenholm, the generator of
the force that neutralizes inertia--the _sine qua non_ of interstellar
speed. For, while any mass in the free condition can assume an almost
unlimited velocity, inert matter cannot equal even that of light--the
veriest crawl, as space speeds go. Also, there is no magic, no getting
of something for nothing, in the operation of a Bergenholm. It takes
power, plenty of power, to run one, and whenever one goes out, the ship
dependent upon it is, to all intents and purposes, anchored in space.

Therefore the Patrolmen were forced to land upon Trenco--which, as
almost everyone knows, is the planet upon which is produced thionite,
perhaps the deadliest of all habit-forming drugs--for repairs.

Meanwhile Helmuth, the Boskonian, had deduced that it was a Lensman
who had been giving him so much trouble. He had already connected the
Lens with Arisia; therefore he set out for Arisia to find out for
himself just what it was that made the Lens such a powerful thing.
He discovered that he was no match at all for an Arisian. He was
given terrific mental punishment, but was allowed to return to his
Grand Base alive and sane; being informed that he was spared because
his destruction would not be good for the budding Civilization to
which Boskonian culture was opposed. He was told further that the
Arisians had given Civilization the Lens; that by its intelligent use,
Civilization should be able to conquer Boskone's alien, abhorrent
culture; that if it could not learn to use the Lens, it was not yet
ready to become a Civilization, and Boskonia would be allowed to
flourish for a time.

After various adventures upon Trenco--a peculiar planet
indeed--Kinnison secured a new Bergenholm and went on. This time
he managed to reach Tellus, and, after a spectacular battle in the
stratosphere with a blockading fleet of the enemy, got down to Prime
Base with his precious data. There he first revealed his conviction
that the Boskonians were not ordinary pirates, but in fact composed
a culture almost, if not quite, as strong as Civilization itself; and
asked that certain scientists of the Patrol should try to develop a
detector nullifier. He predicted a stalemate, and intimated that such a
nullifier might well prove to be the deciding factor in the entire war.

By building ultrapowerful battleships, called "maulers," the Patrol
gained a temporary advantage, but the stalemate soon ensued. Kinnison
thought out a plan of action, in the pursuit of which he scouted a
pirate base upon Aldebaran I. The personnel of this base, however,
instead of being human or near-human beings, were Wheelmen, beings
possessed of a sense of perception unknown to man. The Lensman was
discovered before he could accomplish anything, and in the fight which
followed he was very seriously wounded.

However, he managed to get back to his speedster and sent a thought
to Port Admiral Haynes, who forthwith sent ships to his aid. In the
hospital, Chief Surgeon Lacy put him together without the use of
artificial members; and, during a long and quarrelsome convalescence,
Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall held him together.

As soon as he could leave the hospital he went to Arisia in the hope
that he might be permitted to take advanced training--an unheard-of
idea. Much to his surprise, he learned that he had been expected to
return for exactly such training. Getting it almost killed him, but he
emerged from the ordeal infinitely stronger of mind than any man had
ever been before; and possessed of a new sense of perception as well--a
sense somewhat analogous to sight, but of vastly greater power, depth,
and scope, and not dependent upon light, a sense only vaguely forecast
by ancient experiments with clairvoyance.

After trying out his new mental equipment by solving a murder mystery
upon Radelix, he succeeded in entering an enemy base upon Boyssia II.
There he took over the mind of the communications officer and waited
for the opportunity of getting the second, all-important line upon
Boskonia's Grand Base. An enemy ship of this base captured a hospital
ship of the Patrol and brought it in. Nurse MacDougall, head nurse of
the captured ship, working under Kinnison's instructions, stirred up
trouble which soon became mutiny. Helmuth, from Grand Base, took a
hand, thus enabling Kinnison to get his second line.

The hospital ship, undetectable by virtue of the Lensman's nullifier,
escaped from Boyssia II and headed for Earth at full blast. Kinnison,
convinced that Helmuth was really Boskone himself, found that the
intersection of his two lines--and therefore the pirates' Grand
Base--lay in a star cluster AG 257-4736, well outside the Galaxy.
Pausing only long enough to destroy the Wheelmen of Aldebaran I, the
project in which his first attempt had failed so dismally, he set
out to investigate Helmuth's headquarters. He found a stronghold
impregnable to any massed attack the Patrol could throw against it,
manned by beings each wearing a thought-screen. His sense of perception
was suddenly cut off--the pirates had thrown a thought-screen around
the entire planet. He then returned to Prime Base, deciding en route
that boring from within was the only possible way in which that
stupendous fortress could be taken.

In consultation with Port Admiral Haynes, the zero hour was set,
at which time the massed Grand Fleet of Patrol was to begin raying
Helmuth's base with every projector that could be brought to bear.

Pursuant to his plan, Kinnison again visited Trenco, where the Patrol
forces extracted for him fifty kilograms of thionite, the noxious drug
which, in microgram inhalations, makes the addict experience all the
sensations of doing whatever it is that he wishes most ardently to do.
The larger the dose, the more intense the sensations; the slightest
overdose resulting in an ecstatic death. Thence to Helmuth's planet;
where, finding a dog whose brain was unshielded, he let himself into
the central dome. Here, just before the zero minute, he released his
thionite into the air stream, thus wiping out all the pirate personnel
except Helmuth, who, in his inner sanctum, could not be affected.

The Grand Fleet of the Patrol attacked, but Helmuth would not leave his
retreat, even to try to save his Base. Therefore Kinnison would have
to go in after him. Poised in the air of Helmuth's inner sphere there
was an enigmatic, sparkling ball of force which the Lensman could not
understand, and of which he was in consequence extremely suspicious.

But the storming of that quadruply-defended inner stronghold was
precisely the task for which Kinnison's new and ultracumbersome armor
had been designed; and in the Gray Lensman went.




                                  I.


Among the world-girdling fortifications of a planet distant indeed
from star cluster AG 257-4736 there squatted sullenly a fortress quite
similar to Helmuth's own. Indeed, in some respects it was even superior
to the base of him who spoke for Boskone. It was larger and stronger.
Instead of one dome, it had many. It was dark and cold withal, for its
occupants had practically nothing in common with humanity save the
possession of high intelligence.

In the central sphere of one of the domes there sparkled several of
the peculiarly radiant globes whose counterpart had given Kinnison so
seriously to think, and near them there crouched or huddled or lay at
ease a many-tentacled creature indescribable to man. It was not exactly
like an octopus. Though spiny, it did not resemble at all closely a
sea-cucumber. Nor, although it was scaly and toothy and wingy, was it,
save in the vaguest possible way, similar to a lizard, a sea serpent,
or a vulture. Such a description by negatives is, of course, pitifully
inadequate; but, unfortunately, it is the best that can be done.

The entire attention of this being was focused within one of the
globes, the obscure mechanism of which was relaying to his sense of
perception from Helmuth's globe and mind a clear picture of everything
which was happening within Grand Base. The corpse-littered dome was
clear to his sight; he knew that the Patrol was attacking from without;
knew that that ubiquitous Lensman, who had already unmanned the
citadel, was about to attack from within.

"You have erred seriously," the entity was thinking coldly,
emotionlessly, into the globe, "in not deducing until after it was too
late to save your base that the Lensman had perfected a nullifier of
subethereal detection. Your contention that I am equally culpable is, I
think, untenable. It was your problem, not mine; I had, and still have,
other things to concern me. Your base is of course lost; whether or not
you yourself survive will depend entirely upon the adequacy of your
protective devices."

"But, Eichlan, you yourself pronounced them adequate!"

There followed an interval of silence, as though those conferring
were separated by such a gulf of space that even thought, with its
immeasurable velocity of propagation, required finite time to traverse
it.

"Pardon me--I said that they _seemed_ adequate."

[Illustration: _Through inter-Galactic space Helmuth's thought drove._

"_You said the defenses were adequate!_"

"_I said they seemed adequate_," _said the Eichlan coldly._]

"If I survive--or, rather, after I have destroyed this Lensman--what
are your orders?" Another interval.

"Go to the nearest communicator and concentrate our forces; half of
them to engage this Patrol fleet, the remainder to wipe out all the
life of Sol III. I have not tried to give those orders direct, since
all the beams are keyed to your board and, even if I could reach them,
no commander in that Galaxy knows that I speak for Boskone. After you
have done that, report to me here."

"Instructions received and understood. Helmuth, ending message."

"Set your controls as instructed. I will observe and record. Prepare
yourself, the Lensman comes. Eichlan, speaking for Boskone, ending
message."

The Lensman rushed. Even before he crashed the pirate's screens his own
defensive zone flamed white in the beam of semiportable projectors, and
through that blaze came tearing the metallic slugs of a high-caliber
machine rifle. But the Lensman's screens were almost those of a
battleship, his armor relatively as strong; he had at his command
projectors scarcely inferior to those opposing his advance. Therefore,
with every faculty of his newly enlarged mind concentrated upon that
thought-screened, armored head behind the bellowing gun and the flaring
projectors, Kinnison held his line and forged ahead.

       *       *       *       *       *

Attentive as he was to Helmuth's thought-screens, the Patrolman was
ready when it weakened slightly and a thought began to seep through,
directed at that peculiar ball of force. He blanketed it savagely,
before it could even begin to take form, and attacked the screen so
viciously that the Boskonian had either to restore full coverage
instantly or else die there and then.

Kinnison feared that force-ball no longer. He still did not know what
it was; but he had learned that, whatever its nature might be, it was
operated or controlled by thought. Therefore it was and would remain
harmless. If the pirate chief softened his screen enough to emit a
thought he would never think again.

Doggedly the Lensman drove in, closer and closer. Magnetic clamps
locked and held. Two steel-clad, warring figures rolled into the line
of fire of the ravening automatic rifle. Kinnison's armor, designed and
tested to withstand even heavier stuff, held; wherefore he came through
that storm of metal unscathed. Helmuth's, however, even though stronger
far than the ordinary personal armor of space, failed; and thus the
Boskonian died.

Blasting himself upright, the Patrolman shot across the inner dome to
the control panel and paused, momentarily baffled. He could not throw
the switches controlling the defensive screens of the gigantic outer
dome! His armor, designed for the ultimate of defensive strength, could
not and did not bear any of the small and delicate external mechanisms
so characteristic of the ordinary spacesuit. To leave his personal tank
at that time and in that environment was unthinkable; yet he was fast
running out of time. A scant fifteen seconds was all that remained
before zero, the moment at which the hellish output of every watt
generable by the massed fleet of the Galactic Patrol would be hurled
against those screens in their furiously raging destructive might. To
release the screens after that zero moment would mean his own death,
instantaneous and inevitable.

Nevertheless, he could open those circuits--the conservation of
Boskonian property meant nothing to him. He flipped on his own
projector and flashed its beam briefly across the banked panels in
front of him. Insulation burst into flame, fairly exploding in its
haste to disintegrate; copper and silver ran in brilliant streams or
puffed away in clouds of sparkling vapor: high-tension arcs ripped,
crashed, and cracked among the writhing, dripping, flaring bus-bar.
The shorts burned themselves clear or blew their fuses, every circuit
opened, every Boskonian defense came down; and then, and only then,
could Kinnison get into communication with his friends.

"Haynes!" he thought crisply into his Lens. "Kinnison calling!"

"Haynes acknowledging!" a thought instantly snapped back. "Congrat--"

"Hold it! We're not done yet! Have every ship in the Fleet go free at
once. Have them all, except yours, put out full-coverage screens, so
that they can't look at or think into this Base."

A moment passed. "Done!"

"Don't come in any closer--I'm on my way out there to you. Have your
ship block every band except your personal frequency, which you and I
are now on, and caution all Lensmen aboard with you to stay off that
channel until further notice. Now as to you, personally, I don't like
to seem to be giving orders to the Admiral of the Fleet, but it may
be quite essential that you concentrate upon me, and think of nothing
else, for the next few minutes."

"Right! I don't mind taking orders from _you_."

"QX. Now we can take things a bit easier." Kinnison had so arranged
matters that no one except himself could think into that stronghold,
and he himself would not. He would not think into that tantalizing
enigma, nor toward it, nor even of it, until he was completely ready to
do so. And how many persons, I wonder, really realize just how much of
a feat that was? Realize the sort of mental training that required?

"How many gamma-zeta tracers can you put out, chief?" Kinnison asked
then, more conversationally.

A brief consultation; then, "Ten in regular use. By tuning in all our
spares we can put out sixty."

"At two diameters' distance forty-eight fields will surround this
planet at one-hundred-percent overlap. Please have that many set that
way. Of the other twelve, set three to go well outside the first
sphere--say at four diameters out--covering the line from this planet
to Lundmark's Nebula. Set the last nine to be thrown out as far as you
can read them accurately to only the first decimal on your screens,
centering on the same line. Not much overlap is necessary on these
backing fields--bare contact is enough. Release nothing, of course,
until I get there. And while the boys are setting things up, you might
go inert--it's safe enough now--so that I can match your intrinsic
velocity and come aboard."

       *       *       *       *       *

There followed the maneuvering necessary for one inert body to approach
another in space, then Kinnison's incredible housing of steel was
hauled into the airlock by means of space lines attached to magnetic
clamps. The outer door of the lock closed behind him, the inner one
opened, and the Lensman entered the flagship.

First to the armory, where he clambered stiffly out of his small
battleship and gave orders concerning its storage. Then to the control
room, stretching and bending hugely as he went, in vast relief at his
freedom from the narrow and irksome confinement which he had endured so
long.

Of all the men in that control room, only two knew Kinnison personally.
All knew of him, however, and as the tall gray-clad figure entered
there was a loud, quick cheer.

"Hi, fellows--thanks." Kinnison waved a salute to the room as a
whole. "Hi, Port Admiral! Hi, Commandant!" He saluted Haynes and von
Hohendorff as perfunctorily, and greeted them as casually, as though he
had last seen them an hour, instead of ten weeks, before; as though the
intervening time had been spent in the veriest idleness, instead of in
the fashion in which it actually had been spent.

Old von Hohendorff greeted his erstwhile pupil cordially enough, but:
"Out with it!" Haynes demanded. "What did you do? How did you do it?
What does all this confounded rigmarole mean? Tell us all about it--all
you can, I mean," he added, hastily.

"There's no need of secrecy now, I think," and in flashing thoughts the
Gray Lensman went on to describe everything that had happened.

"So you see," he concluded, "I don't really _know_ anything. It's all
surmise, suspicion, and deduction. It may be that nothing at all will
happen: in which case these precautions, while they will have been
wasted effort, will have done us no harm. In case something _does_
happen, however--and I'll bet all the tea in China that something
will--we'll be ready for it."

"But if what you are beginning to suspect is really true, it means that
Boskonia is inter-Galactic in scope--wider spread even than the Patrol!"

"Probably, but not necessarily--it may mean only that they have bases
further outside. And remember that I'm arguing on a mighty slim thread
of evidence. That screen was hard and tight, and I couldn't touch the
external beam--if there was one--at all. I got just part of a thought,
here and there. However, the thought was 'that' galaxy; not just
'galaxy,' or 'this' or 'the' galaxy--and why think that way if the guy
was already in this galaxy?"

[Illustration: _"But that's not the end, sir," said Kinnison. "They
said not 'the' galaxy, or even 'this' galaxy--the thought was 'that'
galaxy!"_]

"But nobody has ever--But skip it for now--the boys are ready for you.
Take over!"

"QX. First we'll go free again. Don't think much, if any, of the
stuff can come out here, but no use taking chances. Cut your screens.
Now, all you gamma-zeta men, throw out your fields, and if any of you
get a puncture, or even a flash, measure its position. You recording
observers, step your scanners up to fifty thousand. QX?"

"QX!" the observers and recorders reported, almost as one, and the Gray
Lensman sat down at a plate.

       *       *       *       *       *

His mind, free at last to make the investigation from which it had been
so long and so sternly barred, flew down into and through the dome, to
and into that cryptic globe so tantalizingly poised in the air of the
Center.

The reaction was practically instantaneous; so rapid that any ordinary
mind could have perceived nothing at all; so rapid that even Kinnison's
consciousness recorded only a confusedly blurred impression. But he
did see something: in that fleeting millionth of a second he sensed a
powerful, malignant mental force; a force backing multiplex scanners
and subethereal stress-fields interlocked in peculiarly unidentifiable
patterns.

For that ball was, as Kinnison had more than suspected, a potent agency
indeed. It was, as he had thought that it must be, a communicator; but
it was far more than that. Ordinarily harmless enough, it could be so
set as to become an infernal machine at the vibrations of any thought
not in a certain coded sequence; and Helmuth had so set it.

Therefore at the touch of the Patrolman's thought it exploded:
liberating instantaneously the unimaginable forces with which
it was charged. More, it sent out waves which, attuned to
detonating receivers, touched off strategically placed stores of
duodecaplylatomate. "Duodec," that concentrated essence of atomic
violence than which science has even yet failed to develop a more
devastating!

"Hell's--jingling--bells!" Port Admiral Haynes grunted in stunned
amazement, then subsided into silence, eyes riveted upon his plate;
for to the human eye dome, fortress, and planet had disappeared in one
cataclysmically incandescent sphere of flame.

But the observers of the Galactic Patrol did not depend upon eyesight
alone. Their scanners had been working at ultrafast speed; and, as
soon as it became clear that none of the ships of the Fleet had been
endangered, Kinnison asked that certain of the spools be run into a
visitank at normal tempo.

There, slowed to a speed at which the eye could clearly discern
sequences of events, the two old Lensmen and the young one studied with
care the three-dimensional pictures of what had happened; pictures
taken from points of projection close to and even within the doomed
structure itself.

Deliberately, the ball of force opened up, followed an inappreciable
instant later by the secondary centers of detonation; all expanding
magically into spherical volumes of blindingly brilliant annihilation.
There were as yet no flying fragments: no inert fragment _can_ fly
from duodec in the first few instants of its detonation. For the
detonation of duodec is propagated at the velocity of light, so that
the entire mass disintegrates in a period of time to be measured only
in fractional trillionths of a second. Its detonation pressure and
temperature have never been measured save indirectly, since nothing
will hold it except a Q-type helix of pure force. And even those
helices, which perforce must be practically open at both ends, have
to be designed and powered to withstand pressures and temperatures
obtaining only in the cores of suns.

Imagine, if you can, what would happen if some fifty thousand metric
tons of material from the innermost core of Sirius B were to be taken
to Grand Base, separated into twenty-five packages, each package placed
at a strategic point, and all restraint instantaneously removed. What
would have happened then, was what actually _was_ happening!

As has been said, for moments nothing moved except the ever-expanding
spheres of destruction. Nothing _could_ move--the inertia of matter
itself held it in place until it was too late--everything close to
those centers of action simply flared into turgid incandescence and
added its contribution to the already hellish whole.

As the spheres expanded, their temperatures and pressures decreased
and the action became somewhat less violent. Matter no longer simply
disappeared. Instead, plates and girders, even gigantic structural
members, bent, buckled, and crumbled. Walls blew outward and upward.
Huge chunks of metal and of masonry, many with fused and dripping
edges, began to fly in all directions.

And not only, or principally, upward was directed the force of those
inconceivable explosions. Downward the effect was, if possible, even
more catastrophic, since conditions there approximated closely the
oft-argued meeting between the irresistible force and the immovable
object. The planet was to all intents and purposes immovable, the
duodec to the same degree irresistible. The result was that the entire
planet was momentarily blown apart. A vast chasm was blasted deep into
its interior, and, gravity temporarily overcome, stupendous cracks and
fissures began to yawn. Then, as the pressure decreased, the core-stuff
of the planet became molten and began to wreak its volcanic havoc.

Gravity, once more master of the situation, took hold. The cracks and
chasms closed, extruding uncounted cubic miles of fiery lava and metal.
The entire world shivered and shuddered in a Gargantuan cosmic ague.

       *       *       *       *       *

The explosion blew itself out. The hot gases and vapors cooled. The
steam condensed. The volcanic dust disappeared. There lay the planet;
but changed--hideously and awfully changed. Where Grand Base had been
there remained nothing whatever to indicate that anything wrought by
man had ever been there. Mountains were leveled, valleys were filled.
Continents and oceans had shifted, and were still shifting; visibly.
Earthquakes, volcanoes, and other seismic disturbances, instead of
decreasing, were increasing in violence, minute by minute.

Helmuth's planet was, and would for years remain, a barren and
uninhabitable world.

"Well!" Haynes, who had been holding his breath unconsciously,
released it in an almost explosive sigh. "That is inescapably and
incontrovertibly _that_. I was going to use that base, but it looks as
though we'll have to get along without it."

Without comment Kinnison turned to the gamma-zeta observers. "Any
traces?" he asked.

It developed that three of the fields had shown activity. Not merely
traces or flashes, but solid punctures showing the presence of a hard,
tight beam. And those three punctures were in the same line; a line
running straight out into inter-Galactic space.

Kinnison took careful readings on the line, then stood motionless.
Feet wide apart, hands jammed into pockets, head slightly bent, eyes
distant, he stood there unmoving; thinking with all the power of his
brain.

"I want to ask three questions," the old Commandant of Cadets
interrupted his cogitations finally. "Was Helmuth Boskone, or not? Have
we got them licked, or not? What do we do next, besides the mopping up
of those eighteen super-maulers?"

"To all three the answer is 'I don't know'." Kinnison's face was stern
and hard. "You know as much about the whole thing as I do--I haven't
held back a thing that I even suspect. I did not tell you that Helmuth
was Boskone; I said that everyone in any position to judge, including
myself, was as sure that he was as one could be about anything that
could not be proved. I firmly believed that he was. The presence of
this communicator line, and the other stuff I have told you about, has
destroyed that belief in my mind. However, we do not actually _know_
any more than we did before. It is no more certain now that Helmuth
was _not_ Boskone than it was before that he _was_ Boskone. The second
question ties in with the first, and so does the third--but I see that
the mopping up has started."

While von Hohendorff and Kinnison had been talking, Haynes had issued
orders and the Grand Fleet, divided roughly and with difficulty into
eighteen parts, went raggedly outward to surround the eighteen outlying
fortresses. But, and surprisingly enough to the Patrol forces, the
reduction of those hulking monsters was to prove no easy task.

The Boskonians had witnessed the destruction of Helmuth's Grand Base.
Their master plates were dead. Try as they would, they could get in
touch with no one with authority to give them orders, with no one to
whom they could report their present plight. Nor could they escape: the
slowest mauler in the Patrol Fleet could have caught any one of them in
space of minutes.

To surrender was not even thought of--better far to die a clean
death in the blazing holocaust of space battle than to be thrown
ignominiously into the lethal chambers of the Patrol. There was not,
there could not be, any question of pardon or of sentence to any mere
imprisonment, for the strife between Civilization and Boskonia in
no respect resembled the wars between two fundamentally similar and
friendly nations which small, green Terra knew so frequently of old.
It was a Galaxy-wide struggle for survival between two diametrically
opposed, mutually exclusive, and absolutely incompatible cultures;
a duel to the death in which quarter was neither asked nor given; a
conflict which, except for the single instance which Kinnison himself
had engineered, was, and of stern necessity had to be, one of ruthless,
complete, and utter extinction.

       *       *       *       *       *

Die, then, the pirates knew they must; and, although adherents to a
scheme of existence monstrous indeed to our way of thinking, they
were in no sense cowards. Not like cornered rats did they conduct
themselves, but fought like what they were; courageous beings
hopelessly outnumbered and outpowered, unable either to escape or to
choose the field of operations, grimly resolved that in their passing
they would take full toll of the minions of that detested and despised
Galactic Civilization. Therefore, in suicidal glee, Boskonian engineers
rigged up a fantastically potent weapon of offense, tuned in their
defensive screens and hung poised in space, awaiting calmly the massed
attack so sure to come.

Up flashed the heavy cruisers of the Patrol, serenely confident.
Although of little offensive strength, these vessels mounted tractors
and pressors of prodigious power, as well as defensive screens
which--theoretically--no projector-driven beam of force could puncture.
They had engaged mauler after mauler of Boskonia's mightiest, and never
yet had one of those screens gone down. Theirs the task of immobilizing
the opponent; since, as is of course well known, it is under any
ordinary conditions impossible to wreak any hurt upon an object which
is both inertialess and at liberty to move in space. It simply darts
away from the touch of the harmful agent, whether it be immaterial beam
or material substance.

Formerly the attachment of two or three tractors was all that was
necessary to insure immobility, and thus vulnerability; but with the
Velantian development of a shear-plane to cut tractor beams, a new
technique became necessary. This was englobement, in which a dozen
or more vessels surrounded the proposed victim in space and held it
motionless at the center of a sphere by means of pressors, which could
not be cut or evaded. Serene, then, and confident, the heavy cruisers
rushed out to englobe the Boskonian fortress.

Flash! Flash! Flash! Three points of light, as unbearably brilliant
as atomic vortices, sprang into being upon the fortress' side. Three
needle rays of inconceivable energy lashed out, hurtling through the
cruisers' outer screens as though they had been so much inactive
webbing. Through the second and through the first. Through the wall
shield, even that ultrapowerful field scarcely flashing as it went
down. Through the armor, violating the prime tenet then held and
which has just been referred to, that no object free in space can be
damaged--in this case, so unthinkably vehement was the thrust, the
few atoms of substances in the space surrounding the doomed cruisers
afforded resistance enough. Through the ship itself, a ravening
cylinder of annihilation.

For perhaps a second--certainly no longer--those incredible, those
undreamed-of beams persisted before winking out into blackness; but
that second had been long enough. Three riddled hulks lay dead in
space, and as the three original projectors went black three more
flared out. Then three more. Nine of the mightiest of Civilization's
ships of war were riddled before the others could hurl themselves
backward out of range!

       *       *       *       *       *

Most of the officers of the flagship were stunned into temporary
inactivity by that shocking development, but two reacted almost
instantly.

"Thorndyke!" the Admiral snapped. "What did they do, and how?"

And Kinnison, not speaking at all, leaped to a certain panel, to read
for himself the analysis of those incredible beams of force.

"They made superneedle rays out of their main projectors," Master
Technician Laverne Thorndyke reported, crisply. "They must have shorted
everything they've got onto them to burn them out that fast."

"Those beams were hot--plenty hot," Kinnison corroborated the findings.
"These recorders go to five billion and have a factor of safety of ten.
Even that wasn't anywhere nearly enough--everything in the recorder
circuits blew."

"But how could they handle them--" von Hohendorff began to ask.

"They didn't. They pointed them and died," Thorndyke explained,
grimly. "They traded one projector and its crew for one cruiser and
_its_ crew--a good trade from their viewpoint."

"There will be no more such trades," Haynes declared.

Nor were there. The Patrol had maulers enough to englobe the enemy
craft at a distance greater even than the effective range of those
suicidal beams, and it did so.

Shielding screens cut off the Boskonians' intake of cosmic power and
the relentless beaming of the bulldog maulers began. For hour after
hour it continued, the cordon ever tightening as the victims' power
lessened. And finally even the Gargantuan accumulators of the immense
fortresses were drained. Their screens went down under the hellish fury
of the maulers' incessant attack, and in a space of minutes thereafter
the structures and their contents ceased to exist save as atomic
detritus.

The Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol remade its formation after a
fashion and set off toward the Galaxy at touring blast.

And in the control room of the flagship three Lensmen brought a very
serious conference to a close.

"You saw what happened to Helmuth's planet," Kinnison's voice was
oddly hard, "and I gave you all I could get of the thought about the
destruction of all life upon Sol III. A big-enough duodec bomb in
the bottom of an ocean would do it. I don't really _know_ anything
except that we hadn't better let them catch us asleep at the switch
again--we've got to be up on our toes every second."

And the Gray Lensman, face set and stern, strode off to his quarters.




                                  II.


During practically all of the long trip back to Earth, Kinnison kept
pretty much to his cabin, thinking deeply, blackly, and, he admitted
ruefully to himself, to very little purpose. And at Prime Base, through
week after week of its feverish activity, he continued to think.
Finally, however, he was snatched out of his dark abstraction by no
less a personage than Surgeon General Lacy.

"Snap out of it, lad," that worthy advised, smilingly. "When you
concentrate on one thing too long, you know, the vortices of thought
occupy narrower and narrow loci, until finally the effective volume
becomes infinitesimal. Or, mathematically, the then range of
cogitation, integrated between the limits of plus and minus infinity,
approaches zero as a limit--"

"Huh? What are you talking about?" the Lensman demanded.

"Poor mathematics, perhaps, but sound psychology," Lacy grinned. "It
got your undivided attention, didn't it? That was what I was after. In
plain English, if you keep on thinking around in circles you'll soon be
biting yourself in the small of the back. Come on, you and I are going
places."

"Where?"

"To the Grand Ball in honor of the Grand Fleet, my boy--old Dr. Lacy
prescribes it for you as a complete and radical change of atmosphere.
Let's go!"

The city's largest ballroom was a blaze of light and color. A thousand
polychromic lamps flooded their radiance downward through draped
bunting upon an even more colorful throng. Two thousand items of
feminine loveliness were there, in raiment whose fabrics were the boast
of hundreds of planets, whose hues and shades put the spectrum itself
to shame. There were over two thousand men, clad in plain or beribboned
or bemedaled full civilian dress, or in the variously panoplied dress
uniforms of the many Services.

"You're dancing with Miss Forrester first, Kinnison," the surgeon
introduced them informally, and the Lensman found himself gliding
away with a stunning blonde, ravishingly and revealingly dressed in a
dazzlingly blue wisp of Manarkan glamorette--fashion's _dernier cri_.

To the uninformed, Kinnison's garb of plain gray leather might have
seemed incongruous indeed in that brilliantly and fastidiously dressed
assemblage. But to those people, as to us of today, the drab, starkly
utilitarian uniform of the Unattached Lensman transcended far any
other, however resplendent, worn by men: and literally hundreds of eyes
followed the strikingly handsome couple as they slid rhythmically out
upon the polished floor. But a measure of the tall beauty's customary
poise had deserted her. She was slimly taut in the circle of the
Lensman's arm, her eyes were downcast, and suddenly she missed a step.

"'Scuse me for stepping on your feet," he apologized. "A fellow gets
out of practice, flitting around in a speedster so much."

"Thanks for taking the blame, but it's my fault entirely--I know it as
well as you do," she replied, flushing uncomfortably. "I _do_ know how
to dance, too, but--Well, you're a Gray Lensman, you know."

"Huh?" he ejaculated, in honest surprise, and she looked up at him
for the first time. "What has that fact got to do with the price of
Venerian orchids in Chicago--or with my clumsy walking all over your
slippers?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Everything in the world," she assured him. Nevertheless, her stiff
young body relaxed and she fell into the graceful, accurate dancing
which she really knew so well how to do. "You see, I don't suppose that
any of us has ever seen a Gray Lensman before, except in pictures, and
actually to be dancing with one is so thrilling that it is really a
shock--I have to get used to it gradually, so to speak. Why, I don't
even know how to talk to you! One couldn't possibly call you plain
mister, as one would any ord--"

"It'll be QX if you just call me 'say'!" he informed her. "Maybe you'd
rather not dance with a dub? What say we go get us a sandwich and a
bottle of fayalin or something?"

"No--never!" she exclaimed. "I didn't mean it that way at all. I'm
going to have this full dance with you, and enjoy every second of it.
And later I am going to pack this dance card--which I hope you will
sign for me--away in lavender, so it will go down in history that in my
youth I really did dance with Gray Lensman Kinnison. I see that I have
recovered enough so that I can talk and dance at the same time. Do you
mind if I ask you some silly questions about space?"

"Go ahead. They won't be silly, if I'm any judge. Elementary, perhaps,
but not silly."

"I hope so, but I think you're being charitable again. Like most of
the girls here, I suppose, I have never been out in deep space at all.
Besides a few hops to the Moon, I have taken only two flits, and they
were both only interplanetary. One to Mars and one to Venus. I never
could see how you deep-space men can really understand what you're
doing--either the frightful speeds at which you travel, the distance
you cover, or the way your communicators work. In fact, a professor
told us that no human mind can understand figures of those magnitudes
at all. But you must understand them, I should think ... oh, perhaps--"

"Or maybe the guy isn't human?" Kinnison laughed deeply, infectiously.
"No, your professor was right. We can't understand the figures, but we
don't have to--all we have to do is to work with them. And, now that it
has just percolated through my skull who you really are, that you are
_Gladys_ Forrester, it is quite clear that you are in that same boat."

"Me? How?" she exclaimed.

"The human mind cannot really understand a million of anything. Yet
your father, an immensely wealthy man, gave you clear title to a
million credits in cash, to train you in finance in the only way that
really produces results--the hard way of actual experience. You lost a
lot of it at first, of course; but at last accounts you had got it all
back, and some besides, in spite of all the smart guys trying to take
it away from you. The fact that your brain cannot envisage a million
credits has not interfered with your manipulation of that amount, has
it?"

"No, but that's entirely different!" she protested.

"Not in any essential feature," he countered. "I can explain it best,
perhaps, by analogy. You can't visualize, mentally, the size of North
America, either, yet that fact does not bother you in the least while
you are driving around on it in an automobile. What do you drive? On
the ground, I mean, not in the air?"

"A De Khotinsky sporter."

"Um. Top speed a hundred and forty miles per hour, and I suppose you
cruise between ninety and a hundred. We'll have to pretend that you
drive a Crownover sedan, or some other big, slow jalopy, so that you
will tour at about sixty and have an absolute top of ninety. Also,
you have a radio. On the broadcast bands you can hear a program from
three or four thousand miles away; or, on short wave, from anywhere on
Tellus--"

"I can get tight-beam short-wave programs from the Moon," the girl
broke in. "I've heard them lots of times."

"Yes," Kinnison assented dryly, "at such times as there didn't happen
to be any interference."

"Static _is_ pretty bad, lots of times," the heiress agreed.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Well, change 'miles' to 'parsecs' and you've got the picture of
deep-space speeds and operations," Kinnison informed her. "Our speed
varies, of course, with the density of matter in space; but on the
average--say one atom of substance per ten cubic centimeters in
space--we tour at about sixty parsecs an hour, and full blast is about
ninety. And our ultra-wave communicators, working below the level of
the ether, in the subether--"

"Whatever that is," she interrupted.

"That's as good a description or definition of it as any," he grinned
at her. "We don't know what even the ether is, or whether or not
it exists as an objective reality; to say nothing of what we so
nonchalantly call the subether. We do not understand gravity, although
we can make it to order. No scientist yet has been able to say how it
is propagated, or even whether or not it is propagated. No one has been
able to devise any kind of an apparatus or meter or method by which
its nature, period, or velocity can be determined. Neither do we know
anything about time or space. In fact, fundamentally, we don't really
_know_ much of anything at all," he concluded.

"Says you. But that makes me feel better, anyway," she confided,
snuggling a little closer. "Go on about the communicators."

"Ultra-waves are faster than ordinary radio waves, which of course
travel through the ether with the velocity of light, in just about
the same ratio as that of the speed of our ships to the speed of slow
automobiles--that is, the ratio of a parsec to a mile. Roughly nineteen
billion to one. Range, of course, is proportional to the square of the
speed."

"Nineteen billion!" she exclaimed. "And you just said that nobody could
understand even a million!"

"That's the point exactly," he went on, undisturbed. "You don't have to
understand or to visualize it. All you have to do is to remember that
deep-space vessels and communicators can cover distance in parsecs at
practically the same rate that Tellurian automobiles can cover miles.
So, when some space-flea talks to you about parsecs, just think of
miles in terms of an automobile and a radio and you won't be far off."

"I never heard it explained that way before--it does make it ever so
much simpler. Will you sign this, please?"

"Just one more point." The music had ceased and he was signing her
card, preparatory to escorting her back to her place. "Like your
supposedly tight-beam Luna-Tellus hookups, our long range, equally
tight-beam communicators are very sensitive to interference, either
natural or artificial. So, while under perfect conditions we can
communicate clear across the Galaxy, there are times--particularly when
the pirates are scrambling the channels--that we can't drive a beam
from here to Alpha Centauri. Thanks a lot for the dance."

       *       *       *       *       *

The other girls did not quite come to blows as to which of them
was to get him next; and shortly--he never did know exactly how
it came about--he found himself dancing with a luscious, cuddly
little brunette, clad--partially clad, at least--in a high-slitted,
flame-colored sheath of some new fabric which the Lensman had never
seen before. It looked like solidified, tightly woven electricity!

"Oh, Mr. Kinnison!" his new partner cooed, ecstatically. "I think that
all spacemen, and you Lensmen particularly, are just too perfectly darn
_heroic_ for anything! Why, I think that space is just _terrible_! I
simply can't _cope_ with it at _all_!"

"Ever been out, miss?" he grinned. He had never known many social
butterflies, and temporarily he had forgotten that such girls as this
one really existed.

"Why, of _course_!" The young woman kept on being exclamatory.

"Clear out to the Moon, perhaps?" he hazarded.

"Don't be ridic! _Ever_ so much farther than _that_! Why, I went clear
to _Mars_! And it gave me the screaming _meamies_, no less. I thought I
would _collapse_!"

That dance ended ultimately, and other dances with other girls
followed; but Kinnison could not throw himself into the gaiety
surrounding him. During his cadet days he had enjoyed such revels to
the full, but now the whole thing left him cold. His mind insisted
upon reverting to its problem. Finally, in the throng of young people
on the floor, he saw a girl with a mass of red-bronze hair and a
supple, superbly molded figure. He did not need to await her turning
to recognize his erstwhile nurse and later assistant, whom he had last
seen just this side of far-distant Boyssia II.

"Mac!" To her mind alone he sent out a thought through his Lens. "For
the love of Klono, lend a hand--rescue me! How many dances have you got
ahead?"

"None at all--I'm not dating ahead." She jumped as though someone had
jabbed her with a needle, then paused in panic; eyes wide, breath
coming fast, breast pounding. She had felt Lensed thoughts before, but
this was something else, something entirely different. Every cell of
her brain was open to that Lensman's mind--and what _was_ she seeing!
She blanketed her thoughts desperately, tried with all her might not to
think at all!

[Illustration: _She froze suddenly, a gasp of horror half suppressed.
She was seeing things--sensing things beyond comprehension_--]

"QX, Mac," the thought went quietly on within her mind, quite as though
nothing unusual were occurring. "No intrusion meant. You didn't think
it; I already knew that if you started dating ahead you'd be tied up
until day after tomorrow. Can I have the next one?"

"Sure, Kim."

"Thanks--the Lens is off for the rest of the evening."

She sighed in relief as he snapped the telepathic line as though he
were hanging up the receiver of a telephone.

"I'd like to dance with you all, kids," he addressed a large group of
buds surrounding him and eying him hungrily, "but I've got this next
one. See you later, perhaps," and he was gone.

"Sorry, fellows," he remarked casually, as he made his way through the
circle of men around the gorgeous redhead. "Sorry, but this dance is
mine, isn't it, Miss MacDougall?"

She nodded, flashing the radiant smile which had so aroused his ire
during his hospitalization. "I heard you invoke your spaceman's god,
but I was beginning to be afraid that you had forgotten this dance."

"And she said she wasn't dating ahead--the diplomat!" murmured an
ambassador, aside.

"Don't be a dope," a captain of Marines muttered in reply. "She meant
with _us_. That's a Gray Lensman!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Although the nurse, as has been said, was anything but small, she
appeared almost petite against the Lensman's mighty frame as they took
off. Silently the two circled the great hall once; lustrous, goldenly
green gown--of Earthly nylon, this one, and less revealing than
most--swishing in perfect cadence against deftly and softly stepping
high-laced boots.

"This is better, Mac," Kinnison sighed, finally, "but I lack just seven
thousand kilocycles of being in tune with this. Don't know what's
the matter, but it's clogging my jets. I must be getting to be a
space-louse."

"A space-louse--you? Uh-uh!" She shook her head. "You know very well
what the matter is. You're just too much of a man to mention it."

"Huh?" he demanded.

"Uh-huh," she asserted, positively if obliquely. "Of course you're not
in tune with this crowd. How could you be? I don't fit into it any more
myself, and what I'm doing isn't even a muffled flare compared to your
job. Not one in ten of these fluffs here tonight has ever been beyond
the stratosphere; not one in a hundred has ever been out as far as
Jupiter, or has ever had a serious thought in her head except about
clothes or men; not one of them all has any more idea of what a Lensman
really is than I have of hyperspace or of non-Euclidean geometry!"

"Kitty, kitty!" he laughed. "Sheathe the little claws, before you
scratch somebody!"

"That isn't cattishness; it's the barefaced truth. Or perhaps," she
amended, honestly, "it's both true and cattish, but it's certainly
true. And that isn't half of it. No one in the Universe except yourself
really _knows_ what you are doing, and I'm pretty sure that only two
others even suspect. And Dr. Lacy is not one of them," she concluded,
surprisingly.

Though shocked, Kinnison did not miss a step. "You _don't_ fit into
this matrix, any more than I do," he agreed, quietly. "S'pose you and I
could do a little flit somewhere?"

"Surely, Kim," and, breaking out of the crowd, they strolled out into
the grounds. Not a word was said until they were seated upon a broad,
low bench beneath the spreading foliage of a tree.

Then: "What did you come here for tonight, Mac--the real reason?" he
demanded, abruptly.

"I ... me ... you ... I mean--Oh, skip it!" the girl stammered, a
wave of scarlet flooding her face and down even to her superb, bare
shoulders. Then she steadied herself and went on: "You see, I agree
with you--as you say, I check you to nineteen decimals. Even Dr. Lacy,
with all his knowledge, can be slightly screwy at times, I think."

"Oh, so that's it!" It was not, it was only a very minor part of her
reason; but the nurse would have bitten her tongue off rather than
admit that she had come to that dance solely and only because Kimball
Kinnison was to be there. "You knew, then, that this was old Lacy's
idea?"

"Of course. You would never have come, else. He thinks that you may
begin wobbling on the beam pretty soon unless you put out a few braking
jets."

"And you?"

"Not in a million, Kim. Lacy is as cockeyed as Trenco's ether, and I as
good as told him so. He may wobble a bit, but _you_ won't. You've got a
job to do, and you're doing it. You'll finish it, too, in spite of all
the vermin infesting all the galaxies of the macro-cosmic Universe!"
she finished, passionately.

"Klono's brazen whiskers, Mac!" He turned suddenly and stared intently
down into her wide, gold-flecked, tawny eyes. She stared back for a
moment, then looked away.

"Don't look at me like that!" she almost screamed. "I can't stand
it--you make me feel stark naked! I know that your Lens is off--I'd
simply die if it wasn't--but I think that you're a mind-reader, even
without it!"

       *       *       *       *       *

She did know that that powerful telepath was off and would remain
off, and she was glad indeed of that fact; for her mind was seething
with thoughts which that Lensman must not know, then or ever. And for
his part, the Lensman knew what she did not even suspect; that had he
chosen to exert the powers at his command she would have been naked,
mentally and physically, to his perception; but he did not exert those
powers--then. The amenities of human relationship demanded that some
fastnesses of reserve remain inviolate, but he had to know what this
woman knew. If necessary, he would take the knowledge away from her by
force, so completely that she would never know that she had ever known
it. Therefore:

"Just what do you know, Mac, and how did you find it out?" he demanded;
quietly, but with a stern finality of inflection that made a quick
chill run up and down the nurse's back.

"I know a lot, Kim." The girl shivered slightly, even though the
evening was warm and balmy. "I learned it from your own mind. When you
called me, back there on the floor, you didn't send just a single,
sharp thought, just as though you were speaking to me, as you always
did before. Instead, it seemed as though I was actually inside your
own mind--the whole of it. I have heard Lensman speak of a wide-open
two-way, but I never had even the faintest inkling of what it would be
like--no one could who has never experienced it. Of course I didn't--I
couldn't--understand a millionth of what I saw, or seemed to see.
It was too vast, too incredibly immense. I never dreamed any mortal
_could_ have a mind like that, Kim! But it was ghastly, too. It gave
me the creepy jitters. It sent me down completely out of control for
a second. And you didn't even know it--I know you didn't! I didn't
want to look, really, but I couldn't help seeing, and I'm glad I
did--I wouldn't have missed it for the world!" she finished, almost
incoherently.

"Hm-m-m. That changes the picture entirely." Much to her surprise, the
man's voice was calm and thoughtful; not at all incensed. Not even
disturbed. "So I spilled the beans myself, on a wide-open two-way,
and didn't even realize it. I knew that you were back-firing about
something, but thought it was because I might think you guilty of petty
vanity. And I called _you_ a dumbbell once!" he marveled.

"Twice," she corrected him, "and the second time I was never so glad to
be called names in my whole life."

"Now I _know_ that I was getting to be a space-louse."

"Uh-uh, Kim," she denied again, gently. "And you aren't a brat or a lug
or a clunker, either, even though I have thought at times that you were
all of those things. But, now that I've actually got all this stuff,
what can you--what can we--do about it?"

"Perhaps ... probably ... I think, since I gave it to you myself, I'll
let you keep it," Kinnison decided, slowly.

"Keep it!" she exclaimed. "Of course, I'll keep it! Why, it's in my
mind--I'll _have_ to keep it--nobody can take _knowledge_ away from
anyone!"

"Oh, sure--of course," he murmured, absently. There were a lot of
things that Mac didn't know, and probably no good end would be served
my enlightening her further. "You see, there's a lot of stuff in my
mind that I don't know much about myself, yet. Since I gave you an
open channel, there must have been a good reason for it, even though,
consciously, I don't know myself what it was." He thought intensely
for moments, then went on: "Undoubtedly the subconscious. Probably it
recognized the necessity of discussing the whole situation with someone
having a fresh viewpoint, someone whose ideas can help me develop a
fresh angle of attack. Haynes and I think too much alike for him to be
of much help."

"You trust _me_ that much?" the girl asked, dumfounded.

"Certainly," he replied without hesitation. "I know enough about you to
know that you can keep your mouth shut."

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus unromantically did Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, acknowledge the
first glimmerings of the dawning perception of a vast fact--that this
nurse and he were two between whom there never would nor could exist
any iota of doubt or of question.

Then they sat and talked. Not idly, as is the fashion of lovers, of the
minutiae of their own romantic affairs, did these two converse, but
cosmically, of the entire Universe and of the already existent conflict
between the culture of Civilization and Boskonia.

They sat there, romantically enough to all outward seeming; their
privacy assured by Kinnison's Lens and by his ever-watchful sense of
perception. Time after time, completely unconsciously, that sense
reached out to other couples who approached, to touch and to affect
their minds so insidiously that they did not know that they were being
steered away from the tree in whose black moon-shadow sat the Lensman
and the nurse.

Finally the long conversation came to an end and Kinnison assisted his
companion to her feet. His frame was straighter, his eyes held a new
and brighter light.

"By the way, Kim," she asked idly as they strolled back toward the
ballroom, "who is this Klono, by whom you were swearing a while ago?
Another spaceman's god, like Noshabkeming, of the Valerians?"

"Something like him, only more so," he laughed. "A combination of
Noshabkeming, some of the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans, all
three of the Fates, and quite a few other things as well. I think,
originally, from Corvina, but fairly widespread through certain
sections of the Galaxy now. He's got so much stuff--teeth and
horns, claws and whiskers, tail and everything--that he's much more
satisfactory to swear by than any other space-god I know of."

"But why do men have to swear at all, Kim?" she queried, curiously.
"It's so silly."

"For the same reason that women cry," he countered. "A man swears to
keep from crying, a woman cries to keep from swearing. Both are sound
psychology. Safety valves--means of blowing off excess pressure that
would otherwise blow fuses or burn out tubes."




                                 III.


In the library of the Port Admiral's richly comfortable home, a room
as heavily guarded against all forms of intrusion as was his private
office, two old but active Lensmen sat and grinned at each other like
the two conspirators which in fact they were. One took a squat, red
bottle of fayalin from a cabinet and filled two small glasses. The
glasses clinked, rim to rim.

"Here's to love!" Haynes gave the toast.

"Ain't it grand!" Surgeon General Lacy responded.

"Down the hatch!" they chanted in unison, and action followed word.

"You aren't asking if everything stayed on the beam." This from Lacy.

"No need. I had a spy ray on the whole performance."

"You would--you're the type. However, I would have, too, if I
had a panel full of them in _my_ office. Well, say it, you old
space-hellion!" Lacy grinned again, albeit a trifle wryly.

"Nothing to say, sawbones. You did a grand job, and you've got nothing
to blow a jet about."

"No? How would you like to have a red-headed spitfire who's scarcely
dry behind the ears yet tell you to your teeth that you've got
softening of the brain? That you had the mental capacity of a gnat, the
intellect of a Zabriskan fontema? And to have to take it, without even
heaving the insubordinate young jade into the can for about twenty-five
well-earned black spots?"

"Oh, come, now, you're just blasting. It wasn't that bad."

"Perhaps not quite--but it was bad enough."

"She'll grow up, some day, and realize that you were foxing her six
ways from the origin."

"Probably. In the meantime, it's all part of the bigger job. Thank God
I'm not young any more. They suffer so."

"Check. _How_ they suffer!"

"But you saw the ending and I didn't. How did it turn out?" Lacy asked.

"Partly good, partly bad." Haynes slowly poured two more drinks and
thoughtfully swirled the crimson, pungently aromatic liquid around and
around in his glass before he spoke again. "Hooked--but she knows it,
and I'm afraid she'll do something about it."

"She's a smart girl--I told you she was. She doesn't fox herself about
anything. Hm-m-m. And separation is indicated, it would seem."

"Check. Can you send out a hospital ship somewhere, so as to get rid of
her for two or three weeks?"

"Can do. Three weeks be enough? We can't send him anywhere, you know."

"Plenty. He'll be gone in two." Then, as Lacy glanced at him
questioningly, Haynes continued: "Ready for a shock? He's going to
Lundmark's Nebula."

"But he _can't_! That would take years! Nobody has ever got back from
there yet, and there's this new job of his. Besides, this separation is
only supposed to last until you can spare him for a while!"

"If it takes very long he's coming back. The idea has always been, you
know, that intergalactic matter may be so thin--one atom per liter
or so--that such a flit won't take one tenth the time supposed. We
recognize the danger. He's going well heeled."

"How well?"

"The best that we can give him."

"I hate to clog their jets this way, but it's got to be done. We'll
give her a raise when I send her out--make her sector chief. Huh?"

"Did I hear any such words lately as 'spitfire,' 'hussy,' and 'jade,'
or did I dream them?" Haynes asked, quizzically.

"She's all of them, and more--but she's one of the best nurses and one
of the finest women this side of Hades, too!"

"QX, Lacy, give her her raise. Of course she's good, or she wouldn't
be in on this deal at all. In fact, they're about as fine a couple of
youngsters as old Tellus has produced."

"They are that. Man, _what_ a pair of skeletons!"

       *       *       *       *       *

And in the Nurses' Quarters a young woman with a wealth of
red-bronze-auburn hair and tawny eyes was staring at her own reflection
in a mirror.

"You half-wit, you ninny, you lug!" she stormed, bitterly if almost
inaudibly, at that reflection. "You lame-brained moron, you red-headed,
idiotic imbecile, you microcephalic dumbbell, you _clunker_! Of all the
men in this whole cockeyed galaxy, you _would_ have to make a dive at
Kimball Kinnison, the one man who never has realized that you are even
alive. At a Gray Lensman--" Her expression changed and she whispered
softly: "A ... Gray ... Lensman. He _can't_ love any woman as long as
he's carrying that load. They can't let themselves be human--quite;
perhaps loving him will be enough--"

She straightened up, shrugged, and smiled; but even that pitiful
travesty of a smile could not long endure. Shortly it was buried in
waves of pain and the girl threw herself down upon her bed.

"Oh Kim, Kim!" she sobbed. "I wish ... why can't you--Oh, why did I
ever have to be born!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Three weeks later, far out in space, Kimball Kinnison was thinking
thoughts entirely foreign to his usual pattern. He was in his bunk,
smoking dreamily, staring unseeing at the metallic ceiling. He was not
thinking of Boskone.

When he had thought of Mac, back there at that dance, he had, for the
first time in his life, failed to narrow down his beam to the exact
thought being sent. Why? The explanation he had given the girl was
totally inadequate. For that matter, why had he been so glad to see her
there? And why, at every odd moment, did visions of her keep coming
into his mind--her form and features, her eyes, her lips, her startling
hair?

She was beautiful, of course, but not nearly such a seven-sector
callout as that thionite dream he had met on Aldebaran II--and his only
thought of _her_ was an occasional faint regret that he had not half
wrung her lovely neck. Why, she wasn't really as good-looking as, and
didn't have half the _je ne sais quoi_ of, that blond heiress--what was
her name?--oh, yes, Forrester--

There was only one answer, and it jarred him to the core--he would not
admit it, even to himself. He couldn't love anybody--it just simply was
not in the cards. He had a job to do. The Patrol had spent a million
credits making a Lensman out of him, and it was up to him to give them
some kind of a run for their money. No Lensman had any business with a
wife, especially a Gray Lensman. He couldn't sit down anywhere, and she
couldn't flit with him. Besides, nine out of every ten Gray Lensmen got
killed before they finished their jobs, and the one that did happen to
live long enough to retire to a desk was almost always half machinery
and artificial parts--

No, not in seven thousand years. No woman deserved to have her life
made into such a hell on earth as that would be--years of agony, of
heartbreaking suspense, climaxed by untimely widowhood; or, at best,
the wasting of the richest part of her life upon a husband who was half
steel, rubber, and phenoline plastic. Red in particular was much too
splendid a person to be let in for anything like that--

But hold on--jet back! What made him think that he rated any such girl?
That there was even a possibility--especially in view of the way he
had behaved while under her care in Base Hospital--that she would ever
feel like being anything more to him than a strictly impersonal nurse?
Probably not. He had Klono's own brazen gall to think that she would
marry him, under any conditions, even if he made a full-power dive at
her.

Just the same, she might. Look at what women did fall in love with,
sometimes. So he would never make any kind of a dive at her; no, not
even a pass. She was too sweet, too fine, too vital a woman to be
tied to any space-louse; she deserved happiness, not heartbreak. She
deserved the best there was in life, not the worst; the whole love of
a whole man for a whole lifetime, not the fractions which were all
that he could offer any woman. As long as he could think a straight
thought he wouldn't make any motions toward spoiling her life. In fact,
he hadn't better see Reddy again. He wouldn't go near any planet she
was on, and if he saw her out in space he'd go somewhere else at ten
gravities.

With a bitter imprecation Kinnison sprang out of his bunk, hurled his
half-smoked cigarette at an ash tray, and strode toward the control
room.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ship he rode was of the Patrol's best. Superbly powered for flight,
defense, and offense, she was withal a complete space-laboratory and
observatory; and her personnel, over and above her regular crew, was
as varied as her equipment. She carried ten Lensmen--a circumstance
unique in the annals of space, even for such a trouble-shooting battle
wagon as the _Dauntless_ was; a scientific staff which was practically
a cross section of the Tree of Knowledge. She carried Lieutenant
Peter van Buskirk and his company of Valerian wild cats; Worsel of
Velantia and threescore of his reptilian kinsmen; Tregonsee, the blocky
Rigellian Lensman, and a dozen or so of his fellows; Master Technician
LaVerne Thorndyke and his crew. She carried three Master Pilots, Prime
Base's best--Henderson, Schermerhorn, and Watson.

The _Dauntless_ was an immense vessel. She had to be, in order to
carry, in addition to the men and the things requisitioned by Kinnison,
the personnel and the equipment which Port Admiral Haynes had insisted
upon sending with him.

"But great Klono, chief, think of what a hole you're making in Prime
Base if we don't get back!" Kinnison had protested.

"You're coming back, Kinnison," the Port Admiral had replied gravely.
"That is why I am sending these men and this stuff along--to be as sure
as I possibly can that you _do_ get back."

Now they were out in intergalactic space, and the Gray Lensman, lying
flat upon his back with his eyes closed, sent his sense of perception
out beyond the confining iron walls and let it roam the void. This
was better than a visiplate; with no material barriers or limitations
he was feasting upon a spectacle scarcely to be pictured in the most
untrammeled imaginings of man. There were no planets, no suns, no
stars, no meteorites, no particles of cosmic débris. All nearby space
was empty, with an indescribable perfection of emptiness at the very
thought of which the mind quailed in uncomprehending horror. And,
accentuating that emptiness, at such mind-searing distances as to be
dwarfed into buttons, and yet, because of their intrinsic massiveness,
starkly apparent in their three-dimensional relationships, there hung
poised and motionlessly stately the component galaxies of a universe.

Behind the flying vessel the First Galaxy was a tiny, brightly shining
lens, so far away that such minutiae as individual solar systems were
invisible, so distant that even the gigantic masses of its accompanying
globular star clusters were merged indistinguishably into its sharply
lenticular shape. In front of her, to right and to left of her, above
and beneath her were other galaxies, never explored by man or by any
other beings subscribing to the code of Galactic Civilization. Some,
edge on, were thin, waferlike. Others appeared as full disks, showing
faintly or boldly the prodigious, mathematically inexplicable spiral
arms by virtue of whose obscure functioning they had come into being.
Between these two extremes there was every possible variant in angular
displacement.

Utterly incomprehensible although the speed of the space-flyer was,
yet those galaxies remained relatively motionless, hour after hour.
What distances! What magnificence! What grandeur! What awful, what
poignantly solemn calm!

Despite the fact that Kinnison had gone out there expecting to behold
that very scene, he felt awed to insignificance by the overwhelming,
the cosmic immensity of the spectacle. What business had he, a
sub-electronic midge from an ultra-microscopic planet, venturing
out into macro-cosmic space, a demesne comprehensible only to the
omniscient and omnipotent Creator?

       *       *       *       *       *

He got up, shaking off the futile mood. This wouldn't get him to the
first check station, and he had a job to do. And, after all, wasn't
man as big as space? Could he have come out here, otherwise? He was.
Yes, man was bigger even than space. Man, by his very envisionment of
macro-cosmic space, had already mastered it.

Besides, the Boskonians, whoever they might be, had certainly mastered
it; he was now certain that they were operating upon an intergalactic
scale. Even after leaving Tellus he had hoped and had really expected
that his line would lead to a stronghold in some star cluster belonging
to his own Galaxy, so distant from it, or perhaps so small, as to have
escaped the notice of the chartmakers; but such was not the case. No
possible error in either the determination or the following of that
line placed it anywhere near any such cluster. It led straight to and
only to Lundmark's Nebula; and that Galaxy was, therefore, his present
destination.

Man was certainly as good as the pirates; probably better, on the basis
of past performance. Of all the races of the Galaxy, man had always
taken the initiative, had always been the leader and commander. And,
with the exception of the Arisians, man had the best brain in the
Galaxy.

The thought of that eminently philosophical race gave Kinnison pause.
His Arisian sponsor had told him that by virtue of the Lens the Patrol
should be able to make Civilization secure throughout the Galaxy. Just
what did that mean--that it could not go outside? Or did even the
Arisians suspect that Boskonia was in fact intergalactic? Probably. The
mentor had said that, given any one definite fact, a really competent
mind could envisage the entire Universe; even though he had added
carefully that his own mind was not a really competent one.

But this, too, was idle speculation, and it was time to receive and to
correlate some more reports. Therefore, one by one, he got in touch
with scientists and observers.

The density of matter in space, which had been lessening steadily,
was now approximately constant at one atom per four hundred cubic
centimeters. Their speed was therefore about a hundred thousand parsecs
per hour; and, even allowing for the slowing up at both ends due to the
density of the medium, the trip should not take over ten days.

The power situation, which had been his gravest care, since it was
almost the only factor not amenable to theoretical solution, was even
better than anyone had dared hope; the cosmic energy available in space
had actually been increasing as the matter content decreased--a fact
which seemed to bear out the contention than energy was continually
being converted into matter in such regions. It was taking much less
excitation of the intake screens to produce a given flow of power than
any figure ever observed in the denser media within the Galaxy.

Thus, the atomic motors which served as exciters had a maximum power
of four hundred pounds an hour; that is, each exciter could transform
that amount of matter into pure energy and employ the output usefully
in energizing the intake screen to which it was connected. Each
screen, operating normally on a hundred-thousand-to-one ratio, would
then furnish its receptor on the ship with energy equivalent to the
annihilation of four million pounds per hour of material substance. Out
there, however, it was being observed that the intake-exciter ratio,
instead of being less than a hundred thousand to one, was actually
almost a million to one.

       *       *       *       *       *

It would serve no useful purpose here to go further into the details
of any more of the reports, or to dwell at any great length upon the
remainder of the journey to the Second Galaxy. Suffice it to say that
Kinnison and his highly trained crew observed, classified, recorded,
and conferred; and that they approached their destination with every
possible precaution. Detectors full out, observers were at every plate,
the ship was as immune to detection as Hotchkiss' nullifiers could
make it.

Up to the Second Galaxy the _Dauntless_ flashed, and into it. Was
this island universe essentially like the First Galaxy as to planets
and peoples? If so, had they been won over or wiped out by the horrid
culture of Boskonia or was the struggle still going on?

"If we assume, as we must, that the line we followed was the trace
of Boskone's beam," argued the sagacious Worsel, "the probability is
very great that the enemy is in virtual control of this entire Galaxy.
Otherwise--if they were in a minority or were struggling seriously for
dominion--they could neither have spared the forces which invaded our
Galaxy, nor would they have been in condition to rebuild their vessels
as they did to match the new armaments developed by the Patrol."

"Very probably true," agreed Kinnison, and that was the consensus of
opinion. "Therefore we want to do our scouting very quietly. But in
some ways that makes it all the better. If they are in control, they
won't be unduly suspicious."

And thus it proved. A planet-bearing sun was soon located, and while
the _Dauntless_ was still light-years distant from it, several ships
were detected. At least, the Boskonians were not using nullifiers!

Spy rays were sent out. Tregonsee, the Rigellian Lensman, exerted to
the full his powers of perception, and Kinnison hurled downward to the
planet's surface a mental viewpoint and communications center. That
the planet was Boskonian was soon learned, but that was all. It was
scarcely fortified: no trace could be found of a beam communicating
with Boskone.

Solar system after solar system was found and studied, with like
result. But finally, out in space, one of the screens showed activity;
a beam was in operation between a vessel then upon the plates and
some other station. Kinnison tapped it quickly; and, while observers
were determining its direction, hardness, and power, a thought flowed
smoothly into the Lensman's brain.

"--proceed at once to relieve vessel P4K730. Eichlan, speaking for
Boskone, ending message."

"Follow that ship, Hen!" Kinnison directed, crisply. "Not too close,
but don't lose him!" He then relayed to the others the orders which had
been intercepted.

"The same formula, huh?" Van Buskirk roared, and "Just another
lieutenant, that sounds like, not Boskone himself." Thorndyke added.

"Perhaps so, perhaps no." The Gray Lensman was merely thoughtful. "It
doesn't prove a thing except that Helmuth was not Boskone, which was
already fairly certain. If we can prove that there is such a being as
Boskone, and that he is not in this Galaxy--well, in that case, we'll
go somewhere else," he concluded, with grim finality.

       *       *       *       *       *

The chase was comparatively short, leading toward a yellowish star
around which swung eight average-sized planets. Toward one of these
flew the unsuspecting pirate, followed by the Patrol vessel, and it
soon became apparent that there was a battle going on. One spot upon
the planet's surface, either a city or a tremendous military base, was
domed over by a screen which was one blinding glare of radiance. And
for miles in every direction ships of space were waging spectacularly
devastating warfare.

Kinnison shot a thought down into the fortress, and with the least
possible introduction or preamble, got into touch with one of its high
officers. He was not surprised to learn that those people were more or
less human in appearance, since the planet was quite similar to Tellus
in age, climate, atmosphere, and mass.

"Yes, we are fighting Boskonia," the answering thought came coldly
clear. "We need help, and badly. Can you--"

"We're detected!" Kinnison's attention was seized by a yell from the
board. "They're all coming at us at once!"

Whether the scientists of Boskone developed the detector-nullifier
before or after Helmuth's failure to deduce the Lensman's use of such
an instrument is a nice question, and one upon which a great deal has
been said. While interesting, the point is really immaterial here; the
facts remaining the same--that the pirates not only had it at the time
of the Patrol's first visit to the Second Galaxy, but had used it to
such good advantage that the denizens of that recalcitrant planet had
been forced, in the sheer desperation of self-preservation, to work
out a scrambler for that nullification and to surround their world
with its radiations. They could not restore perfect detection, but the
conditions for complete nullification were so critical that it was a
comparatively simple matter to upset it sufficiently so that an image
of a sort was revealed. And, at that close range, any sort of an image
was enough.

The _Dauntless_, approaching the planet, entered the zone of scrambling
and stood revealed plainly enough upon the plates of enemy vessels.
They attacked instantly and viciously; within a second after the
lookout had shouted his warning the outer screens of the Patrol ship
were blazing incandescent under the furious assaults of a dozen
Boskonian beams.




                                  IV.


For a moment all eyes were fixed apprehensively upon meters and
recorders, but there was no immediate cause for alarm. The builders of
the _Dauntless_ had builded well; her outer screen, the lightest of
her series of four, was carrying the attackers' load with no sign of
distress.

"Strap down, everybody," the expedition's commander ordered then.
"Inert her, Hen. Match velocity with that base," and as Master Pilot
Henry Henderson cut his Bergenholm, the vessel lurched wildly aside as
its intrinsic velocity was restored.

Henderson's fingers swept over his board as rapidly and as surely as
those of an organist over the banked keys of his console; producing,
not chords and arpeggios of harmony, but roaring blasts of precisely
controlled power. Each keylike switch controlled one jet. Lightly and
fleetingly touched, it produced a gentle urge; at sharp, full contact
it yielded a mighty, solid shove; depressed still farther, so as to
lock into any one of a dozen notches, it brought into being a torrent
of propulsive force of any desired magnitude, which ceased only when
its key-release was touched.

And Henderson was a virtuoso. Smoothly, effortlessly, but in a space
of seconds the great vessel rolled over, spiraled, and swung until her
landing jets were in line and exerting five gravities of thrust. Then,
equally smoothly, almost imperceptibly, the line of force was varied
until the flame-enshrouded dome was stationary below them. Nobody, not
even the two other Master Pilots, and least of all Henderson himself,
paid any attention to the polished perfection, the consummate artistry,
of the performance. That was his job. He was a Master Pilot, and one of
the hallmarks of his rating was the habit of making difficult maneuvers
look easy.

"Take 'em now, chief? Can't we, huh?" Chatway, the chief firing
officer, did not say those words. He did not need to. The attitude and
posture of the C.F.O. and his subordinates made the thought tensely
plain.

"Not yet, Chatty," the Lensman answered the unsent thought. "We'll have
to wait until they englobe us, so that we can get them all. It's got
to be all or none. If even one of them gets away, or even has time to
analyze and report on the stuff we're going to use, it'll be just too
bad."

He then got in touch with the officer within the beleaguered base and
renewed the conversation at the point at which it had been broken off.

"We can help you, I think; but to do so effectively we must have clear
ether. Will you please order your ships away, out of even extreme
range?"

"For how long? They can do us irreparable damage in one rotation of the
planet."

"One-twentieth of that time, at most--if we cannot do it in that time
we cannot do it at all. Nor will they direct many beams at you, if any.
They will be working on us."

Then, as the defending ships darted away, Kinnison turned to his C. F.
O. "QX, Chatty. Open up with your secondaries. Fire at will!"

Then from projectors of a power theretofore carried only by maulers,
there raved out against the nearest Boskonian vessels beams of a
vehemence compared to which the enemies' own seemed weak, futile. And
those were the secondaries!

As has been intimated, the _Dauntless_ was an unusual ship. She was
enormous. She was bigger even than a mauler in actual bulk and mass;
and from needle-beaked prow to jet-studded stern she was literally
packed with power--power for any emergency conceivable to the fertile
minds of Port Admiral Haynes and his staff of designers and engineers.
Instead of two, or at most three intake-screen exciters, she had two
hundred. Her bus bars, instead of being the conventional rectangular
coppers, of a few square inches cross-sectional area, were laminated
members built up of co-axial tubing of pure silver to a diameter
of over a yard--multiple and parallel conductors, each of whose
current-carrying capacity was to be measured only in millions of
amperes. And everything else aboard that mighty engine of destruction
was upon the same Gargantuan scale.

       *       *       *       *       *

Titanic though those thrusts were, not a pirate ship was seriously
hurt. Outer screens went down, and more than a few of the second lines
of defense also failed. But that was the Patrolmen's strategy; to let
the enemy know that they had weapons of offense somewhat superior to
their own, but not quite powerful enough to be a real menace.

In minutes, therefore, the Boskonians rushed up and englobed the
newcomer; supposing, of course, that she was a product of the world
below, that she was manned by the race who had so long and so
successfully fought off Boskonian encroachment.

They attacked, and under the concentrated fury of their beams, the
outer screen of the Patrol ship began to fail. Higher and higher into
the spectrum it radiated, blinding white--blue--an intolerable violet
glare; then, patchily, through the invisible ultraviolet and into
the black of extinction. The second screen resisted longer and more
stubbornly, but finally it also went down; the third automatically
taking up the burden of defense. Simultaneously, the power of
Civilization's projectors weakened, as though the _Dauntless_ were
shifting her power from offense to defense in order to stiffen her
third, and supposedly her last, shielding screen.

"Pretty soon, now, Chatway," Kinnison observed. "Just as soon as they
can report that they have us in a bad way; that it is just a matter of
time until they blow us out of the ether. Better report now--I'll put
you on the spool."

"We are equipped to energize simultaneously eight of the new,
replaceable-unit primary projectors," the C.F.O. stated, crisply.
"There are twenty-one vessels englobing us, and no others within
detection. With a discharge period of point six oh second and a
switching interval of point oh nine, the entire action should occupy
one point nine eight seconds."

"Chief Communications Officer Nelson on the spool. Can the last
surviving ship of the enemy report enough in two seconds to do us
material harm?"

"In my opinion it cannot, sir," Nelson reported, formally. "The
communications officer is neither an observer nor a technician; he
merely transmits whatever material is given him by other officers
for transmission. If he is already working a beam to his base at the
moment of our first blast, he might be able to report the destruction
of vessels, but he could not be specific as to the nature of the agent
used. Such a report could do no harm, as the fact of the destruction
of the vessels will in any event become apparent shortly. Since we
are apparently being overcome easily, however, and this is a routine
action, the probability is that this detachment is not in direct
communication with Base at any given moment. If not, he could not
establish working control in two seconds."

"Kinnison now reporting. Having determined to the best of my ability
that engaging the enemy at this time will not enable them to send
Boskone any information regarding our primary armament, I now give the
word to--_fire_."

       *       *       *       *       *

The underlying principle of the destructive beam produced by
overloading a regulation projector had, it is true, been discovered by
a Boskonian technician. In so far as Boskonia was concerned, however,
the secret had died with its inventor, since the pirates had at that
time no headquarters in the First Galaxy. And the Patrol had had months
of time in which to perfect it, for that work was begun before the last
of Helmuth's guardian fortress had been destroyed.

The projector was not now fatal to its crew, since they were protected
from the lethal back-radiation, not only by shields of force, but also
by foot after impenetrable foot of lead, osmium, carbon, and paraffin.
The refractories were of neo-cargalloy, backed and permeated by M K R
fields; the radiators were constructed of the most ultimately resistant
materials known to the science of the age. But even so, the unit had
a useful life of but little over half a second, so frightful was the
overload at which it was used. Like a rifle cartridge, it was good for
only one shot. Then it was thrown away, to be replaced by a new unit.

Those problems were relatively simple of solution. Switching those
enormous energies was the great stumbling block. The old Kimmerling
block-dispersion circuit breaker was prone to arc over under loads
much in excess of a hundred billion KW, hence could not even be
considered in this new application. However, the Patrol force finally
succeeded in working out a combination of the immersed-antenna and
the semi-permeable-condenser types, which they called the Thorndyke
heavy-duty switch. It was cumbersome, of course--any device to
interrupt voltages and amperages of the really astronomical magnitude
in question could not at that time be small--but it was positive,
fast-acting, and reliable.

At Kinnison's word of command, eight of those indescribable primary
beams lashed out; stilettos of irresistibly penetrant energy which not
even a Q-type helix could withstand. Through screens, through wall
shields, and through metal they hurtled in a space of time almost too
brief to be measured. Then, before each beam expired, it was swung a
little, so that the victim was literally split apart or carved into
sections. Performance exceeded by far that of the hastily improvised
weapon which had so easily destroyed the heavy cruisers of the Patrol;
in fact, it checked almost exactly with the theoretical figures of the
designers.

As the first eight beams winked out, eight more came into being, then
five more; and meanwhile the mighty secondaries were sweeping the
heavens with full-aperture cones of destruction. Metal meant no more
to those rays than did organic material; everything solid or liquid
whiffed into vapor and disappeared. The _Dauntless_ lay alone in the
sky of that new world.

"Marvelous--wonderful!" the thought beat into Kinnison's brain as soon
as he re-established rapport with the being so far below. "We have
recalled our ships. Will you please come down to our spaceport at
once, so that we can put into execution a plan which has been long in
preparation?"

"As soon as your ships are down," the Tellurian acquiesced. "Not
sooner, as your landing conventions are doubtless very unlike our own
and we do not wish to cause disaster. Give me the word when your field
is entirely clear."

       *       *       *       *       *

That word came soon, and Kinnison nodded to the pilots. Once more
inertialess, the _Dauntless_ shot downward, deep into atmosphere,
before her inertia was restored. Rematching velocity this time was a
simple matter, and upon the towering, powerfully resilient pillars of
her landing-jets the inconceivable mass of the Tellurian ship of war
settled toward the ground, as lightly seeming as a wafted thistle-down.

"Their cradles wouldn't fit us, of course, even if they were big
enough--which they aren't, by half," Schermerhorn commented. "Where do
they want us to put her?"

"'Anywhere,' they say," the Lensman answered, "but we don't want to
take that too literally--without a solid dock she'll make an awful
hole, wherever we set her down. Won't hurt her any. She's designed for
it. We couldn't expect to find cradles to fit her anywhere except on
Tellus. I'd say to lay her down on her belly over there in that corner,
out of the way, as close to that big hangar as you can work without
blasting it out with your jets."

As Kinnison had intimated, the lightness of the vessel was indeed only
seeming. Superbly and effortlessly the big boat seeped downward into
the designated corner; but when she touched the pavement she did not
stop. Still easily and without jar or jolt she settled--a full twenty
feet into the concrete, reinforcing steel and hard-packed earth of the
field before she came to a halt.

"What a monster! Who are they? Where could they have come from?"
Kinnison caught a confusion of startled thoughts as the real size and
mass of the visitor became apparent to the natives. Then again came
the clear thought of the officer.

"We would like very much to have you and as many as possible of your
companions come to confer with us as soon as you have tested our
atmosphere. Come in spacesuits if you must."

The air was tested and found suitable. True, it did not match exactly
that of Tellus, or Rigel IV, or Velantia; but then, neither did that of
the _Dauntless_, since that gaseous mixture was a compromise one, and
mostly artificial to boot.

"Worsel, Tregonsee, and I will go to this conference," Kinnison
decided. "The rest of you sit tight. I don't need to tell you to
keep on your toes, that anything is apt to happen, anywhere, without
warning. Keep your detectors full out and keep your noses clean--be
ready like the good little endeavorers you are, 'to do with all your
might what your hands find to do.' Come on, fellows," and the three
Lensmen strode, wriggled, and waddled across the field, to and into a
spacious room of the Administration Building.

"Strangers, or, I should say friends, I introduce you to Wise, our
president," Kinnison's acquaintance said, clearly enough, although it
was plain to all three Lensmen that he was shocked at the sight of the
Earthman's companions.

"I am informed that you understand our language--" the president began
doubtfully.

He, too, was staring at Tregonsee and Worsel. He had been told that
Kinnison, and therefore, supposed, the rest of the visitors, were
beings fashioned more or less after his own pattern. But these two
creatures!

       *       *       *       *       *

For they were not even remotely human in form. Tregonsee, the
Rigellian, with his leathery, multiappendaged, oil-drumlike body, his
immobile dome of a head and his four blocky pillars of legs must at
first sight have appeared fantastic indeed. And Worsel, the Velantian,
was infinitely worse. He was repulsive, a thing materialized from
sheerest nightmare--a leather-winged, crocodile-headed, crooked-armed,
thirty-foot long, pythonish, reptilian monstrosity!

But the President of Medon saw at once that which the three outlanders
had in common. The Lenses, each glowingly aflame with its own innate
pseudo-vitality--Kinnison's clamped to his brawny wrist by a band of
iridium-osmium-tungsten alloy; Tregonsee's embedded in the glossy
black flesh of one mighty, sinuous arm; Worsel's apparently driven
deep and with cruel force into the horny, scaly hide squarely in the
middle of his forehead, between two of his weirdly stalked, repulsively
extensible eyes.

"It is not your language we understand, but your thoughts, by virtue of
these our Lenses which you have already noticed." The president gasped
as Kinnison bulleted the information into his mind. "Go ahead.... Just
a minute!" as an unmistakable sensation swept through his being. "We've
gone _free_! The whole planet, I perceive. In that respect, at least,
you are in advance of us. As far as I know, no scientist of any of our
races has even thought of a Bergenholm big enough to free a world."

"It was long in the designing; many years in the building of its
units," Wise replied. "We are leaving this sun in an attempt to escape
from our enemy and yours; Boskone. It is our only chance of survival.
The means have long been ready, but the opportunity which you have just
made for us is the first that we have had. This is the first time in
many, many years that not a single Boskonian vessel is in position to
observe our flight."

"Where are you going? Surely the Boskonians will be able to find you if
they wish."

"That is possible, but we must run that risk. We must have a respite
or perish; after a long lifetime of continuous warfare, our resources
are at the point of exhaustion. There is a part of this Galaxy in which
there are very few planets, and of those few, none are inhabited or
habitable. Since nothing is to be gained, ships seldom or never go
there. If we can reach that region undetected, the probability is that
we shall be unmolested long enough to recuperate."

Kinnison exchanged flashing thoughts with his two fellow Lensmen, then
turned again to Wise.

"We come from a neighboring Galaxy," he informed him, and pointed
out to his mind just which Galaxy he meant. "You are fairly close to
the edge of this one. Why not move over to ours? You have no friends
here, since you think that yours may be the only remaining independent
planet. We can assure you of friendship. We can also give you some hope
of peace--or at least semipeace--in the near future, for we are driving
Boskonia out of our Galaxy."

"What you think of as 'semipeace' would be tranquillity incarnate to
us," the old man replied with feeling. "We have, in fact, considered
long that very move. We decided against it for two reasons: first,
because we knew nothing about conditions there, and hence might be
going from bad to worse; and second and more important, because of lack
of reliable data upon the density of matter in intergalactic space.
Lacking that, we could not estimate the time necessary for the journey,
and we could have no assurance that our sources of power, great as they
are, would be sufficient to make up the heat lost by radiation."

"We have already given you an idea of conditions and we can give you
the data you lack."

       *       *       *       *       *

They did so, and for a matter of minutes the Medonians conferred.
Meanwhile Kinnison went on a mental expedition to one of the power
plants. He expected to see supercolossal engines; bus bars ten feet
thick, perhaps cooled in liquid helium; and other things in proportion.
But what he actually saw made him gasp for breath and call Tregonsee's
attention. The Rigellian sent out his sense of perception with
Kinnison's, and he also was almost stunned.

"What's the answer, Trig?" the Earthman asked, finally. "This is more
down your alley than mine. That motor's about the size of my foot, and
if it isn't eating a thousand pounds an hour I'm Klono's maiden aunt.
And the whole output is going out on two wires no bigger than number
four, jacketed together like ordinary parallel pair. Perfect insulator?
If so, how about switching?"

"That must be it, a substance of practically infinite resistance," the
Rigellian replied absently, studying intently the peculiar mechanism.
"Must have a better conductor than silver, too, unless they can handle
voltages of ten to the fifteenth or so, and don't see how they could
break such potentials.... Guess they don't use switches ... don't see
any ... must shut down the prime sources.... No, there it is--so small
that I overlooked it completely. In that little box there! Sort of a
jam-plate type; a thin sheet of insulation with a knife on the leading
edge, working in a slot to cut the two conductors apart--kills the arc
by jamming into the tight slot at the end of the box. The conductors
must fuse together at each make and burn away a little at each break,
that's why they have renewable tips. Kim, they've really got something!
I certainly am going to stay here and do some studying."

"Yes, and we'll have to rebuild the _Dauntless_--"

The two Lensmen were called away from their study by Worsel--the
Medonians had decided to accept the invitation to attempt to move to
the First Galaxy. Orders were given, the course was changed and the
planet, now a veritable spaceship, shot away in the new direction.

"Not as many legs as a speedster, of course, but at that, she's no
slouch--we're making plenty of lights," Kinnison commented, then turned
to the president. "It seems rather presumptuous for us to call you
simply 'Wise,' especially as I gather that that is not really your
formal name--"

"That is what I am called, and that is what you are to call me," the
oldster replied: "We of Medon do not have names. Each has a number; or,
rather, a symbol composed of numbers and letters of our alphabet--a
symbol which gives his full classification. Since these things are
too clumsy for regular use, however, each of us is given a nickname,
usually an adjective, which is supposed to be more or less descriptive.
You of Earth we could not give a complete symbol, your two companions
we could not give any at all. However, you may be interested in knowing
that you three have already been named?"

"Very much so."

"You are to be called 'Keen.' He of Rigel IV is 'Strong,' and he of
Velantia is 'Agile.'"

"Quite complimentary to me, but--"

"Not bad at all, I'd say," Tregonsee broke in. "But hadn't we better be
getting on with more serious business?"

"We should indeed," Wise agreed. "We have much to discuss with you;
particularly the weapon you used."

"Could you get an analysis of it?" Kinnison asked, sharply.

"No. No one beam was in operation long enough. However, a study of the
recorded data, particularly the figure for intensity--figures so high
as to be almost unbelievable--lead us to believe that the beam is the
result of an enormous overload upon a projector otherwise of more or
less conventional type. Some of us have wondered why we did not think
of the idea ourselves--"

"So did we, when it was used on us," Kinnison grinned and went off to
explain the origin of the primary. "But before we go into details,
I noticed that your fixed-mount stuff could not work effectively
through atmosphere. We have what we call Q-type helices, with which
we incase such beams so that they work in a tube of vacuum. We will
give you the Q-formulæ and also the working hookup--including the
protective devices, because they're mighty dangerous without plenty
of force-backing--of the primaries, in exchange for some lessons in
power-plant design."

"Such an exchange of knowledge would be helpful indeed," Wise agreed.

"The Boskonians know nothing whatever of this beam, and we do not
want them to learn of it," Kinnison cautioned. "Therefore I have two
suggestions to make. First, that you try everything else before you
use this primary beam. Second, that you don't use it even then unless
you can wipe out, as nearly simultaneously as we did out there, every
Boskonian who may be able to report back to his base as to what really
happened. Fair enough?"

"Eminently so. We agree without reservation--it is to our interest as
much as yours that such a secret be kept from Boskone."

"QX. Fellow, let's go back to the ship for a couple of minutes." Then,
aboard the _Dauntless_: "Tregonsee, you and your crew want to stay with
the planet, to show the Medonians what to do and to help them along
generally, as well as to learn about their power system. Thorndyke,
you and your gang, and probably Lensman Hotchkiss, had better study
these things, too--you'll know what you want as soon as they show you
the hookup. Worsel, I'd like to have you stay with the ship. You're
in command of her until further orders. Keep her here for, say, a
week or ten days, until the planet is well out of the Galaxy. Then,
if Hotchkiss and Thorndyke haven't got all the dope they want, leave
them here to ride back with Tregonsee on the planet and drill the
_Dauntless_ for Tellus. Keep yourself more or less disengaged for a
while, and sort of keep tuned to me. I may not need an ultra-long-range
communicator, but you never can tell."

"Why such comprehensive orders, Kim?" asked Hotchkiss. "Who ever heard
of a commander abandoning his expeditions? Aren't you sticking around?"

"Nope--got to do a flit. Think maybe I'm getting an idea. Break out my
speedster, will you, Allerdyce?"--and the Gray Lensman was gone.




                                  V.


Kinnison's speedster shot away and made an undetectable, uneventful
voyage back to the Earth. In due time, therefore, the Gray Lensman was
again closeted with Port Admiral Haynes.

"Why the foliage?" the chief of staff asked, almost at sight, for the
Gray Lensman was wearing a more-than-half-grown beard.

"I may need to be Chester Q. Fordyce for a while. If I don't, I can
shave it off quick. If I do, a real beard is a lot better than an
imitation," and he plunged into his subject.

"Very fine work, son, very fine indeed," Haynes congratulated the
younger man at the conclusion of his report. "We shall begin at once,
and be ready to rush things through when the technicians bring back the
necessary data from Medon. But there's one more thing I want to ask
you. How did you come to place those spotting-screens so exactly? The
beam practically dead-centered them. You said that it was surmise and
suspicion before it happened, but I thought then and still think that
you had a much firmer foundation than any kind of a mere hunch. What
was it?"

"Deduction, based upon an unproved, but logical, cosmogonic theory--but
you probably know more about that stuff than I do."

"Highly improbable. I read just a smattering now and then of the doings
of the astronomers and astrophysicists. I didn't know that that was one
of your specialties, either."

"It isn't, but I had to do a little cramming. We'll have to go back
quite a while to make it clear. You know, of course, that a long time
ago, before even interplanetary ships were developed, the belief was
general that not more than about four planetary solar systems could be
in existence at any one time in the whole Galaxy?"

"Yes, I am familiar with that belief--a consequence of the
binary-dynamic-encounter theory in a too-limited application. The
theory itself is still good, isn't it?"

"Eminently so--every other theory is wrecked by its failure to account
for the quantity and above all, the distribution, of angular momentum
of planetary systems. But you know what I'm going to say--that 'limited
application' proves it!"

"No, just let's say that a bit of light is beginning to dawn. Go ahead."

"QX. Well, when it was discovered that there were millions of times
as many planets in the Galaxy as could be accounted for by a dynamic
encounter occurring once in two times ten to the tenth years or so,
some way had to be figured out to increase, millionfold, the number
of such encounters. Manifestly, the random motion of the stars within
the Galaxy could not account for it. Neither could the vibration or
oscillation of the globular clusters through the Galaxy. The meeting
of two Galaxies--the passage of them completely through each other,
edgewise--would account for it very nicely. It would also account for
the fact that the solar systems on one side of the Galaxy tend to be
somewhat older than the ones on the apposite side. Question; find the
Galaxy. It was van der Schleiss, I believe, who found it. Lundmark's
Nebula. It is edge on to us, with a receding velocity of twelve hundred
and forty-six miles per second--the exact velocity which, corrected for
gravitational decrement, will put Lundmark's Nebula right here at the
time when, according to our best geophysicists and geochemists, old
Earth was being born. If that theory was correct, Lundmark's Nebula
should also be full of planets. Four expeditions went out to check the
theory, and none of them came back. We know why, now--Boskone got them.
We got back, because of you, and only you."

"Holy Klono!" the old man breathed, paying no attention to the tribute.
"It checks--_how_ it checks!"

"To nineteen decimals."

       *       *       *       *       *

"But still it doesn't explain why you set your traps on that line."

"Sure it does. How many Galaxies are there in the Universe, do you
suppose, that are full of planets?"

"Why, all of them I suppose--or no, not so many perhaps--I don't
know--I don't remember of having read anything on that question."

"No, and you probably won't. Only loose-screwed space detectives,
like me, and crackpot science-fiction writers, like Wacky Willison,
have noodles vacuous enough to harbor such thin ideas. But, according
to our admittedly highly tenuous reasoning, there are only two such
Galaxies--Lundmark's Nebula and ours."

"Huh? Why?" demanded Haynes.

"Because Galaxies don't collide much, if any, oftener than binaries
within a Galaxy do," Kinnison asserted. "True, they are closer
together in space, relative to their actual linear dimensions, than are
stars; but on the other hand, their relative motions are slower--that
is, a star will traverse the average interstellar distance much quicker
than a Galaxy will the intergalactic one--so that the whole thing evens
up. As nearly as Wacky and I could figure it, two Galaxies will collide
deeply enough to produce a significant number of planetary solar
systems on an average of once in just about one point eight times ten
to the tenth years. Pick up your slide rule and check me on it, if you
like."

"I'll take your word for it," the old Lensman murmured absently. "But
any Galaxy probably has at least a couple of solar systems all the
time--but I see your point. The probability is overwhelmingly great
that Boskone would be in a Galaxy having hundreds of millions of
planets rather than in one having only a dozen or less inhabitable
worlds. But at that, they _could_ all have lots of planets. Suppose
that our wilder thinkers are right, that Galaxies are grouped into
Universes, which are spaced, roughly, about the same as the Galaxies
are. Two of _them_ could collide, couldn't they?"

"They could, but you're getting 'way out of my range now. At this
point the detective withdraws, leaving a clear field for you and the
science-fiction imaginationeer."

"Well, finish the thought--that I'm wackier even than he is!" Both
men laughed, and the Port Admiral went on: "It's a fascinating
speculation--it does no harm to let the fancy roam at times--but at
that, there are things of much greater importance. You think, then,
that the thionite ring enters into this matrix?"

"Bound to. Everything ties in. The most intelligent races of this
Galaxy are oxygen-breathers, with warm, red blood: the only kind of
physique which thionite affects. The more of us who get the thionite
habit, the better for Boskone. It explains why we have never got to
the first check station in getting any of the real higher-ups in the
thionite game; instead of being an ordinary criminal ring they've got
all the brains and all the resources of Boskonia back of them. But if
they are that big--and as good as we know they are--I wonder why--"
Kinnison's voice trailed off into silence; his brain raced.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I want to ask you a question that is none of my business," the young
Lensman went on almost immediately, in a voice strangely altered. "Just
how long ago was it that you started losing fifth-year men just before
graduation? I mean, that boys sent to Arisia to be measured for their
Lenses supposedly never got there? Or at least, they never came back
and no Lenses were ever received for them?"

"About ten years. Twelve, I think, to be ex--" Haynes broke off in the
middle of the word and his eyes bored into those of the younger man.
"What makes you think that there were any such?"

"Deduction again, but this time I know that I'm right. At least one
every year. Usually two or three."

"Right, but there have always been space accidents ... or they were
caught by the pirates ... you think, then, that--"

"I don't think. I _know_!" Kinnison declared. "They got to Arisia, _and
they died there_. All I can say is, thank God for the Arisians! We can
still trust our Lenses; they are seeing to that."

"But why didn't they tell us?" Haynes asked, perplexed.

"They wouldn't; that isn't their way," Kinnison stated, flatly and
with conviction. "They have given us an instrumentality, the Lens, by
virtue of which we should be able to do the job, and they are seeing
to it that that instrumentality remains untarnished. If we cannot
handle it properly, that is our lookout. We've got to fight our own
battles and bury our own dead. Now that we have smeared up the enemy's
military organization in this Galaxy by wiping out Helmuth and his
headquarters, the drug syndicate seems to be my best chance of getting
a line on the real Boskone. While you are mopping up and keeping them
from establishing another war base here, I think I'd better be getting
at it, don't you?"

"Probably so--you know your own oysters best. Mind if I ask where
you're going to start in?" Haynes looked at Kinnison quizzically as he
spoke. "Have you deduced that, too?"

The Gray Lensman returned the look in kind. "No. Deduction couldn't
take me quite that far," he replied in the same tone. "You are going to
tell me that, when you get around to it."

"Me? Where do I come in?" the Port Admiral feigned surprise.

"As follows. Helmuth probably had nothing to do with the dope running,
so its organization must still be intact. If so, they would take over
as much of the other branch as they could get hold of, and hit us
harder than ever. I haven't heard of any unusual activity around here,
so it must be somewhere else. Wherever it is, you would know about it,
since you are a member of Galactic Council; and Councillor Ellington,
in charge of Narcotics, would hardly take any very important step
without conferring with you, as port admiral and chief of staff. How
near right am I?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"On the center of the beam, all the way--your deducer is blasting at
maximum," Haynes said, in admiration. "Radelix is the worst--they're
hitting it mighty hard. We sent a full unit over there last week. Shall
we recall them, or do you want to work independently?"

"Let them go on; I'll be of more use working on my own, I think. I did
the boys over there a favor a while back--they would co-operate anyway,
of course, but it's a little nicer to have them sort of owe it to me.
We'll all be able to play together very nicely if the opportunity
arises."

"I'm mighty glad you're taking this on. The Radeligians are stuck, and
we had no real reason for thinking that our men could do any better.
With this new angle of approach, however, and with you working behind
the scenes, the picture looks entirely different."

"I'm afraid that's unjustifiably high--"

"Not a bit of it, lad. Just a minute--I'll break out a couple of
beakers of fayalin--Luck!"

"Thanks, chief!"

"Down the hatch!" and again the Gray Lensman was gone. To the
spaceport, into his speedster, and away--hurtling through the void
at the maximum blast of the fastest space-flier then boasted by the
Galactic Patrol.

During the long trip, Kinnison exercised, thought, and studied
spool after spool of tape--the Radeligian language. Thoughts of the
red-headed nurse obtruded themselves strongly at times, but he put them
aside resolutely. He was, he assured himself, off women forever--all
women. He cultivated his new beard; trimming it, with the aid of a
triplex mirror and four stereoscopic photographs, into something which,
although neat and spruce enough, was too full and bushy by half to be
a Vandyke. Also, he moved his Lens bracelet up his arm and rayed the
white skin thus exposed until his whole wrist was the same even shade
of tan.

He did not drive his speedster to Radelix, for that racy little
fabrication would have been recognized anywhere for what she was; and
private citizens simply did not drive ships of that type. Therefore,
with every possible precaution of secrecy, he landed her in a
Patrol base four solar systems away. In that base Kimball Kinnison
disappeared; but the tall, shock-haired, bushy-bearded Chester Q.
Fordyce--cosmopolite, man of leisure, and dilettante in science--who
took the next space liner for Radelix was not precisely the same
individual who had come to that planet a few days before with that name
and those unmistakable characteristics.

Mr. Chester Q. Fordyce, then, and not Gray Lensman Kimball Kinnison,
disembarked at Ardith, the world-capital of Radelix. He took up his
abode at the Hotel Ardith-Splendide and proceeded, with neither too
much nor too little fanfare, to be his cosmopolitan self in those
circles of society in which, wherever he might find himself, he was
wont to move.

As a matter of course, he entertained, and was entertained by, the
Tellurian Ambassador. Equally as a matter of course, he attended divers
and sundry functions, at which he made the acquaintance of hundreds of
persons, many of them personages. That one of these should have been
Vice-Admiral Gerrond, Lensman in charge of the Patrol's Radeligian
base, was inevitable.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was, then, a purely routine and logical development that at a
reception one evening Vice-Admiral Gerrond stopped to chat for a
moment with Mr. Fordyce; and it was purely accidental that the nearest
bystander was a few yards distant. Hence, Mr. Fordyce's conduct was
strange enough.

"Gerrond!" he said without moving his lips and in a tone almost
inaudible, the while he was offering the Admiral an Alsakanite
cigarette. "Don't look at me particularly right now, and don't show
surprise. Study me for the next ten minutes, then put your Lens on
me and tell me whether you have ever seen me before or not." Then,
glancing at the watch upon his left wrist--a time-piece just about
as large and as ornate as a wrist watch could be and still remain in
impeccable taste--he murmured something conventional and strolled away.

The ten minutes passed and he felt Gerrond's thought. A peculiar
sensation, this, being on the receiving end of a single beam, instead
of using his own Lens.

"As far as I can tell, I have never seen you before. You are certainly
not one of our agents, and if you are one of Haynes' whom I have ever
worked with you have done a wonderful job of disguising. I must have
met you somewhere, sometime, else there would be no point to your
question; but beyond the evident--and admitted--fact that you are a
white Tellurian, I can't seem to place you."

"Does this help?" This question was shot through Kinnison's own Lens.

"Since I have known so few Tellurian Lensmen it tells me that you
must be Kinnison, but I do not recognize you at all readily. You seem
changed--older--besides, who ever heard of an Unattached Lensman doing
the work of an ordinary agent?"

"I am both older and changed--partly natural and partly artificial. As
for the work, it's a job that no ordinary agent can handle--it takes a
lot of special equipment--"

"You've got _that_, indubitably! I get goose-flesh yet every time I
think of that trial."

"You think that I'm proof against recognition, then, as long as I don't
use my Lens?" Kinnison stuck to the issue.

"Absolutely so. You're here, then, on thionite?" No other issue,
Gerrond knew, could be grave enough to account for this man's presence.
"But your wrist? I studied it. You can't have worn your Lens there for
months--those Tellurian bracelets leave white streaks an inch wide."

"I tanned it with a pencil beam. Nice job, eh? But what I want to ask
you about is a little co-operation. As you supposed, I'm here to work
on this drug ring."

"Surely--anything we can do. But Narcotics is handling that, not
us--but you know that, as well as I do--" the officer broke off,
puzzled.

"I know. That's why I want you--that and because you handle the secret
service. Frankly, I'm scared to death of leaks. For that reason I'm not
saying anything to anyone except Lensmen, and I'm having no dealings
with anyone connected with Narcotics. I have as unimpeachable an
identity as Haynes could furnish--"

"There's no question as to its adequacy, then," the Radeligian
interposed.

"I would like to have you pass the word around among your boys and
girls that you know who I am and that I'm safe to play with. That way,
if Boskone's agents spot me, it will be for an agent of Haynes, and not
for what I really am. That's the first thing. Can do?"

"Easily and gladly. Consider it done. Second?"

"To have a boatload of good, tough marines on hand if I should call
you. There are some Valerians coming over later, but I may need help in
the meantime. I may want to start a fight--quite possibly even a riot."

"They'll be ready, and they'll be big, tough, and hard. Anything else?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Not just now, except for one question. You know Countess Avondrin, the
woman I was dancing with a while ago. Got any dope on her?"

"Certainly not--what do you mean?"

"Huh? Don't you know even that she's a Boskonian agent of some kind?"

"Man, you're crazy! She isn't an agent, she can't be. Why, she's the
daughter of a Planetary Councillor, the wife of one of our most loyal
officers."

"She would be. That's the type they like to get hold of."

"Prove it!" the Admiral snapped. "Prove it or retract it!" He almost
lost his poise, almost looked toward the distant corner in which the
bewhiskered gentleman was sitting so idly.

"QX. If she isn't an agent, why is she wearing a thought-screen? You
haven't tested her, of course."

Of course not. The amenities, as has been said, demanded that certain
reserves of privacy remain inviolate. The Tellurian went on: "You
didn't, but I did. On this job I can recognize nothing of good taste,
of courtesy, of chivalry, or even of ordinary common decency. I suspect
_everyone_ who does not wear a Lens."

"A thought-screen!" exclaimed Gerrond. "How could she, without armor?"

"It's a late model--brand new. Just as good and just as powerful as the
one I myself am wearing," Kinnison explained. "The mere fact that she's
wearing it gives me a lot of highly useful information."

"What do you want me to do about her?" the Admiral asked. He was
mentally asquirm, but he was a Lensman.

"Nothing whatever--except possibly, for our own information, to find
out how many of her friends have become thionite-sniffers lately. If
you do anything, you may warn them, although I know nothing definite
about which to caution you. I'll handle her. Don't worry too much,
though; I don't think she's anybody we really want. Afraid she's small
fry--no such luck as that I'd get hold of a big one so soon."

"I hope she's small fry." Gerrond's thought was a grimace of distaste.
"I hate Boskonia as much as anybody does, but I don't relish the idea
of having to put that girl into the Chamber."

"If my picture is half right she can't amount to much," Kinnison
replied. "A good lead is the best I can expect. I'll see what I can do."

For days, then, the searching Lensman pried into minds: so insidiously
that he left no trace of his invasions. He examined men and women,
of high and of low estate. Waitresses and ambassadors, flunkies and
bankers, ermined prelates and truck drivers. He went from city to city.
Always, but with only a fraction of his brain, he played the part of
Chester Q. Fordyce; ninety-nine percent of his stupendous mind was
probing, searching and analyzing. Into what charnel pits of filth and
corruption he delved, into what fastnesses of truth and loyalty and
high courage and ideals, must be left entirely to the imagination; for
the Lensman never has spoken and never will speak of these things.

He went back to Ardith and, late at night, approached the dwelling of
Count Avondrin. A servant arose and admitted the visitor, not knowing
then or ever that he did so. The bedroom door was locked from the
inside, but what of that? What resistance can any mechanism offer to
a master craftsman, plentifully supplied with tools, who can perceive
every component part, however deeply buried?

The door opened. The countess was a light sleeper, but before she could
utter a single scream one powerful hand clamped her mouth, another
snapped the switch of her supposedly carefully concealed thought-screen
generator. What followed was done very quickly.

[Illustration: _A throttling hand clamped over her mouth even as she
awoke, and in the same instant her thought-screen flicked off._]

Mr. Fordyce strolled back to his hotel and Lensman Kinnison directed a
thought at Vice-Admiral Gerrond.

"Better fake up some kind of an excuse for having a couple of guards or
policemen in front of Count Avondrin's town house at eight twenty-five
this morning. The countess is going to have a brainstorm."

"What _have_ ... what will she do?" Gerrond mastered his emotions
sufficiently to keep from swearing.

"Nothing much. Scream a bit, rush out of doors half dressed, and fight
anything and everybody that touches her. Warn the officers that she'll
kick, scratch, and bite. There are plenty of signs of a prowler having
been in her room, but if they can find him they're good--_very_ good.
She'll have all the signs and symptoms, even to the puncture, of having
been given a shot in the arm of some brand-new drug, which the doctors
won't be able to find or to identify. But there will be no question
raised of insanity or of any other permanent damage--she'll be right
as rain in a couple of months."

"Oh, that mind-ray machine of yours again, eh? And that's all you're
going to do to her?"

"That's all. I can let her off easy and still be just, I think. She's
helped me a lot. She'll be a good girl from now on, too; I've thrown a
scare into her that will last her the rest of her life."

"Thanks, Gray Lensman! What else?"

"I'd like to have you at the Tellurian Ambassador's Ball day after
tomorrow, if it's convenient."

"I've been planning on it, since it's on the 'must' list. Shall I bring
anything or anyone special?"

"No. I just want you on hand to give me any information you can on a
person who will probably be there to investigate what happened to the
countess."

"I'll be there," and he was.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a gay and colorful throng, but neither of the two Lensmen was
in any mood for gaiety. They acted, of course. They neither sought nor
avoided each other but, somehow, they were never alone together.

"Man or woman?" asked Gerrond.

"I don't know. All I've got is the recognition."

The Radeligian did not ask what that recognition was to be. He knew
that that information might prove dangerous indeed to any unauthorized
possessor. He did not want to know it; he was glad that the Tellurian
had not thrust it upon him.

Suddenly the Vice-Admiral's attention was wrenched toward the doorway,
to see the most marvelously, the most flawlessly beautiful woman he
had ever seen. But not long did he contemplate that beauty, for the
Tellurian Lensman's thoughts were fairly seething, despite his iron
control.

"Do you mean ... you can't mean--" Gerrond faltered.

"Yes--definitely!" Kinnison rasped. "She looks like an angel, but take
it from me, _she isn't_. She's one of the slimiest snakes that ever
lived--she's so low that she could put on a tall silk hat and walk
under a duck. I know she's beautiful. She's a riot, a seven-sector
callout, a thionite dream. So what? She is also Dessa Desplaines,
formerly of Aldebaran II. Does that mean anything to you?"

"Not a thing, Kinnison."

"She's in it, clear to her neck. I had a chance to wring her neck once,
too, damn it all, and didn't. She's got a brazen crust, coming here
now, with all our Narcotics on the job--Wonder if they think they've
got Enforcement so badly whipped that they can get away with stuff as
rough as this--Sure you don't know her, or know of her?"

"I never saw her before, or heard of her."

"Perhaps she isn't known, out this way. Or maybe they think they're
ready for a show-down ... or don't care. Her being here ties me up hand
and foot, anyway. _She'll_ recognize me, for all the tea in China.
Gerrond! You know the Narcotics' Lensmen, don't you?"

"Certainly."

"Call one of them right now. Tell him that Dessa Desplaines, the
zwilnik[1] houri, is right here on the floor--What! He doesn't know
her, either! And none of our boys are Lensmen! Make it a three-way.
Lensman Winstead? Kinnison of Sol III--unattached. Sure that none of
you recognize this picture?" and he transmitted a perfect image of
the ravishing creature then moving regally across the floor. "Nobody
does? Good! Maybe that's why she's here, after all--thinks she can get
away with it. Anyway, she's your meat. Here's the chance for a real
capture. Come and get her."

[Footnote 1: Zwilnik:--any person connected with the illicit drug
traffic. E.E.S.]

"You will appear against her, of course?"

"If necessary--but it won't be necessary. As soon as she sees that the
game's up, all hell will be out for noon."

       *       *       *       *       *

As soon as the connection had been broken, Kinnison realized that the
thing could not be done that way; that he could not stay out of it. No
man alive save himself could prevent her from flashing a warning--badly
as he hated it, he had to do it. Gerrond glanced at him curiously: he
had received a few of those racing thoughts.

"Tune in on this," Kinnison grinned wryly. "If the last meeting I had
with her is any criterion, it ought to be good. S'pose anybody around
here understands the language of Aldebaran II?"

"Never heard it mentioned if they do."

The Tellurian walked blithely up to the radiant visitor, held out
his hand in Earthly--and Aldebaranian--greeting, and spoke: "Madam
Desplaines would not remember Chester Q. Fordyce, of course. It is of
the piteousness that I should be so accursedly of the ordinariness; for
to see madam but the one time, as I did at the New Year's ball in High
Altamont, is to remember her forever."

"Such a flatterer!" The woman laughed. "I trust that you will forgive
me, Mr. Fordyce, but one meets so many interesting--" Her eyes widened
in surprise, an expression which changed rapidly to one of flaming
hatred, not unmixed with fear.

"So you do recognize me, you bedroom-eyed, Aldebaranian hell-cat," he
remarked, evenly. "I rather expected that you would."

"Yes, you sweet, uncontaminated sissy, you overgrown super-Boy Scout,
I do," she hissed, malevolently, and made a quick motion toward her
corsage. These two, as has been intimated, were friends of old.

Quick though she was, the man was quicker. His left hand darted out to
seize her left wrist; his right, flashing around her body, grasped her
right and held it rigidly in the small of her back. Thus they walked
away.

"Stop!" she flared. "You're making a spectacle of me!"

"Now isn't that something to worry about?" His lips smiled, for the
benefit of the observers, but his eyes held no glint of mirth. "These
folks will think that this is the way all Aldebaranian friends walk
together. If you think for a second that I'm going to give you a chance
to touch that sounder you're wearing you haven't got the sense of a
Zabriskan fontema. Stop wriggling!" he counseled, sharply. "Even if you
can do enough hula-hula shimmying to work it, before it contacts once
I'll crush your brain to a pulp, right here and right now!"

Outside, in the grounds, "Oh, Lensman, let's sit down and talk this
over!" and the girl brought into play everything she had. It was a
distressing scene, but it left the Lensman cold.

"Save your breath," he advised her finally, wearily. "To me you're just
another zwilnik, no more and no less. A female louse is still a louse;
and calling a zwilnik a louse is sheerest flattery."

He said that; and, saying it, knew it to be the exact and crystal
truth: but not even that knowledge could mitigate in any iota the
recoiling of his every fiber from the deed which he was about to do. He
could not even pray, with immortal Merritt's _Dwayanu_:

"_Luka--turn your wheel so I need not slay this woman!_"

It had to be. Why in all the nine hells of Valeria did he have to be
a Lensman? Why did he have to be the one to do it? But it had to be
done, and soon; they'd be here shortly.

"There's just one thing you can do to make me believe that you're even
partially innocent," he ground out, "that you have even one decent
thought or one decent instinct anywhere in you."

"What is that, Lensman? I'll do it, whatever it is!"

"Release your thought-screen and send out a call to the Big Shot."

The girl stiffened. This big cop wasn't so dumb--he really _knew_
something. He must die, and at once. How could she get word to--

Simultaneously Kinnison perceived that for which he had been waiting;
the Narcotics men were coming.

He tore open the woman's gown, flipped the switch of her
thought-screen, and invaded her mind. But, fast as he was, he was
late--almost too late altogether. He could get neither direction line
nor location; but only, and faintly, a picture of a space-dock saloon,
of a repulsively obese man in a luxuriously furnished back room. Then
her mind went completely blank and her body slumped down, bonelessly.

Thus Narcotics found them; the woman inert and flaccid upon the bench,
the man staring down at her in black abstraction.




                                  VI.


"Suicide? Or did you--" Gerrond paused, delicately. Winstead, the
Lensman of Narcotics, said nothing, but looked on intently.

"Neither," Kinnison replied, still studying. "I would have had to, but
she beat me to it."

"What d'you mean, 'neither'? She's dead, isn't she? How did it happen?"

"Not yet, and unless I'm more cockeyed even than usual, she won't be.
She isn't the type to rub herself out--ever, under any conditions. As
to 'how,' that was easy. A hollow false tooth. Simple, but new--and
clever. But why? WHY?" Kinnison was thinking to himself more than
addressing his companions. "If they had killed her, yes. As it is, it
doesn't make any kind of sense--any of it."

"But the girl's dying!" protested Gerrond. "What're you going to _do_?"

"I wish to Klono I knew." The Tellurian was puzzled, groping. "No
hurry doing anything about her--what was done to her has been done,
and no one this side of Hades can undo it--unless I can fit these
pieces together into some kind of a pattern I'll never know what it's
all about--none of it makes sense--" He shook himself and went on:
"One thing is plain. She won't die. If they had intended to kill her,
she would have died almost instantly. They figure she's worth saving;
in which I agree with them. At the same time, they certainly are not
planning on letting me tap her knowledge. They may be planning on
taking her away from us. Therefore, as long as she stays alive--or even
not dead, the way she is now--guard her so heavily that an army can't
get her. If she should happen to die, don't leave her body unguarded
for a second until she's been autopsied, and you know she'll _stay_
dead. The minute she recovers, day or night, call me. Might as well
take her to the hospital now, I guess."

The call came soon that the patient had indeed recovered.

"She's talking, but I haven't answered her," Gerrond reported. "There's
something strange here, Kinnison."

"There would be--bound to be. Hold everything until I get there," and
he hurried to the hospital.

"Good morning, Dessa," he greeted her in Aldebaranian. "You are feeling
better, I hope?"

Her reaction was surprising. "You really know me?" she almost shrieked,
and flung herself into the Lensman's arms. Not deliberately; not with
her wonted, highly effective technique of bringing into play the s.a.
equipment with which she was so overpoweringly armed. No; this was the
utterly innocent, the wholly unselfconscious abandon of a very badly
frightened young girl. "What happened?" she sobbed, frantically, "Where
am I? Why are all these strangers here?"

Her wide, childlike, tear-filled eyes sought his; and as he probed
them, deeper and deeper into the brain behind them; his face grew set
and hard. Mentally, she now _was_ a young and innocent girl! Nowhere
in her mind, not even in the deepest recesses of her subconscious,
was there the slightest inkling that she had even existed since her
fifteenth year. It was staggering; it was unheard of; but it was
indubitably a fact. For her, now, the intervening time had lapsed
instantaneously--five or six years of her life had disappeared so
utterly as never to have been!

"You have been very ill, Dessa," he told her gravely, "and you are
no longer a child." He led her into another room and up to a triple
mirror. "See for yourself."

"But that isn't I?" she protested. "It can't be! Why, she's beautiful!"

"You're all of that," the Lensman agreed, casually. "You've had a bad
shock. Your memory will return shortly, I think. Now you must go back
to bed."

She did so, but not to sleep. Instead, she went into a trance; and so,
almost, did Kinnison. For over an hour he lay intensely asprawl in an
easy-chair, the while he engraved, day by day, a memory of missing
years into that bare storehouse of knowledge. And finally the task was
done.

"Sleep, Dessa," he told her then. "Sleep. Waken in eight hours; whole."

"Lensman, you're a _man_!" Gerrond realized vaguely what had been done.
"You didn't give her the truth, of course?"

"Far from it. Only that she was married and is a widow. The rest of it
is highly fictitious--just enough like the real thing so that she can
square herself with herself, if she meets old acquaintances. Plenty of
lapses, of course, but they're covered by shock."

"But the husband?" queried the curious Radeligian.

"That's her business," Kinnison countered, callously. "She'll tell you,
if she ever feels like it. One thing I did do, though--they'll never
use her again. The next man that tries to hypnotize her will be lucky
if he gets away alive."

       *       *       *       *       *

The advent of Dessa Desplaines, however, and his curious adventure with
her, had altered markedly the Lensman's situation. No one else in the
throng had worn a screen, but there might have been agents--anyway, the
observed facts would enable the higher-ups to link Fordyce up with what
had happened--they would know, of course, that the real Fordyce hadn't
done it--he could be Fordyce no longer.

Wherefore the real Chester Q. Fordyce took over and a strange
Unattached Lensman appeared. A Posenian, supposedly, since against
the air of Radelix he wore that planet's unmistakable armor. No other
race of even approximately human shape could "see" through a helmet of
solid, opaque metal.

And in this guise Kinnison continued his investigations. That place and
that man must be on this planet somewhere; the sending outfit worn by
the Desplaines woman could not possibly reach any other. He had a good
picture of the room and a fair picture--several pictures, in fact--of
the man. The room was an actuality; all he had had to do was to fill
in the details which definitely, by unmistakable internal evidence,
belonged there. The man was different. How much of the original picture
was real, and how much of it was the girl's impression?

She was, he knew, physically fastidious almost to an extreme. He knew
that no possible hypnotism could nullify completely the basic, the
fundamental characteristics of the subconscious. The intrinsic ego
could not be changed. Was the man really such a monster, or was the
picture in the girl's mind partially or largely the product of her
physical revulsion?

For hours he had sat at a recording machine, covering yard after yard
of tape with every possible picture of the man he wanted. Pictures
ranging from a man almost of normal build up to a thing duplicating in
every detail the woman's mental image.

Now he ran the tape again, time after time. The two extremes, he
concluded, were highly improbable. Somewhere in between--the man _was_
fat, he guessed. Fat, and had a mean pair of eyes. And, no matter how
Kinnison changed the man's physical shape he had found it impossible to
eradicate a personality that was definitely bad.

"The guy's a louse," Kinnison decided, finally. "Needs killing. Glad
of that--if I have to keep on fighting women much longer I'll go
completely nuts. Got enough dope to identify him now, I think."

And again the Tellurian Lensman set out to comb the planet, city
by city. Since he was not now dealing with Lensmen, every move he
made had to be carefully planned and as carefully concealed. It was
heartbreaking; but at long last he found a bartender who had once seen
his quarry. He _was_ fat, Kinnison discovered, and he was a bad egg.
From that point on, progress was rapid. He went to the indicated city,
which was, ironically enough, the very Ardith from which he had set
out; and, from a bit of information here and a bit there, he tracked
down his man. He found the room first, and then the man. The girl
wasn't so far wrong, at that. Her aversion was somewhat worse than the
actuality, but not too much.

Now what to do? The technique he had used so successfully upon Boyssia
II and in other bases could not succeed here; there were thousands of
people instead of dozens, and someone would certainly catch him at it.
Nor could he work at a distance. He was no Arisian, he had to be right
beside his job. He would have to turn dock-walloper.

Therefore a dock-walloper he became. Not like one, but actually one.
He labored prodigiously, his fine hands and his entire being becoming
coarse and hardened. He ate prodigiously, and drank likewise. But,
wherever he drank, his liquor was poured from the bartender's own
bottle or from one of similarly innocuous contents; for then, as
now, bartenders did not themselves imbibe the corrosively potent
distillates in which they dealt. Nevertheless, Kinnison became
intoxicated--boisterously, flagrantly, and pugnaciously so, as did his
fellows.

He lived scrupulously within his dock-walloper's wages. Eight credits
per week went to the company, in advance, for room and board; the
rest he spent over the fat man's bar or gambled away at the fat man's
crooked games--for Bominger, although engaged in vaster commerce
far, nevertheless, allowed no scruple to interfere with his esurient
rapacity. Money was money, whatever its amount or source or however
despicable its means of acquirement.

The Lensman knew that the games were crooked, certainly. He could see,
however they were concealed, the crooked mechanisms of the wheels.
He could see the crooked workings of the dealers' minds as they
manipulated their crooked decks. He could read as plainly as his own
the cards his crooked opponents held. But to win or to protest would
have set him apart, hence he was always destitute before pay day. Then,
like his fellows, he spent his spare time loafing in the same saloon,
vaguely hoping for a free drink or for a stake at cards, until one of
the bouncers threw him out.

       *       *       *       *       *

But in his every waking hour, working, gambling, or loafing, he
studied Bominger and Bominger's various enterprises. The Lensman
could not pierce the fat man's thought-screen, and he could never
catch him without it. However, he could and did learn much. He read
volume after volume of locked account books, page by page. He read
secret documents, hidden in the deepest recesses of massive vault. He
listened in on conference after conference; for a thought-screen of
course, does not interfere with either sight or sound. The Big Shot did
not own--legally--the saloon, nor the ornate, almost palatial back
room which was his office. Nor did he own the dance hall and boudoirs
upstairs, nor the narrow, cell-like rooms in which addicts of twice a
score of different noxious drugs gave themselves over libidinously to
their addictions. Nevertheless, they were his; and they were only a
part of that which was his.

Kinnison detected, traced, and identified agent after agent. With his
sense of perception he followed passages, leading to other scenes,
utterly indescribable here. One comparatively short gallery, however,
terminated in a different setting altogether; for there, as here and
perhaps everywhere, ostentation and squalor lie almost back to back.
Nalizok's Café, the high-life hot-spot of Radelix! Downstairs was
innocuous enough; nothing rough--that is, too rough--was ever pulled
there. Most of the robbery there was open and above-board, plainly
written upon the checks. But there were upstairs rooms, and cellar
rooms, and back rooms. And there were addicts, differing only from
those others in wearing finer raiment and being of a self-styled higher
stratum. Basically they were the same.

Men, women, girls ever were there, in the rigid muscle-lock of
thionite. Teeth hard-set, every muscle tense and staring, eyes jammed
closed, fists clenched, faces white as though carved from marble,
immobile in the frenzied emotion which characterized the ultimately
passionate fulfillment of every suppressed desire; in the release of
their every inhibition crowding perilously close to the dividing line
beyond which lay death from sheer ecstasy. That was the technique of
the thionite-sniffer--to take every microgram that he could stand, to
come to, shaken and too weak even to walk; to swear that he would never
so degrade himself again; to come back after more as soon as he had
recovered strength to do so; and finally, with an irresistible craving
for stronger and ever stronger thrills, to take a larger dose than his
rapidly-weakening body could endure, and so to cross the fatal line.

There also were the idiotically smiling faces of the hadive smokers,
the twitching members of those who preferred the Centralian
nitrolabe-needle, the helplessly stupefied eaters of bentlam--but why
go on? Suffice it to say that in that one city block could be found
every vice and every drug enjoyed by Radeligians and the usual run
of visitors; and if perchance you were an unusual visitor, desiring
something unusual, Bominger could get it for you--at a price.

Kinnison studied, perceived, and analyzed. Also, he reported, via Lens,
daily and copiously, to Narcotics, under Lensman's Seal.

"But Kinnison!" Winstead protested one day. "How much longer are you
going to make us wait?"

"Until I get what I came after or until they get onto me," Kinnison
replied, flatly. For weeks his Lens had been hidden in the side of
his shoe, in a flat sheath of highly charged metal, proof against any
except the most minutely searching spy-ray inspection; but this new
location did not in any way interfere with its functioning.

"Any danger of that?" the Narcotics head asked, anxiously.

"Plenty--and getting worse every day. More actors in the drama. Some
day I'll make a slip--I can't keep this up forever."

"Let us go, then," Winstead urged. "We've got enough now to blow this
ring out of existence, all over the planet."

"Not yet. You're making good progress, aren't you?"

"Yes, but considering--"

"Don't consider it yet. Your present progress is normal for your
increased force. Any more would touch off an alarm. You could take this
planet's drug personnel, yes, but that isn't what I'm after. I want big
game, not small fry. So sit tight until I give you the g.a. QX?"

"Got to be QX if you say so, Kinnison. Be careful!"

"I am. Won't be long now, I'm sure. Bound to break very shortly, one
way or the other. If possible, I'll give you and Gerrond warning."

       *       *       *       *       *

Kinnison had everything lined up except the one thing he had come
after. This was, in fact, the headquarters of the drug syndicate for
the entire planet of Radelix. He knew where the stuff came in, and
when, and how. He knew who received it, and the principal distributors
of it. He knew almost all of the secret agents of the ring, and not a
few even of the small-fry peddlers. He knew where the remittances went,
and how much, and what for. But every lead had stopped at Bominger.
Apparently the fat man was the absolute head of the drug syndicate;
and that appearance didn't make sense--it _had_ to be false. Bominger
and the other planetary lieutenants--themselves only small fry if the
Lensman's ideas were only half right--_must_ get orders from, and send
reports and, in probability, payments to some Boskonian authority; of
that Kinnison felt certain, but he had not been able to get even the
slightest trace of that higher-up.

That the communication would be established upon a thought-beam the
Tellurian was equally certain. The Boskonian would not trust any
ordinary, tappable communicator beam, and he certainly would not be
such a fool as to send any written or taped or otherwise permanently
recorded message, however coded. No, that message, when it came, would
come as thought, and to receive it the fat man would have to release
his screen. Then, and not until then, could Kinnison act. Action at
that time might not prove simple--judging from the precautions Bominger
was taking already, he would not release his screen without taking
plenty more--but until then the Lensman could do nothing.

That screen had not yet been released, Kinnison could swear to that.
True, he had had to sleep at times, but he had slept in a very
hair-trigger, with his subconscious and his Lens set to guard that
screen and to give the alarm at its first sign of weakening.

As the Lensman had foretold, the break came soon. Not in the middle of
the night, as he had half-thought that it would come; nor yet in the
quiet of the daylight hours. Instead, it came well before midnight,
while revelry was at its height. It did not come suddenly, but was
heralded by a long period of gradually increasing tension, of a mental
stress very apparent to the mind of the watcher.

Agents of the drug baron came in, singly and in groups, to an
altogether unprecedented number. Some of them were their usual
viciously self-contained selves, others were slightly but definitely
ill at ease. Kinnison, seated alone at a small table, playing a game
of Radeligian solitaire, divided his attention between the big room as
a whole and the office of Bominger; in neither of which was anything
definite happening.

Then a wave of excitement swept over the agents as five men wearing
thought-screens entered the room and, sitting down at a reserved table,
called for cards and drinks; and Kinnison thought it time to send his
warning.

"Gerrond! Winstead! Three-way! It's going to break soon, now,
I think--tonight. Agents all over the place--five men with
thought-screens here on the floor. Nervous tension high. Lots more
agents outside, for blocks. General precaution, I think, not specific.
Not suspicious of me, at least not exactly. Afraid of spies with a
sense of perception--Rigellians or Posenians or such. Just killed an
Ordovik on general principles, over on the next block. Get your gangs
ready, but don't come too close--just close enough so that you can be
here in thirty seconds after I call you."

"What do you mean 'not exactly suspicious'? What have you done?"

"Nothing that I know of--any one of a million possible small slips I
may have made. Nothing serious, though, or they wouldn't have let me
hang around this long."

"You're in danger. No armor, no DeLameter, no anything. Better come out
while you can."

"And miss what I've spent all this time building up? Not a chance; I'll
be able to take care of myself, I think--Here comes one of the boys in
a screen, to talk to me. I'll leave my Lens open, so that you can sort
of look on."

       *       *       *       *       *

Just then Bominger's screen went down and Kinnison invaded his mind;
taking complete possession of it. Under his domination the fat man
reported to the Boskonian, reported truly and fully. In turn, he
received orders and instructions. Had any inquisitive stranger been
around, or anyone on the planet using any kind of a mind-ray machine
since that quadruply-accursed Lensman had held that trial? (Oh, that
was what had touched them off! Kinnison was glad to know it.) No,
nothing unusual at all--

And just at that critical moment, when the Lensman's mind was so busy
with its task, the stranger came up to his table and stared down at him
dubiously, questioningly.

"Well, what's on _your_ mind?" Kinnison growled. He could not spare
much of his mind just then, but it did not take much of it to play his
part as a dock-walloper. "You another of these smoking house-numbers,
snooping around to see if I'm trying to run a blazer on myself? By the
devil and his imps, if I hadn't lost so much money here already I'd
tear up this deck and go over to Croleo's and _never_ come near this
crummy joint again--his rotgut can't be any worse than yours is."

"Don't burn out a jet, pal." The agent, apparently reassured, adopted a
conciliatory tone.

"Who in hell ever said you was a pal of mine, you Radelig-gig-gigian
pimp?" The supposedly three quarters drunken, certainly three quarters
naked, Lensman got up, wobbled a little, and sat down again, heavily.
"Don't 'pal' me, ape--I'm partic-hic-hicular about who I pal with."

"That's all right, big fellow; no offense intended," soothed the other.
"Come on, I'll buy you a drink."

"Don't want no drink until after I've finished this game," Kinnison
grumbled, and took an instant to flash a thought via Lens. "All set,
boys? Thing's moving fast. If I have to take this drink--it's doped, of
course--I'll bust this bird wide open. When I yell, shake the lead out
of your pants!"

"Of course you want a drink!" the pirate urged. "Come and get it--it's
on me, you know."

"And who are you to be buying me, a Tellurian gentleman, a drink?" the
Lensman roared, flaring into one of the sudden, senseless rages of the
character he had cultivated so assiduously. "Did I ask you for a drink?
I'm educated, I am, and I've got money, I have. I'll buy myself a drink
when I want one." His rage mounted higher and higher, visibly. "Did I
_ever_ ask you for a drink, you--" (unprintable here for the space of
two long breaths).

This was the blow-off. If the fellow was even half honest, there would
be a fight, which Kinnison could make as long as necessary. If he did
not start slugging after what Kinnison had just called him, he was not
what he seemed and the Lensman was surely suspected; for the Earthman
had dredged out the noisomest depths of the foulest vocabularies in
space for the terms he had just employed.

"If you weren't drunk I'd break every bone in your laxlo-soaked
carcass." The other man's anger was sternly suppressed, but he looked
at the dock-walloper with no friendship in his eyes. "I don't ask lousy
spaceport bums to drink with me every day, and when I do, they do--or
else. Do you want to take that drink now or do you want a couple of the
boys to work you over first? Barkeep! Bring two glasses of laxlo over
here!"

Now the time was short, indeed, but Kinnison would not--could not--act
yet. Bominger's conference was still on; the Lensman didn't know enough
yet. The fellow wasn't very suspicious, certainly, or he would have
made a pass at him before this. Bloodshed meant less than nothing to
these gentry; the stranger did not want to incur Bominger's wrath by
killing a steady customer. The fellow probably thought the whole mind
ray story was hocus-pocus, anyway--not a chance in a million of it
being true. Besides, he needed a machine, and Kinnison couldn't hide
a thing, let alone anything as big as that mind-ray machine had been,
because he didn't have clothes enough on to flag a handcar with. But
that free drink was certainly doped--Oh, they wanted to question him.
It would be a truth-dope in the laxlo, then--he certainly couldn't take
_that_ drink!

Then came the all-important second; just as the bartender set the
glasses down Bominger's interview ended. At the signing off, Kinnison
got additional data, just as he had thought that he would; and in that
instant, before the drugmaster could restore his screen, the fat man
died--his brain literally blasted. And in that same instant Kinnison's
Lens fairly throbbed with the power of the call he sent out to his
allies.

But not even Kinnison could hurl such a mental bolt without some
outward sign. His face stiffened, perhaps, or his eyes may have lost
their drunken, vacant stare, to take on momentarily the keen, cold
ruthlessness that was for the moment his. At any rate, the enemy agent
was now definitely suspicious.

"Drink that, bum, and drink it quick--or burn!" he snapped, DeLameter
out and poised.

[Illustration: _Kinnison looked up at the stranger blearily. "Drink
that, bum, and drink it quick--or burn!" the gunman snapped._]

The Tellurian's hand reached out for the glass, but his mind also
reached out, and faster by a second, to the brains of two nearby
agents. Those worthies drew their own weapons and, with wild yells,
began firing. Seemingly indiscriminately, yet in those blasts two of
the thought-screened minions died. For a fraction of a second even the
hard-schooled mind of Kinnison's opponent was distracted, and that was
long enough for the Gray Lensman's instantaneous nervous reactions and
his mighty muscles.

       *       *       *       *       *

A quick flick of the wrist sent the potent liquor into the Boskonian's
eyes; a lightning thrust of the knee sent the little table hurtling
against his gun-hand, flinging the weapon afar. Simultaneously, the
Lensman's hamlike fist, urged by all the strength and all the speed
of his two hundred and sixteen pounds of rawhide and whalebone, drove
forward. Not for the jaw. Not for the head or the face. Lensmen know
better than to mash bare hands, break fingers and knuckles, against
bone. For the solar plexus. The big Patrolman's fist sank forearm-deep.
The stricken zwilnik uttered one shrieking grunt, doubled up, and
collapsed; never to rise again. Kinnison leaped for the fellow's
DeLameter--too late, he was already hemmed in.

One--two--three--four of the nearest men died without having received a
physical blow; again and again Kinnison's heavy fists and far heavier
feet crashed deep into vital spots. One thought-screened enemy dived
at him bodily in a Tomingan donganeur, to fall with a broken neck as
the Lensman opposed instantly the only possible parry--a savage chop,
edge-handed, just below the base of the skull; the while he disarmed
the surviving thought-screened stranger with an accurately-hurled
chair. The latter, feinting a swing, launched a vicious French kick.
The Lensman, expecting anything, perceived the foot coming. His big
hands shot out like striking snakes, closing and twisting savagely in
the one fleeting instant, then jerking upward and backward. A hard and
heavy dock-walloper's boot crashed thuddingly to a mark. A shriek rent
the air and that foeman, too, was done.

Not fair fighting, no; nor cluvvy. Lensmen did not and do not fight
according to the tenets of the late Marquis of Queensberry. They use
the weapons provided by Mother Nature only when they must; but they
can, and do use them with telling effect indeed, when body-to-body
brawling becomes necessary. For they are skilled in the art--every
Lensman has a completely detailed knowledge of all the lethal tricks of
foul combat known to all the dirty fighters of ten thousand planets for
twice ten thousand years.

And then the doors and windows crashed in, admitting those whom
no other bifurcate race has ever faced willingly in hand-to-hand
combat--full-armed Valerians, swinging their space-axes!

The gangsters broke then, and fled in panic disorder; but escape from
Narcotics' fine-meshed net was impossible. They were cut down to a man.

"QX, Kinnison?" came two hard, sharp thoughts. The Lensmen did not see
the Tellurian, but Lieutenant Peter van Buskirk did. That is, he saw
him, but did not look at him.

"Hi, Kim, you little Tellurian wart!" That worthy's thought was a yell.
"Ain't we got fun?"

"QX fellows--thanks," to Gerrond and to Winstead, and--

"Ho, Bus! Thanks, you big, Valerian ape!" to the gigantic
Dutch-Valerian with whom he had shared so many experiences in the past.
"A good clean-up, fellows?"

"One hundred per cent, thanks to you. We'll put you--"

"Don't, please. You will probably clog my jets if you do. I don't
appear in this anywhere--it's just one of your good, routine jobs of
mopping up. Clear ether, fellows, I've got to do a flit."

"Where?" all three wanted to ask, but they didn't--the Gray Lensman was
gone.




                                 VII.


Kinnison did start his flit, but he did not get far. In fact, he did
not even reach his squalid room before cold reason told him that the
job was only half done--yes, less than half. He had to give Boskone
credit for having brains, and it was not at all likely that even such
a comparatively small unit as a planetary headquarters would have only
one string to its bow. They certainly would have been forced to install
duplicate controls of some sort or other by the trouble they had had
after Helmuth's supposedly impregnable Grand Base had been destroyed.

There were other straws pointing the same way. Where had those five
strange thought-screened men come from? Bominger hadn't known of them
apparently. If that idea was sound, the other headquarters would have a
spy ray on the whole thing. Both sides used spy rays freely, of course,
and to block them was, ordinarily, worse than to let them come. The
enemies' use of the thought-screen was different. They realized that
it made it easy for the unknown Lensman to discover their agents, but
they were forced to use it because of the deadliness of the supposed
mind-ray. Why hadn't he thought of this sooner, and had the whole area
blocked off? Too late to cry about it now, though.

Assume the idea correct. They certainly knew now that he was a
Lensman; probably were morally certain that he was _the_ Lensman. His
instantaneous change from a drunken dock-walloper to a cold-sober,
deadly-skilled rough-and-tumble brawler--and the unexplained deaths of
half-a-dozen agents, as well as that of Bominger himself--this was bad.
Very, _very_ bad--a flare lit tip-off, if there ever was one. Their spy
rays would have combed him, millimeter by plotted cubic millimeter:
they knew exactly where his Lens was, as well as he did himself. He had
put his tail right into the wringer--wrecked the whole job right at the
start--unless he could get that other headquarters outfit, too, and get
them before they reported in detail to Boskone.

In his room, then, he sat and thought, harder and more intensely
than he had ever thought before. No ordinary method of tracing would
do. It might be anywhere on the planet, and it certainly would have
no connection whatever with the thionite gang. It would be a small
outfit; just a few men, but under smart direction. Their purpose would
be to watch the business end of the organization, but not to touch it
save in an emergency. All that the two groups would have in common
would be recognition signals, so that the reserves could take over in
case anything happened to Bominger--as it already had. They had him,
Kinnison, cold--What to do? _What to do?_

The Lens. That must be the answer--it _had_ to be. The Lens--what was
it, really, anyway? Simply an aggregation of crystalloids. Not really
alive; just a pseudolife, a sort of a reflection of his own life--he
wondered--great Klono's brazen teeth and tail, could _that_ be it? An
idea had struck him, an idea so stupendous in its connotations and
ramifications that he gasped, shuddered, and almost went faint at the
shock. He started to reach for his Lens, then forced himself to relax
and shot a thought to Base.

"Gerrond! Send me a portable spy-ray block, quick!"

"But that would give everything away!" protested the vice-admiral.
"That's why we haven't been using them."

"Are you telling me?" the Lensman demanded. "Shoot it along--I'll
explain while it's on the way." He went on to tell the Base commander
everything that he thought it well for him to know, concluding: "So
you see, it's a virtual certainty that I am already as wide open as
intergalactic space, and that nothing but fast and sure moves will do
us a bit of good."

The block arrived, and as soon as the messenger had departed Kinnison
set it going. He was now the center of a sphere into which no spy-ray
beam could penetrate. He was also an object of suspicion to anyone
using a spy ray, but that fact made no difference, then. He snatched
off his shoe, took out his Lens, and tossed that ultra-precious
fabrication across the room. Then, just as though he still wore it, he
directed a thought at Winstead.

"All serene, Lensman?" he asked, quietly.

"Everything's on the beam," came instant reply. "Why?"

"Just checking, is all." Kinnison did not specify exactly what it was
that he was checking!

       *       *       *       *       *

He then did something which, so far as he knew, no Lensman had ever
before even thought of doing. Although he felt stark naked without his
Lens, he hurled a thought three quarters of the way across the Galaxy
to that dread planet Arisia; a thought narrowed down to the exact
pattern of that gigantic, fearsome Brain who had been his mentor and
his sponsor.

"Ah, 'tis Kimball Kinnison, of Earth," that entity responded, in
precisely the same modulation it had employed once before. "You have
perceived, then, youth, that the Lens is not the supremely important
thing you have supposed it to be?"

"I ... you ... I mean--" The flustered Lensman, taken completely aback,
was cut off by a sharp rebuke.

"Stop! You are thinking muddily--conduct ordinarily inexcusable! Now,
youth, to redeem yourself, you will explain the phenomenon to me,
instead of asking me to explain it to you. I realize that you have
just discovered another facet of the Cosmic Truth, I know what a shock
it has been to your immature mind; hence for this once it may be
permissible for me to overlook your crime. But strive not to repeat the
offense; for I tell you again in all possible seriousness--I cannot
urge upon you too strongly the fact--that in clear and precise thinking
lies your only safeguard through that which you are attempting.
Confused, wandering thought will assuredly bring disaster inevitable
and irreparable."

"Yes, sir," Kinnison replied meekly; a small boy reprimanded by his
teacher. "It must be this way. In the first stage of training the Lens
is a necessity; just as is the crystal ball or some other hypnotic
object in a séance. In the more advanced stage the mind is able to work
without aid. The Lens, however, may be--in fact, it must be--endowed
with uses other than that of a symbol of identification; uses about
which I as yet know nothing. Therefore, while I can work without it, I
should not do so except when it is absolutely necessary, as its help
will be imperative if I am to advance to any higher stage. It is also
clear that you were expecting my call. May I ask if I am on time?"

"You are--your progress has been highly satisfactory. Also, I note with
approval that you are not asking for help in your admittedly difficult
present problem."

"I know that it wouldn't do me any good--and why." Kinnison grinned
wryly. "But I'll bet that Worsel, when he comes up for his second
treatment, will know on the spot what it has taken me all this time to
find out."

"You deduce truly. He did."

"What? He has been back there already? And you told me--"

"What I told you was true and is. His mind is more fully developed and
more responsive than yours; yours is of vastly greater latent capacity,
capability, and force--" and the line of communication snapped.

Calling a conveyance, Kinnison was whisked to Base, the spy-ray
block full on all the way. There, in a private room, he put his
heavily-insulated Lens and a full spool of tape into a ray-proof
container, sealed it, and called in the Base commander.

"Gerrond, here is a package of vital importance," he informed him.
"Among other things, it contains a record of everything I have done to
date. If I don't come back to claim it myself, please send it to Prime
Base for personal delivery to Port Admiral Haynes. Speed will be no
object, but safety very decidedly of the essence."

"QX--we'll send it in by special messenger."

"Thanks a lot. Now I wonder if I could use your visiphone a minute? I
want to talk to the zoo."

"Certainly."

"Zoological Gardens?" and the image of an elderly, white-bearded man
appeared upon the plate. "Lensman Kinnison of Tellus--Unattached. Have
you as many as three oglons, caged together?"

"Yes. In fact, we have four of them in one cage."

"Better yet. Will you please send them over here to Base at once?
Vice-admiral Gerrond, here, will confirm."

"It is most unusual, sir--" the gray-beard began, but broke off at a
curt word from Gerrond. "Very well, sir," he agreed, and disconnected.

"Oglons?" the surprised commander demanded. "_Oglons!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

For the oglon, or Radeligian cateagle, is one of the fiercest, most
intractable beasts of prey in existence; it assays more concentrated
villainy and more sheerly vicious ferocity to the gram than any other
creature known to science. It is not a bird, but a winged mammal; and
is armed not only with the gripping, tearing talons of the eagle, but
also with the heavy, cruel, needle-sharp fangs of the wildcat. And its
mental attitude toward all other forms of life is anti-social to the
nth degree.

"Oglons." Kinnison confirmed, shortly. "I can handle them."

"You can, of course. But--" Gerrond stopped. This Gray Lensman was
forever doing amazing, unprecedented, incomprehensible things. But, so
far, he had produced eminently satisfactory results, and he could not
be expected to spend all his time in explanations.

"But you think I'm screwy, huh?"

"Oh, no, Kinnison, I wouldn't say that. I only ... well ... after
all, there isn't much real evidence that we didn't mop up one hundred
percent."

"Much? Real evidence? There isn't any," the Tellurian assented,
cheerfully enough. "But you've got the wrong slant entirely on these
people. You are still thinking of them as gangsters, desperadoes,
renegade scum of our own civilization. They are not. They are just as
smart as we are; some of them are smarter. Perhaps I am taking too many
precautions; but, if so, there is no harm done. On the other hand,
there are two things at stake which, to me at least, are extremely
important; this whole job of mine and my life: and remember this--the
minute I leave this Base both of those things are in your hands."

To that, of course, there could be no answer.

While the two men had been talking and while the oglons were being
brought out, two trickling streams of men had been passing, one into
and one out of the spy ray shielded confines of Base. Some of these men
were heavily bearded, some were shaven clean, but all had two things
in common. Each one was human in type and each one in some respect or
other resembled Kimball Kinnison.

"Now remember, Gerrond," the Gray Lensman said impressively as he was
about to leave. "They're probably right here in Ardith, but they may be
anywhere on the planet. Keep a spy ray on me wherever I go, and trace
theirs if you can. That will take some doing, as the head one is bound
to be an expert. Keep those oglons at least a mile--thirty seconds
flying time--away from me; get all the Lensmen you can on the job;
keep a cruiser and a speedster hot, but not too close. I may need one
of them, or all, or none of them, I can't tell; but I do know this--if
I need anything at all, I'll need it fast. Above all, Gerrond, by the
Lens you wear, do nothing whatever, no matter what happens around me or
to me, until I give you the word. QX?"

"QX, Gray Lensman. Clear ether!"

Kinnison took a ground-cab to the mouth of the narrow street upon which
was situated his dock-walloper's mean lodging. This was a desperate,
a fool-hardy trick--but in its very boldness, in its insolubly
paradoxical aspects, lay its strength. Probably Boskone could solve its
puzzles, but--he hoped--this ape, not being Boskone, couldn't. And,
paying off the cabman, he thrust his hands into his tattered pockets
and, whistling blithely if a bit raucously through his stained teeth,
he strode off down the narrow way as though he did not have a care in
the world. But he was doing the finest job of acting of his short
career; even though, for all he really knew, he might not have any
audience at all. For, inwardly, he was strung to highest tension. His
sense of perception, sharply alert, was covering the full hemisphere
around and above him; his mind was triggered to jerk any muscle of his
body into instantaneous action.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, in a heavily guarded room, there sat a manlike being,
faintly but definitely blue; not only as to eyes, but also as to hair,
teeth, and complexion. For two hours he had been sitting at his spy
ray plate, studying with ever-growing uneasiness the human beings so
suddenly and so surprisingly numerously having business at the Patrol's
Base. For minutes he had been studying minutely a man in a ground-cab,
and his uneasiness reached panic heights.

"It _is_ the Lensman!" he burst out. "It's _got_ to be, Lens or no
Lens. Who else would have the cold nerve to go back there when he knows
that he has exposed himself?"

"Well, get him, then," advised his companion. "All set, aren't you?"

"But it _can't_ be!" the chief went on, reversing himself in
mid-flight. "A Lensman without a Lens is unthinkable, and invisible
Lens is preposterous. And this fellow has not now, and never has had,
a mind-ray machine. He hasn't got _anything_! And besides, the Lensman
we're after wouldn't think of doing a thing like this--he always
disappears the instant a job is finished, whether or not there is any
chance of his having been discovered."

"Well, drop him and chase somebody else, then," the lieutenant advised,
unfeelingly.

"But there's nobody nearly enough like him!" snarled the chief, in
desperation. He was torn by doubt and indecision. This whole situation
was a mess--it didn't add up right, from any possible angle. "It's
got to be him--it _can't_ be anybody else. I've checked and rechecked
him. It _is_ him, and not a double. He thinks that he's safe enough; he
doesn't suspect that we're here at all. Besides, his only good double,
Fordyce--and _he's_ not good enough to stand the inspection I just gave
him--hasn't appeared anywhere."

"Probably inside Base yet. Maybe this is a better double. Perhaps this
_is_ the real Lensman pretending he isn't, or maybe the real Lensman
is slipping out while you're watching the man in the cab," the junior
suggested, helpfully.

"Shut up!" the superior yelled. He started to reach for a switch, but
paused, hand in air.

"Go ahead. That's it, call District and toss it into their laps, if
it's too hot for you to handle. I think myself that whoever did this
job is a warm number--plenty warm."

"And get my ears bunted off with that 'your report is neither complete
nor conclusive' of his?" the chief sneered. "And get reduced for
incompetence besides? No, we've got to do it ourselves, and do it
right--but that man there isn't the Lensman--he can't be!"

"Well, you'd better make up your mind--you haven't got all day. And nix
on that 'we' stuff. It's _you_ that's got to do it--you're the boss,
not me," the underling countered, callously. For once, he was really
glad that he was not the one in command. "And you'd better get busy and
do it, too."

"I'll do it," the chief declared, grimly. "There's a way."

There was a way. One only. He must be brought in alive and compelled to
divulge the truth. There was no other way.

The blue man touched a stud and spoke. "Don't kill him--bring him
in alive. If you kill him even accidentally, I'll kill both of you,
myself."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Gray Lensman made his carefree way down the alleylike thoroughfare,
whistling inharmoniously and very evidently at peace with the Universe.

It takes something, friends, to walk knowingly into a trap; without
betraying emotion or stress even while a blackjack, wielded by a strong
arm, is descending toward the back of your head. Something of quality,
something of fiber. But whatever it took, Kinnison in ample measure had.

He did not wink, flinch, or turn an eye as the billy came down. Only
as it touched his hair did he act, exerting all his marvelous muscular
control to jerk forward and downward, with the weapon and ahead of it,
to spare himself as much as possible of the terrific blow.

[Illustration: _The Lensman, fully aware, yet did not wink, flinch, or
turn an eye as the billy came down._]

The blackjack crunched against the base of the Lensman's skull in a
shower of coruscating constellations. He fell. He lay there, twitching
feebly.




                                 VIII.


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!"




                                  IX.


The Port Admiral was eminently correct in supposing that Boskone,
whoever or whatever he or it might be, was already taking action upon
what the Tellurian Lensman had done. For, even as Kinnison was at work
in the Library of Science, a meeting which was indirectly to affect him
no little was being called to order.

In the immensely distant Second Galaxy was that meeting being held;
upon the then planet Jarnevon of the Eich; within that sullen fortress
already mentioned briefly. Presiding over it was the indescribable
entity known to history as Eichlan; or, more properly, Lan of the Eich.

"Boskone is now in session," that entity announced to the eight
other like monstrosities who in some fashion indescribable to man
were stationed at the long, low, wide bench of stonelike material
which served as a table of State. "Nine days ago each of us began to
search for whatever new facts might bear upon the activities of the
as-yet-entirely-hypothetical Lensman who, Helmuth believed, was the
real force back of our recent intolerable reverses in the Tellurian
Galaxy.

"As First of Boskone I will report as to the military situation. As you
know, our positions there became untenable with the fall of our Grand
Base and all our mobile forces were withdrawn. In order to facilitate
reorganization, co-ordinating ships were sent out. Some of these ships
went to planets held in toto by us. Not one of these vessels has been
able to report any pertinent facts whatever. Ships approaching bases
of the Patrol, or encountering Patrol ships of war in space, simply
ceased communicating. Even their automatic recorders, tuned to my desk
as commander-in-chief, ceased to function without transmitting any
intelligible data, indicating complete destruction of those ships.
A cascade system, in which one ship followed another at long range
and with analytical instruments set to determine the nature of any
beam or weapon employed, was attempted. The enemy, however, threw out
blanketing zones of tremendous power; and we lost six more vessels
without obtaining the desired data. These are the facts, all negative.
Theorizing, deduction, summation, and integration will as usual, come
later. Eichmil, Second of Boskone, will now report."

"My facts are also entirely negative," the Second began. "As soon as
our operations upon the planet Radelix began to be really productive of
results, a contingent of Tellurian narcotic agents arrived; which may
or may not have included the Lensman--"

"Stick to facts for the time being," Eichlan ordered, curtly.

"Shortly thereafter a minor agent, a female instructed to wear a
thought-screen at all times, lost her usefulness by suffering a mental
disorder which incapacitated her quite seriously. Then another agent,
also a female, this time one of the third order and who had been very
useful up to that time, ceased reporting. A few days later Bominger,
the Planetary Director, failed to report, as did the Planetary
Observer; who, as you know, was entirely unknown to, and had no
connection with, the operating staff. Reports from other sources, such
as importers and shippers--these, I believe, are here admissible as
facts--indicate that our entire personnel upon Radelix has been put to
death. No unusual developments have occurred upon any other planet, nor
has any significant fact, however small, been discovered."

"Eichnor, Third of Boskone."

"Also negative. Our every source of information from within the bases
of the Patrol has been shut off. Every one of our representatives--some
of whom have been reporting regularly for many years--has been silent,
and every effort to reach any of them has failed."

"Eichsnap, Fourth of Boskone."

"Utterly negative. We have been able to find no trace whatever of the
planet Medon, or of any one of the twenty-one warships investing it at
the time of its disappearance."

And so on, through nine reports, while the tentacles of the mighty
First of Boskone played intermittently over the keys of a complex
instrument or machine before him.

"We will now reason, theorize, and draw conclusions," the First
announced, and each of the organisms fed his ideas and deductions into
the machine. It whirred briefly, then ejected a tape, which Eichlan
took up and scanned narrowly.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Rejecting all conclusions having a probability of less than
ninety-five percent," he announced, "we have: First, a set of
three probabilities of a value of ninety-nine and ninety-nine
one-hundredths--virtual certainties--that some one Tellurian Lensman is
the prime mover behind what has happened; that he has acquired a mental
power heretofore unknown to his race; and that he has been in large
part responsible for the development of the Patrol's new and formidable
weapons. Second, a probability of ninety-nine percent that he and his
organization are no longer on the defensive, but have assumed the
offensive. Third, one of ninety-seven percent that it is not primarily
Tellus which is an obstacle, even though the Galactic Patrol and
Civilization did originate upon that planet, but Arisia; that Helmuth's
report was at least partially true. Fourth, one of ninety-five and
one half percent that the Lens is also concerned in the disappearance
of the planet Medon. There is a lesser probability, but still of some
ninety-four percent, that that same Lensman is involved here.

"I will interpolate here that the vanishment of that planet is a much
more serious matter than it might appear, on the surface, to be. In
situ, it was a thing of no concern--gone, it becomes an affair of
almost vital import. To issue orders impossible of fulfillment, as
Helmuth did when he said 'Comb Trenco, inch by inch,' is easy. To comb
this Galaxy star by star for Medon would be an even more difficult and
longer task; but what can be done is being done.

"To return to the conclusions, they point out a state of things which
I do not have to tell you is really grave. This is the first major
setback which the culture of the Boskone has encountered since it began
its rise, thousands of years ago. You are familiar with that rise; how
we of the Eich took over in turn a city, a race, a planet, a solar
system, a region, a galaxy. How we extended our sway into the Tellurian
Galaxy, as a preliminary to the extension of our authority throughout
all the populated galaxies of the macro-cosmic Universe.

"You know our creed; to the victor the power. He who is strongest and
fittest shall survive and shall rule. This so-called Civilization
which is opposing us, which began upon Tellus but whose driving force
is that which dwells upon Arisia, is a soft, weak, puny-spirited
thing indeed to resist the mental and material power of our culture.
Myriads of beings upon each planet, each one striving for power and,
so striving, giving of that power to him above. Myriads of planets,
each, in return for our benevolently despotic control, delegating
and contributing power to the Eich. All this power, delegated to the
thousands of millions of the Eich of this planet, culminates in and is
wielded by the nine of us who comprise Boskone.

"Power! Our forefathers thought that control of one planet was enough.
Later it was declared that mastery of a galaxy, if realized, would
sate ambition. We of Boskone, however, now know that our power shall
be limited only by the bounds of the Material Cosmic All--every world
that exists throughout space shall and must pay homage and tribute to
Boskone! What, gentlemen, is the sense of this meeting?"

"Arisia must be visited!" There was no need of integrating this
thought; it was dominant and unanimous.

"I would advise caution, however," the Eighth of Boskone amended
his ballot. "We are an old race, it is true, and able; we have
demonstrated our superiority over every other race of our Galaxy, much
more conclusively than the Tellurians have shown their supremacy on
theirs, I cannot help but believe, however, that in Arisia there exists
an unknown quality, an 'x' which we as yet are unable to evaluate.
It must be borne in mind that Helmuth, while not of the Eich, was,
nevertheless, an able being; yet he was handled so mercilessly there
that he could not render a complete or conclusive report of his
expedition, then or ever. With these thoughts in mind I suggest that
no actual landing be made, but that the torpedo be launched from a
distance."

"The suggestion is eminently sound," the First approved. "As to
Helmuth, he was, for an oxygen-breather, fairly able. He was however,
mentally soft, as are all such. Do you, our foremost psychologist,
believe that any existent or conceivable mind could break yours, with
no application whatever of physical force or device, as Helmuth's
reports seemed to indicate that his was broken? I use the word 'seemed'
advisedly, for I do not believe that Helmuth reported the actual truth.
In fact, I was about to replace him with an Eich, however unpleasant
such an assignment would be to any of our race, because of that
weakness."

"No," agreed the Eighth. "I do not believe that there exists in the
Universe a mind of sufficient power to break mine. It is a truism that
no mental influence, however powerful, can affect a strong, definitely
and positively opposed will. For that reason I voted against the
use of thought-screens by our agents. Such screens expose them to
detection and can be of no real benefit. Physical means were--must have
been--used first, and, after physical subjugation, the screens were, of
course, useless."

       *       *       *       *       *

"I am not sure that I agree with you entirely," the Ninth put in. "We
have here cogent evidence that there have been employed mental forces
of a type or pattern with which we are entirely unfamiliar. While it is
the consensus of opinion that the importance of Helmuth's report should
be minimized, it seems to me that we have enough corroborative evidence
to indicate that this mentality may be able to operate without material
aid. If so, rigid screening should be retained, as offering the only
possible safeguard from such force."

"Sound in theory, but in practice dubious," the psychologist countered.
"If there were any evidence whatever that the screens had done any
good I would agree with you. But have they? Screening failed to save
Helmuth or his base; and there is nothing to indicate that the screens
impeded, even momentarily, the progress of the suppositious Lensman
upon Radelix. You speak of 'rigid' screening. The term is meaningless.
Perfectly effective screening is impossible. If, as we seem to be
doing, we postulate the ability of one mind to control another
without physical, bodily contact--or is the idea at all far fetched,
considering what I myself have done to the minds of many of our
agents?--the Lensman can work through any unshielded mentality whatever
to attain his ends. As you know, Helmuth deduced, too late, that it
must have been through the mind of a dog that the Lensman invaded Grand
Base."

"Poppycock!" snorted the Seventh. "Or, if not, we can kill the dogs--or
screen their minds, too," he sneered.

"Admitted," the psychologist returned, unmoved. "You might conceivably
kill all the animals that run and all the birds that fly. You cannot,
however, destroy all life in any locality at all extended, clear
down to the worms in their burrows and the termites in their hidden
retreats; and the mind has not yet existed which is keen enough to draw
a line of demarcation and say 'here begins intelligent life.'"

"This discussion is interesting, but futile," put in Eichlan,
forestalling a scornful reply. "It is more to the point, I think, to
discuss that which must be done; or, rather, who is to do it, since the
thing itself admits of only one solution--an atomic bomb of sufficient
power to destroy every trace of life upon that accursed planet. Shall
we send someone, or shall some of us ourselves go? To overestimate a
foe is at worst only an unnecessary precaution; to underestimate this
one may well be fatal. Therefore, it seems to me, that the decision in
this matter should lie with our psychologist. I will, however, if you
prefer, integrate our various conclusions."

Recourse to the machine was unnecessary; it was agreed by all that
Eichamp, the Eighth of Boskone, should decide.

"My decision will be evident," that worthy said, measuredly, "when I
say that I myself, for one, am going. The situation is admittedly a
serious one. Moreover, I believe, to a greater extent than do the rest
of you, that there is a certain amount of truth in Helmuth's version of
his experiences. My mind is the only one in existence of whose power
I am absolutely certain; the only one which I definitely _know_ will
not give way before any conceivable mental force, whatever its amount
or whatever its method of application. I want none with me save of the
Eich, and even those I will examine carefully before permitting them
aboard ship with me."

"You decide as I thought," said the First. "I also shall go. My mind
will hold, I think."

"It will hold--in your case examination is unnecessary," agreed the
psychologist.

"And I! And I!" arose what amounted to a chorus.

"No," came curt denial from the First. "Two are enough to operate all
machinery and weapons. To take any more of the Boskone would weaken us
here injudiciously; well you know how many are working, and in what
fashions, for seats at this table. To take any weaker mind, even of
the Eich, might conceivably be to court disaster. We two should be
safe; I because I have proven repeatedly my right to hold the title of
First of this Council, the rulers and masters of the dominant race of
the Universe; Eichamp because of his unparalleled knowledge, of all
intelligence. Our vessel is ready. We go."

       *       *       *       *       *

As has been indicated, none of the Eich were, or ever had been,
cowards. Tyrants they were, it is true, and dictators of the harshest,
sternest, and most soulless kind; callous and merciless they were;
cold as the rocks of their frigid world and as utterly ruthless and
remorseless as the fabled Juggernaut; but they were as logical as they
were hard. He, who of them all was best fitted to do anything, did it
unquestioningly and, as a matter of course; did it with the calmly
emotionless efficiency of the machine which in actual fact he was.
Therefore, it was the First and the Eighth of Boskone who went.

Through the star-studded purlieus of the Second Galaxy the black,
airless, lightless vessel sped; through the reaches, vaster and more
tenuous far, of intergalactic space; into the Tellurian Galaxy; up to a
solar system shunned then as now, by all uninvited intelligences--dread
and dreaded Arisia.

Not close to the planet did even the two of Boskone venture; but
stopped at the greatest distance at which a torpedo could be directed
surely against the target. But even so the vessel of the Eich had
punctured a screen of mental force; and as Eichlan extended a tentacle
toward the firing mechanism of the missiles, watched in as much
suspense as they were capable of feeling by the planet-bound seven of
Boskone, a thought as penetrant as a needle and yet as binding as a
cable tempered steel drove into his brain.

"Hold!" That thought commanded, and Eichlan held, as did also his
fellow Boskonian.

Both remained rigid, unable to move any single voluntary muscle; while
the other seven of the Council looked on in uncomprehending amazement.
Their instruments remained dead--since those mechanisms were not
sensitive to thought, to them nothing at all was occurring. Those
seven leaders of the Eich knew that something was happening; something
dreadful, something untoward, something very decidedly not upon the
program they had helped to plan. They, however, could do nothing about
it; they could only watch and wait.

"Ah, 'tis Lan and Amp of the Eich," the thought resounded within the
minds of the helpless twain. "Truly, the Elders are correct. My mind is
not yet competent, for, although I have had many facts instead of but
a single one upon which to cogitate, and no dearth of time in which to
do so, I now perceive that I have erred grievously in my visualization
of the Cosmic All. You do, however, fit nicely into the now enlarged
Scheme, and I am really grateful to you for furnishing new material
with which for many cycles of time to come, I shall continue to build.

"Indeed, I believe that I shall permit you to return unharmed to your
own planet. You know the warning we gave Helmuth, your minion, hence
your lives are forfeit for violating knowingly the privacy of Arisia;
but wanton or unnecessary destruction is not conducive to mental
growth. You are, therefore, at liberty to depart. I repeat to you the
instructions given your underling: do not return, either in person or
by any form whatever of proxy."

The Arisian had as yet exerted scarcely a fraction of his power;
although the bodies of the two invaders were practically paralyzed,
their minds had not been punished. Therefore the psychologist said,
coldly:

"You are not now dealing with Helmuth, nor with any other weak,
mindless oxygen-breather, but with the _Eich_," and, by sheer effort of
will, he moved toward the controls.

"What boots it?" the Arisian compressed upon the Eighth's brain a
searing force which sent shrieking waves of pain throughout all nearby
space. Then, taking over the psychologist's mind, he forced him to move
to the communicator panel, upon whose plate could be seen the other
seven of Boskone, gazing in wonder.

"Set up planetary coverage," he directed, through Eichamp's organs of
speech, "so that each individual member of the entire race of the Eich
can understand what I am about to transmit." There was a brief pause,
then the deep, measured voice rolled on:

       *       *       *       *       *

"I am Eukonidor of Arisia, speaking to you through this mass
of undead flesh which was once your chief psychologist, Eichamp, the
Eighth of that high council which you call Boskone. I had intended to
spare the lives of these two simple creatures, but I perceive that
such action would be useless. Their minds and the minds of all you who
listen to me are warped, perverted, incapable of reason. They and you
would have misinterpreted the gesture completely; would have believed
that I did not slay them only because I could not do so. Some of you
would have offended again and again, until you were so slain; you can
be convinced of such a fact only by an unmistakable demonstration of
superior force. Force is the only thing you are able to understand.
Your one aim in life is to gain material power; greed, corruption, and
crime are your chosen implements.

"You consider yourselves hard and merciless. In a sense, and according
to your abilities you are, although your minds are too callow to
realize that there are depths of cruelty and of depravity which you
cannot even faintly envision.

"You love and worship power. Why? To any thinking mind it should be
clear that such a lust intrinsically is, and forever must by its
very nature be, futile. For, even if any one of you could command
the entire material Universe, what good would it do him? None. What
would he have? Nothing. Not even the satisfaction of accomplishment,
for that lust is in fact insatiable--it would then turn upon itself
and feed upon itself. I tell you as a fact that there is only one
power which is at one and the same time illimitable and yet finite;
insatiable yet satisfying; one which, while eternal, yet invariably
returns to its possessor the true satisfaction of real accomplishment
in exact ratio to the effort expended upon it. That power is the power
of the mind. You, being so backward and so wrong of development,
cannot understand how this can be, but if any one of you will
concentrate upon one single fact, or a small object, such as a pebble
or the seed of a plant or other creature, for as short a period of
time as one hundred of your years, you will begin to perceive its
truth.

"You boast that your planet is old. What of that? We of Arisia dwelt
in turn upon a thousand planets, from planetary youth to cosmic old
age, before we became independent of the chance formation of such
celestial bodies.

"You prate that you are an ancient race. Compared to us you are
sheerly infantile. We of Arisia did not originate upon a planet formed
during the recent interpassage of these two galaxies, but upon one
which came into being in an antiquity so distant that the figure in
years would be entirely meaningless to your minds. We were of an age
to your mentalities starkly incomprehensible when your most remote
ancestors began to wriggle about in the slime of your parent world.

"'Do the men of the Patrol know--?' I perceive the question in your
minds. They do not. None save a few of the most powerful of their
minds has the slightest inkling of the truth. To reveal any portion
of it to Civilization as a whole would blight that Civilization
irreparably. Though Seekers after Truth in the best sense, they are
essentially juvenile and their life spans are ephemeral indeed. The
mere realization that there is in existence such a race as ours would
place upon them such an inferiority complex as would make further
advancement impossible. In your case such a course of events is not
to be expected. You will close your minds to all that has happened,
declaring to yourselves that it was impossible and that therefore, it
could not have taken place and did not. Nevertheless, you will stay
away from Arisia henceforth.

"But to resume. You consider yourselves long-lived. Know then,
insects, that your life span of a thousand of your years is but a
moment. I, myself, have already lived eleven thousand such lifetimes,
and I am but a youth--a mere Guardian, not yet to be entrusted with
really serious thinking.

"I have spoken overlong; the reason for my prolixity being that I
do not like to see the energy of a race so misused, so corrupted to
material conquest for its own sake. I would like to set your minds
upon the Way of Truth, if perchance such a thing should be possible. I
have pointed out that Way; whether or not you follow it is for you to
decide. Indeed, I fear that most of you, in your short-sighted pride,
have already cast my message aside; refusing point-blank to change
your habits of thought. It is, however, in the hope that some few of
you will perceive the Way and will follow it by abandoning your planet
and its Eich before it is too late, that I have discoursed at such
length.

"Whether or not you change your habits of thought, I advise you to
heed this, my warning. Arisia does not want and will not tolerate
intrusion. As a lesson, watch these two violators of our privacy
destroy themselves."

The giant voice ceased. Eichlan's tentacles moved toward the controls.
The vast torpedo launched itself.

But instead of hurtling toward distant Arisia it swept around in a
mighty circle and struck in direct central impact the great cruiser of
the Eich. There was an appalling crash, a space-wracking detonation,
a flare of incandescence incredible and indescribable as the energy
calculated to disrupt--almost to volatilize--a world expended itself
upon the insignificant mass of one Boskonian battleship and upon the
unresisting texture of the void.




                                  X.


Considerably more than the stipulated week passed before Kinnison was
done with the librarian and with the long-range communicator beam,
but eventually he succeeded in enlisting the aid of the fifty-three
most eminent scientists and thinkers of all the planets of Galactic
Civilization. From all over the Galaxy were they selected; from
Vandemar and Centralia and Alsakan; from Chickladoria and Radelix; from
the solar systems of Rigel and Sirius and Antares. Millions of planets
were not represented at all; and of the few which were, Tellus alone
had more than one delegate.

This was necessary, Kinnison explained carefully to each of the chosen.
Sir Austin Cardynge, the man whose phenomenal brain had developed a
new mathematics to handle the positron and the negative energy levels,
was the one who would do the work; he himself was present merely as
a co-ordinator and observer. The meeting place, even, was not upon
Tellus, but upon Medon, the newly acquired and hence entirely neutral
planet. For the Gray Lensman knew well the minds with which he would
have to deal.

They were all the geniuses of the highest rank, but in all too many
cases their stupendous mentalities merged altogether too closely upon
insanity for any degree of comfort. Even before the conclave assembled
it became evident that jealousy was to be rife and rampant; and after
the initial meeting, at which the problem itself was propounded, it
required all of Kinnison's ability, authority, and drive, and all of
Worsel's vast diplomacy and tact, to keep those mighty brains at work.

Time after time, some essential entity, his dignity outraged and his
touchy ego infuriated by some real or fancied insult, stalked off
in high dudgeon to return to his own planet; only to be coaxed or
bullied, or even mentally man-handled by Kinnison or Worsel, or both,
into returning to his task.

[Illustration: _Time after time some essential scientist stalked off in
high dudgeon, with Kinnison trailing, soothing ruffled ego._]

Nor were those insults all, or even mostly, imaginary. Quarreling and
bickering were incessant, violent flare-ups and passionate scenes of
denunciation and vituperation were of almost hourly occurrence. Each
of those minds had been accustomed to world-wide adulation, to the
unquestioned acceptance as gospel of his every idea or pronouncement,
and to have to submit his work to the scrutiny and to the unworshipful
criticisms of lesser minds--actually to have to give way, at times,
to those inferior mentalities--was a situation quite definitely
intolerable.

But at length most of them began to work together, as they appreciated
the fact that the problem before them was one which none of them singly
had been able even partially to solve; and Kinnison let the others, the
most fanatically non-co-operative, go home. The progress began--and
none too soon. The Gray Lensman had lost twenty-five pounds of weight,
and even the iron-thewed Worsel was a wreck. He could not fly, he
declared, because his wings buckled in the middle; he could not crawl,
because his belly-plate clashed against his backbone!

And finally the thing was done; reduced to a set of equations which
could be written upon a single sheet of paper. It is true that those
equations would have been meaningless to almost anyone then alive,
since they were based upon a system of mathematics which had been
brought into existence at that very meeting, but Kinnison had taken
care of that.

No Medonian had been allowed in the Conference--the admittance of one
to membership would have caused a massed exodus of the high-strung,
temperamental maniacs working so furiously there--but the Tellurian
Lensman had had recorded every act, almost every thought, of every
one of those geniuses. Those records had been studied for weeks, not
only by Wise of Medon and his staff, but also by a corps of the less
brilliant, but infinitely better balanced scientists of the Patrol
proper.

"Now you fellows can really get to work." Kinnison heaved a sigh of
profound relief as the last member of the Conference figuratively shook
the dust of Medon off his robe as he departed homeward. "I'm going to
sleep for a week. Call me, will you, when you get the model done?"

       *       *       *       *       *

This was sheerest exaggeration, of course, for nothing could have
kept the Lensman from watching the construction of that first
apparatus. He watched the erection of a spherical shell of loosely
latticed truss-work some twenty feet in diameter. He watched the
installation, at its six cardinal points, of atomic exciters, each
capable of transforming ten thousand pounds per hour of substance into
pure energy. He knew that those exciters were driving their intake
screens at a ratio of at least twenty thousand to one; that energy
equivalent to the annihilation of at least six hundred thousand tons
per hour of material was being hurled into the center of that web from
the six small mechanisms which were in fact, super-Bergenholms. Nor
is that word adequate to describe them. They were engines at whose
power the late Dr. Bergenholm himself would have quailed; demons
whose fabrication would have been utterly impossible without Medonian
conductors and insulation.

He watched the construction of a conveyor and a chute and looked
on intently while a hundred thousand tons of refuse--rocks, sand,
concrete, scrap iron, loose metal, débris of all kinds--were dropped
into that innocuous-appearing sphere, only to vanish as though they had
never existed.

"But we ought to be able to see it by this time, I should think!"
Kinnison protested once.

"Not yet, Kim," Master Technician LaVerne Thorndyke informed him. "Just
forming the vortex--microscopic yet. I haven't the faintest idea of
what is going on in there; but man, dear man, _am_ I glad that I'm here
to help make it go on!"

"But _when_?" demanded the Lensman. "How soon will you know whether
it's going to work or not? I want to do a flit."

"You can flit any time--now, if you like," the technician told him,
brutally. "We don't need _you_ any more--you've done your bit. It's
working now. If it wasn't, do you think we could pack all that stuff
into that little space? But we'll have it done long before you'll need
it."

"But I want to see it work, you big lug!" Kinnison retorted, only half
playfully.

"Come back in three-four days--maybe a week; but don't expect to see
anything but a hole."

"That's exactly what I want to see, a hole in space," and that was
precisely what, a few days later, the Lensman did see.

The spherical framework was unchanged, the machines were still carrying
easily their incredible working load. Material--any and all kinds of
stuff--was still disappearing; instantaneously, invisibly, quietly,
with no flash or fury to mark its passing.

But at the center of that massive sphere there now hung poised a--a
_something_. Or was it a nothing? Mathematically, it was a sphere, or
rather a negasphere, about the size of a baseball; but the eye, while
it could see something, could not perceive it analytically. Nor could
the mind envision it in three dimensions, for it was not essentially
three-dimensional in nature. Light sank into the thing, whatever it
was, and vanished. The peering eye could see nothing whatever of shape
or of texture; the mind behind the eye reeled away before infinite
vistas of nothingness.

Kinnison hurled his extrasensory perception into it and jerked
back, almost stunned. It was neither darkness nor blackness, he
decided, after he recovered enough poise to think coherently. It
was worse than that--worse than anything imaginable--an infinitely
vast and yet non-existent realm of the total absence of everything
whatever--_absolute negation_!

"That's it, I guess," the Lensman said then. "Might as well stop
feeding it now."

"We would have to stop soon, in any case," Wise replied, "for your
available waste material is becoming scarce. It will take the substance
of a fairly large planet to produce that which you require. You have,
perhaps, a planet in mind which is to be used for the purpose?"

"Better than that. I have in mind the material of just such a planet,
but already broken up into sizes convenient for handling."

"Oh, the asteroid belt!" Thorndyke exclaimed. "Fine! Kill two birds
with one stone, huh? Build this thing and at the same time clear out
the menaces to inert interplanetary navigation? But how about the
miners?"

"All covered. The ones actually in development will be let alone.
They're not menaces, anyway, as they all have broadcasters. The tramp
miners we send--at Patrol expense and grubstake--to some other system
to do their mining. But there's one more point before we flit. Are you
sure that you can shift to the second stage without an accident?"

"Positive. Build another one around it, mount new Bergs, exciters, and
screens on it, and let this one, machines and all, go in to feed the
kitty--whatever it is," the technician finished.

"QX. Let's go, fellows!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Two huge Tellurian freighters were at hand; and, holding the small
framework between them in a net of tractors and pressors, they set off
blithely toward Sol. They took a couple of hours for the journey--and
there was no hurry, and in the handling of this particular freight
caution was decidedly of the essence.

Arrived at destination, the crews tackled with zest and zeal this new
game. Tractors lashed out, seizing chunks of iron--

"Pick out the little ones, men," cautioned Kinnison. "Nothing over
about ten feet in section-dimension will go into this frame. Better
wait for the second frame before you try to handle the big ones."

"We can cut 'em up," Thorndyke suggested. "What've we got these
shear-planes for?"

"QX if you like. Just so you keep the kitty fed."

"We'll feed her!" and the game went on.

Chunks of débris--some rock, but mostly solid meteoric
nickel-iron--shot toward the vessels and the ravening sphere, becoming
inertialess as they entered a wide-flung zone. Pressors seized them
avidly, pushing them through the interstices of the framework, holding
them against the voracious screen. As they touched the screen they
disappeared; no matter how fast they were driven the screen ate them
away, silently and unspectacularly, as fast as they could be thrown
against it. A weird spectacle indeed, to see a jagged fragment of solid
iron, having a mass of thousands of tons, drive against that screen
and disappear! For it vanished, utterly, along a geometrically perfect
spherical surface. From the opposite side the eye could see the mirror
sheen of the metal at the surface of disintegration! It was as though
the material were being shoved out of our familiar three-dimensional
space into another universe--which, as a matter of cold fact, may have
been the case.

For not even the men who were doing the work made any pretense of
understanding what was happening to that iron. Indeed, the only
entities who did have any comprehension of the phenomenon--the
forty-odd geniuses whose mathematical wizardry had made it
possible--thought of it and discussed it, not in the limited,
three-dimensional symbols of everyday existence, but only in the
language of high mathematics; a language in which few indeed, are able
to really and readily to think.

And while the crews became more and more expert at the new technique,
so that metal came in faster and faster--huge, hot-sliced bars of iron
ten feet square and a quarter of a mile long were being driven into
that enigmatic sphere of extinction--an outer framework a hundred and
fifty miles in diameter was being built. Nor, contrary to what might
be supposed, was a prohibitive amount of metal or of labor necessary
to fabricate that mammoth structure. Instead of six there were six
cubed--two hundred and sixteen--working stations, complete with
generators and super-Bergenholms and screen generators, each mounted
upon a massive platform; but, instead of being connected together and
supported by stupendous beams and trusses of metal, those platforms
were linked by infinitely stronger bonds of pure force. It took a lot
of ships to do the job, but the technicians of the Patrol had at call
enough floating machine shops and to spare.

When the sphere of negation grew to be about a foot in apparent
diameter it had been found necessary to surround it with a screen
opaque to all visible light, for to look into it long or steadily then
meant insanity. Now the opaque screen was sixteen feet in diameter,
nearing dangerously the sustaining framework, and the outer frame was
ready. It was time to change.

The Lensman held his breath, but the Medonians and the Tellurian
technicians did not turn a hair as they mounted their new stations and
tested their apparatus.

"Ready." "Ready." "Ready." Station after station reported:
then, as Thorndyke threw in the master switch, the primary
sphere--invisible now, through distance, to the eye, but plain upon the
visiplates--disappeared; a mere morsel to those new, gigantic forces.

"Swing into it, boys!" Thorndyke yelled into his transmitter. "We don't
have to feed her with a teaspoon any more. Let her have it!"

       *       *       *       *       *

And "let her have it" they did. No more cutting up of the larger
meteorites; asteroids ten, fifteen, twenty miles in diameter, along
with hosts of smaller stuff, were literally hurled through the black
screen into the even lusher blackness of that which was inside it,
without complaint from the quietly humming motors.

"Satisfied, Kim?" Master Technician Thorndyke asked.

"Uh-_huh_!" the Lensman assented, vigorously. "Nice! Slick, in fact,"
he commended. "I'll buzz off now, I guess."

"Might as well--everything's on the green. Clear ether, spacehound!"

"Same to you, big fella. I'll be seeing you, or sending you a thought.
There's Tellus, right over there. Funny, isn't it, doing a flit to a
place you can actually see before you start?"

The trip to Earth was scarcely a hop, even in a supply-boat. To Prime
Base the Gray Lensman went, where he found that his new non-ferrous
speedster was done; and during the next few days he tested it out
thoroughly. It did not register at all, neither upon the regular,
long-range ultra-instruments nor upon the short-range emergency
electros. Nor could it be seen in space, even in a telescope at
point-blank range. True, it occulted an occasional star; but since
even the direct rays of a searchlight failed to reveal its shape to the
keenest eye--the Lensman chemists who had worked out that ninety-nine
point nine nine percent absolute black coating had done a wonderful
job--the chance of discovery through that occurrence was very slight.

"QX, Kim?" the Port Admiral asked. He was accompanying the Gray Lensman
on a last tour of inspection.

"Fine, chief. Couldn't be better--thanks a lot."

"Sure you're non-ferrous yourself?"

"Absolutely. Not even an iron nail in my shoes."

"What is it, then? You look worried. Want something expensive?"

"You hit the thumb, admiral, right on the nail. The trouble is not only
that it's expensive; I'm afraid that probably we'll never have any use
for it."

"Better build it, anyway. Then if you want it you'll have it, and if
you don't want it we can always use it for something. What is it?"

"A nutcracker. There are a lot of cold planets around, aren't there,
that aren't good for anything?"

"Thousands of them--perhaps millions."

"The Medonians put Bergenholms on their planet and flew it from
Lundmark's Nebula to here in a few weeks. Why wouldn't it be a sound
idea to have the planetographers pick out a couple of useless worlds
which, at some points in their orbits, have diametrically opposite
velocities, to within a degree or two?"

"You've got something there, my boy. It shall be done, and at once. A
thing like that is very much worth having, just for its own sake, if we
never have any use for it. Anything else?"

"Not a thing in the universe. Clear ether, chief!"

"Light landings, Kinnison!" and gracefully, effortlessly, the
dead-black sliver of semi-precious metal lifted herself away from
Earth.

       *       *       *       *       *

Through Bominger, the Radeligian Big Shot, Kinnison had had a long and
eminently satisfactory interview with Prellin, the Regional Director
of all surviving Boskonian activities. Thus he knew where the latter
was, even to the address, and knew the name of the firm which was
his alias--Ethan D. Wembleson & Sons, Inc., 4627 Boulevard Dezalies,
Cominoche, Quadrant Eight, Bronseca. That name was Kim's first shock,
for that firm was one of the largest and most conservative houses
in galactic trade; one having an unquestioned AAA1 rating in every
mercantile index.

However, that was the way they worked, Kinnison reflected, as his
speedster reeled off the parsecs. It wasn't far to Bronseca--easy
Lens distance--he'd better call somebody there and start making
arrangements. He had heard about the planet, although he'd never been
there. Somewhat warmer than Tellus, but otherwise very Earthlike.
Millions of Tellurians lived there and liked it.

His approach to the planet Bronseca was characterized by all possible
caution, as was his visit to Cominoche, the capital city. He found
that 4627 Boulevard Dezalies was a structure covering an entire city
block and some eighty stories high, owned and occupied exclusively by
Wembleson's. No visitors were allowed except by appointment. His first
stroll past it showed him that an immense cylinder, comprising almost
the whole interior of the building, was shielded by thought-screens. He
rode up and down in the elevators of nearby buildings--no penetration.
He visited a dozen offices in the neighborhood upon various errands,
choosing his time with care so that he would have to wait in each an
hour or so in order to see his man.

These leisurely scrutinies of his objective failed to reveal a single
fact of value. Ethan D. Wembleson & Sons, Inc., did a tremendous
business, but every ounce of it was legitimate! That is, the files in
the outer offices covered only legitimate transactions, and the men
and women busily at work there were all legitimately employed. And the
inner offices--vastly more extensive than the outer, to judge by the
number of employees entering in the morning and leaving at the close of
business--were sealed against his prying, every second of every day.

He tapped in turn the minds of dozens of those clerks, but drew only
blanks. As far as they were concerned, there was nothing "queer" going
on anywhere in the organization. The "Old Man"--Howard Wembleson, a
grandnephew or something of Ethan--had developed a complex lately that
his life was in danger. Scarcely left the building--not that he had any
need to, as he had always had palatial quarters there--and then only
under heavy guard.

A good many thought-screened persons came and went, but a careful study
of them and their movements convinced the Gray Lensman that he was
wasting his time.

"No soap," he reported to a Lensman at Bronseca's Base. "Might as well
try to stick a pin quietly into a cateagle. He's been told that he's
the next link in the chain, and he's got the jitters right. I'll bet
he's got a dozen loose observers, instead of only one. I'll save time,
I think, by tracing another line. I have thought before that my best
bet is in the asteroid dens instead of on the planets. I let them talk
me out of it--it's a dirty job and I've got to establish an identity of
my own, which will be even dirtier--but it looks as though I'll have to
go back to it."

"But the others are warned, too," suggested the Bronsecan. "They'll
probably be just as bad. Let's blast it open and take a chance on
finding the data you want."

"No," Kinnison said, emphatically. "Not a chance in the universe that
there's anything there that would do me a bit of good on the big hunt.
The others are probably warned, yes, but since they aren't on my direct
line to the throne, they probably aren't taking it as seriously as this
Prellin--or Wembleson--is. Or if they are, they won't keep it up as
long. They can't, and get any joy out of life at all.

"And you can't say a word to Prellin about his screens, either," the
Tellurian went on in reply to a thought. "They're legal enough; just as
much so as spy-ray blocks. Every man has a right to privacy. Just one
question here, or just one suspicious move, is apt to blow everything
into a cocked hat. You fellows keep on working along the lines we laid
out and I'll try another line. If it works, I'll come back and we'll
open this can the way you want to. That way, we may be able to get the
low-down on about four hundred planetary organizations at one haul."

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus it came about that Kinnison took his scarcely-used indetectable
speedster back to Prime Base; and that, in a solar system prodigiously
far removed from both Tellus and Bronseca, there appeared another tramp
meteor-miner.

Peculiar people, these toilers in the interplanetary voids; flotsam and
jetsam; for the most part the very scum of space. Some solar systems
contain vastly greater amounts of asteroidal and meteoric débris than
did ours of Sol; others somewhat less; but all have at least some.
In the main this material is either nickel-iron or rock, but some of
these fragments carry prodigious values in platinum, osmium, and other
noble metals, and occasionally there are discovered diamonds and other
gems of tremendous size and value. Hence, in the asteroid belts of
every solar system there are to be found those universally despised,
but nevertheless bold and hardy souls who, risking life and limb from
moment to moment though they are, yet live in hope that the next lump
of cosmic detritus will prove to be a bonanza.

Some of these men are the sheer misfits of life. Some are petty
criminals, fugitives from the justice of their own planets, but not of
sufficient importance to be upon the "wanted" lists of the Patrol. Some
are of those who for some reason or other--addiction to drugs, perhaps,
or the overwhelming urge occasionally to go on a spree--are unable or
unwilling to hold down the steady jobs of their more orthodox brethren.
Still others, and these are many, live that horridly adventurous life
because it is in their blood; like the lumberjacks who in ancient times
dwelt upon Tellus, they labor tremendously and unremittingly for weeks,
only and deliberately to "blow in" the fruits of their toil in a few
wild days and still wilder nights of hectic, sanguine, and lustful
debauchery in one or another of the spacemen's hells of which every
inhabited solar system has its quota.

But, whatever their class, they have much in common. They all live for
the moment only, from hand to mouth. They all are intrepid spacemen.
They have to be--all others die during their first venture. They all
live dangerously, violently. They are men of red and gusty passions,
and they have, if not an actual contempt, at least a loud-voiced
scorn of the law in its every phase and manifestation. "Law ends with
atmosphere" is the galaxy-wide creed of the clan, and it is a fact that
no law save that of the ray-gun is even yet really enforced in the
badlands of the asteroid belts.

Indeed, the meteor miners as a matter of course, take their innate
lawlessness with them into their revels in the crimson-lit resorts
already referred to. In general the nearby Planetary Police adopt
a laissez faire attitude, particularly since the asteroids are not
within their jurisdictions, but independent worlds, each with its own
world-government. If they kill a dozen or so of each other and of the
bloodsuckers who batten upon them, what of it? If everybody in those
hells could be killed at once, the Universe would be that much better
off!--and if the Galactic Patrol is compelled, by some unusually
outrageous performance, to intervene in the revelry, it comes in,
not as single policemen, but in platoons or in companies of armed,
full-armored infantry going to war!

Such, then, were those among whom Kinnison chose to cast his lot, in a
new effort to get in touch with the Galactic Director of the drug ring.




                                  XI.


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.




                                 XII.


As has been implied, Miners' Rest was the biggest, widest-open, least
restrained joint in that entire sector of the Galaxy. And through the
underground activities of his fellows of the Patrol, Kinnison knew
that of all the king-snipes of that lawless asteroid, the man called
Strongheart was the big shot.

Therefore, the Lensman landed his battered craft at Strongheart's dock,
loaded the equipment of the hijacker's boat into a hand truck, and went
in to talk to Strongheart himself. "Supplies--Equipment--Metal--Bought
and Sold" the sign read; but to any experienced eye it was evident that
the sign was conservative indeed; that it did not cover Strongheart's
business, by half. There were dance halls, there were long and ornate
bars, there were rooms in plenty devoted to various games of so-called
chance, and most significant, there were scores of the unmistakable
cubicles in which the basest passions and lusts of man were satisfied.

"Welcome, stranger! Glad to see you. Have a good trip?" The divekeeper
always greeted new customers effusively. "Have a drink on the house!"

"Business before pleasure," Kinnison replied, tersely. "Pretty good,
yes. Here's some stuff I don't need any more that I aim to sell.
What'll you gimme for it?"

The dealer inspected the suits and instruments, then bored a keen stare
into the miner's eyes; a scrutiny under which Kinnison neither flushed
nor wavered.

"Two hundred and fifty credits for the lot," Strongheart decided.

"Best you can do?"

"Tops. Take it or leave it."

"QX, they're yours. Gimme it."

"Why, this just starts our business, don't it? Ain't you got cores?
Sure you have."

"Yeah, but not for no"--doubly and unprintably qualified--"damn robber.
I like a louse, but you suit me altogether too damn well. Them suits
alone, just as they lay, are worth a thousand."

"So what? For why go to insult me, a business man? Sure I can't give
what that stuff is worth--who could? You ought to know how I got to get
rid of hot goods. You killed, ain't it, the guys what owned it, so how
could I treat it except like it's hot? Now be your age--don't burn out
no jets," as the Lensman turned with a blistering, sizzling deep-space
oath. "I know they shot first, they always do, but how does that change
things? But keep your shirt on yet. I don't tell nobody nothing. For
why should I? How could I make any money on hot goods if I talk too
much with my mouth, huh? But on cores, that's something else again.
Meteors is legitimate merchandise, and I pay you as much as anybody,
maybe more."

"QX," and Kinnison tossed over his cores. He had sold the bandits'
spacesuits and equipment deliberately, in order to minimize further
killing.

This was his first visit to Miners' Rest, but he intended to become an
habitue of the place; and before he would be accepted as a "regular"
he knew that he would have to prove his quality. Buckoes and bullies
would be sure to try him out. This way was much better. The tale would
spread; and any gunman who had drilled two hijackers, dead-center
through the face-plates, was not one to be challenged lightly. He might
have to kill one or two, but not many, nor frequently.

And the fellow was honest enough in his buying of the metal. His
Spaldings cut honest cores--Kinnison put micrometers on them to
be sure of that fact. He did not under-read his torsiometer, and
he weighed the meteors upon certified balances. He used Galactic
Standard average-value-density tables, and offered exactly half of the
calculated average value; which, Kinnison knew, was fair enough. By
taking his metal to a mint or rare-metals station of the Patrol, any
miner could get the precise value of any meteor, as shown by detailed
analysis. However, instead of making the long trip and waiting--and
paying--for the exact analyses, the miners usually preferred to take
the "fifty-percent-of-average-density-value" which was the customary
offer of the outside dealers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then, the meteors unloaded and hauled away. Kinnison dickered with
Strongheart concerning the supplies he would need during his next trip;
the hundred-and-one items which are necessary to make a tiny spaceship
a self-contained, self-sufficient, warm and inhabitable worldlet in the
immense and unfriendly vacuity of space. Here, too, the Lensman was
overcharged shamelessly; but that, too, was routine. No one would, or
could be expected to, do business in any such place as Miners' Rest in
any sane or ordinary percentage of profit.

When Strongheart counted out to him the net proceeds of the voyage,
Kinnison scratched reflectively at his whiskery chin.

"That ain't hardly enough, I don't think, for the real, old-fashioned,
stem-winding bender I was figuring on," he ruminated. "I been out a
long time and I was figuring on doing the thing up brown. Have to let
go of my nugget, too, I guess. Kinda hate to--been packing it around
quite a while--but here she is." He reached into his kit-bag and tossed
over the lump of really precious metal. "Let you have it for fifteen
hundred credits."

"Fifteen hundred! An idiot you must be, or you should think I'm one, I
don't know?" Strongheart yelped, as he juggled the mass lightly from
hand to hand. "Two hundred, you mean ... well two fifty, then, but
that's an awful high bid, mister, believe me. I tell you, I couldn't
give my own mother over three hundred--I'd lose money on the goods.
You ain't tested it, what makes you think it's such a much?"

"No, and I notice you ain't testing it, neither," Kinnison countered.
"Me and you both know metal well enough so we don't need to test no
such nugget as that. Fifteen hundred or I flit to a mint and get full
value for it. I don't have to stay here, you know, by all the nine
hells of Valeria. There's millions of other places where I can get just
as drunk and have just as good a time as I can here."

There ensued howls of protest, but Strongheart finally yielded, as the
Lensman had known that he would. He could have forced him higher, but
fifteen hundred was enough.

"Now, sir, just the guarantee and you're all set for a lot of fun."
Strongheart's anguish had departed miraculously upon the instant of
the deal's closing. "We take your keys, and when your money's gone
and you come back to get 'em, to sell your supplies or your ship or
whatever, we takes you, without hurting you a bit more than we have
to, and sober you up, quick as scat. A room here, whenever you want
it, included. Padded, sir, very nice and comfortable--you can't hurt
yourself, possibly. We been in business here for years, with perfect
satisfaction. Not one of our customers--and we got hundreds who never
go nowhere else--have we ever let sell any of the stuff he had laid in
for his next trip, and we never steal none of his supplies, neither.
Only two hundred credits for the whole service, sir. Cheap, sir--very,
_very_ cheap at the price."

"Um-m-m"--Kinnison again scratched meditatively, this time at the nape
of his neck--"I'll take your guarantee, I guess, because sometimes,
when I get to going real good, I don't know just exactly when to
stop. But I won't need no padded cell. Me, I don't never get violent.
I always taper off on twenty-four units of bentlam. That gives me
twenty-four hours on the shelf, and then I'm all set for another
stretch out in the ether. You couldn't get me no benny, I don't
suppose, and if you could it wouldn't be no damn good."

This was the critical instant, the moment the Lensman had been
approaching so long and so circuitously. Mind was already reading mind,
Kinnison did not need the speech which followed.

"Twenty-four units!" Strongheart exclaimed. That was a heroic dose--but
the man before him was of heroic mold. "Sure of that?"

"Sure I'm sure; and if I get cut weight or cut quality I cut the guy's
throat that peddles it to me. But I ain't out. I got a few good jolts
left. Guess I'll use my own, and when it gets gone go buy some from a
fella I know that's about half honest."

"Don't handle it myself," this, the Lensman knew, was at least
partially true, "but I know a man who has a friend who can get it.
Good stuff, too, in the original tins; special import from Corvina II.
That'll be four hundred altogether. Gimme it and you can start your
helling around."

"Whatja mean, four hundred?" Kinnison snorted. "Think I'm just blasting
off about having some left, huh? Here's two hundred for your guarantee,
and that's all I want out of you."

"Wait a minute. Jet back, miner!" Strongheart had thought that the
newcomer was entirely out of his drug, and could therefore be charged
eight prices for it. "How much do you get it for, mostly, the clear
quill?"

"One credit per unit--twenty-four for the jolt," Kinnison replied
tersely and truly. That was the prevailing price charged by retail
peddlers. "I'll pay you that, and I don't mean twenty-five, neither."

"QX, gimme it. You don't need to be afraid of being bumped off or
rolled here, neither. We got a reputation, we have."

"Yeah, I been told you run a high-class joint," Kinnison agreed,
amiably. "That's why I'm here. But you wanna be mighty sure that the
ape don't gyp me on the dose--looky here!"

       *       *       *       *       *

As the Lensman spoke he shrugged his shoulders and the divekeeper
leaped backward with a shriek; for faster than sight two ugly
DeLameters had sprung into being in the miner's huge, dirty paws and
were pointing squarely at his midriff!

"Put 'em away!" Strongheart yelled.

"Look 'em over first," and Kinnison handed them over, butts first.
"These ain't like them buzzards' cap-pistols what I sold you. These are
my own, and they're hot and tight. You know guns, don't you? Look 'em
over, pal--real close."

The renegade did know weapons, and he studied these two with care,
from the worn, rough-checkered grips and full-charged magazines to the
burned, scarred, deeply-pitted orifices. Definitely and unmistakably
they were weapons of terrific power; weapons, withal, which had seen
hard and frequent service; and Strongheart personally could bear
witness to the blinding speed of this miner's draw.

"And remember this," the Lensman went on. "I never yet got so drunk
that anybody could take my guns away from me, and if I don't get a full
jolt of benny I get mighty peevish."

The publican knew that--it was a characteristic of the drug--and he
certainly did not want that miner running amuck with those two weapons
in his highly capable hands. He would, he assured him, get his full
dose.

And, for his part, Kinnison knew that he was reasonably safe, even in
this hell of hells. As long as he was active he could take care of
himself, in any kind of company, and he was fairly certain that he
would not be slain, during his drug-induced physical helplessness,
for the value of his ship and supplies. This one visit had yielded
Strongheart a profit of four or five times what he had left, and each
subsequent visit should yield a similar amount.

"The first drink's on the house, always," Strongheart derailed his
guest's train of thought. "What'll it be? Tellurian ain't you--whiskey?"

"Uh-huh. Close, though--Aldebaran II. Got any good old Aldebaranian
bolega?"

"No, but we got some good old Tellurian whiskey, about the same thing."

"QX--gimme a shot." He poured a stiff three fingers, downed it at a
gulp, shuddered ecstatically, and emitted a wild yell. "Yip-yip-yipee!
I'm Wild Bill Williams, the ripping, roaring, ritoo-dolorum from
Aldebaran II, and this is my night to howl. Whee ... yow ...
owrie-e-e!" Then, quieting down, "This rotgut wasn't never within a
million parsecs of Tellus, but it ain't bad--not bad at all. Got the
teeth and claws of holy old Klono himself--goes down your throat just
like swallowing a mad Radeligian cateagle. Clear ether, pal, I'll be
back shortly."

For his first care was to tour the entire Rest, buying scrupulously one
good stiff drink, of whatever first came to hand, at each hot spot as
he came to it.

"A good-will tour," he explained joyously to Strongheart upon his
return. "Got to do it, pal, to keep 'em from calling down the curse of
Klono on me, but I'm going to do all my serious drinking right here."

And he did. He drank various and sundry beverages, mixing them with a
sublime disregard for consequences which surprised even the hard-boiled
booze fighters assembled there. "Anything that'll pour," he declared,
loud and often, and acted accordingly. Potent or mild; brewed,
fermented, or distilled; loaded, cut, or straight, all one. "Down the
hatch!" and down it went. Here was a two-fisted drinker whose like had
not been seen for many a day, and his fame spread throughout the Rest.

[Illustration: _Miners' Rest was a meeting place for a dozen races of
meteor miners--and Kim, with free-flowing liquor, made friends with
them all!_]

Being a "happy jag," the more he drank the merrier he became. He
bestowed largess hither and yon, in joyous abandon. He danced blithely
with the hostesses and tipped them extravagantly. He did not gamble,
explaining frequently and painstakingly that that wasn't none of his
dish; he wanted to have fun with his money.

He fought, even, without anger or rancor; but gayly, laughing with
Homeric gusto the while. He missed with terrific swings that would
have felled a horse had they landed; only occasionally getting in, as
though by chance, a paralyzing punch. Thus he accumulated an entirely
unnecessary mouse under each eye and a sadly bruised nose.

However, his good humor was, as is generally the case in such
instances, quite close to the surface, and was prone to turn into
passionate anger with less real cause even than the trivialities which
started the friendly fist-fights. During various of these outbursts of
wrath he smashed four chairs, two tables, and assorted glassware.

But only once did he have to draw a deadly weapon--the news, as he
had known it would, had spread abroad that with a DeLameter he was
nobody to monkey with--and even then he didn't have to kill the guy.
Just winging him--a little bit of a burn through his gun-arm--had been
enough.

       *       *       *       *       *

So it went for days. And finally, it was an immense relief that the
hilariously drunken Lensman, his money gone to the last millo, went
roistering up the street with a two-quart bottle in each hand; swigging
now from one, then from the other; inviting bibulously the while
any and all chance comers to join him in one last, fond drink. The
sidewalk was not wide enough for him, by half; indeed, he took up most
of the street. He staggered and reeled, retaining any semblance of
balance only by a miracle and by his rigorous spaceman's training.

He threw away one empty bottle, then the other. Then, as he strode
along, so purposefully and yet so futilely, he sang. His voice was
not particularly musical, but what it lacked in quality of tone it
more than made up in volume. Kinnison had a really remarkable voice,
a bass of tremendous power, timbre, and resonance; and, pulling out
all the stops, in tones audible for two thousand yards against the
wind, he poured out his zestfully lusty reveler's soul. His song was
a deep-space chanty that would have blistered the ears of any of the
gentler spirits who had known him as Kimball Kinnison, of Earth; but
which, in Miners' Rest, was merely a humorous and sprightly ballad.

Up the full length of the street he went. Then back, as he put it, to
"Base." Even if this final bust did make him sicker at the stomach than
a ground-gripper going free for the first time, the Lensman reflected,
he had done a mighty good job. He had put Wild Bill Williams, meteor
miner, of Aldebaran II, on the map in a big way. It wasn't a faked and
therefore fragile identity, either; it was solidly, definitely his own.

Staggering up to his friend Strongheart he steadied himself
with two big hands upon the latter's shoulders and breathed a
forty-thousand-horsepower breath into his face.

"I'm boiled like a Tellurian hoot-owl," he announced, still happily.
"When I'm this stewed I can't say 'partic-hic-hicu-lar-ly' without
hick-hicking, but I would partic-hic-hicularly just like one more
quart. How about me borrowing a hundred on what I'm going to bring in
next time, or selling you--"

"You've had plenty, Bill. You've had lots of fun. How about a good
chew of sleep-happy, huh?"

"That's a thought!" the miner exclaimed eagerly. "Lead me to it!"

       *       *       *       *       *

A stranger came up unobtrusively and took him by one elbow. Strongheart
took the other, and between them they walked him down a narrow hall and
into a cubicle. And while he walked flabbily along Kinnison studied
intently the brain of the newcomer. _This_ was what he was after!

The ape had had a screen; but it was such a nuisance he took it off
for a rest whenever he came here. No Lensman on Euphrosyne! They had
combed everybody, even this drunken bum here. This was one place that
no Lensman would ever come to; or, if he did, he wouldn't last long.
Kinnison had been pretty sure that Strongheart would be in cahoots with
somebody bigger than a peddler, and so it had proved. This guy knew
plenty, and the Lensman was taking the information--all of it. Six
weeks from now, eh? Just right--time to find enough metal for another
royal binge here. And during that binge he would really do things.

Six weeks. Quite a while ... but ... QX. It would take some time yet,
anyway, probably, before the Regional Directors would, like this
fellow, get over their scares enough to relax a few of their most
irksome precautions. And, as has been intimated, Kinnison, while
impatient enough at times, could hold himself in check like a cat
watching a mouse hole whenever it was really necessary.

Therefore, in the cell, he seated himself upon the bunk and seized
the packet from the hand of the stranger. Tearing it open, he stuffed
the contents into his mouth; and, eyes rolling and muscles twitching,
he chewed vigorously; expertly allowing the potent juice to trickle
down his gullet just fast enough to keep his head humming like a swarm
of angry bees. Then, the cud sucked dry, he slumped down upon the
mattress, physically dead to the world for the ensuing twenty-four G-P
hours.

He awakened; weak, flimsy, and supremely wretched. He made heavy going
to the office, where Strongheart returned to him the keys of his boat.

"Feeling low, sir." It was a statement, not a question.

"I'll say so," the Lensman groaned. He was holding his spinning head,
trying to steady the gyrating universe. "I'd have to look up--'way,
'way up, with a number nine visiplate--to see a snake's belly in a
swamp. Make that damn cat quit stomping his feet, can't you?"

"Too bad, but it won't last long." The voice was unctuous enough, but
totally devoid of feeling. "Here's a pickup--you need it."

The Lensman tossed off the potion, without thanks, as was good
technique in those parts. His head cleared miraculously, although the
stabbing ache remained.

"Come in again next time. Everything's been on the green, ain't it,
sir?"

"Uh-huh, very nice," the Lensman admitted. "Couldn't ask for better.
I'll be back in five or six weeks, if I have any luck at all."

As the battered but stanch and powerful meteorboat floated slowly
upward a desultory conversation was taking place in the dive he
had left. At that early hour business was slack to the point of
nonexistence, and Strongheart was chatting idly with a bartender and
one of the hostesses.

"If more of the boys was like him, we wouldn't have no trouble at all,"
Strongheart stated with conviction. "Nice, quiet, easygoing--why, he
didn't hardly damage a thing, for all his fun."

"Yeah, but at that maybe it's a good gag nobody riled him up too much,"
the barkeep opined. "He could be rough if he wanted to, I bet a quart.
Drunk or sober, he's chain lightning with them DeLameters."

"He's so refined, such a perfect gentleman," sighed the woman. "He's
nice." To her, he had been. She had had plenty of credits from the big
miner, without having given anything save smiles and dances in return.
"Them two guys he drilled must have needed killing, or he wouldn't have
burned 'em."

And that was that. As the Lensman had intended, Wild Bill Williams was
an old, known, and highly respected resident of Miners' Rest!

       *       *       *       *       *

Out among the asteroids again; more muscle-tearing, back-breaking,
lonesome labor. Kinnison did not find any more fabulously rich
meteors--such things happen only once in a hundred lifetimes--but he
was getting his share of heavy stuff. Then one day when he had about
half a load there came, screaming in upon the emergency wave, a call
for help; a call so loud that the ship broadcasting it must be very
close indeed. Yes, there she was, right in his lap; startlingly large
even upon the low-power plates of his spacetramp.

"Help! Spaceship _Hyperion_, position--" a rattling string of numbers.
"Bergenholm dead, meteorite screens practically disabled, intrinsic
velocity throwing us into the asteroids. Any spacetugs, any vessels
with tractors--hurry!"

At the first word Kinnison had shoved his blast-lever full over. A few
seconds of free flight, a minute of inert maneuvering that taxed to the
utmost his Lensman's skill and powerful frame, and he was within the
liner's air lock.

"I know something about Bergs!" he snapped. "Take this boat of mine and
pull! Are you evacuating passengers?" he shot at the mate as they ran
toward the engine room.

"Yes, but afraid we haven't boats enough--overloaded," was the gasped
reply.

"Use mine--fill 'er up!" If the mate was surprised at such an offer
from the despised spacerat he did not show it. There were many more
surprises in store.

In the engine room Kinnison brushed aside a crew of helplessly futile
gropers and threw in switch after switch. He looked. He listened. Above
all, he pried into that sealed monster of power with all his sense of
perception. How glad he was now that he and Thorndyke had struggled
so long and so furiously with a balky Bergenholm on that trip to
tempestuous Trenco! For as a result of that trip he _did_ know Bergs,
with a sure knowledge.

"Number four lead is shot somewhere," he reported. "Must be burned off
where it clears the pilaster. Careless overhaul last time--got to take
off the lower port third cover. No time for wrenches--get me a cutting
beam, and get the lead out of your pants!"

The beam was brought on the double and the Lensman himself blasted
away the designated cover. Then, throwing an insulated plate over the
red-hot casing he lay on his back--"Hand me a light!"--and peered
briefly upward into the bowels of the Gargantuan mechanism.

"I thought so," he grunted. "Piece of four-oh stranded, eighteen inches
long. Ditmars number six clip ends, spaced to twenty inches between
hole-centers. Myerbeer insulation on center section, doubled. Snap it
up! One of you other fellows, bring me a short, heavy screwdriver and a
Ditmars six wrench!"

The technicians worked fast and in a matter of seconds the stuff was
there. The Lensman labored briefly but hugely; and much more surely
than if he were dependent upon the rays of the hand-lamp to penetrate
the smoky, steamy, greasy murk in which he toiled. Then:

"QX--give her the juice!" he snapped.

They gave it, and to the stunned surprise of all, she took it. The
liner again was free!

"Kind of a jury-rigging I gave it, but it'll hold long enough to
get you into port, sir," he reported to the captain in his sanctum,
saluting crisply. He was in for it now, he knew, as the officer stared
at him. But he _couldn't_ have let that shipload of passengers get
ground up into hamburger. Anyway, there was no way out.

       *       *       *       *       *

In apparent reaction he turned pale and trembled, and the officer
hastily took from his medicinal stores a bottle of choice brandy.

"Here, drink this," he directed, proffering the glass:

Kinnison did so. More, he seized the bottle from the captain's hand and
drank that, too--all of it--a draft which would have literally turned
him inside out a few months since. Then, to the captain's horrified
disgust, he took from his filthy dungarees a packet of bentlam and
began to chew it, idiotically blissful. Thence, and shortly, into
oblivion.

"Poor devil--you poor, poor devil," the commander murmured, and had him
put into a bunk.

When he had come to and had had his pickup, the captain came and
regarded him soberly.

"You were a man once. An engineer, and a crackerjack; or I'm an oiler's
pimp," he said levelly.

"Maybe," Kinnison replied, white and weak. "I'm all right yet, except
once in a while--"

"I know," the captain frowned. "No cure?"

"Not a chance. Tried dozens. So--" and the Lensman spread out his hands
in a hopeless gesture.

"Better tell me your name, anyway--your real name. That'll let your
planet know that you aren't--"

"Better not," the sufferer shook his aching head. "Folks think I'm
dead. Better let them keep on thinking so. Williams is the name, sir;
William Williams, of Aldebaran II."

"As you say."

"How far are we from where I boarded you?"

"Close. Less than half a billion miles. This, the second, is our home
planet: your asteroid belt is just outside the orbit of the fourth."

"I can hop it in an hour, easy. Guess I'll buzz off."

"As you say," the officer agreed, again. "But we'd like to--" and he
extended a sheaf of currency.

"Rather not, sir, thanks. You see, the longer it takes me to earn
another stake, the longer it'll be before--"

"I see. Thanks, anyway, for us all," and captain and mate helped the
derelict embark. They scarcely looked at him, scarcely dared look at
each other, but--

Kinnison, for his part, was almost content. This story, too, would get
around. It would be in Miners' Rest before he got back there, and it
would help--help a lot.

He did not see how he could possibly, or ever, let those officers know
the truth, even though he realized full well that at that very moment
they were thinking, pityingly:

"The poor devil--the poor, brave devil!"




                                 XIII.


The Gray Lensman went back to his mining with a will and with
unimpaired vigor, for his distress aboard the ship he had rescued had
been sheerest acting. One small bottle of good brandy was scarcely a
cocktail to the physique that had stood up under quart after quart of
the crudest, wickedest, fieriest beverage known to space; that tiny
morsel of bentlam--scarcely half a unit--affected him no more than a
lozenge of licorice.

Three weeks. Twenty-one days, each of twenty-four G-P hours. At the
end of that time, he had learned from the mind of the zwilnik that
the Boskonian director of this, the Borovan solar system, would visit
Miners' Rest, to attend some kind of a meeting. His informant did not
know what the meeting was to be about, and he was not unduly curious
about it. Kinnison, however, did and was.

The Lensman knew, or at least very shrewdly suspected, that that
meeting was to be a regional conference of big-shot zwilniks; he was
intensely curious to know all about everything that was to take place;
and he was determined to be present.

Three weeks was lots of time. In fact, he should be able to complete
his quota of heavy metal in two, or less. It was there, there was no
question of that. Right out there were the meteors, unaccountable
thousands of millions of them, and a certain proportion of them carried
values. The more and the harder he worked, the more of these worthwhile
wanderers of the void he would find. Therefore he labored long, hard,
and rapidly, and his store of high-test meteors grew apace.

To such good purpose did he use beam and Spalding drill that he was
ready more than a week ahead of time. That was QX--he'd much rather be
early than late. Something might have happened to hold him up--things
did happen, too often--and he had to be at that meeting!

Thus it came about that, a few days before the all-important date,
Kinnison's battered treasure-hunter blasted herself down to her second
landing at Strongheart's dock. This time the miner was welcomed, not as
a stranger, but as a friend of long standing.

"Hi, Wild Bill!" Strongheart yelled at sight of the big spacehound.
"Right on time, I see--glad to see you! Luck, too, I hope--lots of
luck, and all good, I bet me--ain't it?"

"Ho, Strongheart!" the Lensman roared in return, pommeling the
divekeeper affectionately. "Had a good trip, yeah--a fine trip. Struck
a rich sector--twice as much as I got last time. Told you I'd be back
in five or six weeks, and made it in five weeks and four days."

"Keeping tab on the days, huh?"

"I'll say I do. With a thirst like mine a guy can't do nothing else--I
tell you all my guts're dryer than any desert on the whole of Mars.
Well, what're we waiting for? Check this plunder of mine in and let me
get to going places and doing things!"

The business end of the visit was settled with neatness and dispatch.
Dealer and miner understood each other thoroughly, each knew what could
and what could not be done to the other. The meteors were tested and
weighed. Supplies for the ensuing trip were bought. The guarantee and
twenty-four units of benny--QX. No argument. No hysterics. No bickering
or quarreling or swearing. Everything on the green, all the way.
Gentlemen and friends. Kinnison turned over his keys, accepted a thick
sheaf of currency, and, after the first formal drink with his host,
set out upon the self-imposed, superstitious tour of the other hot
spots which would bring him favor--or at least would avert the active
disfavor--of Klono, his spaceman's deity.

       *       *       *       *       *

This time, however, that tour took longer. Upon his first ceremonial
round he had entered each saloon in turn, had bought one drink of
whatever was nearest, had tossed it down, and had gone on to the next
place; unobserved and inconspicuous. Now, how different it all was!
Wherever he went he was the center of attention.

Men who had met him before flung themselves upon him with whoops of
welcome; men who had never seen him clamored to drink with him; women,
whether or not they knew him, fawned upon him and brought into play
their every lure and wile. For not only was this man a hero and a
celebrity of sorts; he was a lucky--or a skillful--miner whose every
trip resulted in wads of money big enough to clog the under jets of a
Valerian freighter! Moreover, when he was lit up he threw it around
regardless, and he was getting stewed as fast as he could swallow.
Let's keep him here--or, if we can't do that, let's go along, wherever
he goes!

This, too, was strictly according to the Lensman's expectations.
Everybody knew that he did not do any serious drinking glass by glass
at the bar, but bottle by bottle; that he did not buy individual drinks
for his friends, but let them drink as deeply as they would from
whatever container chanced then to be in hand; and his vast popularity
gave him a sound excuse to begin his bottle-buying at the start instead
of waiting until he got back to Strongheart's. He bought, then, several
or many bottles and tins in each place, instead of a single drink. And,
since everybody knew for a fact that he was a practically bottomless
drinker, who was even to suspect that he barely moistened his gullet
while the hangers-on were really emptying the bottles, flasks, and
flagons?

And during his real celebration at Strongheart's, while he drank
enough, he did not drink too much. He waxed exceedingly happy and
frolicsome, as before. He was as profligate, as extravagant in tips. He
had the same sudden flashes of hot anger. He fought enthusiastically
and awkwardly, as Wild Bill Williams did, although only once or twice,
that time; and he did not have to draw his DeLameters at all--he was so
well known and so beloved! He sang as loudly and as raucously, and with
the same good taste in madrigals.

Therefore, when the infiltration of thought-screened men warned him
that the meeting was about to be called Kinnison was ready. He was in
fact cold sober when he began his tuneful, last-two-bottles trip up
the street, and he was almost as sober when he returned to "Base,"
empty of bottles and pockets, to make the usual attempt to obtain more
money from Strongheart and to compromise by taking his farewell chew of
bentlam instead.

[Illustration: _As any man should under that mighty dose of bentlam,
Kim passed out--physically. But his mind reached out, even while the
attendants carried his dulled body out--_]

Nor was he unduly put out by the fact that both Strongheart and the
zwilnik were now wearing screens. He had taken it for granted that
they might be, and had planned accordingly. He seized the packet as
avidly as before, chewed its contents as ecstatically, and slumped down
as helplessly and as idiotically. That much of the show, at least,
was real. Twenty-four units of that drug will paralyze _any_ human
body, make it assume the unmistakable pose and stupefied mien of the
bentlam-eater. But Kinnison's mind was not an ordinary one; the dose
which would have rendered any bona-fide miner's brain as helpless as
his body did not affect the Lensman's new equipment at all. Alcohol and
bentlam together were bad, but the Lensman was sober. Therefore, if
anything, the drugging of his body only made it easier to dissociate
his new mind from it. Furthermore, he need not waste any thought in
making it act. There was only one way it could act, now, and Kinnison
let his new senses roam abroad without even thinking of the body he was
leaving behind him.

       *       *       *       *       *

In view of the rigorous orders from higher-up the conference room
was heavily guarded by screened men; no one except old and trusted
employees were allowed to enter it, and they were also protected.
Nevertheless, Kinnison got in, by proxy.

A clever pickpocket brushed against a screened waiter who was about to
enter the sacred precincts, lightning fingers flicking a switch. The
waiter began to protest--then forgot what he was going to say, even as
the pickpocket forgot completely the deed he had just done. The waiter
in turn was a trifle clumsy in serving a certain big shot, but earned
no rebuke thereby; for the latter forgot the offense almost instantly.
Under Kinnison's control the director fumbled at his screen-generator
for a moment, loosening slightly a small but important resister. That
done, the Lensman withdrew delicately and the meeting was an open book.

"Before we do anything," the director began, "show me that all your
screens are on." He bared his own--it would have taken an expert
service man an hour to find that it was not functioning perfectly.

"Poppycock!" snorted the zwilnik. "Who in all the hells of space thinks
that a Lensman would--or _could_--come to Euphrosyne?"

"No one can tell what this particular Lensman can or can't do, and
nobody knows what he is doing until just before he dies. Hence the
strictness. You've searched everybody here, of course?"

"Everybody," Strongheart averred, "even the drunks and dopes. The whole
building is screened, besides the screens we're wearing."

"The dopes don't count, of course, provided they're really doped." No
one, except the Gray Lensman himself, could possibly conceive of a
Lensman being--not seeming to be, but actually _being_--a drunken sot,
to say nothing of being a confirmed addict of any drug. "By the way,
who is this Wild Bill Williams that I've been hearing about?"

Strongheart and his friend looked at each other and laughed.

"I checked up on him early," the zwilnik chuckled. "He isn't the
Lensman, of course, but I thought at first he might be an agent. We
frisked him and his ship thoroughly--no dice--and checked back on him
as a miner, four solar systems back. He's clean, anyway; this is his
second bender here. He's been guzzling everything in stock for a week,
getting more pie-eyed every day, and Strongheart and I just put him to
bed with twenty-four units of benny. You know what _that_ means, don't
you?"

"Your own benny or his?" the director asked.

"My own. That's why I know he's clean. All the other dopes are, too.
The drunks we gave the bum's rush, like you told us to."

"QX. I don't think there's any danger, myself--I think that the
hot-shot Lensman they're afraid of is still working Bronseca--but these
orders not to take any chances at all come from 'way, 'way up."

"How about this new system they're working on, that nobody knows his
boss any more?" asked the zwilnik. "Hooey, I call it."

"Not ready yet," the director answered. "They haven't been able to
invent one that is safe enough for them and yet will handle the volume
of work that has to be done. In the meantime, we're using these books.
Cumbersome, but absolutely safe, they say, unless and until the enemy
gets onto the idea. Then one group will go into the lethal chambers of
the Patrol and the rest of us will use something else. Some say that
this code can't be cracked without the key; others say any code can be
read in time. Anyway here's your orders. Pass them along. Give me your
stuff and we'll have supper and a few drinks."

They ate. They drank. They enjoyed an evening and a night of high
revelry and low dissipation, each to his taste; each secure in the
knowledge that his thought-screen was one-hundred-percent effective
against the one enemy he really feared. Indeed, the screens were that
effective--then. The Lensman, having learned from the director all that
he knew, had restored the generator to full efficiency in the instant
of his relinquishment of control.

Although the heads of the zwilniks, and therefore their minds, were
secure against Kinnison's prying, the books of record were not. And,
though his body was lying helpless, inert upon a drug-fiend's cot, his
sense of perception read those books; if not as readily as though they
were in his hands and open, yet readily enough. And, far off in space,
a power-brained Lensman yclept Worsel, recorded upon imperishable
metal a detailed account, including names, dates, facts, and figures,
of all the doings of all the zwilniks of a solar system!

The information was coded, it is true; but, since Kinnison knew the
key, it might just as well have been printed in English. To the later
consternation of Narcotics, however, that tape was sent in under
Lensman's seal--the spool could not be opened until the Gray Lensman
gave the word.

       *       *       *       *       *

In twenty-four hours Kinnison recovered from the effects of his
debauch. He got his keys from Strongheart. He left the asteroid. He
knew the mighty intellect with whom he had next to deal, he knew where
that entity was to be found; but, sad to say, he had positively no idea
at all as to what he was going to do or how he was going to do it.

Wherefore it was that a sense of relief tempered, with no small degree,
the natural apprehension he felt upon receiving an insistent call from
Port Admiral Haynes. Truly this must be something really extraordinary,
for while during the long months of his service Kinnison had called the
chief of staff scores of times, Haynes had never before lensed him.

"Kinnison! Haynes calling!" the message beat into his consciousness.

"Kinnison acknowledging Haynes, sir!" the Gray Lensman thought back.

"Am I interrupting anything important?"

"No, sir, not at all. I'm just doing a little flit."

"A situation has come up which we feel you should study, not only in
person, but also without advance information or preconceived ideas. Is
it at all possible for you to come into Prime Base immediately?"

"Yes, sir, eminently so. In fact, a little time right now might do me
good in two ways--let me mull a job over, and let a nut mellow down to
a point where maybe I can crack it. At your orders, sir!"

"Not orders, Kinnison!" the old man reprimanded him sharply. "No one
gives unattached Lensmen orders. We request or suggest, but you are the
sole judge as to where your greatest usefulness lies."

"Please believe, sir, that your requests are orders, to me," Kinnison
replied in all seriousness. Then, more lightly, "Your calling me in
suggests an emergency, and traveling in this miner's scow of mine is
just a trifle faster than going afoot. How about sending out something
with some legs to pick me up?"

"The _Dauntless_, for instance?"

"Oh--you've got her rebuilt already?"

"Yes."

"I'll bet she's a sweet clipper! She was a mighty slick stepper before;
now she must have more legs than a centipede!"

And so it came about that in a region of space entirely empty of all
other vessels as far as ultrapowerful detectors could reach, the
_Dauntless_ met Kinnison's tugboat. The two went inert and maneuvered
briefly, then the immense warship engulfed her tiny companion and
flashed away.

"Hi, Kim, you old son-of-a-space-flea!" A general yell arose at sight
of him, and irrepressible youth rioted, regardless of Regs, in this
reunion of old comrades-in-arms who were yet scarcely more than boys in
years.

"His Nibs says for you to call 'im, Kim, when we're about an hour
out from Prime Base," Commander Maitland informed his classmate
irreverently, as the _Dauntless_ neared the Solarian System.

"Plate or Lens?"

"Didn't say--as you like, I suppose."

"Plate then, I guess--don't want to butt in."

In a few moments chief of staff and Gray Lensman were in image
face-to-face.

"How are you making out, Kinnison?" The Port Admiral studied the young
man's face intently, gravely, line by line. Then, upon his Lens, "We
heard about the shows you put on, clear over here on Tellus. A man
can't drink and dope the way you did without suffering consequences.
I've been wondering if even you can fight it off. How about it? How do
you feel now?"

"Some craving, of course," Kinnison replied, shrugging his shoulders.
"That can't be helped--you can't make an omelette without breaking
eggs. However, I can assure you as a fact that it's nothing I can't
lick. I've got it pretty well boiled out of my system already."

"Mighty glad to hear that, son. Only Ellison and I know who Wild
Bill Williams really is. You had us scared stiff for a while." Then,
speaking aloud:

"I would like to have you come to my office as soon as is convenient
after you land."

"I'll be there, chief, two minutes after we hit the bumpers," and he
was.

"Right of way, Norma?" he asked, waving an airy salute at the
attractive young woman in Haynes' outer office.

"Go right in, Lensman Kinnison, he's waiting for you," and opening the
door for him, she stood aside as he strode into the sanctum.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Port Admiral returned the younger man's punctilious salute, then
the two shook hands warmly before Haynes referred to the third man in
the room.

"Navigator Xylpic, this is Lensman Kinnison, unattached. Sit down,
please; this may take some time. Now, Kinnison, I want to tell you that
ships have been disappearing, right and left, disappearing without
sending out an alarm or leaving a trace. Convoying makes no difference,
as the escorts also disappear--"

"Any with the new projectors?" Kinnison flashed the question via
Lens--this was nothing to talk about aloud.

"No," came the reassuring thought in reply. "Every one bottled up tight
until we find out what it's all about. Sending out the _Dauntless_
after you was the only exception."

"Fine. You shouldn't have taken even that much chance." This interplay
of thought took but an instant; Haynes went on with scarcely a break in
his voice:

"--with no more warning or report than the freighters and liners they
are supposed to be protecting. Automatic reporting also fails--the
instruments simply stop sending. The first and only sign of light--if
it _is_ such a sign; which, frankly, I doubt--came shortly before I
called you in, when Xylpic here came to me with a tall story."

Kinnison looked then at the stranger. Pink. Unmistakably a
Chickladorian--pink all over. Bushy hair, triangular eyes, teeth,
skin; all that same peculiar color. Not the flush of red blood showing
through translucent skin, but opaque pigment; the brick-reddish pink so
characteristic of the near-humanity of that planet.

"We have investigated this Xylpic thoroughly." Haynes went on,
discussing the Chickladorian as impersonally as though he were upon his
home planet instead of there in the room, listening. "The worse of it
is that the man is absolutely honest--or at least, he himself believes
that he is--in telling this yarn. Also, except for this one thing--this
obsession, fixed idea, hallucination, call it what you like; it seems
incredible that it _can_ be a fact--he not only seems to be, but
actually _is_, absolutely sane.

"Now, Xylpic, tell Kinnison what you have told the rest of us. And
Kinnison, I hope that you can make sense of it--none of the rest of us
can."

"QX. Go ahead, I'm listening." But Kinnison did far more than listen.
As the fellow began to talk the Gray Lensman insinuated his mind
into that of the Chickladorian. He groped for moments, seeking the
wave-length; then he, Kimball Kinnison, was actually reliving with the
pink man an experience which harrowed his very soul.

"The Second Navigator of a Radeligian vessel died in space, and when
it landed on Chickladoria I took the berth. About a week out, the
whole crew went mad, all at once. The first I knew of it was when the
pilot on duty beside me left his board, picked up a stool, and smashed
the automatic recorder. Then he went inert and neutralized all the
controls.

"I yelled at him, but he didn't answer me, and all the men in the
control room acted funny. They just milled around like men in a trance.
I buzzed the captain, but he didn't acknowledge either. Then the men
around me left the control room and went down the companionway toward
the main lock. I was scared--my skin prickled and the hair on the
back of my neck stood straight up--but I followed along, quite a ways
behind, to see what they were going to do. The captain, all the rest
of the officers, and the whole crew joined them in the lock. Everybody
was acting kind of crazy, and as if they were in an awful hurry to get
somewhere.

"I didn't go any nearer--I wasn't going to go out into space without a
suit on. I went back into the control room to get at a spy ray, then
changed my mind. That was the first place they would come to if they
boarded us, as they probably would--other ships had disappeared in
space, plenty of them. Instead, I went over to a lifeboat and used its
spy. And I tell you, sirs, there was nothing there--nothing at all!"
The stranger's voice rose almost to a shriek, his mind quivered in an
ecstasy of horror.

"Steady, Xylpic, steady," the Gray Lensman said, quietingly.
"Everything you've said so far makes sense. It all fits right into the
matrix. Nothing to go off the beam about, at all."

"What! You believe me!" the Chickladorian stared at Kinnison in
amazement, an emotion very evidently shared by the Port Admiral.

"Yes," the man in gray leather asserted. "Not only that, but I have a
very fair idea of what's coming next. G. A."

       *       *       *       *       *

"The men walked out into space." The pink man offered this information
diffidently, although positively--an oft-repeated but starkly
incredible statement. "They did not float outward, sirs, they _walked_;
and they acted as if they were breathing air, not space. And as they
walked they sort of faded out; became thin, mistylike. This sounds
crazy, sir"--to Kinnison alone--"I thought then maybe I was cuckoo, and
everybody around here thinks I am now, too. Maybe I _am_ nuts, sir--I
don't know."

[Illustration: _"I saw them walk out of the ship into space--but as
though they walked on something, something invisible. And they walked
into that ghost-ship, the hell-ship from nowhere--"_]

"I do. You aren't," Kinnison said, calmly.

"Well, and here comes the worst of it, they walked around just as
though they were in a ship, growing fainter all the time. Then some
of them lay down and something began to _skin_ one of them--skin him
alive, sir--but there was nothing there at all. I ran, then. I got into
the fastest lifeboat on the far side and gave her all the oof she'd
take. That's all, sir."

"Not quite all, Xylpic, unless I'm badly mistaken. Why didn't you tell
the rest of it while you were at it?"

"I didn't dare to, sir. If I'd told any more they would have _known_ I
was crazy instead of just thinking so--" He broke sharply, his voice
altering strangely as he went on: "What makes you think there was
anything more, sir? Do you--" The question trailed off into silence.

"I do. If what I think happened really did happen, there was
more--quite a lot more--and worse. Wasn't there?"

"I'll say there was!" The navigator almost exploded in relief. "Or
rather, I think now that there was. But I can't describe any of it very
well--everything was getting fainter all the time, and I thought that I
must be imagining most of it."

"You weren't imagining a thing--" the Lensman began, only to be
interrupted by Haynes.

"Hell's jingling bells!" that worthy almost shouted. "If you know what
it was, tell me!"

"Think I know, but not quite sure yet--got to check it. Can't get
it from him--he's told everything he really knows. He didn't really
see anything, it was practically invisible. Even if he had tried to
describe the whole performance you wouldn't have recognized it. Nobody
could have, except Worsel and I, and possibly Van Buskirk. I'll tell
you the rest of what actually happened and Xylpic can tell us if it
checks." His features grew taut, his voice became hard and chill. "I
saw it done, once. Worse, I heard it. Saw it and heard it, clear and
plain. Also, I knew what it was all about, so I can describe it a lot
better than Xylpic possibly can.

"Every man of that crew was killed by torture. Some were flayed alive,
as Xylpic said; then they were carved up, slowly and piecemeal. Some
were stretched, pulled apart by chains and hooks, on racks. Others
twisted on frames. Boiled, little by little. Picked apart, bit by bit.
Gassed. Eaten away by corrosives, one molecule at a time. Pressed out
flat, as though between two plates of glass. Whipped. Scourged.
Beaten gradually to a pulp. Other methods, lots of them--indescribable.
All slow, though, and extremely painful. Greenish-yellow light, showing
the aura of each man as he died. Beams from somewhere--possibly
invisible--consuming the auras. Check, Xylpic?"

"Yes, sir, it checks!" The Chickladorian exclaimed in profound relief;
then added, carefully: "That is, that's the way the torture was,
exactly, sir, but there was something funny, a difference, about their
fading away. I can't describe what was funny about it, but it didn't
seem so much that they became invisible as that they went away, sir,
even though they didn't go any place."

"That's due to the way that system of invisibility works. Got to
be--nothing else will fit into--"

"The Overlords of Delgon!" Haynes rasped, sharply. "But if that's a
true picture, how in all the hells of space did this Xylpic, alone of
all the ship's personnel, get away clean? Tell me that!"

"Simple!" the Gray Lensman snapped back as sharply. "The rest were
all Radeligians--he was the only Chickladorian aboard. The Overlords
simply didn't know that he was there. They didn't feel him at all.
Chickladorians think on a wave nobody else in the Galaxy uses--you must
have noticed that when you felt of him with your Lens. It took me half
a minute to synchronize with him.

"As for his escape, that makes sense, too. The Overlords are slow
workers and when they're playing that game they really concentrate on
it--they don't pay any attention to anything else. By the time they got
done and were ready to take over the ship, he could be almost anywhere."

"But he says that there was no ship there--nothing at all!" Haynes
protested.

"Invisibility isn't hard to understand," Kinnison countered. "We've
almost got it ourselves--we undoubtedly could have it as good as that,
with a little more work on it. There was a ship there, beyond question.
Close. Hooked on with magnets, and with a spacetube, lock to lock.

"The only peculiar part of it, and the bad part, is something you
haven't mentioned yet. What would the Overlords--if, as we must assume,
some of them got away from Worsel and his crew--be doing with a ship?
They never had any spaceships that I ever knew anything about, nor any
other mechanical devices requiring any advanced engineering skill.
Also, and most important, they never did and never could invent or
develop such an invisibility apparatus as that."

       *       *       *       *       *

Kinnison fell silent, and while he frowned in thought Haynes dismissed
the Chickladorian, with orders that his every want be supplied.

"What do you deduce from those facts?" the Port Admiral presently asked.

"Plenty," the Gray Lensman said, darkly. "I smell a rat. In fact, it
stinks to high Heaven. Boskone."

"You may be right," the chief of staff conceded. It was hopeless, he
knew, for him to try to keep up with this man's mental processes. "But
why, and above all, how?"

"'Why' is easy. They both owe us a lot, and want to pay us in full.
Both hate us all to pieces. 'How' is immaterial. One found the other,
some way. They're together, just as sure as hell's a mantrap, and
that's what matters. It's bad. Very, _very_ bad, believe me."

"Orders?" asked Haynes. He was a big man; big enough to ask
instructions from anyone who knew more than he did--big enough to make
no bones of such asking.

"One does not give orders to the Port Admiral," Kinnison mimicked him
lightly, but meaningly. "One may request, perhaps, or suggest, but--"

"Skip it! I'll take a club to you yet, you young hellion! You said
you'd take orders from me. QX--I'll take 'em from you. What are they?"

"No orders yet, I don't think--" Kinnison ruminated. "No ... not until
after we investigate. I'll have to have Worsel and Van Buskirk; we're
the only three who have had experience. We'll take the _Dauntless_, I
think--it'll be safe enough. Thought-screens will stop the Overlords
cold, and a scrambler will take care of the invisibility business if
they use the same principle we do, and they very probably do."

"Safe enough, then, you think, to let traffic resume, if they're
protected with screens?"

"I wouldn't say so. They've got Boskonian superdreadnoughts now to use
if they want to, and that's something else to think about. Another week
or so won't hurt much--better wait until we see what we can see. I've
been wrong once or twice before, too, and I may be again."

He was. Although his words were conservative enough, he was practically
certain in his own mind that he knew all the answers. But how wrong
he was--how terribly, how tragically wrong! For even his mentality
had not as yet envisaged the incredible actuality; his deductions and
perceptions fell far, far short of the appalling truth!




                                 XIV.


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.




                                  XV.


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.




                                 XVI.


The carnage over, Kinnison made his way to the control board, which was
more or less standard in type. There were, however some instruments new
to him; and these he examined with care, tracing their leads throughout
their lengths with his sense of perception before he touched a switch.
Then he pulled out three plungers, one after the other.

There was a jarring _thunk!_ and a reversal of the inexplicable,
sickening sensations he had experienced previously. They ceased; the
ships, solid now and still locked side by side, lay again in open,
familiar space.

"Back to the _Dauntless_," Kinnison directed, tersely, and they went;
taking with them the bodies of the slain patrolmen. The ten who had
been tortured were dead; twelve more had perished under the mental
forces or the physical blows of the Overlords. Nothing could be done
for any of them save to take their remains back to Tellus.

"What do we do with this ship? Let's burn her out, huh?" asked Van
Buskirk.

"Not on Tuesdays--the College of Science would fry me to a crisp in my
own lard if I did," Kinnison retorted. "We take her in, as is. Where
are we, Worsel? Have you and the navigator found out yet?"

"'Way, 'way out--almost out of the Galaxy," Worsel replied, and one of
the computers recited a string of numbers, then added, "I don't see how
we could have come so far in that short a time."

"How much time was it--got any idea?" Kinnison asked, pointedly.

"Why, by the chronometers--Oh--" the man's voice trailed off.

"You're getting the idea. Wouldn't have surprised me much if we'd been
clear out of the known universe. Hyperspace is funny that way, they
say. Don't know a thing about it myself, except that we were in it for
a while, but that's enough for me."

Back to Tellus they drove at the highest practicable speed, and at
Prime Base scientists swarmed over and throughout the Boskonian vessel.
They tore down, rebuilt, measured, analyzed, tested, and conferred.

"They got some of it. All of it, they say, except the stuff that is of
real importance," Thorndyke reported to his friend Kinnison one day.
"Old Cardynge is mad as a cateagle about your report of that vortex,
or tunnel, or whatever it was. He says your lack of appreciation of the
simplest fundamentals is something pitiful, or words to that effect.
He's going to blast you to a cinder as soon as he gets hold of you."

"Vell, ve can't all be first violiners in der orchestra, some of us got
to push vind through der trombone," Kinnison quoted, philosophically.
"I done my darnedest. How's a guy going to report accurately on
something he can't hear, see, feel, smell, taste, or sense? But I heard
that they've solved that thing of the interpenetrability of the two
kinds of matter. What's the low-down on that?"

"Cardynge says it's simple. Maybe it is, but I'm a technician myself,
not a mathematician. As near as I can get it, the Overlords and their
stuff were treated or conditioned with an oscillatory wave of some
kind, so that under the combined action of the fields generated by
the ship and the shore station all their substance was rotated almost
out of space. Not out of space, exactly, either, more like, say, very
nearly one hundred eighty degrees out of phase; so that two bodies--one
untreated, our stuff--could occupy the same place at the same time
without perceptible interference. The failure of either force, such as
your cutting the ship's generators, would relieve the strain."

"It did more than that--it destroyed the vortex ... but it might, at
that," the Lensman went on, thoughtfully. "It could very well be that
only that one special force, exerted in the right place relative to
the home-station generator, could bring the vortex into being. But how
about that heavy stuff, common to both planes, or phases, of matter?"

"Synthetic, they say. Not as dense as it appears--that's due largely to
field-action, too. They're working on it now."

"Thanks for the dope. I've got to flit--got a date with Haynes. I'll
see Cardynge later and let him get it off his chest," and the Lensman
strode away toward the Port Admiral's office.

       *       *       *       *       *

Haynes greeted him cordially; then, at sight of the storm signals
flying in the Gray Lensman's eyes, he sobered.

"QX," he said, wearily. "If we have to go over this again, unload it,
Kim."

"Twenty-two good men," Kinnison said, harshly. "I murdered them. Just
as surely, if not quite as directly, as though I brained them with a
spaceaxe."

"In one way, if you look at it fanatically enough, yes," the older man
admitted, much to Kinnison's surprise. "I am not asking you to look at
it in a broader sense, because you probably can't--yet. Some things you
can do alone; some things you can do even better alone than with help.
I have never objected; nor shall I ever object to your going alone
on such missions, however dangerous they may be. That is, and will
be, your job. What you are forgetting in the luxury of giving way to
your emotions is that the Patrol comes first. The Patrol is of vastly
greater importance than the lives of any man or group of men in it."

"But I know that, sir," protested Kinnison. "I--"

"You have a peculiar way of showing it, then," the Admiral broke in.
"You say that you killed twenty-two men. Admitting it for the moment,
which would you say was better for the Patrol--to lose those twenty-two
good men in a successful and productive operation, or to lose the life
of one Unattached Lensman without gaining any information or any other
benefit whatever thereby?"

"Why ... I--If you look at it that way, sir--" Kinnison still knew that
he was right, but in that form the question answered itself.

"That is the only way it can be looked at," the old man returned,
flatly. "No heroics on your part, no maudlin sentimentality. Now, as a
Lensman, is it your considered judgment that it is best for the Patrol
that you traverse that hyperspatial vortex alone, or with all the
resources of the _Dauntless_ at your command?"

Kinnison's face was white and strained. He could not lie to the Port
Admiral. Nor could he tell the truth, for the dying agonies of those
fiendishly tortured boys still wracked him to the core.

"But I can't order men into any such death as that," he broke out,
finally.

"You must," Haynes replied, inexorably. "Either you take the ship as
she is or else you call for volunteers--and you know what that would
mean."

Kinnison did, too well. The surviving personnel of the two
_Brittanias_, the full present complement of the _Dauntless_,
the crews of every other ship in Base, practically everybody on
the Reservation--Haynes himself certainly, even Lacy and old von
Hohendorff, everybody, even or especially if they had no business on
such a trip as that--would volunteer; and every man jack of them would
yell his head off at being left out. Each would have a thousand reasons
for going.

"QX, I suppose. You win." Kinnison submitted, although with ill grace,
rebelliously. "But I don't like it, nor any part of it. It clogs my
jets."

"I know it, Kim," Haynes put a hand upon the boy's shoulder, tightening
his fingers. "We all have to do it, it's part of the job. But remember
always, Lensman, that the Patrol is not an army of mercenaries or
conscripts. Any one of them--just as would you yourself--would go out
there, _knowing_ that it meant death in the torture chamber of the
Overlords, if in so doing he knew that he could help to end the torture
and the slaughter of non-combatant men, women, and children that is
now going on."

       *       *       *       *       *

Kinnison walked slowly back to the Field; silenced, but not convinced.
There was something screwy somewhere, but he couldn't--

"Just a moment, young man!" came a sharp, irritated voice. "I have been
looking for you. At what time do you propose to set out for that which
is being so loosely called the 'hyperspatial vortex'?"

He pulled himself out of his abstraction to see Sir Austin Cardynge.
Testy, irascible, impatient, and vitriolic of tongue, he had always
reminded Kinnison of a frantic hen attempting to mother a brood of
ducklings.

"Hi, Sir Austin! Tomorrow--hour fifteen. Why?" The Lensman had too much
on his mind to be ceremonious with this mathematical nuisance.

"Because I find that I must accompany you, and it is most damnably
inconvenient, sir. The Society meets Tuesday week, and that ass
Weingarde will--"

"Huh?" Kinnison ejaculated. "Who told you that you had to go along, or
that you even _could_, for that matter?"

"Don't be a fool, young man!" the peppery scientist advised. "It should
be apparent even to your feeble intelligence that after your fiasco,
your inexcusable negligence in not reporting even the most elementary
vectorial-tensorial analysis of that extremely important vortex,
someone with at least a rudimentary brain should--"

"Hold on, Sir Austin!" Kinnison interrupted the harangue, "Do you mean
to say that you want to come along just to study the mathematics of
that damn--"

"_Just_ to study it!" shrieked the old man, almost tearing his hair.
"You dolt--you blockhead! My God, why should anything with such a
brain be permitted to live? Don't you even know, Kinnison, that in
that vortex lies the solution of one of the greatest problems in all
science?"

"Never occurred to me," the Lensman replied, unruffled by the old man's
acid fury. He had had weeks of it, at the Conference.

"It is imperative that I go." Sir Austin was still acerbic, but the
intensity of his passion was abating. "I must analyze those fields,
their patterns, interactions and reactions, myself. Unskilled
observations are useless, as you learned to your sorrow, and this
opportunity is priceless--possibly it is unique. Since the data must be
not only complete but also entirely authoritative, I myself must go.
That is clear, is it not, even to you?"

"No. Hasn't anybody told you that everybody aboard is simply flirting
with the undertaker?"

"Nonsense! I have subjected the affair, every phase of it, to a rigid
statistical analysis. The probability is significantly greater than
zero--oh, ever so much greater, almost point one nine, in fact--that
the ship will return, with my notes."

"But listen, Sir Austin," Kinnison explained patiently. "You won't have
time to study the generators at the other end, even if the folks there
felt inclined to give us the chance. Our object is to blow the whole
thing clear out of space."

"Of course, of course--certainly! The mere generating mechanisms are
immaterial. Analyses of the forces themselves are the sole desiderata.
Vectors--tensors--performance of mechanisms in reception--ethereal and
subethereal phenomena--propagation--extinction--phase angles--complete
and accurate data upon hundreds of such items--slighting even one
would be calamitous. Having this material, however, the mechanism
of energization becomes a mere detail--complete solution and design
inevitable, absolute--childishly simple."

"Oh," the Lensman was slightly groggy under the barrage. "The ship may
get back, but how about you, personally?"

"What difference does that make?" Cardynge snapped fretfully. "Even if,
as is theoretically probable, we find that communication is impossible,
my notes have a very good chance--very good indeed--of getting back.
You do not seem to realize, young man, that to science that data is
_necessary_. It is _so_ evident that the persons or beings who are
operating it do not know, or are at least not utilizing, one percent of
its potentialities. They stumbled upon it--blundered into it--someone
with at least a rudimentary knowledge of science must analyze it, so
that the Conference may exhaust its real possibilities."

Kinnison looked down at the wispy little man in surprise. Here was
something he had never suspected. Cardynge was a scientific wizard,
he knew. That he had a phenomenal mind there was no shadow of doubt,
but the Lensman had never thought of him as being physically brave. It
was not merely courage, he decided. It was something bigger--better.
Transcendent. An utter selflessness, a devotion to science so complete
that neither physical welfare nor even life itself could be given any
consideration whatever.

"You think, then, that this data is worth sacrificing the lives of
four hundred men, including yours and mine, to get?" Kinnison asked,
earnestly.

"Certainly, or a hundred times that many," Cardynge snapped, testily.
"You heard me say, did you not, that this opportunity is priceless, and
may very well be unique?"

"QX, you can come," and Kinnison went on into the _Dauntless_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Kinnison went to bed wondering. Maybe the chief was right. He woke up,
still wondering. Perhaps he was taking himself too seriously. Perhaps
he was, as Haynes had more than intimated, indulging in mock heroics.

He prowled about. The two ships of space were still locked together.
They would fly together to and along that dread tunnel, and he had to
see that everything was on the green.

He went into the wardroom. One young officer was thumping the piano
right tunefully and a dozen others were rending the atmosphere with
joyous song. In that room any formality or "as you were" signal was
unnecessary; the whole bunch fell upon their commander gleefully and
with a complete lack of restraint, in a vociferous hilarity very
evidently neither forced nor assumed.

Kinnison went on with his tour. "What was it?" he demanded of himself.
Haynes didn't feel guilty. Cardynge was worse--he would kill forty
thousand men, including the Lensman and himself, without batting an
eye. These kids didn't give a damn. Their fellows had been slain by the
Overlords, the Overlords had in turn been slain. All square--QX. Their
turn next? So what? Kinnison himself did not want to die--he wanted to
live--but if his number came up that was part of the game.

What was it, this willingness to give up life itself for an
abstraction? Science, the Patrol, Civilization--notoriously ungrateful
mistresses. Why? Some inner force--some compensation defying sense,
reason, or analysis?

Whatever it was, he had it, too. Why deny it to others? What in all the
nine hells of Valeria was he griping about?

"Maybe _I'm_ nuts!" he concluded, and gave the word to blast off.

To blast off--to find and to traverse wholly that awful hypertube, at
whose far terminus there would be lurking no man knew what.




                                 XVII.


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!




                                XVIII.


Edmund Crowninshield sat in his office and seethed quietly, the
all-pervasive blueness of the Kalonian brought out even more
prominently than usual by his mood. His plan to find out whether or not
the ex-miner was a spy had backfired, badly. He had had reports from
Euphrosyne that the fellow was not--_could_ not be--a spy, and now his
test had confirmed that conclusion, too thoroughly by far. He would
have to do some mighty quick thinking and perhaps some salve-spreading
or lose him. He certainly didn't want to lose a client who had over a
quarter of a million credits to throw away, and who could not possibly
resist his cravings for alcohol and bentlam much longer! But curse him,
what had the fellow meant by having a kit-bag built of indurite, with a
lock on it that not even his cleverest artists could pick!

"Come in," he called, unctuously, in answer to a tap. "Oh, it's you!
What did you find out?"

"Janice isn't hurt. He didn't make a mark on her--just gave her a shove
and scared hell out of her. But Clovis was nudged, believe me. He's
still out--will be for hours, the doctor says. What a sock that guy's
got! Clovis looks like he'd been hit with a Valerian maul."

"You're sure he was armed?"

"Must have been. Typical gun fighter's crouch. He was ready, not
bluffing, believe me. The man don't live that could bluff a roomful of
us like that. He was betting that he could whiff us all before we could
get a gun out, and I wouldn't wonder if he was right."

"QX. Beat it, and don't let anyone come near here except Williams."

Therefore the ex-miner was the next visitor.

"You wanted to see me, Crowninshield, before I flit." Kinnison was
fully dressed, even to his flowing cloak, and he was carrying his own
kit. This, in an Aldebaranian, implied the extremest height of dudgeon.

"Yes, Mr. Williams, I wish to apologize for the house. However,"
somewhat exasperated, "it does seem that you were abrupt, to say the
least, in your reaction to a childish prank."

"Prank!" The Aldebaranian's voice was decidedly unfriendly. "Sir, to me
thionite is no prank. I don't mind nitrolabe or heroin, and a little
bentlam now and then is good for a man, but when anyone comes around me
with thionite I object, sir, vigorously, and I don't care who knows it."

"Evidently. But that wasn't really thionite--we would never permit
it--and Miss Carter is an exemplary young lady--"

"How was I to know it wasn't thionite?" Williams demanded. "And as for
your Miss Carter, as long as a woman acts like a lady I treat her like
a lady, but if she acts like a zwilnik--"

"Please, Mr. Williams--"

"--I treat her like a zwilnik, and that's that."

"Mr. Williams, please! Not that word, ever!"

"No? A planetary idiosyncrasy, perhaps?" The ex-miner's towering wrath
abated into curiosity. "Now that you mention it, I do not recall having
heard it lately, nor hereabouts. For its use please accept my apology."

Oh, this was better. Crowninshield was making headway. The big
Aldebaranian didn't even know thionite when he saw it, and he had a
rabid fear of it.

"There remains, then, only the very peculiar circumstance of your
wearing arms here in a quiet hotel--"

"Who says I was armed?" Kinnison demanded.

"Why ... I ... it was assumed--" The proprietor was flabbergasted.

The visitor threw off his coat and removed his jacket, revealing a
shirt of sheer glamorette through which could be plainly seen his
hirsute chest and the smooth, bronzed skin of his brawny shoulders.
He strode over to his kit-bag, unlocked it, and took out a double
DeLameter harness, complete with instruments. He donned the
contraption, put on jacket and cloak--open, now, this latter--shrugged
his shoulders a few times to settle the new burden into its wonted
position, and turned again to the hotelkeeper.

"This is the first time that I have worn this hardware since I came
here," he said, quietly. "Having the name, however, you may take
it upon the very best of authority that I will be armed during the
remaining minutes of my visit here. With your permission, I shall leave
now."

"Oh, no, that won't do, sir, really." Crowninshield was almost abject
at the prospect. "We should be desolated. Mistakes will happen,
sir--planetary prejudices--misunderstandings. Give us a little more
time to get really acquainted, sir--" and thus it went.

Finally Kinnison let himself be mollified into staying on. With true
Aldebaranian mulishness, however, he wore his armament, proclaiming to
all and sundry his sole reason therefor: "An Aldebaranian gentleman,
sir, keeps his word; however lightly or under whatever circumstances
given. I said that I would wear these things as long as I stay here;
therefore wear them I must and I shall. I will leave here any time,
sir, gladly; but while here I remain armed, every minute of every day."

And he did. He never drew them, was always and in every way a
gentleman. Nevertheless, the zwilniks were always uncomfortably
conscious of the fact that those grim, formidable portables were
there--always there and always ready. The fact that they themselves
went armed with weapons deadly enough was all too little reassurance.

       *       *       *       *       *

Always the quintessence of good behavior, Kinnison began to relax his
barriers of reserve. He began to drink--to buy, at least--more and
more. He had taken regularly a little bentlam; now, as though his will
to moderation had begun to go down, he took larger and larger doses. It
was not a significant fact to any one, except himself, that the nearer
drew the time for a certain momentous meeting the more he apparently
drank and the larger the doses of bentlam became.

Thus it was a purely unnoticed coincidence that it was upon the
afternoon of the day during whose evening the conference was to be
held that Williams' quiet and gentlemanly drunkenness degenerated
into a noisy and obstreperous carousal. As a climax he demanded--and
obtained--the twenty-four units of bentlam which, his host knew,
comprised the highest-ceiling dose of the old, unregenerate mining
days. They gave him the Titanic jolt, undressed him, put him carefully
to bed upon a soft mattress covered with silken sheets and forgot him.

Before the meeting every possible source of interruption or spying was
checked, rechecked, and guarded against; but no one even thought of
suspecting the free-spending, hard-drinking, drug-soaked Williams. How
could they?

And so it came about that the Gray Lensman attended that meeting also;
as insidiously and as successfully as he had the one upon Euphrosyne.
It took longer, this time, to read the reports, notes, orders,
addresses, and so on, for this was a Regional meeting, not merely a
local one. However, the Lensman had ample time and was a fast reader
withal; and in Worsel he had an aide who could tape the stuff as fast
as he could send it in. Wherefore, when the meeting broke up Kinnison
was well content. He had forged another link in his chain--was one link
nearer to Boskone, his goal.

As soon as Kinnison could walk without staggering he sought out his
host. He was ashamed, embarrassed, bitterly and painfully humiliated;
but he was still--or again--an Aldebaranian gentleman. He had made
a resolution, and gentlemen of that planet did not take their
gentlemanliness lightly.

"First, Mr. Crowninshield, I wish to apologize, most humbly, most
profoundly, sir, for the fashion in which I have outraged your
hospitality." He could slap down a girl and half-kill a guard without
loss of self-esteem, but no gentleman, however inebriated, should
descend to such depths of commonness and vulgarity as he had plumbed
here. Such conduct was inexcusable. "I have nothing whatever to say in
defense or palliation of my conduct. I can only say that in order to
spare you the task of ordering me out, I am leaving."

"Oh, come, Mr. Williams, that is not at all necessary. Anyone is apt to
take a drop too much occasionally. Really, my friend, you were not at
all offensive, we have not even entertained the thought of your leaving
us." Nor had he. The ten thousand credits which the Lensman had thrown
away during his spree would have condoned behavior a thousand times
worse; but Crowninshield did not refer to that.

"Thank you for your courtesy, sir, but I remember some of my actions,
and I blush with shame," the Aldebaranian rejoined, stiffly. He was
not to be mollified. "I could never look your other guests in the
face again. I think, sir, that I can still be a gentleman; but until
I am certain of the fact--until I know I can get drunk as a gentleman
should--I am going to change my name and disappear. Until a happier
day, sir, good-by."

Nothing could make the stiff-necked Williams change his mind, and leave
he did, scattering five-credit notes abroad as he departed. However,
he did not go far. As he had explained so carefully to Crowninshield,
William Williams did disappear--forever, Kinnison hoped; he was all
done with him--but the Gray Lensman made connections with Worsel.

"Thanks, old man," Kinnison shook one of the Velantian's gnarled, hard
hands, even though Worsel never had had much use for that peculiarly
human gesture. "Nice work. I won't need you for a while now, but I
probably will later. If I succeed in getting the data I'll Lens it to
you as usual for record--I'll be even less able than usual, I imagine,
to take recording apparatus with me. If I can't get it I'll call you
anyway, to help me make other arrangements. Clear ether, big fella!"

"Luck, Kinnison," and the two Lensmen went their separate ways; Worsel
to Prime Base, the Tellurian on a long flit indeed. He had not been
surprised to learn that the Galactic Director was not in the Galaxy
proper, but in a star cluster; nor at the information that he whom
he sought was one Jalte, a Kalonian. Boskone, Kinnison thought, was
a highly methodical sort of a chap--he marked out the best way to do
anything, and then stuck by it through thick and thin.

       *       *       *       *       *

Kinnison was almost wrong there, for not long afterward Boskone was
called in session and that very question was discussed seriously and at
length.

"Granted that the Kalonians are good executives," the new Ninth of
Boskone argued. "They are strong of mind and do produce results. It
cannot be claimed, however, that they are in any sense comparable to us
of the Eich. Eichlan was thinking of replacing Helmuth, but he put off
acting until it was too late.

"There are many factors to consider," the First replied, gravely. "The
planet is uninhabitable save for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. The
base is built for such, and such is the entire personnel. Years of time
went into the construction there. One of us could not work efficiently
alone, insulated against its heat and its atmosphere. If the whole dome
were conditioned for us, we must needs train an entire new organization
to man it. Then, too, the Kalonians have to work well in hand and,
with all due respect to you and the others of your mind, it is by no
means certain that even Eichlan could have saved Helmuth's base had
he been there. Eichlan's own doubt upon this point had much to do
with his delay in acting. In the end it comes down to efficiency, and
some Kalonians are efficient. Jalte is one. And, while it may seem as
though I am boasting of my own selection of directors, please note that
Prellin, the Kalonian director upon Bronseca, seems to have been able
to stop the advance of the Patrol."

"'Seems to' may be too exactly descriptive for comfort," said another,
darkly.

"That is always a possibility," was conceded, "but whenever that
Lensman has been able to act, he has acted. Our keenest observers
can find no trace of his activities elsewhere, with the possible
exception of the misfunctioning of the experimental hyperspatial tube
of our allies of Delgon. Some of us have from the first considered
that venture ill-advised, premature; and its seizure by the Patrol
smacks more of their able mathematical physicists than of a purely
hypothetical, superhuman Lensman. Therefore, it seems logical to assume
that Prellin has stopped him. Our observers report that the Patrol
is loath to act illegally without evidence, and no evidence can be
obtained. Business was hurt, but Jalte is reorganizing as rapidly as
may be."

"I still say that the Galactic Base should be rebuilt and manned by
the Eich," Nine insisted. "It is our sole remaining Grand Headquarters
there, and since it is both the brain of the peaceful conquest and the
nucleus of our new military organization, it should not be subjected to
any unnecessary risk."

"And you will, of course, be glad to take that highly important
command, man the dome with your own people, and face the Lensman--if
and when he comes--backed by the forces of the Patrol?"

"Why ... ah ... no," the Ninth managed. "I am of so much more use
here--"

"That's what we all think," the first said, cynically. "While I would
like very much to welcome that hypothetical Lensman here, I do not care
to meet him upon any other planet. I really believe, however, that
any change in our organization would weaken it seriously. Jalte is
capable, energetic, and is as well informed as is any of us as to the
possibilities of invasion by the Lensman or his Patrol. Beyond asking
him whether he needs anything, and sending him everything he may wish
of supplies and of reinforcements, I do not see how he can improve
matters."

But even before the question was asked, Kinnison's blackly invisible,
indetectable speedster was well within the star cluster. The
guardian fortresses were closer spaced by far than Helmuth's had
been. Electromagnetics had a three hundred percent overlap; ether
and subether alike were suffused with vibratory fields in which
nullification of detection was impossible, and the observers were alert
and keen. To what avail? The speedster was non-ferrous, intrinsically
indetectable; the Lensman slipped through the net with ease.

Sliding down the edge of the world's black shadow he felt for the
expected thought-screen, found it, dropped cautiously through it, and
poised there; observing during one whole rotation. This had been a
fair, green world--once. It had had forests. It had once been peopled
by intelligent, urban dwellers, who had had roads, works, and other
evidences of advancement. But the cities had been melted down into
vast lakes of lava and slag. Cold now for years, cracked, fissured,
weathered; yet to Kinnison's probing sense they told tales of horror,
revealed all too clearly the incredible ferocity and ruthlessness
with which the conquerors had wiped out all the population of a
world. What had been roads and works were jagged ravines and craters
of destruction. The forests of the planet had been burned, again and
again; only a few charred stumps remaining to mark where a few of the
mightiest monarchs had stood. Except for the Boskonian base the planet
was a scene of desolation and ravishment indescribable.

"They'll pay for that, too, the fiends," Kinnison gritted, and directed
his attention toward the base. Forbidding indeed it loomed; thrice
a hundred square miles of massively banked offensive and defensive
armament, with a central dome of such colossal mass as to dwarf even
the stupendous fabrications surrounding it. Typical Boskonian layout,
Kinnison thought, very much like Helmuth's Grand Base. Fully as large
and as strong, or stronger--but he had cracked that one and he was
pretty sure that he could crack this. Exploringly he sent out his sense
of perception; nor was he surprised to find that the whole aggregation
of structures was screened. He had not thought that it would be as easy
as that!

He did not need to get inside the dome this time, as he was not going
to work directly upon the personnel. Inside the screen anywhere would
do. But how to get there? The ground all around the thing was flat,
as level as molten lava would cool, and every inch of it was bathed
in the white glare of floodlights. They had observers, of course, and
photo-cells, which were worse.

Approach then, either through the air or upon the ground, did not
look so promising. That left only underground. They got water from
somewhere--wells, perhaps--and their sewage went somewhere unless
they incinerated it, which was highly improbable. There was a river
over there, he'd see if there wasn't a trunk sewer running into it
somewhere. There was. There was also a place within easy flying
distance to hide his speedster, an overhanging bank of smooth black
rock. The risk of his being seen was nil, anyway, for the only
intelligent life left upon the planet inhabited the Boskonian fortress
and did not leave it.

Donning his space-black, indetectable armor, Kinnison flew down the
river to the sewer's mouth. He lowered himself into the placid stream
and against the sluggish current of the sewer he made his way. The
drivers of his suit were not as efficient in water as they were in air
or in space, and in the dense medium his pace was necessarily slow. But
he was in no hurry. It was fast enough--in a few hours he was beneath
the stronghold.

       *       *       *       *       *

He then began his study of the dome. It was like Helmuth's in some
ways, entirely different from it in others. There were fully as many
firing-stations, each with its operators ready at signal to energize
and to direct the most terrifically destructive agencies known to the
science of the time. There were fewer visiplates and communicators,
fewer catwalks; but there were vastly more individual offices and
there were ranks and tiers of filing cabinets. There would have to be;
this was headquarters for the organized illicit commerce of an entire
galaxy. There, in the familiar center, sat at his great desk Jalte the
Kalonian, and beside him there sparkled the peculiar globe of force
which the Lensman now knew was an intergalactic communicator.

"Ha!" Kinnison exclaimed triumphantly, if inaudibly, to himself, "the
real boss of the outfit--Boskone--is in the Second Galaxy!"

He would have to wait until that communicator went into action, if
it took a month. But in the meantime there was plenty to do. Those
cabinets at least were not thought-screened, they held all the really
vital secrets of the drug ring, and it would take many days to transmit
the information which the Patrol must have if it were to make a
one-hundred-percent clean-up of the whole zwilnik organization.

He called Worsel, and, upon being informed that the recorders were
ready, he started in. Characteristically, he began with Prellin of
Bronseca, and memorized the data covering that wight as he transmitted
it. The next one to go down upon the steel tape was Crowninshield
of Tressilia. Having exhausted all the filed information upon the
organization controlled by those two Regional Directors, he took the
rest of them in order.

He had finished his real task and had practically finished a detailed
survey of the entire Base when the force-ball communicator burst into
activity. Knowing approximately the analysis of the beam and exactly
its location in space, it took only seconds for Kinnison to tap it;
but the longer the interview went on the more disappointed the Lensman
grew. Orders, reports, discussions of broad matters of policy--it was
simply a conference between two high executives of a vast business firm.

"I assume from lack of mention that _the_ Lensman has made no further
progress," Eichmil concluded.

"Not so far as our best men can discover," Jalte replied, carefully,
and Kinnison grinned like the Cheshire cat in his secure, if
uncomfortable, retreat. It tickled his vanity immensely to be referred
to so matter-of-factly as _the_ Lensman, and he felt very smart and
cagy indeed to be within a few hundred feet of Jalte as the Boskonian
uttered the words. "Lensmen by the score are still working Prellin's
base in Cominoche. Some twelve of these--human or approximately
so--have been returning again and again. We are checking those with
care, because of the possibility that one of them may be the one we
want, but as yet I can make no conclusive report."

The connection was broken, and the Lensman's brief thrill of elated
self-satisfaction died away.

"No soap," he growled to himself in disgust. "I've _got_ to get into
that guy's mind, some way or other!"

How could he make the approach? Every man in the Base wore a
head-screen, and they were mighty careful. No dogs or other pet
animals. There were few birds, but it would smell very cheesy indeed
to have a bird flying around, pecking at screen generators. To anyone
with half a brain that would tell the whole story, and these folks were
really smart. What, then?

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a nice spider up there in a corner. Big enough to do light
work, but not big enough to attract much, if any, attention. Did
spiders have minds? The power pack and the generator set were both
open, being on Jalte's belt, while the screen itself was radiated from
a collar-antenna round his neck. He would see what he could do.

The spider had more of a mind than he had supposed, and he got into it
easily enough. She could not really think at all, and at the starkly
terrible savagery of her tiny ego the Lensman actually winced, but
at that she had redeeming features. She was willing to work hard and
long for a comparatively small return of food. He could not fuse his
mentality with hers smoothly, as he could do in the case of creatures
of greater brain power, but he could handle her after a fashion. At
least she knew that certain actions would result in nourishment.

Through the insect's compound eyes the room and all its contents were
weirdly distorted, but the Lensman could make them out well enough to
direct her efforts. She crawled along the ceiling and dropped upon a
silken rope to Jalte's belt. She could not pull the plug of the power
pack--it loomed before her eyes, a gigantic metal pillar as immovable
as the Rock of Gibraltar--therefore she scampered on and began to
explore the mazes of the set itself. She could not see the thing as a
whole, it was far too immense a structure for that; so Kinnison, to
whom the device was no larger than a hand, directed her to the first
grid lead.

A tiny thing, thread-thin in gross; yet to the insect it was an
ordinary cable of stranded soft-metal wire. Her powerful mandibles
pried loose one of the component strands and with very little effort
pulled it away from its fellows beneath the head of a binding screw.
The strand bent easily, and as it touched the metal of the chassis the
thought-screen vanished.

Instantly Kinnison insinuated his mind into Jalte's and began to dig
for knowledge. Eichmil was his chief--Kinnison knew that already. His
office was in the Second Galaxy, on the planet Jarnevon. Jalte had been
there--co-ordinates so and so, courses such and such--Eichmil reported
to Boskone--

The Lensman stiffened. Here was the first positive evidence he had
found that his deductions were correct--or even that there really _was_
such an entity as Boskone! He bored anew.

Boskone was not a single entity, but a council--probably of the Eich,
the natives of Jarnevon--weird impressions of coldly intellectual
reptilian monstrosities, horrific, indescribable--Eichmil must know
exactly who and where Boskone was. Jalte did not.

Kinnison finished his research and abandoned the Kalonian's mind
as insidiously as he had entered it. The spider opened the short,
restoring the screen to usefulness. Then, before he did anything else,
the Lensman directed his small ally to a whole family of young grubs
just under the cover of his manhole. Lensmen paid their debts, even to
spiders.

Then, with a profound sigh of relief, he dropped down into the sewer.
The submarine journey to the river was made without incident, as was
the flight to his speedster. Night fell, and through its blackness
there darted the even blacker shape which was the Lensman's little
ship. Out into intergalactic space she flashed, and homeward. And as
she flew the Tellurian scowled.

He had gained much, but not enough by far. He had hoped to get all the
data on Boskone, so that he could storm Headquarters in the van of
Civilization's armada, invincible in its newly-devised might.

No soap. Before he could do that he would have to scout Jarnevon--in
the Second Galaxy--alone. Alone? Better not. Better take the flying
snake along. Good old dragon. That was a mighty long flit to be doing
alone, and one with some mightily high-powered opposition at the other
end of it.




                                 XIX.


"Before you go anywhere; or, rather, whether you go anywhere or not, we
want to knock down that Bronsecan base of Prellin's," Haynes declared
to Kinnison in no uncertain voice. "It's a Galactic scandal, the way
we've been letting them thumb their noses at us. Everybody in space
thinks that the Patrol has gone soft all of a sudden. When are you
going to let us smack them down? Do you know what they've done now?"

"No. What?"

"Gone out of business. We've been watching then so closely that
they couldn't do any queer business--goods, letters, messages, or
anything--so they closed up the Bronseca branch entirely. 'Unfavorable
conditions,' they said. Locked up tight--telephones disconnected,
communicators cut, everything."

"Hm-m-m. In that case we'd better take 'em, I guess. No harm done,
anyway, now--maybe all the better. Let Boskone think that our strategy
failed and we had to fall back on brute force."

"You say it easy. You think that it'll be a push-over, don't you?"

"Sure--why not?"

"You noticed the shape of their screens?"

"Roughly cylindrical"--in surprise. "They're hiding a lot of stuff, of
course, but they can't possibly--"

"I'm afraid that they can, and will. I've been checking up on the
building. Ten years old. Plans and permits QX except for the fact that
nobody knows whether or not the inside of the building resembles the
plans in any particular."

"Klono's whiskers!" Kinnison was aghast, his mind racing. "How could
that be, chief? Inspectors--builders--contractors--workmen?"

"The city inspector who had the job came into money later, retired,
and nobody has seen him since. Nobody can locate a single builder or
workman who saw it constructed. No competent inspector has been in
it since. Cominoche is lax--all cities are, for that matter--with an
outfit as big as Wembleson's, that carries its own insurance, does its
own inspecting, and won't allow outside interference. Wembleson's isn't
alone in that attitude--they're not all zwilniks, either."

"You think that it's really fortified, then?"

"Sure of it. That's why we ordered a gradual, but complete, evacuation
of the city, beginning a couple of months ago."

"How could you?" Kinnison was growing more surprised by the minute.
"The businesses--the houses--the expense!"

"Martial law--the Patrol takes over in emergencies, you know.
Businesses moved, and mostly carrying on very well. People ditto--very
nice temporary camps, lake and river cottages, and so on. As for
expense, the Patrol pays damages. We'll pay for rebuilding the whole
city if we have to--much rather that than leave that Boskonian base
standing there untouched."

"What a mess! Never thought of it that way, but you're right, as usual.
They wouldn't be there at all unless they thought--but they must know,
chief, that they can't hold off the stuff that you can bring to bear."

"Probably betting that we won't destroy our own city to get them--if
so, they're wrong. Or possibly they hung on a few days too long."

"How about the observers?" Kinnison asked. "They have four auxiliaries
there, you know."

"That's strictly up to you." Haynes was unconcerned. "Smearing that
base is the only thing I insist on. We'll wipe out the observers or let
them observe and report, whichever you say; but that base goes--it has
been there far too long already."

"Be nicer to let them alone," Kinnison decided. "We're not supposed to
know anything about them. You won't have to use the primaries, will
you?"

"No. It's a fairly large building, as business blocks go, but it lacks
a lot of being big enough to be a first-class base. We can burn the
ground out from under all its foundations with our secondaries."

He called an adjutant. "Get me Sector 19." Then, as the seamed, scarred
face of an old Lensman appeared upon a plate:

"You can go to work on Cominoche now, Parker. Twelve maulers. Twenty
heavy caterpillars and about fifty units of Q-type screen, remote
control. Supplies and service. Have them muster all available
fire-fighting apparatus. If desirable, import some--we want to save as
much of the place as we can. I'll come over in the _Dauntless_."

He glanced at Kinnison, one eye-brow raised quizzically.

"I feel as though I rate a little vacation; I think I'll go and watch
this," he commented. "Got time to come along?"

"I think so. It's more or less on my way to Lundmark's Nebula."

       *       *       *       *       *

Upon Bronseca, then, as the _Dauntless_ ripped her way through
protesting space, there converged structures of the void from a dozen
nearby systems; each ship emblazoned with the device of ray-emitting
intertwined spirals which is the emblem of the Galactic Patrol. There
came maulers; huge, ungainly flying fortresses of stupendous might.
There came transports, bearing the commissariat and the service units.
Vast freighters, under whose unimaginable mass the Gargantuanly braced
and latticed and trussed docks yielded visibly and groaningly, crushed
to a standstill and disgorged their varied cargoes.

What Haynes had so matter-of-factly referred to as "heavy" caterpillars
were all of that; and the mobile screens were even heavier. Clanking
and rumbling, but with their weight so evenly distributed over huge,
flat treads that they sank only a foot or so into even ordinary ground,
they made their ponderous way along Cominoche's deserted streets.

What thoughts seethed within the minds of the Boskonians can only be
imagined. They knew that the Patrol had landed in force, but what could
they do about it? At first, when the Lensmen began to infest the place,
they could have fled in safety; but at that time they were too certain
of their immunity to abandon their richly established position. Even
now, they would not abandon it until that course became absolutely
necessary.

They could have destroyed the city, true; but it was not until after
the non-combatant inhabitants had unobtrusively moved out that that
course suggested itself as a desirability. Now the destruction of
property would be a gesture worse than meaningless; it would be a waste
of energy which would all too certainly be needed--badly and soon.

Hence, as the Patrol's land forces ground clangorously into position
the enemy made no demonstration. The mobile screens were in place,
surrounding the doomed section with a wall of force to protect the rest
of the city from the hellish energies so soon to be unleashed. The
heavy caterpillars, mounting projectors quite comparable in size and
power with the warships' own--weapons similar in purpose and function
to the railway-carriage coast-defense guns of an earlier day--were
likewise ready. Far back of the line, but still too close, as they
were to discover later, heavily armored men crouched at their remote
controls behind their shields; barriers both of hard-driven, immaterial
fields of force and of solid, grounded, ultrarefrigerated walls of the
most refractory materials possible of fabrication. In the sky hung the
maulers, poised stolidly upon the towering pillars of flame erupting
from their under jets.

Cominoche, Bronseca's capital city, witnessed then what no one there
present had ever expected to see; the warfare designed for the
illimitable reaches of empty space being waged in the very heart of its
business district!

For Port Admiral Haynes had directed the investment of this minor
stronghold almost as though it were a regulation base, and with good
reason. He knew that from their coigns of vantage afar four separate
Boskonian observers were looking on, charged with the responsibility
of recording and reporting everything that transpired, and he wanted
that report to be complete and conclusive. He wanted Boskone, whoever
and wherever he might be, to know that when the Galactic Patrol started
a thing, that thing it finished; that the mailed fist of civilization
would not spare an enemy base simply because it was so located within
one of humanity's cities that its destruction must inevitably result
in severe property damage. Indeed, the chief of staff had massed there
thrice the force necessary; specifically and purposely to drive that
message home.

At the word of command there flamed out, almost as one, a thousand
lances of energy intolerable. Masonry, brickwork, steel, glass, and
chromium trim disappeared; flaring away in sparkling, hissing vapor
or cascading away in brilliantly mobile streams of fiery, corrosive
liquid. Disappeared, revealing the unbearably incandescent surface of
the Boskonian defensive screen.

Full-driven, that barrier held, even against the titanic thrusts of the
maulers above and of the heavy defense guns below. Energy rebounded
in scintillating torrents, shot off in blinding streamers, released
itself in bolts of lightning hurling themselves frantically to ground.

[Illustration: _The fury of the beams rebounded in scintillating
torrents, shot off in blinding streamers_--]

Nor was that superbly disguised citadel designed for defense alone.
Knowing now that the last faint hope of continuing in business upon
Bronseca was gone, and grimly determined to take full toll of the hated
Patrol, the defenders in turn loosed their beams. Five of them shot
out simultaneously, and five of the panels of mobile screen flamed
instantly into eye-tearing violet. Then black. These were not the
comparatively feeble, antiquated rays which Haynes had expected, but
were the output of up-to-the-minute, first-line space artillery!

Defenses down, it took but a blink of time to lick up the caterpillars.
On, then, the destroying beams tore, each in a direct line for a
remote-control station. Through tremendous edifices of masonry and
steel they drove, the upper floors collapsing into the cylinders of
annihilation only to be consumed almost as fast as they could fall.

"All screen-control stations, back, fast!" Haynes directed crisply.
"Back, dodging! Put your screens on automatic block until you get back
beyond effective range. Spy-ray men! See if you can locate the enemy
observers directing fire!"

But no matter how far back they went, Boskonian beams still sought
them out in grimly persistent attempts to slay. Their shielding fields
blazed white, their refractories wavered in the high blue as the
overdriven refrigerators strove mightily to cope with the terrific
load. The operators, stifling, almost roasting in their armor of
proof, shook sweat from the eyes they could not reach as they drove
themselves and their mechanisms on to even greater efforts; cursing
luridly, fulminantly the while at carrying on a space war in the hotly
reeking, the hellishly reflecting and heat-retaining environment of a
metropolis!

And all around the embattled structure, within the Patrol's now
partially open wall of screen, spread holocaust supreme; holocaust
spreading wider and wider during each fractional split second. In an
instant, it seemed, nearby buildings burst into flame. The fact that
they were fireproof meant nothing whatever. The air inside them, heated
in moments to a point far above the ignition temperature of organic
material, fed furiously upon furniture, rugs, drapes, and whatever
else had been left in place. Even without such adventitious aids the
air itself, expanding tremendously, irresistibly, drove outward before
it the glass of windows and the solid brickwork of walls. And as they
fell, glass and brick ceased to exist as such. Falling, they fused;
coalescing and again splashing apart as they descended through the
inferno of annihilatory vibrations in an appalling rain which might
very well have been sprinkled from the hottest middle of the central
core of hell itself. And in this fantastically potent, this incredibly
corrosive flood the ground itself, the metaled pavement, the sturdily
immovable foundations of skyscrapers, dissolved as do lumps of sugar
in boiling coffee. Dissolved, slumped down, flowed away in blindingly
turbulent streams. Super-structures toppled into disintegration, each
discrete particle contributing as it fell to the utterly indescribable
fervency of the whole.

More and more panels of mobile screen went down. They were not designed
to stand up under such heavy projectors as "Wemblesons" mounted, and
the Boskonians blasted them down in order to get at the remote-control
operators back of them. Swath after swath of flaming ruin was cut
through the Bronsecan capital as the enemy gunners tried to follow the
dodging caterpillar tractors.

"Drop down, maulers!" the commander-in-chief ordered. "Low enough so
that your screens touch ground. Never mind damage--they'll blast the
whole city if we don't stop those beams. Surround him!"

Down the maulers came, ringwise; mighty protective envelopes
overlapping; down until the screens bit ground. Now the caterpillar and
mobile-screen crews were safe; powerful as Prellin's weapons were, they
could not break through those maulers' screens.

Now holocaust waxed doubly infernal. The wall was tight, the only
avenue of escape of all that fiercely radiant energy straight upward;
and adding to the furor were the flaring under jets--themselves
destructive agents by no means to be despised!

Inside the screens, then, raged pure frenzy. At the line raved the
maulers' prodigious lifting blasts. Out and away, down every avenue
of escape, swept torrents of superheated air at whose touch anything
and everything combustible burst into flame. But there could be no
fire-fighting--yet. Outlying fires, along the lines of destruction
previously cut, yes; but personal armor has never been designed to
enable life to exist in such an environment as that near those screens
then was.

"Burn out the ground under them!" came the order. "Tip them over--slag
them down!"

Sharply downward angled twoscore of the beams which had been expending
their energies upon Boskone's radiant defenses. Downward into the
lake of lava which had once been pavement. That lake had already
been seething and bubbling; emitting momently bursts of lambent
flame. Now it leaped into a frenzy of its own; a transcendent fury of
volatilization. High-explosive shells by the hundred dropped also into
the incandescent mess, hurling the fiery stuff afar; deepening and
broadening the sulphurous moat.

"Deep enough," Haynes spoke into his microphone. "Tractors and
pressors as assigned--tip him over."

The intensity of the bombardment did not slacken, but from the maulers
to the north there reached out pressors, from those upon the south came
tractors; each a beam of terrific power, each backed by all the mass
and all the driving force of a veritable flying fortress.

Slowly that which had been a building leaned from the perpendicular,
its inner defensive screen still intact.

"Chief?" From his post as observer, Kinnison flashed a thought to
Haynes. "Are you beginning to think any funny thoughts about that ape
down there?"

"No. Are you? What?" asked the port admiral, surprised.

"Maybe I'm nuts, but it wouldn't surprise me if he'd start doing a flit
pretty quick. I've got a CRX tracer on him, just in case, and it might
be smart to caution Henderson to keep up on his toes."

"Your diagnosis--'nuts'--is correct, I think," came the answering
thought; but the port admiral followed the suggestion, nevertheless.

       *       *       *       *       *

And none too soon. Deliberately, grandly, the Colossus was leaning
over, bowing in stately fashion toward the awful lake in which it
stood. But only so far. Then there was a flash, visible even in the
inferno of energies already there at war, and the already coruscant
lava was hurled to all points of the compass as the full-blast drive of
a superdreadnought was cut loose beneath its surface!

To the eye the thing simply and instantly disappeared; but not to the
ultra-vision of the observers' plates, and especially not to the CRX
tracers attached by Kinnison and by Henderson. They held, and the chief
pilot, already warned, was on the trail as fast as he could punch his
keys.

Through atmosphere, through stratosphere, into interplanetary space
flew pursued and pursuer at ever-increasing speed. The _Dauntless_
overtook her proposed victim fairly easily. The Boskonian was fast, but
the Patrol's new flier was the fastest thing in space. But tractors
would not hold against the now universal standard equipment of shears,
and the heavy secondaries served only to push the fleeing vessel along
all the faster. And the dreadful primary beams could not be used--yet.

"Not yet," cautioned the admiral. "Don't get too close--wait until
there's nothing detectable in space."

Finally an absolutely empty region was entered, the word to close up
was given, and Prellin drank of the bitter cup which so many commanders
of vessels of the Patrol had had to drain--the gallingly fatal
necessity of engaging a ship which was both faster and more powerful
than his own. The Boskonian tried, of course. His beams raged out at
full power against the screens of the larger ship, but without effect.
Three primaries lashed out as one. The fleeing vessel, structure and
contents, ceased to be. The _Dauntless_ returned to the torn and
ravaged city.

The maulers had gone. The lumbering caterpillars--what were left
of them--were clanking away; reeking, smoking hot in every plate
and member. Only the firemen were left, working like Trojans with
explosives, rays, water, carbon-dioxide snow, clinging and smothering
chemicals; anything and everything which would isolate, absorb, or
dissipate any portion of the almost incalculable heat energy so
recently and so profligately released.

Fire apparatus from four planets was at work. There were pumpers,
ladder trucks, hose and chemical trucks. There were men in heavily
insulated armor. Vehicles and men alike were screened against the
specific wave lengths of heat; and under the direction of a fire
marshal in his red speedster high in air they fought methodically and
efficiently the conflagration which was the aftermath of battle. They
fought, and they were winning.

And then it rained. As though the heavens themselves had been outraged
by what had been done, they opened and rain sluiced down in level
sheets. It struck hissingly the nearby structures, but it did not touch
the central area at all. Instead, it turned to steam in mid-air, and,
rising or being blown aside by the tempestuous wind, it concealed the
redly glaring, raw wound beneath a blanket of crimson fog.

"Well, that is that," the port admiral said slowly. His face was grim
and stern. "A good job of clean-up--expensive, but worth the price. So
be it to every pirate base and every zwilnik hide-out in the Galaxy!
Henderson, land us at Cominoche Spaceport."

       *       *       *       *       *

And from four other cities of the planet four Boskonian observers,
each unknown to all the others, took off in four spaceships for four
different destinations. Each had reported fully and accurately to Jalte
everything that had transpired until the two fliers had faded into
the distance. Then, highly elated--and probably, if the truth could
be known, no little surprised as well--at the fact that he was still
alive, each had left Bronseca at maximum blast.

The Galactic director had done all that he could, which was little
enough. At the Patrol's first warlike move he had ordered a squadron
of Boskone's ablest fighting craft to Prellin's aid. It was almost
certainly a useless gesture, he knew as he did it. Gone were the days
when pirate bases dotted the Tellurian Galaxy; only by a miracle could
those ships reach the Bronsecan's line of flight in time to be of
service.

Nor could they. The howl of interfering vibrations which was smothering
Prellin's communicator beam snapped off into silence while the would-be
rescuers were many hours away. For minutes, then, Jalte sat immersed
in thought at his great desk in the Center, his normally bluish face
turning a sickly green, before he called the planet Jarnevon to report
to Eichmil, his chief.

"There is, however, a bright side to the affair," he concluded.
"Prellin's records were destroyed with him. Also, there are two
facts--that the Patrol had to use such force as practically to
destroy the city of Cominoche, and that our four observers escaped
unmolested--which furnish conclusive proof that the vaunted Lensman
failed completely to penetrate with his mental powers the defenses we
have been using against him."

"Not conclusive proof," Eichmil rebuked him harshly. "Not proof at all,
in any sense--scarcely a probability. Indeed, the display of force may
very well mean that he has already attained his objective. He may have
allowed the observers to escape, to lull our suspicions. You yourself
are probably the next in line. How certain are you that your own base
has not already been invaded?"

"Absolutely certain, sir." Jalte's face, however, turned a shade
greener at the thought.

"You use the term 'absolutely' very loosely--but I hope that you are
right. Use all the men and all the equipment we have sent you to make
sure that it remains impenetrable."




                                  XX.


In their nonmagnetic, practically invisible speedster, Kinnison and
Worsel entered the terra incognita of the Second Galaxy and approached
the solar system of the Eich, slowing down to a crawl as they did so.
They knew as much concerning dread Jarnevon, the planet which was their
goal, as did Jalte, from whom the knowledge had been acquired; but that
was all too little.

They knew that it was the fifth planet out from the Sun and that it
was bitterly cold. It had an atmosphere, but one containing no oxygen;
one poisonous to oxygen-breathers. It had no rotation--or rather, its
day coincided with its year--and its people dwelt upon its eternally
dark hemisphere. If they had eyes, a point upon which there was doubt,
they did not operate upon the frequencies ordinarily referred to as
"visible" light. In fact, about the Eich as persons or identities
they knew next to nothing. Jalte had seen them, but either he did not
perceive them clearly or else his mind could not retain their true
likeness; his only picture of the Eichlan physique being a confusedly
horrible blur.

"I'm scared, Worsel," Kinnison declared. "Scared purple, and the closer
we come the more scared I get."

And he was scared. He was afraid as he had never before been, in all
his short life. He had been in dangerous situations before, certainly;
not only that, he had been wounded almost unto death. In those
instances, however, peril had come upon him suddenly. He had reacted
to it automatically, having had little if any time to think about it
beforehand.

Never before had he gone into a place in which he knew in advance
that the advantage was all upon the other side; from which his chance
of getting out alive was so terrifyingly small. It was worse, much
worse, than going into that vortex. There, while the road was strange,
the enemy was known to be one whom he had conquered before; and
furthermore, he had had the _Dauntless_, its eager young crew, and the
scientific self-abnegation of old Cardynge to back him. Here he had the
speedster and Worsel--and Worsel was just as scared as he was.

The pit of his stomach felt cold, his bones seemed bits of rubber
tubing. Nevertheless, the two Lensmen were going in. That was their
job. They had to go in, even though they knew that the foe was at least
their equal mentally, was overwhelmingly their superior physically, and
was upon his own ground.

"So am I," Worsel admitted. "I'm scared to the tip of my tail. I have
one advantage over you, however--I've been that way before." He was
referring to the time when he had gone to Delgon, abysmally certain
that he would not return. Nor would he have returned save for Kinnison
and Van Buskirk. "What is fated, happens. Shall we prepare?"

They had spent many hours in discussion of what could be done, and in
the end had decided that the only possible preparation was to make sure
that if Kinnison failed, his failure would not bring disaster to the
Patrol.

"Might as well. Come in; my mind's wide open."

The Velantian insinuated his mind into Kinnison's and the Earthman
slumped down, unconscious. Then for many minutes Worsel wrought within
the plastic brain. Finally:

"Thirty seconds after you leave me these inhibitions will become
operative. When I release them your memory and your knowledge will be
exactly as they were before I began to operate," he thought, slowly,
intensely, clearly. "Until that time you know nothing whatever of any
of these matters. No mental search, however profound; no truth drug,
however potent; no probing, even of the subconscious, will or can
discover them. They do not exist. They never have existed. They shall
not exist until I so allow. These other matters have been, are, and
shall be the facts until that instant. Kimball Kinnison, awaken!"

The Tellurian came to, not knowing that he had been out. Nothing had
occurred; for him no time whatever had elapsed. He could not perceive
even that his mind had been touched.

"Sure it's done, Worsel? I can't find a thing!" Kinnison, who had
himself operated upon so many minds as tracelessly, could scarcely
believe that his own had been tampered with.

"It is done. If you could detect any trace of the work it would have
been poor work, and wasted."

       *       *       *       *       *

The speedster dropped as nearly as the Lensmen dared toward Jarnevon's
tremendous primary base. They did not know whether they were being
observed or not. For all they knew, these incomprehensible beings might
be able to see or to sense them as plainly as though their ship were
painted with radium and were landing openly, with searchlights ablaze
and with bells a-clang. Muscles tense, ready to hurl their tiny flier
away at the slightest alarm, they wafted downward.

Through the screens they dropped. Power off, even to the gravity pads;
thought, even, blanketed to zero. Nothing happened. They landed. They
disembarked. Foot by foot they made their cautious way forward.

In essence the plan was simplicity itself. Worsel would accompany
Kinnison until both were within the thought-screens of the dome. Then
the Tellurian would get, some way or other, the information the Patrol
had to have, and the Velantian would get it back to Prime Base. If the
Gray Lensman could go, too, well and good. After all, there was no
real reason to think that he couldn't--he was merely playing safe, on
general principles. If, however, worst came to worst, well--

They arrived.

"Now remember, Worsel, no matter what happens to me, or around me, you
stay out. Don't come in after me. Help me all you can with your mind,
but not otherwise. Take everything I get, and at the first sign of
danger you flit back to the speedster and give her the oof, whether I'm
around or not. Check?"

"Check," Worsel agreed, quietly. Kinnison's was the harder part. Not
because he was the leader, but because he was the better qualified.
They both knew it. The Patrol came first. It was bigger, vastly more
important than any being or any group of beings in it.

The man strode away and in thirty seconds underwent a weird and
striking mental transformation. Three quarters of his knowledge
disappeared so completely that he had no inkling that he had ever
had it. A new name, a new personality were his, so completely and
indisputably his that he had no faint glimmering of a recollection that
he had ever been otherwise.

He was wearing his Lens. It could do no possible harm, since it was
almost inconceivable that the Eich could be made to believe that any
ordinary agent could have penetrated so far, and the fact should not
be revealed to the foe that any Lensman could work without his
Lens. That would explain far too much of what had already happened.
Furthermore, it was a necessity in the only really convincing rôle
which Kinnison could play in the event of his capture.

He would not think into that base until he was far enough away from
Worsel so that the Velantian's hiding place, if it were not already
known, would not be revealed. He did not then know that such a being as
Worsel existed; he did not think into the stronghold simply because he
was not yet close enough to work efficiently.

Closer he crept. Closer. There were pits beneath the pavement, he
observed, big enough to hold a speedster. Traps. He avoided them. There
were various mechanisms within the blank walls he skirted. More traps.
He avoided them. Photo-cells, trigger beams, invisible rays, networks.
He avoided them all. Close enough.

       *       *       *       *       *

Delicately he sent out a mental probe, and almost in the instant of its
sending, cables of steel came whipping from afar. He perceived them as
they came, but he was unable to dodge them all. His projectors flamed
briefly, only to be sheared away. The cables wrapped about his limbs,
binding him fast. Helpless, he was carried through the atmosphere,
into the dome, through an air lock into a chamber housing much grimly
unmistakable apparatus. And in the council room, where the nine of
Boskone and one armored Delgonian Overlord held meeting, a communicator
buzzed and snarled.

[Illustration: _At the first faint touch of Kim's mind, the Eich
reacted. Tentacles like steel whips lashed out to bind and hold him, to
drag him into the frowning fortress_--]

"Ah!" exclaimed Eichmil. "Our visitor has arrived and is awaiting us in
the Delgonian hall of question. Shall we meet again, there?"

They did so; they of the Eich armored against the poisonous oxygen, the
Overlord naked. All wore screens.

"Earthling, we are glad indeed to see you here," the First of Boskone
welcomed the prisoner. "For a long time we have been anxious indeed--"

"I don't see how that can be," the Lensman blurted. "I just graduated.
My first big assignment, and I have failed," he ended bitterly.

A start of surprise swept around the circle. Could this be?

"He is lying," Eichmil decided. "You of Delgon, take him out of his
armor." The Overlord did so, the Tellurian's struggles meaningless
to the reptile's superhuman strength. "Release your screen and see
whether or not you can make him tell the truth."

After all, the man might not be lying. The fact that he could
understand a strange language meant nothing at all. All Lensmen could.

"But in case he _should_ be the one we seek--" The Overlord hesitated.

"We will see to it that no harm comes to you--"

"We cannot," the Ninth--the psychologist--broke in. "Before any
screen is released I suggest that we question him verbally, under the
influence of the drug which renders it impossible for any warm-blooded
oxygen breather to tell anything except the complete truth."

The suggestion, so eminently sensible, was adopted forthwith.

"Are you the Lensman who has made it possible for the Patrol to drive
us out of the Tellurian Galaxy?" came the sharp demand.

"No," was the flat and surprising reply.

"Who are you, then?"

"Philip Morgan, class of--"

"Oh, this will take forever!" snapped the Ninth. "Let me question him.
Can you control minds at a distance and without previous treatment?"

"If they are not too strong, yes. All of us specialists in psychology
can do that."

"Go to work upon him, Overlord!"

The now fully reassured Delgonian snapped off his screen and a battle
of wills ensued which made the subether boil. For Kinnison, although he
no longer knew what the truth was, still possessed a large part of his
mental power, and the Delgonian's mind, as has already been made clear,
was a capable one indeed.

"Desist!" came the command. "Earthman, what happened?"

"Nothing," Kinnison replied truthfully. "Each of us could resist the
other; neither could penetrate or control."

"Ah!" and nine Boskonian screens snapped off. Since the Lensman could
not master one Delgonian, he would not be a menace to the massed minds
of the nine of Boskone, and the questioning need not wait upon the
slowness of speech. Thoughts beat into Kinnison's brain from all sides.

       *       *       *       *       *

This power of mind was relatively new, yes. He did not know what it
was. He went to Arisia, fell asleep, and woke up with it. A refinement,
he thought, of hypnotism. Only advanced students in psychology could do
it. He knew nothing except by hearsay of the old _Brittania_--he was
a cadet then. He had never heard of Blakeslee, or of anything unusual
concerning any one hospital ship. He did not know who had scouted
Helmuth's base, or put the thionite into it. He had no idea who it
was who had killed Helmuth. As far as he knew, nothing had ever been
done about any Boskonian spies in Patrol bases. He had never happened
to hear of the planet Medon, or of anyone named Bominger, or Madame
Desplaines, or Prellin. He was entirely ignorant of any unusual weapons
of offense--he was a psychologist, not an engineer or a physicist. No,
he was not unusually adept with DeLameters--

"Hold on!" Eichmil commanded. "Stop questioning him, everybody! Now,
Lensman, instead of telling us what you do not know, give us positive
information, in your own way. How do you work? I am beginning to
suspect that the man we really want is a director, not an operator."

This was a more productive line. Lensmen, hundreds of them, each
worked upon a definite assignment. None of them had ever seen or ever
would see the man who issued orders. He had not even a name, but was
a symbol--Star A Star. They received orders through their Lenses,
wherever they might be in space. They reported back to him in the
same way. Yes, Star A Star knew what was going on in that room. He was
reporting constantly--

A knife descended viciously. Blood spurted. The stump was dressed,
roughly but effectively. They did not wish their victim to bleed to
death when he died, and he was not to die in any fashion--yet.

And in the instant that Kinnison's Lens went dead, Worsel, from his
safely distant nook, reached out direct to the mind of his friend,
thereby putting his own life in jeopardy. He knew that there was an
Overlord in that room, and the grue of a thousand helplessly sacrificed
generations of forebears swept his sinuous length at the thought,
despite his inward certainty of the new powers of his mind. He knew
that of all the entities in the Universe, the Delgonians were most
sensitive to the thought vibrations of Velantians. Nevertheless, he did
it.

He narrowed the beam down to the smallest possible coverage,
employed a frequency as far as possible from that ordinarily used by
the Overlords, and continued to observe. It was risky, but it was
necessary. It was beginning to appear as though the Earthman might not
be able to escape, and he must not die in vain.

"Can you communicate now?" In the ghastly chamber the relentless
questioning went on.

"I cannot communicate."

"It is well. In one way I would not be averse to letting your Star A
Star know what happens when one of his minions dares to spy upon the
Council of Boskone itself, but the information is as yet a trifle
premature. Later, he shall learn--"

Kinnison did not consciously thrill at that thought. He did not know
that the news was going beyond his brain; that he had achieved his
goal. Worsel, however, did; and Worsel thrilled for him. The Gray
Lensman had finished his job; all that was left to do was to destroy
this world and the power of Boskone would be broken. Kinnison could
die, now, content.

But no thought of leaving entered Worsel's mind. He would, of course,
stand by as long as there remained the slightest shred of hope, or
until some development threatened his ability to leave the planet with
his priceless information. And the pitiless inquisition went on.

       *       *       *       *       *

Star A Star had sent him to investigate their planet, to discover
whether or not there was any connection between it and the zwilnik
organization. He had come alone, in a speedster. No, he could not tell
them even approximately where the speedster was. It was so dark, and
he had come such a long distance on foot. In an hour or so, though, it
would start sending out a thought signal which he could detect--

"But you must have some ideas about this Star A Star!" This director
was the man they wanted so desperately to get. They believed implicitly
in this figment of a Lensman director. Fitting in so perfectly with
their own ideas of efficient organization, it was more convincing by
far than the actual truth would have been. They knew now that he would
be hard to find. They did not now insist upon facts; they wanted every
possible crumb of surmise. "You must have wondered who and where Star A
Star is? You must have tried to trace him?"

Yes, he had tried, but the problem could not be solved. The Lens was
non-directional, and the signals came in at practically the same
strength, anywhere in the Galaxy. They were, however, very much fainter
out here. That might be taken to indicate that Star A Star's office
was in a star cluster, well out in either the zenith or the nadir
direction--

The victim sucked dry, eight of the Council departed, leaving Eichmil
and the Overlord with the Lensman.

"What you have in mind to do, Eichmil, is childish. Your basic idea is
excellent, but your technique is pitifully inadequate."

"What could be worse?" Eichmil demanded. "I am going to dig out his
eyes, smash his bones, flay him alive, roast him, cut him up into a
dozen pieces, and send him back to his Star A Star with a warning that
every creature he sends into this Galaxy will be treated the same way.
What would _you_ do?"

"You of the Eich lack finesse," the Delgonian sighed. "You have no
subtlety, no conception of the nicer possibilities of torture, either
of an individual or of a race. For instance, to punish Star A Star
adequately this man must be returned to him alive, not dead."

"Impossible! He dies--_here_!"

"You misunderstand me. Not alive as he is now--but not entirely dead.
Bones broken, yes, and eyes removed; but those minor matters are but
a beginning. If I were doing it, I should then apply several of these
devices here, successively; but none of them to the point of complete
incompatibility with life. I should inoculate the extremities of his
four limbs with an organism which grows--shall we say--unpleasantly?
Finally, I should extract his life force and consume it--as you know,
that essence is a rarely satisfying delicacy with us--taking care to
leave just enough to maintain a bare existence. I would then put what
is left of him aboard his ship, start it toward the Tellurian Galaxy,
and send notice to the Patrol as to its exact course and velocity."

"But they would find him _alive_!" Eichmil stormed.

"Exactly. For the fullest vengeance they must, as I have said. Which is
worse, think you? To find a corpse, however dismembered, and to dispose
of it with full military honors, or to find and to have to take care
of for a full lifetime a something that has not enough intelligence
even to swallow food placed in its mouth? Remember also that the
organism will be such that they themselves will be obliged to amputate
all four of the creature's limbs to save its life."

While thinking thus the Delgonian shot out a slender tentacle which,
slithering across the floor, flipped over the tiny switch of a small
mechanism in the center of the room. This entirely unexpected action
surprised Worsel. He had been debating for minutes whether or not to
release the Gray Lensman's inhibitions. He would have done so instantly
if he had had any warning of what the Delgonian was about to do. Now it
was too late.

"I have set up a thought-screen about the room. I do not wish to share
this titbit with any of my fellows, as there is not enough to divide,"
the monster explained, parenthetically. "Have you any suggestions as to
how my plan may be improved?"

"No. You have shown that you understand torture better than we do."

"I should, since we Overlords have practiced it as a fine art since our
beginnings as a race. Do you wish the pleasure of co-operating with me
in the work?"

"I do not torture for pleasure. Since you do, you may carry out the
procedure as outlined. All I require is the assurance that he will be a
warning and an object lesson to Star A Star of the Galactic Patrol."

"I can assure you definitely that he will be both. More, I will show
you the results when I have finished with him. Or, if you like, I would
be glad to have you stay and look on--you will find the spectacle
interesting, entertaining and highly instructive."

"No, thanks--that is, not if you are sure that you can handle him
alone."

"Handle him! This pitiful weakling?" The Overlord snorted
contemptuously. "I could handle seven like him. He is on the verge of
fainting already. Observe, please, his reaction to the fungus-culture
injections."

Four times the Delgonian rammed the needle home; and, true to
prediction, Kinnison's body went limp in its shackles.

"Ah, yes; a weak race, physically--very weak," Eichmil observed, as he
left the room; and the Overlord, alone with his victim, cast off the
chains in order to stretch the Lensman out upon one of the sinister
machines so close at hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

But Kinnison had not fainted. He had not allowed himself to feel the
hurt of the knife, of the needle, nor of the injected fluid. Never
before had he been more coldly, intently alert than in this, the
climactic minute of his life. The full of his powers he did not have,
perhaps, yet even now he was better equipped, mentally and physically,
than the Kinnison of even a short year ago, able to establish a nerve
block that would permit full and unshaken concentration on every move
of offense and defense he might make, whatever frightful toll of pain
and injury the inhumanly powerful, semireptilian Delgonian might
inflict in the struggle that the Lensman now proposed. Thus, upon the
first instant of opportunity, he exploded into action with a violence
which took even the trigger-nerved Overlord entirely by surprise.

In practically one motion he rolled, ducked, gathered himself together
and launched a kick behind which there was the driving force of every
ounce of his powerful body and the concentrated urge of every cell of
his brain. It struck its mark squarely--the hard toe of the Lensman's
heavy boot crashed squarely against the Overlord's plated neck at the
exact base of the skull. That kick would have pulped any human or
near-human head--it would have slain a horse--it staggered momentarily
even the reptilianly armored monstrosity which was the Delgonian.

Kinnison went leaping across the room toward a rack of implements and
weapons, only to be buried in mid-course beneath a hurtling avalanche
of fury. For a moment man and monster stood poised, almost en tableau,
then they crashed to the floor together--talons and fingers clawing,
gouging at eyes; wings, feet, hard-gnarled hands, scimitared tail,
balled fist, boots and teeth wreaking every ultimate possibility of
damage. Against the frightfully armed and naturally armored body of the
Delgonian, human physical weapons and human strength were near useless;
but, insulated against the agony of snapping bones and bludgeon blows
of the mighty tail by that hard-held nerve block, the Lensman's
furiously active mind had a goal--a vaguely understood goal--toward
which he directed the deadly struggle he could not control or hope to
win--

Upon and over the thought-screen generator rolled the madly warring
pair, and as the delicate mechanism disintegrated it ceased to function.

Worsel's prodigious mentality had been beating ceaselessly against
that screen ever since its erection, and in the very instant of its
fall Kinnison became again the Gray Lensman of old. And in the next
instant both of those mighty minds--the two most powerful then known
to civilization--had hurled themselves against that of the Delgonian.
Bitter though the ensuing struggle was, it was brief. Nothing short of
an Arisian mentality could have withstood the venomous intensity, the
berserk power, of that concerted and synchronized attack.

Brain half burned out, the Overlord wilted; and, docility itself, he
energized the communicator.

"Eichmil? The work is done. Thoroughly done, and well."

"So soon?"

"Yes. I was hungry--and, as I intimated, Tellurians are much too weak
to furnish any real sport. Do you wish to inspect what is left of
the Lensman?" This question was safe enough; Worsel knew exactly how
Kinnison had fared during his whirlwind bodily encounter with the
frightfully armed, heavily armored engine of destruction which was the
Delgonian.

"No." Eichmil, as a high executive, was accustomed to delegating far
more important matters to competent underlings. "If you say that it is
well done, that is sufficient."

"Clear the way for me, then, please," the Overlord requested. Then,
picking up the hideously mangled thing that was Kinnison's body, he
incased it in its armor and, donning his own, wriggled boldly away with
his burden. "I go to place this residuum within its ship and to return
it to Star A Star."

"You will be able to find the speedster?"

"Certainly. He was to find it. Whatever he could have done, I, working
through the cells of his brain, can likewise do."

"Can you handle him alone, Kinnison?" Worsel asked presently. "Can you
hold out until you reach the boat?"

"Yes, to both. I can handle him--we softened him down plenty. I will
last--I'll make myself last, long enough."

"I go, then, lest they be observing with spy rays."

To the black flier the completely subservient Delgonian then bore his
physically disabled master, and carefully he put him aboard. Worsel
helped openly there, for he had put out screens against all forms of
intrusion. The vessel took off and the Overlord wriggled blithely back
toward the dome. He was full of the consciousness of a good job, well
done. He even felt the sensation of repletion concomitant with having
consumed much vital force!

"I hate to let him go!" Worsel's thought was a growl of baffled fury.
"It gripes me to the tail to let him think that he has done everything
he set out to do; that he will never even know how he got those bruises
and contusions. I wanted--I still want--to tear him apart for what he
has done to you, my friend."

"Thanks, old snake." Kinnison's thought came faintly. "Just temporary.
He's living on borrowed time. He'll get his. You've got everything
under control, haven't you?"

"On the green. Why?"

"Because I can't hold this nerve block any longer.... It hurts.... I'm
sick.... I think I'm going to--"

He fainted. More, he plunged parsecs deep into the blackest depths of
oblivion as outraged nature took the toll she had been so long denied.

Worsel hurled a call to Earth, then turned to his maimed and horribly
broken companion. He applied splints to the shattered limbs, he dressed
and bandaged the hideous wounds and the raw sockets which had once held
eyes, he ministered to the raging, burning thirst. Whenever Kinnison's
mind wearied he held for him the nerve block, the priceless anodyne
without which the Gray Lensman must have died from sheerest agony.

"Why not allow me, friend, to relieve you of all consciousness until
help arrives?" the Velantian asked pityingly.

"Can you do it without killing me?"

"If you so allow, yes. If you offer any resistance, I do not believe
that any mind in the Universe could."

"I won't resist you. Come in," and Kinnison's suffering ended.

But kindly Worsel could do nothing about the fantastically atrocious
growths which were transforming the Earthman's legs and arms into
monstrosities out of nightmare.

He could only wait--wait for the skilled assistance which he knew must
be so long in coming.




                                 XXI.


When Worsel's hard-driven call impinged upon the port admiral's
lens, Haynes dropped everything to take the report himself.
Characteristically Worsel sent first and Haynes first recorded a
complete statement of the successful mission to Jarnevon. Last came
personalities, the tale of Kinnison's ordeal and of his present plight.

"Are they following you in force, or can't you tell?"

"Nothing has been detectable, and at the time of our departure there
had been no suggestion of any such action," Worsel replied carefully.

"We'll come in force, anyway, and fast. Keep him alive until we meet
you," Haynes urged, and disconnected.

It was an unheard-of occurrence for the port admiral to turn over his
very busy and extremely important desk to a subordinate without notice
and without giving him detailed instructions, but Haynes did it now.

"Take charge of everything, Southworth!" he snapped. "I'm called
away--emergency. Kinnison found Boskone--got away--hurt--I'm going
after him in the _Dauntless_. Taking the new flotilla with me. Time
indefinite--probably a few weeks."

He strode toward the communicator desk. The _Dauntless_ was, as always,
completely serviced and ready for any emergency. Where was that fleet
of her sister ships, on its shakedown cruise? He'd shake them down!
They had with them the new hospital ship, too--the only Red Cross ship
in space that could leg it, parsec for parsec, with the _Dauntless_.

"Get me Navigations.... Figure best point of rendezvous for the
_Dauntless_ and Flotilla ZKD, both at full blast, en route to
Lundmark's Nebula. Fifteen minutes departure. Figure approximate time
of meeting with speedster, also at full blast, leaving that nebula
hour nine fourteen today. Correction! Cancel speedster meeting; we
can compute that more accurately later. Advise adjutant. Vice-Admiral
Southworth will send order, through channels. Get me Base Hospital....
Lacy, please.... Kinnison's hurt, sawbones, bad. I'm going out after
him. Coming along?"

"Yes. How about--"

"On the green. Flotilla ZKD, including your new
two-hundred-million-credit hospital, is going along. Slip twelve,
_Dauntless_, eleven and one half minutes from now. Hipe!" And the
surgeon general "hiped."

Two minutes before the scheduled take-off Base Navigations called the
chief navigating officer of the _Dauntless_.

"Course to rendezvous with Flotilla ZKD latitude three fifty-four dash
thirty longitude nineteen dash forty-two time approximately twelve dash
seven dash twenty-six place one dash three dash oh outside arbitrary
galactic rim check and repeat," rattled from the speaker without pause
or punctuation. Nevertheless, the chief navigator got it, recorded it,
checked and repeated it.

"Figures only approximations because of lack of exact data on
variations in density of medium and on distance necessarily lost in
detouring stars," the speaker chattered on. "Suggest instructing your
second navigator to communicate with navigating officers Flotilla
ZKD at time twelve dash oh dash oh to correct courses to compensate
unavoidably erroneous assumptions in computation Base Navigations off."

"I'll say he's off--'way off!" growled the second. "What does he think
I am--a complete nitwit? Pretty soon he'll be telling me that two plus
two equals four point oh."

       *       *       *       *       *

The fifteen-second warning bell sounded. Every man came to the ready at
his post, and precisely upon the designated second the superdreadnought
blasted off. For six miles she rose inert upon her under jets,
sirens and flaring lights clearing her way. Then she went free, her
needle prow slanted sharply upward, her full battery of main driving
projectors burst into action, and to all intents and purposes she
vanished.

The Earth fell away from her at an incredible rate, dwindling away into
invisibility in less than a minute. In two minutes the Sun itself was
merely a bright star, in five it had merged indistinguishably into the
sharply defined, brilliantly white belt of the Milky Way.

Hour after hour, day after day, the _Dauntless_ hurtled through space,
swinging almost imperceptibly this way and that to avoid the dense
ether in the neighborhood of suns through which the designated course
would have led; but never leaving far or for long the direct line,
almost exactly in the equatorial plane of the Galaxy, between Tellus
and the place of meeting. Behind her the Milky Way clotted, condensed,
gathered itself together; before her and around her the stars began
rapidly to thin out. Finally there were no more stars in front of her.
She had reached the "arbitrary rim" of the Galaxy, and the second
navigator plugged into Communications.

"Please get me Flotilla ZDK, Flagship Navigations," he requested; and,
as a clean-cut young face appeared upon his plate: "Hi, Harvey, old
spacehound! Fancy meeting you out here! It's a small Universe, ain't
it? Say, did that crumb back there at Base tell you, too, to be sure
and start checking course before you overran the rendezvous? If he was
singling me out to make that pass at, I'm going to take steps, and not
through channels, either."

"Yeah, he told me the same. I thought it was funny, too--an oiler's boy
would know enough to do that without being told. We figured maybe he
was jittery on account of us meeting the admiral or something. What's
burned out all the jets, Paul, to get the big brass hats 'way out here
and all dithered up, and to pull us offa the cruise this way? Must be
a hell of an important flit! You're computing the Old Man himself; you
oughta know something. What's all this about a speedster that we're
going to escort? Spill it--give us the dope!"

"I don't know a thing, Harvey, honest, any more than you do.
They didn't put out a word. Well, we'd better be getting onto
the course--'to compensate unavoidably erroneous assumptions in
computation,'" he mimicked caustically. "What do you read on my lambda?
Fourteen--three--oh point six--decrement--"

The conversation became a technical jargon; because of which, however,
the courses of the flying spaceships changed subtly. The flotilla
swung around, through a small arc of a circle of prodigious radius,
decreasing by a tenth its driving force. Up to it the _Dauntless_
crept; through it and into the van. Then again in cone formation, but
with fifty-five units instead of fifty-four, the flotilla screamed
forward at maximum blast.

Well before the calculated time of meeting the speedster a Velantian
Lensman who knew Worsel well put himself en rapport with him and
sent a thought out far ahead of the flying squadron. It found its
goal--Lensmen of that race, as has been brought out, have always been
extraordinarily capable communicators--and once more the course was
altered slightly. In due time Worsel reported that he could detect the
fleet, and shortly thereafter:

"Worsel says to cut your drive to zero," the Velantian transmitted.
"He's coming up. He's close. He's going to go inert and start driving.
We're to stay free until we see what his intrinsic velocity is. Watch
for his flare."

It was a weird sensation, this of knowing that a speedster--quite a
sizable chunk of boat, really--was almost in their midst, and yet
having all their instruments, even the electros, register empty space.

There it was! The flare of the driving blast, a brilliant streamer of
fierce white light, sprang into being and drifted rapidly away to one
side of their course. When it had attained a safe distance:

"All ships of the flotilla except the _Dauntless_ go inert," Haynes
directed. Then, to his own pilot, "Back us off a bit, Henderson, and do
the same," and the new flagship also went inert.

"How can I get onto the _Pasteur_ the quickest, Haynes?" Lacy demanded.

"Take a gig," the admiral grunted. "Strapped down, you can use as much
acceleration as you like. Three G's is all we can use without warning
and preparation."

       *       *       *       *       *

There followed a curious and fascinating spectacle, for the hospital
ship had an intrinsic velocity entirely different from that of either
Kinnison's speedster or Lacy's powerful gig. The _Pasteur_, gravity
pads cut to zero, was braking down by means of her under jets at a
conservative one point four gravities, since hospital ships were not
allowed to use the brutal inert accelerations employed as a matter of
course by ships of war.

The gig was on her brakes at five gravities, all that Lacy wanted to
take--but the speedster! Worsel had put his patient into a pressure
pack and had hung him on suspension, and was "balancing her down on her
tail" at everything he could stand--a full eleven gravities!

But even at that, the gig first matched the velocity of the hospital
ship. The intrinsics of those two were at least of the same order
of magnitude, since both had come from the same galaxy. Therefore,
Lacy boarded the Red Cross vessel and was escorted to the office of
the chief nurse while Worsel was still blasting at eleven G's--fifty
thousand miles distant then and getting farther away by the second--to
kill the speedster's Lundmarkian intrinsic velocity. Nor could the
tractors of the warships be of any assistance--the speedster's own
vicious jets were fully capable of supplying more acceleration than
even unhuman Worsel could endure!

"How do you do, Dr. Lacy? Everything is ready." Clarrissa MacDougall
met him, hand outstretched. Her saucy white cap was worn as jerkily
cocked as ever; perhaps even more so, now that it was emblazoned with
the cross-surmounted wedge which is the insignia of sector chief nurse.
Her flaming hair was as gorgeous, her smile was as radiant, her bearing
as confidently--Kinnison has said of her more than once that she is the
only person he has ever known who can strut sitting down!--as calmly
poised. "I'm very glad to see you, doctor. It's been quite a while--"
Her voice died away, for the man was looking at her with an expression
defying analysis.

For Lacy was thunderstruck. If he had ever known it--and he must
have--he had forgotten completely that MacDougall had this ship. This
was awful--terrible!

"Oh, yes ... yes, of course. How do you do? Mighty glad to see you
again. How's everything going?" He pumped her hand vigorously, thinking
frantically the while what he would--what he _could_--say next. "Oh, by
the way, who is to be in charge of the operating room?"

"Why, I am, of course," she replied in surprise. "Who else would be?"

"_Anyone_ else," he wanted to say, but did not--then. "Why, that isn't
at all necessary. I would suggest--"

"You'll suggest nothing of the kind!" She stared at him intently;
then, as she realized what his expression really meant--she had never
before seen such a look of pitying anguish upon his usually sternly
professional face--her own turned white and both hands flew to her
throat.

"Not Kim, Lacy!" she gasped. Gone now was everything of poise, of
insouciance, which had so characterized her a moment before. She who
had worked unflinchingly upon all sorts of dismembered, fragmentary,
maimed and mangled men was now a pleading, stricken, desperately
frightened girl. "Not Kim--please! Oh, merciful God, don't let it be
my Kim!"

"You _can't_ be there, Mac." He did not need to tell her. She knew; he
knew that she knew. "Somebody else--_anybody_ else."

"No!" came the hot negative, although the blood drained completely from
the chief nurse's face, leaving it as white as the immaculate uniform
she wore. Her eyes were black, burning holes. "It's my job, Lacy, in
more ways than one. Do you think that I would _ever_ let anyone else
work on _him_?" she finished passionately.

"You'll have to," he declared. "I didn't want to tell you this, but
he's a ghastly mess. Altogether too much so for any woman, to say
nothing of one who loves him." This, from a surgeon of Lacy's long and
wide experience, was an unthinkable statement. Nevertheless:

"All the more reason why I've got to do it. No matter what shape he's
in, I'll let no one else work on my Kim."

"I say no. That's an order--official!"

"Damn such orders!" she flamed. "There's nothing back of it--you know
that as well as I do!"

"See here, young woman--"

"Do you think that you can get away with ordering me not to perform
the very duties I have taken an oath to do?" she stormed. "And even
if it were not my job, I'd come in and work on him if I had to get a
torch and cut the ship apart, plate by plate, to do it! The only way
you can keep me out of that operating room, Lacy, is to have about ten
of your men put me into a strait jacket--and if you do that I'll have
you kicked out of the service bodily. You know that I could and that I
would!"

"QX, MacDougall, you win." She had him there. This girl could and would
do exactly that. "But if you faint, I swear that I'll make you wish--"

"You know me better than that, doctor." She was cold now as a woman of
marble. "If he dies, I'll die, too, right then. But if he lives, I'll
stand by as long as I can do a single thing, however small, to help."

"You would, at that," the surgeon admitted. "Probably you would be
able to hold together better than anyone else could. But there'll be
after-effects in your case, you know."

"I know." Her voice was bleak. "I'll live through them--if Kim lives."
She became all nurse in the course of a breath. White, cold, inhuman;
strung to highest tension and yet placidly calm, as only a truly loving
woman in life's great crises can be. "You have had reports on him,
doctor. What is your provisional diagnosis?"

"Something like elephantiasis, only worse, affecting both arms and both
legs. Drastic amputations indicated. Eye sockets require attention.
Various multiple and compound fractures. Punctured and incised wounds.
Traumatism, ecchymosis, extensive extravasations, œdema. Profound
systemic shock, of course. The prognosis, however, seems to be
distinctly favorable, as far as we can tell."

"Oh, I'm glad of that!" she breathed, the woman for a moment showing
through the armor of the nurse. She had not dared even to think of
prognosis. Then she had a thought. "Is that really true, or are you
just giving me a shot in the arm?" she demanded.

"The truth--strictly," he assured her. "Worsel has an excellent sense
of perception, and he has reported fully and clearly. Kinnison's mind,
brain, and spine are not affected in any way, and we should be able to
save his life. That is the one good feature of the whole thing."

       *       *       *       *       *

The speedster finally matched the velocity of the hospital ship.
She went free, flashed up to the _Pasteur_, inerted, and maneuvered
briefly. The larger vessel engulfed the smaller. The Gray Lensman was
carried into the operating room. The anæsthetist approached the table
and Lacy was stunned at a thought from Kinnison.

[Illustration: _They wheeled Kim out of the speedster, grim Worsel's
vast strength gentle to help him into the hospital ship._]

"Never mind the anæsthetic, Dr. Lacy. You can't make me unconscious
without killing me. Go ahead with your work. I'll hold a nerve block
while you're doing what has to be done. I can do it perfectly--I've had
lots of practice."

"But we can't, man!" Lacy exclaimed. "You've got to be under a general
for this job--we can't have you conscious. You're raving, I think. It
will work, surely; it always has. Let us try it, anyway, won't you?"

"Sure. It'll save me the trouble of holding the block, even though it
won't do anything else. Go ahead."

The attendant physician did so, with the same cool skill and to the
same end point as in thousands of similar and successful undertakings.
At its conclusion: "Gone now, aren't you, Kinnison?" Lacy asked,
through his Lens.

"No," came the surprising reply. "Physically, it worked. I can't feel a
thing and I can't move a muscle, but mentally I am as wide awake as I
ever was."

"But you shouldn't be!" Lacy protested. "Perhaps you were right, at
that--we can't give you much more without danger of collapse. But
you've _got_ to be unconscious! Isn't there some way in which you can
be made so?"

"Yes, there is. But why do I have to be unconscious?" Kinnison asked
curiously.

"To avoid mental shock--seriously damaging," the surgeon explained. "In
your case particularly the mental aspect is much graver than the purely
physical one."

"Maybe you're right but you can't do it with drugs. Call Worsel; he has
done it before. He had me unconscious most of the way over here, except
when he had to give me a drink or something to eat. He's the only man
this side of Arisia who can operate on my mind."

Worsel came. "Sleep, my friend," he commanded, gently but firmly.
"Sleep profoundly, body and mind, with no physical or mental
sensations, no consciousness, no perception even of the passage of
time. Sleep until someone having authority to do so bids you awaken."

And Kinnison slept; so deeply that even Lacy's probing Lens could
elicit no response.

"He will _stay_ that way?" the surgeon asked in awe.

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Indefinitely. Until one of you doctors or nurses tells him to wake up,
or until he dies for lack of food or water."

"We will see to it that he gets nourishment. He would make a much
better recovery if we could keep him in that state until his injuries
are almost healed. Would that do him harm, think you?"

"None whatever."

Then the surgeons and the nurses went to work. Lacy was not guilty of
exaggeration when he described Kinnison as being a "ghastly mess."
He was all of that. The job was long and hard. It was heartbreaking,
even for those to whom Kinnison was merely another case, not a beloved
personality. What they had to do they did, and the white marble
chief nurse carried on through every soul-wrenching second, through
every shocking, searing motion of it. She did her part, stoically,
unflinchingly, as efficiently as though the patient upon the table were
a total stranger undergoing a simple appendectomy and not the one man
in her entire universe suffering radical dismemberment. Nor did she
faint--then.

       *       *       *       *       *

Back in Base Hospital, then, time wore on until Lacy decided that the
Lensman could be aroused from his trance. Clarrissa it was who woke
him up. She had fought for the privilege; first claiming it as a right
and then threatening to commit mayhem upon the person of anyone else
who dared even to think of doing it.

"Wake up, Kim, dear," she whispered. "The worst of it is over now. You
are getting well."

The Gray Lensman came to instantly, in full command of every faculty,
knowing everything that had happened up to the instant of his hypnosis
by Worsel. He stiffened, ready to establish again the nerve block
against the intolerable agony to which he had been subjected so long,
but there was no need. His body was, for the first time in untold
æons, free from pain; and he relaxed blissfully, reveling in the sheer
comfort of it.

"I'm _so_ glad that you're awake, Kim," the nurse went on. "I know
that you can't talk to me--we can't unbandage your jaw until next
week--and you can't think at me, either, because your new Lens
hasn't come yet. But I can talk to you and you can listen. Don't be
discouraged, Kim. Don't let it get you down. I love you just as much as
I ever did, and as soon as you can talk we're going to get married. I
am going to take care of you--"

"Don't 'poor dear' me, Mac," he interrupted her with a vigorous
thought. "You didn't say it, I know, but you were thinking it. I'm not
half as helpless as you think I am. I can still communicate, and I can
see as well as I ever could, or better. And if you think that I'm going
to let you marry me to take care of me, you're crazy."

"You're raving! Delirious! Stark, staring mad!" She started back,
then controlled herself with an effort. "Maybe you can think at people
without a Lens--of course you can, since you just did, at me--but you
_can't_ see, Kim, possibly. Believe me, boy, I _know_ that you can't. I
was there--"

"I can, though," he insisted. "I got a lot of stuff on my second trip
to Arisia that I couldn't let anybody know about then, but I can now.
I've got as good a sense of perception as Tregonsee has--maybe better.
To prove it, you look thin, worn--whittled down to a nub. You've been
working too hard--on me."

"Deduction," she scoffed. "You would know that I would."

"QX. How about those roses over there on the table? White ones, yellow
ones, and red ones? With ferns?"

"You can smell them, perhaps"--dubiously. Then, with more assurance:
"You would know that practically all the flowers known to botany would
be here."

"Well, I'll count 'em and point 'em out to you, then--or, better, how
about that little gold locket, with 'CM' engraved on it, that you're
wearing under your uniform? I can't smell that, nor the picture in
it--" The man's thought faltered in embarrassment. "_My_ picture!
Klono's whiskers, Mac, where did you get that--and why?"

"It's a reduction that Admiral Haynes let me have made. I am wearing it
because I love you--I've said that before."

The girl's entrancing smile was now in full evidence. She knew now that
he _could_ see, that he would never be the helpless hulk which she had
so gallingly thought him doomed to become, and her spirits rose in
ecstatic relief. But he would _never_ take the initiative now. Well,
then, she would; and this was as good an opening as she ever would have
with the stubborn brute. Therefore:

"More than that, as I said before, I am going to marry you, whether
you like it or not." She blushed a heavenly--and discordant--magenta,
but went on unfalteringly: "And not out of pity, either, Kim, or just
to take care of you. It's older than that--much older."

"It can't be done, Mac." His thought was a protest to high Heaven at
the injustice of Fate. "I've thought it over out in space a thousand
times--thought until I was black in the face--but I get the same
result every time. It's just simply no soap. You are much too fine a
woman--too splendid, too vital, too much of everything a woman should
be--to be tied down for life to a thing that's half steel, rubber, and
phenoline. It just simply is not on the wheel, that's all."

"You're full of pickles, Kim." Gone was all her uncertainty and
nervousness. She was calm, poised; glowing with a transcendent inward
beauty. "I didn't really _know_ until this minute that you love me,
too, but I do now. Don't you realize, you big, dumb, wonderful clunker,
that as long as there's one single, little bit of a piece of you left
alive I'll love that piece more than I ever could any other man's
entire being?"

"But I _can't_, I tell you!" He groaned the thought. "I can't and
I won't! My job isn't done yet, either, and the next time they'll
probably get me. I _can't_ let you waste yourself, Mac, on a fraction
of a man for a fraction of a lifetime!"

"QX, Gray Lensman." Clarrissa was serene, radiantly untroubled. She
could make things come out right now; everything was on the green.
"We'll put this back up on the shelf for a while. I'm afraid that I
have been terribly remiss in my duties as a nurse. Patients mustn't be
excited or quarreled with, you know."

"That's another thing. How come you, a sector chief, to be on ordinary
room duty, and night duty at that?"

"Sector chiefs assign duties, don't they?" she retorted sunnily. "Now
I'll give you a rub and change some of these dressings."




                                 XXII.


"Hi, Skeleton-gazer!"

"Ho, Big Chief Feet-on-the-desk!"

"I see that your red-headed sector chief is still occupying all
strategic salients in force." Haynes had paused in the surgeon
general's office on his way to another of his conferences with the Gray
Lensman. "Can't you get rid of her or don't you want to?"

"Don't want to. Couldn't, anyway, probably. The young vixen would tear
down the hospital--she might even resign, marry him out of hand, and
lug him off somewhere. You want him to recover, don't you?"

"Don't be any more of an idiot than you have to. What a question!"

"Don't work up a temperature about MacDougall, then. As long as she's
around him--and that's twenty-four hours a day--he'll get everything in
the Universe that he can get any good out of."

"That's so, too. This other thing's out of our hands now, anyway.
Kinnison can't hold his position long against her and himself
both--overwhelmingly superior force. Just as well, too--civilization
needs more like those two."

"Check, but the affair isn't out of our hands yet, by any means. We've
got quite a little more fine work to do there, as you'll see, before
it's a really good job. But about Kinnison--"

"Yes. When are you going to fit arms and legs on him? He should be
practicing with them at this stage of the game, I should think--I was."

"You _should_ think--but, unfortunately, you don't, about anything
except war," was the surgeon's dry rejoinder. "If you did, you would
have paid more attention to what Phillips has been doing. He is making
the final test today. Come along--your conference with Kinnison can
wait half an hour."

In the research laboratory which had been assigned to Phillips they
found von Hohendorff with the Posenian. Haynes was surprised to see the
old commandant of cadets, but Lacy quite evidently had known that he
was to be there.

"Phillips," the surgeon general began, "explain to Admiral Haynes, in
nontechnical language, what you are doing."

"The original problem was to discover what hormone or other agent
caused proliferation of neural tissue--"

"Wait a minute; I'd better do it," Lacy broke in. "Anyway, you wouldn't
do yourself justice. The first thing that Phillips found out was that
the problem of repairing damaged nervous tissue was inextricably
involved with several other unknown things, such as the original growth
of such tissue, its relationship to growth in general, the regeneration
of lost members in lower forms, and so on. You see, Haynes, it is a
known fact that nerves do grow, or else they could not exist; and in
some lower forms of life they regenerate. Those facts were all he had,
at first. In higher forms, even during the growth stage, regeneration
does not occur spontaneously. Phillips set out to find out why.

"The thyroid controls growth, but does not initiate it, he learned.
This fact seemed to indicate that there was an unknown hormone
involved--that certain lower types possess an endocrine gland which
is either atrophied or non-existent in higher types. If the latter,
he was sunk. He reasoned, however, that, since higher types evolved
from lower, the gland in question might very well exist in a vestigial
stage. He studied animals, thousands of them, from the germ upward. He
exhausted the patience of the Posenian authorities; and when they cut
off his appropriation, on the ground that the thing was impossible, he
came here. We gave him carte blanche.

"The man is a miracle of perseverence, a keen observer, a shrewd
reasoner, and a mechanic par excellence--a born researcher. Therefore,
in time he learned what it must be: to cut it short, the pineal body.
Then he had to find the stimulant. Drugs, chemicals, and spectrum of
radiation; singly and in combination. Years of plugging, with just
enough progress to keep him at it. Visits to other planets peopled
by races human to two places or more; learning everything that had
been done along the line of his problem. When you fellows moved Medon
over here he visited it as a matter of routine, and there he hit
the jackpot. Wise himself is a surgeon, and the Medonians have for
centuries been having warfare and grief enough, steadily and in heroic
doses, to develop the medical and surgical arts no end.

"They knew how to stimulate the pineal--a combination of drugs and
specific radiations--but their method was dangerous. With Phillips'
fresh viewpoint, his wide, new knowledge, and his mechanical genius,
they worked out a new and highly satisfactory technique. He was going
to try it out on a pirate going into the lethal chamber, but von
Hohendorff heard about it and insisted that it should be tried on him.
Got up on his Unattached Lensman's high horse and won't come down. So
here we are."

"Hm-m-m--interesting!" The admiral had listened attentively. "You're
pretty sure that it will work, aren't you?"

"As sure as we can be of anything that hasn't been tried.
Ninety-percent probability, say--certainly not over ninety-five."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Good enough odds." Haynes turned to the commandant. "What do you mean,
you old reprobate, by sneaking around behind my back and horning in on
my reservation? I rate Unattached, too, you know, and it's mine. You're
out, von."

"I saw it first and I refuse to relinquish." Von Hohendorff was adamant.

"You've got to," Haynes insisted. "He isn't your cub any more; he's my
Lensman. Besides, I'm a better test than you are--I've got more parts
to replace than you have."

"Four or five make just as good a test as a dozen," the commandant
declared.

"Gentlemen, think!" the Posenian pleaded. "Please consider that the
pineal is actually inside the brain. It is true that I have not been
able to discover any brain injury so far, but the process has not yet
been applied to a reasoning brain and I can offer no assurance whatever
that some obscure injury will not result."

"What of it?" and the two old Unattached Lensmen resumed their battle,
hammer and tongs. Neither would yield a millimeter.

"Operate on them both, then, since they are both above law or reason,"
Lacy finally ordered in exasperation. "There ought to be a law to
reduce Gray Lensmen to the ranks when they begin to suffer from
ossification of the intellect."

"Starting with yourself, perhaps?" the admiral shot back, not at all
abashed.

Haynes relented enough to let von Hohendorff go first, and both were
given the necessary injections. The commandant was then strapped
solidly into a chair; his head was clamped so firmly that he could not
move it in any direction.

The Posenian swung his needle rays into place; two of them,
diametrically opposed, each held rigidly upon micrometered racks and
each operated by two huge, double, rock-steady hands. The operator
_looked_ entirely aloof--being eyeless and practically headless, it
is impossible to tell from a Posenian's attitude or posture anything
about the focal point of his attention--but the watchers knew that he
was observing in microscopic detail the tiny gland within the old
Lensman's skull.

Then Haynes. "Is this all there is to it, or do we come back for more?"
he asked, when he was released from his shackles.

"That's all," Lacy answered. "One stimulation lasts for life, as far as
we know. But if the treatment is successful you'll come back--about day
after tomorrow, I think--to go to bed here. Your spare equipment won't
fit and your stumps may require surgical attention."

Sure enough, Haynes did come back to the hospital, but not to go to
bed. He was too busy. Instead, he got a wheel chair, and in it he was
taken back to his now-boiling office. And in a few more days he called
Lacy in high exasperation.

"Know what you've done?" he demanded. "Not satisfied with taking my
perfectly good parts away from me, you've taken my teeth, too. They
don't fit--I can't eat a thing! And I'm hungry as a wolf--I was never
so hungry before in all my life! I _can't_ live on soup, man; I've got
work to do. What are you going to do about it?"

"_Ho-ho-haw!_" Lacy roared. "Serves you right--von Hohendorff is taking
it easy here; sitting right on top of the world. Easy, now, sailor,
don't rupture your aorta. I'll send a nurse over with a soft-boiled egg
and a spoon. _Teething_--at _your_ age--_Haw-ho-haw!_"

But it was no ordinary nurse who came, a few minutes later, to see
the port admiral; it was the sector chief herself. She looked at him
pityingly as she trundled him into his private office and shut the
door, thereby establishing complete coverage.

"I had no idea, Admiral Haynes, that you ... that there--" She paused.

"That I was so much of a machine-shop rebuild?"--complacently. "Except
in the matter of eyes--which he doesn't need, anyway--our mutual
friend Kinnison has very little on me, my dear. I got so handy with the
replacements that very few people knew how much of me was artificial.
But it's these teeth that are taking all the joy out of life. I'm
hungry, confound it! Have you got anything really satisfying that I can
eat?"

"I'll say I have!" She fed him; then, bending over, she squeezed him
tight and kissed him emphatically. "You and the commandant are just
perfectly wonderful old darlings, and I love you all to pieces," she
declared. "I think Lacy was simply poisonous to laugh at you the way he
did. Why, you two are the world's greatest heroes! He knew perfectly
well all the time, the lug, that of course you'd be hungry; that you'd
have to eat twice as much as usual while your legs and things were
growing. Don't worry, admiral, I'll feed you until you bulge. I want
you to hurry up with this, so that they'll do it to Kim."

"Thanks, Mac," and as she wheeled him back into the main office he
considered her anew. A ravishing creature, but sound. Rash, and a bit
stubborn, perhaps; impetuous and head-strong; but clean, solid metal
all the way through. She had what it takes--she qualified. She and
Kinnison would make a mighty fine couple when the lad got some of that
heroic damn nonsense knocked out of his head--but there was work to do.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was. The Galactic Council had considered thoroughly Kinnison's
reports; its every member had conferred with him and with Worsel at
length. Throughout the First Galaxy the Patrol was at work in all its
prodigious might, preparing to wipe out the menace to civilization
which was Boskone. First-line superdreadnoughts--no others would go
upon that mission--were being built and armed, rebuilt and rearmed.

Well it was that the Galactic Patrol had previously amassed an almost
inexhaustible supply of wealth, for its "reserves of expendible credit"
were running like water.

Weapons, supposedly of irresistible power, were made even more
powerful. Screens already "impenetrable" were stiffened into even
greater stubbornness.

Primary projectors were made to take even higher loads, for longer
times. New and heavier Q-type helices were designed and built. Larger
and more destructive duodec bombs were hurled against already ruined,
torn, and quivering test planets. Uninhabited worlds were being
equipped with super-Bergenholms and with driving projectors. The
negasphere, the most incredible menace to navigation which had ever
existed in space, was being patrolled by a cordon of guard ships.

And all this activity centered in one vast building and culminated in
one man--Port Admiral Haynes, Galactic councilor and chief of staff.
And Haynes could not get enough to eat because he was cutting a new set
of teeth!

He cut them, all thirty-two of them. His new limbs grew perfectly, even
to the nails. Hair grew upon what had for years been a shining expanse
of pate. But, much to Lacy's relief, it was old skin, not young, which
covered the new limbs. It was white hair, not brown, that was dulling
the glossiness of Haynes' bald old head. His bifocals, unchanged, were
still necessary if he were to see anything clearly, near or far.

"Our experimental animals aged and died normally," Lacy explained
graciously, "but I was beginning to wonder if we had rejuvenated you
two, or perhaps endowed you with eternal life. Glad to see that the new
parts have the same physical age as the rest of you--it would be mildly
embarrassing to have to kill two Gray Lensmen to get rid of them."

"You aren't even as funny as a rubber crutch," Haynes grunted. "When
are you going to give young Kinnison the works? Don't you realize that
we need him?"

"Pretty soon now--just as soon as we give you and von your
psychological examinations."

"Bah! That isn't necessary--my brain's QX!"

"That's what you think, but what do you know about brains? Worsel will
tell us what shape your mind--if any--is in."

The Velantian put both Haynes and von Hohendorff through a grueling
examination, finding that their minds had not been affected in any way
by the stimulants applied to their pineal glands.

Then and only then did Phillips operate upon Kinnison; and in his
case, too, the operation was a complete success. Arms and legs and
eyes replaced themselves flawlessly. The scars of his terrible wounds
disappeared, leaving no sign of ever having been.

He was a little slower, however; somewhat clumsy, and woefully weak.
Therefore, instead of discharging him from the hospital as cured, which
procedure would have restored to him automatically all the rights and
privileges of an Unattached Lensman, the Council decided to transfer
him to a physical-culture camp. A few weeks there would restore to him
entirely the strength, speed, and agility which had formerly been his,
and he would then be allowed to resume active duty.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just before he left the hospital, Kinnison strolled with Clarrissa out
to a bench in the grounds.

"--and you're making a perfect recovery," the girl was saying. "You'll
be exactly as you were before. But things between us aren't just as
they were, and they never can be again. You know that, Kim. We've got
unfinished business to transact--let's take it down off the shelf
before you go."

"Better let it lay, Mac," and all the newfound joy of existence went
out of the man's eyes. "I'm whole, yes, but that angle was really the
least important of all. You never yet have faced squarely the fact that
my job isn't done and that my chance of living through it is just about
one in ten. Even Phillips can't do anything about a corpse."

"No, and I won't face it, either, unless and until I must." Her reply
was tranquillity itself. "Most of the troubles people worry about in
advance never do materialize. And even if I did, you ought to know that
I ... that any woman would rather ... well, that half a loaf is better
than no bread."

"QX. I haven't ever mentioned the worst thing. I didn't want to--but if
you've got to have it, here it is," the man wrenched out. "Look at what
I am. A barroom brawler. A rum-dum. A hard-boiled egg. A cold-blooded,
ruthless murderer, even of my own men--"

"Not that, Kim, ever, and you know it," she rebuked him.

"What else can you call it?" he grated. "A killer besides; a red-handed
butcher if there ever was one--then, now, and forever. I've got to be.
I can't get away from it. Do you think that you, or any other decent
woman, could stand it to live with me? That you could feel my arms
around you, feel my gory paws touching you, without going sick at the
stomach?"

"Oh, so _that's_ what's really been griping you all this time!"
Clarrissa was surprised and entirely unshaken. "I don't have to think
about that, Kim--I know. If you were a murderer or had the killer
instinct, that would be different, but you aren't and you haven't. You
are hard, of course. You have to be--but do you think that I would
ever run a temperature over a softy? You brawl, yes--like the world's
champion you are. Anybody you ever killed needed killing, there's no
question of that. You don't do those things for fun; and the fact that
you can drive yourself to do the things that have to be done shows your
true caliber.

"Nor have you ever thought of the obverse; that you lean over backward
in wielding that terrific power of yours. The Desplaines woman, the
countess--lots of other instances. I respect and honor you more
than any other man I have ever known. Any woman who really knew you
would--_she must! And I know!_ Remember that wide-open two-way put me
_in_ your mind for an instant--long enough--that let me understand
something of the horrible weight you have to carry, something of the
terrible power you must--for civilization--leash or release, direct and
control. _I know_--no words you may say now can add to or change that
single, full-view understanding I got then.

"Listen, Kim. Read my mind, all of it. You will know me then, and
understand me better than I can ever explain myself."

"Have you got a picture of me doing that?" he asked flatly.

"No, you big, unreasonable clunker, I haven't!" she flared, "and
that's just what's driving me mad!" Then, voice dropping to a whisper,
almost sobbing: "Cancel that, Kim--I didn't mean it. You wouldn't--you
couldn't, I suppose, and still be you, the man I love. But isn't there
something--_anything_--that will make you understand what I really am?"

"I know what you are." Kinnison's voice was uninflected, weary. "As I
told you before--the Universe's best. It's what I am that's clogging
the jets. What I have been and what I have to keep on being. I simply
don't rate up, and you'd better lay off me, Mac, while you can.
There's a poem by one of the ancients--Kipling--the 'Ballad of Boh Da
Thone'--that describes it exactly. You wouldn't know it--"

"You just think that I wouldn't"--nodding brightly. "The only trouble
is that you always think of the wrong verses. Part of it really is
descriptive of you. You know, where all the soldiers of the Black
Tyrone thought so much of their captain?"

She recited:

    "And worshiped with fluency, fervor, and zeal
    The mud on the boot heels of Crook O'Neil.

"That describes you exactly."

"You're crazy for the lack of sense," he demurred. "I don't rate like
that."

"Sure, you do," she assured him. "All the men think of you that way.
And not only men. Women, too, darn 'em--and the very next time that I
catch one of them at it I'm going to kick her cursed teeth out, one by
one!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Kinnison laughed, albeit a trifle sourly. "You're raving, Mac.
Imagining things. But to get back to that poem, what I was referring to
went like this--"

"I know how it goes. Listen:

    "But the captain had quitted the long-drawn strife
    And in far Simoorie had taken a wife;

    "And she was a damsel of delicate mold,
    With hair like the sunshine and heart of gold.

    "And little she knew the arms that embraced
    Had cloven a man from the brow to the waist;

    "And little she knew that the loving lips
    Had ordered a quivering life's eclipse,

    "And the eyes that lit at her lightest breath
    Had glared unawed in the Gates of Death.

    "(For these be matters a man would hide,
    As a general thing, from an innocent bride.)

"That's what you, mean, isn't it?" she asked quietly.

"Mac, you know a lot of things that you've got no business knowing."
Instead of answering her question, he stared at her speculatively. "My
sprees and brawls, Dessa Desplaines and the Countess Avondrin, and now
this. Would you mind telling me how you get the stuff?"

"I'm closer to you than you suspect, Kim, and have been for a long
time. Worsel calls it being 'en rapport,' I believe. You don't need
to think at me--in fact, you have to put up a conscious block to keep
me out. So I know a lot that I shouldn't, but Lensmen aren't the only
ones who don't talk. You have been thinking about that poem a lot--it
worried you--so I went to the library and looked it up. I memorized
most of it."

"Well, to get the true picture of me you'll have to multiply that by
a thousand. Also, don't forget that loose heads might be rolling onto
your breakfast table almost any morning instead of only once."

"So what?" she countered evenly. "Do you think that I could sit for
Kipling's portrait of Mrs. O'Neil? Nobody ever called my mold delicate,
and he would have said of me:

    "With hair like a conflagration
    And a heart of solid brass!

"Captain O'Neil's bride, as well as being innocent and ignorant,
strikes me as having been a good deal of a sissy, something of a
weeping willow, and no little of a shrinking violet. Tell me, Kim, do
you think that she would have made good as a sector chief nurse?"

"No, but that's neither here--"

"It is, too," she interrupted. "You've got to consider what I did, and
that it's no job for a girl with a weak stomach. Besides, the Boh's
head took the fabled Mrs. O'Neil by surprise. She didn't know that her
husband used to be in the wholesale mayhem-and-killing business. I do.

"And lastly, you big lug, do you think that I'd be making such
barefaced passes at you--playing the brazen hussy this way--unless I
was very, _very_ certain of the truth?"

"Huh?" he demanded, blushing furiously. "I thought that you were
running a blazer on me before--you really do _know_, then, that--" He
would not say it, even then.

"Of course I know!" She nodded; then, as the man spread his hands
helplessly, she abandoned her attempts to keep the conversation upon a
light level.

"I know, my dear; there is nothing we can do about it yet." Her voice
was unsteady, her heart in every word. "You have to do your job, and I
honor you for that, too; even if it does take you from me. It will be
easier for you, though, I think, and I _know_ that it will be easier
for me, to have us both know the truth. Whenever you are ready, Kim,
I'll be here--or somewhere--waiting. Clear ether, Gray Lensman!" and,
rising to her feet, she turned back toward the hospital.

"Clear ether, Chris!" Unconsciously he used the pet name by which he
had thought of her so much. He stared after her for a minute, hungrily.
Then, squaring his shoulders, he strode away.

       *       *       *       *       *

And upon far Jarnevon Eichmil, the First of Boskone, was conferring
with Jalte via communicator. Long since, the Kalonian had delivered
through devious channels the message of Boskone to an imaginary
director of Lensmen; long since he had transmitted this cryptically
direful reply:

"Lensman Morgan lives, and so does Star A Star."

Jalte had not been able to report to his chief any news concerning the
fate of that which the speedster bore, since spies no longer existed
within the reservations of the Patrol. He had learned of no discovery
that any Lensman had made. He could not venture any hypothesis as
to how this Star A Star had heard of Jarnevon or had learned of its
location in space. He was sure of only one thing, and that was a grimly
disturbing fact indeed. The Patrol was re-arming throughout the Galaxy,
upon a scale theretofore unknown. Eichmil's thought was cold:

"That means but one thing. A Lensman invaded you and learned of us
here--in no other way could knowledge of Jarnevon have come to them."

"Why me?" Jalte demanded. "If there exists a mind of power sufficient
to break my screens and tracelessly to invade my mind, what of yours?"

"It is a thing proven by the outcome." The Boskonian's statement was
a calm summation of fact. "The messenger sent against you succeeded;
the one sent against us failed. The Patrol intends and is preparing:
certainly to wipe out our remaining forces within the Tellurian Galaxy;
probably to attack your stronghold; eventually to invade our own
galaxy. It is well--for that reason, in part, was the Lensman Morgan
sent back as he was sent."

"Let them come!" snarled the Kalonian. "We can and we will hold this
planet forever against anything they can bring through space!"

"I would not be too sure of that," cautioned the superior. "In fact,
if--as I am beginning to regard as a probability--the Patrol does make
a concerted drive against any significant number of our planetary
organizations, you should abandon your base there and return to
Kalonia, after disbanding and so preserving for future use as many as
possible of the planetary units."

"Future use? In that case there will be no future."

"There will be," Eichmil replied, coldly vicious. "We are strengthening
the defenses of Jarnevon to withstand any conceivable assault. If they
do not attack us here of their own free will, we shall compel them to
do so. Then, after destroying their every mobile force, we shall again
take over their galaxy. Arms for that purpose are even now in the
building. Is the matter entirely clear?"

"It is clear. We shall warn all our groups that such orders may issue;
and we shall prepare to abandon this base if such a step should become
desirable."

So it was planned: neither Eichmil nor Jalte even suspecting two
startling truths:

First, that when the Patrol was ready it would strike hard and without
warning, and,

Second, that it would strike--not low, but high!




                                XXIII.


Kinnison played, worked, rested, ate, and slept. He boxed, strenuously
and viciously, with masters of the craft. He practiced with his
DeLameters until he had regained his old-time speed and dead-center
accuracy. He swam for hours at a time, he ran in cross-country races.
He lolled, practically naked, in hot sunshine. And finally, when his
muscles were writhing and rippling as of yore beneath the bronzed satin
of his skin, Lacy answered his insistent demands by coming to see him.

The Gray Lensman met the flier eagerly, but his face fell when he saw
that the surgeon general was alone.

"No, MacDougall didn't come--she isn't around any more," he explained
guilefully.

"Huh?" came the startled query. "How come?"

"Out in space--out Borova way somewhere. What do you care? After the
way you acted you've got the crust of a rhinoceros to think that--"

"You're crazy, Lacy! Why, we ... she--It's all fixed up."

"Funny kind of fixing. Moping around Base, crying her red head off.
Finally, though, she decided that she had some Scotch pride left, and I
let her go aboard again. If she isn't all done with you, she ought to
be." This, Lacy figured, would be good for what ailed the big saphead.
"Come on, and I'll see whether you're fit to go back to work or not."

He was fit. "QX, lad, flit!" Lacy discharged him informally with a slap
upon the back. "Get dressed and I'll take you back to Haynes--he's been
snapping at me like a turtle ever since you've been out here."

At Prime Base, Kinnison was welcomed enthusiastically by the admiral.

"Feel those fingers, Kim!" he exclaimed. "Perfect! Just like the
originals!"

"Mine, too. They do feel good."

"It's a pity that you got your new ones so quick. You'd appreciate 'em
much more after a few years without 'em. But to get down to business.
The fleets have been taking off for a couple of weeks--we're to join up
as the line passes. If you haven't anything better to do, I'd like to
have you aboard the _Z9M9Z_."

"I don't know of any place I'd rather be, sir--thanks."

"QX. Thanks should be the other way. You can make yourself mighty
useful between now and zero time." He eyed the young man speculatively.

Haynes had a special job for him, Kinnison knew. As a Gray Lensman, he
could not be given any military rank or post, and he could not conceive
of the admiral of Grand Fleet wanting him around as an aid-de-camp.

"Spill it, chief," he invited. "Not orders, of course--I understand
that perfectly. Requests or ... ah-hum ... suggestions."

"I _will_ crown you with something yet, you whelp!" Haynes snorted,
and Kinnison grinned. These two were very close, in spite of their
disparity in years; and very much of a piece. "As you get older you
will realize that it is good tactics to stick pretty close to Gen Regs.
Yes, I _have_ got a job for you, and it's a nasty one. Nobody else has
been able to handle it, not even two companies of Rigellians. Grand
Fleet Operations."

"_Grand Fleet Operations!_" Kinnison was aghast. "Holy ... Klono's ...
brazen ... bowels! What makes you think I've got jets enough to swing
_that_ load, chief?"

"I haven't any idea whether you can or not. I know, however, that if
you can't, nobody can; and in spite of all the work we've done on the
thing we'll have to operate as a mob, as we did before, and not as a
fleet. If so, I shudder to think of the results."

"QX. If you'll send for Worsel, we'll try it a fling or two. It'd be a
shame to build a whole ship around an Operations tank and then not be
able to use it; I'll see what I can do. By the way, I haven't seen my
head nurse--Miss MacDougall, you know--any place lately. Have you? I
ought to tell her 'thanks' or something--maybe send her a flower."

"Nurse? MacDougall? Oh, yes, the redhead. Let me see--did hear
something about her the other day. Married? No, that wasn't it.... She
took a hospital ship somewhere. Alsakan--Vandemar--somewhere; didn't
pay any attention. She doesn't need thanks--or flowers, either--she's
getting paid for her work. Much more important, don't you think, to get
Operations straightened out?"

"Undoubtedly, sir," Kinnison replied stiffly, and as he went out Lacy
came in.

The two old conspirators greeted each other with knowing grins. _Was_
Kinnison taking it big! He was falling, like ten thousand bricks down a
well.

"Do him good to undermine his position a bit. Too cocky altogether. But
_how_ they suffer!"

"Check!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Kinnison rode toward the flagship in a mood which even he could not
have described. He had expected to see her, as a matter of course--he
wanted to see her--confound it, he _had_ to see her! Why did she have
to do a flit now, of all the times on the calendar? She knew that the
fleet was shoving off, and that he'd have to go along--and nobody
knew where she was. When he got back he'd find her if he had to chase
her all over the Galaxy. He'd put an end to this. Duty was duty, of
course--but Chris was CHRIS--and half a loaf _was_ better than no bread!

He jerked back to reality as he entered the gigantic teardrop which
was technically the _Z9M9Z_, socially the _Directrix_, and ordinarily
_GFHQ_. She had been designed and built specifically to be Grand Fleet
Headquarters, and nothing else. She bore no offensive armament; but
since she had to protect the presiding geniuses of combat, she had
every possible defense.

Port Admiral Haynes had learned a bitter lesson during the expedition
to Helmuth's base. Long before that relatively small Grand Fleet got
there he was sick to the core, realizing that fifty thousand vessels
simply could not be controlled or maneuvered as a group. If that base
had been capable of an offensive, or even of a real defensive, or if
Boskone could have put their fleets into that star cluster in time, the
Patrol would have been defeated ignominiously; and Haynes, wise old
tactician that he was, knew it only too well.

Therefore, immediately after the return from that "triumphant" venture,
he gave orders to design and to build, at whatever cost, a flagship
capable of directing efficiently a million combat units.

The "tank"--the three-dimensional galactic chart which is a necessary
part of every pilot room--had grown and grown as it became evident that
it must be the prime agency in Grand Fleet Operations. Finally, in this
last rebuilding, the tank was seven hundred feet in diameter and eighty
feet thick in the middle--over seventeen million cubic feet of space in
which more than two million tiny lights crawled hither and thither in
hopeless confusion. For, after the technicians and designers had put
that tank into actual service, they had discovered that it was useless.
No available mind had been able either to perceive any situation as
a whole, or to identify with certainty any light or group of lights
needing correction. And as for linking up any particular light with
its individual, blanket-proof communicator in time to issue orders in
space combat--

Kinnison looked at the tank, then around the full circle of the
million-plug board encircling it. He observed the horde of operators,
each one trying frantically to do something. Next he shut his eyes, the
better to perceive everything at once, and studied the problem for an
hour.

"Attention, everybody!" he thought then. "Open all circuits--do nothing
at all for a while." He then called Haynes.

"I think that we can clean up this mess if you'll send over some
Simplex analyzers and the crew of technicians. Helmuth had a sweet
set-up on multiplex controls, and Jalte had some ideas that we can
adapt to fit this tank. If we add them all together, we may have
something."

       *       *       *       *       *

And by the time Worsel arrived, they did.

"Red lights are fleets already in motion," Kinnison explained rapidly
to the Velantian. "Greens are fleets still at their bases. Ambers are
the planets the greens took off from--connected, you see, by Ryerson
string-lights. The white star is us, the _Directrix_. That violet cross
'way over there is Jalte's planet, our first objective. The pink comets
are our free planets, their tails showing their intrinsic velocities.
Being so slow, they had to start long ago. The purple circle is the
negasphere. It's on its way, too. You take that side, I'll take this.
They were supposed to start from the edge of the twelfth sector. The
idea was to make it a smooth, bowl-shaped sweep across the Galaxy,
converging upon the objective, but each of the fleet commanders
apparently wants to run this war to suit himself. Look at that guy
there--he's beating the gun by nine thousand parsecs. Watch me pin his
ears back!"

He pointed his Simplex at the red light which had so offendingly sprung
into being. There was a whirring click and the number 449276 flashed
above a board. An operator flicked a switch.

"Grand Fleet Operations!" Kinnison snapped. "Why are you taking off
without orders?"

"Why, I ... I'll give you the vice-admiral, sir--"

"No time! Tell your vice-admiral that one more such break will put him
in irons. Land at once! GFO--off!"

"With around a million fleets to handle, we can't spend much time on
anyone," he thought at Worsel, "but after we get them lined up and get
our Rigellians broken in, it won't be so bad."

The breaking in did not take long; definite and meaningful orders
flew faster and faster along the tiny, but steel-hard beams of the
communicators.

"Take off.... Increase drive four point five.... Decrease drive two
point seven.... Change course to--" and so it went, hour after hour and
day after day.

And with the passage of time came order out of chaos. The red lights
formed a gigantically sweeping, curving wall, its almost imperceptible
crawl representing an actual velocity of almost one hundred parsecs an
hour. Behind that wall blazed a sea of amber, threaded throughout with
the brilliant filaments which were the Ryerson lights. Ahead of it lay
a sparkling, almost solid blaze of green. Closer and closer the wall
crept toward the bright white star.

And in the "reducer"--the standard, ten-foot tank in the lower
well--the entire spectacle was reproduced in miniature. It was plainer
there, clearer and much more readily seen; but it was so crowded that
details were indistinguishable.

Haynes stood beside Kinnison's padded chair one day, staring up into
the immense lens and shaking his head. He went down the flight of
stairs to the reducer, studied that, and again shook his head.

"This is very pretty, but it doesn't mean a thing," he thought at
Kinnison. "It begins to look as though I'm going along just for the
ride. You--or you and Worsel--will have to do the fighting, too, I'm
afraid."

"Uh-huh," Kinnison demurred. "What do we--or anyone else--know about
tactics, compared to you? You've got to be the brains. That's why we
had the boys rig up the original working model there, for a reducer. On
that you can watch and figure out the gross developments and tell us in
general terms what to do. Knowing that, we will know who ought to do
what, from the big tank here, and we will pass your orders along."

"Say, that _will_ work, at that!" and Haynes brightened visibly. "Looks
as though a couple of those reds are going to knock our star out of the
tank, doesn't it?"

"It'll be close in that reducer. They'll probably touch. Close enough
in real space--less than three parsecs."

The zero hour came and the Tellurian armada of eighty-one sleek
destroyers--eighty superdreadnoughts and the _Directrix_--spurned Earth
and took its place in that hurtling wall of crimson. Solar system
after solar system was passed; fleet after fleet leaped into the ether
and fitted itself into the smoothly geometrical pattern which GFO was
nursing along so carefully.

Through the Galaxy the formation swept, and out of it, toward a star
cluster. It slowed its mad pace; the center hanging back, the edges
advancing and folding in.

"Surround the cluster and close in," the admiral directed; and, under
the guidance now of two hundred Rigellians, civilization's vast Grand
Fleet closed smoothly in and went inert. Drivers flared white as they
fought to match the intrinsic velocity of the cluster.

"Vice admirals of all fleets, attention! Using secondaries only, fire
at will upon any enemy object coming within range. Engage outlying
structures and such battle craft as may appear. Keep assigned distance
from planet and stiffen cosmic screens to maximum. Haynes--off!"

From untold millions of projectors there raved out gigantic rods,
knives, and needles of force, under the impact of which the defensive
screens of Jalte's guardian citadels flamed into terrible refulgence.
Duodec bombs were hurled--tight-beam-directed monsters of destruction
which, swinging around in huge circles to attain the highest possible
measure of momentum, flung themselves against Boskone's defenses in
Herculean attempts to smash them down. They exploded; each as it burst
filling all nearby space with blindingly intense violet light and with
flying scraps of metal. Q-type helices, driven with all the frightful
kilowattage possible to Medonian conductors and insulation, screwed in,
biting, gouging, tearing in wild abandon. Shear-planes, hellish knives
of force beside which Tellurian lightning is pale and wan, struck and
struck and struck again--fiendishly, crunchingly.

But those grimly stolid fortresses could take it. They had been
repowered; their defenses stiffened to such might as to defy, in the
opinion of Boskone's experts, any projectors capable of being mounted
upon mobile bases. And not only could they take it--those formidably
armed and armored planetoids could dish it out as well. The screens of
the Patrol ships flared high into the spectrum under the crushing force
of sheer enemy power. Not a few of those defenses were battered down,
clear to the wall shields, before the unimaginable ferocity of the
Boskonian projectors could be neutralized.

       *       *       *       *       *

And at this spectacularly frightful deep-space engagement Jalte,
Boskone's galactic director, and through him Eichmil, First of Boskone
itself, stared in stunned surprise.

"It is insane!" Jalte gloated. "The fools judged our strength by that
of Helmuth; not considering that we, as well as they, would be both
learning and doing during the intervening time. They have a myriad of
ships, but mere numbers will never conquer my outposts, to say nothing
of my works here."

"They are not fools. I am not sure--" Eichmil cogitated.

He would have been even less sure could he have listened to a
conversation which was even then being held.

"QX, Thorndyke?" Kinnison asked.

"On the green," came instant reply. "Intrinsic, placement,
releases--everything on the green!"

"Cut!" and the lone purple circle disappeared from tank and from
reducer. The master technician had cut his controls and every pound
of metal and other substance surrounding the negasphere had been
absorbed by that enigmatic volume of nothingness. No connection or
contact with it was now possible; and with its carefully established
intrinsic velocity it rushed engulfingly toward the doomed planet. One
of the mastodonic fortresses which lay in its path vanished utterly,
with nothing save a burst of invisible cosmics to mark its passing. It
approached its goal. It was almost upon the planet before any of the
defenders perceived it; and even then they could neither understand nor
grasp it. All detectors and other warning devices remained static, but:

"Look! There! Something's _coming_!" an observer jittered, and Jalte
swung his plate.

Jalte saw--nothing. Eichmil saw the same thing. There was nothing to
see. A vast, intangible nothing--yet a nothing tangible enough to
occult everything material in a full third of the cone of vision!
Jalte's operators hurled into it their mightiest beams. Nothing
happened. They struck nothing and disappeared. They loosed their
heaviest duodec torpedoes; gigantic missiles whose warheads contained
enough of that frightfully violent detonate to disrupt a world. Nothing
happened--not even an explosion. Not even the faintest flash of light.
Shell and contents alike merely and, oh, so incredibly peaceful,
ceased to exist. There were important bursts of cosmics, but they were
invisible and inaudible; and neither Jalte nor any member of his crew
were to live long enough to realize how terribly they had already been
burned.

Gigantic pressors shoved against it; beams of power sufficient to
deflect a satellite; beams whose projectors were braced, in steel-laced
concrete down to bedrock, against any conceivable thrust. But this was
_negative_, not positive, matter--matter negative in every respect
of mass, inertia, and force. To it a push was a pull. Pressors to it
were tractors--at contact they pulled themselves up off their massive
foundations and hurtled into the appalling blackness.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then the negasphere struck. Or did it? Can nothing strike anything? It
would be better, perhaps, to say that the spherical hyperplane which
was the three-dimensional cross-section of the negasphere began to
occupy the same volume of space as that in which Jalte's unfortunate
world already was. And at the surface of contact of the two the
materials of both disappeared. The substance of the planet vanished;
the incomprehensible nothingness of the negasphere faded away into the
ordinary vacuity of empty space.

Jalte's base, all the three hundred square miles of it, was taken at
the first gulp. A vast pit opened where it had been, a hole which
deepened and widened with horrifying rapidity. And as the yawning
abyss enlarged itself the stuff of the planet fell into it, in turn to
vanish. Mountains tumbled into it, oceans dumped themselves into it.
The hot, frightfully compressed and nascent material of the planet's
core sought to erupt--but instead of moving, it, too, vanished. Vast
areas of the world's surface crust, tens of thousands of square
miles in extent, collapsed into it, splitting off along crevasses of
appalling depth, and became nothing. The stricken globe shuddered,
trembled, ground itself to bits in paroxysm after ghastly paroxysm of
disintegration.

What was happening? Eichmil did not know, since his "eye" was destroyed
before any really significant developments could eventuate. He and his
scientists could only speculate and deduce--which, with surprising
accuracy, they did. The officers of the Patrol ships, however, _knew_
what was going on, and they were scanning with intently narrowed eyes
the instruments which were recording instant by instant the performance
of the new cosmic super-screens which were being assaulted so brutally.

For, as has been said, the negasphere was composed of negative matter.
Instead of electrons, its building blocks were positrons--the "Dirac
holes" in an infinity of negative energy. Whenever the field of a
positron encountered that of an electron, the two neutralized each
other, giving rise to two quanta of hard radiation. And, since those
encounters were occurring at the rate of countless trillions per
second, there was tearing at the Patrol's defenses a flood of cosmic
rays of an intensity which no spaceship had ever before been called
upon to withstand. But the new screens had been figured with a factor
of safety of five, and they stood up.

The planet dwindled with soul-shaking rapidity to a moon, to a moonlet,
and finally to a discreetly conglomerate aggregation of meteorites
before the mutual neutralization ceased.

"Primaries now," Haynes ordered briskly, as the needles of the
cosmic-ray-screen meters dropped back to the points of normal
functioning. The probability was that the defenses of the Boskonian
citadels would now be automatic only, that no life had endured through
that awful flood of lethal radiation; but he was taking no chances. Out
flashed the penetrant super rays and the fortresses, too, ceased to
exist save as the impalpable infradust of space.

And the massed Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol, making its
formation, hurtled outward through the intergalactic void.




                                 XXIV.


"They are not fools. I am not so sure--" Eichmil had said; and when
the last force-ball, his last means of intergalactic communication,
went dead, the First of Boskone became very unsure indeed. The Patrol
undoubtedly had something new--he himself had had glimpses of it--but
what was it?

That Jalte's base was gone was obvious. That Boskone's hold upon the
Tellurian Galaxy was gone, followed as a corollary. That the Patrol was
or would soon be wiping out Boskone's regional and planetary units was
a logical inference. Star A Star, that accursed director of Lensmen,
had--must have--succeeded in stealing Jalte's records, to be willing to
destroy out of hand the base which had housed them.

Nor could Boskone do anything to help the underlings, now that the
long-awaited attack upon Jarnevon itself was almost certainly coming.
Let them come--Boskone was ready. Or was it--quite? Jalte's defenses
had been strong, but they had not withstood that unknown weapon even
for seconds.

Eichmil called a joint meeting of Boskone and the Academy of Science.
Coldly and precisely he told them everything that he had seen.
Discussion followed.

"Negative matter beyond a doubt," a scientist summed up the consensus
of opinion. "It has long been surmised that in some other, perhaps
hyperspatial universe there must exist negative matter of mass
sufficient to balance the positive material of the universe we know.
It is conceivable that by hyperspatial explorations and manipulations
the Tellurians have discovered that other universe and have transported
some of its substance into ours."

"Can they manufacture it?" Eichmil demanded.

"The probability that such material can be manufactured is exceedingly
small," was the studied reply. "An entirely new mathematics would be
necessary. In all probability they found it already existent."

"We must find it also, then, and at once."

"We will try. Bear in mind, however, that the field is large, and do
not be optimistic of an early success. Note, also, that the substance
is not necessary--perhaps not even desirable--in a defensive action."

"Why not?"

"Because, by directing pressors against such a bomb, Jalte actually
pulled it into his base, precisely where the enemy wished it to go.
As a surprise attack, against those ignorant of its true nature, such
a weapon would be effective indeed; but against us it will prove a
boomerang. All that is needful is to mount tractor heads upon pressor
bases, and thus drive the bombs back upon those who send them." It did
not occur, even to the coldest scientist of them all, that that bomb
had been of planetary mass. Not one of the Eich suspected that all that
remained of the entire world upon which Jalte's base had stood was a
handful of meteorites.

"Let them come, then," the First of Boskone announced grimly. "Their
dependence upon a new and supposedly unknown weapon explains what would
otherwise be insane tactics. With that weapon impotent, they cannot
possibly win a long war waged so far from their bases. We can match
them ship for ship, and more; and our supplies and munitions are close
at hand. We will wear them down--blast them out--the Tellurian Galaxy
shall yet be ours!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Admiral Haynes spent almost every waking hour setting up and knocking
down tactical problems in the practice tank, and gradually his
expression changed from one of strained anxiety to one of pleased
satisfaction. He went over to his sealed-band transmitter, called all
communications officers, and ordered:

"Each vessel will direct its longest-range detector, at highest
possible power, centrally upon the objective galaxy. The first observer
to find enemy activity will report it instantly to us here. We will
send out a general C. B., at which every vessel will cease blasting
at once, remaining motionless until further orders." He then called
Kinnison.

"Look here," he directed the attention of the younger man into the
reducer, which now represented intergalactic space, with a portion
of the Second Galaxy filling one edge. "I have a solution, but its
practicability depends upon whether or not it calls for the impossible
from you, Worsel, and your Rigellians. You remarked at the start that I
knew my tactics. I wish that I knew more--or at least could be certain
that Boskone and I agree upon what constitutes good tactics. I feel
quite safe in assuming, however, that we shall meet their Grand Fleet
well outside the Galaxy--"

"Why?" asked the startled Kinnison. "If I were Eichmil, I'd pull every
ship I had in around Jarnevon and keep it there; they can't force
engagement with us!"

"Poor tactics. The very presence of their fleet out in space will
force us to engage, and decisively at that. From his viewpoint, if he
defeats us there, that ends it. If he loses, that is only his first
line of defense. His observers will have reported fully. He will have
invaluable data upon which to work, and much time before even his
outlying fortresses can be threatened.

"From our viewpoint, we cannot refuse battle if his fleet is there. It
would be suicidal for us to enter that Galaxy, leaving intact outside
it a fleet as powerful as that one is bound to be."

"Why? Harrying us from the rear might be bothersome, but I don't see
how it could be disastrous."

"Not that. They could, and would, attack Tellus."

"Oh--I never thought of that. But couldn't they, anyway--two fleets?"

"No. He knows that Tellus is very strongly held, and that this is no
ordinary fleet. He will have to concentrate everything he has upon
either one or the other--it is almost inconceivable that he would
divide his forces."

"QX. I said that you're the brains of the outfit, and you are!"

"Thanks, lad. At the first sign of detection, we stop. They may be
able to detect us, but I doubt it, since we are looking for them with
special instruments. But that's immaterial. What I want to know is, can
you and your crew split the fleet, making two big, hollow hemispheres
of it? Let this group of ambers represent the enemy. Since they know
that we will have to carry the battle to them, they will probably be
in fairly close formation. Set your two hemispheres--the reds--there
and there. Close in, making a sphere, like this--englobing their whole
fleet. Can you do it?"

Kinnison whistled through his teeth; a long, low, unmelodious whistle.
"Yes--but Klono's brazen claws, chief, suppose they catch you at it?"

"How can they? If you were using detectors, instead of double-ended,
tight-beam binders, how many of our own vessels could you locate?"

"That's right, too--less than one percent of them. They couldn't tell
that they were being englobed until long after it was done. They
could, however, globe up inside us--"

"Yes--and that would give them the tactical advantage of position,"
the admiral admitted. "We probably have, however, enough superiority
in firing power, if not in actual tonnage, to make up the difference.
Also, we have speed enough, I think, so that we could retire in good
order. But you are assuming that they can maneuver as rapidly and as
surely as we can, a condition which I do not consider at all probable.
If, as I believe much more likely, they have no better Grand Fleet
Operations than we had in Helmuth's star cluster--if they haven't the
equivalent of you and Worsel and this supertank here--then what?"

"In that case it'd be just too bad. Just like pushing baby chicks into
a pond." Kinnison saw the possibilities clearly enough after they had
been explained to him.

"How long will it take you?"

"With Worsel and both full crews of Rigellians I would guess it at
about ten hours--eight to compute and assign positions and two to get
there."

"Fast enough--faster than I would have thought possible. Oil up your
calculating machines and Simplexes and get ready."

       *       *       *       *       *

In due time the enemy fleet was detected and detection was confirmed.
The "Cease Blasting" signal was sent out. Civilization's prodigious
fleet stopped dead, hanging motionless in space with its nearest
units at the tantalizing limit of detectability from the warships
awaiting them. For eight hours two hundred Rigellians stood at whirring
calculators, each solving course-and-distance problems at the rate of
ten per minute. Two hours or less of free flight, and Haynes rejoiced
audibly in the perfection of the two red hemispheres shown in his
reducer. The two immense bowls flashed together, rim to rim. The
sphere began inexorably to contract. Each ship put out a red K6T screen
as a combined battle flag and identification, and the greatest naval
engagement of the age was on.

It soon became evident that the Boskonians could not maneuver their
forces efficiently. Their fleet was too huge, too unwieldy for their
operations officers to handle. Against an equally uncontrollable mob of
battle craft it would have made a showing, but against the carefully
planned, chronometer-timed attack of the Patrol individual action,
however courageous or however desperate, was useless.

Each red-sheathed destroyer hurtled along a definite course at a
definite force of drive for a definite length of time. Orders were
strict; no ship was to be lured from course, pace, or time. They could,
however, fight en passant with their every weapon if occasion arose;
and occasion did arise, some thousands of times. The units of Grand
Fleet flashed inward, lashing out with their terrible primaries at
everything in space not wearing the crimson robe of civilization. And
whatever those beams struck did not need striking again.

The warships of Boskone fought back. Many of the Patrol's defensive
screens blazed hot enough almost to mask the scarlet beacons; some
of them went down. A few Patrol ships were englobed by the concerted
action of two or three subfleet commanders more co-operative or more
farsighted than the rest, and were blasted out of existence by an
overwhelming concentration of power. But even those vessels took toll
with their primaries as they went out; few, indeed, were the Boskonians
who escaped through holes thus made.

At a predetermined instant each dreadnought stopped, to find herself
one nut of an immense, red-flaming hollow sphere of ships packed almost
screen to screen. And upon signal every primary projector that could
be brought to bear hurled bolt after bolt, as fast as the burned-out
shells could be replaced, into the ragingly incandescent inferno which
that sphere's interior instantly became. For two hundred million
discharges such as those will convert even a very large volume of space
into something utterly impossible to describe.

The raving torrents of energy subsided and keen-eyed observers swept
the scene of action. Nothing was there except jumbled and tumbling
white-hot wreckage. A few vessels had escaped during the closing in of
the sphere, but none inside it had survived this climactic action--not
one in five thousand of Boskone's massed fleet made its way back to
dark Jarnevon.

"Maneuver fifty-eight--hipe!" and Grand Fleet shot away. There was no
waiting, no hesitation. Every course and time had been calculated and
assigned.

Into the Second Galaxy the scarcely diminished armada of the Patrol
hurtled--to Jarnevon's solar system--around it. Once again the crimson
sheathing of civilization's messengers almost disappeared in blinding
coruscance as the outlying fortresses unleashed their mighty weapons;
once again a few ships, subjected to such concentrations of force as to
overload their equipment, were lost; but this conflict, although savage
in its intensity, was brief. Nothing mobile _could_ endure for long
the utterly hellish energies of the primaries, and soon the armored
planetoids, too, ceased to be.

[Illustration: _Some ships, attacked on every hand, watched meters
climb, strain against stopping--and saw huge converters, hopelessly
overloaded, vanish in gouts of atomic flame._]

"Maneuver fifty-nine--hipe!" and Grand Fleet closed in upon somber
Jarnevon itself.

"Sixty!" It rolled in space, forming an immense cylinder; the doomed
planet the midpoint of its axis.

"Sixty-one!" Tractors and pressors leaped out, from ship to ship
and from ship to shore. The Patrol did not know whether or not the
scientists of the Eich could render their planet inertialess, but now
it made no difference. Planet and fleet were for the time being one
rigid system.

"Sixty-two--blast!" And against the world-girdling battlements of
Jarnevon there flamed out in all their appalling might the dreadful
beams against which the defensive webs of battleships and of mobile
citadels alike had been so pitifully inadequate.

But these which they were attacking now were not the limited
installations of a mobile structure. The Eich had at their command
all the resources of a galaxy. Their generators and conductors could
be of any desired number and size. Hence Eichmil, in view of prior
happenings, had strengthened the defenses of his planet to a point
which certain of his fellows derided as being beyond the bounds of
sanity or reason.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now those unthinkably powerful screens were being tested to the utmost.
Bolt after bolt of quasi-solid lightning struck against them, spitting
mile-long sparks in baffled fury as they raged to ground. Plain and
incased in Q-type helices they came; biting, tearing, gouging. Often
and often, under the thrust of half a dozen at once, local failures
appeared; but these were only momentary, and not even the newly devised
shells of the projectors could stand the load long enough to penetrate
effectively Boskone's indescribably capable defenses. Nor were the
enemies' offensive weapons less capable.

Rods, cones, planes, and shears of pure force bored, cut, stabbed, and
slashed. Bombs and dirigible torpedoes charged to the skin with duodec
sought out the red-cloaked ships. Beams, sheathed against atmosphere
in Q-type helices, crashed against and through their armor--beams of
an intensity almost to rival that of the Patrol's primary weapons and
of a hundred times their effective aperture. And not singly did those
beams come. Eight, ten, twelve at once they clung to and demolished
dreadnought after dreadnought of the Expeditionary Force.

Eichmil was well content. "We can hold them and we are burning them
down!" he gloated. "Let them loose their negative-matter bombs! Get the
analysis of those beams--build them! They are burning out projectors,
which means that they cannot keep this up indefinitely. They will have
to retire, what there are left of them, for more munitions; and when
they come back we will blast them out of space!"

He was wrong. Grand Fleet did not stay there long enough so that even
the projectors of the Eich could destroy more than a few thousands of
ships. For even while the cylinder was forming, Kinnison was in rapid
but careful consultation with Thorndyke, checking intrinsic velocities,
directions, and speeds.

"QX, Verne--_cut_!" he yelled.

Two planets, one well within each end of the combat cylinder, went
inert at the word; resuming instantaneously their diametrically opposed
intrinsic velocities, each of some thirty miles per second. And it was
these two very ordinary, but utterly irresistible planets, instead of
the negative-matter bombs with which the Eich were prepared to cope,
which hurtled then along the axis of the immense tube of warships
toward Jarnevon. Whether or not the Eich could make their planet
inertialess has never been found out. Free or inert, the end would have
been the same.

"Every Y14M officer of every ship of the Patrol, attention!" Haynes
ordered. "Don't get all tensed up. Take it easy; there's lots of time.
Any time within a second after I give the word will be p-l-e-n-t-y o-f
t-i-m-e--_cut_!"

The two worlds rushed together, doomed Jarnevon squarely between them.
Haynes snapped out his order as the three were within two seconds of
contact, and as he spoke all the tractors and all the pressors were
released. The ships of the Patrol were already free--none had been
inert since leaving Jalte's ex-planet--and thus could not be harmed by
flying débris.

The planets touched. They coalesced, squishingly at first, the
encircling warships drifting lightly away before a cosmically violent
blast of superheated atmosphere; Jarnevon burst open, all the way
around, and spattered; billions upon billions of tons of hot core-magma
being hurled afar in gouts and streamers. The two planets, crashing
through what had been a world, met, crunched, crushed together in
all the unimaginable momentum of their masses and velocities. They
subsided, crashingly. Not merely mountains, but entire halves of worlds
disrupted and fell, in such Gargantuan paroxysms as the eye of man had
never elsewhere beheld. And every motion generated heat. The kinetic
energy of translation of two worlds became heat. Heat added to heat,
piling up ragingly, frantically, unable to escape!

The masses, still falling upon and through and past themselves and each
other, melted--boiled--vaporized incandescently. The entire mass, the
mass of three fused worlds, began to equilibrate; growing hotter and
hotter as more and more of its terrific motion was converted into pure
heat. Hotter! _Hotter!_ HOTTER!

And as the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol blasted through
intergalactic space toward the First Galaxy and home, there glowed
behind it a new, small, comparatively cool, and probably short-lived
companion to an old and long-established star.




                                 XXV.


The uproar of the landing of the Tellurian contingent was over; the
celebration of victory had not yet begun. Haynes had, peculiarly
enough, set a definite time for a conference with Kinnison and the two
of them were in the admiral's private office, splitting a bottle of
fayalin and discussing--apparently--nothing at all.

"Narcotics has been yelling for you." Haynes finally got around to
business. "But they don't need you to help them clean up the zwilnik
mess; they just want to have the honor of having you work with them--so
I told Ellington, as diplomatically as possible, to take a swan dive
off of an asteroid. Hicks wants you, too; and Spencer and Frelinghuysen
and thousands of others. See that basketful of stuff? All requests
for you, to be submitted to you for your consideration. I submit
'em, thus--into the wastebasket. You see, there's something really
important--"

"Nix, chief, nix--jet back a minute, please!" Kinnison implored.
"Unless it's something that's got to be done right away, gimme a
break, can't you? I've got a couple of things to do first--stuff to
attend to. Maybe a little flit somewhere, too, I don't know yet."

"More important than Patrol business?"--dryly.

"Until it's cleaned up, yes." Kinnison's face burned scarlet and
his eyes revealed the mental effort necessary for him to make that
statement. "The most important thing in the Universe," he finished,
quietly but doggedly.

"Well, of course I can't give you orders--" Haynes' frown was distinct
with disappointment.

"Don't, chief--that hurts. I'll be back, honest, as soon as I possibly
can, and I'll do anything you want me to--"

"That's enough, son." Haynes stood up and grasped Kinnison's
hands--hard--in both his own. "I know. Forgive me for taking you
for this little ride, but you and Mac suffer so! You're so young,
so intense, so insistent upon carrying the entire Cosmos upon your
shoulders--I couldn't help it. You won't have to do much of a flit." He
glanced at his chronometer. "You'll find all your unfinished business
in Room 7295, Base Hospital."

"Huh? You know, then?" shouted the overjoyed young giant.

"Who doesn't?" was the admiral's quizzical rejoinder. "There may be a
few members of some backward race somewhere who do not know all about
you and your red-headed sector riot, but I don't happen to know--" He
was addressing empty air.

Kinnison shot out of the building and, exerting his Gray Lensman's
authority, he did a thing which he had always longed boyishly to do but
which he had never before really considered doing. He whistled, shrill
and piercingly, and waved a Lensed arm, even while he was directing a
Lensed thought at the driver of the fast ground car always in readiness
in front of GHQ.

"Base Hospital--full emergency blast!" he ordered, and the Jehu obeyed.
That chauffeur loved emergency stuff, and the long, low, wide racer
took off with a deafening roar of unmuffled exhaust and a scream of
tortured, burning rubber.

"Thanks, Jack--you needn't wait." At the hospital's door Kinnison
rendered tribute to fast service and strode along a corridor. An
express elevator whisked him up to the seventy-second floor, and there
his haste departed completely. This was Nurses' Quarters, he realized
suddenly. He had no more business there than--yes, he did, too. He
found Room 7295 and rapped upon its door. Boldly, he intended, but the
resultant sound was surprisingly small.

"Come in!" called a clear contralto. Then, after a moment, "_Come in!_"
more sharply; but the Lensman did not, could not obey the summons. She
might be--dammitall, he _didn't_ have any business on this floor! Why
hadn't he called her up or sent her a thought or something? Why didn't
he think at her now?

       *       *       *       *       *

The door opened, revealing the mildly annoyed sector chief. At what
she saw, her hands flew to her throat and her eyes widened in starkly
unbelieving rapture.

"_Kim!_" she shrieked in ecstasy.

"Chris--my Chris!" Kinnison whispered unsteadily, and for minutes those
two uniformed minions of the Galactic Patrol stood motionless upon
the room's threshold, strong young arms straining, nurse's crisp and
spotless white crushed unregarded against Lensman's pliant gray.

"Oh ... I've missed you so terribly, my darling!" Clarrissa crooned.
Her voice, always sweetly rich, was pure music.

"You don't know the half of it, Chris. This isn't real, I don't think.
It can't be--nothing _can_ feel this good!"

"You did come back to me--you really did!" she lilted. "I didn't dare
to hope that you could come so soon."

"I had to." Kinnison drew a deep breath. "I simply couldn't stand it
any longer. It'll be tough sometimes, but you were right--half a loaf
_is_ better than no bread."

"Of course it is!" She released herself--partially--after the first
transports of their first embrace and eyed him shrewdly. "Tell me, Kim,
did Lacy have a hand in this surprise?"

"Uh-huh," he denied. "I haven't seen him for ages--but jet back! Haynes
told me--say, what'll you bet that those two old hardheads haven't been
giving us the works?"

"Who are old hardheads?" Haynes--in person--demanded. So deeply
immersed had Kinnison been in his rapturous delirium that even his
sense of perception was in abeyance; and there, not two yards from the
entranced couple, stood the two old Lensmen!

The culprits sprang apart, flushing guiltily, but Haynes went on
imperturbably, quite as though nothing out of the ordinary had been
either said or done:

"We gave you fifteen minutes, then came up to be sure to catch you
before you flited off to the celebration or somewhere. We have matters
to discuss--important matters, but pleasant."

"QX. Come in, all of you." As she spoke, the nurse stood aside in
invitation. "You know, don't you, that it's exceedingly much contraregs
for nurses to entertain visitors of the opposite sex in their rooms?
Fifty demerits. Most girls never get a chance at even one Gray Lensmen,
and here I've got three!" She giggled infectiously. "Wouldn't it be one
for the book for me to get a hundred and fifty black spots for this?
And to have Surgeon General Lacy, Port Admiral Haynes, and Unattached
Lensman Kimball Kinnison all heaved into the clink to boot? Boy, oh,
boy, ain't we got fun?"

"Lacy's too old and I'm too moral to be affected by the wiles even of
the likes of you, my dear," Haynes explained equably, as he seated
himself upon the davenport--the most comfortable thing in the room.

"Old? Moral? Tommyrot!" Lacy glared an "I'll-see-you-later" look at the
admiral, then turned to the nurse. "Don't worry about that, MacDougall.
No penalties accrue--regulations apply only to nurses actually in the
service--"

"And what--" she started to blaze, but checked herself and her tone
changed instantly. "Go on--you interest me strangely, sir. I'm just
going to love this!" Her eyes sparkled, her voice was vibrant with
unconcealed eagerness.

"Told you she was quick on the uptake!" Lacy gloated. "Didn't fox her
for a second!"

"But say--listen--what's this all about, anyway?" Kinnison demanded.

"Never mind; you'll learn soon enough," from Lacy, and:

"Kinnison, you are very urgently invited to attend a meeting of the
Galactic Council tomorrow afternoon," from Haynes.

"Huh? What's up now?" Kinnison protested. His arm tightened about the
girl's supple waist and she snuggled closer, a trace of foreboding
beginning to dim the eagerness in her eyes.

"Promotion. We want to make you something--galactic co-ordinator,
director, something like that--the job hasn't been named yet. In
plain language, the big shot of the Second Galaxy, formerly known as
Lundmark's Nebula."

"But, Klono's brazen claws! Chief, I can't swing it--I haven't got jets
enough!"

"You always yelp about a deficiency of jets whenever a new job is
mentioned, but we notice that you usually deliver the goods. Think it
over for a minute. Who else could we wish such a job as that onto?"

"Worsel," Kinnison declared without hesitation. "He's--"

"Balloon juice!" snorted the older man.

"Well, then ... ah ... er--" He stopped. Clarrissa opened her mouth;
then shut it, ridiculously, without having uttered a word.

"Go ahead, MacDougall--you are an interested party, you know."

"No." She shook her spectacular head. "I'm not saying a word or
thinking a thought to sway his decision one way or the other. Besides,
he'd have to flit around as much then as now."

"Some travel involved, of course," Haynes admitted. "All over that
Galaxy, some in this one, and back and forth between the two. However,
the _Dauntless_--or something newer, bigger, and faster--will be his
private yacht, and I do not see why it is either necessary or desirable
that his flits be solo."

"Say, I never thought of that!" Kinnison blurted, and, as thoughts
began to race through his mind of what he could do, with Chris beside
him all the time, to straighten out the mess in the Second Galaxy:

"Oh, Kim!" Clarrissa squealed in ecstasy, squeezing his arm even
tighter against her side.

"Hooked!" the surgeon general chortled in triumph.

"But I'd have to retire!" That thought was the only thorn in Kinnison's
whole wreath of roses. "I wouldn't like that."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Certainly you wouldn't," Haynes agreed. "But remember that all such
assignments are conditional, subject to approval, and with a very
definite cancellation agreement in case of what the Lensman regards
as an emergency. If a Gray Lensman had to give up his right to serve
the Patrol in any way he considered himself most able, they'd have to
shoot us all before they could make executives out of us. And finally,
I don't see how the job we're talking about can be figured as any sort
of a retirement. You will be as active as you are now--yes, more so, I
think."

"QX. I'll be there--I'll try it," Kinnison promised.

"Now for some more news," Lacy announced. "Haynes didn't tell you, but
he has been made president of the Galactic Council. You are his first
appointment. I hate to say anything good about the old scoundrel,
but he has one outstanding ability. He doesn't know much or do much
himself, but he certainly can pick the men who have to do the work for
him!"

"There's something vastly more important than that," Haynes steered the
acclaim away from himself.

"Just a minute," Kinnison interposed. "I haven't got this all straight
yet. What was that crack about active nurses a while ago?"

"Why, Dr. Lacy was just intimating that I had resigned, goose,"
Clarrissa chuckled. "I didn't know a thing about it myself, but I
imagine that it must have been just before this conference started. Am
I right, doctor?" she asked innocently.

"Or tomorrow, or even yesterday--any convenient time will do," Lacy
blandly assented. "You see, young man, MacDougall has been a mighty
busy girl, and wedding preparations take time, too. Therefore, we have
very reluctantly accepted her resignation."

"Especially, preparations take time when it's going to be such a
wedding as the Patrol is going to stage," Haynes volunteered. "That was
what I was starting to talk about when I was so rudely interrupted."

"Nix--not in seven thousand years!" Kinnison exploded. "Cancel that,
right now. I won't stand for it. I'll not--"

"Close the pan, young fellow," the admiral advised him, firmly.
"Bridegrooms are to be seen--just barely visible--but not heard, ever.
A wedding is where the girls really strut their stuff. How about it,
you gorgeous young menace to civilization?"

"I'll say so!" she exclaimed in high animation. "I'd just _love_ it,
admiral--" She broke off, aghast. Her face fell. "No, I didn't mean
that, really. Kim's right. Thanks a million, just the same, but--"

"But nothing!" Haynes broke in. "I know what's the matter. Don't try
to fib to an old campaigner, and don't be silly. I said the Patrol
was throwing this wedding--_all_ of it. All you have to do is to
participate in the action. Got any money, Kinnison? On you, I mean."

"No," in surprise. "What would I be doing with money?"

"Here's ten thousand credits--Patrol funds. Take it and--"

"He will not!" the nurse stormed. "No! You can't, Admiral Haynes,
really. Why, a bride has _got_ to buy her own clothes!"

"She's right, Haynes," Lacy announced. The admiral stared at him in
wrathful astonishment, and even the girl seemed disappointed at her
easy victory. "But listen to this: As surgeon general, et cetera, in
recognition of the unselfish services, et cetera, unflinching bravery
under fire, performance beyond and above requirements or reasonable
expectations, et cetera, et cetera, Sector Chief Nurse Clarrissa
MacDougall, upon the occasion of her separation from the service, is
hereby granted a bonus of ten thousand credits. That goes on the record
as of hour twelve today. Now, you red-headed young spitfire, if you
refuse to accept that bonus, I'll cancel your resignation and put you
back to work! What do you say to that?"

"I say QX, Dr. Lacy. Thanks a million, both of you--you're perfect
darlings and I love all two of you!" The gaspingly happy girl kissed
them both, then turned to her betrothed.

"Let's go and walk about ten miles, shall we, Kim? I've got to do
_something_ or I'll explode all over the place!"

And the tall Lensman--no longer unattached--and the radiant nurse swung
down the hall.

Side by side, in step, heads up, laughing; a beginning symbolical
indeed of the life which they were to live together.


                               THE END.

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