SECOND STAGE LENSMAN

      First serialized in "ASTOUNDING," Nov '41 - Feb '42;
            Fist book, Fantasy Press hardbound, 1953
 

BY E. E. "DOC" SMITH

FOREWORD

     A couple of billion years ago, when the first and Second Galaxies were passing
through each other and when myriads of planets were coming into being where only a
handful had existed before, two races of beings were already ancient. Each had
become independent of the chance formation of planets upon which to live. Each had
won a large measure of power over its environment; the Arisians by force of mind alone,
the Eddorians by employing both mind and mechanism.
     The Arisians were native to this, our normal space-time continuum. They had
lived in it since the unthinkably remote time of their origin. The original Arisia was very
much like Earth. Thus all our normal space was permeated by Arisian life-spores, and
thus upon all Earth-like planets there came into being races more or less like what the
Arisians had been in the days of their racial youth.
     The Eddorians, on the other hand, were interlopers. They came to our space-
time continuum from some horribly different plenum. For eons they had been exploring
the Macrocosmic All; moving their planets from plenum to plenum; seeking that which at
last they found—one in which there were enough planets, soon to be inhabited by
intelligent life, to sate even the Eddorian lust for dominance. Here, in our own universe,
they would stay; and here supreme they would rule.
     The Elders of Arisia, however, the ablest thinkers of the race, had known of and
had studied the Eddorians for many cycles of time. Their integrated Visualization of the
Cosmic All showed what was to happen. No more than the Arisians themselves could
the Eddorians be slain by any physical means; nor could the Arisians, unaided, kill all
the invaders by mental force. Eddore's All-Highest and his Innermost Circle, in their
ultrashielded citadel, could be destroyed only by a mental bolt of such nature and
magnitude that its generator, which was to become known as the Galactic Patrol, would
require several long Arisian lifetimes for its building.
     Nor would that building be easy. The Eddorians must be kept in ignorance, both
of Arisia and of the proposed generator, until too late to take effective counter-
measures. Also, no entity below the third level of intelligence could ever be allowed to
learn the truth, for that knowledge would set up an inferiority complex that would rob the
generator of its ability to do the work.
     On the four most promising planets of the First Galaxy —our Earth or Sol Three,
Velantia, Rigel Four, and Palain Seven—breeding programs, to develop the highest
mentality of which each race was capable, were begun as soon as intelligent life
appeared.
     On our Earth there were only two blood lines, since humanity has only two sexes.
One was a straight male line of descent, and was always named Kinnison or its
equivalent. Civilizations rose and fell; Arisia surreptitiously lifting them up, Eddore
callously knocking them down. Pestilences raged, and wars, and famines, and
holocausts and disasters that decimated entire populations again and again; but the
direct male line of descent of the Kinnisons was never broken.
     The other line, sometimes male and sometimes female, which was to culminate
in the female penultimate of the Arisian program, was equally persistent and was
characterized throughout its prodigious length by a peculiarly spectacular shade of red-
bronze-auburn hair and equally striking gold-flecked, tawny eyes. Atlantis fell, but the
red-headed, yellow-eyed child of red-haired Captain Phryges had been sent to North
Maya, and lived. Patroclus, the red-headed gladiator, begot a red-haired daughter
before he was cut down. And so it went.
     World Wars One, Two, and Three, occupying as they did only a few moments of
Arisian-Eddorian time, formed merely one incident in the eons-long game. Immediately
after that incident, Gharlane of Eddore made what proved to be an error. Knowing
nothing of the Arisians, he assumed that the then completely ruined Tellus would not
require his personal attention again for many hundreds of Tellurian years, and went
elsewhere; to Rigel Four, to Palain Seven, and to Velantia Two, or Delgon, where he
found that his creatures, the Overlords, were not progressing satisfactorily. He spent
quite a little time there; during which the men of Earth, aided by the Arisians, made a
rapid recovery from the ravages of atomic warfare and very rapid advances in both
sociology and technology.
     Virgil Samms, the auburn-haired, tawny-eyed Crusader who was to become the
first wearer of Arisia's Lens, took advantage of the demoralization to institute an
effective planetary police force. Then, with the advent of interplanetary flight, he was
instrumental in forming the Interplanetary League. As head of the Triplanetary Service
he took a leading part in the brief war with the Nevians, a race of highly intelligent
amphibians who used allotropic iron as a source of atomic power.
     Gharlane of Eddore came back to the Solarian System as Gray Roger, the
enigmatic and practically immortal scourge of space, only to find his every move so
completely blocked that he could not kill two ordinary human beings, Conway Costigan
and Clio Marsden. Nor were these two, in spite of some belief to the contrary, anything
but what they seemed. Neither of them ever knew that they were being protected.
Gharlane's blocker was in fact an Arisian fusion; the four-ply mentality which was to
become known to every Lensman of the Patrol as Mentor of Arisia.
     The inertialess drive, which made an interstellar trip a matter of minutes instead
of lifetimes, brought with it such an increase in crime, and made detection of criminals
so difficult, that law enforcement broke down almost completely. As Samms himself
expressed it:
     "How can legal processes work efficiently—work at all, for that matter—when a
man can commit a murder or a pirate can loot a space-ship and be a hundred parsecs
away before the crime is even discovered? How can a Tellurian John Law find a
criminal on a strange world that knows nothing of our Patrol, with a completely alien
language— maybe no language at all—when it takes months even to find out who and
where—if any—the native police officers are?"
     Also there was the apparently insuperable difficulty of identification of authorized
personnel. Triplanetary's best scientists had done their best in the way of a non-
counterfeitable badge—the historic Golden Meteor, which upon touch impressed upon
the toucher's consciousness an unpronounceable,—unspellable syllable—but that best
was not enough. What physical science could devise and synthesize, physical science
could analyze and duplicate; and that analysis and duplication had caused trouble
indeed.
     Triplanetary needed something vastly better than its meteor. In fact, without a
better, its expansion into an inter-systemic organization would probably be impossible. It
needed something to identify a Patrolman, anytime and anywhere. This something must
be impossible of duplication or imitation—ideally, it should kill, painfully, any entity
attempting imposture. It should operate as a telepath or endow its wearer with telepathic
power—how else could a Tellurian converse with peoples such as the Rigellians, who
could not talk, see, or hear?
     Both Solarian Councillor Virgil Samms and his friend of old, Commissioner of
Public Safety Roderick Kinnison, knew these things; but they also knew how utterly
preposterous their thoughts were; how utterly and self-evidently impossible such a
device was.
     But Arisia again came to the rescue. The scientist working on the meteor
problem, one Dr. Nels Bergenholm—who, all unknown to even his closest associates,
was a form of flesh energized at various times by various Arisians—reported to Virgil
Samms that:
     (1) Physical science could not then produce what was needed, and probably
could never do so. (2) Although it could not be explained by any symbology known to
man, there was—there must be—a science of die mind; a science whose tangible
products physical science could neither analyze nor imitate. (3) Virgil Samms, by going
to Arisia, could obtain exactly what was needed.
     "Arisia! Of all the hells in space, why Arisia?" Kinnison demanded. "How? Don't
you know that nobody can get anywhere near that damn planet?"
     "I know that the Arisians are very well versed in that science. I know that if Virgil
Samms goes to Arisia he will obtain the symbol he needs. I know that he will never
obtain it otherwise. As to how I know these things—I can't—I just —I know them, I tell
you!"
     And since Bergenholm was already as well known for uncannily accurate
"hunches" as for a height of genius bordering on insanity, the two leaders of Civilization
did not press him farther, but went immediately to the hitherto forbidden planet. They
were—apparently—received hospitably enough, and were given Lenses by Mentor of
Arisia; Lenses which, it developed, were all that Bergenholm had indicated, and more.
     The Lens is a lenticular structure of hundreds of thousands of tiny crystalloids,
built and tuned to match the individual life force—the ego, the personality—of one
individual entity. While not, strictly speaking, alive, it is endowed with a sort of pseudo-
life by virtue of which it gives off a strong, characteristically-changing, polychromatic
light as long as it is in circuit with the living mentality with which it is in synchronization.
Conversely, when worn by anyone except its owner, it not only remains dark, but it kills;
so strongly does its pseudo-life interfere with any life to which it is not attuned. It is also
a telepathic communicator of astounding power and range—and other things.
     Back on Earth, Samms set out to find people of Lensman caliber to send to
Arisia. Kinnison's son, Jack, Jack's friend Mason Northrop, Conway Costigan, and
Samms' daughter Virgilia—who had inherited her father's hair and eyes and who was
the most accomplished muscle-reader of her time— went first. The boys got Lenses, but
Jill did not. Mentor, who was to her senses a woman seven feet tall—it should be
mentioned here that no two entities who ever saw Mentor ever saw the same
thing—told her that she did not then and never would need a Lens.
     Frederick Rodebush, Lyman Cleveland, young Bergenholm and a couple of
commodores of the Patrol—Clayton of North America and Schweikert of Europe—just
about exhausted Earth's resources. Nor were the other Solarian planets very helpful,
yielding only three Lensmen—Knobos of Mars, Del Nalten of Venus, and Rularion of
Jove. Lensman material was very scarce stuff.
     Knowing that his proposed Galactic Council would have to be made up
exclusively of Lensmen, and that it should represent as many solar systems as
possible, Samms visited the various systems which had been colonized by humanity,
then went on: to Rigel Four, where he found Dronvire the Explorer, who was of
Lensman grade; and next to Pluto, where he found Pilinixi the Dexitroboper, who very
definitely was not; and finally to Palain Seven, an ultra-frigid world where he found
Tallick, who might—or might not—go to Arisia some day. And Virgil Samms, being
physically tough and mentally a real crusader, survived these various ordeals.
     For some time the existence of the newly-formed Galactic Patrol was precarious
indeed. Archibald Isaacson, head of Interstellar Spaceways, wanting a monopoly of
interstellar trade, first tried bribery; then, joining forces with the machine of Senator
Morgan and Boss Towne, assassination. The other Lensmen and Jill saved Samms' life;
after which Kinnison took him to the safest place on Earth—deep underground beneath
the Hill; the tremendously fortified, superlatively armed fortress which had been built to
be the headquarters of the Triplanetary Service.
     But even there the First Lensman was attacked, this time by a fleet of space-
ships in full battle array. By that time, however, the Galactic Patrol had a fleet of its own,
and again the Lensmen won.
     Knowing that the final and decisive struggle would of necessity be a political one,
the Patrol took over the Cosmocrat party and set out to gather detailed and
documentary evidence of corrupt and criminal activities of the Nationalists, the party
then in power. Roderick ("Rod the Rock") Kinnison ran for President of North America
against the incumbent Witherspoon; and after a knock-down-and-drag-out political
battle with Senator Morgan, the voice of the Morgan-Towne-Isaacson machine, he was
elected.
     And Morgan was murdered—supposedly by disgruntled gangsters; actually by
his Kalonian boss, who was in turn a minion of Eddore—simply because he had failed.
     North America was the most powerful continent of Earth; Earth was the mother
planet, the leader and the boss. Hence, under the sponsorship of the Cosmocratic
government of North America, the Galactic Council and its arm, the Galactic Patrol,
came into their own. At the end of R. K. Kinnison's term of office, at which time he
resumed his interrupted duties as Port Admiral of the Patrol, there were a hundred
planets adherent to Civilization. In ten years there were a thousand; in a hundred years
a million; and it is sufficient characterization of the government of the Galactic Council to
say that in the long history of Civilization no planet has ever withdrawn from it.
     Time went on. The prodigiously long blood-lines, so carefully manipulated by
Mentor of Arisia, neared culmination. Lensman Kimball Kinnison was graduated Number
One of his class—as a matter of fact, although he did not know it, he was Number One
of his time. And his female counterpart and complement, Clarrissa MacDougall of the
red-bronze-auburn hair and the gold-flecked tawny eyes, was a nurse in the Patrol's
Hospital at Prime Base.
     Shortly after graduation Kinnison was called in by Port Admiral Haynes. Space
piracy had become an organized force; and, under the leadership of someone or
something known as "Boskone", had risen to such heights of power as to threaten
seriously the Patrol itself. In one respect Boskonia was ahead of the Patrol; its scientists
having developed a source of power vastly greater than any known to Civilization. Pirate
ships, faster than the Patrol's fastest cruisers and yet more heavily armed than its most
powerful battleships, had been doing as they pleased throughout all 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 offense she had only
one weapon, the "Q-gun". Kinnison was put in command of this vessel, with orders to:
(1) Capture a late-model pirate vessel; (2) Learn her secrets of power; and (3) Transmit
the information to Prime Base.
     He found and took such a ship. Sergeant Peter vanBuskirk led the storming party
of Valerians—men of human ancestry, but of extraordinary size, strength, and agility
because of the enormous gravitation of the planet Valeria—in wiping out those of the
pirate crew not killed in the battle between the two vessels.
     The Brittania's scientists secured the desired data. It could not be transmitted to
Prime Base, however, as the pirates were blanketing all channels of communication.
Boskonian warships 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 destroy
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 manned by
Kinnison and vanBuskirk, and there the pirates tried 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 before the crash. The two
Patrolmen boarded the pirate vessel and drove her toward Earth, reaching the solar
system of Velantia before the Boskonians headed them off. Again taking to their
lifeboat, they landed on the planet Delgon, where they were rescued from a horde of
Catlats by one Worsel—later to become Lensman Worsel of Velantia—a highly
intelligent winged reptile.
     By means of improvements upon Velantian thought-screens the three destroyed
a group of the Overlords of Delgon, a sadistic race of monsters who had been preying
upon the other peoples 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 defenses against the expected attack of the Boskonians.
Several other lifeboats reached Velantia, guided by Worsel's mind working through
Kinnison's ego and Lens.
     Kinnison intercepted a message from Helmuth, who "spoke for Boskone", and
traced his communicator beam, thus getting his first line on Boskone's Grand Base. The
pirates attacked Velantia, and six of their warships were captured. In these six ships,
manned by Velantian crews, the Patrolmen again set out for Earth and Prime Base.
     Then Kinnison's Bergenholm, the generator of the force which makes inertialess
flight possible, broke down, so that he had to land upon Trenco for repairs. Trenco, the
tempestuous, billiard-ball-smooth planet where it rains forty seven feet and five inches
every night and where the wind blows at over eight hundred miles per hour—Trenco,
the source of thionite, the deadliest of all deadly drugs—Trenco, whose weirdly-charged
ether and atmosphere so distort beams and vision that it can be policed only by such
beings as the Rigellians, who possess the sense of perception instead of those of sight
and hearing!
     Lensman Tregonsee, of Rigel Four, then in command of the Patrol's wandering
base on Trenco, supplied Kinnison with a new Bergenholm and he again set out for
Tellus.
     Meanwhile Helmuth had decided that some one particular Lensman must be the
cause of all his set-backs; and that the Lens, a complete enigma to all Boskonians, was
in some way connected with Arisia. That planet had always been dreaded and shunned
by all spacemen. No Boskonian who had even approached that planet could be
compelled, even by the certainty of death, to go near it again.
     Thinking himself secure by virtue of thought-screens "given him by a being from
a higher-echelon planet named Floor, Helmuth went alone to Arisia, determined to learn
all about the Lens. There he was punished to the verge of insanity, but was permitted to
return to his Grand Base alive and sane: "Not for your own good, but for the good of
that struggling young Civilization which you oppose."
     Kinnison reached Prime Base with the all-important data. By building super-
powerful battleships, called "maulers", the Patrol gained a temporary advantage over
Boskonia, but a stalemate soon ensued. Kinnison developed a plan of action whereby
he hoped to locate Helmuth's Grand Base, and asked Port Admiral Haynes for
permission to follow it. In lieu of that, however, Haynes told him that he had been given
his Release; that he was an Unattached Lensman—a "Gray" Lensman, popularly so-
called, from the color of the plain leather uniforms they wear. Thus he earned the
highest honor possible for the Galactic Patrol to give, for the Gray Lensman works
under no supervision or direction whatever. He is responsible to no one; to nothing save
his own conscience. He is no longer a cog in the immense machine of the Galactic
Patrol: wherever he may go he is the Patrol!
     In quest of a second line to Grand Base, Kinnison scouted a pirate stronghold on
Aldebaran I. Its personnel, however, were not even near-human, but were Wheelmen,
possessed of the sense of perception; hence Kinnison was discovered before he could
accomplish anything and was very seriously wounded. He managed to get back to his
speedster and to send a thought to Port Admiral Haynes, who rushed ships to his aid. In
Base Hospital Surgeon-Marshal Lacy put him back together; and, during a long and
quarrelsome convalescence, Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall held him together. And Lacy
and Haynes connived to promote a romance between nurse and Lensman.
     As soon as he could leave the hospital he went to Arisia in the hope that he
might he given advanced training; something which had never before been attempted.
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 vastly stronger of
mind than any human being had ever been before; and possessed of a new sense as
well—the sense of perception, a sense somewhat analogous to sight, but of much
greater power, depth, and scope, and not dependent on light.
     After trying out his new mental equipment by solving a murder mystery on
Radelix, he went to Boyssia II, where he succeeded in entering an enemy base. He took
over the mind of a communications officer and waited for a chance to get his second,
all-important line to Grand Base. An enemy ship captured a hospital ship of the Patrol
and brought it in to Boyssia. Nurse MacDougall, head nurse of the ship, working under
Kinnison's instructions, stirred up trouble which soon became mutiny. Helmuth took a
hand from Grand Base, thus enabling the Lensman to get his second line.
     The hospital ship, undetectable by virtue of Kinnison'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 the two lines, and therefore the
pirates' Grand Base, lay in Star Cluster AC 257-4736, well outside the galaxy. Pausing
only long enough to destroy the Wheelmen of Aldebaran I, he set out to investigate
Helmuth's headquarters. He found a stronghold impregnable to any attack the Patrol
could throw against it; manned by thought-screened personnel. His sense of perception
was suddenly cut off—the pirates had erected a thought-screen around their whole
planet. He then returned to Prime Base, deciding en route that boring from within was
the only possible way to take that stupendous fortress.
     In consultation with the Port Admiral the zero hour was set, at which time the
massed Grand Fleet of the Patrol was to attack Grand Base with every projector it could
bring to bear.
     Pursuant to his plan, Kinnison again visited Trenco, where the Patrol forces
extracted for him some 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 and exquisite the
sensations—resulting, sooner or later, in a super-ecstatic death.
     Thence to Helmuth's planet; where, working through the unshielded brain of a
dog, 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 pirates except Helmuth himself,
who, in his ultra-shielded inner bombproof, could not be affected.
     The Patrol attacked precisely on schedule, but Helmuth would not leave his
retreat, even to try to save his base. Therefore Kinnison had to go in after him. Poised in
the air of the inner dome there was an enigmatic, sparkling ball of force which the
Lensman could not understand, and of which he was therefore very suspicious.
     But the storming of that quadruply-defended inner stronghold was exactly the
task for which Kinnison's new and ultra-cumbersome armor had been designed; so in
he went. He killed Helmuth in armor-to-armor combat.
     Kinnison was pretty sure that that force-ball was keyed to some particular
pattern, and suspected—correctly—that it was in part an inter-galactic communicator.
Hence he did not think into it until he was in the flagship with Port Admiral Haynes; until
all kinds of recorders and analyzers had been set up. Then he did so—and Grand Base
was blasted out of existence by duodec bombs placed by the pirates themselves and
triggered by the force-ball. The detectors showed a hard, tight communications line
running straight out toward the Second Galaxy. Helmuth was not Boskone.
     Scouting the Second Galaxy in his super-powerful battleship Dauntless, Kinnison
met and defeated a squadron of Boskonian war-vessels. He landed upon the planet
Medon, whose people had been fighting a losing war against Boskone. The Medonians,
electrical wizards who had already installed inertia-neutralizers and a space-drive,
moved their world across inter-galactic space to our First Galaxy.
     With the cessation of military activity, however, the illicit traffic in habit-forming
drugs had increased tremendously, and Kinnison, deducing that Boskone was back of
the drug syndicate, decided that the best way to find the real leader of the enemy was to
work upward through the drug ring.
     Disguised as a dock walloper, he frequented the saloon of a drug baron, and
helped to raid it; but, although he secured much information, his disguise was
penetrated.
     He called a Conference of Scientists to devise means of building a gigantic bomb
of negative matter. Then, impersonating a Tellurian secret-service agent who lent
himself to the deception, he tried to investigate the stronghold of Prellin of Bronseca,
one of Boskone's regional directors. This disguise also failed and he barely managed to
escape.
     Ordinary disguises having proved useless, Kinnison became Wild Bill Williams;
once a gentleman of Aldebaran II, now a space-rat meteor miner. He made of himself
an almost bottomless drinker of the hardest beverages known to space. He became a
drug fiend—a bentlam eater—discovering that his Arisian-trained mind could function at
full efficiency even while his physical body was completely stupefied. He became widely
known as the fastest, deadliest performer with twin DeLameters ever to strike the
asteroid belts.
     Through solar system after solar system he built up an unimpeachable identity as
a hard-drinking, wildly-carousing, bentlam-eating, fast-shooting space-hellion; a lucky or
a very skillful meteor miner; a derelict who had been an Aldebaranian gentleman once
and who would be again if he should ever strike it rich.
     Physically helpless in a bentlam stupor, he listened in on a zwilnik conference
and learned that Edmund Crowninshield, of Tressilia III, was also a regional director of
the enemy.
     Boskone formed an alliance with the Overlords of Delgon, and through a hyper-
spatial tube the combined forces again attacked humanity. Not simple slaughter this
time, for the Overlords tortured their captives and consumed their life forces in sadistic
orgies. The Conference of Scientists solved the mystery of the tube and the Dauntless
counter-attacked through it, returning victorious.
     Wild Bill Williams struck it rich at last. Abandoning the low dives in which he had
been wont to carouse, he made an obvious effort to become again an Aldebaranian
gentleman. He secured an invitation to visit Crowninshield's resort—the Boskonian,
believing that Williams was basically a booze- and drug-soaked bum, wanted to get his
quarter-million credits.
     In a characteristically wild debauch, Kinnison-Williams did squander a large part
of his new fortune; but he learned from Crowninshield's mind that one Jalte, a Kalonian
by birth, was Boskone's galactic director; and that Jalte had his headquarters in a star
cluster just outside the First Galaxy. Pretending bitter humiliation and declaring that he
would change his name and disappear, the Gray Lensman left the planet—to
investigate Jalte's base.
     He learned that Boskone was not a single entity, but a council. Jalte did not know
very much about it, but his superior, one Eichmil, who lived on the planet Jarnevon, in
the Second Galaxy, would know who and what Boskone really was.
     Therefore Kinnison and Worsel went to Jarnevon. Kinnison was captured and
tortured—there was at least one Overlord there—but Worsel rescued him before his
mind was damaged and brought him back with his knowledge intact. Jarnevon was
peopled by the Eich, a race almost as monstrous as the Overlords. The Council of Nine
which ruled the planet was in fact the long-sought Boskone.
     The greatest surgeons of the age—Phillips of Posenia and Wise of
Medon—demonstrated that they could grow new nervous tissue; even new limbs and
organs if necessary. Again Clarrissa MacDougall nursed Kinnison back to health, and
this time the love between them could not be concealed.
     The Grand Fleet of the Patrol was assembled, and with Kinnison in charge of
Operations, swept outward from the First Galaxy. Jalte's planet was destroyed by
means of the negasphere—the negative-matter bomb—4hen on to the Second Galaxy.
     Jarnevon, the planet of the Eich, was destroyed by smashing it between two
barren planets which had been driven there in the "free" (inertialess) condition. These
planets, having exactly opposite intrinsic velocities, were inerted, one upon each side of
the doomed world; and when that frightful collision was over a minor star had come into
being.
     Grand Fleet returned to our galaxy. Galactic Civilization rejoiced. Prime Base
was a center of celebration. Kinnison, supposing that the war was over and that his
problem was solved, threw off Lensman's Load. Marrying his Cris, he declared, was the
most important thing in the universe.
     But how wrong he was! For even as Lensman and nurse were walking down a
corridor of Base Hospital after a conference with Haynes and Lacy regarding that
marriage—
     
CHAPTER 1
Recalled

     Stop, youth!" the voice of Mentor the Arisian thundered silently, deep within the
Lensman's brain.
     He stopped convulsively, almost in mid-stride, and at the rigid, absent awareness
in his eyes Nurse MacDougall's face went white.
     "This is not merely the loose and muddy thinking of which you have all too
frequently been guilty in the past," the deeply resonant, soundless voice went on, "it is
simply not thinking at all. At times, Kinnison of Tellus, we almost despair of you. Think,
youth, think! For know, Lensman, that upon the clarity of your thought and upon the
trueness of your perception depends the whole future of your Patrol and of your
Civilization; more so now by far than at any time in the past."
     "What'dy'mean, 'think'?" Kinnison snapped back thoughtlessly. His mind was a
seething turmoil, his emotions an indescribable blend of surprise, puzzlement, and
incredulity.
     For moments, as Mentor did not reply, the Gray Lensman's mind raced.
Incredulity . . . becoming tinged with apprehension . . . turning rapidly into rebellion.
     "Oh, Kim!" Clarrissa choked. A queer enough tableau they made, these two, had
any been there to see; the two uniformed figures standing there so strainedly, the
nurse's two hands gripping those of the Lensman. She, completely en rapport with him,
had understood his every fleeting thought. "Oh, Kim! They can't do that to us . . ."
     "I'll say they cant!" Kinnison flared. "By Klono's tungsten teeth, I won't do it! We
have a right to happiness, you and I, and we'll. . ."
     "We'll what?" she asked, quietly. She knew what they had to face; and, strong-
souled woman that she was, she was quicker to face it squarely than was he. "You were
just blasting off, Kim, and so was I."
     "I suppose so," glumly. "Why in all the nine hells of Valeria did I have to be a
Lensman? Why couldn't I have stayed a . . . ?"
     "Because you are you," the girl interrupted, gently. "Kimball Kinnison, the man I
love. You couldn't do anything else." Chin up, she was fighting gamely. "And if I rate
Lensman's Mate I can't be a sissy, either. It won't last forever, Kim. Just a little longer to
wait, that's all."
     Eyes, steel-gray now, stared down into eyes of tawny, gold-flecked bronze. "QX,
Cris? Really QX?" What a world of meaning there was in that cryptic question!
     "Really, Kim." She met his stare unfalteringly. If not entirely unafraid, at least with
whole-hearted determination. "On the beam and on the green, Gray Lensman, all the
way. Every long, last millimeter. There, wherever it is—to the very end of whatever road
it has to be—and back again. Until it's over. I'll be here. Or somewhere, Kim. Waiting."
     The man shook himself and breathed deep. Hands dropped apart—both knew
consciously as well as subconsciously that the less of physical demonstration the better
for two such natures as theirs—and Kimball Kinnison, Unattached Lensman, came to
grips with his problem.
     He began really to think; to think with the full power of his prodigious mind; and
as he did so he began to see what the Arisian could have—what he must have—meant.
He, Kinnison, had gummed up the works. He had made a colossal blunder in the
Boskonian campaign. He knew that Mentor, although silent, was still en rapport with
him; and as he coldly, grimly, thought the thing through to its logical conclusion he
knew, with a dull, sick certainty, what was coming next. It came:
     "Ah, you perceive at last some portion of the truth. You see that your confused,
superficial thinking has brought about almost irreparable harm. I grant that, in
specimens so young of such a youthful race, emotion has its place and its function; but I
tell you now in all solemnity that for you the time of emotional relaxation has not yet
come. Think, youth— THINK!" and the ancient Arisian snapped the telepathic line.
     As one, without a word, nurse and Lensman retraced their way to the room they
had left so shortly before. Port Admiral Haynes and Surgeon-Marshal Lacy still sat upon
the nurse's davenport, scheming roseate schemes having to do with the wedding they
had so subtly engineered.
     "Back so soon? Forget something, MacDougall?" Lacy asked, amiably. Then, as
both men noticed the couple's utterly untranslatable expression:
     "What happened? Break it out, Kim!" Haynes commanded.
     "Plenty, chief," Kinnison answered, quietly. "Mentor .stopped us before we got to
the elevator. Told me I'd put my foot in it up to my neck on that Boskonian thing. That
instead of being all buttoned up, my fool blundering has put us farther back than we
were when we started."
     "Mentor!"
     "Told you!"
     "Put us back!"
     It was an entirely unpremeditated, unconscious duet. The two old officers were
completely dumbfounded. Arisians never had come out of their shells, they never would.
Infinitely less disturbing would have been the authentic tidings that a brick house had
fallen upstairs. They had nursed this romance along so carefully, had timed it so
exactly, and now it had gone p-f-f-f-t—it had been taken out of their hands entirely. That
thought flashed through their minds first. Then, as catastrophe follows lightning's flash,
the real knowledge exploded within their consciousnesses that, in some unguessable
fashion or other, the whole Boskonian campaign had gone p-f-f-f-t, too.
     Port Admiral Haynes, master tactician, reviewed in his keen strategist's mind
every phase of the recent struggle, without being able to find a flaw in it.
     "There wasn't a loop-hole anywhere," he said aloud. "Where do they figure we
slipped up?"
     "We didn't slip—7 slipped," Kinnison stated, flatly. "When we took Bominger—the
fat Chief Zwilnik of Radelix, you know—I took a bop on the head to learn that Boskone
had more than one string per bow. Observers, independent, for every station at all
important. I learned that fact thoroughly then, I thought. At least, we figured on
Boskone's having lines of communication past, not through, his Regional Directors,
such as Prellin of Bronseca. Since I changed my line of attack at that point, I did not
need to consider whether or not Crowninshield of Tressilia III was by-passed in the
same way; and when I had worked my way up through Jalte in his star-cluster to
Boskone itself, on Jarnevon, I had forgotten the concept completely. Its possibility didn't
even occur to me. That's where I fell down."
     "I still don't see it!" Haynes protested. "Boskone was the top!"
     "Yeah?" Kinnison asked, pointedly. "That's what I thought —but prove it."
     "Oh." The Port Admiral hesitated. "We had no reason to think otherwise . . .
looked at in that light, this intervention would seem to be conclusive . . . but before that
there was no . . ."
     "There were so," Kinnison contradicted, "but I didn't see them then. That's where
my brain went sour; I should have seen them. Little things, mostly, but significant. Not
so much positive as negative indices. Above all, there was nothing whatever to indicate
that Boskone actually was the top. That idea was the product of my own-wishful and
very low-grade thinking, with no basis or foundation in fact or in theory. And now," he
concluded bitterly, "because my skull is so thick that it takes an idea a hundred years to
filter through it—because a sheer, bare fact has to be driven into my brain with a
Valerian maul before I can grasp it—we're sunk without a trace."
     "Wait a minute, Kim, we aren't sunk yet," the girl advised, shrewdly. "The fact
that, for the first time in history, an Arisian has taken the initiative in communicating with
a human being, means something big—really big. Mentor does not indulge in what he
calls 'loose and muddy' thinking. Every part of every thought he sent carries meaning—
plenty of meaning."
     "What do you mean?" As one, the three men asked substantially the same
question; Kinnison, by virtue of his faster reactions, being perhaps half a syllable in the
lead.
     "I don't know, exactly," Clarrissa admitted. "I've got only an ordinary mind, and it's
firing on half its jets or less right now. But I do know that his thought was 'almost'
irreparable, and that he meant precisely that—nothing else. If it had been wholly
irreparable he not only would have expressed his thought that way, but he would have
stopped you before you destroyed Jarnevon. I know that. Apparently it would have
become wholly irreparable if we had got . . ." she faltered, blushing, then went on, ". . . if
we had kept on about our own personal affairs. That's why he stopped us. We can win
out, he meant, if you keep on working. It's your oyster, Kim . . . it's up to you to open it.
You can do it, too—I just know you can."
     "But why didn't he stop you before you fellows smashed Boskone?" Lacy
demanded, exasperated.
     "I hope you're right, Cris—it sounds reasonable," Kinnison said, thoughtfully.
Then, to Lacy:
     "That's an easy one to answer, doctor. Because knowledge that comes the hard
way is knowledge that really sticks with you. If he had drawn me a diagram before, it
wouldn't have helped, the next time I get into a jam. This way it will. I've got to learn how
to think, if it cracks my skull.
     "Really think," he went on, more to himself than to the other three. "To think so it
counts."
     "Well, what are we going to do about it?" Haynes was— he had to be, to get
where he was and to stay where he was—quick on the uptake. "Or, more specifically,
what are you going to do and what am I going to do?"
     "What I am going to do will take a bit of mulling over," Kinnison replied, slowly.
"Find some more leads and trace them up, is the best that occurs to me right now. Your
job and procedure are rather clearer. You remarked out in space that Boskone knew
that Tellus was very strongly held. That statement, of course, is no longer true."
     "Huh?" Haynes half-pulled himself up from the davenport, then sank back.
"Why?" he demanded.
     "Because we used the negasphere—a negative-matter bomb of planetary anti-
mass—to wipe out Jalte's planet, and because we smashed Jarnevon between two
colliding planets," the Lensman explained, concisely. "Can the present defenses of
Tellus cope with either one of those offensives?"
     "I'm afraid not . . . no," the Port Admiral admitted. "But . . ."
     "We can admit no 'buts', admiral," Kinnison declared, with grim finality. "Having
used those weapons, we must assume that the Boskonian scientists—we'll have to
keep on calling them 'Boskonians', I suppose, until we find a truer name—had recorders
on them and have now duplicated them. Tellus must be made safe against anything we
have ever used; against, as well, everything that, by the wildest stretch of the
imagination, we can conceive of the enemy using."
     "You're right. . . I can see that," Haynes nodded.
     "We've been underestimating them right along," Kinnison went on. "At first we
thought they were merely organized outlaws and pirates. Then, when it was forced upon
us that they could match us—overmatch us in some things—we still wouldn't admit that
they must be as large and as wide-spread as we are—galactic in scope. We know now
that they were wider-spread than we are. Inter-galactic. They penetrated into our
galaxy, riddled it, before we knew that theirs was inhabited or inhabitable. Right?"
     "To a hair, although I never thought of it in exactly that way before."
     "None of us have—mental cowardice. And they have the advantage," Kinnison
continued, inexorably, "in knowing that our Prime Base is on Tellus; whereas, if
Jarnevon was not in fact theirs, we have no idea whatever where it is. And another
point. Was that fleet of theirs a planetary outfit?"
     "Well, Jarnevon was a big planet, and the Eich were a mighty warlike race."
     "Quibbling a bit, aren't you, chief?"
     "Uh-huh," Haynes admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "The probability is very great
that no one planet either built or maintained that fleet."
     "And that leads us to expect what?"
     "Counter-attack. In force. Everything they can shove this way. However, they've
got to rebuild their fleet, besides designing and building the new stuff. We'll have time
enough, probably, if we get started right now."
     "But, after all, Jarnevon may have been their vital spot," Lacy submitted.
     "Even if that were true, which it probably isn't," the now thoroughly convinced
Port Admiral sided in with Kinnison, "it doesn't mean a thing, Sawbones. If they should
blow Tellus out of space it wouldn't kill the Galactic Patrol. It would hurt it, of course, but
it wouldn't cripple it seriously. The other planets of Civilization could, and certainly
would, go ahead with it."
     "My thought exactly," from Kinnison. "I check you to the proverbial nineteen
decimals."
     "Well, there's a lot to do and I'd better be getting at it." Haynes and Lacy got up to
go. "See you in my office when convenient?"
     "I'll be there as soon as I tell Clarrissa goodbye."

     At about the same time that Haynes and Lacy went to Nurse MacDougall's room,
Worsel the Velantian arrowed downward through the atmosphere toward a certain flat
roof. Leather wings shot out with a snap and in a blast of wind— Velantians can stand
eleven Tellurian gravities—he came in his customary appalling landing and dived
unconcernedly down a nearby shaft. Into a corridor, along which he wriggled blithely to
the office of his old friend, Master Technician La-Verne Thorndyke.
     "Verne, I have been thinking," he announced, as he coiled all but about six feet of
his sinuous length into a tight spiral upon the rug and thrust out half a dozen weirdly
stalked eyes.
     "That's nothing new," Thorndyke countered. No human mind can sympathize with
or even remotely understand the Velantian passion for solid weeks of intense,
uninterrupted concentration upon a single thought. "What about this time? The
whichness of the why?"
     "That is the trouble with you Tellurians," Worsel grumbled. "Not only do you not
know how to think, but you . . ."
     "Hold on!" Thorndyke interrupted, unimpressed. "If you've got anything to say, old
snake, why not say it? Why circumnavigate total space before you get to the point?"
     "I have been thinking about thought. . ."
     "So what?" the technician derided. "That's even worse. That's a logarithmic spiral
if there ever was one."
     "Thought—and Kinnison," Worsel declared, with finality.
     "Kinnison? Oh—that's different. I'm interested—very much so. Go ahead."
     "And his weapons. His DeLameters, you know.".
     "No, I don't know, and you know I don't know. What about them?"
     "They are so . . . so . . . so obvious." The Velantian finally found the exact
thought he wanted. "So big, and so clumsy, and so obtrusive. So inefficient, so wasteful
of power. No subtlety—no finesse."
     "But that's far and away the best hand-weapon that has ever been developed!"
Thorndyke protested.
     "True. Nevertheless, a millionth of that power, properly applied, could be at least
a million times as deadly."
     "How?" The Tellurian, although shocked, was dubious.
     "I have reasoned it out that thought, in any organic being, is and must be
connected with one definite organic compound —this one," the Velantian explained
didactically, the while there appeared within the technician's mind the space formula of
an incredibly complex molecule; a formula which seemed to fill not only his mind, but
the entire room as well. "You will note that it is a large molecule, one of very high
molecular weight. Thus it is comparatively unstable. A vibration at the resonant
frequency of any one of its component groups would break it down, and thought would
therefore cease."
     It took perhaps a minute for the full import of the ghastly thing to sink into
Thorndyke's mind. Then, every fiber of him flinching from the idea, he began to protest.
     "But he doesn't need it, Worsel. He's got a mind already that can . . ."
     "It takes much mental force to kill," Worsel broke in equably. "By that method one
can slay only a few at a time, and it is exhausting work. My proposed method would
require only a minute fraction of a watt of power and scarcely any mental force at all."
     "And it would kill—it would have to. That reaction could not be made reversible."
     "Certainly," Worsel concurred. "I never could understand why you soft-headed,
soft-hearted, soft-bodied human beings are so reluctant to kill your enemies. What good
does it do merely to stun them?"
     "QX—skip it" Thorndyke knew that it was hopeless to attempt to convince the
utterly unhuman Worsel of the fundamental lightness of human ethics. "But nothing has
ever been designed small enough to project such a wave."
     "I realize that. Its design and construction will challenge your inventive ability. Its
small ness is its great advantage. He could wear it in a ring, in the bracelet of his Lens;
or, since it will be actuated, controlled, and directed by thought, even imbedded
surgically beneath his skin."
     "How about backfires?" Thorndyke actually shuddered. "Projection . . . shielding .
. ."
     "Details—mere details," Worsel assured him, with an airy flip of his scimitared
tail.
     "That's nothing to be running around loose," the man argued. "Nobody could tell
what killed them, could they?"
     "Probably not." Worsel pondered briefly. "No. Certainly not. The substance must
decompose in the instant of death, from any cause. And it would not be 'loose', as you
think; it should not become known, even. You would make only the one, of course."
     "Oh. You don't want one, then?"
     "Certainly not. What do I need of such a thing? Kinnison only—and only for his
protection."
     "Kim can handle it . . . but he's the only being this side of Arisia that I'd trust with
one . . . QX, give me the dope on the frequency, wave-form, and so on, and I'll see what
I can do."

CHAPTER 2
Invasion Via Tube

     Port Admiral Haynes, newly chosen president of the Galactic Council and by
virtue of his double office the most powerful entity of Civilization, set instantly into
motion the vast machinery which would make Tellus safe against any possible attack.
He first called together his Board of Strategy; the same keen-minded tacticians who had
helped him plan the invasion of the Second Galaxy and the eminently successful attack
upon Jarnevon. Should Grand Fleet, many of whose component fleets had not yet
reached their home planets, be recalled? Not yet—lots of time for that. Let them go
home for a while first. The enemy would have to rebuild before they could attack, and
there were many more pressing matters.
     Scouting was most important. The planets near the galactic rim could take care
of that. In fact, they should concentrate upon it, to the exclusion of everything else of
warfare's activities. Every approach to the galaxy—yes, the space between the two
galaxies and as far into the Second Galaxy as it was safe to penetrate—should be
covered as with a blanket. That way, they could not be surprised.
     Kinnison, when he heard that, became vaguely uneasy. He did not really have a
thought; it was as though he should have had one, but didn't. Deep down, far off, just
barely above the threshold of perception an indefinite, formless something obtruded
itself upon his consciousness. Tug and haul at it as he would, he could not get the drift.
There was something he ought to be thinking of, but what in all the iridescent hells from
Vandemar to Alsakan was it? So, instead of flitting about upon his declared business,
he stuck around; helping the General Staff—and thinking.
     And Defense Plan BBT went from the idea men to the draftsmen, then to the
engineers. This was to be, primarily, a war of planets. Ships could battle ships, fleets
fleets; but, postulating good tactics upon the other side, no fleet, however armed and
powered, could stop a planet. That had been proved. A planet had a mass of the order
of magnitude of one times ten to the twenty fifth kilograms, and an intrinsic velocity of
somewhere around forty kilometers per second. A hundred probably, relative to Tellus,
if the planet came from the Second Galaxy. Kinetic energy, roughly, about five times ten
to the forty first ergs. No, that was nothing for any possible fleet to cope with.
     Also, the attacking planets would of course be inertia-less until the last strategic
instant. Very well, they must be made inert prematurely, when the Patrol wanted them
that way, not the enemy. How? HOW? The Bergenholms upon those planets would be
guarded with everything the Boskonians had.
     The answer to that question, as worked out by the engineers, was something
they called a "super-mauler". It was gigantic, cumbersome, and slow; but little faster,
indeed, than a free planet. It was like Helmuth's fortresses of space, only larger. It was
like the special defense cruisers of the Patrol, except that its screens were vastly
heavier. It was like a regular mauler, except that it had only one weapon. All of its
incomprehensible mass was devoted to one thing—power! It could defend itself; and, if
it could get close enough to its objective, it could do plenty of damage—its dreadful
primary was the first weapon ever developed capable of cutting a Q-type helix squarely
in two.
     And in various solar systems, uninhabitable and worthless planets were
converted into projectiles. Dozens of them, possessing widely varying masses and
intrinsic velocities. One by one they flitted away from their parent suns and took up
positions—not too far away from our Solar System, but not too near.
     And finally Kinnison, worrying at his tantalizing thought as a dog worries a bone,
crystallized it. Prosaically enough, it was an extremely short and flamboyantly waggling
pink skirt which catalyzed the reaction; which acted as the seed of the crystallization.
Pink—a Chickladorian—Xylpic the Navigator—Overlords of Delgon. Thus flashed the
train of thought, culminating in:
     "Oh, so that's it!" he exclaimed, aloud. "A TUBE—just as sure as hell's a
mantrap!" He whistled raucously at a taxi, took the wheel himself, and broke—or at least
bent—most of the city's traffic ordinances in getting to Haynes' office.
     The Port Admiral was always busy, but he was never too busy to see Gray
Lensman Kinnison; especially when the latter demanded the right of way in such terms
as he used then.
     "The whole defense set-up is screwy," Kinnison declared. "I thought I was
overlooking a bet, but I couldn't locate it. Why should they fight their way through inter-
galactic space and through sixty thousand parsecs of planet-infested galaxy when they
don't have to?" he demanded. "Think of the length of the supply line, with our bases
placed to cut it in a hundred places, no matter how they route it. It doesn't make sense.
They'd have to out-weigh us in an almost impossibly high ratio, unless they have an
improbably superior armament."
     "Check." The old warrior was entirely unperturbed. "Surprised you didn't see that
long ago. We did. I'll be very much surprised if they attack at all."
     "But you're going ahead with all this just as though . . ."
     "Certainly. Something may happen, and we can't be caught off guard. Besides,
it's good training for the boys. Helps morale, no end." Haynes' nonchalant air
disappeared and he studied the younger man keenly for moments. "But Mentor's
warning certainly meant something, and you said 'when they don't have to'. But even if
they go clear around the galaxy to the other side—an impossibly long haul—we're
covered. Tellus is far enough in so they can't possibly take us by surprise. So—spill it!"
     "How about a hyperspatial tube? They know exactly where we are, you know."
     "Urn . . . m . . . m." Haynes was taken aback. "Never thought of it . . . possible,
distinctly a possibility. A duodec bomb, say, just far enough underground . . ."
     "Nobody else thought of it, either, until just now," Kinnison broke in. "However,
I'm not afraid of duodec—don't see how they could control it accurately enough at this
three-dimensional distance. Too deep, it wouldn't explode at all. What I don't like to
think of, though, is a negasphere. Or a planet, perhaps."
     "Ideas? Suggestions?" the admiral snapped.
     "No—I don't know anything about that stuff. How about putting our Lenses on
Cardynge?"
     "That's a thought!" and in seconds they were in communication with Sir Austin
Cardynge, Earth's mightiest mathematical brain.
     "Kinnison, how many times must I tell you that I am not to be interrupted?" the
aged scientist's thought was a crackle of fury. "How can I concentrate upon vital
problems if every young whippersnapper in the System is to perpetrate such
abominable, such outrageous intrusions . . ."
     "Hold it, Sir Austin—hold everything!" Kinnison soothed. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't
have intruded if it hadn't been a matter of life or death. But it would be. worse intrusion,
wouldn't it, if the Boskonians sent a planet about the size of Jupiter—or a
negasphere—through one of their extra-dimensional vortices into your study? That's
exactly what they're figuring on doing."
     "What-what-what?" Cardynge snapped, like a string of firecrackers. He quieted
down, then, and thought. And Sir Austin Cardynge could think, upon occasion and when
he felt so inclined; could think in the abstruse symbology of pure mathematics with a
cogency equalled by few minds in the universe. Both Lensmen perceived those
thoughts, but neither could understand or follow them. No mind not a member of the
Conference of Scientists could have done so.
     "They can't!" of a sudden the mathematician cackled, gleefully disdainful.
"Impossible—quite definitely impossible. There are laws governing such things,
Kinnison, my impetuous and ignorant young friend. The terminus of the necessary
hyper-tube could not be established within such proximity to the mass of the sun. This is
shown by . . ."
     "Never mind the proof—the fact is enough," Kinnison interposed, hastily. "How
close to the sun could it be established?"
     "I couldn't say, off-hand," came the cautiously scientific reply. "More than one
astronomical unit, certainly, but the computation of the exact distance would require
some little time. It would, however, be an interesting, if minor, problem. I will solve it for
you, if you like, and advise you of the exact minimum distance."
     "Please do so—thanks a million," and the Lensmen disconnected.
     "The conceited old goat!" Haynes snorted. "I'd like to smack him down!"
     "I've felt like it more than once, but it wouldn't do any good. You've got to handle
him with gloves—besides, you can afford to make concessions to a man with a brain
like that."
     "I suppose so. But how about that infernal tube? Knowing that it can not be set
up within or very near Tellus helps some, but not enough. We've got to know where it
is—if it is. Can you detect it?"
     "Yes. That is, I can't, but the specialists can, I think. Wise of Medon would know
more about that than anyone else. Why wouldn't it be a thought to call him over here?"
     "It would that", and it was done.
     Wise of Medon and his staff came, conferred, and departed.
     Sir Austin Cardynge solved his minor problem, reporting that the minimum
distance from the sun's center to the postulated center of the terminus of the
vortex—actually, the geometrical origin of the three-dimensional figure which was the
hyper-plane of intersection—was one point two six four seven, approximately,
astronomical units; the last figure being tentative and somewhat uncertain because of
the rapidly-moving masses of Jupiter . . .
     Haynes cut the tape—he had no time for an hour of mathematical
dissertation—and called in his execs.
     "Full-globe detection of hyper-spatial tubes," he directed, crisply. "Kinnison will
tell you exactly what he wants. Hipe!"
     Shortly thereafter, five-man speedsters, plentifully equipped with new
instruments, flashed at full drive along courses carefully calculated to give the greatest
possible coverage in the shortest possible time.
     Unobtrusively the loose planets closed in; close enough so that at least three or
four of them could reach any designated point in one minute or less. The outlying units
of Grand Fleet, too, were pulled in. That fleet was not actually mobilized—yet—but
every vessel in it was kept in readiness for instant action.
     "No trace," came the report from the Medonian surveyors, and Haynes looked at
Kinnison, quizzically.
     "QX, chief—glad of it," the Gray Lensman answered the unspoken query. "If it
was up, that would mean they were on the way. Hope they don't get a trace for two
months yet. But I'm next-to-positive that that's the way they're coming and the longer
they put it off the better—there's a possible new projector that will take a bit of doping
out. I've got to do a flit—can I have the Dauntless?"
     "Sure—anything you want—she's yours anyway."
     Kinnison went. And, wonder of wonders, he took Sir Austin Cardynge with him.
From solar system to solar system, from planet to planet, the mighty Dauntless hurtled
at the incomprehensible velocity of her full maximum blast; and every planet so visited
was the home world of one of the most cooperative—or, more accurately, one of the
least non-cooperative—members of the Conference of Scientists. For days brilliant but
more or less unstable minds struggled with new and obdurate problems; struggled
heatedly and with friction, as was their wont. Few if any of those mighty intellects would
have really enjoyed a quietly studious session, even had such a thing been possible.
     Then Kinnison returned his guests to their respective homes and shot his flying
warship-laboratory back to Prime Base. And, even before the Dauntless landed, the first
few hundreds of a fleet which was soon to be numbered in the millions of meteor-
miners' boats began working like beavers to build a new and exactly-designed system
of asteroid belts of iron meteors.
     And soon, as such things go, new structures began to appear here and there in
the void. Comparatively small, these things were; tiny, in fact, compared to the Patrol's
maulers. Unarmed, too; carrying nothing except defensive screen. Each was,
apparently, simply a power-house; stuffed skin full of atomic motors, exciters, intakes,
and generators of highly peculiar design and pattern. Unnoticed except by gauntly
haggard Thorndyke and his experts, who kept dashing from one of the strange craft to
another, each took its place in a succession of precisely-determined relationships to the
sun.
     Between the orbits of Mars and of Jupiter, the new, sharply-defined rings of
asteroids moved smoothly. Most of Grand Fleet formed an enormous hollow
hemisphere. Throughout all nearby space the surveying speedsters and flitters rushed
madly hither and yon. Uselessly, apparently, for not one needle of the vortex-detectors
stirred from its zero-pin.
     As nearly as possible at the Fleet's center there floated the flagship. Technically
the Z9M9Z, socially the Directrix, ordinarily simply GFHQ, that ship had been built
specifically to control the operations of a million separate flotillas. At her million-plug
board stood—they had no need, ever, to sit— two hundred blocky, tentacle-armed
Rigellians. They were waiting, stolidly motionless.
     Intergalactic space remained empty. Interstellar ditto, ditto. The flitters flitted,
fruitlessly.
     But if everything out there in the threatened volume of space seemed quiet and
serene, things in the Z9M9Z were distinctly otherwise. Haynes and Kinnison, upon
whom the heaviest responsibilities rested, were tensely ill at ease.
     The admiral had his formation made, but he did not like it at all. It was too big, too
loose, too cumbersome. The Boskonian fleet might appear anywhere, and it would take
him far, far too long to get any kind of a fighting formation made, anywhere. So he
worried. Minutes dragged—he wished that the pirates would hurry up and start
something!
     Kinnison was even less easy in his mind. He was not afraid of negaspheres,
even if Boskonia should have them; but he was afraid of fortified, mobile planets. The
super-maulers were big and powerful, of course, but they very definitely were not
planets; and the big, new idea was mighty hard to jell. He didn't like to bother Thorndyke
by calling him—the master technician had troubles of his own—but the reports that were
coming in were none too cheery. The excitation was wrong or the grid action was too
unstable or the screen potentials were too high or too low or too something. Sometimes
they got a concentration, but it was just as apt as not to be a spread flood instead of a
tight beam. To Kinnison, therefore, the minutes fled like seconds—but every minute that
space remained clear was one more precious minute gained.
     Then, suddenly, it happened. A needle leaped into significant figures. Relays
clicked, a bright red light flared into being, a gong clanged out its raucous warning. A
fractional instant later ten thousand other gongs in ten thousand other ships came
brazenly to life as the discovering speedster automatically sent out its number and
position; and those other ships—surveyors all—flashed toward that position and dashed
frantically about. Theirs the task to determine, in the least number of seconds possible,
the approximate location of the center of emergence.
     For Port Admiral Haynes, canny old tactician that he was, had planned his
campaign long since. It was standing plain in his tactical tank—to englobe the entire
space of emergence of the foe and to blast them out of existence before they could
maneuver. If he could get into formation before the Boskonians appeared it would be a
simple slaughter—if not, it might be otherwise. Hence seconds counted; and hence he
had had high-speed computers working steadily for weeks at the computation of
courses for every possible center of emergence.
     "Get me that center—fast!" Haynes barked at the surveyors, already blasting at
maximum.
     It came in. The chief computer yelped a string of numbers. Selected loose-leaf
binders were pulled down, yanked apart, and distributed on the double, leaf by leaf.
And:
     "Get it over there! Especially the shock-globe!" the Port Admiral yelled.
     For he himself could direct the engagement only in broad; details must be left to
others. To be big enough to hold in any significant relationship the millions of lights
representing vessels, fleets, planets, structures, and objectives, the Operations tank of
the Directrix had to be seven hundred feet in diameter; and it was a sheer physical
impossibility for any ordinary mind either to perceive that seventeen million cubic feet of
space as a whole or to make any sense at all out of the stupendously bewildering maze
of multi-colored lights crawling and flashing therein.
     Kinnison and Worsel had handled Grand Fleet Operations during the battle of
Jarnevon, but they had discovered that they could have used some help. Four Rigellian
Lensmen had been training for months for that all-important job, but they were not yet
ready. Therefore the two old masters and one new one now labored at GFO: three
tremendous minds, each supplying something that the others lacked. Kinnison of Tellus,
with his hard, flat driving urge, his unconquerable, unstoppable will to do. Worsel of
Velantia, with the prodigious reach and grasp which had enabled him, even without the
Lens, to scan mentally a solar system eleven light-years distant. Tregonsee of Rigel IV,
with the vast, calm certainty, the imperturbable poise peculiar to his long-lived, solemn
race. Second Stage Lensmen all, graduates of Arisian advanced training; minds linked,
basically, together into one mind by a wide-open three-way; superficially free, each to
do his assigned third of the gigantic task.
     Smoothly, effortlessly, those three linked minds went to work at the admiral's
signal. Orders shot out along tight beams of thought to the stolid hundreds of Rigellian
switchboard operators, and thence along communicator beams to the pilot rooms,
wherever stationed. Flotillas, squadrons, sub-fleets flashed smoothly toward their newly-
assigned positions. Super-maulers moved ponderously toward theirs. The survey ships,
their work done, vanished. They had no business anywhere near what was coming
next. Small they were, and defenseless; a speedster's screens were as efficacious as
so much vacuum against the forces about to be unleashed. The power houses also
moved. Maintaining rigidly their cryptic mathematical relationships to each other and the
sun, they went as a whole into a new one with respect to the circling rings of tightly-
packed meteors and the invisible, non-existent mouth of the Boskonian vortex.
     Then, before Haynes' formation was nearly complete, the Boskonian fleet
materialized. Just that—one instant space was empty; the next it was full of warships. A
vast globe of battle-wagons, in perfect fighting formation. They were not free, but inert
and deadly.
     Haynes swore viciously under his breath, the Lensmen pulled themselves
together more tensely; but no additional orders were given. Everything that could
possibly be done was already being done.
     Whether the Boskonians expected to meet a perfectly-placed fleet or whether
they expected to emerge into empty space, to descend upon a defenseless Tellus, is
not known or knowable. It is certain, however, that they emerged in the best possible
formation to meet anything that could be brought to bear. It is also certain that, had the
enemy had a Z9M9Z and a Kinnison-Worsel-Tregonsee combination scanning its
Operations tank, the outcome might well have been otherwise than it was.
     For that ordinarily insignificant delay, that few minutes of time necessary for the
Boskonians' orientation, was exactly that required for those two hundred smoothly-
working Rigellians to get Civilization's shock-globe into position.
     A million beams, primaries raised to the hellish heights possible only to Medonian
conductors and insulation, lashed out almost as one. Screens stiffened to the urge of
every generable watt of defensive power. Bolt after bolt of quasi-solid lightning struck
and struck and struck again. Q-type helices bored, gouged, and searingly bit Rods and
cones, planes and shears of incredibly condensed pure force clawed, tore, and ground
in mad abandon. Torpedo after torpedo, charged to the very skin with duodec, loosed its
horribly detonant cargo against flinching wall-shields, in such numbers and with such
violence as to fill all circumambient space with an atmosphere of almost planetary
density.
     Screen after screen, wall-shield after wall-shield, in their hundreds and their
thousands, went down. A full eighth of the Patrol's entire count of battleships was
wrecked, riddled, blown apart, or blasted completely out of space in the paralyzingly
cataclysmic violence of the first, seconds-long, mind-shaking, space-wracking
encounter. Nor could it have been otherwise; for this encounter had not been at battle
range. Not even at point-blank range; the warring monsters of the void were packed
practically screen to screen.
     But not a man died—upon Civilization's side at least— even though practically all
of the myriad of ships composing the inner sphere, the shock-globe, was lost. For they
were automatics, manned by robots; what little superintendence was necessary had
been furnished by remote control. Indeed it is possible, although perhaps not entirely
probable, that the shock-globe of the foe was similarly manned.
     That first frightful meeting gave time for the reserves of the Patrol to get there,
and it was then that the superior Operations control of the Z9M9Z made itself tellingly
felt. Ship for ship, beam for beam, screen for screen, the Boskonians were, perhaps
equal to the Patrol; but they did not have the perfection of control necessary for unified
action. The field was too immense, the number of contending units too enormously vast.
But the mind of each of the three Second-Stage Lensmen read aright the flashing lights
of his particular volume of the gigantic tank and spread their meaning truly in the
infinitely smaller space-model beside which Port Admiral Haynes, Master Tactician,
stood. Scanning the entire space of battle as a whole, he rapped out general orders
—orders applying, perhaps, to a hundred or to five hundred planetary fleets. Kinnison
and his fellows broke these orders down for the operators, who in turn told the admirals
and vice-admirals of the fleets what to do. They gave detailed orders to the units of their
commands, and the line officers, knowing exactly what to do and precisely how to do it,
did it with neatness and dispatch.
     There was no doubt, no uncertainty, no indecision or wavering. The line officers,
even the admirals, knew nothing, could know nothing of the progress of the
engagement as a whole. But they had worked under the Z9M9Z before. They knew that
the maestro Haynes did know the battle as a whole. They knew that he was handling
them as carefully and as skillfully as a master at chess plays his pieces upon the
square-filled board. They knew that Kinnison or Worsel or Tregonsee was assigning no
task too difficult of accomplishment.
     They knew that they could not be taken by surprise, attacked from some,
unexpected and unprotected direction; knew that, although in those hundreds of
thousands of cubic miles of space there were hundreds of thousands of highly inimical
and exceedingly powerful ships of war, none of them were or shortly could be in position
to do them serious harm. If there had been, they would have been pulled out of there,
beaucoup fast. They were as safe as anyone in a warship in such a war could expect,
or even hope, to be. Therefore they acted instantly; directly, whole-heartedly and
efficiently; and it was the Boskonians who were taken, repeatedly and by the thousands,
by surprise.
     For the enemy, as has been said, did not have the Patrol's smooth perfection of
control. Thus several of Civilization's fleets, acting in full synchronization, could and
repeatedly did rush upon one unit of the foe; englobing it, blasting it out of existence,
and dashing back to stations; all before the nearest by fleets of Boskone knew even that
a threat was being made. Thus ended the second phase of the battle, the engagement
of the two Grand Fleets, with the few remaining thousands of Boskone's battleships
taking refuge upon or near the phalanx of planets which had made up their center.
     Planets. Seven of them. Armed and powered as only a planet can be armed and
powered; with fixed-mount weapons impossible of mounting upon a lesser mobile base,
with fixed-mount intakes and generators which only planetary resources could excite or
feed. Galactic Civilization's war-vessels fell back. Attacking a full-armed planet was no
part of their job. And as they fell back the super-maulers moved ponderously up and
went to work. This was their dish; for this they had been designed. Tubes, lances,
stillettoes of unthinkable energies raved against their mighty screens; bouncing off,
glancing away, dissipating themselves in space-torturing discharges as they hurled
themselves upon the nearest ground. In and in the monsters bored, inexorably taking up
their positions directly over the ultra-protected domes which, their commanders knew,
sheltered the vitally important Bergenholms and controls. They then loosed forces of
their own. Forces of such appalling magnitude as to burn out in a twinkling of an eye
projector-shells of a refractoriness to withstand for ten full seconds the maximum output
of a first-class battleship's primary batteries!
     The resultant beam was of very short duration, but of utterly intolerable
poignancy. No material substance could endure it even momentarily. It pierced instantly
the hardest, tightest wall-shield known to the scientists of the Patrol. It was the only
known thing which could cut or rupture the ultimately stubborn fabric of a Q-type helix.
Hence it is not to be wondered at that as those incredible needles of ravening energy
stabbed and stabbed and stabbed again at Boskonian domes every man of the Patrol,
even Kimball Kinnison, fully expected those domes to go down.
     But those domes held. And those fixed-mount projectors hurled back against the
super-maulers forces at the impact of which course after course of fierce-driven
defensive screen flamed through the spectrum and went down.
     "Back! Get them back!" Kinnison whispered, white-lipped, and the attacking
structures sullenly, stubbornly gave way.
     "Why?" gritted Haynes. "They're all we've got."
     "You forget the new one, chief—give us a chance."
     "What makes you think it'll work?" the old admiral flashed the searing thought. "It
probably won't—and if it doesn't. . ."
     "If it doesn't," the younger man shot back, "we're no worse off than now to use
the maulers. But we've got to use the sunbeam now while those planets are together
and before they start toward Tellus."
     "QX," the admiral assented; and, as soon as the Patrol's maulers were out of the
way:
     "Verne?" Kinnison flashed a thought. "We can't crack 'em. Looks like it's up to
you—what do you say?"
     "Jury-rigged—don't know whether she'll light a cigarette or not—but here she
comes!"
     The sun, shining so brightly, darkened almost to the point of invisibility. War-
vessels of the enemy disappeared, each puffing out into a tiny but brilliant sparkle of
light.
     Then, before the beam could effect the enormous masses of the planets, the
engineers lost it. The sun flashed up— dulled—brightened—darkened—wavered. The
beam waxed and waned irregularly; the planets began to move away under the urgings
of their now thoroughly scared commanders.
     Again, while millions upon millions of tensely straining Patrol officers stared into
their plates, haggard Thorndyke and his sweating crews got the sunbeam under
control— and, in a heart-stopping wavering fashion, held it together. It
flared—sputtered—ballooned out—but very shortly, before they could get out of its way,
the planets began to glow. Ice-caps melted, then boiled. Oceans boiled, their surfaces
almost exploding into steam. Mountain ranges melted and flowed sluggishly down into
valleys. The Boskonian domes of force went down and stayed down.
     "QX, Kim—let be," Haynes ordered. "No use overdoing it. Not bad-looking
planets; maybe we can use them for something."
     The sun brightened to its wonted splendor, the planets began visibly to
cool—even the Titanic forces then at work had heated those planetary masses only
superficially.
     The battle was over.
     "What in all the purple hells of Palain did you do, Haynes, and how?" demanded
the Z9M9Z's captain.
     "He used the whole damned solar system as a vacuum tube!" Haynes explained,
gleefully. "Those power stations out there, with all their motors and intake screens, are
simply the power leads. The asteroid belts, and maybe some of the planets, are the
grids and plates. The sun is . . ."
     "Hold on, chief!" Kinnison broke in. "That isn't quite it. You see, the directive field
set up by the . . ."
     "Hold on yourself!" Haynes ordered, briskly. "You're too damned scientific, just
like Sawbones Lacy. What do Rex and I care about technical details that we can't
understand anyway? The net result is what counts—and that was to concentrate upon
those planets practically the whole energy output of the sun. Wasn't it?"
     "Well, that's the main idea," Kinnison conceded. "The energy equivalent, roughly,
of four million one hundred and fifty thousand tons per second of disintegrating matter."
     "Whew!" the captain whistled. "No wonder it frizzled 'em up."
     "I can say now, I think, with no fear of successful contradiction, that Tellus is
strongly held," Haynes stated, with conviction. "What now, Kim old son?"
     "I think they're done, for a while," the Gray Lensman pondered. "Cardynge can't
communicate through the tube, so probably they can't; but if they managed to slip an
observer through they may know how almighty close they came to licking us. On the
other hand, Verne says that he can get the bugs out of the sunbeam in a couple of
weeks—and when he does, the next zwilnik he cuts loose at is going to get a surprise."
     "I'll say so," Haynes agreed. "We'll keep the surveyors on the prowl, and some of
the Fleet will always be close by. Not all of it, of course—we'll adopt a schedule of
reliefs— but enough of it to be useful. That ought to be enough, don't you think?"
     "I think so—yes," Kinnison answered, thoughtfully. "I'm just about positive that
they won't be in shape to start anything here again for a long time. And I had better get
busy, sir, on my own job—I've got to put out a few jets."
     "I suppose so," Haynes admitted.
     For Tellus was strongly held, now—so strongly held that Kinnison felt free to
begin again the search upon whose successful conclusion depended, perhaps, the
outcome of the struggle between Boskonia and Galactic Civilization.

CHAPTER 3
Lyrane the Matriarchy

     When the forces of the Galactic Patrol blasted Helmuth's Grand Base out of
existence and hunted down and destroyed his secondary bases throughout this galaxy,
Boskone's military grasp upon Civilization was definitely broken. Some minor bases
may have escaped destruction, of course. Indeed, it is practically certain that some of
them did so, for there are comparatively large volumes of our Island Universe which
have not been mapped, even yet, by the planetographers of the Patrol. It is equally
certain, however, that they were relatively few and of no real importance. For warships,
being large, cannot be carried around or concealed in a vest pocket —a war-fleet must
of necessity be based upon a celestial object not smaller than a very large asteroid.
Such a base, lying close enough to any one of Civilization's planets to be of any use,
could not be hidden successfully from the detectors of the Patrol.
     Reasoning from analogy, Kinnison quite justifiably concluded that the back of the
drug syndicate had been broken in similar fashion when he had worked upward through
Bominger and Strongheart and Crowninshield and Jalte to the dread council of Boskone
itself. He was, however, wrong.
     For, unlike the battleship, thionite is a vest-pocket commodity. Unlike the space-
fleet base, a drug-baron's headquarters can be and frequently is small, compact, and
highly mobile. Also, the galaxy is huge, the number of planets in it immense, the total
count of drug addicts utterly incomprehensible. Therefore it had been found more
efficient to arrange the drug hook-up in multiple series-parallel, instead of in the straight
en-cascade sequence which Kinnison thought that he had followed up.
     He thought so at first, that is, but he did not think so long. He had thought, and he
had told Haynes, as well as Gerrond of Radelix, that the situation was entirely under
control; that with the zwilnik headquarters blasted out of existence and with all of the
regional heads and many of the planetary chiefs dead or under arrest, all that the
Enforcement men would have to cope with would be the normal bootleg trickle. In that,
too, he was wrong. The lawmen of Narcotics had had a brief respite, it is true; but in a
few days or weeks, upon almost as many planets as before, the illicit traffic was again in
full swing.
     After the Battle of Tellus, then, it did not take the Gray Lensman long to discover
the above facts. Indeed, they were pressed upon him. He was, however, more relieved
than disappointed at the tidings, for he knew that he would have material upon which to
work. If his original opinion had been right, if all lines of communication with the now
completely unknown ultimate authorities of the zwilniks had been destroyed, his task
would have been an almost hopeless one.
     It would serve no good purpose here to go into details covering his early efforts,
since they embodied, in principle, the same tactics as those which he had previously
employed. He studied, he analyzed, he investigated. He snooped and he spied. He
fought; upon occasion he killed. And in due course —and not too long a course—he cut
into the sign of what he thought must be a key zwilnik. Not upon Bronseca or Radelix or
Chickladoria, or any other distant planet, but right upon Tellus!
     But he could not locate him. He never saw him on Tellus. As a matter of cold
fact, he could not find a single person who had ever seen him or knew anything definite
about him. These facts, of course, only whetted Kinnison's keenness to come to grips
with the fellow. He might not be a very big shot, but the fact that he was covering
himself up so thoroughly and so successfully made it abundantly evident that he was a
fish well worth landing.
     This wight, however, proved to be as elusive as the proverbial flea. He was never
there when Kinnison pounced. In London he was a few minutes late. In Berlin he was a
minute or so too early, and the ape didn't show up at all. He missed him in Paris and in
San Francisco and in Shanghai. The guy sat down finally in New York, but still the Gray
Lensman could not connect—it was always the wrong street, or the wrong house, or the
wrong time, or something.
     Then Kinnison set a snare which should have caught a microbe—and almost
caught his zwilnik. He missed him by one mere second when he blasted off from New
York Space-Port. He was so close that he saw his flare, so close that he could slap onto
the fleeing vessel the beam of the CRX tracer which he always carried with him.
     Unfortunately, however, the Lensman was in mufti at the time, and was driving a
rented flitter. His speedster—altogether too spectacular and obvious a conveyance to
be using in a hush-hush investigation—was at Prime Base. He didn't want the
speedster, anyway, except inside the Dauntless. He'd go organized this time to chase
the lug clear out of space, if he had to. He shot in a call for the big cruiser, and while it
was coming he made luridly sulphurous inquiry.
     Fruitless. His orders had been carried out to the letter, except in the one detail of
not allowing any vessel to take off. This take-off absolutely could not be helped—it was
just one of those things. The ship was a Patrol speedster from Deneb V, registry
number so-and-so. Said he was coming in for servicing. Came in on the north beam,
identified himself properly—Lieutenant Quirkenfal, of Deneb V, he said it was, and it
checked. . . .
     It would check, of course. The zwilnik that Kinnison had been chasing so long
certainly would not be guilty of any such raw, crude work as a faulty identification. In
fact, right then he probably looked just as much like Quirkenfal as the lieutenant himself
did.
     "He wasn't in any hurry at all," the information went on. "He waited around for his
landing clearance, then slanted in on his assigned slide to the service pits. In the last
hundred yards, though, he shot off to one side and sat down, plop, broadside on, clear
over there in the far corner of the field. But he wasn't down but a second, sir. Long
before anybody could get to him—before the cruisers could put a beam on him,
even—he blasted off as though the devil was on his tail. Then you came along, sir, but
we did put a CRX tracer on him. . . ."
     "I did that much, myself," Kinnison stated, morosely. "He stopped just long
enough to pick up a passenger—my zwilnik, of course—then flitted . . . and you fellows
let him get away with it."
     "But we couldn't help it, sir," the official protested. "And anyway, he couldn't
possibly have . . ."
     "He sure could. You'd be surprised no end at what that bimbo can do."
     Then the Dauntless flashed in; not asking but demanding instant right of way.
     "Look around, fellows, if you like, but you won't find a damned thing," Kinnison's
uncheering conclusion came back as he sprinted toward the dock into which his
battleship had settled. "The lug hasn't left a loose end dangling yet."
     By the time the great Patrol ship had cleared the stratosphere Kinnison's CRX,
powerful and tenacious as it was, was just barely registering a line. But that was
enough. Henry Henderson, Master Pilot, stuck the Dauntless' needle nose into that line
and shoved into the driving projectors every watt of that those Brobdingnagian creations
would take.
     They had been following the zwilnik for three days now, Kinnison reflected, and
his CRX's were none too strong yet. They were overhauling him mighty slowly; and the
Dauntless was supposed to be the fastest thing in space. That bucket up ahead had
plenty of legs—must have been souped up to the limit. This was apt to be a long chase,
but he'd get that bozo if he had to chase him on a geodesic line along the hyper-
dimensional curvature of space clear back to Tellus where he started from!
     They did not have to circumnavigate total space, of course, but they did almost
leave the galaxy before they could get the fugitive upon their plates. The stars were
thinning out fast; but still, hazily before them in a vastness of distance, there stretched a
milky band of opalescence.
     "What's coming up, Hen— a rift?" Kinnison asked.
     "Uh-huh, Rift Ninety Four," the pilot replied. "And if I remember right, that arm up
ahead is Dunstan's region and it has never been explored. I'll have the chart-room
check up on it."
     "Never mind; I'll go check it myself—I'm curious about this whole thing."
     Unlike any smaller vessel, the Dauntless was large enough so that she
could—and hence as a matter of course did—carry every space-chart issued by all the
various Boards and Offices and Bureaus concerned with space, astronomy, astrogation,
and planetography. She had to, for there were usually minds aboard which were apt at
any time to become intensely and unpredictably interested in anything, anywhere.
Hence it did not take Kinnison long to obtain what little information there was.
     The vacancy they were approaching was Rift Ninety Four, a vast space,
practically empty of stars, lying between the main body of the galaxy and a minor
branch of one of its prodigious spiral arms. The opalescence ahead was the branch
—Dunstan's Region. Henderson was right; it had never been explored.
     The Galactic Survey, which has not even yet mapped at all completely the whole
of the First Galaxy proper, had of course done no systematic work upon such outlying
sections as the spiral arms. Some such regions were well known and well mapped, it is
true; either because its own population, independently developing means of space-
flight, had come into contact with our Civilization upon its own initiative or because
private exploration and investigation had opened up profitable lines of commerce. But
Dunstan's Region was bare. No people resident in it had ever made themselves known;
no private prospecting, if there had ever been any such, had revealed anything worthy
of exploitation or development. And, with so many perfectly good uninhabited planets so
much nearer to Galactic Center, it was of course much too far out for colonization.
     Through the rift, then, and into Dunstan's Region the Dauntless bored at the
unimaginable pace of her terrific full-blast drive. The tracers' beams grew harder and
more taut with every passing hour; the fleeing speedster itself grew large and clear
upon the plates. The opalescence of the spiral arm became a firmament of stars. A sun
detached itself from that firmament; a dwarf of Type G. Planets appeared.
     One of these in particular, the second out, looked so much like Earth that it made
some of the observers homesick. There were the familiar polar ice-caps, the
atmosphere and stratosphere, the high-piled, billowy masses of clouds. There were vast
blue oceans, there were huge, unfamiliar continents glowing with chlorophyllic green.
     At the spectroscopes, at the bolometers, at the many other instruments men
went rapidly and skillfully to work.
     "Hope the ape's heading for Two, and I think he is," Kinnison remarked, as he
studied the results. "People living on that planet would be human to ten places, for all
the tea in China. No wonder he was so much at home on Tellus . . . Yup, it's
Two—there, he's gone inert."
     "Whoever is piloting that can went to school just one day in his life and that day it
rained and the teacher didn't come," Henderson snorted. "And he's trying to balance her
down on her tail—look at her bounce and flop around! He's just begging for a crack-up."
     "If he makes it it'll be bad—plenty bad," Kinnison mused. "He'll gain a lot of time
on us while we're rounding the globe on our landing spiral."
     "Why spiral, Kim? Why not follow him down, huh? Our intrinsic is no worse than
his—it's the same one, in fact."
     "Get conscious, Hen. This is a superbattlewagon—just in case you didn't know it
before."
     "So what? I can certainly handle this super a damn sight better than that ground-
gripper is handling that scrap-heap down there." Henry Henderson, Master Pilot
Number One of the Service, was not bragging. He was merely voicing what to him was
the simple and obvious truth.
     "Mass is what. Mass and volume and velocity and inertia and power. You never
stunted this much mass before, did you?"
     "No, but what of it? I took a course in piloting once, in my youth." He was then a
grand old man of twenty-eight or thereabouts. "I can line up the main rear center pipe
onto any grain of sand you want to pick out on that field, and hold her there until she
slags it down."
     "If you think you can spell 'able', hop to it!"
     "QX, this is going to be fun." Henderson gleefully accepted the challenge, then
clicked on his general-alarm microphone. "Strap down, everybody, for inert
maneuvering, Class Three, on the tail. Tail over to belly landing. Hipe!"
     The Bergenholms were cut and as the tremendously massive super-
dreadnought, inert, shot off at an angle under its Tellurian intrinsic velocity, Master Pilot
Number One proved his rating. As much a virtuoso of the banks and tiers of blast keys
and levers before him as a concert organist is of his instrument, his hands and feet
flashed hither and yon. Not music?—the bellowing, crescendo thunders of those jets
were music to the hard-boiled space-hounds who heard them. And in response to the
exact placement and the precisely-measured power of those blasts the great sky-rover
spun, twisted, and bucked as her prodigious mass was forced into motionlessness
relative to the terrain beneath her.
     Three G's, Kinnison reflected, while this was going on. Not bad—he'd guessed it
at four or better. He could sit up and take notice at three, and he did so.
     This world wasn't very densely populated, apparently. Quite a few cities, but all
just about on the equator. Nothing in the temperate zones at all; even the highest power
revealed no handiwork of man. Virgin forest, untouched prairie. Lots of roads and things
in the torrid zone, but nothing anywhere else. The speedster was making a rough and
unskillful, but not catastrophic landing.
     The field which was their destination lay just outside a large city. Funny—it wasn't
a space-field at all. No docks, no pits, no ships. Low, flat buildings—hangars. An air-
field, then, although not like any air-field he knew. Too small. Gyros? 'Copters? Didn't
see any—all little ships. Crates— biplanes and tripes. Made of wire and fabric. Wotta
woil, wotta woil!
     The Dauntless landed, fairly close to the now deserted speedster.
     "Hold everything, men," Kinnison cautioned. "Something funny here. I'll do a bit of
looking around before we open up."
     He was not surprised that the people in and around the airport were human to at
least ten places of classification; he had expected that from the planetary data. Nor was
he surprised at the fact that they wore no clothing. He had learned long since that, while
most human or near-human races—particularly the women—wore at least a few
ornaments, the wearing of clothing as such, except when it was actually needed for
protection, was far more the exception than the rule. And, just as a Martian, out of
deference to conventions, wears a light robe upon Tellus, Kinnison as a matter of
course stripped to his evenly-tanned hide when visiting planets upon which nakedness
was de rigueur. He had attended more than one state function, without a quibble or a
qualm, tastefully attired in his Lens.
     No, the startling fact was that there was not a man in sight anywhere around the
place; there was nothing male perceptible as far as his sense of perception could reach.
Women were laboring, women were supervising, women were running the machines.
Women were operating the airplanes and servicing them. Women were in the offices.
Women and girls and little girls and girl babies filled the waiting rooms and the
automobile-like conveyances parked near the airport and running along the streets.
     And, even before Kinnison had finished uttering his warning, while his hand was
in the air reaching for a spy-ray switch, he felt an alien force attempting to insinuate
itself into his mind.
     Fat chance! With any ordinary mind it would have succeeded, but in the case of
the Gray Lensman it was just like trying to stick a pin unobtrusively into a panther. He
put up a solid block automatically, instantaneously; then, a fraction of a second later, a
thought-tight screen enveloped the whole vessel.
     "Did any of you1 fellows . . ." he began, then broke off. They wouldn't have felt it,
of course; their brains could have been read completely with them none the wiser. He
was the only Lensman aboard, and even most Lensmen couldn't . . . this was his oyster.
But that kind of stuff, on such an apparently backward planet as this? It didn't make
sense, unless that zwilnik . . . ah, this was his oyster, absolutely!
     "Something funnier even than I thought—thought-waves," he calmly continued
his original remark. "Thought I'd better undress to go out there, but I'm not going to. I'd
wear full armor, except that I may need my hands or have to move fast. If they get
insulted at my clothes I'll apologize later."
     "But listen, Kim, you can't go out there alone—especially without armor!"
     "Sure I can. I'm not taking any chances. You fellows couldn't do me much good
out there, but you can here. Break out a 'copter and keep a spy-ray on me. If I give you
the signal, go to work with a couple of narrow needle-beams. Pretty sure that I won't
need any help, but you can't always tell."
     The airlock opened and Kinnison stepped out. He had a high-powered thought-
screen, but he did not need it—yet. He had his DeLameters. He had also a weapon
deadlier by far even than those mighty portables; a weapon so utterly deadly that he
had not used it. He did not need to test it— since Worsel had said that it would work, it
would. The trouble with it was that it could not merely disable: if used at all it killed, with
complete and grim finality. And behind him he had the full awful power of the Dauntless.
He had nothing to worry about.
     Only when the space-ship had settled down upon and into the hard-packed soil
of the airport could those at work there realize just how big and how heavy the visitor
was. Practically everyone stopped work and stared, and they continued to stare as
Kinnison strode toward the office. The Lensman had landed upon many strange
planets, he had been met in divers fashions and with various emotions; but never before
had his presence stirred up anything even remotely resembling the sentiments written
so plainly upon these women's faces and expressed even more plainly in their seething
thoughts.
     Loathing, hatred, detestation—not precisely any one of the three, yet containing
something of each. As though he were a monstrosity, a revolting abnormality that
should be destroyed on sight. Beings such as the fantastically ugly, spider-like denizens
of Dekanore VI had shuddered at the sight of him, but their thoughts were mild
compared to these. Besides, that was natural enough. Any human being would appear
a monstrosity to such as those. But these women were human; as human as he was.
He didn't get it, at all.
     Kinnison opened the door and faced the manager, who was standing at that
other-worldly equivalent of a desk. His first glance at her brought to the surface of his
mind one of the peculiarities which he had already unconsciously observed. Here, for
the first time in his life, he saw a woman without any touch whatever of personal
adornment. She was tall and beautifully proportioned, strong and fine; her smooth skin
was tanned to a rich and even brown. She was clean, almost blatantly so.
     But she wore no jewelry, no bracelets, no ribbons; no decoration of any sort or
kind. No paint, no powder, no touch of perfume. Her heavy, bushy eyebrows had never
been plucked or clipped. Some of her teeth had been expertly filled, and she had a two-
tooth bridge that would have done credit to any Tellurian dentist—but her hair! It, too,
was painfully clean, as was the white scalp beneath it, but aesthetically it was a mess.
Some of it reached almost to her shoulders, but it was very evident that whenever a lock
grew long enough to be a bother she was wont to grab it and hew it off, as close to the
skull as possible, with whatever knife, shears, or other implement came readiest to
hand.
     These thoughts and the general inspection did not take any appreciable length of
time, of course. Before Kinnison had taken two steps toward the manager's desk, he
directed a thought:
     "Kinnison of Sol III—Lensman, Unattached. It is possible, however, that neither
Tellus nor the Lens are known upon this planet?"
     "Neither is known, nor does anyone of Lyrane care to know anything of either,"
she replied coldly. Her brain was keen and clear; her personality vigorous, striking,
forceful. But, compared with Kinnison's doubly-Arisian-trained mind, hers was woefully
slow. He watched her assemble the mental bolt which was intended to slay him then
and there. He let her send it, then struck back. Not lethally, not even paralyzingly, but
solidly enough so that she slumped down, almost unconscious, into a nearby chair.
     "It's good technique to size a man up before you tackle him, sister," he advised
her when she had recovered. "Couldn't you tell from the feel of my mind-block that you
couldn't crack it?"
     "I was afraid so," she admitted, hopelessly, "but I had to kill you if I possibly
could. Since you are the stronger you will of course kill me." Whatever else these
peculiar women were, they were stark realists. "Go ahead—get it over with. . . . But it
can't be!" Her thought was a wail of protest. "I do not grasp your thought of a 'man', but
you are certainly a male; and no mere male can be—can possibly be, ever— as strong
as a person."
     Kinnison got that thought perfectly, and it rocked him. She did not think of herself
as a woman, a female, at all. She was simply a person. She could not understand even
dimly Kinnison's reference to himself as a man. To her. "man" and "male" were
synonymous terms. Both meant sex, and nothing whatever except sex.
     "I have no intention of killing you, or anyone else upon this planet," he informed
her levelly, "unless I absolutely have to. But I have chased that speedster over there all
the way from Tellus, and I intend to get the man that drove it here, if I have to wipe out
half of your population to do it. Is that perfectly clear?"
     "That is perfectly clear, male." Her mind was fuzzy with a melange of immiscible
emotions. Surprise and relief that she was not to be slain out of hand; disgust and
repugnance at the very idea of such a horrible, monstrous male creature having the
audacity to exist; stunned, disbelieving wonder at his unprecedented power of mind; a
dawning comprehension that there were perhaps some things which she did not know:
these and numerous other conflicting thoughts surged through her mind. "But there was
no male within the space-traversing vessel which you think of as a 'speedster'," she
concluded, surprisingly.
     And he knew that she was not lying. "Damnation!" he snorted to himself.
"Fighting women again!"
     "Who was she, then—it, I mean," he hastily corrected the thought.
     "It was our elder sister . . ."
     The thought so translated by the man was not really "sister". That term, having
distinctly sexual connotations and implications, would never have entered the mind of
any "person" of Lyrane II. "Elder child of the same heritage" was more like it.
     ". . . and another person from what it claimed was another world," the thought
flowed smoothly on. "An entity, rather, not really a person, but you would not be
interested in that, of course."
     "Of course I would," Kinnison assured her. "In fact, it is this other person, and not
your elderly relative, in whom I am interested. But you say that it is an entity, not a
person. How come? Tell me all about it."
     "Well, it looked like a person, but it wasn't. Its intelligence was low, its brain
power was small. And its mind was upon things . . . its thought were so . . ."
     Kinnison grinned at the Lyranian's efforts to express clearly thoughts so utterly
foreign to her mind as to be totally incomprehensible.
     "You don't know what that entity was, but I do," he broke in upon her floundering.
"It was a person who was also, and quite definitely, a female. Right?"
     "But a person couldn't—couldn't possibly—be a female!" she protested. "Why,
even biologically, it doesn't make sense. There are no such things as females—there
can't be!" and Kinnison saw her viewpoint clearly enough. According to her sociology
and conditioning there could not be.
     "We'll go into that later," he told her. "What I want now is this female zwilnik. Is
she—or it—with your elder relative now?"
     "Yes. They will be having dinner in the hall very shortly."
     "Sorry to bother, but you'll have to take me to them—right now."
     "Oh, may I? Since I could not kill you myself, I must take you to them so they can
do it. I have been wondering how I could force you to go there," she explained, naively.
     "Henderson?" The Lensman spoke into his microphone— thought-screens, of
course, being no barrier to radio waves.
     "I'm going after the zwilnik. This woman here is taking me. Have the 'copter stay
over me, ready to needle anything I tell them to. While I'm gone go over that speeder
with a fine-tooth comb, and when you get everything we want, blast it. It and the
Dauntless are the only spacecraft on the planet. These janes are man-haters and
mental killers, so keep your thought-screens up. Don't let them down for a fraction of a
second, because they've got plenty of jets and they're just as sweet and reasonable as
a cageful of cateagles. Got it?"
     "On the tape, chief," came instant answer. "But don't take any chances, Kim.
Sure you can swing it alone?"
     "Jets enough and to spare," Kinnison assured him, curtly. Then, as the Tellurians'
helicopter shot into the air, he again turned his thought to the manager.
     "Let's go," he directed, and she led him across the way to a row of parked
ground-cars. She manipulated a couple of levers and smoothly, if slowly, the little
vehicle rolled away.
     The distance was long and the pace was slow. The woman was driving
automatically, the while her every sense was concentrated upon finding some weak
point, some chink in his barrier, through which to thrust at him. Kinnison was
amazed—stumped—at her fixity of purpose; at her grimly single-minded determination
to make an end of him. She was out to get him, and she wasn't fooling.
     "Listen, sister," he thought at her, after a few minutes of it; almost plaintively, for
him. "Let's be reasonable about this thing. I told you I didn't want to kill you; why in all
the iridescent hells of space are you so dead set on killing me? If you don't behave
yourself, I'll give you a treatment that will make your head ache for the next six months.
Why don't you snap out of it, you dumb little lug, and be friends?"
     This thought jarred her so that she stopped the car, the better to stare directly
and viciously into his eyes.
     "Be friends! With a male!" The thought literally seared its way into the man's
brain.
     "Listen, half-wit!" Kinnison stormed, exasperated. "Forget your narrow-minded,
one-planet prejudices and think for a minute, if you can think—use that pint of bean
soup inside your skull for something besides hating me all over the place. Get this—I
am no more a male than you are the kind of a female that you think, by analogy, such a
creature would have to be if she could exist in a sane and logical world."
     "Oh." The Lyranian was taken aback at such cavalier instruction. "But the others,
those in your so-immense vessel, they are of a certainty males," she stated with
conviction. "I understood what you told them via your telephone-with-out-conductors.
You have mechanical shields against the thought which kills. Yet you do not have to use
it, while the others—males indubitably—do. You yourself are not entirely male; your
brain is almost as good as a person's."
     "Better, you mean," he corrected her. "You're wrong. All of us of the ship are
men—all alike. But a man on a job can't concentrate all the time on defending his brain
against attack, hence the use of thought-screens. I can't use a screen out here,
because I've got to talk to you people. See?"
     "You fear us, then, so little?" she flared, all of her old animosity blazing out anew.
"You consider our power, then, so small a thing?"
     "Right. Right to a hair," he declared, with tightening jaw. But he did not believe
it—quite. This girl was just about as safe to play around with as five-feet-eleven of
coiled bush-master, and twice as deadly.
     She could not kill him mentally. Nor could the elder sister —whoever she might
be—and her crew; he was pretty sure of that. But if they couldn't do him in by dint of
brain it was a foregone conclusion that they would try brawn. And brawn they certainly
had. This jade beside him weighed a hundred sixty Jive or seventy, and she was trained
down fine. Hard, limber, and fast. He might be able to lick three or four of them—maybe
half a dozen—in a rough-and-tumble brawl; but more than that would mean either killing
or being killed. Damn it all! He'd never killed a woman yet, but it looked as though he
might have to start in pretty quick now.
     "Well, let's get going again," he suggested, "and while we're en route let's see if
we can't work out some basis of cooperation—a sort of live-and-let-live arrangement.
Since you understood the orders I gave the crew, you realize that our ship carries
weapons capable of razing this entire city in a space of minutes." It was a statement, not
a question.
     "I realize that." The thought was muffled in helpless fury. "Weapons,
weapons—always weapons! The eternal male! If it were not for your huge vessel and
the peculiar airplane hovering over us I would claw your eyes out and strangle you with
my bare hands!"
     "That would be a good trick if you could do it," he countered, equably enough.
"But listen, you frustrated young murderess. You have already shown yourself to be,
basically, a realist in facing physical facts. Why not face mental, intellectual facts in the
same spirit?"
     "Why, I do, of course. I always do!"
     "You do not," he contradicted, sharply. "Males, according to your lights, have
two—and only two—attributes. One, they breed. Two, they fight. They fight each other,
and everything else, to the death and at the drop of a hat. Right?"
     "Right, but . . ."
     "But nothing—let me talk. Why didn't you breed the combativeness out of your
males, hundreds of generations ago?"
     "They tried it once, but the race began to deteriorate," she admitted.
     "Exactly. Your whole set-up is cock-eyed—unbalanced. You can think of me only
as a male—one to be destroyed on sight, since I am not like one of yours. Yet, when I
could kill you and had every reason to do so, I didn't. We can destroy you all, but we
won't unless we must. What's the answer?"
     "I don't know," she confessed, frankly. Her frenzied desire for killing abated,
although her ingrained antipathy and revulsion did not. "In some ways, you do seem to
have some of the instincts and qualities of a . . . almost of a person."
     "I am a person . . ."
     "You are not! Do you think that I am to be misled by the silly coverings you
wear?"
     "Just a minute. I am a person of a race having two equal sexes. Equal in every
way. Numbers, too—one man and one woman . . ." and he went on to explain to her, as
well as he could, the sociology of Civilization.
     "Incredible!" she gasped the thought.
     "But true," he assured her. "And now are you going to lay off me and behave
yourself, like a good little girl, or am I going to have to do a bit of massaging on your
brain? Or wind that beautiful body of yours a couple of times around a tree? I'm asking
this for your own good, kid, believe me."
     "Yes, I do believe you," she marveled. "I am becoming convinced that . . . that
perhaps you are a person—at least of a sort—after all."
     "Sure I am—that's what I've been trying to tell you for an hour. And cancel that 'of
a sort', too . . ."
     "But tell me," she interrupted, "a thought you used—'beautiful". I do not
understand it. What does it mean, 'beautiful body'?"
     "Holy Klono's whiskers!" If Kinnison had never been stumped before, he was
now. How could he explain beauty, or music, or art, to this . . . this matriarchal savage?
How explain cerise to a man born blind? And above all, who had ever heard of having to
explain to a woman—to any woman, anywhere in the whole macrocosmic
universe—that she in particular was beautiful?
     But he tried. In her mind he spread a portrait of her as he had seen her first. He
pointed out to her the graceful curves and lovely contours, the lithely flowing lines, the
perfection of proportion and modeling and symmetry, the flawlessly smooth, firm-
textured skin, the supple, hard-trained fineness of her whole physique. No soap. She
tried, in brow-furrowing concentration, to get it, but in vain. It simply did not register.
     "But that is merely efficiency, everything you have shown," she declared.
"Nothing else. I must be so, for my own good and for the good of those to come. But I
think that I have seen some of your beauty," and in turn she sent into his mind a weirdly
distorted picture of a human woman. The zwilnik he was following, Kinnison decided
instantly.
     She would be jeweled, 'of course, but not that heavily—a horse couldn't carry
that load. And no woman ever born put paint on that thick, or reeked so of violent
perfume, or plucked her eyebrows to such a thread, or indulged in such a hair-do.
     "If that is beauty, I want none of it," the Lyranian declared.
     Kinnison tried again. He showed her a waterfall, this time, in a stupendous gorge,
with appropriate cloud formations and scenery. That, the girl declared, was simply
erosion. Geological formations and meteorological phenomena. Beauty still did not
appear. Painting, it appeared to her, was a waste of pigment and oil. Useless and
inefficient—for any purpose of record the camera was much faster and much more
accurate. Music—vibrations in the atmosphere—would of necessity be simply a noise;
and noise—any kind of noise —was not efficient.
     "You poor little devil." The Lensman gave up. "You poor, ignorant, soul-starved
little devil. And the worst of it is that you don't even realize—and never can
realize—what you are missing."
     "Don't be silly." For the first time, the woman actually laughed. "You are utterly
foolish to make such a fuss about such trivial things."
     Kinnison quit, appalled. He knew, now, that he and this apparently human
creature beside him were as far apart as the Galactic Poles in every essential phase of
life. He had heard of matriarchies, but he had never considered what a real matriarchy,
carried to its logical conclusion, would be like.
     This was it. For ages there had been, to all intents and purposes, only one sex;
the masculine element never having been allowed to rise above the fundamental
necessity of reproducing the completely dominant female. And that dominant female
had become, in every respect save the purely and necessitously physical one,
absolutely and utterly sexless. Men, upon Lyrane II, were dwarfs about thirty inches tall.
They had the temper and the disposition of a mad Radeligian cateagle, the intellectual
capacity of a Zabriskan fontema. They were not regarded as people, either at birth or at
any subsequent time. To maintain a static population, each person gave birth to one
person, on the grand average. The occasional male baby—about one in a hundred—did
not count. He was not even kept at home, but was taken immediately to the
"maletorium", in which he lived until attaining maturity.
     One man to a hundred or so women for a year, then death. The hundred persons
had their babies at twenty-one or twenty-two years of age—they lived to an average age
of a hundred years—then calmly blasted their male's mind and disposed of his carcass.
The male was not exactly an outcast; not precisely a pariah. He was tolerated as a
necessary adjunct to the society of persons, but in no sense whatever was he a
member of it.
     The more Kinnison pondered this hook-up the more appalled he became.
Physically, these people were practically indistinguishable from human, Tellurian,
Caucasian women. But mentally, intellectually, in every other way, how utterly different!
Shockingly, astoundingly so to any really human being, whose entire outlook and
existence is fundamentally, however unconsciously or subconsciously, based upon and
conditioned by the prime division of life into two cooperant sexes. It didn't seem, at first
glance, that such a cause could have such terrific effects; but here they were. In cold
reality, these women were no more human than were the . . . the Eich. Take the
Posenians, or the Rigellians, or even the Velantians. Any normal, stay-at-home
Tellurian woman would pass out cold if she happened to stumble onto Worsel in a dark
alley at night. Yet the members of his repulsively reptilian-appearing race, merely
because of having a heredity of equality and cooperation between the sexes, were in
essence more nearly human than were these tall, splendidly-built, actually and
intrinsically beautiful creatures of Lyrane II!
     "This is the hall," the person informed him, as the car came to a halt in front of a
large structure of plain gray stone. "Come with me."
     "Gladly," and they walked across the peculiarly bare grounds. They were side by
side, but a couple of feet apart. She had been altogether too close to him in the little car.
She did not want this male—or any male—to touch her or to be near her. And,
considerably to her surprise, if the truth were to be known, the feeling was entirely
mutual. Kinnison would have preferred to touch a Borovan slime-lizard.
     They mounted the granite steps. They passed through the dull, weather-beaten
portal. They were still side by side—but they were now a full yard apart.

CHAPTER 4
Kinnison Captures . . .

     Listen, my beautiful but dumb guide," Kinnison counseled the Lyranian girl as
they neared their objective. "I see that you're forgetting all your good girl-scout
resolutions and are getting all hot and bothered again. I'm telling you now for the last
time to watch your step. If that zwilnik person has even a split second's warning that I'm
on her tail all hell will be out for noon, and I don't mean perchance."
     "But I must notify the Elder One that I am bringing you in," she told him. "One
simply does not intrude unannounced. It is not permitted."
     "QX. Stick to the announcement, though, and don't put out any funny ideas or I'll
lay you out cold. I'll send a thought along, just to make sure."
     But he did more than that, for even as he spoke his sense of perception was
already in the room to which they were going. It was a large room, and bare; filled with
tables except for a clear central space upon which at the moment a lithe and supple
person was doing what seemed to be a routine of acrobatic dancing, interspersed with
suddenly motionless posings and posturings of extreme technical difficulty. At the tables
were seated a hundred or so Lyranians, eating.
     Kinnison was not interested in the floor show, whatever it was, nor in the massed
Lyranians. The zwilnik was what he was after. Ah, there she was, at a ringside table—a
small, square table seating four—near the door. Her back was to it—good. At her left,
commanding the central view of the floor, was a redhead, sitting in a revolving, reclining
chair, the only such seat in the room. Probably the Big Noise herself— the Elder One.
No matter, he wasn't interested in her, either—yet. His attention flashed back to his
proposed quarry and he almost gasped.
     For she, like Dessa Desplaines, was an Aldebaranian, and she was everything
that the Desplaines woman had been—more so, if possible. She was a seven-sector
callout, a thionite dream if there ever was one. And jewelry! This Lyranian tiger hadn't
exaggerated that angle very much, at that. Her breast-shields were of gold and platinum
filigree, thickly studded with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, in intricate designs. Her
shorts, or rather trunks, made of something that looked like glamorete, blazed with
gems. A cleverly concealed dagger, with a jeweled haft and a vicious little fang of a
blade. Rings, even a thumb-ring. A necklace which was practically a collar flashed all
the colors of the rainbow. Bracelets, armlets, anklets and knee-bands. High-laced dress
boots, jeweled from stem to gudgeon. Ear-rings, and a meticulous, micrometrically
precise coiffure held in place by at least a dozen glittering buckles, combs and
barrettes.
     "Holy Klono's brazen tendons!" the Lensman whistled to himself, for every last,
least one of those stones was the clear quill. "Half a million credits if it's a millo's worth!"
     But he was not particularly interested in this jeweler's vision of what the well-
dressed lady zwilnik will wear. There were other, far more important things. Yes, she
had a thought-screen. It was off, and its battery was mighty low, but it would still work;
good thing he had blocked the warning. And she had a hollow tooth, too, but he'd see to
it that she didn't get a chance to swallow its contents. She knew plenty, and he hadn't
chased her this far to let her knowledge be obliterated by that hellish Boskonian drug.
     They were at the door now. Disregarding the fiercely-driven metal protests of his
companion, Kinnison flung it open, stiffening up his mental guard as he did so.
Simultaneously he invaded the zwilnik's mind with a flood of force, clamping down so
hard that she could not move a single voluntary muscle. Then, paying no attention
whatever to the shocked surprise of the assembled Lyranians, he strode directly up to
the Aldebaranian and bent her head back into the crook of his elbow. Forcibly but gently
he opened her mouth. With thumb and forefinger he deftly removed the false tooth.
Releasing her then, mentally and physically, he dropped his spoil to the cement floor
and ground it savagely to bits under his hard and heavy heel.
     The zwilnik screamed wildly, piercingly at first. However, finding that she was
getting no results, from Lensman or Lyranian, she subsided quickly into alertly watchful
waiting.
     Still unsatisfied, Kinnison flipped out one of his DeLameters and flamed the
remains of the capsule of worse than paralyzing fluid, caring not a whit that his vicious
portable, even in that brief instant, seared a hole a foot deep into the floor. Then and
only then did he turn his attention to the redhead in the boss's chair.
     He had to hand it to Elder Sister—through all this sudden and to her entirely
unprecedented violence of action she hadn't turned a hair. She had swung her chair
around so that she was facing him. Her back was to the athletic dancer who, now
holding a flawlessly perfect pose, was going on with the act as though nothing out of the
ordinary were transpiring. She was leaning backward in the armless swivel chair, her
right foot resting upon its pedestal. Her left ankle was crossed over her right knee, her
left knee rested lightly against the table's top. Her hands were clasped together at the
nape of her neck, supporting her red-thatched head; her elbows spread abroad in easy,
indolent grace. Her eyes, so deeply, darkly green as to be almost black stared up
unwinkingly into the Lensman's—"insolently" was the descriptive word that came first to
his mind.
     If the Elder Sister was supposed to be old, Kinnison reflected as he studied
appreciatively the startlingly beautiful picture which the artless Chief Person of this tribe
so unconsciously made, she certainly belied her looks. As far as looks went, she really
qualified—whatever it took, she in abundant measure had. Her hair was not really red,
either. It was a flamboyant, gorgeous auburn, about the same color as Clarrissa's own,
and just as thick. And it wasn't all haggled up. Accidentally, of course, and no doubt
because on her particular job her hair didn't get in the way very often, it happened to be
a fairly even, shoulder-length bob. What a mop! And damned if it wasn't wavy! Just as
she was, with no dolling up at all, she'd be a primary beam on any man's planet. She
had this zwilnik houri here, knockout that she was and with all her war-paint and
feathers, blasted clear out of the ether. But this queen bee had a sting; she was still
boring away at his shield. He'd better let her know that she didn't even begin to have
enough jets to swing that load.
     "QX, ace, cut the gun!" he directed, crisply. "Ace", from him, was a
complimentary term indeed. "Pipe down— that's all of that kind of stuff from you. I stood
for this much of it, just to show you that you can't get to the first check-station with that
kind of fuel, but enough is a great plenty." At the sheer cutting power of the thought,
rebroadcast no doubt by the airport manager, Lyranian activity throughout the room
came to a halt. This was decidedly out of the ordinary. For a male mind—any male
mind—to be able even momentarily to resist that of the meanest person of Lyrane was
starkly unthinkable. The Elder's graceful body tensed, into her eyes there crept a
dawning doubt, a peculiar, wondering uncertainty. Of fear there was none; all these
sexless Lyranian women were brave to the point of fool-hardiness.
     "You tell her, draggle-pate," he ordered his erstwhile guide. "It took me hell's own
time to make you understand that I mean business, but you talk her language—see how
fast you can get the thing through Her Royal Nibs's skull."
     It did not take long. The lovely, dark-green eyes held conviction, now; but also a
greater uncertainty.
     "It will be best, I think, to kill you now, instead of allowing you to leave . . ." she
began.
     Allow me to leave!" Kinnison exploded. "Where do you get such funny ideas as
that killing stuff? Just who, Toots, is going to keep me from leaving?"
     "This." At the thought a weirdly conglomerate monstrosity which certainly had not
been in the dining hall an instant before leaped at Kinnison's throat. It was a frightful
thing indeed, combining the worst features of the reptile and the feline, a serpent's head
upon a panther's body. Through the air it hurtled, terrible claws unsheathed to rend and
venomous fangs out-thrust to stab.
     Kinnison had never before met that particular form of attack, but he knew
instantly what it was—knew that neither leather nor armor of proof nor screen of force
could stop it. He knew that the thing was real only to the woman and himself, that it was
not only invisible, but non-existent to everyone else. He also knew how ultimately deadly
the creature was, knew that if claw or fang should strike him he would die then and
there.
     Ordinarily very efficient, to the Lensman this method of slaughter was crude and
amateurish. No such figment of any other mind could harm him unless he knew that it
was coming; unless his mind was given ample time in which to appreciate—in reality, to
manufacture—the danger he was in. And in that time his mind could negate it. He had
two defenses. He could deny the monster's existence, in which case it would simply
disappear. Or, a much more difficult, but technically a much nicer course, would be to
take over control and toss it back at her.
     Unhesitatingly he did the latter. In mid-leap the apparition swerved, in a full right-
angle turn, directly toward the quietly-poised body of the Lyranian. She acted just barely
in time; the madly-reaching claws were within scant inches of her skin when they
vanished. Her eyes widened in frightened startlement; she was quite evidently shaken
to the core by the Lensman's viciously skillful riposte. With an obvious effort she pulled
herself together.
     "Or these, then, if I must," and with a sweeping gesture of thought she indicated
the roomful of her Lyranian sisters.
     "How?" Kinnison asked, pointedly.
     "By force of numbers; by sheer weight and strength. You can kill many of them
with your weapons, of course, but not enough or quickly enough."
     "You yourself would be the first to die," he cautioned her; and, since she was en
rapport with his very mind, she knew that it was not a threat, but the stern finality of fact.
     "What of that?" He in turn knew that she, too, meant precisely that and nothing
else.
     He had another weapon, but she would not believe it without a demonstration,
and he simply could not prove that weapon upon an unarmed, defenseless woman,
even though she was a Lyranian.
     Stalemate.
     No, the 'copter. "Listen, Queen of Sheba, to what I tell my boys," he ordered, and
spoke into his microphone.
     "Ralph? Stick a one-second needle down through the floor here; close enough to
make her jump, but far enough away so as not to blister her fanny."
     At his word a narrow, but ragingly incandescent pencil of destruction raved
downward through ceiling and floor. So inconceivably hot was it that if it had been a
fraction larger, it would have ignited the Elder Sister's very chair. Effortlessly, insatiably
it consumed everything in its immediate path, radiating the while the entire spectrum of
vibrations. It was unbearable, and the auburn-haired creature did indeed jump, in spite
of herself—half-way to the door. The rest of the hitherto imperturbable persons
clustered together in panic-stricken knots.
     "You see, Cleopatra," Kinnison explained, as the dreadful needle-beam expired,
"I've got plenty of stuff if I want to —or have to—use it. The boys up there will stick a
needle like that through the brain of any one or everyone in this room if I give the word. I
don't want to kill any of you unless it's necessary, as I explained to your misbarbered
friend here, but I am leaving here alive and all in one piece, and I'm taking this
Aldebaranian along with me, in the same condition. If I must, I'll lay down a barrage like
that sample you just saw, and only the zwilnik and I will get out alive. How about it?"
     "What are you going to do with the stranger?" the Lyranian asked, avoiding the
issue.
     "I'm going to take some information away from her, that's all. Why? What were
you going to do with her yourselves?"
     "We were—and are going to kill it," came flashing reply. The lethal bolt came
even before the reply; but, fast as the Elder One was, the Gray Lensman was faster. He
blanked out the thought, reached over and flipped on the Aldebaranian's thought-
screen.
     "Keep it on until we get to the ship, sister," he spoke aloud in the girl's native
tongue. "Your battery's low, I know, but it'll last long enough. These hens seem to be
strictly on the peck."
     "I'll say they are—you don't know the half of it." Her voice was low, rich, vibrant.
"Thanks, Kinnison."
     "Listen, Red-Top, what's the percentage in playing so dirty?" the Lensman
complained then. "I'm doing my damndest to let you off easy, but I'm all done dickering.
Do we go out of here peaceably, or do we fry you and your crew to cinders in your own
lard, and walk out over the grease spots? It's strictly up to you, but you'll decide right
here and right now."
     The Elder One's face was hard, her eyes flinty. Her fingers were curled into ball-
tight fists. "I suppose, since we cannot stop you, we must let you go free," she hissed, in
helpless but controlled fury. "If by giving my life and the lives of all these others we
could kill you, here and now would you two die . . . but as it is, you may go."
     "But why all the rage?" the puzzled Lensman asked. "You strike me as being, on
the whole, reasoning creatures. You in particular went to Tellus with this zwilnik here, so
you should know . . ."
     "I do know," the Lyranian broke in. "That is why I would go to any length, pay any
price whatever, to keep you from returning to your own world, to prevent the inrush of
your barbarous hordes here . . ."
     "Oh! So that's it!" Kinnison exclaimed. "You think that some of our people might
want to settle down here, or to have traffic with you?"
     "Yes." She went into a eulogy concerning Lyrane II, concluding, "I have seen the
planets and the races of your so-called Civilization, and I detest them and it. Never
again shall any of us leave Lyrane; nor, if I can help it, shall any stranger ever come
here."
     "Listen, angel-face!" the man commanded. "You're as mad as a Radeligian
cateagle—you're as cockeyed as Trenco's ether. Get this, and get it straight. To any
really intelligent being of any one of forty million planets, your whole Lyranian race
would be a total loss with no insurance. You're a God-forsaken, spiritually and
emotionally starved, barren, mentally ossified, and completely monstrous mess. If I,
personally, never see either you or your planet again, that will be exactly twenty seven
minutes too soon. This girl here thinks the same of you as I do. If anybody else ever
hears of Lyrane and thinks he wants to visit it, I'll take him out of— I'll knock a hip down
on him if I have to, to keep him away from here. Do I make myself clear?"
     "Oh, yet—perfectly!" she fairly squealed in school-girlish delight. The Lensman's
tirade, instead of infuriating her farther, had been sweet music to her peculiarly insular
mind. "Go, then, at once—hurry! Oh, please, hurry! Can you drive the car back to your
vessel, or will one of us have to go with you?"
     "Thanks. I could drive your car, but it won't be necessary. The "copter will pick us
up."
     He spoke to the watchful Ralph, then he and the Aldebaranian left the hall,
followed at a careful distance by the throng. The helicopter was on the ground, waiting.
The man and the woman climbed aboard.
     "Clear ether, persons!" The Lensman waved a salute to the crowd and the
Tellurian craft shot into the air.
     Thence to the Dauntless, which immediately did likewise, leaving behind her,
upon the little airport, a fused blob of metal that had once been the zwilnik's speedster.
Kinnison studied the white face of his captive, then handed her a tiny canister.
     "Fresh battery for your thought-screen generator; yours is about shot." Since she
made no motion to accept it, he made the exchange himself and tested the result. It
worked. "What's the matter with you, kid, anyway? I'd say you were starved, if I hadn't
caught you at a full table."
     "I am starved," the girl said, simply. "I couldn't eat there. I knew they were going
to kill me, and it . . . it sort of took away my appetite."
     "Well, what are we waiting for? I'm hungry, too—let's go eat."
     "Not with you, either, any more than with them. I thanked you, Lensman, for
saving my life there, and I meant it. I thought then and still think that I would rather have
you kill me than those horrible, monstrous women, but I simply can't eat."
     "But I'm not even thinking of killing you—can't you get that through your skull? I
don't make war on women; you ought to know that by this time."
     "You will have to." The girl's voice was low and level. "You didn't kill any of those
Lyranians, no, but you didn't chase them a million parsecs, either. We have been taught
ever since we were born that you Patrolmen always torture people to death. I don't quite
believe that of you personally, since I have had a couple of glimpses into your mind, but
you'll kill me before I'll talk. At least, I hope and I believe that I can hold out."
     "Listen, girl." Kinnison was in deadly earnest. "You are in no danger whatever.
You are just as safe as though you were in Klono's hip pocket. You have some
information that I want, yes, and I will get it, but in the process I will neither hurt you nor
do you mental or physical harm. The only torture you will undergo will be that which, as
now, you give yourself."
     "But you called me a . . . a zwilnik, and they always kill them," she protested.
     "Not always. In battles and in raids, yes. Captured ones are tried in court. If found
guilty, they used to go into the lethal chambers. Sometimes they do yet, but not usually.
We have mental therapists now who can operate on a mind if there's anything there
worth saving."
     "And you think that I will wait to stand trial, in the entirely negligible hope that
your bewhiskered, fossilized therapists will find something in me worth saving?"
     "You won't have to," Kinnison laughed. "Your case has already been decided—in
your favor. I am neither a policeman nor a Narcotics man; but I happen to be qualified
as judge, jury, and executioner. I am a therapist to boot. I once saved a worse zwilnik
than you are,- even though she wasn't such a knockout. Now do we eat?"
     "Really? You aren't just. . . just giving me the needle?"
     The Lensman flipped off her screen and gave her unmistakable evidence. The
girl, hitherto so unmovedly self-reliant, broke down. She recovered quickly, however,
and in Kinnison's cabin she ate ravenously.
     "Have you a cigarette?" She sighed with repletion when she could hold no more
food.
     "Sure. Alsakanite, Venerian, Tellurian, most anything— we carry a couple of
hundred different brands. What would you like?"
     "Tellurian, by all means. I had a package of Camerfields once—they were
gorgeous. Would you have those, by any chance?"
     "Uh-huh," he assured her. "Quartermaster! Carton of Camerfields, please." It
popped out of the pneumatic tube in seconds. "Here you are sister."
     The glittery girl drew the fragrant smoke deep, down into her lungs.
     "Ah, that tastes good! Thanks, Kinnison—for everything. I'm glad you kidded me
into eating; that was the finest meal I ever ate. But it won't take, really. I've never broken
yet, and I won't break now. If I do, I won't be worth a damn, to myself or to anybody
else, from then on." She crushed out the butt. "So let's get on with the third degree.
Bring on your rubber hose and your lights and your drip-can."
     "You're still on the wrong foot, Toots," Kinnison said, pityingly. What a frightful
contrast there was between her slimly rounded body, in its fantastically gorgeous
costume, and the stark somberness of her eyes! "There'll be no third degree, no hose,
no lights, nothing like that. In fact, I'm not even going to talk to you until you've had a
good long sleep. You don't look hungry any more, but you're still not in tune, by seven
thousand kilocycles. How long has it been since you really slept?"
     "A couple of weeks, at a guess. Maybe a month."
     "Thought so. Come on; you're going to sleep now."
     The girl did not move. "With whom?" she asked, quietly. Her voice did not quiver,
but stark terror lay in her mind and her hand crept unconsciously toward the hilt of her
dagger.
     "Holy Klono's claws!" Kinnison snorted, staring at her in wide-eyed wonder. "Just
what kind of a bunch of hyenas do you think you've got into, anyway?"
     "Bad," the girl replied, gravely. "Not the worst possible, perhaps, but from my
standpoint plenty bad enough. What can I expect from me Patrol except what I do
expect?'You don't need to kid me along, Kinnison. I can take it, and I'd a lot rather take
it standing up, facing it, than have you sneak up on me with it after giving me your shots
in the arm."
     "What somebody has done to you is a sin and a shrieking shame," Kinnison
declared, feelingly. "Come on, you poor little devil." He picked up sundry pieces of
apparatus, then, taking her arm, he escorted her to another, almost luxuriously
furnished cabin.
     "That door," he explained carefully, "is solid chrome-tungsten-molybdenum steel.
The lock can't be picked. There are only two keys to it in existence, and here they are.
There's a bolt, too, that's proof against anything short of a five-hundred-ton hydraulic
jack, or an atomic-hydrogen cutting torch. Here's a full-coverage screen, and a twenty-
foot spy-ray block. There is your stuff out of the speedster. If you want help, or anything
to eat or drink, or anything else that can be expected aboard a ship like this, there's the
communicator. QX?
     "Then you really mean it? That I . . . that you . . . I mean . . ."
     "Absolutely," he assured her. "Just that You are completely the master of your
destiny, the captain of your soul. Good-night."
     "Good-night, Kinnison. Good-night, and th . . . thanks." The girl threw herself face
downward upon the bed in a storm of sobs.
     Nevertheless, as Kinnison started back toward his own cabin, he heard the
massive bolt click into its socket and felt the blocking screens go on.

CHAPTER 5
. . Illona of Lonabar

     Twelve or fourteen hours later, after the Aldebaranian girl had had her breakfast,
Kinnison went to her cabin.
     "Hi, Cutie, you look better. By the way, what's your name, so we'll know what to
call you?"
     "Illona,"
     "Illona what?"
     "No what—just Illona, that's all."
     "How do they tell you from other Illonas, then?"
     "Oh, you mean my registry number. In the Aldebaranian language there are not
the symbols—it would have to be The Illona who is the daughter of Porlakent the potter
who lives in the house of the wheel upon the road of. . .'"
     "Hold everything—well call you Illona Porter." He eyed her keenly. "I thought your
Aldebaranian wasn't so hot— didn't seem possible that I could have got that rusty. You
haven't been on Aldebaran II for a long time, have you?"
     "No, we moved to Lonabar when I was about six."
     "Lonabar? Never heard of it—I'll check up on it later. Your stuff was all here,
wasn't it? Did any of the red-headed person's things get mixed in?"
     "Things?" She giggled sunnily, then sobered in quick embarrassment "She didn't
carry any. They're horrid, I think —positively indecent—to run around that way."
     "Hm . . . m. Glad you brought the point up. You've got to put on some clothes
aboard this ship, you know."
     "Me?" she demanded. "Why, I'm fully dressed . . ." She paused, then shrank
together visibly. "Oh! Tellurians—I remember, all those coverings! You mean, then . . .
you think I'm shameless and indecent too?"
     "No. Not at all—yet." At his obvious sincerity Illona unfolded again. "Most of
us—especially the officers—have been on so many different planets, had dealings with
so many different types and kinds of entities, that we're used to anything. When we visit
a planet that goes naked, we do also, as a matter of course; when we hit one that
muffles up to the smothering point we do that, too. 'When in Rome, be a Roman candle',
you know. The point is that we're at home here, you're the visitor. It's all a matter of
convention, of course; but a rather important one. Don't you think so?"
     "Covering up, certainly. Uncovering is different. They told me to be sure to, but I
simply can't. I tried it back there, but I felt naked!"
     "QX—we'll have the tailor make you a dress or two. Some of the boys haven't
been around very much, and you'd look pretty bare to them. Everything you've got on,
jewelry and all, wouldn't make a Tellurian sun-suit, you know."
     "Then have them hurry up the dress, please. But this isn't jewelry, it is . . ."
     "Jet back, beautiful. I know gold, and platinum, and . . ."
     "The metal is expensive, yes," Illona conceded. "These alone," she tapped one of
the delicate shields, "cost five days of work. But base metal stains the skin blue and
green and black, so what can one do? As for the beads, they are synthetics—junk. Poor
girls, if they buy it themselves, do not wear jewelry, but beads, like these. Half a day's
work buys the lot."
     "What!" Kinnison demanded.
     "Certainly. Rich girls only, or poor girls who do not work, wear real jewelry, such
as . . . the Aldebaranian has not the words. Let me think at you, please?"
     "Sorry, nothing there that I recognize at all," Kinnison answered, after studying a
succession of thought-images of multi-colored, spectacular gems. "That's one to file
away in the book, too, believe me. But as to that 'junk' you've got draped all over
yourself—half a day's pay—what do you work at for a living, when you work?"
     "I'm a dancer—like this." She leaped lightly to her feet and her left boot whizzed
past her ear in a flashingly fast high kick. Then followed a series of gyrations and
contortions, for which the Lensman knew no names, during which the girl seemed a
practically boneless embodiment of suppleness and grace. She sat down; meticulous
hairdress scarcely rumpled, not a buckle or bracelet awry, breathing hardly one count
faster.
     "Nice." He applauded briefly. "Hard for me to evaluate such talent as that—I
thought you were a pilot. However, on Tellus or any one of a thousand other planets I
could point out to you, you can sell that 'junk' you're wearing for —at a rough
guess—about fifty thousand days' work."
     "Impossible!"
     "True, nevertheless. So, before we land, you'd better give them to me, so that I
can send them to a bank for you, under guard."
     "If I land." As Kinnison spoke Illona's manner changed; darkened as though an
inner light had been extinguished. "You have been so friendly and nice, I was forgetting
where I am and the business ahead. Putting it off won't make it any easier. Better be
getting on with it, don't you think?"
     "Oh, that? That's all done, long ago."
     "What?" she almost screamed. "It isn't! It couldn't be!"
     "Sure. I got most of the stuff I wanted last night, while I was changing your
thought-screen battery. Menjo Bleeko, your big-shot boss, and so on."
     "You didn't! But . . . you must have, at that, to know it . . . but you didn't hurt me,
or anything . . . you couldn't have operated—changed me, because I have all my
memories . . . or seem to . . . I'm not an idiot, I mean any more than usual . . ."
     "You've been taught a good many sheer lies, and quite a few half truths," he
informed her, evenly. "For instance, what did they tell you that hollow tooth would do to
you when you broke the seal?"
     "Make my mind a blank. But one of their doctors would get hold of me very soon
and give me the antidote that would restore me exactly as I was before."
     "That is one of the half truths. It would certainly have made your mind a blank,
but only by blasting most of your memory files out of existence. Their therapists would
'restore' you by substituting other memories for your real ones—whatever other ones
they pleased."
     "How horrible! How perfectly ghastly! That was why you treated it so, then; as
though it were a snake. I wondered at your savagery toward it. But how, really, do I
know that you are telling the truth?"
     "You don't," he admitted. "You will have to make your own decisions after
acquiring full information."
     "You are a therapist," she remarked, shrewdly. "But if you operated on my mind
you didn't 'save' me, because I still think exactly the same as 1 always did about the
Patrol and everything pertaining to it . . . or do I? . . . Or is this . . ." her eyes widened
with a startling possibility.
     "No, I didn't operate," he assured her. "No such operation can possibly be done
without leaving scars—breaks in the memory chains—that you can find in a minute if
you look for them. There are no breaks or blanks in any chain in your mind."
     "No—at least, I can't find any," she reported after a few minutes' thought. "But
why didn't you? You can't turn me loose this way, you know—a z . . . an enemy of your
society."
     "You don't need saving," he grinned. "You believe in absolute good and absolute
evil, don't you?"
     "Why of course—certainly! Everybody must!"
     "Not necessarily. Some of the greatest thinkers in the universe do not."1 His voice
grew somber, then lightened again. "Such being the case, however, all you need to
'save' yourself is experience, observation, and knowledge of both sides of the question.
You're a colossal little fraud, you know."
     "How do you mean?" She blushed vividly, her eyes wavered.
     "Pretending to be such a hard-boiled egg. 'Never broke yet'. Why should you
break, when you've never been under pressure?"
     "I have so!" she flared. "What do you suppose I'm carrying this knife for?"
     "Oh, that." He mentally shrugged the wicked little dagger aside as he pondered.
"You little lamb hi wolfs clothing . . . but at that, your memories may, I think, be
altogether too valuable to monkey with . . . there's something funny about this whole
matrix—damned funny. Come clean, baby-face— why?"
     "They told me to," she admitted, wriggling slightly. 'To act tough—really tough. As
though I were an adventuress who had been everywhere and had done . . . done
everything. That the worse I acted the better I would get along in your Civilization."
     "I suspected something of the sort. And what did you zwil—excuse me, you
folks—go to Lyrane for, hi the first place?"
     "I don't know. From chance remarks I gathered that we were to land on one of
the planets—any one, I supposed—and wait for somebody."
     "What were you, personally, going to do?"
     "I don't know that, either—not exactly, that is. I was to take some kind of a ship
somewhere, but I don't know what, or when, or where, or why, or whether I was to go
alone or take somebody. Whoever it was that we were going to meet was going to give
us orders."
     "How come those women killed your men? Didn't they have thought-screens,
too?"
     "No. They weren't agents—just soldiers. They shot about a dozen of the
Lyranians when we first landed, just to show their authority, then they dropped dead."
     "Um. Poor technique, but typically Boskonian. Your trip to Tellus was more or
less accidental, then?"
     "Yes. I wanted her to take me back to Lonabar, but she wouldn't. She couldn't
have, anyway, because she didn't know any more about where it is than I did."
     "Huh?" Kinnison blurted. "You don't know where your own home planet is? What
the hell kind of a pilot are you, anyway?"
     "Oh, I'm not really a pilot. Just what they made me learn after we left Lonabar, so
I'd be able to make that trip. Lonabar wasn't shown on any of the charts we had aboard.
Neither was Lyrane—that was why I had to make my own chart, to get back there from
Tellus."
     "But you must know something!" Kinnison fumed. "Stars? Constellations? The
Galaxy—the Milky Way?"
     "The Milky Way, yes. By its shape, Lonabar isn't anywhere near the center of the
galaxy. I've been trying to remember if there were any noticeable star configurations,
but I can't. You see, I wasn't the least bit interested in such things, then."
     "Hell's Brazen Hinges! You can't be that dumb—nobody can! Any Tellurian infant
old enough to talk knows either the Big Dipper or the Southern Cross! Hold it—I'm
coming in and find out for myself."
     He came—but he did not find out.
     "Well, I guess people can be that dumb, since you so indubitably are," he
admitted then. "Or—maybe—aren't there any?"
     "Honestly, Lensman, I don't know. There were lots of stars, of course . . . if there
were any striking configurations I might have noticed them; but I might not have, too. As
I said, I wasn't the least bit interested."
     "That was very evident," dryly. "However, excuse me, please, for talking so
rough."
     "Rough? Of course, sir," Illona giggled. "That wasn't rough, comparatively—and
nobody ever apologized before—I'd like awfully well to help you, sir, if I possibly can."
     "I know you would, Toots, and thanks. To get back onto the beam, what put it into
Helen's mind to go to Tellus?"
     "She learned about Tellus and the Patrol from our minds —none of them could
believe at first that there were any inhabited worlds except their own—and wanted to
study them at first hand. She took our ship and made me fly it."
     "I see. I'm not surprised. I thought that there was something remarkably screwy
about those activities—they seemed so aimless and so barren of results—but I couldn't
put my finger on it. And we crowded her so close that she decided to flit for home. You
could see her, but nobody else could—that she didn't want to."
     "That was it. She said that she was being hampered by a mind of power. That
was you, of course?"
     -And others. Well, that's that, for a while."
     He called the tailor in. No, he didn't have a thing to make a girl's dress out of,
especially not a girl like that. She should wear glamorette, and sheer—very sheer. He
didn't know a thing about ladies' tailoring, either; he hadn't made a gown since he was
knee-high to a duck. All he had hi the shop was coat-linings. Perhaps nylon would do,
after a fashion. He remembered now, he did have a bolt of nylon that wasn't any good
for linings—not stiff enough, and red. Too heavy, of course, but it would drape well.
     It did. She came swaggering back, an hour or so later, the hem of her skirt
swishing against the tops of her high-laced boots.
     "Do you like it?" she asked, pirouetting gayly.
     "Fine!" he applauded, and it was. The tailor had understated tremendously both
his ability and the resources of his shop.
     "Now what? I don't have to stay in my room all the time now, please?"
     "I'll say not. The ship is yours. I want you to get acquainted with every man on
board. Go anywhere you like—except the private quarters, of course—even to the
control room. The boys all know that you're at large."
     "The language—but I'm talking English now!"
     "Sure. I've been giving it to you right along. You know it as well as I do."
     She stared at him in awe. Then, her natural buoyancy asserting itself, she flirted
out of the room with a wave of her hand.
     And Kinnison sat down to think. A girl—a kid who wasn't dry behind the ears
yet—wearing beads worth a full grown fortune, sent somewhere . . . to do what? Lyrane
II, a perfect matriarchy. Lonabar, a planet of zwilniks that knew all about Tellus, but
wasn't on any Patrol chart, sending expeditions to Lyrane. To the system, perhaps not
specifically to Lyrane II. Why? For what? To do what? Strange, new jewels of fabulous
value. What was the hook-up? It didn't make any kind of sense yet. . . not enough data .
. .
     And faintly, waveringly, barely impinging upon the outermost, most tenuous
fringes of his mind he felt something: the groping, questing summons of an incredibly
distant thought.
     "Male of Civilization . . . Person of Tellus . . . Kinnison of Tellus . . . Lensman
Kinnison of Sol III . . . Any Lensbearing officer of the Galactic Patrol . . ." Endlessly the
desperately urgent, almost imperceptible thought implored.
     Kinnison stiffened. He reached out with the full power of his mind, seized the
thought, tuned to it, and hurled a reply— and when that mind really pushed a thought, it
traveled.
     "Kinnison of Tellus acknowledging!" His answer fairly crackled on its way.
     "You do not know my name," the stranger's thought came clearly now. "I am the
Toots', the 'Rep-Top', the 'Queen of Sheba", the 'Cleopatra', the Elder Person of Lyrane
II. Do you remember me, Kinnison of Tellus?"
     "I certainly do!" he shot back. What a brain—what a terrific brain—that sexless
woman had!
     "We are invaded by manlike beings in ships of space, who wear screens against
our thoughts and who slay without cause. Will you help us with your ship of might and
your mind of power?"
     "Just a sec, Toots—Henderson!" Orders snapped. The Dauntless spun end-for-
end.
     "QX, Helen of Troy," he reported then. "We're on our way back there at maximum
blast. Say, that name 'Helen of Troy' fits you better than anything else I have called you.
You don't know it, of course, but that other Helen launched a thousand ships. You're
launching only one; but believe me, Babe, the old Dauntless is SOME ship!"
     "I hope so." The Elder Person, ignoring the by-play, went directly to the heart of
the matter in her usual pragmatic fashion. "We have no right to ask; you have every
reason to refuse . . ."
     "Don't worry about that, Helen. We're all good little Boy Scouts at heart. We're
supposed to do a good deed every day, and we've missed a lot of days lately."
     "You are what you call 'kidding', I think." A matriarch could not be expected to
possess a sense of humor. "But I do not lie to you or pretend. We did not, do not now,
and never will like you or yours. With us now, however, it is that you are much the lesser
of two terrible evils. If you will aid us now we will tolerate your Patrol; we will even
promise to endure others of your kind."
     "And that's big of you, Helen, no fooling." The Lensman was really impressed.
The plight of the Lyranians must be desperate indeed. "Just keep a stiff upper lip, all of
you. We're coming loaded for bear, and we are not exactly creeping."
     Nor were they. The big cruiser had plenty of legs and she was using them all; the
engineers were giving her all the of her drivers would take. She was literally blasting a
hole through space; she was traveling so fast that the atoms of substance in the
interstellar vacuum, merely wave-forms though they were, simply could not get out of
the flyer's way. They were being blasted into nothingness against the Dauntless" wall-
shields.
     And throughout her interior the Patrol ship, always in complete readiness for
strife, was being gone over again with microscopic thoroughness, to be put into more
readiness, if possible, even than that.
     After a few hours Illona danced back to Kinnison's "con" room, fairly bubbling
over.
     "Why, they're marvelous, Lensman!" she cried, "simply marvelous!"
     "What are marvelous?"
     "The boys," she enthused. "All of them. They're here because they want to
be—why, the officers don't even have whips! They like them, actually! The officers who
push the little buttons and things and those who walk around and look through the little
glass things and even the gray-haired old man with the four stripes, why they like them
all! And the boys were all putting on guns when I left—why, I never heard of such a
thing!—and they're just simply crazy about you. I thought it was awfully funny you took
off your guns as soon as the ship left Lyrane and you don't have guards around you all
the time because I thought sure somebody would stab you in the back or something but
they don't even want to and that's what's so marvelous and Hank Henderson told me . .
."
     "Save it!" he ordered. "Jet back, angel-face, before you blow a fuse." He had
been right in not operating—this girl was going to be a mine of information concerning
Boskonian methods and operations, and all without knowing it. "That's what I've been
trying to tell you about our Civilization; that it's based on the freedom of the individual to
do pretty much as he pleases, as long as it is not to the public harm. And, as far as
possible, equality of all the entities of Civilization."
     "Uh-huh, I know you did," she nodded brightly, then sobered quickly, "but I
couldn't understand it. I can't understand it yet; I can scarcely believe that you all are so
. . . you know, don't you, what would happen if this were a Lonabarian ship and I would
go running around talking to officers as though I were their equal?"
     "No—what?"
     "It's inconceivable, of course; it simply couldn't happen. But if it did, I would be
punished terribly—perhaps though, at a first offense, I might be given only a twenty-scar
whipping." At his lifted eyebrow she explained, "One that leaves twenty scars that show
for life.
     "That's why I'm acting so intoxicated, I think. You see, I . . ." she hesitated shyly,
"I'm not used to being treated as anybody's equal, except of course other girls like me.
Nobody is, on Lonabar. Everybody is higher or lower than you are. I'm going to simply
love this when I get used to it." She spread both arms in a sweeping gesture. "I'd like to
squeeze this whole ship and everybody in it—I just can't wait to get to Tellus and really
live there!"
     "That's a .thing that has been bothering me," Kinnison confessed, and the girl
stared wonderingly at his serious face. "We're going into battle, and we can't take time
to land you anywhere before the battle starts."
     "Of course not Why should you?" she paused, thinking deeply. "You're not
worrying about me, surely? Why, you're a high officer! Officers don't care whether a girl
gets shot or not, do they?" The thought was obviously, utterly new.
     "We do. It's extremely poor hospitality to invite a guest aboard and then have her
killed. All I can say, though, is that if our number goes up . . . I still don't see how I could
have done anything else."
     "Oh . . . thanks, Gray Lensman. Nobody ever spoke to me like that before. But I
wouldn't land if I could. I like Civilization. If you . . . if you don't win, I couldn't go to Tellus
anyway, so I'd much rather take my chances here than not, sir, really. I'll never go back
to Lonabar, in any case."
     "At-a-girl, Toots!l" He extended his hand. She looked at it dubiously, then
hesitantly stretched out her own. But she learned fast; she put as much pressure into
the brief handclasp as Kinnison did. "You'd better flit now, I've got work to do."
     "Can I go up top? Hank Henderson is going to show me the primaries."
     "Sure. Go anywhere you like. Before the trouble starts I'll take you down to the
center and put you into a suit."
     "Thanks, Lensman!" The girl hurried away and Kinnison Lensed the master pilot.
     "Henderson? Kinnison. Official. Illona just told me about the primaries. They're
QX—but no etchings."
     "Of course not, sir."
     "And please pass a word around for me. I know as well as anybody does that she
doesn't belong aboard; but it couldn't be helped and I'm getting rid of her as soon as I
possibly can. In the meantime she's my personal responsibility. So—no passes'. She's
strictly off limits."
     "Ill pass the word, sir."
     "Thanks." The Gray Lensman broke the connection and got into communication
with Helen of Lyrane, who gave him a resume of everything that had happened.
     Two ships—big ships, immense space-cruisers—appeared near the airport.
Nobody saw them coming, they came so fast. They stopped, and without warning or
parley destroyed all the. buildings and all the people nearby with beams like Kinnison's
needle-beam, except much larger. Then the ships landed and men disembarked. The
Lyranians killed ten of them by direct mental impact or by monsters of the mind, but
after that everyone who came out of the vessel wore thought-screens and the persons
were quite helpless. The enemy had burned down and melted a part of the city, and as
a further warning were then making formal plans to execute publicly a hundred leading
Lyranians—ten for each man they had killed.
     Because of the screens no communication was possible, but the invaders had
made it clear that if there was one more sign of resistance, or even of non-cooperation,
the entire city would be beamed; every living thing in it blasted out of existence. She
herself had escaped so far. She was hidden in a crypt in the deepest sub-cellar of the
city. She was, of course, one of the ones they wanted to execute, but finding any of
Lyrane's leaders would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. They were still
searching, with .many persons as highly unwilling guides. They had indicated that they
would stay there until the leaders were found; that they would make the Lyranians tear
down their city, stone by stone, until they were found.
     "But how could they know who you leaders are?" Kinnison wanted to know.
     "Perhaps one of our persons weakened under their torture," Helen replied
equably. "Perhaps they have among them a mind of power. Perhaps in some other
fashion. What matters it? The thing of importance is that they do know."
     "Another thing of importance is that it'll hold them there until we get there,"
Kinnison thought "Typical Boskonian technique, I gather. It won't be many hours now.
Hold them off if you can."
     "I think that I can," came tranquil reply. "Through mental contact each person
acting as guide knows where each of us hidden ones is, and is avoiding all our hiding-
places."
     "Good. Tell me all you can about those ships, their size, shape, and armament."
     She could not, it developed, give him any reliable information as to size. She
thought that the present invaders were smaller than the Dauntless, but she could not be
sure. Compared to the little airships which were the only flying structures with which she
was familiar, both Kinnison's ship and those now upon Lyrane were so immensely huge
that trying to tell which was larger was very much like attempting to visualize, the
difference between infinity squared and infinity cubed. On shape, however, she was
much better; she spread in the Lensman's mind an accurately detailed picture of the two
space-ships which the Patrolman intended to engage.
     In shape they were ultra-fast, very much like the Dauntless herself. Hence they
certainly were not maulers. Nor, probably, were they first-line battleships, such as had
composed the fleet which had met Civilization's Grand Fleet off the edge of the Second
Galaxy. Of course, the Patrol had had in that battle ultra-fast shapes which were ultra-
powerful as well— such as this same Dauntless—and it was a fact that while Civilization
was designing and building, Boskonia could very well have been doing the same thing.
On the other hand, since the enemy could not logically be expecting real trouble in
Dunstan's Region, these buckets might very well be second-line or out-of-date stuff . . .
     "Are those ships lying on the same field we landed on?" he asked at that point in
his cogitations.
     "Yes."
     "You can give me pretty close to an actual measurement of the difference, then,"
he told her. "We left a hole in that field practically our whole length. How does it
compare with theirs?"
     "I can find that out, I think," and in due time she did so; reporting that the
Dauntless was the longer, by some twelve times a person's height.
     "Thanks, Helen." Then, and only men, did Kinnison call his officers into
consultation in the control room.
     He told them everything he had learned and deduced about the two Boskonian
vessels which they were about to attack. Then, heads bent over a visitank, the
Patrolmen began to discuss strategy and tactics.

CHAPTER 6
Back to Lyrane

     The Dauntless approached Lyrane II so nearly that the planet showed a
perceptible disk upon the plates, the observers began to study their detectors carefully.
Nothing registered, and a brief interchange of thoughts with the Chief Person of Lyrane
informed the Lensman that the two Boskonian warships were still grounded. Indeed,
they were going to stay grounded until after the hundred Lyranian leaders, most of
whom were still safely hidden, had been found and executed, exactly as per
announcement The strangers had killed many persons by torture and were killing more
in attempts to make them reveal the hiding-places of the leaders, but little if any real
information was being obtained.
     "Good technique, perhaps, from a bull-headed, dictatorial standpoint, but it
strikes me as being damned poor tactics," grunted Malcolm Craig, the Dauntless'
grizzled captain, when Kinnison had relayed the information.
     "Ill say it's poor tactics," the Lensman agreed. "If anybody of Helmuth's caliber
were down there one of those heaps would be out on guard, flitting all over space."
     "But how could they be expecting trouble 'way out here, nine thousand parsecs
from anywhere?" argued Chatway, the Chief Firing Officer.
     "They ought to be—that's the point." This from Henderson. "Where do we land,
Kim, did you find out?"
     "Not exactly; they're on the other side of the planet from here, now. Good thing
we don't have to get rid of a Tellurian intrinsic this time—it'll be a near thing as it is." And
it was.
     Scarcely was the intrinsic velocity matched to that of the planet when the
observers reported that the airport upon which the enemy lay was upon the horizon.
Inertialess, the Dauntless flashed ahead, going inert and into action simultaneously
when within range of the zwilnik ships. Within range of one of them, that is; for short as
the time had been, the crew of one of the Boskonian vessels had been sufficiently alert
to get her away. The other one did not move; then or ever.
     The Patrolmen acted with the flawless smoothness of long practice and perfect
teamwork. At the first sign of zwilnik activity as revealed by his spy-rays, Nelson, the
Chief Communications Officer, loosed a barrage of ethereal and sub-ethereal
interference through which no communications beam or signal could be driven. Captain
Craig barked a word into his microphone and every dreadful primary that could be
brought to bear erupted as one weapon. Chief Pilot Henderson, after a casual glance
below, cut in the Bergenholms, tramped in his blasts, and set the cruiser's narrow nose
into his tracer's line. One glance was enough. He needed no orders as to what to do
next It would have been apparent to almost anyone, even to one of the persons of
Lyrane, that that riddled, slashed, three-quarters fused mass of junk never again would
be or could contain aught of menace. The Patrol ship had not stopped: had scarcely
even paused. Now, having destroyed half of the opposition en passant, she legged it
after the remaining half.
     "Now what, Kim?" asked Captain Craig. "We cant englobe him and he no doubt
mounts tractor shears. We'll have to use the new tractor zone, won't we?" Ordinarily the
gray-haired four-striper would have made his own decisions, since he and he alone
fought his ship; but these circumstances were far from ordinary. First, any Unattached
Lensman, wherever he was, was the boss. Second, the tractor zone was new; so brand
new that even the Dauntless had not as yet used it. Third, the ship was on detached
duty, assigned directly to Kinnison to do with as he willed. Fourth, said Kinnison was
high in the confidence of the Galactic Council and would know whether or not the
present situation justified the use of the new mechanism.
     "If he can cut a tractor, yes," the Lensman agreed. "Only one ship. He can't get
away and he can't communicate—safe enough. Go to it."
     The Tellurian ship was faster than the Boskonian; and, since she had been only
seconds behind at the start, she came within striking distance of her quarry in short
order. Tractor beams reached out and seized; but only momentarily did they hold. At the
first pull they were cut cleanly away. No one was surprised; it had been taken for
granted that all Boskonian ships would by this time have been equipped with tractor
shears.
     These shears had been developed originally by the scientists of the Patrol.
Immediately following that invention, looking forward to the time when Boskone would
have acquired it, those same scientists set themselves to the task of working out
something which would be just as good as a tractor beam for combat purposes, but
which could not be cut. They got it finally—a globular shell of force, very much like a
meteorite screen except double in phase. That is, it was completely impervious to
matter moving in either direction, instead of only to that moving inwardly. Even if exact
data as to generation, gauging, distance, and control of this weapon were
available—which they very definitely are not—it would serve no good end to detail them
here. Suffice it to say that the Dauntless mounted tractor zones, and had ample power
to hold them.
     Closer up the Patrol ship blasted. The zone snapped on, well beyond the
Boskonian, and tightened. Henderson cut the Bergenholms. Captain Craig snapped out
orders and Chief Firing Officer Chatway and his boys did their stuff.
     Defensive screens full out, the pirate stayed free and tried to run. No soap. She
merely slid around upon the frictionless inner surface of the zone. She rolled and she
spun. Then she went inert and rammed. Still no soap. She struck the zone and
bounced; bounced with all of her mass and against all the power of her driving thrust.
The impact jarred the Dauntless to her very skin; but the zone's anchorages had been
computed and installed by top-flight engineers and they held. And the zone itself held. It
yielded a bit, but it did not fail and the shear-planes of the pirates could not cut it.
     Then, no other course being possible, the Boskonians fought. Of course,
theoretically, surrender was possible, but it simply was not done. No pirate ship ever
had surrendered to a Patrol force, however large; none ever would. No Patrol ship had
ever surrendered to Boskone—or would. That was the unwritten, but grimly understood
code of this internecine conflict between two galaxy-wide and diametrically-opposed
cultures; it was and had to be a war of utter and complete extermination. Individuals or
small groups might be captured bodily, but no ship, no individual, even, ever, under any
conditions, surrendered. The fight was—always and everywhere—to the death.
     So this one was. The enemy was well-armed of her type, but her type simply did
not carry projectors of sufficient power to crush the Dauntless" hard-held screens. Nor
did she mount screens heavy enough to withstand for long the furious assault of the
Patrol ship's terrific primaries.
     As soon as the pirate's screens went down the firing stopped; that order had
been given long since. Kinnison wanted information, he wanted charts, he wanted a few
living Boskonians. He got nothing. Not a man remained alive aboard the riddled hulk,
the chart-room contained only heaps of fused ash. Everything which might have been of
use to the Patrol had been destroyed, either by the Patrol's own beams or by the pirates
themselves after they saw they must lose.
     "Beam it out," Craig ordered, and the remains of the Boskonian warship
disappeared.
     Back toward Lyrane II, then, the Dauntless went, and Kinnison again made
contact with Helen, the Elder Sister. She had emerged from her crypt and was directing
affairs from her— "office" is perhaps the word—upon the top floor of the city's largest
building. The search for the Lyranian leaders, the torture and murder of the citizens, and
the destruction of the city had stopped, all at once, when the grounded Boskonian
cruiser had been blasted out of commission. The directing intelligences of the raiders
had remained, it developed, within the "safe" confines of their vessel's walls; and when
they ceased directing, their minions in the actual theater of operations ceased
operating. They had been grouped uncertainly in an open square, but at the first
glimpse of the returning Dauntless they had dashed into the nearest large building, each
man seizing one, or sometimes two persons as he went. They were now inside, erecting
defenses and very evidently intending to use the Lyranians both as hostages and as
shields.
     Motionless now, directly over the city, Kinnison and his officers studied through
their spy-rays the number, armament, and disposition of the enemy force. There were
one hundred and thirty of them, human to about six places. They were armed with the
usual portable weapons carried by such parties. Originally they had had several semi-
portable projectors, but since all heavy stuff must be powered from the mother-ship, it
had been abandoned long since. Surprisingly, though, they wore full armor. Kinnison
had expected only thought-screens, since the Lyranians had no offensive weapons
save those of the mind; but apparently either the pirates did not know that or else were
guarding against surprise.
     Armor was—and is—heavy, cumbersome, a handicap to fast action, and a
nuisance generally; hence for the Boskonians to have dispensed with it would not have
been poor tactics. True, the Patrol did attack, but that could not have been what was
expected. In fact, had such an attack been in the cards, that Boskonian punitive party
would not have been on the ground at all. It was equally true that canny old Helmuth,
who took nothing whatever for granted, would have had his men in armor. However, he
would have guarded much more completely against surprise . . . but few commanders
indeed went to such lengths of precaution as Helmuth did. Thus Kinnison pondered.
     "This ought to be as easy as shooting fish down a well— but you'd better put out
space-scouts just the same," he decided, as he Lensed a thought to Lieutenant Peter
vanBuskirk. "Bus? Do you see what we see?"
     "Uh-huh, we've been peeking a bit," the huge Dutch-Valerian responded, happily.
     "QX. Get your gang wrapped up in their tinware. I'll see you at the main lower
starboard lock in ten minutes." He cut off and turned to an orderly. "Break out my G-P
cage for me, will you, Spike? And I'll want the 'copters—tell them to get hot."
     "But listen, Kim!" and "You can't do that, Kinnison!" came simultaneously from
Chief Pilot and Captain, neither of whom could leave the ship in such circumstances as
these. They, the vessel's two top officers, were bound to her; while the Lensman,
although ranking both of them, even aboard the ship, was not and could not be bound
by anything.
     "Sure I can—you fellows are just jealous, that's all," Kinnison retorted, cheerfully.
"I not only can, I've got to go with the Valerians. I need a lot of information, and I can't
read a dead man's brain—yet."
     While the storming party was assembling the Dauntless settled downward,
coming to rest in the already devastated section of the town, as close as possible to the
building in which the Boskonians had taken refuge.
     One hundred and two men disembarked: Kinnison, vanBuskirk, and the full
company of one hundred Valerians.
     Each of those space-fighting wild-cats measured seventy eight inches or more
from sole to crown; each was composed of four hundred or more pounds of the
fantastically powerful, rigid, and reactive brawn, bone, and sinew necessary for survival
upon a planet having a surface gravity almost three times that of small, feeble Terra.
     Because of the women held captive by the pirates, the Valerians carried no
machine rifles, no semi-portables, no heavy stuff at all; only their DeLameters and of
course their space-axes. A Valerian trooper without his space-axe? Unthinkable! A dire
weapon indeed, the space-axe. A combination and sublimation of battle-axe, mace,
bludgeon, and lumberman's picaroon; thirty pounds of hard, tough, space-tempered
alloy; a weapon of potentialities limited only by the physical strength and bodily agility of
its wielder. And vanBuskirk's Valerians had both—plenty of both. One-handed, with
simple flicks of his incredible wrist, the smallest Valerian of the Dauntless" boarding
party could manipulate his atrocious weapon as effortlessly as, and almost unbelievably
faster than, a fencing master handles his rapier or an orchestra conductor waves his
baton.
     With machine-like precision the Valerians fell in and strode away; vanBuskirk in
the lead, the helicopters hovering overhead, the Gray Lensman bringing up the rear.
Tall and heavy, strong and agile as he was—for a Tellurian—he had no business in that
front line, and no one knew that fact better than he did. The puniest Valerian of the
company could do in full armor a standing high jump of over fourteen feet against one
Tellurian gravity; and could dodge, feint, parry, and swing with a blinding speed starkly
impossible to any member of any of the physically lesser breeds of man.
     Approaching the building they spread out, surrounded it; and at a signal from a
helicopter that the ring was complete the assault began. Doors and windows were
locked, barred, and barricaded, of course; but what of that? A few taps of the axes and
a few blasts of the DeLameters took care of things very nicely; and through the
openings thus made there leaped, dove, rolled, or strode the space-black-and-silver
warriors of the Galactic Patrol. Valerians, than whom no fiercer race of hand to hand
fighters has ever been known—no bifurcate race, and but very few others, however built
or shaped, have ever willingly come to grips with" the armored axe-men of Valeria!
     Not by choice, then, but of necessity and in sheer desperation the pirates fought.
In the vicious beams of their portables the stone walls of the room glared a baleful red;
in spots even were pierced through. Old-fashioned pistols barked, spitting steel-jacketed
lead. But the G-P suits were screened against lethal beams by generators capable of
withstanding anything of lesser power than a semi-portable projector; G-P armor was
proof against any projectile possessing less energy than that hurled by the high-caliber
machine rifle. Thus the Boskonian beams splashed off the Valerians' screens in torrents
of man-made lightning and in pyrotechnic displays of multi-colored splendor, their
bullets ricocheted harmlessly as spent, mis-shapen blobs of metal.
     The Patrolmen did not even draw their DeLameters during their inexorable
advance. They knew that the pirates' armor was as capable as theirs, and the women
were not to die if death for them could possibly be avoided. As they advanced the
enemy fell back toward the center of the great room; holding there with the Lyranians
forming the outer ring of their roughly-circular formation; firing over the women's heads
and between their naked bodies.
     Kinnison did not want those women to die. It seemed, however, that die they
must, from the sheer, tremendous reflection from the Valerians' fiercely radiant screens,
if the Patrolmen persisted in their advance. He studied the enemy formation briefly, then
flashed an order.
     There ensued a startling and entirely unorthodox maneuver, one possible only to
the troopers mere at work, as at Kinnison's command every Valerian left the floor in a
prodigious leap. Over the women's heads, over the heads of the enemy; but in mid-leap,
as he passed over, each Patrolman swung his axe at a Boskonian helmet with all the
speed and all the power he could muster. Most of the enemy died then and there, for
the helmet has never been forged which is able to fend the beak of a space-axe driven
as each of those was driven. The fact that the Valerians were nine or ten feet off the
floor at the time made no difference whatever. They were space-fighters, trained to
handle themselves and their weapons in any position or situation; with or without
gravity, with or without even inertia.
     "You persons—run! Get out of here! SCRAM!" Kinnison fairly shouted the
thought as the Valerians left the floor, and the matriarchs obeyed—frantically. Through
doors and windows they fled, in all directions and at the highest possible speed.
     But in their enthusiasm to strike down the foe, not one of the Valerians had paid
any attention to the exact spot upon which he was to land; or, if he did, some one else
got there either first or just barely second. Besides, there was not room for them all in
the center of the ring, For seconds, therefore, confusion reigned and a boiler-works
clangor resounded for a mile around as a hundred and one extra-big and extra-heavy
men, a writhing, kicking, pulling tangle of armor, axes, and equipment, jammed into a
space which half their number would have filled over-full. Sulphurous Valerian profanity
and sizzling deep-space oaths blistered the very air as each warrior struggled madly to
right himself, to get one more crack at a pirate before somebody else beat him to it.
     During this terrific melee some of the pirates released their screens and
committed suicide. A few got out of the room, but not many. Nor far; the men in the
helicopters saw to that. They had needle-beams, powered from the Dauntless, which
went through the screens of personal armor as a knife goes through ripe cheese.
     "Save it, guys—hold everything!" Kinnison yelled as the tangled mass of
Valerians resolved itself into erect and warlike units. "No more axe-work—don't let them
kill themselves—catch them ALIVE!"
     They did so, quickly and easily. With the women out of the way, there was
nothing to prevent the Valerians from darting right up to the muzzles of the foes'
DeLameters. Nor could the enemy dodge, or run, half fast enough to get away.
Armored, shielded hands batted the weapons away— if an arm or leg broke in the
process, what the hell?—and the victim was held motionless until his turn came to face
the mind-reading Kinnison.
     Nothing. Nothing, flat, A string of zeros. And, bitterly silent, Kinnison led the way
back to the Dauntless. The men he wanted, the ones who knew anything, were the
ones who killed themselves, of course. Well, why not? In like case, officers of the Patrol
had undoubtedly done the same. The live ones didn't know where their planet was,
could give no picture even of where it lay in the galaxy, did not know where they were
going, nor why. Well, so what? Wasn't ignorance the prime characteristic of the bottom
layers of dictatorships everywhere? If they had known anything, they would have been
under compulsion to kill themselves, too, and would have done it.
     In his own room in the Dauntless his black mood lightened somewhat and he
called the Elder Person.
     "Helen of Troy? I suppose that the best thing we can. do now, for your peace of
mind, prosperity, well-being, et cetera, is to drill out of here as fast as Klono and
Noshabkeming will let us. Right?"
     "Why, I . . . you . . . um . . . that is . . ." The matriarch was badly flustered at the
Lensman's bald summation of her attitude. She did not want to agree, but she certainly
did not want these males around a second longer than was necessary.
     "Just as well say it, because it goes double for me—you can play it clear across
the board, Toots, that if I ever see you again it will be because I can't get out of it."
Then, to his chief pilot:
     "QX, Hen, give her the of—back to Tellus."

CHAPTER 7
Wide-Open N-Way

     Serenely the mighty Dauntless bored her way homeward through the ether, at
the easy touring blast—for her —of some eighty parsecs an hour. The engineers
inspected and checked their equipment, from instrument-needles to blast-nozzles;
relining, repairing, replacing anything and everything which showed any signs of wear or
strain because of what the big vessel had just gone through. Then they relaxed into
their customary routine of killing time—the games of a dozen planets and the vying with
each other in the telling of outrageously untruthful stories.
     The officers on watch lolled at ease in their cushioned seats, making much ado
of each tiny thing as it happened, even the changes of watch. The Valerians, as usual,
remained invisible in their own special quarters. There the gravity was set at twenty
seven hundred instead of at the Tellurian normal of nine hundred eighty, there the
atmospheric pressure was forty pounds to the square inch, there the temperature was
ninety six degrees Fahrenheit, and there vanBuskirk and his fighters lived and moved
and had their drills of fantastic violence and stress. They were irked less than any of the
others by monotony; being, as has been intimated previously, neither mental nor
intellectual giants.
     And Kinnison, mirror-polished gray boots stacked in all their majestic size upon a
corner of his desk, leaned his chair precariously backward and thought in black
concentration. It still didn't make any kind of sense. He had just enough
clues—fragments of clues—to drive a man nuts. Menjo Bleeko was the man he wanted.
On Lonabar. To find one was to find the other, but how in the steaming hells of Venus
was he going to find either of them? It might seem funny not to be able to find a thing as
big as a planet—but since nobody knew where it was, by fifty thousand parsecs, and
since there were millions and skillions and whillions of planets in the galaxy, a random
search was quite definitely out. Bleeko was a zwilnik, or tied in with zwilniks, of course;
but he could read a million zwilnik minds without finding, except by merest chance, one
having any contact with or knowledge of the Lonabarian.
     The Patrol had already scoured—fruitlessly—Aldebaran II for any sign, however
slight, pointing toward Lonabar. The planetographers had searched the files, the charts,
the libraries thoroughly. No Lonabar. Of course, they had suggested—what a
help!—they might know it under some other name. Personally, he didn't think so, since
no jeweler throughout the far-flung bounds of Civilization had as yet been found who
could recognize or identify any of the items he had described.
     Whatever avenue or alley of thought Kinnison started along, he always ended up
at the jewels and the girl. Illona, the squirrel-brained, romping, joyous little imp who by
now owned in fee simple half of the ship and nine-tenths of the crew. Why in Palain's
purple hells couldn't she have had a brain? How could anybody be dumb enough not to
know the galactic coordinates of their own planet? Not even to know anything that could
help locate it? But at that, she was probably about as smart as most—you couldn't
expect any other woman in the galaxy to have a mind like Mac's . . .
     For minutes, then, he abandoned his problem and reveled in visions of the
mental and physical perfections of his fiancee. But this was getting him nowhere, fast.
The girl or the jewels —which? They were the only real angles he had.
     He sent out a call for her, and in a few minutes she came swirling in. How
different she was from what she had been! Gone were the somberness, the dread, the
terror which had oppressed her; gone were the class-conscious inhibitions against
which she had been rebelling, however subconsciously, since childhood. Here she was
free! The boys were free, everybody was free! She had expanded
tremendously—unfolded. She was living as she had never dreamed it possible to live.
Each new minute was an adventure in itself. Her black eyes, once so dull, sparkled with
animation; radiated her sheer joy in living. Even her jet-black hair-seemed to have taken
on a new luster and gloss, in its every, precisely-arranged wavelet.
     "Hi, Lensman!" she burst out, before Kinnison could say a word or think a thought
in greeting. "I'm so glad you sent for me, because there's something I've been wanting
to ask you since yesterday. The boys are going to throw a blow-out, with all kinds of
stunts, and they want me to do a dance. QX, do you think?"
     "Sure. Why not?"
     "Clothes," she explained. "I told them I couldn't dance in a dress, and they said I
wasn't supposed to, that acrobats didn't wear dresses when they performed on Tellus,
that my regular clothes were just right. I said they were trying to string me and they
swore they weren't—said to ask the Old Man . . ." she broke off, two knuckles jammed
into her mouth, expressive eyes wide in sudden fright. "Oh, excuse me, sir," she
gasped. "I didn't. . ."
     " 'Smaller? What bit you?" Kinnison asked, then got it. "Oh —the 'Old Man', huh?
QX, angel-face, that's standard nomenclature in the Patrol. Not with you folks, though, I
take it?"
     "I'll say not," she breathed. She acted as though a catastrophe had been averted
by the narrowest possible margin. "Why, if anybody got caught even thinking such a
thing, the whole crew would go into the steamer that very minute. And if I would dare to
say 'Hi' to Menjo Bleeko . . . !" she shuddered.
     "Nice people," Kinnison commented.
     "But are you sure that the . . . that I'm not getting any of the boys into trouble?"
she pleaded. "For, after all, none of them ever dare call you that to your face, you
know."
     "You haven't been around enough yet," he assured her. "On duty, no; that's
discipline—necessary for efficiency. And I haven't hung around the wardrooms much of
late—been too busy. But at the party you'll be surprised at some of the things they call
me—if you happen to hear them. You've been practicing—keeping in shape?"
     "Uh-huh," she confessed. "In my room, with the spy-ray-block on."
     "Good. No need to hide, though, and no need to wear dresses any time you're
practicing—the boys were right on that. But what I called you in about is that I want you
to help me. Will you?"
     "Yes, sir. In anything I can—anything, sir," she answered, instantly.
     "I want you to give me every scrap of information you possibly can about
Lonabar; its customs and habits, its work and its play—everything, even its money and
its jewelry." This last apparently an after-thought. "To do so, you'll have to let me into
your mind of your own free will—you'll have to cooperate to the limit of your capability.
QX?"
     "That will be quite all right, Lensman," she agreed, shyly. "I know now that you
aren't going to hurt me."
     Illona did not like it at first, there was no question of that. And small wonder. It is
an intensely disturbing thing to have your mind invaded, knowingly, by another;
particularly when that other is the appallingly powerful mind of Gray Lensman Kimball
Kinnison. There were lots of things she did not want exposed, and the very effort not to
think of them brought them ever and ever more vividly to the fore. She squirmed
mentally and physically: her mind was for minutes a practically illegible turmoil. But she
soon steadied down and, as she got used to the new sensations, she went to work with
a will. She could not increase the planetographical knowledge which Kinnison had
already obtained from her, but she was a mine of information concerning Lonabars' fine
gems. She knew all about every one of them, with the completely detailed knowledge
one is all too apt to have of a thing long and intensely desired, but supposedly forever
out of reach.
     "Thanks, Illona." It was over; the Lensman knew as much as she did about
everything which had any bearing upon his quest. "You've helped a lot—now you can
flit."
     "I'm glad to help, sir, really—any time. I'll see you at the party, then, if not before."
Illona left the room in a far more subdued fashion than she had entered it. She had
always been more than half afraid of Kinnison; just being near him did things to her
which she did not quite like. And this last thing, this mind-searching interview, did not
operate to quiet her fears. It gave her the screaming meamies, no less!
     And Kinnison, alone in his room, started to call for a tight beam to Prime Base,
then changed his mind and Lensed a thought—gingerly and diffidently enough—to Port
Admiral Haynes.
     "Certainly I'm free!" came instant response. "To you, I'm free twenty four hours of
every day. Go ahead."
     "I want to try something that I don't know whether can be done or not. A wide-
open, Lens-to-Lens conference with all the Lensmen, especially all Unattached
Lensmen, who can be reached. Can it be done?"
     "Whew!" Haynes whistled. "I've been in such things up to a hundred or so . . . no
reason why it wouldn't work. Most of the people you want know me, and those who
don't can tune in through someone who does. If everybody tunes to me at the same
time, we'll all be en rapport with each other."
     "It's QX, then? The reason I. . ."
     "Skip it, son. No use explaining twice—I'll get it when the others do. I'll take care
of it. It'll take some little time. . . Would hour twenty, tomorrow, be soon enough?"
     "That'll be fine. Thanks a lot, chief."
     The next day dragged, even for the always-busy Kinnison. He prowled about,
aimlessly. He saw the spectacular Aldebaranian several times, noticing something
which tied in very nicely with a fact he had half-seen in the girl's own mind before he
could dodge it—that whenever she made a twosome with any man, the man was Henry
Henderson.
     "Blasted, Hen?" he asked, casually, when he came upon the pilot in a corner of a
ward-room, staring fixedly at nothing.
     "Out of the ether," Henderson admitted. "However, I haven't been making any
passes. No use telling you that, though."
     There wasn't. Unattached Lensmen, as well as being persons of supreme
authority, are supremely able mind-readers. Verbum sap.
     "I know you haven't" Then, answering the unasked question: "No, I haven't been
reading your mind. Nor anybody else's, except Illona's. I've read hers, up and down and
crosswise."
     "Oh . . . so you know, then . . . say, Kim, can I talk to you for a minute? Really
talk, I mean?"
     "Sure. On the Lens?"
     "That'd be better."
     "Here you are. About Illona, the beautiful Aldebaranian zwilnik, I suppose."
     "Don't, Kim." Henderson actually flinched, physically. "She isn't a zwilnik,
really—she can't be—I'd bet my last millo on that?"
     "Are you telling me or asking me?"
     "I don't know." Henderson hesitated. "I've been wanting to ask you . . . you've got
a lot of stuff we haven't, you know . . . whether she . . . I mean if I . . . Oh, hell! Kim, is
there any reason why I shouldn't. . . well, er . . . get married?"
     "Millions of reasons why you should, Hen. Everybody ought to."
     "Damnation, Kim! That isn't what I meant, and you know it!"
     "Think straight, then."
     "QX. Sir, would Unattached Lensman Kimball Kinnison approve of my marriage
to Illona Potter, if I've got jets enough to swing it?"
     Mighty clever, the Lensman thought. Since the men of the Patrol were
notoriously averse to going sloppy about it, he had wondered just how the pilot was
going to phrase his question. He had done it very neatly, by tossing the buck right back
at him. But he wouldn't go sloppy, either. This "untarnished-meteors-upon-the-collars-of-
our-heroes" stuff was QX for swivel-tongued spellbinders, but not for anybody else. So:
     "As far as I know—and I bashfully admit that I know it all —the answer is yes."
     "Great!" Henderson came to life with a snap. "Now, if . . . but I don't suppose
you'd . . ." the thought died away.
     'Til say I wouldn't. Unethical no end. I might cheat just a little bit, though. She
probably won't do much worse than beat your brains out with a two-inch spanner if you
ask her. And only about half of the twenty one hundred or so other guys aboard this
heap are laying awake nights trying to figure out ways of beating your time."
     "Huh? Those apes? Watch my jets!" Henderson strode away, doubts all resolved;
and Kinnison, seeing that hour twenty was very near, went to his own room.
     It is difficult for any ordinary mind to conceive of its being in complete accord with
any other, however closely akin. Consider, then, how utterly impossible it is to envision
that merging of a hundred thousand, or five hundred thousand, or a million—nobody
ever did know how many Lensmen tuned in that day—minds so utterly different that no
one human being can live long enough even to see each of the races there
represented! Probably less than half of them were even approximately human. Many
were not mammals, many were not warm-blooded. Not all, by far, were even oxygen-
breathers— oxygen, to many of those races, was sheerest poison. Nevertheless, they
had much in common. All were intelligent; most of them very highly so; and all were
imbued with the principles of freedom and equality for which Galactic Civilization stood
and upon which it was fundamentally based.
     That meeting was staggering, even to Kinnison's mind. It was appalling—yet it
was ultimately thrilling, too. It was one of the greatest, one of the most terrific thrills of
the Lensman's long life.
     "Thanks, fellows, for coming in," he began simply. "I will make my message very
short. As Haynes may have told you, I am Kinnison of Tellus. It will help greatly in
locating the head of the Boskonian culture if I can find a certain planet, known to me
only by the name of Lonabar. Its people are human beings to the last decimal; its rarest
jewels are these," and he spread in the collective mind a perfect, exactly detailed and
pictured description of the gems. "Does any one of you know of such a planet? Has any
one of you ever seen a stone like any of these?"
     A pause—a heart-breakingly long pause. Then a faint, soft, diffident thought
appeared; appeared as though seeping slowly from a single cell of that incredibly linked,
million-fold-composite Lensman's BRAIN.
     "I waited to be sure that no one else would speak, as my information is very
meager, and unsatisfactory, and old," the thought apologized.
     Kinnison started, but managed to conceal his surprise from the linkage. That
thought, so diamond-clear, so utterly precise, must have come from a Second-Stage
Lensman—and since it was neither Worsel nor Tregonsee, there must be another one
he had never heard of!
     "Whatever its nature, any information at all is very welcome," Kinnison replied,
without perceptible pause. "Who is speaking, please?"
     "Nadreck of Palain VII, Unattached. Many cycles ago I secured, and still have in
my possession, a crystal—or rather, a fragment of a super-cooled liquid—like one of the
red gems you showed us; the one having practically all its transmittance in a very
narrow band centering at point seven zero zero."
     "But you do not know what planet it came from—is that it?"
     "Not exactly," the soft thought went on. "I saw it upon its native planet, but
unfortunately I do not now know just what or where that planet was. We were exploring
at the time, and had visited many planets. Not being interested in any world having an
atmosphere of oxygen, we paused but briefly, nor did we map it. I was interested in the
fusion because of its peculiar filtering effect. A scientific curiosity merely."
     "Could you find that planet again?"
     "By checking back upon the planets we did map, and by retracing our route, I
should be able to—yes, I am certain that I can do so."
     "And when Nadreck of Palain VII admits to being certain of anything," another
thought appeared, "nothing in the macrocosmic universe is more certain."
     "I thank you, Twenty Four of Six, for the expression of confidence."
     "And I thank both of you particularly, as well as all of you collectively," Kinnison
broadcast. Intelligences by the millions broke away from the linkage. As soon as the two
were alone:
     "You're Second Stage, aren't you?"
     "Yes. I felt a need. I was too feeble. A certain project was impossible, since it was
so dangerous as to involve a distinct possibility of personal harm. Therefore Mentor
gave me advanced treatment, to render me somewhat less feeble than I theretofore
was."
     "I see."
     Kinnison didn't see, at all, since this was his first contact with a Palainian mind.
Who ever heard of a Lensman refusing a job because of personal risk? Lensmen
always went in . . . no matter how scared he was, of course he went in . . . that was the
Code . . . human Lensmen, that is . . . There were a lot of things he didn't know, and
other races could be—must be—different. He was astounded that there could be that
much difference; but after all, since the guy was an L2, he certainly had enough of what
it took to more than make up for any lacks. How did he know how short of jets he
himself looked, in the minds of other Second Stage Lensmen? These thoughts flashed
through his mind, behind his impervious shield, and after only the appropriate slight
pause his thought went smoothly on:
     "I had known of only Worsel of Velantia and Tregonsee of Rigel Four, besides
myself. I don't need to tell you how terrifically glad I am that there are four of us instead
of three. But at the moment the planet Lonabar is, I believe, more important to my job
than anything else in existence. You will map it for me, and send the data to me at
Prime Base?"
     "I will map the planet and will myself bring the data to you at Prime Base. Do you
want some of the gems, also?"
     "I don't think so." Kinnison thought swiftly. "No, better not. They'll be harder to get
now, and it might tip our hand too much. I'll get them myself, later. Will you inform me,
through Haynes, when to expect you?"
     "I will so inform you. I will proceed at once, with speed." "Thanks a million,
Nadreck—clear ether!" The ship sped on, and as it sped Kinnison continued to think. He
attended the "blowout". Ordinarily he would have been right in the thick of it; but this
time, young though he was and enthusiastic, he simply could not tune in. Nothing fitted,
and until he could see a picture that made some kind of sense he could not let go. He
listened to the music with half an ear, he watched the stunts with only half an eye.
     He forgot his problem for a while when, at the end, Illona Potter danced. For
Lonabarian acrobatic dancing is not like the Tellurian art of the same name. Or rather, it
is like it, except more so—much more so. An earthly expert would be scarcely a novice
on Lonabar, and Illona was a Lonabarian expert. She had been training, intensively, all
her life, and even in Lonabar's chill social and psychological environment she had loved
her work. Now, reveling as she was in the first realization of liberty of thought and of
person, and inspired by the heart-felt applause of the space-hounds so closely packed
into the hall, she put on something more than an exhibition of coldly impersonal skill and
limberness. And the feelings, both of performer and of spectators, were intensified by
the fact that, of all the repertoire of the Dauntless1 superb orchestra, Illona liked best to
dance to the stirring strains of "Our Patrol". "Our Patrol", which any man who has ever
worn the space-black-and-silver will say is the greatest, grandest, most glorious, most
terrific piece of music that ever was or ever will be written, played, or sung! Small
wonder, then, that the dancer really "gave"; or that the mighty cruiser's walls almost
bulged under the applause of Illona's "boys" at the end of her first number.
     They kept her at it until the captain stopped it, to keep the girl from killing herself.
"She's worn down to a nub," he declared, and she was. She was trembling. She was
panting, her almost-lacquered-down hair stood out in wild disorder. Her eyes were
starry with tears—happy tears. Then the ranking officers made short speeches of
appreciation and the spectators carried the actors—actual carrying, in Illona's case,
upon an improvised throne—off for refreshments.
     Back in his quarters, Kinnison tackled his problem again. He could work out
something on Lonabar now, but what about Lyrane? It tied in, too—there was an angle
there, somewhere. To get it, though, somebody would have to get close to —really
friendly with—the Lyranians. Just looking on from the outside wouldn't do. Somebody
they could trust and would confide in—and they were so damnably, so fanatically non-
cooperative! A man couldn't get a millo's worth of real information—he could read any
one mind by force, but he'd never get the right one. Neither could Worsel or Tregonsee
or any other non-human Lensman; the Lyranians just simply didn't have the galactic
viewpoint. No, what he wanted was a human woman Lensman, and there weren't any . .
.
     At the thought he gasped; the pit of his stomach felt cold. Mac! She was more
than half Lensman already—she was the only un-Lensed human being who had ever
been able to read his thoughts . . . But he didn't have the gall, the sheer, brazen crust,
to shove a load like that onto her . . . or did he? Didn't the job come first? Wouldn't she
be big enough to see it that way? Sure she would! As to what Haynes and the rest of
the Lensmen would think . . . let them think! In this, he had to make his own decisions . .
.
     He couldn't. He sat there for an hour; teeth locked until his jaws ached, fists
clenched.
     "I can't make that decision alone," he breathed, finally. "Not jets enough by half,"
and he shot a thought to distant Arisia and Mentor the Sage.
     "This intrusion is necessary," he thought coldly, precisely. "It seems to me to be
wise to do this thing which has never before been done. I have no data, however, upon
which to base a decision and the matter is grave. I ask, therefore—is it wise?"
     "You do not ask as to repercussions—consequences, either to yourself or to the
woman?"
     "I ask what I asked."
     "Ah, Kinnison of Tellus, you truly grow. You at last learn to think. It is wise," and
the telepathic link snapped.
     Kinnison slumped down in relief. He had not known what to expect. He would not
have been surprised if the Arisian had pinned his ears back; he certainly did not expect
either the compliment or the clear-cut answer. He knew that Mentor would give him no
help whatever in any problem which he could possibly solve alone; he was just
beginning to realize that the Arisian would aid him in matters which were absolutely,
intrinsically, beyond his reach.
     Recovering, he flashed a call to Surgeon-Marshal Lacy.
     "Lacy? Kinnison. I would like to have Sector Chief Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall
detached at once. Please have her report to me here aboard the Dauntless, en route, at
the earliest possible moment of rendezvous."
     "Huh? What? You can't . . . you wouldn't . . ." the old Lensman gurgled.
     "No, I wouldn't. The whole Corps will know it soon enough, so I might as well tell
you now. I'm going to make a" Lensman out of her."
     Lacy exploded then, but Kinnison had expected that.
     "Seal it!" he counseled, sharply. "I'm not doing it entirely on my own—Mentor of
Arisia made the final decision. Prefer charges against me if you like, but in the
meantime please do as I request."
     And that was that.

CHAPTER 8
Cartiff the Jeweler

     Few hours before the time of rendezvous with the cruiser which was bringing
Clarrissa out to him, the detectors picked up a vessel whose course, it proved, was set
to intersect their own. A minute or so later a sharp, clear thought came through
Kinnison's Lens.
     "Kim? Raoul. Been flitting around out Arisia way, and they called me in and
asked me to bring you a package. Said you'd be expecting it. QX?"
     "Hi, Spacehound! QX." Kinnison had very decidedly not been expecting it — he
had been intending to do the best he could without it — but he realized instantly, with a
thrill of gladness, what it was. "Inert? Or can't you stay?"
     "Free. Got to make a rendezvous. Can't take time to inert — that is, if you'll inert
the thing in your cocoon. Don't want it to hole out on you, though."
     "Can do. Free it is. Pilot room! Prepare for inertialess contact with vessel
approaching. Magnets. Messenger coming aboard — free."
     The two speeding vessels flashed together, at all their unimaginable velocities,
without a thump or jar. Magnetic clamps locked and held. Airlock doors opened, shut,
opened; and at the inner port Kinnison met Raoul LaForge, his classmate through the
four years at Wentworth Hall. Brief but hearty greetings were exchanged, but the visitor
could not stop. Lensmen are busy men.
     "Fine seeing you, Kim — be sure and inert the thing — clear ether!"
     "Same to you, ace. Sure I will — think I want to vaporize half of my ship?"
     Indeed, inerting the package was the Lensman's first care, for in the free
condition it was a frightfully dangerous thing. Its intrinsic velocity was that of Arisia,
while the ship's was that of Lyrane II. They might be forty or fifty miles per second apart;
and if the Dauntless should go inert that harmless-looking package would instantly
become a meteorite inside the ship. At the thought of that velocity he paused. The
cocoon would stand it—but would the Lens? Oh, sure, Mentor knew what was coming;
the Lens would be packed to stand it Kinnison wrapped the package in heavy gauze,
then in roll after roll of spring-steel mesh. He jammed heavy steel springs into the ends,
then clamped the whole thing into a form with high-alloy bolts an inch in diameter. He
poured in two hundred pounds of metallic mercury, filling the form to the top. Then a
cover, also bolted on. This whole assembly went into the "cocoon", a cushioned,
heavily-padded affair suspended from all four walls, ceiling, and floor by every shock-
absorbing device known to the engineers of the Patrol.
     The Dauntless incited briefly at Kinnison's word and it seemed as though a troop
of elephants were running silently amuck in the cocoon room. The package to be
inerted weighed no more than eight ounces—but eight ounces of mass, at a relative
velocity of fifty miles per second, possesses a kinetic energy by no means to be
despised.
     The frantic lurchings and bouncings subsided, the cruiser resumed her free flight,
and the man undid all that he had done. The Arisian package looked exactly as before,
but it was harmless now; it had the same intrinsic velocity as did everything else aboard
the vessel.
     Then the Lensman pulled on a pair of insulating gloves and opened the package;
finding, as he had expected, that the packing material was a dense, viscous liquid. He
poured it out and there was the Lens—Cris's Lens! He cleaned it carefully, then
wrapped it in heavy insulation. For of all the billions of unnumbered billions of living
entities in existence, Clarrissa MacDougall was the only one whose flesh could touch
that apparently innocuous jewel with impunity. Others could safely touch it while she
wore it, while it glowed with its marvelously polychromatic cold flame; but until she wore
it and unless she wore it its touch meant death to any life to which it was not attuned.
     Shortly thereafter another Patrol cruiser hove in sight. This meeting, however,
was to be no casual one, for the nurse could not be inerted from the free state in the
Dauntless" cocoon. No such device ever built could stand it—and those structures are
stronger far than is the human frame. Any adjustment which even the hardest, toughest
spacehound can take in a cocoon is measured in feet per second, not in miles.
     Hundreds of miles apart, the ships inerted and their pilots fought with supreme
skill to make the two intrinsics match. And even so the vessels did not touch, even
nearly. A space-line was thrown; the nurse and her space-roll were quite
unceremoniously hauled aboard.
     Kinnison did not meet her at the airlock, but waited for her in his con room; and
the details of that meeting will remain unchronicled. They were young, they had not
seen each other for a long time, and they were very much in love. It is evident,
therefore, that Patrol affairs were not the first matters to be touched upon. Nor, if the
historian has succeeded even partially in portraying truly the characters of the two
persons involved, is it either necessary or desirable to go at any length into the
argument they had as to whether or not she should be inducted so cavalierly into a
service from which her sex had always, automatically, been barred. He did not want to
make her carry that load, but he had to; she did not—although for entirely different
reasons—want to take it.
     He shook out the Lens and, holding it in a thick-folded corner of the insulating
blanket, flicked one of the girl's fingertips across the bracelet. Satisfied by the fleeting
flash of color which swept across the jewel, he snapped the platinum-iridium band
around her left wrist, which it fitted exactly.
     She stared for a minute at the smoothly, rhythmically flowing colors of the thing
so magically sprung to life upon her wrist; awe and humility in her glorious eyes. Then:
     "I can't,. Kim. I simply can't. I'm not worthy of it," she choked.
     "None of us are, Cris. We can't be—but we've got to do it, just the same."
     "I suppose that's true—it would be so, of course . . . I'll do my best. . . but you
know perfectly well, Kim, that I'm not —can't ever be—a real Lensman."
     "Sure you can. Do we have to go over all that again? You won't have some of the
technical stuff that we got, of course, but you carry jets that no other Lensman ever has
had. You're a real Lensman; don't worry about that—if you weren't, do you think they
would have made that Lens for you?"
     "I suppose not . . . it must be true, even though I can't understand it. But I'm
simply scared to death of the rest of it, Kim."
     "You needn't be. It'll hurt, but not more than you can stand. Don't think we'd
better start that stuff for a few days yet, though; not until you get used to using your
Lens. Coming at you, Lensman!" and he went into Lens-to-Lens communication,
broadening it gradually into a wide-open two-way. She was appalled at first, but
entranced some thirty minutes later, when he called the lesson to a halt.
     "Enough for now," he decided. "It doesn't take much of that stuff to be a great
plenty, at first."
     "I'll say it doesn't," she agreed. "Put this away for me until next time, will you,
Kim? I don't want to wear it all the time until I know more about it."
     "Fair enough. In the meantime I want you to get acquainted with a new girl-friend
of mine," and he sent out a call for Illona Potter. "Girl-friend!"
     "Uh-huh. Study her. Educational no end, and she may be important. Want to
compare notes with you on her later, is why I'm not giving you any advance dope on
her—here she comes."
     "Mac, this is Illona," he introduced them informally. "I told them to give you the
cabin next to hers," he added, to the nurse. "I'll go with you to be sure everything's on
the green." It was, and the Lensman left the two together. "I'm awfully glad you're here,"
Illona said, shyly. "I've heard so much about you, Miss . . ."
     " 'Mac' to you, my dear—all my friends call me that," the nurse broke in. "And you
don't want to believe everything you hear, especially aboard this space-bucket." Her lips
smiled, but her eyes were faintly troubled.
     "Oh, it was nice," Illona assured her. "About what a grand person you are, and
what a wonderful couple you and Lensman Kinnison make—why, you really are in love
with him, aren't you?" This in surprise, as she studied the nurse's face. "Yes,"
unequivocally. "And you love him, too, and that makes it. . ."
     "Good heavens, no!" the Aldebaranian exclaimed, so positively that Clarrissa
jumped.
     "What? You don't? Really?" Gold-flecked, tawny eyes stared intensely into
engagingly candid eyes of black. The nurse wished then that she had left her Lens on,
so she could tell whether this bejeweled brunette hussy was telling the truth or not.
     "Certainly not. That's what I meant—I'm simply scared to death of him. He's so . .
. well, so overpowering—he's so much more—tremendous—than I am. I didn't see how
any girl could possibly love him—but I understand now how you could, perhaps. You're
sort of—terrific—yourself, you know. I feel as though I ought to call you 'Your
Magnificence' instead of just plain 'Mac'."
     "Why, I'm no such thing!" Clarrissa exclaimed; but she softened noticeably, none
the less. "And I think that I'm going to like you a lot."
     "Oh . . . h . . . h—honestly?" Illona squealed. "It sounds too good to be true,
you're so marvelous. But if you do, I think that Civilization will be everything that I've
been afraid—so afraid—that it couldn't possibly be!"
     No longer was it a feminine Lensman investigating a female zwilnik; it was two
girls—two young, intensely alive, human girls—who chattered on and on.
     Days passed. Clarrissa learned some of the uses of her Lens. Then Kimball
Kinnison, Second-Stage Lensman, began really to bear down. Since such training has
been described in detail elsewhere, it need be said here only that Clarrissa MacDougall
had mental capacity enough to take it without becoming insane. He suffered as much as
she did; after every mental bout he was as spent as she was; but both of them stuck
relentlessly to it.
     He did not make a Second Stage Lensman of her, of course. He couldn't. Much
of the stuff was too hazy yet; more of it did not apply. He gave her everything, however,
which she could handle and which would be of any use to her in the work she was to
do; including the sense of perception. He did it, that is, with a modicum of help; for, once
or twice, when he faltered or weakened, not knowing exactly what to do or not being
quite able to do it, a stronger mind than his was always there.
     At length, approaching Tellus fast, the nurse and Kinnison had a final
conference; the consultation of two Lensmen settling the last details of procedure in a
long-planned and highly important campaign.
     "I agree with you that Lyrane II is a key planet," she was saying, thoughtfully. "It
must be, to have those .expeditions from Lonabar and the as yet unknown planet 'X'
centering there."
     " 'X' certainly, and don't forget the possibility of 'Y' and 'Z' and maybe others," he
reminded her. "The Lyrane-Lonabar linkage is the only one we're sure of. With you on
one end of that and me on the other, it'll be funny if we can't trace out some more. While
I'm building up an authentic identity to tackle Bleeko, you'll be getting chummy with
Helen of Lyrane. That's about as far ahead as we can plan definitely right now, since
this groundwork can't be hurried too much."
     "And I report to you often—frequently, in fact." Clarrissa widened her expressive
eyes at her man.
     "At least," he agreed. "And I'll report to you between times."
     "Oh, Kim, it's nice, being a Lensman!" She snuggled closer. Some way or other,
the conference had become somewhat personal. "Being en rapport will be almost as
good as being together—we can stand it, that way, at least."
     "It'll help a lot, ace, no fooling. That was why I was afraid to go ahead with it on
my own hook. I couldn't be sure that my feelings were not in control, instead of my
judgment—if any."
     "I'd have been certain that it was your soft heart instead of your hard head if it
hadn't been for Mentor," she sighed, happily. "As it is, though, everything's on the
green."
     "All done with Illona?"
     "Yes, the darling . . . she's the sweetest thing, Kim . . . and a storehouse of
information if there ever was one. You and I know more of Boskonian life than anyone
of Civilization ever knew before, I'm sure. And it's so ghastly! We must win, Kim . . . we
simply must, for the good of all creation!"
     "We will." Kinnison spoke with grim finality.
     "But back to Illona. She can't go with me, and she can't stay here with Hank
aboard the Dauntless taking me back to Lyrane, and you can't watch her. I'd hate to
think of anything happening to her, Kim."
     "It won't," he replied, comfortably. "Ilyowicz won't sleep nights until he has her as
the top-flight solo dancer in his show—even though she doesn't have to work for a living
any more . . ."
     "She will, though, I think. Don't you?"
     "Probably. Anyway, a couple of Haynes' smart girls are going to be her best
friends, wherever she goes. Sort of keep an eye on her until she learns the ropes—it
won't take long. We owe her that much, I figure."
     "That much, at least. You're seeing to the selling of her jewelry yourself, aren't
you?"
     "No, I had a new thought on that. I'm going to buy it myself—or rather, Cartiff is.
They're making up a set of paste imitations. Cartiff has to buy a stock somewhere; why
not hers?"
     "That's a thought—there's certainly enough of them to stock a wholesaler . . .
'Caitiff—I can see that sign," she snickered. "Almost microscopic letters, severely plain,
in the lower right-hand corner of an immense plate-glass window. One gem in the
middle of an acre of black velvet. Cartiff, the most peculiar, if not quite the most
exclusive, jeweler in the galaxy. And nobody except you and me knows anything about
him. Isn't that something?"
     "Everybody will know about Cartiff pretty soon," he told her. "Found any flaws in
the scheme yet?"
     "Nary a flaw." She shook her head. "That is, if none of the boys over-do it, and
I'm sure they won't. I've got a picture of it," and she giggled merrily. "Think of a whole
gang of sleuths from the Homicide Division chasing poor Cartiff, and never quite
catching him!"
     "Uh-huh—a touching picture indeed. But there goes the signal, and there's
Tellus. We're about to land."
     "Oh, I want to see!" and she started to get up.
     "Look, then," pulling her down into her original place at his side. "You've got the
sense of perception now, remember; you don't need visiplates."
     And side by side, arms around each other, the two Lensmen watched the
docking of their great vessel.
     It landed. Jewelers came aboard with their carefully-made wares. Assured that
the metal would not discolor her skin, Illona made the exchange willingly enough. Beads
were beads, to her. She could scarcely believe that she was now independently
wealthy—in fact, she forgot all about her money after Ilyowicz had seen her dance.
     "You see," she explained to Kinnison, "there were two things I wanted to do until
Hank gets back—travel around a lot and, learn all I can about your Civilization. I wanted
to dance, too, but I didn't see how I could. Now I can do all three, and get paid for doing
them besides—isn't that marvelous?—and Mr. Ilyowicz said you said it was QX. Is it,
really?"
     "Right," and Illona was off.
     The Dauntless was serviced and Clarrissa was off, to far Lyrane.
     Lensman Kinnison was supposedly off somewhere, also, when Caitiff appeared.
Cartiff, the ultra-ultra; the Oh! so exclusive! Cartiff did not advertise. He catered, word
spread fast, to only the very upper flakes of the upper crust. Simple dignity was Caitiff's
key-note, his insidiously-spread claim; the dignified simplicity of immense wealth and
impeccable social position.
     What he actually achieved, however, was something subtly different. His
simplicity was. just a hair off-beam; his dignity was an affected, not a natural, quality.
Nobody with less than a million credits ever got past his door, it is true. However,
instead of being the real creme de la creme of Earth, Caitiffs clients were those who
pretended to belong to, or who were trying to force an entrance into, that select stratum.
Cartiff was a snob of snobs; he built up a clientele of snobs; and, even more than in his
admittedly flawless gems, he dealt in equally high-proof snobbery.
     Betimes came Nadreck, the Second Stage Lensman of Palain VII, and Kinnison
met him secretly at Prime Base. Soft-voiced, apologetic, diffident; even though Kinnison
now knew that the Palainian had a record of accomplishment as long as any one of his
arms. But it was not an act, not affectation. It was simply a racial trait, for the intelligent
and civilized race of that planet is in no sense human. Nadreck was utterly, startlingly
unhuman. In his atmosphere there was no oxygen, in his body there flowed no aqueous
blood. At his normal body temperature neither liquid water nor gaseous oxygen could
exist.
     The seventh planet out from any sun would of course be cold, but Kinnison had
not thought particularly about the point until he felt the bitter radiation from the heavily-
insulated suit of his guest; perceived how fiercely its refrigerators were laboring to keep
its internal temperature down.
     "If you will permit it, please, I will depart at once," Nadreck pleaded, as soon as
he had delivered his spool and his message. "My heat dissipators, powerful though they
are, cannot cope much longer with this frightfully high temperature."
     "QX, Nadreck, I won't keep you. Thanks a million. I'm mighty glad to have had
this chance of getting acquainted with you. We'll see more of each other, I think, from
now on. Remember, Lensman's Seal on all this stuff."
     "Of course, Kinnison. You will understand, however, I am sure, that none of our
races of Civilization are even remotely interested in Lonabar—it is as hot, as poisonous,
as hellish generally as is Tellus itself!" The weird little monstrosity scuttled out.
     Kinnison went back to Cartiff's; and very soon thereafter it became noised abroad
that Cartiff was a crook. He was a cheat, a liar, a robber. His stones were synthetic; he
made them himself. The stories grew. He was a smuggler; he didn't have an honest
gem hi his shop. He was a zwilnik, an out-and-out pirate; a red-handed murderer who, if
he wasn't there already, certainly ought to be in the big black book of the Galactic
Patrol. This wasn't just gossip, either; everybody saw and spoke to men who had seen
unspeakable things with their own eyes.
     Thus Cartiff was arrested. He blasted his way out, however, before he could be
brought to trial, and the newscasters blazed with that highly spectacular, murderous jail-
break. Nobody actually saw any lifeless bodies. Everybody, however, saw the Telenews
broadcasts of the shattered walls and the sheeted forms; and, since such pictures are
and always have been just as convincing as the real thing, everybody knew that there
had been plenty of mangled corpses in those ruins and that Cartiff was a fugitive
murderer. Also, everybody knew that the Patrol never gives up on a murderer.
     Hence it was natural enough that the search for Cartiff, the jeweler-murderer,
should spread from planet to planet and from region to region. Not exactly obtrusively,
but inexorably, it did so spread; until finally anyone interested in the subject could find
upon any one of a hundred million planets unmistakable evidence that the Patrol
wanted one Cartiff, description so-and-so, for murder in the first degree.
     And the Patrol was thorough. Wherever Cartiff went or how, they managed to
follow him. At first he disguised himself, changed his name, and stayed in the legitimate
jewelry business; apparently the only business he knew. But he never could get even a
start. Scarcely would his shop open than he would be discovered and forced again to
flee.
     Deeper and deeper he went, then, into the noisome society of crime. A fence
now—still and always he clung to jewelry. But always and ever the bloodhounds of the
law were baying at his heels. Whatever name he used was nosed aside and "Cartiff!"
they howled; so loudly that a thousand million worlds came to know that hated name.
     Perforce he became a traveling fence, always on the go. He flew a dead-black
ship, ultra-fast, armed and armored like a super-dreadnought, crewed—according to the
newscasts—by the hardest-boiled gang of cut-throats in the known universe. He traded
in, and boasted of trading in, the most blood-stained, the most ghost-ridden gems of a
thousand worlds. And, so trading, hurling defiance the while into the teeth of the Patrol,
establishing himself ever more firmly as one of Civilization's cleverest and most
implacable foes, he worked zig-zag-wise and not at all obviously toward the unexplored
spiral arm in which the planet Lonabar lay. And as he moved farther and farther away
from the Solarian System his stock of jewels began to change. He had always favored
pearls—the lovely, glorious things so characteristically Tellurian—and those he kept.
The diamonds, however, he traded away; likewise the emeralds, the rubies, the
sapphires, and some others. He kept and accumulated Borovan fire-stones, Manarkan
star-drops, and a hundred other gorgeous gems, none of which would be "beads" upon
the planet which was his goal.
     As he moved farther he also moved faster; the Patrol was hopelessly
outdistanced. Nevertheless, he took no chances. His villainous crew guarded his ship;
his bullies guarded him wherever he went—surrounding him when he walked, standing
behind him while he ate, sitting at either side of the bed in which he slept. He was a
king-snipe now.
     As such he was accosted one evening as he was about to dine in a garish
restaurant. A tall, somewhat fish-faced man in faultless evening dress approached. His
arms were at his sides, fingers bent into the "I'm not shooting" sign.
     "Captain Cartiff, I believe. May I seat myself at your table, please?" the stranger
asked, politely, in the lingua franca of deep space.
     Kinnison's sense of perception frisked him rapidly for concealed weapons. He
was clean. "I would be very happy, sir, to have you as my guest," he replied,
courteously.
     The stranger sat down, unfolded his napkin, and delicately allowed it to fall into
his lap, all without letting either of his hands disappear from sight, even for an instant,
beneath the table's top. He was an old and skillful hand. And during the excellent meal
the two men conversed brilliantly upon many topics, none of which were of the least
importance. After it Kinnison paid the check, despite the polite protestations of his vis-a-
vis. Then:
     "I am simply a messenger, you will understand, nothing else," the guest
observed. "Number One has been checking up on you and has decided to let you come
in. He will receive you tonight. The usual safeguards on both sides, of course— I am to
be your guide and guarantee."
     "Very kind of him, I'm sure." Kinnison's mind raced. Who could this Number One
be? The ape had a thought-screen1 on, so he was flying blind. Couldn't be a real big
shot, though, so soon—no use monkeying with him at all. "Please convey my thanks,
but also my regrets."
     "What?" the other demanded. His veneer of politeness had sloughed off, his eyes
were narrow, keen, and cold. "You know what happens to independent operators
around here, don't you? Do you think you can fight us?"
     "Not fight you, no." The Lensman elaborately stifled a yawn. He now had a clue.
"Simply ignore you—if you act up, squash you like bugs, that's all. Please tell your
Number One that I do not split my take with anybody. Tell him also that I am looking for
a choicer location to settle down upon than any I have found as yet. If I do not find such
a place near here, I shall move on. If I do find it I shall take it, in spite of God, man, or
the devil."
     The stranger stood up, glaring hi quiet fury, but with both hands still above the
table. "You want to make it a war, then, Captain Cartiff!" he gritted.
     "Not 'Captain' Cartiff, please," Kinnison begged, dipping one paw delicately into
his finger-bowl. " 'Cartiff' merely, my dear fellow, if you don't mind. Simplicity, sir, and
dignity; those two are my key-words."
     "Not for long," prophesied the other. "Number One'll blast you out of the ether
before you swap another stone."
     "The Patrol has been trying to do that for some time now, and I'm still here,"
Kinnison reminded him, gently. "Caution him, please, in order to avoid bloodshed, not to
come after me in only one ship, but a fleet; and suggest that he have something hotter
than Patrol primaries before he tackles me at all."
     Surrounded by his bodyguards, Kinnison left the restaurant, and as he walked
along he reflected. Nice going, this. It would get around fast. This Number One couldn't
be Bleeko; but the king-snipe of Lonabar and its environs would hear the news in short
order. He was now ready to go. He would flit around a few more days—give this bunch
of zwilniks a chance to make a pass at him if they felt like calling his bluff —then on to
Lonabar.

CHAPTER 9
Cartiff the Fence

     Kinnison did not walk far, nor reflect much, before he changed his mind and
retraced his steps; finding the messenger still in the restaurant.
     "So you got wise to yourself and decided to crawl while the crawling's good, eh?"
he sneered, before the Lensman could say a word. "I don't know whether the offer is still
good or not."
     "No—and I advise you to muffle your exhaust before somebody pulls one of your
legs off and rams it down your throat." Kinnison's voice was coldly level. "I came back to
tell you to tell your Number One that I'm calling his bluff. You know Checuster?"
     "Of course." The zwilnik was plainly discomfited.
     "Come along, then, and listen, so you'll know I'm not running a blazer."
     They sought a booth, wherein the native himself got Checuster on the visiplate.
     "Checuster, this is Cartiff." The start of surprise and the expression of pleased
interest revealed how well that name was known. "I'll be down at your old warehouse
day after tomorrow night about this time. Pass the word around that if any of the boys
have any stuff too hot for them to handle conveniently, I'D buy it; paying for it in either
Patrol credits or bar platinum, whichever they like."
     He then turned to the messenger. "Did you get that straight, Lizard-Puss?"
     The man nodded.
     "Relay it to Number One," Kinnison ordered and strode off. This time he got to
his ship, which took off at once.
     Cartiff had never made a habit of wearing visible arms, and his guards, while
undoubtedly fast gun-men, were apparently only that. Therefore there was no reason for
Number One to suppose that his mob would have any noteworthy difficulty in cutting
this upstart Cartiff down. He was, however, surprised; for Cartiff did not come afoot or
unarmed.
     Instead, it was an armored car that brought the intruding fence through the truck-
entrance into the old warehouse. Not a car, either; it was more like a twenty-ton tank
except for the fact that it ran upon wheels, not treads. It was screened like a cruiser; it
mounted a battery of projectors whose energies, it was clear to any discerning eye,
nothing short of battle-screen could handle. The thing rolled quietly to a stop, a door
swung open, and Kinnison emerged. He was neither unarmed nor unarmored now.
Instead, he wore a full suit of G-P armor or a reasonable facsimile thereof, and carried a
semi-portable projector.
     "You will excuse the seeming discourtesy, men," he announced, "when I tell you
that a certain Number One has informed me that he will blast me out of the ether before
I swap a stone on this planet. Stand clear, please, until we see whether he meant
business or was just warming up his jets. Now, Number One, if you're around, come
and get it!"
     Apparently the challenged party was not present, for no overt move was made.
Neither could Kinnison's sense of perception discover any sign of unfriendly activity
within its range. Of mind-reading there was none, for every man upon the floor was, as
usual, both masked and screened.
     Business was slack at first, for those present were not bold souls and the
Lensman's overwhelmingly superior armament gave them very seriously to doubt his
intentions. Many of them, in fact, had fled precipitately at the first sight of the armored
truck, and of these more than a few—Number One's thugs, no doubt—did not return.
The others, however, came filtering back as they perceived that there was to be no
warfare and as cupidity overcame their timorousness. And as it became evident to all
that the stranger's armament was for defense only, that he was there to buy or to barter
and not to kill and thus to steal, Cartiff trafficked ever more and more briskly, as the
evening wore on, in the hottest gems of the planet.
     Nor did he step out of character for a second. He was Cartiff the fence, all the
time. He drove hard bargains, but not too hard. He knew jewels thoroughly by this time,
he knew the code, and he followed it rigorously. He would give a thousand Patrol
credits, in currency good upon any planet of Civilization or in bar platinum good
anywhere, for an article worth five thousand, but which was so badly wanted by the law
that its then possessor could not dispose of it at all.
     Or, in barter, he would swap for that article another item, worth fifteen hundred or
so, but which was not hot—at least, not upon that planet. Fair enough—so fair that it
was almost morning before the silently-running truck slid into its storage inside the
dead-black space-ship.
     Then, insofar as Number One, the Patrol, and Civilization was concerned, Cartiff
and his outfit simply vanished. The zwilnik sub-chief hunted him viciously for a space,
then bragged of how he had run him out of the region. The Patrol, as usual, was on a
cold scent. The general public forgot him completely in the next sensation to arise.
     Fairly close although he then was to the rim of the galaxy, Kinnison did not take
any chances at all of detection in a line toward that rim. The spiral arm beyond Rift
Eighty Five was unexplored. It had been of so little interest to Civilization that even its
various regions were nameless upon the charts, and the Lensman wanted it to remain
that way, at least for the time being. Therefore he left the galaxy in as nearly a straight
nadir line as he could without coming within detection distance of any trade route. Then,
making a prodigious loop, so as to enter the spiral arm from the nadir direction, he threw
Nadreck's map into the pilot tank and began the computations which would enable him
to place correctly in that three-dimensional chart the brilliant point of light which
represented his ship.
     In this work he was ably assisted by his chief pilot. He did not have Henderson
now, but he did have Watson, who rated Number Two only by the hair-splitting of the
supreme Board of Examiners. Such hair-splitting was, of course, necessary; otherwise
no difference at all could have been found within the ranks of the first fifty of the Patrol's
Master Pilots, to say nothing of the first three or four. And the rest of the crew did
whatever they could.
     For it was only in the newscasts that Cartiff's crew was one of murderous and
villainous pirates. They were in fact volunteers; and, since everyone is familiar with what
that means in the Patrol, that statement is as informative as a book would be.
     The chart was sketchy and incomplete, of course; around the flying ships were
hundreds, yes thousands, of stars which were not in the chart at all; but Nadreck had
furnished enough reference points so that the pilots could compute their orientation. No
need to fear detectors now, in these wild, waste spaces; they set a right-line course for
Lonabar and followed it.
     As soon as Kinnison could make out the continental outlines of the planet he took
over control, as he alone of the crew was upon familiar ground. He knew everything
about Lonabar that Illona had ever learned; and, although the girl was a total loss as an
astronaut, she did know her geography.
     Kinnison docked his ship boldly at the spaceport of Lonia, the planet's largest city
and its capital. With equal boldness he registered as "Cartiff"; filling in some of the blank
spaces in the space-port's routine registry form—not quite truthfully, perhaps—and
blandly ignoring others. The armored truck was hoisted out of the hold and made its
way to Lonia's largest bank, into which it disgorged a staggering total of bar platinum, as
well as sundry coffers of hard, gray steel. These last items went directly into a private
vault, under the watchful eyes and ready weapons of Kinnison's own guards.
     The truck rolled swiftly back to the space-port and Cartiff's ship took off—it did
not need servicing at the time—ostensibly for another planet unknown to the Patrol,
actually to go, inert, into a closed orbit around Lonabar and near enough to it to respond
to a call in seconds.
     Immense wealth can command speed of construction and service. Hence, in a
matter of days, Cartiff was again in business. His salon was, upon a larger and grander
scale, a repetition of his Tellurian shop. It was simple, and dignified, and blatantly
expensive. Costly rugs covered the floor, impeccable works of art adorned the walls,
and three precisely correct, flawlessly groomed clerks displayed, with the exactly right
air of condescending humility, Caitiff's wares before those who wished to view them.
Cartiff himself was visible, ensconced within a magnificent plate-glass-and-gold office in
the rear, but he did not ordinarily have anything to do with customers. He waited; nor did
he wait long before there happened that which he expected.
     One of the super-perfect clerks coughed slightly into a microphone.
     "A gentleman insists upon seeing you personally, sir," he announced.
     "Very well, I will see him now. Show him in, please," and the visitor was
ceremoniously ushered into the Presence.
     "This is a very nice place you have here, Mr. Cartiff, but did it ever occur to you
that. . ."
     "It never did and it never will," Kinnison snapped. He still lolled at ease in his
chair, but his eyes were frosty and his voice carried an icy sting. "I quit paying protection
to little shots a good many years ago. Or are you from Menjo Bleeko?"
     The visitor's eyes widened. He gasped, as though even to utter that dread name
was sheer sacrilege. "No, but Number . . ."
     "Save it, slob!" The cold venom of that crisp but quiet order set the fellow back
onto his heels. "I am thoroughly sick of this thing of every half-baked tin-horn zwilnik in
space calling himself Number One as soon as he can steal enough small change to hire
an ape to walk around behind him packing a couple of blasters. If that louse of a boss of
yours has a name, use it. If he hasn't call him The Louse". But cancel that Number One
stuff. In my book there is no Number One in the whole damned universe. Doesn't your
mob know yet who and what Cartiff is?"
     "What do we care?" the visitor gathered courage visibly. "A good big bomb . . ."
     "Clam it, you squint-eyed slime-lizard!" The Lensman's voice was still low and
level, but his tone bit deep and his words drilled in. "That stuff?" he waved inclusively at
the magnificent hall. "Sucker-bait, nothing more. The whole works cost only a hundred
thousand. Chicken feed. It wouldn't even nick the edge of the roll if you blew up ten of
them. Bomb it any time you feel the urge. But take notice that it would make me
sore—plenty sore—and that I would do things about it; because I'm in a big game, not
this petty-larceny racketeering and chiseling your mob is doing, and when a toad gets in
my way I step on it. So go back and tell that"—sulphurously and copiously
qualified—"Number One of yours to case a job a lot more thoroughly than he did this
one before he starts throwing his weight around. Now scram, before I feed your carcass
to the other rats around here!"
     Kinnison grinned inwardly as the completely deflated gangster slunk out. Good
going. It wouldn't take long for that blast to get action. This little-shot Number One
wouldn't dare to lift a hand, but Bleeko would have to. That was axiomatic, from the very
nature of things. It was very definitely Bleeko's move next. The only moot point was as
to which His Nibs, would do first—talk or act. He would talk, the Lensman thought. The
prime reward of being a hot-shot was to have people know it and bend the knee.
Therefore, although Caitiff's salon was at all times in complete readiness for any form of
violence, Kinnison was practically certain that Menjo Bleeko would send an emissary
before he started the rough stuff.
     He did, and shortly. A big, massive man was the messenger; a man wearing
consciously an aura of superiority, of boundless power and force. He did not simply
come into the shop—he made an entrance. All three of the clerks literally cringed before
him, and at his casually matter-of-fact order they hazed the already uncomfortable
customers out of the shop and locked the doors. Then one of them escorted the visitor,
with a sickening servility he had never thought of showing toward his employer and with
no thought of consulting Cartiff's wishes in the matter, into Cartiff's private sanctum.
Kinnison knew at first glance that this was Ghundrith Khars, Bleeko's right-hand man.
Khars, the notorious, who knelt only to His Supremacy, Menjo Bleeko himself; and to
whom everyone else upon Lonabar and its subsidiary planets kneeled. The Visitor
waved a hand and the clerk fled in disorder.
     "Stand up, worm, and give me that . . ." Khars began, loftily.
     "Silence, fool! Attention!" Kinnison rasped, in such a drivingly domineering tone
that the stupefied messenger obeyed involuntarily. The Lensman, psychologist par
excellence that he was, knew that this man, with a background of twenty years of blind,
dumb obedience to Bleeko's every order, simply could not cope with a positive and self-
confident opposition. "You will not be here long enough to sit down, even if I permitted it
in my presence, which I definitely do not. You came here to give me certain instructions
and orders. Instead, you are going to listen merely; I will do all the talking.
     "First. The only reason you did not die as you entered this place is that neither
you not Menjo Bleeko knows any better. The next one of you to approach me in this
fashion dies in Ms tracks.
     "Second. Knowing as I do the workings of that which your bloated leech of a
Menjo Bleeko calls his brain, I know that he has a spy-ray on us now. I am not blocking
it out as I want him to receive ungarbled—and I know that you would not have the
courage to transmit it accurately to His Foulness—everything I have to say.
     "Third. I have been searching for a long time for a planet that I like. This is it. I
fully intend to stay here as long as I please. There is plenty of room here for both of us
without crowding.
     "Fourth. Being essentially a peaceable man, I came in peace and I prefer a
peaceable arrangement. However, let it be distinctly understood that I truckle to no man
or entity; dead, living, or yet to be born.
     "Fifth. Tell Bleeko from me to consider very carefully and very thoroughly an
iceberg; its every phase and aspect. That is all—you may go."
     "Bub-bub-but," the big man stammered. "An iceberg?"
     "An iceberg, yes—just that," Kinnison assured him. "Don't bother to try to think
about it yourself, since you've got nothing to think with. But His Putrescence Bleeko,
even though he is a mental, moral, and intellectual slime-lizard, can think—at least in a
narrow, mean, small-souled sort of way—and I advise him in all seriousness to do so.
Now get the hell out of here, before I burn the seat of your pants off."
     Khars got, gathering together visibly the shreds of his self-esteem as he did so;
the clerks staring the while in dumbfounded amazement. Then they huddled together,
eyeing the owner of the establishment with a brand-new respect—a subservient
respect, heavily laced with awe.
     "Business as usual, boys," he counseled them, cheerfully enough. "They won't
blow up the place until after dark."
     The clerks resumed their places then and trade did go on, after a fashion; but
Cartiff's force had not recovered its wonted blas6 aplomb even at closing time.
     "Just a moment." The proprietor called his employees together and, reaching into
his pocket, distributed among them a sheaf of currency. "In case you don't find the shop
here in the morning, you may consider yourselves on vacation at full pay until I call you."
     They departed, and Kinnison went back to his office. His first care was to set up
a spy-ray block—a block which had been purchased upon Lonabar and which was
therefore certainly pervious to Bleeko's instruments. Then he prowled about, apparently
in deep and anxious thought. But as he prowled, the eavesdroppers did not, could not
know that his weight set into operation certain devices of his own highly secret
installation, or that when he finally left the shop no really serious harm could be done to
it except by an explosion sufficiently violent to demolish the neighborhood for blocks
around. The front wall would go, of course. He wanted it to go; otherwise there would be
neither reason nor excuse for doing that which for days he had been ready to do.
     Since Caitiff lived rigorously to schedule and did not have a spy-ray block in his
room, Bleeko's methodical and efficient observers always turned off their beams when
the observee went to sleep. This night, however, Kinnison was not really asleep, and as
soon as the ray went off he acted. He threw on big clothes and sought the street, where
he took a taxi to a certain airport. There he climbed into a prop-and-rocket job already
hot and waiting.
     Hanging from her screaming props the fantastically powerful little plane bulleted
upward in a vertical climb, and as she began to slow down from lack of air her rockets
took over. A tractor reached out, seizing her gently. Her wings retracted and she was
drawn into Cartiff's great spaceship; which, a few minutes later, hung poised above one
of the largest, richest jewel-mines of Lonabar.
     This mine was, among others, Menjo Bleeko's personal property. Since over-
production would glut the market, it was being worked by only one shift of men; the day-
shift. It was now black night; the usual guards were the only men upon the premises.
The big black ship hung there and waited. "But suppose they don't, Kim?" Watson
asked. "Then we'll wait here every night until they do," Kinnison replied, grimly. "But
they'll do it tonight, for all the tea in China. They'll have to, to save Bleeko's face."
     And they did., In a couple of hours the observer at a high-powered plate reported
that Cartiff's salon had just been blown to bits. Then the Patrolmen went into action.
     Bleeko's mobsmen hadn't killed anybody at Cartiff's, therefore the Tellurians
wouldn't kill anybody here. Hence, while. ten immense beam-dirigible torpedoes were
being piloted carefully down shafts and along tunnels into the deepest bowels of the
workings, the guards were given warning that, if they got into their flyers fast enough,
they could be fifty miles away and probably safe by zero time. They hurried.
     At zero time the torpedoes let go as one. The entire planet quivered under the
trip-hammer shock of detonating duodec. For those frightful, those appalling charges
had been placed, by computations checked and rechecked, precisely where they would
wreak the most havoc, the utmost possible measure of sheer destruction. Much of the
rock, however hard, around each one of those incredible centers of demolition was
simply blasted out of existence. That is the way duodec, in massive charges, works.
Matter simply cannot get out of its way in the first instants of its detonation; matter's own
inherent inertia forbids.
     Most of the rock between the bombs was pulverized the merest fraction of a
second later. Then, the distortedly-spherical explosion fronts merging, the total
incomprehensible pressure was exerted as almost pure lift. The field above the mine-
works lifted, then; practically as a mass at first. But it could not remain as such. It could
not move fast enough as a whole; nor did it possess even a minute fraction of the
tensile strength necessary to withstand the stresses being applied. Those stresses, the
forces of the explosions, were to all intents and purposes irresistible. The crust
disintegrated violently and almost instantaneously. Rock crushed grindingly against
rock; practically the whole mass reducing in the twinkling of an eye to an impalpable
powder.
     Upward and outward, then, the ragingly compressed gases of detonation drove,
hurling everything before them. Chunks blew out sidewise, flying for miles: the mind-
staggeringly enormous volume of dust was hurled upward clear into the stratosphere.
     Finally that awful dust-cloud was wafted aside, revealing through its thinning
haze a strangely and hideously altered terrain. No sign remained of the buildings or the
mechanisms of Bleeko's richest mine. No vestige was left to show that anything built by
or pertaining to man had ever existed there. Where those works had been there now
yawned an absolutely featureless crater; a crater whose sheer geometrical perfection of
figure revealed with shocking clarity the magnitude of the cataclysmic forces which had
wrought there.
     Kinnison, looking blackly down at that crater, did not feel the glow of satisfaction
which comes of a good deed well done. He detested it—it made him sick at" the
stomach. But, since he had had it to do, he had done it. Why in all the nine hells of
Valeria did he have to be a Lensman, anyway?
     Back to Lonia. then, the Lensman made his resentful way, and back to bed.
     And in the morning, early, workmen began the reconstruction of Cartiff's place of
business.

CHAPTER 10
Bleeko and the Iceberg

     Kinnison's impenetrable shields of force had confined the damage to the store's
front, it was not long before Cartiff's reopened. Business was and remained brisk; not
only because of what had happened, but also because Cartiff's top-lofty and arrogant
snobbishness had an irresistible appeal to the upper layers of Lonabar's peculiarly
stratified humanity. The Lensman, however, paid little enough attention to business.
Outwardly, seated at his ornate desk in haughty grandeur, he was calmness itself, but
inwardly he was far from serene.
     If he had figured things right, and he was pretty sure that he had, it was up to
Bleeko to make the next move, and it would pretty nearly have to be a peaceable one.
There was enough doubt about it, however, to make the Lensman a bit jittery inside.
Also, from the fact that everybody having any weight at all wore thought-screens, it was
almost a foregone conclusion that they had been warned against, and were on the
lookout for, THE Lensman—that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Lensman who had
already done so much hurt to the Boskonian cause. That they now thought that one to
be a well-hidden, unknown Director of Lensmen, and not an actual operative, was little
protection. If he made one slip they'd have him, cold.
     He hadn't slipped yet, they didn't suspect him yet; he was sure of those points.
With these people to suspect was to act, and his world-circling ship, equipped with
every scanning, spying, and eavesdropping device known to science, would have
informed him instantly of any untoward development anywhere upon or near the planet.
And his fight with Bleeko was, after all, natural enough and very much in character. It
was of the very essence of Boskonian culture that king-snipes should do each other to
death with whatever weapons came readiest to hand. The underdog was always trying
to kill the upper, and if the latter was not strong enough to protect his loot, he deserved
everything he got. A callous philosophy, it is true, but one truly characteristic of
Civilization's inveterate foes.
     The higher-ups never interfered. Their own skins were the only ones in which
they were interested. They would, Kinnison reflected, probably check back on him, just
to insure their own safety, but they would not take sides in this brawl if they were
convinced that he was, as he appeared to be, a struggling young racketeer making his
way up the ladder of fame and fortune as best he could. Let them check—Cartiff's past
had been fabricated especially to stand up under precisely that investigation, no matter
how rigid it were to be!
     Hence Kinnison waited, as calmly as might be, for Bleeko to move. There was no
particular hurry, especially since Cris was finding heavy going and thick ether at her end
of the line, too. They had been in communication at least once every day, usually
oftener; and Clarrissa had reported seethingly, in near-masculine, almost-deep-space
verbiage, that that damned red-headed hussy of a Helen was a hard nut to crack.
     Kinnison grinned sourly every time he thought of Lyrane II. Those matriarchs
certainly were a rum lot. They were a pig-headed, self-centered, mulishly stubborn
bunch of cockeyed knotheads, he decided. Non-galaxy-minded; as shortsightedly anti-
social as a flock of mad Radeligian cateagles. He'd better . . . no, he hadn't better,
either—he'd have to lay off. If Cris, with all her potency and charm, with all her drive and
force of will, with all her sheer power of mind and of Lens, couldn't pierce their armor,
what chance did any other entity of Civilization have of doing it? Particularly any male
creature? He'd like to half-wring their beautiful necks, all of them; but that wouldn't get
him to the first check-station, either. He'd just have to wait until she broke through the
matriarchs' crust—she'd do it, too, by Klono's prehensile tail!—and then they'd really
ride the beam.
     So Kinnison waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. When he got tired of waiting
he gave a few more lessons in snobbishness and in the gentle art of self-preservation to
the promising young Lonabarian thug whom he had selected to inherit the business,
lock, stock, and barrel—including goodwill, if any—if, as, and when he was done with it.
Then he waited some more; waited, in fact, until Bleeko was forced, by his silent
pressure, to act.
     It was not an overt act, nor an unfriendly—he simply called him up on the
visiphone.
     "What do you think you're trying to do?" Bleeko demanded, his darkly handsome
face darker than ever with wrath.
     "You." Kinnison made succinct answer. "You should have taken my advice about
pondering the various aspects of an iceberg."
     "Bah!" the other snorted. "That silliness?"
     "Not as silly as you think. That was a warning, Bleeko,' that the stuff showing
above the surface is but a very small portion of my total resources. But you could not or
would not learn by precept. You had to have it the hard way. Apparently, however, you
have learned. That you have not been able to locate my forces I am certain. I am almost
as sure that you do not want to try me again, at least until you have found out what you
do not know. But I can give you no more time—you must decide now, Bleeko, whether it
is to be peace or war between us. I still prefer a peaceful settlement, with an equitable
division of the spoils; but if you want war, so be it."
     "I have decided upon peace," the Lonabarian said, and the effort of it almost
choked him. "I, Menjo Bleeko the Supreme, will give you a place beside me. Come to
me here, at once, so that we may discuss the terms of peace."
     "We will discuss them now," Kinnison insisted.
     "Impossible!.Barred and shielded as this room is . . ."
     "It would be," Kinnison interrupted with a nod, "for you to make such an
admission as you have just made."
     ". . . I do not trust unreservedly this communication .line. If you join me now, you
may do so in peace. If you do not come to me, here and now, it is war to the death."
     "Fair enough, at that," the Lensman admitted. "After all, you've got to save your
.face, and I haven't—yet. And if I team up with you I can't very well stay out of your
palace forever. But before I come there I want to give you three things—a reminder, a
caution, and a warning. I remind you. that our first exchange of amenities cost you a
thousand times as much as it did me. I caution you to consider again, and more
carefully this time, the iceberg. I warn" you that if we again come into conflict you will
lose not only a mine, but everything you have, including your life. So see to it that you
lay no traps for me. I come."
     He went out into the shop. "Take over, Sport," he told his gangster protege. "I'm
going up to the palace to see Menjo Bleeko. If I'm not back in two hours, and if your
grapevine reports that Bleeko is out of the picture, what I've left in the store here is
yours until I come back and take it away from you."
     "I'll take care of it, Boss—thanks," and the Lensman knew that in true Lonabarian
gratitude the youth was already, mentally, slipping a long, keen knife between his ribs.
     Without a qualm, but with every sense stretched to the limit and in instant
readiness for any eventuality, Kinnison took a cab to the palace arid entered its heavily-
guarded portals. He was sure that they would not cut him down before he got to
Bleeko's room—that room would surely be the one chosen for the execution.
Nevertheless, he took no chances. He was supremely ready to slay instantly every
guard within range of his sense of perception at the first sign of inimical activity. Long
before he came to them, he made sure that the beams which were set to search him for
concealed weapons were really search-beams and not lethal vibrations.
     And as he passed those beams each one of them reported him clean. Rings, of
course; a stick-pin, and various other items of adornment. But Cartiff, the great jeweler,
would be expected to wear very large and exceedingly costly gems. And the beam has
never been projected which could penetrate those Worsel-designed, Thorndyke-built
walls of force; to show that any one of those flamboyant gems was not precisely what it
appeared to be.
     Searched, combed minutely, millimeter by cubic millimeter, Kinnison was
escorted by a heavily-armed quartette of Bleeko's personal guards into His
Supremacy's private study. All four bowed as he entered—but they strode in behind
him, then shut and locked the door.
     "You fool!" Bleeko gloated from behind his massive desk. His face flamed with
sadistic joy and anticipation. "You trusting, greedy fool! I have you exactly where I want
you now. How easy! How simple! This entire building is screened and shielded—by my
screens and shields. Your friends and accomplices, whoever or wherever they are, can
neither see you nor know what is to happen to you. If your ship attempts your rescue it
will be blasted out of the ether. I will, personally, gouge out your eyes, tear off your
nails, strip your hide from your quivering carcass . . ." Bleeko was now, in his raging
exaltation, fairly frothing at the mouth.
     "That would be a good trick if you could do h," Kinnison remarked, coldly. "But
the real fact is that you haven't even tried to use that pint of blue mush that you call a
brain. Do you think me an utter idiot? I put on an apt and you fell for it . . ."
     "Seize him, guards! Silence his yammering—tear out his tongue!" His Supremacy
shrieked, leaping out of his chair as though possessed.
     The guards tried manfully, but before they could touch him —before any one of
them could take one full step—they dropped. Without being touched by material object
or visible beam, without their proposed victim having moved a muscle, they died and
fell. Died instantly, in their tracks; died completely, effortlessly, painlessly, with every
molecule of the all-important compound without which life cannot even momentarily
exist shattered instantaneously into its degradation products; died not knowing even
that they died.
     Bleeko was shaken, but he was not beaten. Needle-ray men, sharpshooters all,
were stationed behind those walls. Gone now the dictator's intent to torture his victim to
death. Slaying him out of hand would have to suffice. He flashed a signal to the
concealed marksmen, but that order too went unobeyed. For Kinnison had perceived
the hidden gunmen long since, and before any of them could align his sights or press
his firing stud each one of them ceased to live. The zwilnik then flipped on his
communicator and gobbled orders. Uselessly; for death sped ahead. Before any mind at
any switchboard could grasp the meaning of the signal, it could no longer, think.
     "You fiend from hell!" Bleeko screamed, in mad panic now, and wrenched open a
drawer in order to seize a weapon of his own. Too late. The Lensman had already
leaped, and as he landed he struck—not gently. Lonabar's tyrant collapsed upon the
thick-piled rug in a writhing, gasping heap; but he was not unconscious. To suit
Kinnison's purpose he could not be unconscious; he had to be in. full possession of his
mind.
     The Lensmen crooked one brawny arm around the zwilnik's neck in an
unbreakable strangle-hold and flipped off his thought-screen. Physical struggles were of
no avail: the attacker knew exactly what to do to certain nerves and ganglia to paralyze
all such activity. Mental resistance was equally futile against the overwhelmingly
superior power of the Tellurian's mind. Then, his subject quietly passive, Kinnison tuned
in and began his search for information. Began it—and swore soulfully. This couldn't be
so . . . it didn't make any kind of sense . . . but there it was.
     The ape simply didn't know a thing about any ramification whatever of the vast
culture to which Civilization was opposed. He knew all about Lonabar and the rest of the
domain which he had ruled with such an iron hand. He knew much—altogether too
much—about humanity and Civilization, and plainly to be read in his mind were the
methods by which he had obtained those knowledges and the brutally efficient
precautions he had taken to make sure that Civilization would not in turn learn of him.
     Kinnison scowled blackly. His deductions simply couldn't be that far off . . . and
besides, it wasn't reasonable that this guy was the top or that he had done all that work
on his own account . . . He pondered deeply, staring unseeing at Bleeko's placid face;
and as he pondered, some of the jigsaw blocks of the puzzle began to click into a
pattern.
     Then, ultra-carefully, with the utmost nicety of which he was capable, he again
fitted his mind to that of the dictator and began to trace, one at a time, the lines of
memory. Searching, probing, coursing backward and forward along those deeply-buried
time-tracks, until at last he found the breaks and the scars. For, as he had told Illona, a
radical mind-operation cannot be performed without leaving marks. It is true that upon
cold, unfriendly Jarnevon, after Worsel had so operated upon Kinnison's mind, Kinnison
himself could not perceive that any work had been done. But that, be it remembered,
was before any actual change had occurred; before the compulsion had been applied.
The false memories supplied by Worse] were still latent, non-existent; the true memory
chains, complete and intact, were still in place.
     The lug's brain had been operated upon, Kinnison now knew, and by an expert.
What the compulsion was, what combination of thought-stimuli it was that would restore
those now non-existent knowledges, Kinnison had utterly no means of finding out.
Bleeko himself, even subconsciously, did not know. It was, it had to be, something
external, a thought-pattern impressed upon Bleeko's mind by the Boskonian higher-up
whenever he wanted to use him; and to waste time in trying to solve that problem would
be the sheerest folly. Nor could he discover how that compulsion had been or could be
applied. If he got his orders from the Boskonian high command direct, there would have
to be an inter-galactic communicator; and it would in all probability be right here, in
Bleeko's private rooms. No force-ball, or anything else that could take its place, was to
be found. Therefore Bleeko was, probably, merely another Regional Director, and took
orders from someone here in the First Galaxy.
     Lyrane? The possibility jarred Kinnison. No real probability pointed that way yet,
however; it was simply a possibility, born of his own anxiety. He couldn't worry about
it—yet.
     His study of the zwilnik's mind, unproductive although it was of the desired details
of things Boskonian, had yielded one highly important fact. His Supremacy of Lonabar
had sent at least one expedition to Lyrane II; yet there was no present memory in his
mind that he had ever done so. Kinnison had scanned those files with surpassing care,
and knew positively that Bleeko did not now know even that such a planet as Lyrane II
existed.
     Could he, Kinnison, be wrong? Could somebody other than Menjo Bleeko have
sent that ship? Or those ships, since it was not only possible, but highly probable, that
that voyage was not an isolated instance? No, he decided instantly. Illona's knowledge
was far too detailed and exact Nothing of such importance would be or could be done
without the knowledge and consent of Lonabar's dictator. And the fact that he did not
now remember it was highly significant. It meant—it must mean—that the new Boskone
or whoever was back of Boskone considered the solar system of Lyrane of such vital
importance that knowledge of it must never, under any circumstances, get to Star A
Star, the detested, hated, and feared Director of Lensmen of the Galactic Patrol! And
Mac was on Lyrane II—ALONE! She had been safe enough so far, but . . .
     "Cris!" he sent her an insistent thought.
     "Yes, Kim?" came flashing answer.
     "Thank Klono and Noshabkeming! You're QX, then?"
     "Of course. Why shouldn't I be, the same as I was this morning?"
     "Things have changed since then," he assured her, grimly. "I've finally cracked
things open here, and I find that Lonabar is simply a dead end. It's a feeder for Lyrane,
nothing else.
     It's not a certainty, of course, but there's a very distinct possibility that Lyrane is
FT. If it is, I don't need to tell you that you're on a mighty hot spot So I want you to quit
whatever you're doing and run. Hide. Crawl into a hole and pull it in after you. Get into
one of Helen's deepest crypts and have somebody sit on the lid. And do it right
now—five minutes ago would have been better."
     "Why, Kim!" she giggled. "Everything here is exactly as it has always been. And
surely, you wouldn't have a Lensman hide, would you? Would you, yourself?"
     That question was, they both knew, unanswerable. "That's different," he of
course protested, but he knew that it was not. "Well, anyway, be careful," he insisted.
"More careful than you ever were before in your life. Use everything you've got, every
second, and if you notice anything, however small, the least bit out of the way, let me
know, right then."
     "Ill do that. You're coming, of course." It was a statement, not a question.
     "Ill say I am—in force! 'Bye, Cris—BE CAREFUL!" and he snapped the line. He
had a lot to do. He had to act fast, and had to be right—and he couldn't take all day in
deciding, either.
     His mind flashed back over what he had done. Could he cover up? Should he
cover up, even if he could? Yes and no. Better not even try to cover Cartiff up, he
decided. Leave that trail just as it was; wide and plain—up to a certain point. This point,
right here. Cartiff would disappear here, in Bleeko's palace.
     He was done with Cartiff, anyway. They would smell a rat, of course—it stunk to
high heaven. They might not—they probably would not—believe that he had died in the
ruins of the palace, but they wouldn't know that he hadn't. And they would think that he
hadn't found out a thing, and he would keep them thinking so as long as he could. The
young thug in Cartiff's would help, too, all unconsciously. He would assume the name
and station, of course, and fight with everything Kinnison had taught him. That would
help—Kinnison grinned as he realized just how much it would help.
     The real Cartiff would have to vanish as completely, as absolutely without a trace
as was humanly possible. They would figure out in time that Caitiff had done whatever
was done in the palace, but it was up to him to see to it that they could never find out
how it was done. Wherefore he took from Menjo's mind every iota of knowledge which
might conceivably be of use to him thereafter. Then Menjo Bleeko died and the
Lensman strode along corridors and down stairways. And wherever he went, there went
Death.
     This killing griped Kinnison to the core of his being, but it had to be. The fate of
all Civilization might very well depend upon the completeness of his butchery this day;
upon the sheer mercilessness of his extermination of every foe who might be able to
cast any light, however dim, upon what he had just done.
     Straight to the palace arsenal he went, where he labored briefly at the filling of a
bin with bombs. A minute more to set a timer and he was done. Out of the building he
ran. No one stayed him; nor did any, later, say that they had seen him go. He dumped a
dead man out of a car and drove it away at reckless speed. Even at that, however, he
was almost too slow—hurtling stones from the dynamited palace showered down
scarcely a hundred feet behind his screeching wheels.
     He headed for the space-port; then, changing his mind, braked savagely as he
sent Lensed instructions to Watson. He felt no compunction about fracturing the rules
and regulations made and provided for the landing of space-ships at space-ports
everywhere by having his vessel make a hot-blast, unauthorized, and quite possibly
highly destructive landing to pick him up. Nor did he fear pursuit. The big shots were, for
the most part, dead. The survivors and the middle-sized shots were too busy by far to
waste time over an irregular incident at a space-port. Hence nobody would give
anybody any orders, and without explicit orders no Lonabarian officer would act. No,
there would be no pursuit. But They—the Ones Kinnison was after—would interpret
truly every such irregular incident; wherefore there must not be any.
     Thus it came about that when the speeding ground-car was upon an empty
stretch of highway, with nothing in sight in any direction, a space-ship eased down upon
muffled under-jets directly above it. A tractor beam reached down; car and man were
drawn upward and into the vessel's hold. Kinnison did not want the car, but he could not
leave it there. Since many cars had been blown out of existence with Bleeko's palace,
for this one to disappear would be natural enough; but for it to be found abandoned out
in the open country would be a highly irregular and an all too revealing occurrence.
     Upward through atmosphere and stratosphere the black cruiser climbed; out into
inter-stellar space she flashed. Then, while Watson coaxed the sleek flyer to do even
better than her prodigious best, Kinnison went to his room and drilled a thought to Prime
Base and Port Admiral Haynes.
     "Kinnison. Are you too busy to give me a couple of minutes?"
     "You always have the right-of-way, Kim, you know that —you're the most
important thing in the galaxy right now," Haynes said, soberly.
     "Well, a minute or so wouldn't make any difference—not that much difference,
anyway," Kinnison replied, uncomfortably. "I don't like to Lens you unless I have to," and
he began his report.
     Scarcely had he started, however, when he felt a call impinge upon his own
Lens. Clarrissa was calling him from Lyrane II.
     "Just a sec, admiral! Come in, Cris—make it a three-way with Admiral Haynes!"
     "You told me to report anything unusual, no matter what," the girl began. "Well, I
finally managed to get chummy enough with Helen so she'd really 'talk to me. The
death-rate from airplane crashes went up sharply a while ago and is still rising. I am
reporting that fact as per instructions."
     "Hm . . . m . . . m. What kind of crashes?" Kinnison asked.
     "That's the unusual feature of it. Nobody knows—they just disappear."
     "WHAT?" Kinnison yelled the thought, so forcibly that both Clarrissa and Haynes
winced under its impact.
     "Why, yes," she replied, innocently—somewhat too innocently. "But as to what it
means . . ."
     "You know what it means, don't you?" Kinnison snapped.
     "I don't know anything. I can do some guessing, of course, but for the present I'm
reporting a fact, not personal opinions."
     "QX. That fact means that you do, right now, crawl into the deepest, most heavily
thought-screened hole in Lyrane and stay there until I, personally, come and dig you
out," he replied, grimly. "It means, Admiral Haynes, that I want Worsel and Tregonsee
as fast as I can get them—not orders, of course, but very, very urgent requests. And I
want vanBuskirk and his gang of Valerians, and Grand Fleet, with all the trimmings,
within easy striking distance of Dunstan's Region as fast as you can possibly get them
there. And I want. . ."
     "Why all the excitement, Kim?" Haynes demanded. "You're 'way ahead of me,
both of you. Give!"
     "I don't know anything, either," Kinnison emphasized the verb very strongly.
"However, I suspect a lot. Everything, in fact, grading downward from the Eich. I'd say
Overlords, except that I don't see how . . . what do you think, Cris?"
     "What I think is too utterly fantastic for words—my visualization of the Cosmic All
calls for another Eich-Overlord alliance."
     "Could be, I guess. That would . . ."
     "But they were all destroyed, weren't they?" Haynes interrupted.
     "Far from it." This from the nurse. "Would the destruction of Tellus do away with
all mankind? I am beginning to think that the Eich are to Boskonia exactly what we are
to Civilization."
     "So am I," Kinnison agreed. "And, such being the case, I'm going to get in touch
with Nadreck of Palain Seven—I think I know his pattern well enough to Lens him from
here."
     "Nadreck? Your new playfellow? Why?" Clarrissa asked, curiously.
     "Because he's a frigid-blooded, poison-breathing, second-stage Gray Lensman,"
Kinnison explained. "As such he is much closer to the Eich, in every respect, than we
are, and may very well have an angle that we haven't." And in a few minutes the
Palanian Lensman became en rapport with the group.
     "An interesting development, truly," his soft thought came in almost wistfully
when the situation had been made clear to him. "I fear greatly that I cannot be of any
use, but I am not doing anything of importance at the moment and will be very glad
indeed to give you whatever slight assistance may be possible to one of my small
powers. I come at speed to Lyrane II."

CHAPTER 11
Alcon of Thrale

     Kinnison Had not underestimated the power and capacity of his as yet unknown
opposition. Well it was for him and for his Patrol that he was learning to think; for, as
has already been made clear, this phase of the conflict was not essentially one of
physical combat. Material encounters did occur, it is true, but they were comparatively
unimportant. Basically, fundamentally, it was brain against brain; the preliminary but
nevertheless prodigious skirmishing of two minds—or, more accurately, two teams of
minds—each trying, even while covering up its own tracks and traces, to get at and to
annihilate the other.
     Each had certain advantages.
     Boskonia—although we know now that Boskone was by no means the prime
mover in that dark culture which opposed Civilization so bitterly, nevertheless
"Boskonia" it was and still is being called—for a long time had the initiative, forcing the
Patrol to wage an almost ^purely defensive fight. Boskonia knew vastly more about
Civilization than Civilization knew about Boskonia. The latter, almost completely
unknown, had all the advantages of stealth and of surprise; her forces could and did
operate from undeterminable points against precisely-plotted objectives. Boskonia had
the hyper-spatial tube long before the Conference of Scientists solved its mysteries; and
even after the Patrol could use it it could do Civilization no good unless and until
something could be found at which to aim it.
     Civilization, however, had the Lens. It had the backing of the Arisians;
maddeningly incomplete and unsatisfactory though that backing seemed at times to be.
It had a few entities, notably one Kimball Kinnison, who were learning to think really
efficiently. Above all, it had a massed purpose, a loyalty, an esprit de corps back-boning
a morale which the whip-driven ranks of autocracy could never match and which the
whip-wielding drivers could not even dimly understand.
     Kinnison, then, with all the powers of his own mind and the minds of his friends
and co-workers, sought to place and to identify the real key mentality at the destruction
of which the mighty Boskonian Empire must begin to fall apart; that mentality in turn was
trying with its every resource to find and to destroy the intellect which, pure reason
showed, was the one factor which had enabled Civilization to throw the fast-conquering
hordes of Boskonia back into their own galaxy.
     Now, from our point of vantage in time and space, we can study at leisure and in
detail many things which Kimball Kinnison could only surmise and suspect and deduce.
Thus, he knew definitely only the fact that the Boskonian organization did not collapse
with the destruction of the planet Jarnevon.
     We know now, however, all about the Thrallian solar system and about Alcon of
Thrale, its unlamented Tyrant. The planet Thrale—planetographically speaking, Thrallis
II —so much like Tellus that its natives, including the unspeakable Alcon, were human
practically to the limit of classification; and about Onlo, or Thrallis IX, and its monstrous
natives. We know now that the duties and the authorities of the Council of Boskone
were taken over by Alcon of Thrale; we now know how, by reason of his absolute
control over both the humanity of Thrale and the monstrosities of Onlo, he was able to
carry on.
     Unfortunately, like the Eich, the Onlonians simply cannot be described by or to
man. This is, as is already more or less widely known, due to the fact that all such non-
aqueous, sub-zero-blooded, non-oxygen-breathing peoples have of necessity a
metabolic extension into the hyper dimension; a fact which makes even their three-
dimensional aspect subtly incomprehensible to any strictly three-dimensional mind.
     Not all such races, it may be said here, belonged to Boskonia. Many essentially
similar ones, such as the natives of Palain VII, adhered to our culture from the very first.
Indeed, it has been argued that sexual equality is the most important criterion of that
which we know as Civilization. But, since this is not a biological treatise, this point is
merely mentioned, not discussed.
     The Onlonians, then, while not precisely describable to man, were very similar to
the Eich—as similar, say, as a Posenian and a Tellurian are to each other in the
perception of a Palainian. That is to say practically identical; for to the unknown and
incomprehensible senses of those frigid beings the fact that the Posenian possess four
arms, eight hands, and no eyes at all, as compared with the Tellurian's simply paired
members, constitutes a total difference so slight as to be negligible.
     But to resume the thread of history, we are at liberty to know things that Kinnison
did not. Specifically, we may observe and hear a conference which tireless research
has reconstructed in toto. The place was upon chill, dark Onlo, in a searingly cold room
whose normal condition of utter darkness was barely ameliorated by a dim blue glow.
The time was just after Kinnison had left Lonabar for Lyrane II. The conferees were
Alcon of Thrale and his Onlonian cabinet officers. The armor-clad Tyrant, in whose
honor the feeble illumination was, lay at ease in a reclining chair; the pseudo-reptilian
monstrosities were sitting or standing in some obscure and inexplicable fashion at a
long, low bench of stone.
     "The fact is," one of the Onlonians was radiating harshly, "that our minions in the
other galaxy could not or would not or simply did not think. For years things went so
smoothly that no one had to think. The Great Plan, so carefully worked out, gave every
promise of complete success. It was inevitable, it seemed, that that entire galaxy would
be brought under our domination, its Patrol destroyed, before any inkling of our purpose
could be perceived by the weaklings of humanity.
     "The Plan took cognizance of every known factor of any importance. When,
however, an unknown, unforeseeable factor, the Lens of the Patrol, became of real
importance, that Plan of course broke down. Instantly upon the recognition of an
unconsidered factor the Plan should have been revised. All action should have ceased
until that factor had been evaluated and neutralized. But no—no one of our
commanders in that galaxy or handling its affairs ever thought of such a thing . . ."
     "It is you who are not thinking now," the Tyrant of Thrale broke in. "If any
underling had dared any such suggestion you yourself would have been among the first
to demand his elimination. The Plan should have been revised, it is true; but the fault
does not lie with the underlings. Instead, it lies squarely with the Council of Boskone . . .
by the way, I trust that those six of that Council who escaped destruction upon Jarnevon
by means of their hyper-spatial tube have been dealt with?"
     "They have been liquidated," another officer replied.
     "It is well. They were supposed to think, and the fact that they neither coped with
the situation nor called it to your attention until it was too late to mend matters, rather
than any flaw inherent in the Plan, is what has brought about the present intolerable
situation.
     "Underlings are not supposed to think. They are supposed to report facts; and, if
so requested, opinions and deductions. Our representatives there were well-trained and
skillful. They reported accurately, and that was all that was required of them. Helmuth
reported truly, even though Boskone discredited his reports. So did Prellin, and
Crowninshield, and Jalte. The Eich, however, failed in their duties of supervision and
correlation; which is why their leaders have been punished and their operators have
been reduced in rank—why we have assumed a task which, it might have been
supposed and was supposed, lesser minds could have and should have performed.
     "Let me caution you now that to underestimate a foe is a fatal error. Lan of the
Eich prated largely upon this very point, but in the eventuality he did in fact
underestimate very seriously the resources and the qualities of the Patrol; with what
disastrous consequences we are all familiar. Instead of thinking he attempted to subject
a purely philosophical concept, the Lens, to a mathematical analysis. Neither did the
heads of our military branch think at all deeply, or they would not have tried to attack
Tellus until after this new and enigmatic factor had been resolved. Its expeditionary
force vanished without sign or signal—in spite of its primaries, its negative-matter
bombs, its supposedly irresistible planets —and Tellus still circles untouched about Sol
its sun. The condition is admittedly not to be borne; but I have always said, and I now do
and shall insist, that no further action be taken until the Great Plan shall have been so
revised as reasonably to take into account the Lens . . . What of Arisia?" he demanded
of a third cabineteer.
     "It is feared that nothing can be done about Arisia at present," that entity replied.
"Expeditions have been sent, but they were dealt with as simply and as effectively as
were Lan and Amp of the Eich. Planets have also been sent, but they were detected by
the Patrol and were knocked out by far-ranging dirigible planets of the enemy. However,
I have concluded that Arisia, of and by itself, is not of prime immediate importance. It is
true that the Lens did in all probability originate with the Arisians. It is hence true that the
destruction of Arisia and its people would be highly desirable, in that it would insure that
no more Lenses would be produced. Such destruction would not do away, however with
the myriads of the instruments which are already in use and whose wearers are
operating so powerfully against us. Our most pressing business, it seems to me, is to
hunt down and exterminate all Lensmen; particularly the one whom Jalte called THE
Lensman; whom Eichmil was informed by Lensman Morgan, was known to even other
Lensmen only as Star A Star. In that connection, I am forced to wonder—is Star A Star
in reality only one mind?"
     "That question has been considered both by me and by your chief psychologist,"
Alcon made answer. "Frankly, we do not know. We have not enough reliable data upon
which to base a finding of fact Nor does it matter in the least. Whether one or two or a
thousand, we must find and we must slay until it is feasible to resume our orderly
conquest of the universe. We must also work unremittingly upon a plan to abate the
nuisance which is Arisia. Above all, we must see to it with the utmost diligence that no
iota of information concerning us ever reaches any member of the Galactic Patrol—I do
not want either of our worlds to become as Jarnevon now is."
     "Hear! Bravo! Nor I!" came a chorus of thoughts, interrupted by an emanation
from one of the sparkling force-ball inter-galactic communicators.
     "Yes? Alcon acknowledging," the Tyrant took the call.
     It was a zwilnik upon far Lonabar, reporting through Lyrane VIII everything that
Cartiff had done. "I do not know —I have no idea—whether or not this matter is either
unusual or important," the observer concluded. "I would, however, rather report ten
unimportant things than miss one which might later prove to have had significance."
     "Right. Report received," and discussion raged. Was this affair actually what it
appeared upon the surface to be, or was it another subtle piece of the work of that
never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Lensman?
     The observer was recalled. Orders were given and were carried out. Then, after
it had been learned that Bleeko's palace and every particle of its contents had been
destroyed, that Cartiff had vanished utterly, and that nobody could be found upon the
face of Lonabar who could throw any light whatever upon the manner or the time of his
going; then, after it was too late to do anything about it, it was decided that this must
have been the work of THE Lensman. And it was useless to storm or to rage. Such a
happening could not have been reported sooner to so high an office; the routine events
of a hundred million worlds simply could not be considered at that level. And since this
Lensman never repeated —his acts were always different, alike only in that they were
drably routine acts until their crashing finales—the Boskonian observers never had been
and never would be able to report his activities in time.
     "But he got nothing this time, I am certain of that," the chief psychologist exulted.
     "How can you be so sure?" Alcon snapped.
     "Because Menjo Bleeko of Lonabar knew nothing whatever of our activities or of
our organization except at such times as one of my men was in charge of his mind," the
scientist gloated. "I and my assistants know mental surgery as those crude hypnotists
the Eich never will know it. Even our lowest agents are having those clumsy and
untrustworthy false teeth removed as fast as my therapists can operate upon their
minds."
     "Nevertheless, you are even now guilty of underestimating," Alcon reproved him
sharply, energizing a force-ball communicator. "It is quite eminently possible that he
who wrought so upon Lonabar may have been enabled—by pure chance, perhaps—to
establish a linkage between that planet and Lyrane . . ."
     The cold, crisply incisive thought of an Eich answered the Tyrant's call.
     "Have you of Lyrane perceived or encountered any unusual occurrences or
indications?" Alcon demanded.
     "We have not."
     "Expect them, then," and the Thrallian despot transmitted in detail all the new
developments.
     "We always expect new and untoward things," the Eich more than half sneered.
"We are prepared momently for anything that can happen, from a visitation by Star A
Star and any or all of his Lensmen up to an attack by the massed Grand Fleet of the
Galactic Patrol. Is there anything else, Your Supremacy?"
     "No. I envy you your self-confidence and assurance, but I mistrust exceedingly
the soundness of your judgment. That is all." Alcon turned his attention to the
psychologist. "Have you operated upon the minds of those Eich and those self-styled
Overlords as you did upon that of Menjo Bleeko?"
     "No!" the mind-surgeon gasped. "Impossible! Not physically, perhaps, but would
not such a procedure interfere so seriously with the work that it. . ."
     "That is your problem—solve it," Alcon ordered, curtly. "See to it, however it is
solved, that no traceable linkage exists between any of those minds and us. Any mind
capable of thinking such thoughts as those which we have just received is not to be
trusted."

     As has been said, Kinnison-ex-Cartiff was en route for Lyrane II while the
foregoing conference was taking place. Throughout the trip he kept in touch with
Clarrissa. At first he tried, with his every artifice of diplomacy, cajolery, and downright
threats, to make her lay off; he finally invoked all his Unattached Lensman's
transcendental authority and ordered her summarily to lay off.
     No soap. How did he get that way, she wanted furiously to know, to be ordering
her around as though she were an uncapped probe? She was a Lensman, too, by
Klono's curly whiskers! Solving this problem was her job—nobody else's— and she was
going to do it. She was on a definite assignment —his own assignment, too,
remember—and she wasn't going to be called off of it just because he had found out all
of a sudden that it might not be quite as safe as dunking doughnuts at a down-river
picnic. What kind of a sun-baked, space-tempered crust did he have to pull a crack like
that on her? Would he have the bare-faced, unmitigated gall to spring a thing like that
on any other Lensman in the whole cock-eyed universe?
     That stopped Dim—cold. Lensmen always went in; that was the Code. For any
Tellurian Lensman, anywhere, to duck or to dodge because of any personal danger was
sheerly, starkly unthinkable. The fact that she was, to him, the sum total of all the
femininity of the galaxy could not be allowed any weight whatever; any more than the
converse aspect had ever been permitted to sway him. Fair enough. Bitter, but
inescapable. This was one—just one—of the consequences which Mentor had
foreseen. He had foreseen it, too, in a dimly unreal sort of way, and now that it was here
he'd simply have to take it. QX.
     "But be careful, anyway," he surrendered. "Awfully careful —as careful as I would
myself."
     "I could be ever so much more careful than that and still be pretty reckless." Her
low, entrancing chuckle came through as though she were present in person. "And by
the way, Kim, did I ever tell you that I am fast getting to be a gray Lensman?"
     "You always were, ace—you couldn't very well be anything else."
     "No—I mean actually gray. Did you ever stop to consider what the laundry
problem would be on this heathenish planet?"
     "Cris, I'm surprised at you—what do you need of a laundry?" he derided her,
affectionately. "Here you've been blasting me to a cinder about not taking your
Lensmanship seriously enough, and yet you are violating one of the prime tenets—that
of conformation to planetary customs. Shame on you!"
     He felt her hot blush across all those parsecs of empty space. "I tried it at first,
Kim, but it was just simply terrible.'"
     "You've got to learn how to be a Lensman or else quit throwing your weight
around like you did a while back. No back chat, either, you insubordinate young jade, or
I'll take that Lens away from you and heave you into the clink."
     "You and what regiment of Valerians? Besides, it didn't make any difference,"
she explained, triumphantly. "These matriarchs don't like me one bit better, no matter
what I wear or don't wear."
     Time passed, and in spite of Kinnison's highly disquieting fears, nothing
happened. Right on schedule the Patrol ship eased down to a landing at the edge of the
Lyranian airport. Clarrissa was waiting; dressed now, not in nurse's white, but in
startlingly nondescript gray shirt and breeches.
     "Not the gray leather of my station, but merely dirt color," she explained to
Kinnison after the first fervent greetings. "These women are clean enough physically,
but I simply haven't got a thing fit to wear. Is your laundry working?"
     It was, and very shortly Sector Chief Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall appeared in
her wonted immaculately-white, stiffly-starched uniform. She would not wear the Grays
to which she was entitled; nor would she—except when defying Kinnison—claim as her
right any one of the perquisites or privileges which were so indubitably hers. She was
not, never had been, and never would or could be a real Lensman, she insisted. At best,
she was only a synthetic—or an imitation—or a sort of amateur—or maybe a "Red"
Lensman— handy to have around, perhaps, for certain kinds of jobs, but absolutely and
definitely not a regular Lensman. And it was this attitude which was to make the Red
Lensman not merely tolerated, but loved as she was loved by Lensmen, Patrolmen, and
civilians alike throughout the length, breadth, and thickness of Civilization's bounds.
     The ship lifted from the airport and went north into the uninhabited temperate
zone. The matriarchs did not have anything the Tellurians either needed or wanted; the
Lyranians disliked visitors so openly and so intensely that to move away from the
populated belt was the only logical and considerate thing to do.
     The Dauntless arrived a day later, bringing Worsel and Tregonsee; followed
closely by Nadreck in his ultra-refrigerated speedster. Five Lensmen, then, studied
intently a globular map of Lyrane II which Clarrissa had made. Four of them, the
oxygen-breathers, surrounded it in the flesh, while Nadreck was with them only in
essence. Physically he was far out in the comfortably sub-zero reaches of the
stratosphere, but his mind was en rapport with theirs; his sense of perception scanned
the markings upon the globe as carefully and as accurately as did theirs.
     "This belt which I have colored pink," the female Lensman explained,
"corresponding roughly to the torrid zone, is the inhabited area of Lyrane II. Nobody
lives anywhere else. Upon it I have charted every unexplained disappearance that I
have been able to find out about. Each of these black crosses is where one such person
lived. The black circle—or circles, for frequently there are more than one—connected to
each cross by a black line, marks the spot—or spots—where that person was seen for
die last time or times. If the black circle is around the cross it means that she was last
seen at home."
     The crosses were distributed fairly evenly all around the globe and throughout
the populated zone. The circles, however, tended markedly to concentrate upon the
northern edge of that zone; and practically all of the encircled crosses were very .close
to the northern edge of the populated belt.
     "Almost all the lines intersect at this point here," she went on, placing a finger-tip
near the north pole of the globe. "The few that don't could be observational errors, or
perhaps the person was seen there before she really disappeared. If it is Overlords,
their cavern must be within about fifty kilometers of the spot I've marked here. However,
I couldn't find any evidence that any Eich have ever been here; and if they haven't I
don't see how the Overlords could be here, either. That, gentlemen of the Second
Stage, is my report; which, I fear, is neither complete nor conclusive."
     "You err, Lensman MacDougall." Nadreck was the first to speak. "It is both. A
right scholarly and highly informative piece of work, eh, friend Worsel?"
     "It is so . . . it is indeed so," the Velantian agreed, the while a shudder rippled
along the thirty-foot length of his sinuous body. "I suspected many things, but not this. . .
certainly not this, ever, away out here."
     "Nor I." Tregonsee's four horn-lipped, toothless mouths snapped open and shut;
his cabled arms writhed.
     "Nor I," from Kinnison. "If I had, you'd never've got that Lens, Clarrissa May
MacDougall."
     His voice was the grimmest she had ever heard it. He was picturing to himself
her lovely body writhing in torment; stretched, twisted, broken; forgetting completely that
his thoughts were as clear as a tri-di to all the others.
     "If they had detected you . . . you know what they'd do to get hold of a mind and
a vital force such as yours . . ."
     He shook himself and drew a tremendously deep breath of relief. "But thank God
they didn't. So all I've got to say is that if we ever have any kids and they don't bawl
when I tell 'em about this, I'll certainly give 'em something to bawl about!"

CHAPTER 12
Helen Goes North

     "But listen, Kim!" Clarrissa protested. "all four of you are assuming that I've dead-
centered the target. I thought probably I was right, but since I couldn't find any Eich
traces, I expected a lot of argument."
     "No argument," Kinnison assured her. "You know how they work. They tune in on
some one mind, the stronger and more vital the better. In that connection, I wonder that
Helen is still around—the ones who disappeared were upper-bracket minds, weren't
they?"
     She thought a space. "Now that yon mention it, I believe so. Most of them,
certainly."
     "Thought so. That clinches it, if it needed clinching. They tune in; then drag 'em in
in a straight line."
     "But that would be so obvious!" she objected.
     "It was not obvious, Clarrissa," Tregonsee observed, "until your work made it so:
a task which, I would like to say here, could not have been accomplished by any other
entity of Civilization."
     "Thanks, Tregonsee. But they're smart enough to . . . you'd think they'd vary their
technique, at least enough to get away from those dead straight lines."
     "They probably can't," Kinnison decided. "A racial trait, bred into 'em for ages.
They've always worked that way; probably can't work any other way. The Eich
undoubtedly told "em to lay off those orgies, but they probably couldn't do it—the vice is
too habit-forming to break, would be my guess. Anyway, we're all in agreement that it's
the Overlords?"
     They were.
     "And there's no doubt as to what we do next?"
     There was none. Two great ships, the incomparable Dauntless and the
camouflaged warship which had served Kinnison-Cartiff so well, lifted themselves into
the stratosphere and headed north. The Lensmen did not want to advertise their
presence and there was no great hurry, therefore both vessels had their thought-
screens out and both rode upon baffled jets.
     Practically all of the crewmen of the Dauntless had seen Overlords in the
substance; so far as is known they were the only human beings who had ever seen an
Overlord and had lived to tell of it. Twenty two of their former fellows had seen
Overlords and had died. Kinnison, Worsel, and vanBuskirk had slain Overlords in
unscreened hand-to-hand combat in the fantastically incredible environment of a hyper-
spatial tube—that uncanny medium in which man and monster could and did occupy the
same space at the same time without being able to touch each other; in which the air or
pseudo-air is thick and viscous; in which the only substance common to both sets of
dimensions and thus available for combat purposes is dureum—a synthetic material so
treated and so saturated as to be of enormous mass and inertia.
     It is easier to imagine, then, than to describe the emotion which seethed through
the crew as the news flew around that the business next in order was the extirpation of
a flock of Overlords.
     "How about a couple or three nice duodec torpedoes. Kim, steered right down
into the middle of that cavern and touched off—POWIE!—slick, don't you think?"
Henderson insinuated.
     "Aw, let's not, Kim!" protested vanBuskirk, who, as one of the three Overlord-
slayers, had been called into the control room. "This ain't going to be in a tube, Kim; it's
in a cavern on a planet—made to order for axe-work. Let me and the boys put on our
screens and bash their ugly damn skulls in for 'em—how about it, huh?"
     "Not duodec, Hen . . . not yet, anyway," Kinnison decided. "As for axe-work,
Bus—maybe, maybe not. Depends. We want to catch some of them alive, so as to get
some information . . . but you and your boys will be good for that, too, so you might as
well go and start getting them ready." He turned his thought to his snakish comrade-in-
arms.
     "What do you think, Worsel, is this hide-out of theirs heavily fortified, or just
hidden?"
     "Hidden, I would say from what I know of them—well hidden," the Velantian
replied, promptly. "Unless they have changed markedly; and, like you, I do not believe
that a race so old can change that much. I could tune them in, but it might very well do
more harm than good."
     "Certain to, I'm afraid." Kinnison knew as well as did Worsel that a Velantian was
the tastiest dish which could be served up to any Overlord. Both knew also, however,
the very real mental ability of the foe; knew that the Overlords would be sure to suspect
that any Velantian so temptingly present upon Lyrane II must be there specifically for
the detriment of the Delgonian race; knew that they would almost certainly refuse the
proffered bait. And not only would they refuse to lead Worsel to their caverns, but in all
probability they would cancel even their ordinary activities, thus making it impossible to
find them at all, until they had learned definitely that the hook-bearing tid-bit and its
accomplices had left the Lyranian solar system entirely. "No, what we need right now is
a good, strong-willed Lyranian."
     "Shall we go back and grab one? It would take only a few minutes," Henderson
suggested, straightening up at his board.
     "Uh-uh," Kinnison demurred. "That might smell a bit on the cheesy side, too,
don't you think, fellows?" and Worsel and Tregonsee agreed that such a move would be
ill-advised.
     "Might I offer a barely tenable suggestion?" Nadreck asked diffidently.
     "I'll say you can—come in."
     "Judging by the rate at which Lyranians have been vanishing of late, it would
seem that we would not have to wait too long before another one comes hither under
her own power. Since the despised ones will have captured her themselves, and
themselves will have forced her to come to them, no suspicion will be or can be
aroused."
     "That's a thought, Nadreck—that is a thought!" Kinnison applauded. "Shoot us
up, will you, Hen? 'Way up, and hover over the center of the spread of intersections of
those lines. Put observers on every plate you've got here, and have Communications
'alert all observers aboard ship. Have half of them search the air all around as far as
they can reach for an airplane in flight; have the rest comb the terrain below, both on the
surface and underground, with spy-rays, for any sign of a natural or artificial cave."
     "What kind of information do you think they may have, Kinnison?" asked
Tregonsee the Rigellian.
     "I don't know." Kinnison pondered for minutes. "Somebody—around here
somewhere—has got some kind of a tie-up with some Boskonian entity or group that is
fairly well up the ladder: I'm pretty sure of that. Bleeko sent ships here—one speedster,
certainly, and there's no reason to suppose that it was an isolated case . . ."
     "There is nothing to show, either, that it was not an isolated case," Tregonsee
observed, quietly, "and the speedster landed, not up here near the pole, but in the
populated zone. Why? To secure some of the women?" The Rigellian was not arguing
against Kinnison; he was, as they all knew, helping to subject every facet of the matter
to scrutiny.
     "Possibly—but this is a transfer point," Kinnison pointed out. "Illona was to start
out from here, remember. And those two ships . . . coming to meet her, or perhaps each
other, or . . ."
     "Or perhaps called there by the speedster's crew, for aid," Tregonsee completed
the thought.
     "One, but quite possibly not both," Nadreck suggested. "We are agreed, 1 think,
that the probability of a Boskonian connection is sufficiently large to warrant the taking
of these Overlords alive in order to read their minds?"
     They were; hence the discussion then turned naturally to the question of how this
none-too-easy feat was to be accomplished. The two Patrol ships had climbed and were
cruising in great, slow circles; the spy-ray men and the other observers were hard at
work. Before they had found anything upon or in the ground, however:
     "Plane, ho!" came the report, and both vessels, with spy-ray blocks out now as
well as thought-screens, plunged silently into a flatly-slanting dive. Directly over the slow
Lyranian craft, high above it, they turned as one to match its course and slowed to
match its pace.
     "Come to life, Kim—don't let them have her!" Clarrissa exclaimed. Being en
rapport with them all, she knew that both unhuman Worsel and monstrous Nadreck
were perfectly willing to let the helpless Lyranian become a sacrifice; she knew that
neither Kinnison nor Tregonsee had as yet given that angle of the affair a single
thought. "Surely, Kim, you don't have to let them kill her, do you? Isn't showing you the
gate or whatever it is, enough? Can't you rig up something to do something with when
she gets almost inside?"
     "Why . . . uh . . . I s'pose so." Kinnison wrenched his attention away from a plate.
"Oh, sure,. Cris. Hen! Drop us down a bit, and have the boys get ready to spear that
crate with a couple of tractors when I give the word."
     The plane held its course, directly toward a range of low, barren, precipitous hills.
As it approached them it dropped, as though to attempt a landing upon a steep and
rocky hillside.
     "She can't land there," Kinnison breathed, "and Overlords would want her alive,
not dead . . . suppose I've been wrong all the time? Get ready, fellows!" he snapped.
"Take her at the very last possible instant—before—she—crashes—NOW!"
     As he yelled the command the powerful beams leaped out, seizing the disaster-
bound vehicle in a gently unbreakable grip. Had they not done so, however, the
Lyranian would not have crashed; for in that last split second a section of the rugged
hillside fell inward. In the very mouth of that dread opening the little plane hung for an
instant, then:
     "Grab the woman, quick!" Kinnison ordered, for the Lyranian was very evidently
going to jump. And, such was the awful measure of the Overlord's compulsion, she did
jump; without a parachute, without knowing or caring what, if anything, was to break her
fall. But before she struck ground a tractor beam had seized her, and passive plane and
wildly struggling pilot were both borne rapidly aloft.
     "Why, Kim, it's Helen!" Clarrissa shrieked in surprise, then voice and manner
became transformed. "The poor, poor thing," she crooned. "Bring her in at number six
lock. I'll meet her there—you fellows keep clear. In the state she's in a
shock—especially such a shock as seeing such a monstrous lot of males—would knock
her off the beam, sure."
     Helen of Lyrane ceased struggling in the instant of being drawn through the
thought-screen surrounding the Dauntless. She had not been unconscious at any time.
She had known exactly what she had been doing; she had wanted intensely—such was
the insidiously devastating power of the Delgonian mind—to do just that and nothing
else. The falseness of values, the indefensibility of motivation, simply could not register
in her thoroughly suffused, completely blanketed mind. When the screen cut off the
Overlord's control, however, thus restoring her own, the shock of realization of what she
had done—what she had been forced to do—struck her like a physical blow. Worse
than a physical blow, for ordinary physical violence she could understand.
     This mischance, however, she could not even begin to understand. It was utterly
incomprehensible. She knew what had happened; she knew that her mind had been
taken over by some monstrously alien, incredibly powerful mentality, for some purpose
so obscure as to be entirely beyond her ken. To her narrow philosophy of existence, to
her one-planet insularity of viewpoint and outlook, the very existence, anywhere, of such
a mind with such a purpose was in simple fact impossible. For it actually to exist upon
her own planet, Lyrane II, was sheerly, starkly unthinkable.
     She did not recognize the Dauntless, of course. To her all space-ships were
alike. They were all invading warships, full of enemies. All things and all beings
originating elsewhere than upon Lyrane II were, perforce, enemies. Those outrageous
males, the Tellurian Lensman and his cohorts, had pretended not to be inimical, as had
the peculiar, white-swathed Tellurian near-person who had been worming itself into her
confidence in order to study the disappearances; but she did not trust even them.
     She now knew the manner of, if not the reason for, the vanishment of her fellow
Lyranians. The tractors of the space-ship had saved her from whatever fate it was that
impended. She did not, however, feel any thrill of gratitude. One enemy or another,
what difference did it make? Therefore, as she went through the blocking screen and
recovered control of her mind, she set herself to fight; to fight with every iota of her
mighty mind and with every fiber of her lithe, hard-schooled, tigress' body. The air-lock
doors opened and closed—she faced, not an armed and armored male all set to slay,
but the white-clad near-person whom she already knew better than she ever would
know any other non-Lyranian.
     "Oh, Helen!" the girl half sobbed, throwing both arms around the still-braced
Chief Person. "I'm so glad that we got to you in time! And there will be no more
disappearances, dear—the boys will see to that!"
     Helen did not know, really, what disinterested friendship meant. Since the nurse
had put her into a wide-open two-way, however, she knew beyond all possibility of
doubt that these Tellurians wished her and all her kind well, not ill; and the shock of that
knowledge, superimposed upon the other shocks which she had so recently undergone,
was more than she could bear. For the first and only time in her hard, busy, purposeful
life, Helen of Lyrane fainted; fainted dead away in the circle of the Earth-girl's arms.
     The nurse knew that this was nothing serious; in fact, she was professionally
quite in favor of it. Hence, instead of resuscitating the Lyranian, she swung the pliant
body into a carry—as has been previously intimated, Clarrissa MacDougall was no
more a weakling physically than she was mentally—and without waiting for orderlies
and stretcher she bore it easily away to her own quarters.

CHAPTER 13
In the Cavern

     In the meantime the more warlike forces of the Dauntless had not been idle. In
die instant of the opening of the cavern's doors the captain's talker issued orders, and
as soon as the Lyranian was out of the line of fire keen-eyed needle-ray men saw to it
that those doors were in no mechanical condition to close. The Dauntless settled
downward; landed in front of the entrance to the cavern. The rocky, broken terrain
meant nothing to her; .the hardest, jaggedest boulders crumbled instantly to dust as her
enormous mass drove the file-hard, inflexible armor of her mid-zone deep into the
ground. Then, while alert beamers watched the entrance and while spy-ray experts
combed the interior for other openings which Kinnison and Worsel were already
practically certain did not exist, the forces of Civilization formed for the attack.
     Worsel was fairly shivering with eagerness for the fray. His was, and with plenty
of reason, the bitterest by far of all the animosities there present against the Overlords.
For Delgon and his own native planet, Velantia, were neighboring worlds, circling about
the same sun. Since the beginning of Velantian space-flight the Overlords of Delgon
had preyed upon the Velantians; in fact, the Overlords had probably caused the first
Velantian space-ship to be built. They had called them, in a never-ending stream,
across the empty gulf of space. They had pinned them against their torture screens, had
flayed them and had tweaked them to bits, had done them to death in every one of the
numberless slow and hideous fashions which had been developed by a race of sadists
who had been specializing in the fine art of torture for thousands upon thousands of
years. Then, in the last minutes of the long-drawn-out agony of death, the Overlords
were wont to feed, with a passionate, greedy, ineradicably ingrained lust utterly
inexplicable to any civilized mind, upon the life-forces which the mangled bodies could
no longer contain.
     This horrible parasitism went on for ages. The Velantians fought vainly: their
crude thought-screens were almost useless until after the coming of the Patrol. Then,
with screens that were of real use, and with ships of power and with weapons of might,
Worsel himself had taken the lead in the clean-up of Delgon. He was afraid, of course.
Any Velantian was and is frightened to the very center of his being by the mere thought
of an Overlord. He cannot help it; it is in his heredity, bred into the innermost chemistry
of his body; the cold grue of a thousand thousand fiendishly tortured ancestors simply
will not be denied or cast aside.
     Many of the monsters had succeeded in fleeing Delgon, of course. Some
departed in the ships which had ferried their victims to the planet, some were removed
to other solar systems by the Eich. The rest were slain; and as the knowledge that a
Velantian could kill an Overlord gained headway, the emotions toward the oppressors
generated within minds such as the Velantians' became literally indescribable. Fear was
there yet and in abundance—it simply could not be eradicated. Horror and revulsion.
Sheer, burning hatred; and, more powerful than all, amounting almost to an obsession,
a clamoring, shrieking, driving urge for revenge which was almost tangible. All these,
and more, Worsel felt as he waited, twitching.
     The Valerians wanted to go in because it meant a hand-to-hand fight. Fighting
was their business, their sport, and their pleasure; they loved it for its own sweet sake,
with a simple, wholehearted devotion. To die in combat was a Valerian soldier's natural
and much-to-be-desired end; to die in any peaceful fashion was a disgrace and a
calamity. They did and do go into battle with very much the same joyous abandon with
which a sophomore goes to meet his date in Lover's Lane. And now, to make physical
combat all the nicer and juicier, they carried semi-portable tractors and pressors, for the
actual killing was not to take place until after the battle proper was over. Blasting the
Overlords out of existence would have been simplicity itself: but they were not to die
until after they had been forced to divulge whatever they might have of knowledge or of
information.
     Nadreck of Palain wanted to go in solely to increase his already vast store of
knowledge. His thirst for facts was a purely scientific one; the fashion in which it was to
be satisfied was the veriest, the most immaterial detail. Indeed, it is profoundly
impossible to portray to any human intelligence the serene detachment, the utterly
complete indifference to suffering exhibited by practically all of the frigid-blooded races,
even those adherent to Civilization, especially when the suffering is being done by an
enemy. Nadreck did know, academically and in a philological sense, from his reading,
the approximate significance of such words as "compunction", "sympathy", and
"squeamishness"; but he would have been astounded beyond measure at any
suggestion that they would apply to any such matter-of-fact business as the extraction
of data from the mind of an Overlord of Delgon, no matter what might have to be done
to the unfortunate victim in the process.
     Tregonsee went in simply because Kinnison did—to be there to help out in case
the Tellurian should need him.
     Kinnison went in because he felt that he had to. He knew full well that he was not
going to get any kick at all out of what was going to happen. He was not going to like it,
any part of it. Nor did he. In fact, he wanted to be sick— violently sick—before the
business was well started. And Nadreck perceived his mental and physical distress.
     "Why stay, friend Kinnison, when your presence is not necessary?" he asked,
with the slightly pleased, somewhat surprised, hellishly placid mental immobility which
Kinnison was later to come to know so well. "Even though my powers are admittedly
small, I feel eminently qualified to cope with such minor matters as the obtainment and
the accurate transmittal of that which you wish to know. I cannot understand your
emotions, but I realize fully that they are essential components of that which makes you
what you fundamentally are. There can be no justification for your submitting yourself
needlessly to such stresses, such psychic traumata."
     And Kinnison and Tregonsee, realizing the common sense of the Palainian's
statement and very glad indeed to have an excuse for leaving the outrageous scene,
left it forthwith.
     There is no need to go into detail as to what actually transpired within that
cavern's dark and noisome depths. It took a long time, nor was any of it gentle. The
battle itself, before the Overlords were downed, was bad enough in any Tellurian eyes.
Clad in armor of proof although they were, more than one of the Valerians died.
Worsel's armor was shattered and rent, his leather-hard flesh was slashed, burned, and
mangled before the last of the monstrous forms was pinned down and helpless.
Nadreck alone escaped unscathed —he did so, he explained quite truthfully, because
he did not go in there to fight, but to learn.
     What followed the battle, however, was infinitely worse. The Delgonians, as has
been said, were hard, cold, merciless, even among themselves; they were pitiless and
unyielding and refractory in the extreme. It need scarcely be emphasized then, that they
did not yield to persuasion either easily or graciously; that their own apparatus and
equipment had to be put to its fullest grisly use before those stubborn minds gave up
the secrets so grimly and so implacably sought. Worsel, the raging Velantian, used
those torture-tools with a vengeful savagery and a snarling ferocity which are at least
partially understandable; but Nadreck employed them with a calm capability, a coldly,
emotionlessly efficient callousness the mere contemplation of which made icy shivers
chase each other up and down Kinnison's spine.
     At long last the job was done. The battered Patrol forces returned to the
Dauntless, bringing with them their spoils and their dead. The cavern and its every
molecule of contents was bombed out of existence. The two ships took off; Cartiff's
heavily-armed "merchantman" to do the long flit back to Tellus, the Dauntless to drop
Helen and her plane off at her airport and then to join her sister super-dreadnoughts
which were already beginning to assemble in Rift Ninety Four.
     "Come down here, will you please, Kim?" came Clarrissa's thought. "I've been
keeping her pretty well blocked out, but she wants to talk to you—in fact, she insists on
it— before she leaves the ship."
     "Hm . . . that is something!" the Lensman exclaimed, and hurried to the nurse's
cabin.
     There stood the Lyranian queen; a full five inches taller than Clarissa's five feet
six, a good thirty five pounds heavier than her not inconsiderable one hundred and forty
five. Hard, fine, supple; erectly poised she stood there, an exquisitely beautiful statue of
pale bronze, her flaming hair a gorgeous riot. Head held proudly high, she stared only
slightly upward into the Earth-man's quiet, understanding eyes.
     "Thanks, Kinnison, for everything that you and yours have done for me and
mine," she said, simply; and held out her right hand in what she knew was the correct
Tellurian gesture.
     "Uh-uh, Helen," Kinnison denied, gently, making no motion to grasp the proffered
hand—which was promptly and enthusiastically withdrawn. "Nice, and it's really big of
you, but don't strain yourself to like us men too much or too soon; you've got to get used
to us gradually. We like you a lot, and we respect you even more, but we've been
around and you haven't. You can't be feeling friendly enough yet to enjoy shaking hands
with me—you certainly haven't got jets enough to swing that load—so this time we'll
take the thought for the deed. Keep trying, though, Toots old girl, and you'll make it yet.
In the meantime we're all pulling for you, and if you ever need any help, shoot us a call
on the communicator we've put aboard your plane. Clear ether, ace!"
     "Clear ether, MacDougall and Kinnison!" Helen's eyes were softer than either of
the Tellurians had ever seen them before. "There is, I think, something of wisdom, of
efficiency, in what you have said. It may be . . . that is, there is a possibility . . . you of
Civilization are, perhaps, persons—of a sort, that is,—after all. Thanks—really thanks, I
mean, this time—good-bye."
     Helen's plane had already been unloaded. She disembarked and stood beside it;
watching, with a peculiarly untranslatable expression, the huge cruiser until it was out of
sight.
     "It was just like pulling teeth for her to be civil to me," Kinnison grinned at his
fiancee, "but she finally made the lift. She's a grand girl, that Helen, in her peculiar,
poisonous way."
     "Why, Kim!" Clarrissa protested. "She's nice, really, when you get to know her.
And she's so stunningly, so ravishingly beautiful!"
     "Uh-huh," Kinnison agreed, without a trace of enthusiasm. "Cast her in chilled
stainless steel—she'd just about do as she is, without any casting—and she'd make a
mighty fine statue."
     "Kim! Shame on you!" the girl exclaimed. "Why, she's the most perfectly beautiful
thing I ever saw in my whole life!" Her voice softened. "I wish I looked like that," she
added wistfully.
     "She's beautiful enough—in her way—of course," the man admitted, entirely
unimpressed. "But then, so is a Radelegian cateagle, so is a spire of frozen helium, and
so is. a six-foot-long, armor-piercing punch. As for you wanting to look like her—that's
sheer tripe, Cris, and you know it. Beside you, all the Helens that ever lived, with
Cleopatra, Dessa Desplaines, and Illona Potter thrown in, wouldn't make a baffled flare .
. ."
     That was, of course, what she wanted him to say; and what followed is of no
particular importance here.
     Shortly after the Dauntless cleared the stratosphere, Nadreck reported that he
had finished assembling and arranging the data, and Kinnison called the Lensmen
together in his con room for an ultra-private conference. Worsel, it appeared, was still in
surgery.
     " 'Smaller, Doc?" Kinnison asked, casually. He knew that there was nothing really
serious the matter—Worsel had come out of the cavern under his own power, and a
Velantian recovers with startling rapidity from any wound which does not kill him outright
"Having trouble with your stitching?"
     "I'll say we are!" the surgeon grunted. "Have to bore holes with an electric drill
and use linemen's pliers. Just about through now, though—he'll be with you in a couple
of minutes," and in a very little more than the stipulated time the Velantian joined the
other Lensmen.
     He was bandaged and taped, and did not move at his customary headlong pace,
but he fairly radiated self-satisfaction, bliss, and contentment. He felt better, he
declared, than he had at any time since he cleaned out the last of Delgon's caverns.
     Kinnison stopped the inter-play of thoughts by starting up his Lensman's
projector. This mechanism was something like a tri-di machine, except that instead of
projecting sound and three-dimensional color, it operated via pure thought. Sometimes
the thoughts of one or more Overlords, at other times the thoughts of the Eich or other
beings as registered upon the minds of the Overlords, at still others the thoughts of
Nadreck or of Worsel amplifying a preceding thought-passage or explaining some detail
of the picture which was being shown at the moment. The spool of tape now being run,
with others, formed the Lensmen's record of what they had done. This record would go
to Prime Base under Lensman's Seal; that is, only a Lensman could handle it or see it.
Later, after the emergency had passed, copies of it would go to various Central
Libraries and thus become available to properly accredited students. Indeed, it is only
from such records, made upon the scene and at the time by keen-thinking, logical, truth-
seeking Lensmen, that such a factual, minutely-detailed history as this can be compiled;
and your historian is supremely proud that he was the first person other than a Lensman
to be allowed to study a great deal of this priceless data.
     Worsel knew the gist of the report, Nadreck the compiler knew it all; but to
Kinnison, Clarrissa, and Tregonsee the unreeling of the tape brought shocking news.
For, as a matter of fact, the Overlords had known more, and there was more in the
Lyranian solar system to know, than Kinnison's wildest imaginings had dared to
suppose. That system was one of the main focal points for the zwilnik business of an
immense volume of space; Lyrane II was the meeting-place, the dispatcher's office, the
nerve-center from which thousands of invisible, immaterial lines reached out to
thousands of planets peopled by warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. Menjo Bleeko had
sent to Lyrane II not one expedition, but hundreds of them; the affair of Illona and her
escorts had been the veriest, the most trifling incident.
     The Overlords, however, did not know of any Boskonian group in the Second
Galaxy. They had no superiors, anywhere. The idea of anyone or any thing anywhere
being superior to an Overlord was unthinkable. They did, however, cooperate
with—here came the really stunning fact—certain of the Eich who lived upon eternally
dark Lyrane VIII, and who managed things for the frigid-blooded, poison-breathing
Boskonians of the region in much the same fashion as the Overlords did for the warm-
blooded, light-loving races. To make the cooperation easier and more efficient, the two
planets were connected by a hyper-spatial tube.
     "Just a sec!" Kinnison interrupted, as he stopped the machine for a moment.
"The Overlords were kidding themselves a bit there, I think—they must have been. If
they didn't report to or get orders from the Second Galaxy or some other higher-up
office, the Eich must have; and since the records and plunder and stuff were not in the
cavern, the Eich must have them on Eight. Therefore, whether they realized it or not,
the Overlords must have been inferior to the Eich and under their orders. Check?"
     "Check," Nadreck agreed. "Worsel and I concluded that they knew the facts, but
were covering up even in their own minds, to save face. Our conclusions, and the data
from which they were derived, are in the introduction—another spool. Shall I get it?"
     "By no means—just glad to have the point cleared up, is all. Thanks," and the
showing went on.
     The principal reason why the Lyranian system had been chosen for that
important headquarters was that it was one of the very few outlying solar systems,
completely unknown to the scientists of the Patrol, in which both the Eich and the
Overlords could live in their natural environments. Lyrane VIII was, of course, intensely,
bitterly cold. This quality is not rare, since nearly all Number Eight planets are; its
uniqueness lay in the fact that its atmosphere was almost exactly like that of Jarnevon.
     And Lyrane II suited the Overlords perfectly. Not only did it have the correct
temperature, gravity, and atmosphere, but also it offered that much rarer thing without
which no cavern of Overlords would have been content for long—a native life-form
possessing strong and highly vital minds upon which they could prey.
     There was more, much more; but the rest of it was not directly pertinent to the
immediate questions. The tape ran out, Kinnison snapped off the projector, and the
Lensmen went into a five-way.
     Why was not Lyrane II defended? Worsel and Kinnison had already answered
that one. Secretiveness and power of mind, not armament, had always been the natural
defenses of all Overlords. Why hadn't the Eich interfered? That was easy, too. The Eich
looked after themselves—if the Overlords couldn't, that was just too bad. The two ships
that had come to aid and had remained to revenge had certainly not come from
Eight—their crews had been oxygen-breathers. Probably a rendezvous—immaterial
anyway. Why wasn't the whole solar system ringed with outposts and screens? Too
obvious. Why hadn't the Dauntless been detected? Because of her nullifiers; and if she
had been spotted by any short-range stuff she had been mistaken for another zwilnik
ship. They hadn't detected anything out of the way on Eight because it hadn't occurred
to anybody to swing an analyzer toward that particular planet. If they did they'd find that
Eight was defended plenty. Had the Eich had time to build defenses? They must have
had, or they wouldn't be there—they certainly were not taking that kind of chances. And
by the way, hadn't they better do a bit of snooping around Eight before they went back
to join the Z9M9Z and the Fleet? They had.
     Thereupon the Dauntless faced about and retraced her path toward the now
highly important system of Lyrane. In their previous approaches the Patrolmen had
observed the usual precautions to avoid revealing themselves to any zwilnik vessel
which might have been on the prowl. Those precautions were now intensified to the
limit, since they knew that Lyrane VIII was the site of a base manned by the Eich
themselves.
     As the big cruiser crept toward her goal, nullifiers full out and every instrument of
detection and reception as attentively out-stretched as the whiskers of a tomcat slinking
along a black alley at midnight, the Lensmen again pooled their brains in conference.
     The Eich. This was going to be NO pushover. Even the approach would have to
be figured to a hair; because, since the Boskonians had decided that it would be poor
strategy to screen in their whole solar system, it was a cold certainty that they would
have their own planets guarded and protected by every device which their inhuman
ingenuity could devise. The Dauntless would have to stop just outside the range of
electro-magnetic detection, for the Boskonians would certainly have a five hundred
percent overlap. Their nullifiers would hash up the electros somewhat, but there was no
use in taking too many chances. Previously, on right-line courses to and from Lyrane II,
that had not mattered, for two reasons—not only was the distance extreme for accurate
electro work, but also it would have been assumed that their ship was a zwilnik. Laying
a course for Eight, though, would be something else entirely. A zwilnik would take the
tube, and they would not, even if they had known where it was.
     That left the visuals. The cruiser was a mighty small target .at interplanetary
distances; but there were such things as electronic telescopes, and the occupation of
even a single star might prove disastrous. Kinnison called the chief pilot.
     "Stars must be thin in certain regions of the sky out here, Hen. Suppose you can
pick us out a line of approach along which we will occult no stars and no bright
nebulae?"
     "I should think so, Kim—just a sec; I'll see . . . Yes, easily. There's a lot of black
background, especially to the nadir," and the conference was resumed.
     They'd have to go through the screens of electros in Kinnison's inherently
indetectable black speedster. QX, but she was nobody's fighter—she didn't have a
beam hot enough to light a match. And besides, there were the thought-screens and the
highly-probable other stuff about which th~e Lensmen could know nothing.
     Kinnison quite definitely did not relish the prospect. He remembered all too vividly
what had happened when he had scouted the Eich's base on Jarnevon; when it was
only through Worsel's aid that he had barely—just barely—escaped with his life. And
Jarnevon's defenders had probably been exerting only routine precautions, whereas
these fellows were undoubtedly cocked and primed for THE Lensman. He would go in,
of course, but he'd probably come out feet first —he didn't know any more about their
defenses than he had known before, and that was nothing, fiat. . .
     "Excuse the interruption, please," Nadreck's thought apologized, "but it would
seem to appear more desirable, would it not, to induce the one of them possessing the
most information to come out to us?"
     "Huh?" Kinnison demanded. "It would, of course—but how in all your purple hells
do you figure on swinging that load?"
     "I am, as you know, a person of small ability," Nadreck replied in his usual
circuitous fashion. "Also, I am of almost negligible mass and strength. Of what is known
as bravery I have no trace—in fact, I have pondered long over that to me
incomprehensible quality and have decided that it has no place in my scheme of
existence. I have found it much more efficient to perform the necessary tasks in the
easiest and safest possible manner, which is usually by means of stealth, deceit,
indirection, and other cowardly artifices."
     "Any of those, or all of them, would be QX with me," Kinnison assured him.
"Anything goes, with gusto and glee, as far as the Eich are concerned. What I don't see
is how we can put it across."
     "Thought-screens interfered so seriously with my methods of procedure," the
Palainian explained, "that I was forced to develop a means of puncturing them without
upsetting their generators. The device is not generally known, you understand."
Kinnison understood. So did the other Lensmen.
     "Might I suggest that the four of you put on heated armor and come with me to
my vessel in the hold? It will take some little time to transfer my apparatus and
equipment to your speedster."
     "Is it non-ferrous—undetectable?" Kinnison asked.
     "Of course," Nadreck replied in surprise. "I work, as I told you, by stealth. My
vessel is, except for certain differences necessitated by racial considerations, a
duplicate of your own."
     "Why didn't you say so?" Kinnison wanted to know. "Why bother to move the
gadget? Why not use your speedster?"
     "Because I was not asked. We should not bother. The only reason for using your
vessel is so that you will not suffer the discomfort of wearing armor," Nadreck replied,
categorically.
     "Cancel it, then," Kinnison directed. "You've been wearing armor all the time you
were with us—turn about for a while will be QX. Better that way, anyway, as this is very
definitely your party, not ours. Not?"
     "As you say, and with your permission," Nadreck agreed. "Also it may very well
be that you will be able to suggest improvements in my device whereby its efficiency
may be increased."
     "I doubt it" The Tellurian's already great respect for this retiring, soft-spoken,
"cowardly" Lensman was increasing constantly. "But we would like to study it, and
perhaps copy it, if you so allow."
     "Gladly," and so it was arranged.
     The Dauntless crept along a black-background pathway and stopped. Nadreck,
Worsel, and Kinnison—three were enough and neither Clarrissa nor Tregonsee insisted
upon going— boarded the Palainian speedster.
     Away from the mother-ship it sped upon muffled jets, and through the far-flung,
heavily overlapped electro-magnetic detector zones. Through the outer thought-
screens. Then, ultra-slowly, as space-speeds go, the speedster moved forward, feeling
for whatever other blocking screens there might be.
     All three of those Lensmen were in fact detectors themselves—their Arisian-
imparted special senses made ethereal, even sub-ethereal, vibrations actually visible or
tangible—but they did not depend only upon their bodily senses. That speedster carried
instruments unknown to space-pilotry, and the Lensmen used them unremittingly. When
they came to a screen they opened it, so insidiously that its generating mechanisms
gave no alarms. Even a meteorite screen, which was supposed to forbid the passage of
any material object, yielded without protest to Nadreck's subtle manipulation.
     Slowly, furtively, a perfectly absorptive black body sinking through blackness so
intense as to be almost palpable, the Palainian speedster settled downward toward the
Boskonian fortress of Lyrane VIII.

CHAPTER 14
Nadreck at Work

     This is perhaps as good a place as any to glance in passing at the fashion in
which the planet Lonabar was brought under the aegis of Civilization. No attempt will or
can be made to describe it in any detail, since any adequate treatment of it would fill a
volume—indeed, many volumes have already been written concerning various phases
of the matter —and since it is not strictly germane to the subject in hand. However,
some knowledge of the modus operandi in such cases is highly desirable for the full
understanding of this history, in view of the vast number of planets which Coordinator
Kinnison and his associates did have to civilize before the Second Galaxy was made
secure.
     Scarcely had Cartiff-Kinnison moved out than the Patrol moved in. If Lonabar had
been heavily fortified, a fleet of appropriate size and power would have cleared the way.
As it was, the fleet which landed was one of transports, not of battleships, and all the
fighting from then on was purely defensive.
     Propagandists took the lead; psychologists; Lensmen skilled not only in
languages but also in every art of human relationships. The case of Civilization was
stated plainly and repeatedly, the errors and the fallacies of autocracy were pointed out.
A nucleus of government was formed; not of Civilization's imports, but of solid
Lonabarian citizens who had passed the Lensmen's tests of ability and trustworthiness.
     Under this local government a pseudo-democracy began haltingly to function. At
first its progress was painfully slow; but as more and more of the citizens perceived
what the Patrol actually was doing, it grew apace. Not only did the invaders allow—yes,
foster—free speech and statutory liberty; they suppressed ruthlessly any person or any
faction seeking to build a new dictatorship, whatever its nature, upon the ruins of the
old. That news traveled fast; and laboring always and mightily upon Civilization's side
were the always-present, however deeply-buried, urges of all intelligent entities toward
self-expression.
     There was opposition, of course. Practically all of those who had waxed fat upon
the old order were very strongly in favor of its continuance. There were the hordes of
the down-trodden who had so long and so dumbly endured oppression that they could
not understand anything else; in whom the above-mentioned urges had been beaten
and tortured almost out of existence. They themselves were not opposed to
Civilization—for them it meant at worst only a change of masters—but those who
sought by the same old wiles to re-enslave them were foes indeed.
     Menjo Bleeko's sycophants and retainers were told to work or starve. The fat
hogs could support the new order—or else. The thugs and those who tried to prey upon
and exploit the dumb masses were arrested and examined. Some were cured, some
were banished, some were shot.
     Little could be done, however, about the dumb themselves, for in them the spark
was feeble indeed. The new government nursed that spark along, the while ruling them
as definitely, although not as harshly, as had the old; the Lensmen backing the
struggling young Civilization knowing full well that in the children or in the children's
children of these unfortunates the spark would flame up into a great white light.
     It is seen that this government was not, and could not for many years become, a
true democracy. It was in fact a benevolent semi-autocracy; autonomous in a sense, yet
controlled by the Galactic Council through its representatives, the Lensmen. It was,
however, so infinitely more liberal than anything theretofore known by the Lonabarians
as to be a political revelation, and since corruption, that cosmos-wide curse of
democracy, was not allowed a first finger-hold, the principles of real democracy and of
Civilization took deeper root year by year.
     To get back into the beam of narrative, Nadreck's blackly indetectable speedster
settled to ground far from the Boskonians' central dome; well beyond the far-flung
screens. The Lensmen knew that no life existed outside that dome and they knew that
no possible sense of perception could pierce those defenses. They did not know,
however, what other resources of detection, of offense, or of defense the foe might
possess; hence the greatest possible distance at which they could work efficiently was
the best distance.
     "I realize that it is useless to caution any active mind not to think at all," Nadreck
remarked as he began to manipulate various and sundry controls, "but you already
know from the nature of our problem that any extraneous thought will wreak untold
harm. For that reason I beg of you to keep your thought-screens up at all times, no
matter what happens. It is, however, imperative that you be kept informed, since I may
require aid or advice at any moment. To that end I ask you to hold these electrodes,
which are connected to a receptor. Do not hesitate to speak freely to each other or to
me; but please use only a spoken language, as I am averse to Lensed thoughts at this
juncture. Are we agreed? Are we ready?"
     They were agreed and ready. Nadreck actuated Ms peculiar drill—a tube of force
somewhat analogous to a Q-type helix except in that it operated within the frequency-
range of thought—and began to increase, by almost infinitesimal increments, its power.
Nothing, apparently, happened; but finally the Palainian's instruments registered the fact
that it was through.
     "This is none too safe, friends," the Palainian announced from one part of his
multi-compartmented brain, without distracting any part of his attention from the
incredibly delicate operation he was performing. "May I suggest, Kinnison, in my
cowardly way, that you place yourself at the controls and be ready to take us away from
this planet at speed and without notice?"
     "I'll say you may!" and the Tellurian complied, with alacrity. "Right now, cowardice
is indicated—copiously!"
     But through course after course of screen the hollow drill gnawed its cautious
way without giving alarm; until at length there began to come through the interloping
tunnel a vague impression of foreign thought. Nadreck stopped the helix, then advanced
it by tiny steps until the thoughts came in coldly clear—the thoughts of the Eich going
about their routine businesses. In the safety of their impregnably shielded dome the
proudly self-confident monsters did not wear their personal thought-screens; which, for
Civilization's sake, was just as well.
     It had been decided previously that the mind they wanted would be that of a
psychologist; hence the thought sent out by the Palainian was one which would appeal
only to such a mind; in fact, one practically imperceptible to any other. It was extremely
faint; wavering uncertainly upon the very threshold of perception. It was so vague, so
formless, so inchoate that it required Kinnison's intensest concentration even to
recognize it as a thought. Indeed, so starkly unhuman was Nadreck's mind and that of
his proposed quarry that it was all the Tellurian Lensman could do to so recognize it. It
dealt, fragmentarily and in the merest glimmerings, with the nature and the mechanisms
of the First Cause; with the fundamental ego, its ration d'etre, its causation, its
motivation, its differentiation; with the stupendously awful concepts of the Prime Origin
of all things ever to be.
     Unhurried, monstrously patient, Nadreck neither raised the power of the thought
nor hastened its slow tempo. Stolidly, for minute after long minute he held it, spraying it
throughout the vast dome as mist is sprayed from an atomizer nozzle. And finally he got
a bite. A mind seized upon that wistful, homeless, incipient thought; took it for its own. It
strengthened it, enlarged upon it, built it up. And Nadreck followed it.
     He did not force it; he did nothing whatever to cause any suspicion that the
thought was or ever had been his. But as the mind of the Eich busied itself with that
thought he all unknowingly let down the bars to Nadreck's invasion.
     Then, perfectly in tune, the Palainian subtly insinuated into the mind of the Eich
the mildly disturbing idea that he had forgotten something, or had neglected to do some
trifling thing. This was the first really critical instant, for Nadreck had no idea whatever of
what his victim's duties were or what he could have left undone. It had to be something
which would take him out of the dome and toward the Patrolman's concealed speedster,
but what it was, the Eich would have to develop for himself; Nadreck could not dare to
attempt even a partial control at this stage and at this distance.
     Kinnison clenched his teeth and held his breath, his big hands clutching fiercely
the pilot's bars; Worsel unheedingly coiled his supple body into an ever smaller, ever
harder and more compact bale.
     "Ah!" Kinnison exhaled explosively. "It worked!" The psychologist, at Nadreck's
impalpable suggestion, had finally thought of the thing. It was a thought-screen
generator which had been giving a little trouble and which really should have been
checked before this.
     Calmly, with the mild self-satisfaction which comes of having successfully
recalled to mind a highly elusive thought, the Eich opened one of the dome's
unforceable doors and made his unconcerned way directly toward the waiting Lensmen;
and as he approached Nadreck stepped up by logarithmic increments the power of his
hold.
     "Get ready, please, to cut your screens and to synchronize with me in case
anything slips and he tries to break away," Nadreck cautioned; but nothing slipped.
     The Eich came up unseeing to die speedster's side and stopped. The drill
disappeared. A thought-screen encompassed die group narrowly. Kinnison and Worsel
released their screens and also tuned in to die creature's mind. And Kinnison swore
briefly, for what they found was meager enough.
     He knew a great deal concerning die zwilnik doings of die First Galaxy; but so did
die Lensmen; they were not interested in diem. Neither were they interested, at die
moment, in the files or hi die records. Regarding die higher-ups, he knew of two, and
only two, personalities. By means of an inter-galactic communicator he received orders
from, and reported to, a clearly-defined, somewhat Eich-like entity known to him as
Kandron; and vaguely, from occasional stray and unintentional thoughts of this
Kandron, he had visualized as being somewhere in die background a human being
named Alcon. He supposed that die planets upon which these persons lived were
located in die Second Galaxy, but he was not certain, even of that. He had never seen
either of diem; he was pretty sure that none of his group ever would be allowed to see
diem. He had no means of tracing diem and no desire whatsoever to do so. The only
fact he really knew was dial at irregular intervals Kandron got into communication with
this base of die Eich.
     That was all. Kinnison and Worsel let go and Nadreck, with a minute attention to
detail which would be wearisome here, jockeyed die unsuspecting monster back into die
dome. The native knew full where he had been, and why. He had inspected the
generator and found it in good order. Every second of elapsed time was accounted for
exactly. He had not the slightest inkling dial anything out of the ordinary had happened
to him or anywhere around him.
     As carefully as die speedster had approached die planet, she departed from it.
She rejoined the Dauntless, in whose control room Kinnison lined out a solid
communicator beam to the Z9M9Z and to Port Admiral Haynes. He reported crisply,
rapidly, everything that had transpired.
     "So our best bet is for you and the Fleet to get out of here as fast as Klono will let
you," he concluded. "Go straight out Rift Ninety Four, staying as far away as possible
from both the spiral arm and the galaxy proper. Unlimber every spotting-screen you've
got—put them to work along the line between Lyrane and the Second Galaxy. Plot all
the punctures, extending the line as fast as you can. We'll join you at max and transfer
to the Z9M9Z—her tank is just what the doctors ordered for the job we've got to do."
     "Well, if you say so, I suppose that's the way it's got to be," Haynes grumbled. He
had been growling and snorting under his breath ever since it had become evident what
Kinnison's recommendation was to be. "I don't like this thing of standing by and letting
zwilniks thumb their noses at us, like Prellin did on Bronseca. That once was once too
damned often."
     "Well, you got him, finally, you know," Kinnison reminded, quite cheerfully, "and
you can have these Eich, too—sometime."
     "I hope," Haynes acquiesced, something less than sweetly. "QX, then—but put
out a few jets. The quicker you get out here the sooner we can get back and clean out
this hoo-raw's nest."
     Kinnison grinned as he cut his beam. He knew that it would be some time before
the Port Admiral could hurl the metal of the Patrol against Lyrane VIII; but even he did
not realize just how long a time it was to be.
     What occasioned the delay was not the fact that the communicator was in
operation only at intervals: so many screens were out, they were spaced so far apart,
and the punctures were measured and aligned so accurately that the periods of non-
operation caused little or no loss of time. Nor was it the vast distance involved; since, as
has already been pointed out, the matter in the inter-galactic void is so tenuous that
spaceships are capable of enormously greater velocities than any attainable in the far
denser medium filling interstellar space.
     No: what gave the Boskonians of Lyrane VIII their greatly lengthened reprieve
was simply the direction of the line established by the communicator-beam punctures.
Reasoning from analogy, the Lensmen had supposed that it would lead them into a
star-cluster, fairly well away from the main body of the Second Galaxy, in either the
zenith or the nadir direction. Instead of that, however, when the Patrol surveyors got
close enough so that their possible error was very small, it became clear that their
objective lay inside the galaxy itself.
     "I don't like this line a bit, chief," Kinnison told the admiral then. "It'd smell like
Limburger to have a fleet of this size and power nosing into their home territory, along
what must be one of the hottest lines of communication they've got."
     "Check," Port Admiral Haynes agreed. "QX so far, but it would begin to stink
pretty quick now. We've got to assume that they know about spotting screens, whether
they really do or not. If they do, they'll have this line trapped from stem to gudgeon, and
the minute they detect us they'll cut this line out entirely. Then where'll you be?"
     "Right back where I started from—that's what I'm yowling about. To make
matters worse, it's credits to millos that the ape we're looking for isn't going to be
anywhere near the end of this line."
     "Huh? How do you figure that?" Haynes demanded.
     "Logic. We're getting up now to where these zwilniks can really think. We've
already assumed that they know about our beam tracers and detector nullifiers. Aren't
they apt to know that we have inherently indetectable ships and almost perfectly
absorptive coatings? Where does that land you?"
     "Urn . . . m . . . m. I see. Since they can't change the nature of the beam, they'll
run it through a series of relays . . . with each leg trapped with everything they can think
of . . . at the first sign of interference they'll switch, maybe half way across the galaxy.
Also, they might very well switch around once in a while, anyway, just on general
principles."
     "Check. That's why you'd better take the fleet back home, leaving Nadreck and
me to work the rest of this line with our speedsters."
     "Don't be dumb, son; you can think straighter than that." Haynes gazed
quizzically at the younger man.
     "What else? Where am I overlooking a bet?" Kinnison demanded.
     "It is elementary tactics, young man," the admiral instructed, "to cover up any
small, quiet operation with a large and noisy one. Thus, if I want to make an exploratory
sortie in one sector I should always attack in force in another."
     "But what would it get us?" Kinnison expostulated. "What's the advantage to be
gained, to make up for the unavoidable losses?"
     "Advantage? Plenty! Listen!" Haynes' bushy gray hair fairly bristled in eagerness.
"We've been on the defensive long enough. They must be weak, after their losses at
Tellus; and now, before they can rebuild, is the time to strike. It's good tactics, as I said,
to make a diversion to cover you up, but I want to do more than that. We should start an
actual, serious invasion, right now. When you can swing it, the best possible
defense—even in general—is a powerful offense, and we're all set to go. We'll begin it
with this fleet, and then, as soon as we're sure that they haven't got enough power to
counter-invade, we'll bring over everything that's loose. We'll hit them so hard that they
won't be able to worry about such a little thing as a communicator line."
     "Hm . . . m. Never thought of it from that angle, but it'd be nice. We were coming
over here sometime, anyway —why not now? I suppose you'll start on the edge, or in a
spiral arm, just as though you were going ahead with the conquest of the whole
galaxy?"
     "Not 'just as though'," Haynes declared. "We are going through with it. Find a
planet on the outer edge of a spiral arm, as nearly like Tellus as-possible . . ."
     "Make it nearly enough like Tellus and maybe I can use it for our headquarters on
this 'coordinator' thing," Kinnison grinned.
     "More truth than poetry in that, fellow. We find it and take over. Comb out the
zwilniks with a fine-tooth comb. Make it the biggest, toughest base the universe ever
saw—like Jarnevon, only more so. Bring in everything we've got and expand from that
planet as a center, cleaning everything out as we go. We'll civilize 'em!"
     And so, after considerable ultra-range communicator work, it was decided that
the Galactic Patrol would forthwith assume the offensive.
     Haynes assembled Grand Fleet. Then, while the two black speedsters kept
unobtrusively on with the task of plotting the line, Civilization's mighty armada moved a
few thousand parsecs aside and headed at normal touring blast for the nearest
outcropping of the Second Galaxy.
     There was nothing of stealth in this maneuver, nothing of finesse, excepting in
the arrangements of the units. First, far in the van, flew the prodigious, irregular cone of
scout cruisers. They were comparatively small, not heavily armed or armored, but they
were ultra-fast and were provided with the most powerful detectors, spotters, and
locators known. They adhered to no rigid formation, but at the will of their individual
commanders, under the direct supervision of Grand Fleet Operations in the Z9M9Z,
flashed hither and thither ceaselessly—searching, investigating, mapping, reporting.
     Backing them up came the light cruisers and the cruising bombers—a new type,
this latter, designed primarily to bore in to close quarters and to hurl bombs of negative
matter. Third in order were the heavy defensive cruisers. These ships had been
developed specifically for hunting down Boskonian commerce raiders within the galaxy.
They wore practically impenetrable screen, so that they could lock to and hold even a
super-dreadnought. They had never before been used in Grand Fleet formation; but
since they were now equipped with tractor zones and bomb-tubes, theoretical strategy
found a good use for them in this particular place.
     Next came the real war-head—a solidly packed phalanx of maulers. All the ships
up ahead had, although in varying degrees, freedom of motion and of action. The
scouts had practically nothing else; fighting was not their business. They could fight, a
little, if they had to; but they always ran away if they could, in whatever direction was
most expedient at the time. The cruising bombers could either take their fighting or
leave it alone, depending upon circumstances—in other words, they fought light
cruisers, but ran away from big stuff, stinging as they ran. The heavy cruisers would
fight anything short of a mauler, but never in formation: they always broke ranks and
fought individual dog-fights, ship to ship.
     But that terrific spear-head of maulers had no freedom of motion whatever. If
knew only one direction—straight ahead. It would swerve aside for an inert planet, but
for nothing smaller; and when it swerved it did so as a whole, not by parts. Its function
was to blast through—straight through— any possible opposition, if and when that
opposition should have been successful in destroying or dispersing the screens of
lesser vessels preceding it. A sunbeam was the only conceivable weapon with which
that stolid, power-packed mass of metal could not cope; and, the Patrolmen devoutly
hoped, the zwilniks didn't have any sunbeams—yet.
     A similar formation of equally capable maulers, meeting it head-on, could break it
up, of course. Theoretical results and war-game solutions of this problem did not agree,
either with each other or among themselves, and the thing had never been put to the
trial of actual battle. Only one thing was certain—when and if that trial did come there
was bound to be, as in the case of the fabled meeting of the irresistible force with the
immovable object, a lot of very interesting by-products.
     Flanking the maulers, streaming gracefully backward from their massed might in
a parabolic cone, were arranged the heavy battleships and the super-dreadnoughts;
and directly behind the bulwark of flying fortresses, tucked away inside the protecting
envelope of big battle-wagons, floated the Z9M9Z—the brains of the whole outfit.
     There were no free planets, no negaspheres of planetary anti-mass, no
sunbeams. Such things were useful either, hi the defense of a Prime Base or for an all-
out, ruthlessly destructive attack upon such a base. Those slow, cumbersome,
supremely powerful weapons would come later, after the Patrol had selected the planet
which they intended to hold against everything the Boskonians could muster. This
present expedition had as yet no planet to defend, it sought no planet to destroy. It was
the vanguard of Civilization, seeking a suitable foothold hi the Second Galaxy and
thoroughly well equipped to argue with any force mobile enough to bar its way.
     While it has been said that there was nothing of stealth in this approach, to the
Second Galaxy, it must not be thought that it was unduly blatant or obvious: any
carelessness or ostentation would have been very poor tactics indeed. Civilization's
Grand Fleet advanced in strict formation, with every routine military precaution. Its
nullifiers were full on, every blocking screen was out, every plate upon every. ship was
hot and was being scanned by alert and keen-eyed observers.
     But every staff officer from Port Admiral Haynes down, and practically every line
officer as well, knew that the enemy would locate the invading fleet long before it
reached even the outer fringes of the galaxy toward which it was speeding. That
stupendous tonnage of ferrous metal could not be disguised; nor could it by any
possible artifice be made to simulate any normal tenant of the space which it occupied.
     The gigantic flares of the heavy stuff could not be baffled, and the combined
grand flare of Grand Fleet made a celestial object which would certainly attract the
electronic telescopes of plenty of observatories. And the nearest such "scopes,
instruments of incredible powers of resolution, would be able to pick them out, almost
ship by ship, against the relatively brilliant background of their own flares.
     The Patrolman, however, did not care. This was, and was intended to be, an
open, straightforward invasion; the first wave of an attack which would not cease until
the Galactic Patrol had crushed Boskonia throughout the entire Second Galaxy.
     Grand Fleet bored serenely on. Superbly confident in her awful might, grandly
contemptuous of whatever she was to face, she stormed along; uncaring that at that
very moment the foe was massing his every defensive arm to hurl her back or to blast
her out of existence.

CHAPTER 15
Klovia

     As Haynes and the Galactic Council had already surmised, Boskonia was now
entirely upon the defensive. She had made her supreme bid in the effort which had
failed so barely to overcome the defenses of hard-held Tellus. It was, as has been seen,
a very near thing indeed, but the zwilnik chieftains did not and could not know that.
Communication through the hyper-spatial tube was impossible, no ordinary
communicator beam could be driven through the Patrol's scramblers, no Boskonian
observers could be stationed near enough to the scene of action to perceive or to
record anything that had occurred, and no single zwilnik ship or entity survived to tell of
how nearly Tellus had come to extinction.
     And, in fine, it would have made no difference in the mind of Alcon of Thrale if he
had known. A thing which was not a full success was a complete failure; to be almost a
success meant nothing. The invasion of Tellus had failed. They had put everything they
had into that gigantically climactic enterprise. They had shot the whole wad, and it had
not been enough. They had, therefore, abandoned for the nonce humanity's galaxy
entirely, to concentrate their every effort upon the rehabilitation of their own depleted
forces and upon the design and construction of devices of hitherto unattempted
capability and power.
     But they simply had not had enough time to prepare properly to meet the
invading Grand Fleet of Civilization. It takes time—lots of time—to build such heavy stuff
as maulers and flying fortresses, and they had not been allowed to have it. They had
plenty of lighter stuff, since the millions of Boskonian planets could furnish upon a few
hours' notice more cruisers, and even more first-line battleships, than could possibly be
used efficiently, but their back-bone of brute force and fire-power was woefully weak.
     Since the destruction of a solid center of maulers was.
     theoretically, improbable to the point of virtual impossibility, neither Boskonia nor
the Galactic Patrol had built up any large reserve of such structures. Both would now
build up such a reserve as rapidly as possible, of course, but half-built structures could
not fight.
     The zwilniks had many dirigible planets, but they were too big. Planets, as has
been seen, are too cumbersome and unwieldly for use against a highly mobile and
adequately-controlled fleet.
     Conversely, humanity's Grand Fleet was up to its maximum strength and
perfectly balanced. It had suffered losses in the defense of Prime Base, it is true; but
those losses were of comparatively light craft, which Civilization's inhabited world could
replace as quickly as could Boskonia's.
     Hence Boskonia's fleet was at a very serious disadvantage as it formed to defy
humanity just outside the rim of its galaxy. At two disadvantages, really, for Boskonia
then had neither Lensmen nor a Z9M9Z; and Haynes, canny old master strategist that
he was, worked upon them both.
     Grand Fleet so far had held to one right-line course, and upon this line the zwilnik
defense had been built. Now Haynes swung aside, forcing the enemy to re-form: they
had to engage him, he did not have to engage them. Then, as they shifted—raggedly,
as he had supposed and had hoped that they would—he swung again. Again, and
again; the formation of the enemy becoming more and more hopelessly confused with
each shift.
     The scouts had been reporting constantly; in the seven-hundred-foot lenticular
tank of the Z9M9Z there was spread in exact detail the disposition of every unit of the
foe. Four Rigellian Lensmen, now thoroughly trained and able to perform the task
almost as routine, condensed the picture— summarized it—in Haynes' ten-foot tactical
tank. And finally, so close that another swerve could not be made, and with the line of
flight of his solid fighting core pointing straight through the loosely disorganized nucleus
of the enemy, Haynes gave the word to engage.
     The scouts, remaining free, flashed aside into their prearranged observing
positions. Everything else went inert and bored ahead. The light cruisers and the
cruising bombers clashed first, and a chill struck at Haynes' stout old heart as he
learned that the enemy did have negative-matter bombs.
     Upon that point there had been much discussion. One view was that the
Boskonians would have them, since they had seen them in action and since their
scientists were fully as capable as were those of Civilization. The other was that, since it
had taken all the massed intellect of the Conference of Scientists to work out a method
of handling and of propelling such bombs, and since the Boskonians were probably not
as cooperative as were the civilized races, they could not have them.
     Approximately half of the light cruisers of Grand Fleet were bombers. This was
deliberate, for in the use of the new arm there were involved problems which theoretical
strategy could not completely solve. Theoretically, a bomber could defeat a
conventional light cruiser of equal tonnage one hundred percent of the time,
provided—here was the rub!—that the conventional cruiser did not blast her out of the
ether before she could get her bombs into the vitals of the foe. For, in order to
accommodate the new equipment, something of the old had to be decreased:
something of power, of armament, of primary or secondary beams, or of defensive
screen. Otherwise the size and mass must be so increased that the ship would no
longer be a light cruiser, but a heavy one.
     And the Patrol's psychologists had had ideas, based upon facts which they had
gathered from Kinnison and from Illona and from many spools of tape—ideas by virtue
of which it was eminently possible that the conventional light cruisers of Civilization, with
their heavier screen and more and hotter beams, could vanquish the light cruisers of the
foe, even though they should turn out to be negative-matter bombers.
     Hence the fifty-fifty division of types; but, since Haynes was not thoroughly sold
upon either the psychologists or their ideas, the commanders of his standard light
cruisers had received very explicit and definite orders. If the Boskonians should have
bombs and if the high-brows' idea did not pan out, they were to turn tail and run, at
maximum and without stopping to ask questions or to get additional instructions.
     Haynes had not really believed that the enemy would have negabombs, they
were so new and so atrociously difficult to handle. He wanted—but was unable—to
believe implicitly in the psychologist's findings. Therefore, as soon as he saw what was
happening, he abandoned his tank for a moment to seize a plate and get into full touch
with the control room of one of the conventional light cruisers then going into action.
     He watched it drive boldly toward a Boskonian vessel which was in the act of
throwing bombs. He saw that the agile little vessel's tractor zone was out. He watched
the bombs strike that zone and bounce. He watched the tractor-men go to work and he
saw the psychologists' idea bear splendid fruit. For what followed was a triumph, not of
brute force and striking power, but of morale and manhood. The brain-men bad said,
and it was now proved, that the -Boskonian gunners, low-class as they were and driven
to their tasks like the slaves they were, would hesitate long enough before using tractor-
beams as pressors so that the Patrolmen could take their own bombs away from them!
     For negative matter, it must be remembered, is the exact opposite of ordinary
matter. To it a pull is, or becomes, a push; the tractor beam which pulls ordinary matter
toward its projector actually pushed negative matter away.
     The "boys" of the Patrol knew that fact thoroughly. They knew all about what they
were doing, and why. They were there because they wanted to be, as Illona had so
astoundingly found out, and they worked with their officers, not because of them. With
the Patrol's gun-crews it was a race to see which crew could capture the first bomb and
the most.
     Aboard the Boskonian how different it was! There the dumb cattle had been told
what to do, but not why. They did not know the fundamental mechanics of the bomb-
tubes they operated by rote; did not know that they were essentially tractor-beam
projectors. They did know, however, that tractor beams pulled things toward them; and
when they were ordered to swing their ordinary tractors upon the bombs which the
Patrolmen were so industriously taking away from them, they hesitated for seconds,
even under the lash.
     This hesitation was fatal. Haynes' gleeful gunners, staring through their special
finders, were very much on their toes; seconds were enough. Their fierce-driven tractors
seized the inimical bombs in mid-space, and before the Boskonians could be made to
act in the only possible opposition hurled them directly backward against the ships
which had issued them. Ordinary defensive screen did not affect them; repulsor screen,
meteorite- and wall-shields only sucked them inward the faster.
     And ordinary matter and negative matter cannot exist in contact. In the instant of
touching, the two unite and disappear, giving rise to vast quantities of intensely hard
radiation. One negabomb was enough to put any cruiser out of action, but here there
were usually three or four at once. Sometimes as many as ten; enough almost, to
consume the total mass of a ship.
     A bomb struck; ate in. Through solid armor it melted. Atmosphere rushed out, to
disappear en route—for air is normal matter. Along beams and trusses the hellish
hyper-sphere travelled freakishly, although usually in the direction of greatest mass. It
clung, greedily. Down stanchions it flowed; leaving nothing in its wake, flooding all
circumambient space with lethal emanations. Into and through converters. Into pressure
tanks, which blew up enthusiastically. Men's bodies it did not seem to favor—not
massive enough, perhaps—but even them it did not refuse if offered. A Boskonian,
gasping frantically for air which was no longer there and already half mad, went
completely mad as he struck savagely at the thing and saw his hand and his arm to the
shoulder vanish instantaneously, as though they had never been.
     Satisfied, Haynes wrenched his attention back to his tank. Most of his light
cruisers were through and in the clear; they were reporting by thousands. Losses were
very small. The conventional-type cruisers had won either by using the enemies' own
bombs, as he had seen them used, or by means of their heavier armor and armament.
The bombers had won in almost every case; not by superior force, for in arms and
equipment they were to all intents and purposes identical with their opponents, but
because of their infinitely higher quality of personnel. To brief it, scarcely a handful of
Boskonia's light cruisers got away.
     The heavy cruisers came up, broke formation, and went doggedly to work. They
were the blockers. Each took one ship—a heavy cruiser or a battleship—out of the line,
and held it out. It tried to demolish it with every weapon it could swing, but even if it
could not vanquish its foe, it could and did hang on until some big bruiser of a battleship
could come up and administer the coup de grace.
     And battleships and super-dreadnoughts were coming up in then: thousands and
their myriads. All of them, in fact, save enough to form a tight globe, packed screen to
screen, around the Z9M9Z.
     Slowly, ponderously, inert, the war-head of maulers came crawling up. The
maulers and fortresses of the Boskonians were hopelessly outnumbered and were
badly scattered in position. Hence this meeting of the ultra-heavies was not really a
battle at all, but a slaughter. Ten or more of Haynes' gigantic structures could
concentrate their entire combined fire-power upon any luckless one of the enemy; with
what awful effect it would be superfluous to enlarge upon.
     When the mighty fortresses had done their work they en-globed the Z9M9Z,
enabling the guarding battleships to join their sister moppers-up; but there was very little
left to do. Civilization had again triumphed; and, this time, at very little cost. Some of the
pirates had escaped, of course; observers from afar might very well have had scanners
and recorders upon the entire conflict; but, whatever of news was transmitted or how,
Alcon of Thrale and Boskonia's other master minds would or could derive little indeed of
comfort from the happenings of this important day.
     "Well, that's probably that—for a while, at least, don't you mink?" Haynes asked
his Council of War.
     It was decided that it was; that if Boskonia could not have mustered a heavier
center for her defensive action here, she would be in no position to make any really
important attack for months to come.
     Grand Fleet, then, was re-formed; this time into a purely defensive and
exploratory formation. In the center, of course, was the Z9M9Z. Around her was a close-
packed quadruple globe of maulers. Outside of them in order, came sphere after sphere
of super-dreadnoughts, of battleships, of heavy cruisers, and of light cruisers. Then, not
in globe at all, but ranging far and wide, were the scouts. Into the edge of the nearest
spiral arm of the Second Galaxy the stupendous formation advanced, and along it it
proceeded at dead slow blast. Dead slow, to enable the questing scouts to survey
thoroughly each planet of every solar system as they came to it.
     And finally an Earth-like planet was found. Several approximately Tellurian
worlds had been previously discovered and listed as possibilities; but this one was so
perfect that the search ended then and there. Apart from the shape of the continents
and the fact that there was somewhat less land-surface and a bit more salt water, it was
practically identical with Tellus. As was to be expected, its people were human to the
limit of classification. Entirely unexpectedly, however, the people of Klovia—which is as
close as English can come to the native name—were not zwilniks. They had never
heard of, nor had they ever been approached by, the Boskonians. Space-travel was to
them only a theoretical possibility, as was atomic energy.
     They had no planetary organization, being still divided politically into sovereign
states which were all too often at war with each other. In fact, a world war had just
burned itself out, a war of such savagery that only a fraction of the world's population
remained alive. There had been no victor, of course. All had lost everything—the
survivors of each nation, ruined as they were and without either organization or
equipment, were trying desperately to rebuild some semblance of what they had once
had.
     Upon learning these facts the psychologists of the Patrol breathed deep sighs of
relief. This kind of thing was made to order; civilizing this planet would be simplicity
itself. And it was. The Klovians did not have to be overawed by a show of superior force.
Before this last, horribly internecine war, Klovia had been a heavily industrialized world,
and as soon as the few remaining inhabitants realized what Civilization had to offer, that
no one of their neighboring competitive states was to occupy a superior position, and
that full, worldwide production was to be resumed as soon as was humanly possible,
their relief and joy were immeasurable.
     Thus the Patrol took over without difficulty. But they were, the Lensmen knew,
working against time. As soon as the zwilniks could get enough heavy stuff built they
would attack, grimly determined to blast Klovia and everything upon it out of space.
Even though they had known nothing about the planet previously, it was idle to hope
that they were still in ignorance either of its existence or of what was in general going on
there.
     Haynes' first care was to have the heaviest metalry of the Galactic Patrol—loose
planets, negaspheres, sunbeams, fortresses, and the like—rushed across the void to
Klovia at maximum. Then, as well as putting every employable of the new world to work,
at higher wages than he had ever earned before, the Patrol imported millions upon
millions of men, with their women and families, from hundreds of Earth-like planets in
the First Galaxy.
     They did not, however, come blindly. They came knowing that Klovia was to be
primarily a military base, the most supremely powerful base that had ever been built.
They knew that it would bear the brunt of the most furious attacks that Boskone could
possibly deliver; they knew full well that it might fall. Nevertheless, men and women,
they came in their multitudes. They came with high courage and high determination,
glorying in that which they were to do. People who could and did so glory were the only
ones who came; which fact accounts in no small part for what Klovia is today.
     People came, and worked, and stayed. Ships came, and trafficked. Trade and
commerce increased tremendously. And further and further abroad, as there came into
being upon that formerly almost derelict planet some seventy-odd gigantic defensive
establishments, there crept out an ever-widening screen of scout-ships, with all their
high-powered feelers hotly outstretched.

     Meanwhile Kinnison and frigid-blooded Nadreck had worked their line, leg by
tortuous leg, to Onlo and thence to Thrale. A full spool should be devoted to that
working alone: but, unfortunately, as space here must be limited to the barest
essentials, it can scarcely be mentioned. As Kinnison and Haynes had foreseen, that
line was heavily trapped. Luckily, however, it had not been moved so radically that the
searchers could not re-discover it; the zwilniks were, as Haynes had promised, very
busily engaged with other and more important matters. All of those traps were deadly,
and many of them were ingenious indeed—so ingenious as to test to the utmost the
"cowardly" Palainian's skill and mental scope. All, however, failed. The two Lensmen
held to the line in spite of the pitfalls and followed it to the end. Nadreck stayed upon or
near Onlo, to work in its frightful environment against the monsters to whom he was
biologically so closely allied, while the Tellurian went on to try conclusions with Alcon,
the Tyrant of Thrale.
     Again he had to build up an unimpeachable identity and here there were no
friendly thousands to help him do it. He had to get close—really close—to Alcon, without
antagonizing him or in any way arousing his hair-trigger suspicions. Kinnison had
studied that problem for days. Not one of his previously-used artifices would work, even
had he dared to repeat a procedure. Also, time was decidedly of the essence.
     There was a way. It was not an easy way, but it was fast and, if it worked at all, it
would work perfectly. Kinnison would not have risked it even a few months back, but
now he was pretty sure that he had jets enough to swing it.
     He needed a soldier of about his own size and shape— details were unimportant.
The man should not be in Alcon's personal troops, but should be in a closely-allied
battalion, from which promotion into that select body would be logical. He should be
relatively inconspicuous, yet with a record of accomplishment, or at least of initiative,
which would square up with the rapid promotions which were to come.
     The details of that man-hunt are interesting, but not of any real importance here,
since they did not vary in any essential from other searches which have been described
at length. He found him—a lieutenant in the Royal Guard—and the ensuing mind-study
was as assiduous as it was insidious. In fact, the Lensman memorized practically every
memory-chain in the fellow's brain. Then the officer took his regular -furlough and
started for home—but he never got there.
     Instead, it was Kimball Kinnison who wore the Thralian's gorgeous full-dress
uniform and who greeted in exactly appropriate fashion the Thralian's acquaintances
and life-long friends. A few of these, who chanced to see the guardsman first, wondered
briefly at his changed appearance or thought that he was a stranger. Very few,
however, and very briefly; for the Lensman's sense of perception was tensely alert and
his mind was strong. In moments, then, those chance few forgot that they had ever had
the slightest doubt concerning this soldiers' identity; they knew calmly and as a matter of
fact that he was the Traska Gannel whom they had known so long.
     Living minds presented no difficulty except for the fact that of course he could not
get in touch with everyone who had ever known the real Gannel. However, he did his
best. He covered plenty of ground and he got most of them—all that could really matter.
     Written records, photographs, and tapes were something else again. He had
called Worsel in on that problem long since, and the purely military records of the Royal
Guard were QX before Gannel went on leave. Although somewhat tedious, that task
had not proved particularly difficult. Upon a certain dark night a certain light-circuit had
gone dead, darkening many buildings. Only one or two sentries or guards saw anything
amiss, and they never afterward recalled having done so. And any record that has ever
been made can be remade to order by the experts of the Secret Service of the Patrol!
     And thus it was also with the earlier records. He had been bora in a hospital.
QX—that hospital was visited, and thereafter Gannel's baby foot-prints were actually
those of infant Kinnison. He had gone to certain schools—those schools' records also
were made to conform to the new facts.
     Little could be done, however, about pictures. No man can possibly remember
how many times he has had his picture taken, or who has the negatives, or to whom he
had given photographs, or in what papers, books, or other publications his likeness has
appeared.
     The older pictures, Kinnison decided, did not count. Even if the likenesses were
good, he looked enough like Gannel so that the boy or the callow youth might just about
as well have developed into something that would pass for Kinnison in a photograph as
into the man which he actually did become. Where was the dividing line? The Lensman
decided—or rather, the decision was forced upon him—that it was at his graduation
from the military academy.
     There had been an annual, in which volume appeared an individual picture, fairly
large, of each member of the graduating class. About a thousand copies of the book
had been issued, and now they were scattered all over space. Since it would be idle
even to think of correcting them all, he could not correct any of them. Kinnison studied
that picture for a long time. He didn't like it very well. The cub was just about grown up,
and this photo looked considerably more like Gannel than it did like Kinnison. However,
the expression was self-conscious, the pose strained—and, after all, people hardly ever
looked at old annuals. He'd have to take a chance on that. Later poses—formal
portraits, that is; snap-shots could not be considered—would have to be fixed up.
     Thus it came about that certain studios were raided very surreptitiously. Certain
negatives were abstracted and were deftly re-touched. Prints were made therefrom, and
in several dozens of places in Gannel's home town, in albums and in frames, stealthy
substitutions were made.
     The furlough was about to expire. Kinnison had done everything that he could do.
There were holes, of course—there couldn't help but be—but they were mighty small
and, if he played his cards right, they would never show up. Just to be on the safe side,
however, he'd have Worsel stick around for a couple of weeks or so, to watch
developments and to patch up any weak spots that might develop. The Velantian's
presence upon Thrale would not create suspicion—there were lots of such folks flitting
from planet to planet—and if anybody did get just a trifle suspicious of Worsel, it might
be all the better.

     Mentor of Arisia, however, knew many things that Kinnison of Tellus did not; he
had powers of which Kinnison would never dream. Mentor knew exactly what entity
stood behind Tyrant Alcon's throne; knew exactly what it could and would do; knew that
this was one of the most critical instants of Civilization's long history.
     Wherefore every negative of every picture that had ever been taken of Traska
Gannel, and every print and reproduction made therefrom, was made to conform;
nowhere, throughout the reaches of space or the vistas of time, was there any iota of
evidence that the present Traska Gannel had not borne that name since infancy.

     So it was done, and Lieutenant Traska Gannel of the Royal Guard went back to
duty.

CHAPTER 16
Gannel Fights a Duel

     Nadreck, the furtive palainian, had prepared as thoroughly in his own queerly
underhanded fashion as had Kinnison in his bolder one. Nadreck was cowardly, in
Earthly eyes, there can be no doubt of that; as cowardly as he was lazy. To his race,
however, those traits were eminently sensible; and those qualities did in fact underlie
his prodigious record of accomplishment. Being so careful of his personal safety, he had
lived long and would live longer: by doing everything in the easiest possible way he had
conserved his resources. Why take chances with a highly valuable life? Why be so
inefficient as to work hard hi the performance of a task when it could always be done in
some easy way?
     Nadreck moved in upon Onlo, men, absolutely imperceptibly. His dark, cold,
devious mind, so closely akin to those of the Onlonians, reached out, indetectably en
rapport with theirs. He studied, dissected, analyzed and neutralized their defenses, one
by one. Then, his ultra-black speedster securely hidden from their every prying
mechanism and sense, although within easy working distance of the control dome itself,
he snuggled down into his softly-cushioned resting place and methodically, efficiently,
he went to work.
     Thus, when Alcon of Thrale next visited his monstrous henchmen, Nadreck
flipped a switch and every thought of the zwilniks' conference went permanently on
record.
     "What have you done, Kandron, about the Lensman?" the Tyrant demanded,
harshly. "What have you concluded?"
     "We have done very little," the chief psychologist replied, coldly. "Beyond the
liquidation of a few Lensmen—with nothing whatever to indicate that any of them had
any leading part in our recent reverses—our agents have accomplished nothing.
     "As to conclusions, I have been unable to draw any except the highly negative
one that every Boskonian psychologist who has ever summed up the situation has, in
some respect or other, been seriously in error."
     "And only you are right!" Alcon sneered. "Why?"
     "I am right only in that I admit my inability to draw any valid conclusions^"
Kandron replied, imperturbably. "The available data are too meager, too inconclusive,
and above all, too contradictory to justify any positive statements. There is a possibility
that there are two Lensmen who have been and are mainly responsible for what has
happened. One of these, the lesser, may be—note well that I say 'may be', not ‘is'—a
Tellurian or an Aldebaranian or some other definitely human being; the other and by far
the more powerful one is apparently entirely unknown, except by his works."
     "Star A Star," Alcon declared.
     "Call him so if you like," Kandron assented, flatly. "But this Star A Star is an
operator. As the supposed Director of Lensmen he is merely a figment of the
imagination."
     "But this information came from the Lensman Morgan!" Alcon protested. "He was
questioned under the drug of truth; he was tortured and all but slain; the Overlord of
Delgon consumed all his life-force except for the barest possible moiety!"
     "How do you know all these things?" Kandron asked, unmoved. "Merely from the
report of the Overlords and from the highly questionable testimony of one of the Eich,
who was absent from the scene during all of the most important time."
     "You suspect, then, that . . ." Alcon broke off, shaken visibly.
     "I do," the psychologist replied, dryly. "I suspect very strongly indeed that there is
working against us a mind of a power and scope but little inferior to my own. A mind
able to overcome that of an Overlord; one able, at least if unsuspected and hence
unopposed, to deceive even the admittedly capable minds of the Eich. I suspect that the
Lensman Morgan was, if he existed at all, merely a puppet. The Eich took him too easily
by far. It is therefore eminently possible that he had no physical actuality of existence . .
."
     "Oh, come, now! Don't be ridiculous!" Alcon snapped. "With all Boskone there .as
witnesses? Why, his hand and Lens remained!"
     "Improbable, perhaps, I admit—but still eminently possible," Kandron insisted.
"Admit for the moment that he was actual, and that he did lose a hand—but remember
also that the hand and the Lens may very well have been brought along and left there
as reassurance; we cannot be sure even that the Lens matched the hand. But admitting
all this, I am still of the opinion that Lensman Morgan was not otherwise tortured, that he
lost none of his vital force, that he and the unknown I have already referred to returned
practically unharmed to their own galaxy. And not only did they return, they must have
carried with them the information which was later used by the Patrol in the destruction of
Jarnevon."
     "Preposterous!" Alcon snorted. 'Tell me, if you can, upon what facts you have
been able to base such fantastic opinions?"
     "Gladly," Kandron assented. "I have been able to come to no really valid
conclusions, and it may very well be that your fresh viewpoint will enable us to succeed
where I alone have failed. I will therefore summarize very briefly the data which seem to
me most significant. Attend closely, please:
     "For many years, as you know, everything progressed smoothly. Our first set-
back came when a Tellurian warship, manned by Tellurians and Valerians, succeeded
in capturing almost intact one of the most modern and most powerful of our vessels.
The Valerians may be excluded from consideration, insofar as mental ability is
concerned. At least one Tellurian escaped, in one of our own, supposedly derelict,
vessels. This one, whom Helmuth thought of, and reported, as 'the' Lensman, eluding
all pursuers, went to Velantia; upon which planet he so wrought as to steal bodily six of
our ships sent there specifically to hunt him down. In those ships he won his way back
to Tellus in spite of everything Helmuth and his force could do.
     "Then there were the two episodes of the Wheelmen of Aldebaran I. In the first
one a Tellurian Lensman was defeated—possibly killed. In the second our base was
destroyed—tracelessly. Note, however, that the base next above it in order was, so far
as we know, not visited or harmed.
     "There was the Boyssia affair, in which the human being Blakeslee did various
unscheduled things. He was obviously under the control of some far more powerful
mind; a mind which did not appear, then or ever.
     "We jump then to this, our own galaxy—the sudden, inexplicable disappearance
of the planet Medon.
     "Back to theirs again—the disgraceful and closely-connected debacles at
Shingvors and Antigan. Traceless both, but again neither was followed up to any higher
headquarters."
     Nadreck grinned at that, if a Palainian can be said to grin. Those matters were
purely his own. He had done what he had been requested to do—thoroughly—no
following up had been either necessary or desirable.
     "Then Radelix." Kandron's summary went concisely on. "The female agents,
Bominger, the Kalonian observers—all wiped out. Was or was not some human
Lensman to blame? Everyone, from Chester Q. Forsyce down to a certain laborer upon
the docks, was suspected, but nothing definite could be learned.
     "The senselessly mad crew of the 27L462P—Wynor— Grantlia. Again
completely traceless. Reason obscure, and no known advantage gained, as this
sequence also has dropped."
     Nadreck pondered briefly over this material. He knew nothing of any such
matters nor, he was pretty sure, did Kinnison. THE Lensman apparently was getting
credit for something that must have been accidental or wrought by some internal
enemy. QX. He listened again:
     "After the affair of Bronseca, in which so many Lensmen were engaged that
particularization was impossible, and which again was not followed up, we jump to the
Asteroid Euphrosyne, Miner's Rest, and Wild Bill Williams of Aldebaran II. If it was a
coincidence that Bill Williams became William Williams and followed our line to Tressilia,
it is a truly remarkable one—even though, supposedly, said Williams was so stupefied
with drugs as to be incapable either of motion or perception.
     "Jalte's headquarters was, apparently, missed. However, it must have been
invaded—tracelessly—for it was the link between Tressilia and Jarnevon, and Jarnevon
was found and was destroyed.
     "Now, before we analyze the more recent events, what do you yourself deduce
from the above facts?" Kandron asked.
     While the tyrant was cogitating, Nadreck indulged in a minor gloat. This
psychologist, by means of impeccable logic and reasoning from definitely known facts,
had arrived at such erroneous conclusions! However, Nadreck had to admit, his own
performances and those in which Kinnison had acted indetectably, when added to those
of some person or persons unknown, did make a really impressive total.
     "You may be right," Alcon admitted finally. "At least two entirely different
personalities and methods of operation. Two Lensmen are necessary to satisfy the
above requirements . . . and, as far as we know, sufficient. One of the necessary two is
a human being, the other an unknown. Caitiff was, of course, the human Lensman. A
masterly piece of work, that —but, with the cooperation of the Patrol, both logical and
fairly simple. This human being is always in evidence, yet is so cleverly concealed by
his very obviousness that nobody ever considers him important enough to be worthy of
a close scrutiny. Or . . . perhaps . . ."
     "That is better," Kandron commented. "You are beginning to see why I was so
careful in saying that the known Tellurian factor 'may be', not 'is', of any real
importance."
     "But he must be!" Alcon protested. "It was a human being who tried and executed
our agent; Cartiff was a human being—to name only two."
     "Of course," Kandron admitted, half contemptuously. "But we have no proof
whatever that any of those human beings actually did, of their own volition, any of the
things for which they have been given credit. Thus, it is now almost certain that that
widely advertised 'mind-ray machine' was simply a battery of spot-lights—the man
operating them may very well have done nothing else. Similarly, Cartiff may have been
an ordinary gangster controlled by the Lensman— we may as well call him Star A Star
as anything else—or a Lensman or some other member of the Patrol acting as a
dummy to distract our attention from Star A Star, who himself did the real work, all
unperceived."
     "Proof?" the Tyrant snapped.
     "No proof—merely a probability," the Onlonian stated flatly. "We know, however,
definitely and for a fact—visiplates and long-range communicators cannot be
hypnotized— that Blakeslee was one of Helmuth's own men. Also that he-was the same
man, both as a loyal Boskonian of very ordinary mental talents and as an enemy having
a mental power which he as Blakeslee never did and never could possess."
     "I see." Alcon thought deeply. "Very cogently put. Instead of there being two
Lensmen, working sometimes together and sometimes separately, you think that there
is only one really important mind and that this mind at times works with or through some
Tellurian?"
     "But not necessarily the same Tellurian—exactly. And there is nothing to give us
any indication whatever as to Star A Star's real nature or race. We cannot even deduce
whether or not he is an oxygen-breather . . . and that is bad."
     "Very bad," the Tyrant assented. "Star A Star, or Car-tiff, or both working
together, found Lonabar. They learned of the Overlords, or at least of Lyrane II. . ."
     "By sheer accident, if they learned it there at all, I am certain of that," Kandron
insisted. "They did not get any information from Menjo Bleeko's mind; there was none
there to get."
     "Accident or not, what boots it?" Alcon impatiently brushed aside the
psychologist's protests. "They found Bleeko and killed him. A raid upon the cavern of
the Overlords of Lyrane II followed immediately. From the reports sent by the Overlords
to the Eich of Lyrane VIII we know that there were two Patrol ships involved. One, not
definitely identified as Caitiffs, took no part in the real assault The other, the super-
dreadnought Dauntless, did that alone. She was manned by Tellurians, Valerians, and
at least one Velantian. Since they went to the trouble of taking the Overlords alive, we
may take it for granted that they obtained from them all the information they possessed
before they destroyed them and their cavern?"
     "It is at" least highly probable that they did so," Kandron admitted.
     "We have, then, many questions and few answers," and the Tyrant strode up and
down the dimly blue-lit room. "It would be idle indeed, in view of the facts, to postulate
that Lyrane II was left, as were some others, a dead end. Has Star A Star attempted
Lyrane VIII? If not, why has he delayed? If so, did he succeed or fail in penetrating the
defenses of the Eich? They swear that he did not, that he could not. . ."
     "Of course," Kandron sneered. "But while asking questions why not ask why the
Patrol chose this particular time to invade our galaxy in such force as to wipe out our
Grand Fleet? To establish themselves so strongly as to make it necessary for us of the
High Command to devote our entire attention to the problem of dislodging them?"
     "What!" Alcon exclaimed, then sobered quickly and thought for minutes. "You
think, then, that. . ." His thoughts died away.
     "1 do so think," Kandron thought, glumly. "It is very decidedly possible—perhaps
even probable—that the Eich of Lyrane VIII were able to offer no more resistance to the
penetration of Star A Star than was Jalte the Kalonian. That this massive thrust was
timed to cover the insidious tracing of our lines of communication or whatever other
leads the Lensman had been able to discover."
     "But the traps—the alarms—the screens and zones!" Alcon exclaimed,
manifestly jarred by this new and disquietingly keen thought.
     "No alarm was tripped, as you know; no trap was sprung," Kandron replied,
quietly. "The fact that we have not as yet been attacked here may or may not be
significant. Not only is Onlo very strongly held, not only is it located in such a central
position that their lines of communication would be untenable, but also . . ."
     "Do you mean to admit that you may have been invaded and
searched—tracelessly?" Alcon fairly shrieked the thought.
     "Certainly," the psychologist replied, coldly. "While I do not believe that it has
been done, the possibility must be conceded. What we could do, we have done; but
what science can do, science can circumvent. To finish my thought, it is a virtual
certainty that it is not Onlo and I who are their prime objectives, But Thrale and you.
Especially you."
     "You may be right. You probably are right; but with no data whatever upon who
or what Star A Star really is, with no tenable theory as to how he could have done what
actually has been done, speculation is idle."
     Upon this highly unsatisfactory note the interview closed. Alcon the Tyrant went
back to Thrale; and as he entered his palace grounds he passed within forty inches of
his Nemesis. For Star-A-Star-Kinnison-Traska-Gannel was, as Alcon himself so clearly
said, rendered invisible and imperceptible by his own obviousness.
     Although obvious, Kinnison was very busy indeed. As a lieutenant of
Guardsmen, the officer in charge of a platoon whose duties were primarily upon the
ground, he had very little choice of action. His immediate superior, the first lieutenant of
the same company, was not much better off. The captain had more authority and scope,
since he commanded aerial as well as ground forces. Then, disregarding side-lines of
comparative seniority, came the major, the colonel, and finally the general, who was in
charge of all the regular armed forces of Thrale's capital city. Alcon's personal troops
were of course a separate organization, but Kinnison was not interested in them—yet.
     The major would be high enough, Kinnison decided. Big enough to have
considerable authority and freedom of motion, and yet not important enough to attract
undesirable attention.
     The first lieutenant, a stodgy, strictly rule-of-thumb individual, did not count. He
could step right over his head into the captaincy. The real Gannel had always, in true
zwilnik fashion, hated his captain and had sought in devious ways to undermine him.
The pseudo-Gannel despised the captain as well as hating him, and to the task of
sapping he brought an ability enormously greater than any which the real Gannel had
ever possessed.
     Good Boskonian technique was to work upward by stealth and treachery, aided
by a carefully-built-up personal following of spies and agents. Gannel had already
formed such a staff; had already selected the man who, in the natural course of events,
would assassinate the first lieutenant. Kinnison retained Gannel's following, but
changed subtly its methods of operation. He worked almost boldly. He himself criticized
the captain severely, within the hearing of two men whom he knew to belong, body and
soul, to his superior.
     This brought quick results. He was summoned brusquely to the captain's office;
and, knowing that the company commander would not dare to have him assassinated
there, he went. In that office there were a dozen people: it was evident that the captain
intended this rebuke to be a warning to all upstarts.
     "Lieutenant Traska Gannel, I have had my eye on you and your subversive
activities for some time," the captain orated. "Now, purely as a matter of form, and in
accordance with paragraph 5, section 724 of General Regulations, you may offer
whatever you have of explanation before I reduce you to the ranks for insubordination."
     "I have a lot to say," Kinnison replied, coolly. "I don't know what your spies have
reported, but to whatever it was I would like to add that having this meeting here as you
are having it proves that you are as fat in the head as you are in the belly . . ."
     "Silence! Seize him, men!" the captain commanded, fiercely. He was not really
fat. He had only a scant inch of equatorial bulge; but that small surplusage was a sore
point indeed. "Disarm him!"
     "The first man to move dies in his tracks," Kinnison countered; his coldly
venemous tone holding the troopers motionless. He wore two hand weapons more or
less similar to DeLameters, and now his hands rested lightly upon their butts. "I cannot
be disarmed until after I have been disrated, as you know very well; and that will never
happen. For if you demote me I will take an appeal, as is my right, to the colonel's court;
and there I will prove that you are stupid, inefficient, cowardly, and unfit generally to
command. You really are, and you know it. Your discipline is lax and full of favoritism;
your rewards and punishments are assessed, not by logic, but by whim, passion, and
personal bias. Any court that can be named would set you down into the ranks, where
you belong, and would give me your place. If this is insubordination and if you want to
make something out of it, you pussy-gutted, pusillanimous, brainless tub of lard, cut in
your jets!"
     The maligned officer half-rose, white-knuckled hands gripping the arms of his
chair, then sank back craftily. He realized now that he had blundered; he was in no
position to face the rigorous investigation which Gannel's accusation would bring on.
But there was a way out. This could now be made a purely personal matter, in which a
duel would be de rigueur. And in Boskonian duelling the superior officer, not the
challenged, had the choice of weapons. He was a master of the saber; he had out-
pointed Gannel regularly in the regimental games. Therefore he choked down his wrath
and:
     "These personal insults, gratuitous and false as they are, make it a matter of
honor," he declared smoothly. "Meet me, then, tomorrow, half an hour before sunset, in
the Place of Swords. It will be sabers."
     "Accepted," Kinnison meticulously followed the ritual. 'To first blood or to the
death?" This question was superfluous —the stigma of the Lensman's epithets,
delivered before such a large group, could not possibly be expunged by the mere letting
of a little blood.
     "To the death," curtly.
     "So be it, Oh captain!" Kinnison saluted punctiliously, executed a snappy about-
face, and marched stiffly out of the room.
     QX. This was fine—strictly according to Hoyle. The captain was a swordsman, of
course; but Kinnison was no slouch. He didn't think he'd have to use a thought-beam to
help him. He had had five years of intensive training. Quarter-staff, night-stick, club,
knife, and dagger; foil, epee, rapier, saber, broadsword, scimitar, bayonet, what-have-
you—with practically any nameable weapon any Lensman had to be as good as be was
with fists and feet.
     The Place of Swords was in fact a circular arena, surrounded by tiers of
comfortably-padded seats. It was thronged with uniforms, with civilian formal afternoon
dress, and with modish gowns; for such duels as this were sporting events of the first
magnitude.
     To guard against such trickery as concealed armor, the contestants were almost
naked. Each wore only silken trunks and a pair of low shoes, whose cross-ribbed,
flexible composition soles could not be made to slip upon the corrugated surface of the
cork-like material of the arena's floor.
     The colonel himself, as master of ceremonies, asked the usual perfunctory
questions. No, reconciliation was impossible. No, the challenged would not apologize.
No, the challenger's honor could not be satisfied with anything less than mortal combat.
He then took two sabers from an orderly, measuring them to be sure that they were of
precisely the same length. He tested each edge for keenness, from hilt to needle point,
with an expert thumb. He pounded each hilt with a heavy testing club. Lastly, still in view
of the spectators, he slipped a guard over each point and put his weight upon the
blades. They bent alarmingly, but neither broke and both snapped back truly into shape.
No spy or agent, everyone then knew, had tampered with either one of those beautiful
weapons.
     Removing the point-guards, the colonel again inspected those slenderly lethal
tips and handed one saber to each of the duelists. He held out a baton, horizontal and
shoulder-high. Gannel and the captain crossed their blades upon it. He snapped his
stick away and the duel was on.
     Kinnison fought in Gannel's fashion exactly; in his characteristic crouch and with
his every mannerism. He was, however, the merest trifle faster than Gannel had ever
been —just enough faster so that by the exertion of everything he had of skill and
finesse, he managed to make the zwilnik's blade meet steel instead of flesh during the
first long five minutes of furious engagement. The guy was good, no doubt of that. His
saber came writhing in, to disarm. Kinnison flicked his massive wrist. Steel slithered
along steel; hilt clanged against heavy basket hilt. Two mighty right arms shot upward,
straining to the limit. Breast to hard-ridged breast, left arms pressed against bulgingly-
corded backs, every taut muscle from floor-gripping feet up to powerful shoulders
thrown into the effort, the battlers stood motionlessly en tableau for seconds.
     The ape wasn't fat, at that, Kinnison realized then; he was as hard as cord-wood
underneath. Not fat enough, anyway, to be anybody's push-over; although he was
probably not in good enough shape to last very long—he could probably wear him
down. He wondered fleetingly, if worst came to worst, whether he would use his mind or
not. He didn't want to . . . but he might have to. Or would he, even then—could he? But
he'd better snap out of it. He couldn't get anywhere with this body-check business; the
zwilnik was just about as strong as he was.
     They broke, and in the breaking Kinnison learned a brand new cut. He sensed it
coming, but he could not parry or avoid it entirely; and the crowd shrieked wildly as the
captain's point slashed into Cancel's trunks and a stream of crimson trickled down
Gannel's left leg.
     Stamp! Stamp! Cut, thrust, feint, slash and parry, the grim game went on. Again,
in spite of all he could do, Kinnison was pinked; this time by a straight thrust aimed at
his heart. He was falling away from it, though, so got only half an inch or so of the point
in the fleshy part of his left shoulder. It bled spectacularly, however, and the throng
yelled ragingly for the kill. Another—he never did know exactly how he got that one—in
the calf of his right leg; and the bloodthirsty mob screamed still louder.
     Then, the fine edge of the captain's terrific attack worn off, Kinnison was able to
assume the offensive. He maneuvered his foe into an awkward position, swept his
blade aside, and slashed viciously at the neck. But the Thralian was able partially to
cover. He ducked frantically, even while his parrying blade was flashing up. Steel
clanged, sparks flew, but the strength of the Lensman's arm could not be entirely
denied. Instead of the whole head, however, Kinnison's razor-edged weapon snicked off
only an ear and a lock of hair.
     Again the spectators shrieked frenzied approval. They did not care whose blood
was shed, so long as it was shed; and this duel, of two superb swordsmen so evenly
matched, was the best they had seen for years. It was, and promised to keep on being,
a splendidly gory show indeed.
     Again and again the duelists engaged at their flashing top speed; once again
each drew blood before the colonel's whistle shrilled.
     Time out for repairs: to have either of the contestants bleed to death, or even to
the point of weakness, was no part of the code. The captain had out-pointed the
lieutenant, four to two, just as he always did in the tournaments; but he now derived
very little comfort from the score. He was weakening, while Gannel seemed as strong
and fast as at the bout's beginning.
     Surgeons gave hasty but effective treatment, new and perfect sabers replaced
the nicked weapons, the ghastly thing went on. The captain tired slowly but surely;
Gannel took, more and more openly and more and more savagely, the offensive.
     When it was over Kinnison flipped his saber dexterously, so that its point struck
deep into the softly resilient floor beside that which had once been his captain. Then,
while the hilt swung back and forth in slow arcs, he faced one segment of the now
satiated throng and crisply saluted the colonel.
     "Sir, I trust that I have won honorably the right to be examined for fitness to
become the captain of my company?" he asked, formally; and:
     "You have, sir," the colonel as formally replied.

CHAPTER 17
Into Nth Space

     Kinnison's wounds, being superficial, healed rapidly. He passed the examination
handily. He should have; since, although it was rigorous and comprehensive, Traska
Gannel himself could have passed and Kinnison, as well as knowing practically
everything that the Thralian had ever learned, had his own vast store of knowledge
upon which to draw. Also, if necessary, he could have read the answers from the minds
of the examiners.
     As a captain, the real Gannel would have been a hard and brilliant commander,
noticeable even among the select group of tried and fire-polished veterans who
officered the Guards. Hence Kinnison became so; in fact, considerably more so than
most. He was harsh, he was relentless and inflexible; but he was absolutely fair. He did
not punish a given breach of discipline with twenty lashes one time and with a mere
reprimand the next; fifteen honest, scarring strokes it became for each and every time,
whoever the offender. Whatever punishment a man deserved by the book he got,
promptly and mercilessly; whatever reward was earned was bestowed with equal
celerity, accompanied by a crisply accurate statement of the facts in each case, at the
daily parade-review.
     His men hated him, of course. His non-coms and lieutenants, besides hating him,
kept on trying to cut him down. All, however, respected him and obeyed him without
delay and without question, which was all that any Boskonian officer could expect and
which was far more than most of them ever got.
     Having thus consolidated his position, Kinnison went blithely to work to
undermine and to supplant the major. Since Alcon, like all dictators everywhere, was in
constant fear of treachery and of revolution, war-games were an almost constant form
of drill. The general himself planned and various officers executed the mock attacks, by
space, air, and land; the Royal Guards and Alcon's personal troops, heavily
outnumbered, always constituted the defense. An elaborate system of scoring had been
worked out long since, by means of which the staff officers could study in detail every
weak point that could be demonstrated.
     "Captain Gannel, you will have to hold passes 25, 26, and 27," the obviously
worried major told Kinnison, the evening before a particularly important sham battle was
to take place. The Lensman was not surprised. He himself had insinuated the idea into
his superior's mind. Moreover, he already knew, from an intensive job of spying, that his
major was to be in charge of the defense, and that the colonel, who was to direct the
attacking forces, had decided to route his main column through Pass 27.
     "Very well, sir," Kinnison acknowledged. "I wish to protest formally, however,
against those orders. It is manifestly impossible, sir, to hold all three of those passes
with two platoons of infantry and one squadron of speedsters. May I offer a suggestion .
. ."
     "You may not," the major snapped. "We have deduced that the real attack is
coming from the north, and that any activity in your sector will be merely a feint. Orders
are orders, captain!"
     "Yes, sir," Kinnison replied, meekly, and signed for the thick sheaf of orders
which stated in detail exactly what he was to do.
     The next evening, after Kinnison had won the battle by disregarding every order
he had been given, he was summoned to the meeting of the staff. He had expected
that, too, but he was not at all certain of how it was coming out. It was in some
trepidation, therefore, that he entered the lair of the Big Brass Hats.
     "Har-rumph!" he was greeted by the adjutant. "You have been called . . ."
     "I know why I was called," Kinnison interrupted, brusquely. "Before we go into
that, however, I wish to prefer charges before the general against Major Delios of
stupidity, incompetence, and inefficiency."
     Astonishment resounded throughout the room in a ringing silence, broken finally
by the general, 'Those are serious charges indeed, Captain Gannel; but you may state
your case."
     "Thank you, sir. First, stupidity: He did not perceive, at even as late a time as
noon, when he took all my air away from me to meet the feint from the north, that the
attack was not to follow any orthodox pattern. Second, incompetence: The orders he
gave me could not possibly have stopped any serious attack through any one of the
passes I was supposed to defend. Third, inefficiency: No efficient commander refuses to
listen to suggestions from his officers, as he refused to listen to me last night."
     "Your side, Major?" and the staff officers listened to a defense based upon blind,
dumb obedience to orders.
     "We will take this matter under advisement," the general announced then. "Now,
Captain, what made you suspect that the colonel was coming through Pass 27?"
     "I didn't," Kinnison replied, mendaciously. "To reach any one of those passes,
however, he would have to come down this valley," tracing it with his forefinger upon the
map. "Therefore I held my whole force back here at Hill 562, knowing that, warned by
my air of his approach, I could reach any one of the passes before he could."
     "Ah. Then, when your air was sent elsewhere?"
     "I commandeered a flitter—my own, by the way—and sent it up so high as to be
indetectable. I then ordered motorcycle scouts out, for the enemy to capture; to make
the commander of any possible attacking or reconnaissance force think that I was still
blind."
     "Ah . . . smart work. And then?"
     "As soon as my scout reported troop movements in the valley, I got my men
ready to roll. When it became certain that Pass 27 was the objective, I rushed
everything I had into preselected positions commanding every foot of that pass. Then,
when the colonel walked into the trap, I wiped out most of his main column. However, I
had a theoretical loss of three-quarters of my men in doing it," bitterly. "If I had been
directing the defense I would have wiped out the colonel's entire force, ground and air
both, with a loss of less than two percent."
     This was strong talk. "Do you realize, Captain Gannel, that this is sheer
insubordination?" the general demanded. "That you are in effect accusing me also of
stupidity in planning and in ordering such an attack?"
     "Not at all, sir," Kinnison replied instantly. "It was quite evident, sir, that you did it
deliberately, to show all of us junior officers the importance of thought. To show us that,
while unorthodox attacks may possibly be made by unskilled tacticians, any such attack
is of necessity fatally weak if it be opposed by good tactics. In other words, that
orthodox strategy is the only really good strategy. Was not that it, sir?"
     Whether it was or not, that viewpoint gave the general an out, and he was not
slow in taking advantage of it. He decided then and there, and the always subservient
staff agreed with him, that Major Delios had indeed been stupid, incompetent, and
inefficient; and Captain Gannel forthwith became Major Gannel.
     Then the Lensman took it easy. He wangled and finagled various and sundry
promotions and replacements, until he was once more surrounded by a thoroughly
subsidized personal staff and in good position to go to work upon the colonel. Then,
however, instead of doing so, he violated another Boskonian precedent by having a
frank talk with the man whom normally he should have been trying to displace.
     "You have found out that you can't kill me, colonel," he told his superior, after
making sure that the room was really shielded. "Also that I can quite possibly kill you.
You know that I know more than you do—that all my life, while you other fellows were
helling around, I have been working and learning—and that I can, in a fairly short time,
take your job away from you without killing you. However, I don't want it."
     "You don't want it!" The colonel stared, narrow-eyed. "What do you want, then?"
He knew, of course, that Gannel wanted something.
     "Your help," Kinnison admitted, candidly. "I want to get onto Alcon's personal
staff, as adviser. With my experience and training, I figure that there's more in it for me
there than here in the Guards. Here's my proposition—if I help you, by showing you how
to work out your field problems and in general building you up however I can instead of
tearing you down, will you use your great influence with the general and Prime Minister
Fossten to have me transferred to the Household?"
     "Will I? I'll say I will!" the colonel agreed, with fervor. He did not add "If I can't kill
you first"—that was understood.
     And Kinnison did build the colonel up. He taught him things about the military
business which that staff officer had never even suspected; he sounded depths of
strategy theretofore completely unknown to the zwilnik. And the more Kinnison taught
him, the more eager the colonel became to get rid of him. He had been suspicious and
only reluctantly cooperative at first; but as soon as he realized that he could not kill his
tutor and that if the latter stayed in the Guards it would be only a matter of days—at
most of weeks—until Gannel would force himself into the colonelcy by sheer force of
merit, he pulled in earnest every wire he could reach.
     Before the actual transfer could be effected, however, Kinnison received a call
from Nadreck.
     "Excuse me, please, for troubling you," the Palainian apologized, "but there has
been a development hi which you may perhaps be interested. This Kandron has been
given orders by Alcon to traverse a hyper-spatial tube, the terminus of which will appear
at coordinates 217-493-28 at hour eleven of the seventh Thralian day from the present."
     "Fine business! And you want to chase him, huh?" Kinnison jumped at the
conclusion. "Sure—go ahead. I'll meet you there. I'll fake up some kind of an excuse to
get away from here and we'll run him ragged . . ."
     "I do not," Nadreck interrupted, decisively. "If I leave my work here it will all come
undone. Besides, it would be dangerous—foolhardy. Not knowing what lies at the other
end of that tube, we could make no plans and could have no assurance of safety, or
even of success. You should not go, either—that is unthinkable. I am reporting this
matter in view of the possibility that you may think it significant enough to warrant the
sending of some observer whose life is of little or no importance."
     "Oh . . . uh-huh . . . I see. Thanks, Nadreck." Kinnison did not allow any trace of
his real thought to go out before he broke the line. Then:
     "Funny ape, Nadreck," he cogitated, as he called Haynes. "I don't get his angle at
all—I simply can't figure him out. . . Haynes? Kinnison," and he reported in full.
     "The Dauntless has all the necessary generators and equipment, and the place is
far enough out so that she can make the approach without any trouble," the Lensman
concluded. "We'll burn whatever is at the other end of that tube clear out of the ether.
Send along as many of the old gang as you can spare. Wish we had time to get
Cardynge— he'll howl like a wolf at being left out—but we've got only a week . . ."
     "Cardynge is here," Haynes broke in. "He has been working out some stuff for
Thorndyke on the sunbeam. He is finished now, though, and will undoubtedly want to go
along."
     "Fine!" and explicit arrangements for the rendezvous were made.
     It was not unduly difficult for Kinnison to make his absence from duty logical,
even necessary. Scouts and observers reported inexplicable interferences with certain
communications lines. With thoughts of THE Lensman suffusing the minds of the
higher-ups, and because of Gannel's already-demonstrated prowess and keenness, he
scarcely had to signify a willingness to investigate the phenomena in order to be
directed to do so.
     Nor did he pick a crew of his own sycophants. Instead, he chose the five highest-
ranking privates of the battalion to accompany him upon this supposedly extremely
dangerous mission; apparently entirely unaware that two of them belonged to the
colonel, two to the general, and one to the captain who had taken his place.
     The colonel wished Major Gannel luck—verbally—even while hoping fervently
that THE Lensman would make cold meat of him in a hurry; and Kinnison gravely gave
his well-wisher thanks as he set out. He did not, however, go near any communications
lines; although his spying crew did not realize the fact. They did not realize anything;
they did not know even that they became unconscious within five minutes after leaving
Thrale.
     They remained unconscious while the speedster in which they were was drawn
into the Dauntless' capacious hold. In the Patrol ship's sick-bay, under expert care, they
remained unconscious during the entire duration of their stay on board.
     The Patrol pilots picked up Kandron's flying vessel with little difficulty; and,
nullifiers full out, followed it easily. When the zwilnik ship slowed down to feel for the
vortex the Dauntless slowed also, and baffled her driving jets as she sneaked up to the
very edge of electro-detector range. When the objective disappeared from three-
dimensional space the point of vanishment was marked precisely, and up to that point
the Patrol ship flashed in seconds.
     The regular driving blasts were cut off, the special generators were cut in. Then,
as the force-fields of the ship reacted against those of the Boskonian "shore" station,
the Patrolmen felt again in all their gruesome power the appallingly horrible sensations
of inter-dimensional acceleration. For that sensation is, literally, indescribable. A man in
good training can overcome sea-sickness, air-sickness, and space-sickness. He can
overcome the nausea and accustom himself to the queasily terrifying endless-fall
sensation of weightlessness. He can become inured to the physical and mental ills
accompanying inertialessness. No man ever has, however, been able to get used to
inter-dimensional acceleration.
     It is best likened to a compression; not as a whole, but atom by atom. A man
feels as though he were being twisted —corkscrewed in some monstrously obscure
fashion which permits him neither to move from his place nor to remain where he is. It is
a painless but utterly revolting transformation, progressing in a series of waves; a re-
arrangement, a writhing, crawling distortion, an incomprehensibly impossible extrusion
of each ultimate particle of his substance in an unknowable, ordinarily non-existent
direction.
     The period of acceleration over, the Dauntless began to travel at uniform velocity
along whatever course it was that the tube took. The men, although highly
uncomfortable and uneasy, could once more move about and work. Sir Austin
Cardynge in particular was actually happy and eager as he flitted from one to another of
the automatic recording instruments upon his special panel. He resembled more closely
than ever a lean, gray tomcat, Kinnison thought—he almost expected to see him begin
to lick his whiskers and purr.
     "You see, my ignorant young friend," the scientist almost did purr as one of the
recording pens swung wildly across the ruled paper, "it is as I told you—the lack of
exact data upon even one tiny factor of this extremely complex phenomenon is
calamitous. While my notes were apparently complete and were certainly accurate, our
experimental tubes did not function perfectly. The time factor was
irreconcilable—completely so, in every aspect, even that of departure from and return to
normal space—and it is unthinkable that time, one of the fundamental units, is or can be
intrinsically variable . . ."
     "You think so?" Kinnison broke in. "Look at that," pointing to the ultimate of
timepieces, Cardynge's own triplex chronometer. "Number One says we've been in this
tube for an hour, Number Two says a little over nine minutes, and according to Number
Three we won't be starting for twenty minutes yet—it must be running backwards—let's
see you comb that out of your whiskers!"
     "Oh-h . . . ah . . . a-hum." But only momentarily was Sir Austin taken aback. "Ah, I
was right all the time!" he cackled gleefully. "I thought it was practically impossible for
me to commit an error or to overlook any possibilities, and I have now proved that I did
not Time, in this hyper-spatial region or condition, is intrinsically variable, and in major
degree!"
     "And what does that get you?" Kinnison asked, pointedly.
     "Much, my impetuous youngster, much," Cardynge replied. "We observe, we
note facts. From the observations and facts we theorize and we deduce; thus arriving
very shortly at the true inwardness of time."
     "You hope," the Lensman snorted, dubiously; and in his skepticism he was right
and Sir Austin was wrong. For the actual nature and mechanism of time remained, and
still constitute, a mystery, or at least an unsolved problem. The
Arisians—perhaps—understand time; no other race does.
     To some of the men, then, and to some of the clocks and other time-measuring
devices, the time seemed—or actually was?—very long; to other "and similar beings
and mechanisms it seemed—or was—short. Short or long, however, the Dauntless did
not reach the Boskonian end of the hyper-spatial tube.
     In mid-flight there came a crunching, twisting cloonk! and an abrupt reversal of
the inexplicably horrible inter-dimensional acceleration—a deceleration as sickeningly
disturbing, both physically and mentally, as the acceleration had been.
     While within the confines of the hyper-spatial tube every eye of the Dauntless
had been blind. To every beam upon every frequency, visible or invisible, ether-borne or
carried upon the infinitely faster waves of the sub-ether, the murk was impenetrable.
Every plate showed the same mind-numbing blankness; a vague, eerily-shifting,' quasi-
solid blanket of formless, textureless grayness. No lightness or darkness, no stars or
constellation or nebulae, no friendly, deep-space blackness—nothing.
     Deceleration ceased; the men felt again the wonted homeliness and comfort of
normal pseudo-gravity. Simultaneously the gray smear of the visiplates faded away into
commonplace areas of jetty black, pierced by the brilliantly dimensionless vari-colored
points of light which were the familiar stars of their own familiar space.
     But were they familiar? Was that our galaxy, or anything like it? They were not. It
was not. Kinnison stared into his plate, aghast.
     He would not have been surprised to have emerged into three-dimensional
space anywhere within the Second Galaxy. In that case, he would have seen a Milky
Way; and from its shape, apparent size, and texture he could have oriented himself
fairly closely in a few minutes. But the Dauntless was not within any lenticular
galaxy—nowhere was there any sign of a Milky Way!
     He would not have been really surprised to have found himself and his ship out in
open inter-galactic space. In that case he would have seen a great deal of dead-black
emptiness, blotched with lenticular bodies which were in fact galaxies. Orientation would
then have been more difficult; but, with the aid of the Patrol charts, it could have been
accomplished. But here there were no galaxies—no nebulae of any kind!

CHAPTER 18
Prime Minister Fossten

     Here, upon a background of a blackness so intense as to be obviously barren of
nebular material, there lay a multitude of blazingly resplendent stars—and nothing
except stars. A few hundred were of a visual magnitude of about minus three.
Approximately the same number were of minus two or thereabouts, and so on down;
but there did not seem to be a star or other celestial object in that starkly incredible sky
of an apparent magnitude greater than about plus four.
     "What do you make "of this, Sir Austin?" Kinnison asked, quietly. "It's got me
stopped like a traffic light."
     The mathematician ran toward him and the Lensman stared. He had never
known Cardynge to hurry—in fact, he was not really running now. He was walking, even
though his legs were fairly twinkling in their rapidity of motion. As he approached
Kinnison his pace gradually slowed to normal.
     "Oh—time must be cock-eyed here, too," the Lensman observed. "Look over
there—see how fast those fellows are moving, and how slow those others over that way
are?"
     "Ah, yes. Interesting—intensely interesting. Truly, a most remarkable and
intriguing phenomenon," the fascinated mathematician enthused.
     "But that wasn't what I meant. Swing this plate—it's on visual—around outside,
so as to get the star aspect and distribution. What do you think of it?"
     "Peculiar—I might almost say unique," the scientist concluded, after his survey.
"Not at all like any normal configuration or arrangement with which I am familiar. We
could perhaps speculate, but would it not be preferable to secure data first? Say by
approaching a solar system and conducting systematic investigations?"
     "Uh-huh," and again Kinnison stared at the wispy little physicist in surprise. Here
was a man! "You're certainly something to tie to, ace, do you know it?" he asked,
admiringly. Then, as Cardynge gazed at him questioningly, uncomprehendingly:
     "Skip it. Can you feel my thought, Henderson?"
     "Yes."
     "Shoot us across to one of those nearer stars, stop, and go inert.""
     "QX, chief." The pilot obeyed.
     And in the instant of inerting, the visiplate into which the two men stared went
black. The thousands of stars studding the sky a moment before had disappeared as
though they had never been.
     "Why . . . what . . . How in all the yellow hells of space can that happen?"
Kinnison blurted.
     Without a word Cardynge reached out and snapped the plate's receiver over
from "visual" to "ultra", whereupon the stars reappeared as suddenly as they had
vanished.
     "Something's screwy somewhere!" the Lensman protested. "We can't have an
inert velocity greater than that of light— it's impossible!"
     "Few things, if any, can be said definitely to be impossible; and everything is
relative, not absolute," the old scientist declared, pompously. "This space, for instance.
You have not yet perceived, I see, even that you are not in the same three-dimensional
space in which we have heretofore existed."
     Kinnison gulped. He was going to protest about that, too, but in the face of
Cardynge's unperturbed acceptance of the fact he did not quite dare to say what he had
in mind.
     "That is better," the old man declaimed. "Do not get excited—to do so dulls the
mind. Take nothing for granted, do not jump at conclusions—to commit either of those
errors will operate powerfully against success. Working hypotheses, young man, must
be based upon accurately determined facts; not upon mere guesses, superstitions, or
figments of personal prejudices."
     "Bub—bub—but . . . QX—skip it!" Nine-tenths of the Dauntless" crew would have
gone out of control at the impact of the knowledge of what had happened; even
Kinnison's powerful mind was shaken. Cardynge, however, was—not seemed to be, but
actually was—as calm and as self-contained as though he were in his own quiet study.
"Explain it to me, will you please, in words of as nearly one syllable as possible?"
     "Our looser thinkers have for centuries speculated upon the possibility of an
entire series of different spaces existing simultaneously, side by side in a hypothetical
hyper-continuum. I have never indulged in such time-wasting; but now that actual
corroborative data have become available, I regard it as a highly fruitful field of
investigation. Two extremely significant facts have already become apparent; the
variability of time and the non-applicability of our so-called 'laws' of motion. Different
spaces, different laws, it would seem."
     "But when we cut our generators in that other tube we emerged into our own
space," Kinnison argued. "How do you account for that?"
     "I do not as yet try to account for it!" Cardynge snapped. "Two very evident
possibilities should already be apparent, even to your feeble brain. One, that at the
moment of release your vessel happened to be situated within a fold of our own space.
Two, that the collapse of the ship's force-fields always returns it to its original space,
while the collapse of those of the shore station always forces it into some other space.
In the latter case, it would be reasonable to suppose that the persons or beings at the
other end of the tube may have suspected that we were following Kandron, and, as
soon as he landed, cut off their forces deliberately to throw us out of space. They may
even have learned that persons of lesser ability, so treated, never return. Do not allow
yourself to be at all impressed by any of these possibilities, however, as the truth may
very well lie in something altogether different. Bear it in mind that we have as yet very
little data upon which to formulate any theories, and that the truth can be revealed only
by a very careful, accurate, and thorough investigation. Please note also that I would
surely have discovered and evaluated all these unknowns during the course of my as
yet incomplete study of our own hyper-spatial tubes; that I am merely continuing here a
research in which I have already made noteworthy progress."
     Kinnison really gasped at that—the guy was certainly terrific! He called the chief
pilot. "Go free, Hen, and start flitting for a planet—we've got to sit down somewhere
before we can start back home. When you find one, land free. Stay free, and watch your
Bergs—I don't have to tell you what will happen if they quit on us."
     Then Thorndyke. "Verne? Break out some personal neutralizers. We've got a job
of building to do—inertialess," and he explained to both men in flashing thoughts what
had happened and what they had to do.
     "You grasp the basic idea, Kinnison," Cardynge approved, "that it is necessary to
construct a station apart from the vessel in which we propose to return to our normal
environment. You err grievously, however, in your insistence ,upon the necessity of
discovering a planet, satellite, asteroid, or other similar celestial body upon which to
build it."
     "Huh?" Kinnison demanded.
     "It is eminently possible—yes, even practicable—for us to use the Dauntless as
an anchorage for the tube and for us to return in the lifeboats," Cardynge pointed out.
     "What? Abandon this ship? Waste all that time rebuilding all the boats?"
     "It is preferable, of course, and more expeditious, to find a planet, if possible," the
scientist conceded. "However, it is plain that it is in no sense necessary. Your reasoning
is fallacious, your phraseology is deplorable. 1 am correcting you in the admittedly faint
hope of teaching you scientific accuracy of thought and of statement."
     "Wow! Wottaman!" Kinnison breathed to himself, as, heroically, he "skipped it".
     Somewhat to Kinnison's surprise—he had more than half expected that planets
would be non-existent in that space— the pilots did find a solid world upon which to
land. It was a peculiar planet indeed. It did not move right, it did not look right, it did not
feel right. It was waterless, airless, desolate; a senseless jumble of jagged fragments,
mostly metallic. It was neither hot nor cold—indeed, it seemed to have no temperature
of its own at all. There was nothing whatever right about it, Kinnison declared.
     "Oh, yes, there is!" Thorndyke contradicted. 'Time is constant here, whatever its
absolute rate may be, these metals are nice to work with, and some of this other stuff
will make insulation. Or hadn't you thought of that? Which would be faster, cutting down
an intrinsic velocity of fifteen lights to zero or building the projector out of native
materials? And if you match intrinsics, what will happen when you hit our normal space
again?
     "Plenty, probably—uh-huh, faster to use the stuff that belongs here. Careful,
though, fella!"
     And care was indeed necessary; extreme care that not a particle of matter from
the ship was used in the construction and that not a particle of the planet's substance by
any mischance got aboard the spare-ship.
     The actual work was simple enough. Cardynge knew exactly what had to be
done. Thorndyke knew exactly how to do it, as he had built precisely similar generators
for the experimental tubes upon Tellus. He had a staff of experts; the Dauntless carried
a machine shop and equipment second to none. Raw material was abundant, and it
was an easy matter to block out an inertialess room within which the projectors and
motors were built. And, after they were built, they worked.
     It was not the work, then, but the strain which wore Kinnison down. The constant,
wearing strain of incessant vigilance to be sure that the Bergenholms and the small
units of the personal neutralizes did not falter for a single instant. He did not lose a man,
but again and again there flashed into his mind the ghastly picture of one of his boys
colliding with the solid metal of the planet at a relative velocity fifteen times that of light!
The strain of the endless checking and re-checking to make certain that there was no
exchange of material, however slight, between the ship and the planet.
     Above all, the strain of knowing a thing which, apparently, no one else
suspected; that Cardynge, with all his mathematical knowledge, was not going to be
able to find his way back! He had never spoken of this to the scientist. He did not have
to. He knew that without a knowledge of the fundamental distinguishing characteristics
of our normal space —a knowledge even less to be expected than that a fish should
know the fundamental equations and structure of water—they never could, save by
sheerest accident, return to their own space. And as Cardynge grew more and more
tensely, unsocially immersed in his utterly insoluble problem, the more and more
uneasy the Gray Lensman became. But this last difficulty was resolved first, and in a
totally unexpected fashion.
     "Ah, Kinnison of Tellus, here you are—I have been considering your case for
some twenty nine of your seconds," a deep, well-remembered voice resounded within
his brain.
     "Mentor!" he exclaimed, and at the sheer shock of his relief he came very near
indeed to fainting. "Thank Klono and Noshabkeming you found us! How did you do it?
How do we get ourselves out of here?"
     "Finding you was elementary," the Arisian replied, calmly.
     "Since you were not in your own environment you must be elsewhere. It required
but little thought to perceive what was a logical, in fact an inevitable, development. Such
being the case, it needed very little additional effort to determine what had happened,
and how, and why; likewise precisely where you must now be. As for departure
therefrom, your mechanical preparations are both correct and adequate. I could give
you the necessary information, but it is rather technically specialized and not negligible
in amount; and since your brain is not of infinite capacity, it is better not to fill any part of
it with mathematics for which you will have no subsequent use. Put yourself en rapport,
therefore, with Sir Austin Cardynge. I will follow."
     He did so, and as mind met mind there ensued a conversation whose barest
essentials Kinnison could not even dimly grasp. For Cardynge, as has been said, could
think in the universal language of mathematics: in the esoteric symbology which very
few minds have ever been able even partially to master. The Lensman did not get it, nor
any part of it; he knew only that in that to him completely meaningless gibberish the
Arisian was describing to the physicist, exactly and fully, the distinguishing
characteristics of a vast number of parallel and simultaneously co-existent spaces.
     If that was "rather" technical stuff, the awed Lensman wondered, what would
really deep stuff be like? Not that he wanted to find out! No wonder these mathematical
wizards were nuts—went off the beam—he'd be pure squirrel-food if he had half that
stuff in his skull!
     But Sir Austin took to it like a cat lapping up cream or doing away with the
canary. He brightened visibly; he swelled: and, when the Arisian had withdrawn from his
mind, he preened himself and swaggered as he made meticulous adjustments of the
delicate meters and controls which the technicians had already built.
     Preparations complete, Cardynge threw in the switches and everything belonging
to the Dauntless was rushed aboard —everything, that is, that was demonstrably
uncontaminated by any particle of Nth-space matter. The spacesuits that had been
worn on the planet and everything else, no matter what it was, that could not show an
unquestionable bill of health were dumped. The neutralizers, worn so long and
cherished so assiduously, were taken off with profound sighs of relief. The vessel was
briefly, tentatively inerted. QX—no faster-than-light meteorites tore volatizingly through
her mass. So far, so good.
     Then the ship's generators were energized and smoothly, effortlessly the big
battle-wagon took the inter-dimensional plunge. There came the expected, but
nevertheless almost unendurable acceleration; the imperceptible, unloggable flight
through the drably featureless grayness; the horrible deceleration. Stars flashed
beautifully upon the plates.
     "We made it!" Kinnison shouted in relief when he had assured himself that they
had emerged into "real" space inside the Second Galaxy, only a few parsecs away from
their point of departure. "By Klono's golden grin, Sir Austin, you figured it to a red
whisker! And when the Society meets, Tuesday week, won't you just blast that ape
Weingarde to a cinder? Hot dog!"
     "Having the basic data, the solution and the application followed of
necessity—automatically—uniquely," the scientist said, austerely. He was highly
pleased with himself, he was tremendously flattered by the Lensman's ebullient praise;
but not for anything conceivable would he have so admitted.
     "Well, the first thing we'd better do is to find out what time of what day it is,"
Kinnison went on, as he directed a beam to the Patrol headquarters upon Klovia.
     "Better ask 'em the year, too," Henderson put in, pessimistically—he had missed
Illona poignantly—but it wasn't that bad.
     In fact, it was not bad at all; they had been gone only a little over a week of
Thralian time. This finding pleased Kinnison immensely, as he had been more than half
afraid that it had been a month. He could explain a week easily enough, but anything
over two weeks would have been tough to handle.
     The supplies of the Thralian speedster were adjusted to fit the actual elapsed
time, and Worsel and Kinnison engraved upon the minds of the five unconscious
Guardsmen completely detailed—even though equally completely fictitious— memories
of what they and Major Gannel had done since leaving Thrale. Their memories were not
exactly alike, of course —each man had had different duties and experiences, and no
two observers see precisely the same things even while watching the same event—but
they were very convincing. Also, and fortunately, not even the slightest scars were left
by the operations, for in these cases no memory chain had to be broken at any point.
     The Dauntless blasted off for Klovia; the speedster started for Thrale. Kinnison's
crew woke up—without having any inkling that they had ever been unconscious or that
their knowledge of recent events did not jibe exactly with the actual occurrences—and
resumed work.
     Immediately upon landing, Kinnison turned in a full official report of the mission,
giving himself neither too much nor too little credit for what had been accomplished.
They had found a Patrol sneak-boat near Line Eleven. They had chased it so many
parsecs, upon such-and-such a course, before forcing it to engage. They had crippled it
and boarded, bringing away material, described as follows, which had been turned over
to Space Intelligence. And so on. It would hold, Kinnison knew; and it would be
corroborated fully by the ultra-private reports which his men would make to their real
bosses.
     The colonel made good; hence with due pomp and ceremony Major Traska
Gannel was inducted into the Household. He was given one of the spy-ray-screened
cigarette boxes in which Alcon's most trusted officers were allowed to carry their private,
secret insignia. Kinnison was glad to get that—he could carry his Lens with him now, if
the thing was really ray-proof, instead of leaving it buried in a can outside the city limits.
     The Lensman went to his first meeting of the Advisory Cabinet with his mind set
on a hair-trigger. He hadn't been around Alcon very much, but he knew that the Tyrant
had a stronger mind-shield than any untreated human being had any right to have. He'd
have to play this mighty close to his chest—he didn't want any zwilnik reading his mind,
yet he didn't want to create suspicion by revealing the fact that he, too, had an
impenetrable block.
     As he approached the cabinet chamber he walked into a zone of compulsion,
and practically bounced. He threw up his head; it was all he could do to keep his
barriers down. It was general, he knew, not aimed specifically at him—to fight the
hypnotist would be to call attention to himself as the only man able either to detect his
work or to resist him; would give the whole show away. Therefore he let the thing take
hold—with reservations—of his mind. He studied it. He analyzed it. Sight only, eh?
QX—he'd let Alcon have superficial control, and he wouldn't put too much faith in
anything he saw.
     He entered the room; and, during the preliminaries, he reached out delicately, to
touch imperceptibly mind after mind. All the ordinary officers were on the level; now he'd
see about the prime minister. He'd heard a lot about this Fossten, but had never met
him before—he'd see what the guy really had on the ball.
     He did not find out, however. He did not even touch his mind, for that worthy also
had an automatic block; a block as effective as Alcon's or as Kinnison's own.
     Sight was unreliable; how about the sense of perception? He tried it, very daintily
and gingerly, upon Alcon's feet, legs, arms, and torso. Alcon was real, and present in
the flesh. Then the premier—and he yanked his sense back, cancelled it, appalled.
Perception was blocked, at exactly what his eyes told him was the fellow's skin!
     That tore it—that busted it wide open. What in all nine prime iridescent hells did
that mean? He didn't know of anything except a thought-screen that could stop a sense
of perception. He thought intensely. Alcon's mind was bad enough. It had been treated,
certainly; mine-shields like that didn't grow naturally on human or near-human beings.
Maybe the Eich, or the race of super-Eich to which Kandron belonged, could give
mental treatments of that kind. Fossten, though, was worse.
     Alcon's boss! Probably not a man at all. It was he, it was clear, and not Alcon,
who was putting out the zone of compulsion. An Eich, maybe? No, he was a warm-
blooded oxygen-breather; a frigid-blooded super-big-shot would make Alcon come to
him. A monster, almost certainly, though; possibly of a type Kinnison had never seen
before. Working by remote control? Possibly; but not necessarily. He could be—
probably was—right here, inside the dummy or figment or whatever it was that
everybody thought was die prime minister—that was it, for all the tea in China . . .
     "And what do you think, Major Gannel?" the prime minister asked, smoothly,
insinuating his mind into Kinnison's as he spoke.
     Kinnison, who knew that they had been discussing an invasion of the First
Galaxy, hesitated as though in thought. He was thinking, too, and ultra-carefully. If that
ape was out to do a job of digging he'd never dig again—QX, he was just checking
Gannel's real thoughts against what he was going to say.
     "Since I am such a newcomer to this Council I do not feel as though my opinions
should be given too much weight," Kinnison said—and thought—slowly, with the exactly
correct amount of obsequiousness. "However, I have a very decided opinion upon the
matter. I believe very firmly that it would be better tactics to consolidate our position
here in our own galaxy first."
     "You advise, then, against any immediate action against Tellus?" the prime
minister asked. "Why?"
     "I do, definitely. It seems to me that short-sighted, half-prepared measures,
based upon careless haste, were the underlying causes of our recent reverses. Time is
not an important factor—the Great Plan was worked out, not in terms of days or of
years, but of centuries and millenia—and it seems to me self-evident that we should
make ourselves impregnably secure, then expand slowly; seeing-to it that we can hold,
against everything that the Patrol can bring to bear, every planet that we take."
     "Do you realize that you are criticizing the chiefs of staff who are in complete
charge of military operations?" Alcon asked, venomously.
     "Fully," the Lensman replied, coldly. "I ventured this opinion because I was asked
specifically for it. The chiefs of staff failed, did they not? If they had succeeded, criticism
would have been neither appropriate nor forthcoming. As it is, I do not believe that mere
criticism of their conduct, abilities, and tactics is sufficient. They should be disciplined
and demoted. New chiefs should be chosen; persons abler and more efficient than the
present incumbents."
     This was a bomb-shell. Dissentions waxed rife and raucous, but amidst the
turmoil the Lensman received from the prime minister a flash of coldly congratulatory
approval.
     And as Major Traska Gannel made his way back to his quarters two things were
starkly plain:
     First, he would have to cut Alcon down and himself become the Tyrant of Thrale.
It was unthinkable to attack or to destroy this planet. It had too many too promising
leads— there were too many things that didn't make sense—above all, there were the
stupendous files of information which no one mind could scan in a lifetime.
     Second, if he wanted to keep on living he would have to keep his detectors
shoved out to maximum—this prime minister was just about as touchy and just about as
safe to play with as a hundred kilograms of dry nitrogen iodide!

CHAPTER 19
Gannel, Tyrant of Thrale

     Adreck, the Palainian Lensman, had not exaggerated in saying that he could not
leave his job, that his work would come undone if he did.
     As has been intimated, Nadreck was cowardly and lazy and characterized
otherwise by traits not usually regarded by humankind as being noble. He was,
however, efficient; and he was now engaged in one of the most colossal tasks ever
attempted by any one Lensman. Characteristically, he had told no one, not even
Haynes or Kinnison, what it was that he was trying to do—he never talked about a job
until after it was done, and his talking then was usually limited to a taped, Lensman's-
sealed, tersely factual report. He was "investigating" Onlo; that was all that anybody
knew.
     Onlo was at that time perhaps the most heavily fortified planet in the universe.
Compared to its massed might Jarnevon was weak; Tellus, except for its sunbeams and
its other open-space safeguards, a joke. Onlo's defenses were all, or nearly all,
planetary; Kandron's strategy, unlike Haynes", was to let any attacking force get almost
down to the ground and then blast it out of existence.
     Thus Onlo was in effect one tremendously armed, titanically powered fortress;
not one cubic foot of its poisonous atmosphere was out of range of projectors
theoretically capable of puncturing any defensive screen possible of mounting upon a
mobile base.
     And Nadreck, the cowardly, the self-effacing, the apologetic, had tackled
Onlo—alone!
     Using the technique which has already been described in connection with his
highly successful raid upon the Eich stronghold of Lyrane VIII, he made his way through
the Onlonian defensive screens and settled down comfortably near one of the gigantic
domes. Then, as though time were of no consequence whatever, he proceeded to get
acquainted with the personnel. He learned the identifying pattern of each entity and
analyzed every one psychologically, mentally, intellectually, and emotionally. He
tabulated his results upon the Palainian equivalent of index cards, then very carefully
arranged the cards into groups.
     In the same fashion he visited and took the census of dome after dome. No one
knew that he had been near, apparently he had done nothing; but in each dome as he
left it there had been sown seeds of discord and of strife which, at a carefully calculated
future time, would yield bitter fruit indeed.
     For every mind has some weakness, each intellect some trait of which it does not
care to boast, each Achilles his heel. That is true even of Gray Lensmen—and the
Onlonians, with their heredity and environment of Boskonianism, were in no sense
material from which Lensmen could be made.
     Subtly, then, and coldly and callously, Nadreck worked upon the basest
passions, the most ignoble traits of that far-from-noble race. Jealousy, suspicion, fear,
greed, revenge— quality by quality he grouped them, and to each group he sent series
after series of horridly stimulating thoughts.
     Jealousy, always rife, assumed fantastic proportions. Molehills became
mountains overnight. A passing word became a studied insult. No one aired his
grievances, however, for always and everywhere there was fear—fear of discipline, fear
of reprisal, fear of betrayal, fear of the double cross. Each monster brooded, sullenly
intense. Each became bitterly, gallingly, hatingly aware of an unwarranted and
intolerable persecution. Not much of a spark would be necessary to touch off such
explosive material as that!
     Nadreck left the headquarters dome until the last. In one sense it was the hardest
of all; in another the easiest. It was hard in that the entities there had stronger minds
than those of lower station; minds better disciplined, minds more accustomed to straight
thinking and to logical reasoning. It was easy, however, in that those minds were
practically all at war already—fighting either to tear down the one above or to resist die
attacks of those below. Every mind in it already hated, or feared, or distrusted, or was
suspicious of or jealous of some other.
     And while Nadreck labored thus deviously his wonders to perform, Kinnison went
ahead in his much more conventional and straightforward fashion upon Thrale. His first
care, of course, was to surround himself with the usual coterie of spies and courtiers.
     The selection of this group gave Kinnison many minutes of serious thought. It
was natural enough that he had not been able to place any of his own men in the secret
service of Alcon or the prime minister, since they both had minds of power. It would not
be natural, however, for either of them not to be able to get an agent into his. For to be
too good would be to invite a mental investigation which he simply could not as yet
permit. He would have to play dumb enough so that his hitherto unsuspected powers of
mind would remain unsuspected.
     He could, however, do much. Since he knew who the spies were, he was able
quite frequently to have his more trusted henchmen discover evidence against them,
branding them for what they were. Assassinations were then, of course, very much in
order. And even a strong suspicion, even though it could not be documented, was
reason enough for a duel.
     In this fashion, then, Kinnison built up his. entourage and kept it reasonably free
from subversive elements; and, peculiarly enough, those elements never happened to
learn anything which the Lensman did not want them to know.
     Building up a strong personal organization was now easy, for at last Kinnison
was a real Boskonian big shot. As a major of the Household he was a power to be
toadied to and fawned upon. As a personal adviser to Alcon the Tyrant he was one
whose ill-will should be avoided at all costs. As a tactician who had so boldly and yet so
altruistically put the skids under the chiefs of staff, thereby becoming a favorite even of
the dreaded prime minister, he was marked plainly as a climber to whose coat-tails it
would be wise to cling. In short, Kinnison made good in a big—it might almost be said in
a stupendous—way.
     With such powers at work the time of reckoning could not be delayed for long.
Alcon knew that Gunnel was working against him; learned very quickly, since he knew
exactly the personnel of Kinnison's "private" secret service and could read at will any of
their minds, that Gannel held most of the trumps. The Tyrant had tried many times to
read the major's mind, but the latter, by some subterfuge or other, had always managed
to elude his inquisitor without making an issue of the matter. Now, however, Alcon drove
in a solid questing beam which, he was grimly determined, would produce results of one
kind or another.
     It did: but, unfortunately for the Thralian, they were nothing he could use. For
Kinnison, instead either of allowing the Tyrant to read his whole mind or of throwing up
an all-too-revealing barricade, fell back upon the sheer native power of will which made
him unique in his generation. He concentrated upon an all-inclusive negation; which in
effect was a rather satisfactory block and which was entirely natural.
     "I don't know what you're trying to do, Alcon," he informed his superior, stiffly,
"but whatever it is I do NOT like it. I think you're trying to hypnotize me. If you are, know
now that you can't do it. No possible hypnotic force can overcome my definitely and
positively opposed will."
     "Major Gannel, you will . . ." the Tyrant began, then stopped. He was not quite
ready yet to come openly to grips with this would-be usurper. Besides, it was now plain
that Gannel had only an ordinary mind. He had not even suspected all the prying that
had occurred previously. He had not recognized even this last powerful thrust for what it
really was; he had merely felt it vaguely and had supposed that it was an attempt at
hypnotism!
     A few more days and he would cut him down. Hence Alcon changed his tone and
went on smoothly, "It is not hypnotism, Major Gannel, but a sort of telepathy which you
cannot understand. It is, however, necessary; for in the case of a man occupying such a
high position as yours, it is self-evident that we can permit no secrets whatever to be
withheld from us— that we can allow no mental reservations of any kind. You see the
justice and the necessity of that, do you not?"
     Kinnison did. He saw also that Alcon was being super-humanly forbearing.
Moreover, he knew what the Tyrant was covering up so carefully—the real reason for
this highly unusual tolerance.
     "I suppose you're right; but I still don't like it," Gannel grumbled. Then, without
either denying or acceding to Alcon's right of mental search, he went to his own
quarters.
     And there—or thereabouts—he wrought diligently at a thing which had been long
in the making. He had known all along that his retinue would be useless against Alcon,
hence he had built up an organization entirely separate from, and completely unknown
to any member of, his visible following. Nor was this really secret outfit composed of
spies or sycophants. Instead, its members were hard, able, thoroughly proven men,
each one carefully selected for the ability and the desire to take the place of one of
Alcon's present department heads. One at a time he put himself en rapport with them;
gave them certain definite orders and instructions.
     Then he put on a mechanical thought-screen. Its use could not make the prime
minister any more suspicious than he already was, and it was the only way he could
remain in character. This screen was, like those of Lonabar, decidedly pervious in that it
had an open slit. Unlike Bleeko's, however, which had their slits set upon a fixed
frequency, the open channel of this one could be varied, both in width and in wave-
length, to any setting which Kinnison desired.
     Thus equipped, Kinnison attended the meeting of the Council of Advisers, and to
say that he disrupted the meeting is no exaggeration. The other advisers perceived
nothing out of the ordinary, of course, but both Alcon and the prime minister were so
perturbed that the session was cut very short indeed. The other members were
dismissed summarily, with no attempt at explanation. The Tyrant was raging, furious;
the premier was alertly, watchfully intent.
     "I did not expect any more physical privacy than I have been granted," Kinnison
grated, after listening quietly to a minute or two of Alcon's unbridled language. "This
thing of being spied upon continuously, both by men and by mechanisms, while it is
insulting and revolting to any real man's self-respect, can—just barely—be borne. I find
it impossible, however, to force myself to submit to such an ultimately degrading
humiliation as the surrender of the only vestiges of privacy I have remaining; those of
my mind. I will resign from the Council if you wish, I will resume my status as an officer
of the line, but I cannot and will not tolerate your extinction of the last spark of my self-
respect," he finished, stubbornly.
     "Resign? Resume? Do you think I'll let you off that easily, fool?" Alcon sneered.
"Don't you realize what I'm going to do to you? That, were it not for the fact that I am
going to watch you die slowly and hideously, I would have you blasted where you
stand?"
     "I do not, no, and neither do you," Gannel answered, as quietly as surprisingly. "If
you were sure of your ability, you would be doing something instead of talking about it."
He saluted crisply, turned, and walked out.
     Now the prime minister, as the student of this history already knows, was
considerably more than he appeared upon the surface to be. His, not Alcon's, was the
voice of authority, although he worked so subtly that the Tyrant himself never did realize
that he was little better than a figure-head.
     Therefore, as Gannel departed, the premier thought briefly but cogently. This
major was smart—too smart. He was too able, he knew too much. His advancement
had been just a trifle too rapid. That thought-screen was an entirely unexpected
development. The mind behind it was not quite right, either—a glimpse through the slit
had revealed a flash of something that might be taken to indicate that Major Gannel had
an ability which ordinary Thralians did not have. This open defiance of the Tyrant of
Thrale did not ring exactly true—it was not quite in character. If it had been a bluff, it
was too good—much too good. If it had not been a bluff, where was his support? How
could Gannel have grown so powerful without his, Fossten's, knowledge?
     If Major Gannel were bona-fide, all well and good. Boskonia needed the
strongest possible leaders, and if any other man showed himself superior to Alcon,
Alcon should and would die. However, there was a bare possibility that . . . Was Gannel
bona-fide? That point should be cleared up without delay. And Fossten, after a
quizzical, searching, more than half contemptuous inspection of the furiously
discomfited Tyrant, followed the rebellious, the contumaceous, the enigmatic Gannel to
his rooms.
     He knocked and was admitted. A preliminary and entirely meaningless
conversation occurred. Then:
     "Just when did you leave the Circle?" the visitor demanded, sharply.
     "What do you want to know for?" Kinnison shot back. That question didn't mean a
thing to him. Maybe it didn't to the big fellow, either—it could be just a catch—but he
didn't intend to give any kind of an analyzable reply to any question that this ape asked
him.
     Nor did he, through thirty minutes of viciously skillful verbal fencing. That
conversation was far from meaningless, but it was entirely unproductive of results; and it
was a baffled, intensely thoughtful Fossten who at its conclusion left Gannel's quarters.
From those quarters he went to the Hall of Records, where he requisitioned the major's
dossier. Then to his own private laboratory, where he applied to those records every
test known to the scientists of his ultra-suspicious race.
     The photographs were right in every detail. The prints agreed exactly with those
he himself had secured from the subject not twenty four hours since. The typing was
right. The ink was right. Everything checked. And why not? Ink, paper, fiber, and film
were in fact exactly what they should have been. There had been no erasures, no
alterations. Everything had been aged to the precisely correct number of days. For
Kinnison had known that this check-up was coming; and while the experts of the Patrol
were not infallible, Mentor of Arisia was.
     Even though he had found exactly what he had expected to find, the suspicions
of the prime minister were intensified rather than allayed. Besides his own, there were
two unreadable minds upon Thrale, where there should have been only one. He knew
how Alcon's had been treated—could Gannel's possibly be a natural phenomenon? If
not, who had treated it, and why?
     There were three, and only three possibilities. Another Eddorian, another
member of the Innermost Circle, working against him? Probably not; this job was too
important. The All-Highest would not permit it. The Arisian who had been hampering
him so long? Much more likely. Star A Star? Most likely of all.
     Not enough data . . . but in any event, circumspection was very definitely
indicated. The show-down would come at a time and a place of his own choosing, not
the foe's.
     He left the palace then, ostensibly to attend a function at the Military Academy.
There, too, everything checked. He visited the town in which Gannel had been
born—finding no irregularities whatever in the records of the birth. He went to the city in
which Gannel had lived for the greater part of his life; where he assured himself that
school records, club records, even photographs and negatives, all dead-centered the
beam.
     He studied the minds of six different persons who had known Gannel from
childhood. As one they agreed that the Traska Gannel who was now Traska Gannel
was in fact the real Traska Gannel, and could not by any possibility be anyone else. He
examined their memory tracks minutely for scars, breaks, or other evidences of surgery;
finding none. In fact, none existed, for the therapists who had performed those
operations had gone back clear to the very beginnings, to the earliest memories of the
Gannel child.
     In spite of the fact that all the data thus far investigated were so precisely what
they should have been—or because of it—the prime minister was now morally certain
that Gannel was, in some fashion or other, completely spurious. Should he go farther,
delve into unimportant but perhaps highly revealing side issues? He should. He did so
with a minute attention to detail anticipated only by Mentor of Arisia. He found nothing
amiss in any particular, but he was still unsatisfied. The mind who had falsified those
records so flawlessly—if they had in fact been falsified—had done a beautiful piece of
work; as masterly a job as he himself could have done. He himself would have left no
traces; neither, in all probability, had the unknown.
     Who, then, and why? This was no ordinary plot, no part of any ordinary scheme
to overthrow Alcon. It was bigger, deeper, far more sinister. Nothing so elaborate and
efficient originating upon Thrale could possibly have been developed and executed
without his knowledge and at least his tacit consent. It could not be Eddorian. That
narrowed the field to two—the Arisian or Star A Star.
     His mind flashed back, reviewing everything that had been ascribed to that
mysterious Director of Lensmen. Something clicked.
     BLAKESLEE!
     This was much finer than the Blakeslee affair, of course; more subtle and more
polished by far. It was not nearly as obvious, as blatant, but the basic similarity was
nevertheless there. Could this similarity have been accidental? No—unthinkable. In this
undertaking accidents could be ruled out— definitely. Whatever had been done had
been done deliberately and after meticulous preparation.
     But Star A Star never repeated . . . Therefore, this time, he had repeated;
deliberately, to throw Alcon and his psychologists off the trail. But he, Fossten, was not
to be deceived by even such clever tactics.
     Gannel was, then, really Gannel, just as Blakeslee had really been Blakeslee.
Blakeslee had obviously been under control. Here, however, there were two
possibilities. First, Gannel might be under similar control. Second, Star A Star might
have operated upon Gannel's mind so radically as to make an entirely different man of
him. Either hypothesis would explain Gannel's extreme reticence in submitting to any
except the most superficial mental examination. Each would account for Gannel's calm
certainty that Alcon was afraid to attack him openly. Which of these hypotheses was the
correct one could be determined later. It was unimportant, anyway, for in either case
there was now accounted for the heretofore inexplicable power of Gannel's mind.
     In either case it was not Gannel's mind at all, but that of THE Lensman, who was
making Gannel act as he could not normally have acted. Somewhere hereabouts, in
either case, there actually was lurking Boskonia's Nemesis' the mentality whom above
all others Boskonia was raving to destroy; the one Lensman who had never been seen
or heard or perceived: the feared and detested Lensman about whom nothing whatever
had ever been learned.
     That Lensman, whoever he might be, had at last met his match. Gannel, as
Gannel, was of no importance whatever: the veriest pawn. But he who stood behind
Gannel . . . Ah! . . . He, Gharlane himself, would wait and he would watch. Then, at
precisely the correct instant, he would pounce!
     And Kinnison, during the absence of the prime minister, worked swiftly and
surely. Twelve men died, and as they ceased to live twelve others, grimly ready and
thoroughly equipped for any emergency, took their places. And during that same minute
of time Kinnison strode into Alcon's private sanctum.
     The Tyrant hurled orders to his guards—orders which were not obeyed He then
went for his own weapons, and he was fast—but Kinnison was faster. Alcon's guns and
hands disappeared and the sickened Tellurian slugged him into unconsciousness.
Then, grimly, relentlessly, he took every item of interest from the Thralian's mind, killed
him, and assumed forthwith the title and the full authority of the Tyrant of Thrale.
     Unlike most such revolutions, this one was accomplished with very little
bloodshed and with scarcely any interference with the business of the realm. Indeed, if
anything, there was an improvement in almost every respect, since the new men were
more thoroughly trained and were more competent than the previous officers hod been.
Also, they had arranged matters beforehand so that their accessions could be made
with a minimum of friction.
     They were as yet loyal to Kinnison and to Boskonia: and in a rather faint hope of
persuading them to stay that way, without developing any queer ideas about
overthrowing him, the Lensman called them into conference.
     "Men, you know how you got where you are," he began, coldly. "You are loyal to
me at the moment. You know that real cooperation is the only way to achieve maximum
productivity, and that true cooperation cannot exist in any regime in which the
department heads, individually or en masse, are trying to do away with the dictator.
     "Some of you will probably be tempted very shortly to begin to work against me
instead of for me and with me. I am not pleading with you, nor even asking you out of
gratitude for what I have done for you, to refrain from such activities. Instead, I am
telling you as a simple matter of fact that any or all of you, at the first move toward any
such disloyalty, will die. In that connection, I know that all of you have been exerting
every resource to discover in what manner your predecessors came so conveniently to
die, and that none of you have succeeded."
     One by one they admitted that they had not. "Nor will you, ever. Be advised that I
know vastly more than Alcon did, and that I am far mere powerful. Alcon, while in no
sense a weakling, did not know how to command obedience. I do. Alcon's sources of
information were meager and untrustworthy; mine are comprehensive and reliable.
Alcon very often did not know that anything was being plotted against him until the thing
was well along; I shall always know of the first seditious move. Alcon blustered,
threatened, and warned; he tortured; he gave some offenders a second chance before
he killed. I shall do none of these things. I do not threaten, I do not warn, I do not
torture. Above all, I give no snake a second chance to strike at me. I execute traitors
without bluster or fanfare. For your own good, gentlemen, I advise you in all seriousness
to believe that I mean precisely every word I say."
     They slunk out, but Boskonian habit was too strong. Thus, within three days,
three of Kinnison's newly appointed head men died. He called another cabinet meeting.
     "The three new members have listened to the recording of our first meeting,
hence there is no need to repeat what I said at that time," the Tyrant announced, in a
voice so silkily venomous that his listeners cringed. "I will add to it merely that I will have
full cooperation, and only cooperation, if I have to kill all of you and all of your
successors to get it. You may go."

CHAPTER 20
Gannel vs. Fossten

     This killing made Kinnison ill; physically and mentally sick. It was ruthless,
cowardly murder. It was worse than stabbing a man in the back; the poor devils didn't
have even the faintest shadow of a chance. Nevertheless he did it.
     When he had first invaded the stronghold of the Wheelmen of Aldebaran I, he
had acted almost without thought. If there was a chance of success, Lensmen went in.
When he had scouted Jarnevon he had thought but little more. True—and
fortunately—he took Worsel along; but he did not stop to consider whether or not there
were minds in the Patrol better fitted to cope with the problem than was his own. It was
his problem, he figured, and it was up to him to solve it.
     Now, however, he knew bitterly that he could no longer act in that comparatively
thoughtless fashion. At whatever loss of self-esteem, of personal stature, or of standing,
he had to revise the Tellurian Lensmen's Code. It griped him to admit it, but Nadreck
was right. It was not enough to give his life in an attempt to conquer a half-way station;
he must remain alive in order to follow through to completion the job which was so
uniquely his. He must think, assaying and evaluating every factor of his entire task.
Then, without considering his own personal feelings, he must employ whatever forces
and methods were best fitted to do the work at the irreducible minimum of cost and of
risk.
     Thus Kinnison sat unharmed upon the throne of the Tyrant of Thrale, and thus
the prime minister returned to the palace to find the fact accomplished. That worthy
studied with care every aspect of the situation before he sought an audience with the
new potentate.
     "Allow me to congratulate you, Tyrant Gannel," he said, smoothly. "I cannot say
that I am surprised, since I have been watching you and your activities for some little
time— with distinct approval, I may add. You have fulfilled—more than fulfilled,
perhaps—my expectations. Your regime is functioning superbly; you have established
in this very short time a smoothness of operation and an esprit de corps which are
decidedly unusual. There are, however, certain matters about which it is possible that
you are not completely informed."
     "It is possible," Kinnison agreed, with the merest trace of irony. "Such as?"
     "In good time. You know, do you not, who is the real authority here upon Thrale?"
     "I know who was," the Tellurian corrected, with the faintest perceptible accent
upon the final verb. "In part only, however, for if you had concerned yourself wholly, the
late Alcon would not have made so many nor so serious mistakes."
     "I thank you. You know, of course, the reason for that. I want the Tyrant of Thrale
to be the strongest man of Thrale, and I may say without flattery that I believe he now is.
And I would suggest that you add 'sire' when you speak to me."
     "I thank you in turn. I will so address you when you call me 'Your
Supremacy'—not sooner."
     "We will let it pass for the moment. To come to your question, you apparently do
not know that the Tyrant of Thrale, whoever he may be, opens his mind to me."
     "I have suspected that such a condition has existed in the past. However, please
be informed that I trust fully only those who fully trust me; and that thus far in my short
life such persons have been few. You will observe that I am still respecting your privacy
in that I am allowing your control of my sense of sight to continue. It is not because I
trust you, but because your true appearance is to me a matter of complete indifference.
For, frankly, I do not trust you at all. I will open my mind to you just exactly as wide as
you will 1 open yours to me—no wider."
     "Ah . . . the bravery of ignorance. It is as I thought. You do not realize, Gannel,
that I can slay you at any moment I choose, or that a very few more words of defiance
from you will be enough." Fossten did not raise his voice, but his tone was instinct with
menace.
     "I do not, and neither do you, as I remarked to the then Tyrant Alcon in this very
room not long ago. I am sure that you will understand without elaboration the
connotations and implications inherent in that remark." Kinnison's voice also was low
and level, freighted in its every clipped syllable with the calm assurance of power.
"Would you be interested in knowing why I am so certain that you will not accept my
suggestion of a mutual opening of minds?"
     "Very much so."
     "Because I suspect that you are, or are in league with, Star A Star of the Galactic
Patrol." Even at that astounding charge Fossten gave no sign of surprise or of shock. "I
have not been able as yet to obtain any evidence supporting that belief, but I tell you
now that when I do so, you die. Not by power of thought, either, but in the beam of my
personal ray-gun."
     "Ah—you interest me strangely," and the premier's hand strayed almost
imperceptibly toward an inconspicuous button.
     "Don't touch that switch!" Kinnison snapped. He did not quite see why Fossten
was letting him see the maneuver, but he would bite, anyway.
     "Why not, may I ask? It is merely a . . ."
     "I know what it is, and I do not like thought-screens. I prefer that my mind be left
free to roam."
     Fossten's thoughts raced in turn. Since the Tyrant was on guard, this was
inconclusive. It might—or might not—indicate that Gannel was controlled by or in
communication with Star A Star.
     "Do not be childish," he chided. "You know as well as I do that your accusations
are absurd. However, as I reconsider the matter, the fact that neither of us trusts
unreservedly the other may not after all be an insuperable obstacle to our working
together for the good of Boskonia. I think now more than ever that yours is the strongest
Thralian mind, and as such the logical one to wield the Tyrant's power. It would be a
shame to destroy you unnecessarily, especially in view of the probability that you will
come later of your own accord to see the reasonableness of that which I have
suggested."
     "It is possible," Kinnison admitted, "but not, I would say, probable." He thought
that he knew why the lug had pulled in his horns, but he wasn't sure. "Now that we have
clarified our attitudes toward each other, have decided upon an armed and suspicious
truce, I see nothing to prevent us from working together in a completely harmonious
mutual distrust for the good of all. The first thing to do, as I see it, is to devote our every
effort to the destruction of the planet Klovia and all the Patrol forces based upon it."
     "Right." If Fossten suspected that the Tyrant was somewhat less than frank he
did not show it, and the conversation became strictly technical.
     "We must not strike until we are completely ready," was Kinnison's first
statement, and he repeated it so often thereafter during the numerous conferences with
the chiefs of staff that it came almost to be a slogan.
     The prime minister did not know that Kinnison's main purpose was to give the
Patrol plenty of time to make Klovia utterly impregnable. Fossten could know nothing of
the Patrol's sunbeam, to which even the mightiest fortress possible for man to build
could offer scarcely more resistance than could the lightest, the most fragile pleasure
yacht.
     Hence he grew more and more puzzled, more and more at a loss week by week,
as Tyrant Gannel kept on insisting upon building up the strongest, the most logically
perfect fleet which all the ability of their pooled brains could devise. Once or twice he
offered criticisms and suggestions which, while defensible according to one theory,
would actually have, weakened their striking power. These offerings Gannel rejected
flatly; insisting, even to an out-and-out break with his co-administrator if necessary,
upon the strongest possible armada.
     The Tyrant wanted, and declared that he must and would have, more and bigger
of everything. More and heavier flying fortresses, more and stronger battleships and
super-dreadnoughts, more and faster cruisers and scouts, more and deadlier weapons.
     "We want more of everything than our operations officers can possibly handle in
battle," he declared over and over; and he got them. Then:
     "Now, you operations officers, learn how to handle them!" he commanded.
     Even the prime minister protested at that, but it was finally accomplished.
Fossten was a real thinker. So, in a smaller way, was Kinnison, and between them they
worked out a system. It was crudeness and inefficiency incarnate in comparison with
the Z9M9Z, but it was so much better than anything previously known to the Boskonians
that everyone was delighted. Even the suspicious and cynical Fossten began to
entertain some doubts as to the infallibility of his own judgment. Tyrant Gannel might be
working under his own power, after all.
     And these doubts grew apace as the Tyrant drilled his Grand Fleet. He drove the
personnel unmercifully, especially the operations officers; as relentlessly as he drove
himself. He simply could not be satisfied, his ardor and lust for efficiency were
insatiable. His reprimands were scathingly accurate; officer after officer he demoted
bitingly during ever more complicated, ever more inhumanly difficult maneuvers; until
finally he had what were unquestionably his best men in those supremely important
positions. Then, one day:
     "QX, Kim, come ahead—we're ready," Haynes Leased him, briefly.
     For Kinnison had been in touch with the Port Admiral every day. He had learned
long since that the prime minister could not detect a Lensed thought, particularly when
the Lensman was wearing a thought-screen, as he did practically constantly; wherefore
the strategists of the Patrol were as well informed as was Kinnison himself of every
move made by the Boskonians.
     Then Kinnison called Fossten, and was staring glumly at nothing when the latter
entered the room.
     "Well, it would seem that we're about as nearly ready as we ever will be," the
Tyrant brooded, pessimistically. "Have you any suggestions, criticisms, or other
contributions to offer, of however minor a nature?"
     "None whatever. You have done very well indeed."
     "Unnhh," Gannel grunted, without enthusiasm. "You have observed, no doubt,
that I have said little if anything as to the actual method of approach?"
     The prime minister had indeed noticed that peculiar oversight, and said so. Here,
undoubtedly, he thought, was the rub. Here was where Star A Star's minion would get in
his dirty work.
     "I have thought about it at length," Kinnison said, still hi his brown study. "But I
know enough to recognize and to admit my own limitations. I do know tactics and
strategy, and thus far I have worked with known implements toward known objectives.
That condition, however, no longer exists. The simple fact is that I do not know enough
about the possibilities, the techniques and the potentialities, the advantages and the
disadvantages of the hyper-spatial tube as an avenue of approach to enable me to
come to a defensible decision one way or the other. I have decided, therefore, that if
you have any preference in the matter I will give you full authority and let you handle the
approach in any manner you please. I shall of course direct the actual battle, as in that I
shall again be upon familiar ground."
     The premier was flabbergasted. This was incredible. Gannel must really be
working for Boskonia after all, to make such a decision as that. Still skeptical,
unprepared for such a startling development as that one was, he temporized.
     "The bad—the very bad—features of the approach via rube are two," he
pondered aloud. "We have no means of knowing anything about what happens; and,
since our previous such venture was a total failure, we must assume that, contrary to
our plans and expectations, the enemy was not taken by surprise."
     "Right," Kinnison concurred, tonelessly.
     "Upon the other hand, an approach via open space, while conducive to the
preservation of our two lives, would be seen from afar and would certainly be met by an
appropriate formation."
     "Check," came emotionlessly non-commital agreement.
     "Haven't you the slightest bias, one way or the other?" Fossten demanded,
incredulously.
     "None whatever," the Tyrant was coldly matter-of-fact. "If I had had any such, I
would have ordered the approach made in the fashion I preferred. Having none, I
delegated authority to you. When I delegate authority I do so without reservations."
     This was a stopper.
     "Let it be open space, then," the prime minister finally decided.
     "So be it." And so it was.
     Each of the component flotillas of Grand Fleet made a flying trip to some nearby
base, where each unit was serviced. Every item of mechanism and of equipment was
checked and rechecked. Stores were replenished, and munitions—especially munitions.
Then the mighty armada, the most frightfully powerful aggregation ever to fly for
Boskonia—the mightiest fleet ever assembled anywhere, according to the speeches of
the politicians—remade its stupendous formation and set out for Klovia. And as it flew
through space, shortly before contact was made with the Patrol's Grand Fleet, the
premier called Kinnison into the control room.
     "Gannel, I simply can not make you out," he remarked, after studying him fixedly
for five minutes. "You have offered no advice. You have not interfered with my handling
of the Fleet in any way. Nevertheless, I still suspect you of treacherous intentions. I
have been suspicious of you from the first . . ."
     "With no grounds whatever for your suspicions," Kinnison reminded him, coldly.
     "What? With all the reason possible!" Fossten declared. "Have you not steadily
refused to bare your mind to me?"
     "Certainly. Why not? Do we have to go over that again? Just how do you figure
that I should so trust any being who refuses to reveal even his true shape to me?"
     "That is for your own good. I have not wanted to tell you this, but the truth is that
no human being can perceive my true self and retain his sanity."
     Fossten's Eddorian mind flashed. Should he reveal this form of flesh, which was
real enough, as Tellurians understood reality? Impossible. Star-A-Star-Gannel was no
more Tellurian than Fossten was Thralian. He would not be satisfied with perceiving the
flesh; he would bore in for the mind.
     "I'll take a chance on that," Kinnison replied, skeptically. "I've seen a lot of
monstrous entities in my time and I haven't conked out yet."
     "There speaks the sheer folly of callow youth; the rashness of an ignorance so
abysmal as to be possible only to one of your ephemeral race." The voice deepened,
became more resonant. Kinnison, staring into those inscrutable eyes which he knew did
not in fact exist, thrilled forebodingly; the timbre and the overtones of that voice
reminded him very disquietingly of something which he could not at the moment recall
to mind. "I forbear to discipline you, not from any doubt as to my ability to do so, as you
suppose, but because of the sure knowledge that breaking you by force will destroy
your usefulness. On the other hand, it is certain that if you cooperate with me willingly
you will be the strongest, ablest leader that Boskonia has ever had. Think well upon
these matters, O Tyrant."
     "I will," the Lensman agreed, more seriously than he had intended. "But just
what, if anything, has led you to believe that I am not working to the fullest and best of
my ability for Boskonia?"
     "Everything," Fossten summarized. "I have been able to find no flaws in your
actions, but those actions do not fit in with your unexplained and apparently
unexplainable reticence in letting me perceive for myself exactly what is in your mind.
Furthermore, you have never even troubled to deny accusations that you are in fact
playing a far deeper game than you appear upon the surface to be playing."
     "That reticence I have explained over and over as an overmastering
repugnance—call it a phobia if you like," Kinnison rejoined, wearily. "I simply can't and
won't. Since you cannot understand that, denials would have been entirely useless.
Would you believe anything that I could possibly say— that I would swear by everything
I hold sacred—whether it was that I am whole-heartedly loyal to Boskonia or that I am in
fact Star A Star himself?"
     "Probably not," came the measured reply. "No, certainly not. Men—especially
men such as you, bent ruthlessly upon the acquisition of power—are liars . . . ah, could
it, by any chance, be that the reason for your intractability is that you have the effrontery
to entertain some insane idea of supplanting ME?"
     Kinnison jumped mentally. That tore it—that was a flare-lit tip-off. This man—this
thing—being—entity—whatever he really was—instead of being just another Boskonian
big shot, must be the clear quill—the real McCoy—BOSKONE HIMSELF! The end of
the job must be right here! This was—must be—the real Brain for whom he had been
searching so long; here within three feet of him sat the creature with whom he had been
longing so fervently to come to grips!
     "The reason is as I have said," the Tellurian stated, quietly. "I will attempt to
make no secret, however, of a fact which you must already have deduced; that if and
when it becomes apparent that you have any authority above or beyond that of the
Tyrant of Thrale I shall take it away from you. Why not? Now that I have come so far,
why should I not aspire to sit in the highest seat of all?"
     "Hrrummphhh!" the monster—Kinnison could no longer think of him as Fossten,
or as the prime minister, or as anything even remotely human—snorted with such utter,
such searing contempt that even the Lensman's burly spirit quailed. "As well might you
attempt to pit your vaunted physical strength against the momentum of an inert planet.
Now, youth, have done. The time for temporizing is past. As 1 have said, I desire to
spare you, as I wish you to rule this part of Boskonia as my viceroy. Know, however,
that you are in no sense essential, and that if you do not yield your mind fully to mine,
here and now, before this coming battle is joined, you most certainly die." At the grim
finality, the calmly assured certainty of the pronouncement, a quick chill struck into the
Gray Lensman's vitals.
     This thing who called himself Fossten . . . who or what was he? What was it that
he reminded him of? He thought and talked like . . . like . . . MENTOR! But it couldn't be
an Arisian, possibly—that wouldn't make sense . . . But then, it didn't make any kind of
sense, anyway, any way you looked at it . . . Whoever he was, he had plenty of jets—
jets enough to lift a freighter off of the north pole of Valeria . . . and by the same token,
his present line of talk didn't make sense, either—there must be some good reason why
he hadn't made a real pass at him long before this, instead of arguing with him so
patiently—what could it be? . . . Oh, that was it, of course . . . He needed only a few
minutes more, now; he could probably stall off the final show-down that long by crawling
a bit—much as it griped him to let this zwilnik think that he was licking his boots . . .
     "Your forebearance is appreciated, sire." At the apparently unconscious tribute to
superiority and at the fact that the hitherto completely self-possessed Tyrant got up and
began to pace nervously up and down the control room, the prime minister's austere
mien softened appreciably. "It is, however, a little strange. It is not quite in character; it
does not check quite satisfactorily with the facts thus far revealed. I may, perhaps, as
you say, be stupid. I may be overestimating flagrantly my own abilities. To one of my
temperament, however, to surrender in such a craven fashion as you demand comes
hard—extremely, almost unbearably hard. It would be easier, I think, if Your Supremacy
would condescend to reveal his true identity, thereby making plainly evident and
manifest that which at present must be left to unsupported words, surmise, and not too
much conviction."
     "But I told you, and now tell you again, that for you to look upon my real form is to
lose your reason!" the creature rasped.
     "What do you care whether or not I remain sane?" Kinnison shot his bolt at last,
in what he hoped would be taken for a last resurgence of spirit. His time was about up.
In less than one minute now the screens of scout cruisers would be in engagement, and
either he or the prime minister or both would be expected to be devoting every cell of
their brains to the all-important battle of giants. And in that very nick of time he would
have to cripple the Bergenholms and thus inert the flagship. "Could it be that the real
reason for your otherwise inexplicable forbearance is that you must know how my mind
became as it now is, and that the breaking down of my barriers by mental force will
destroy the knowledge which you, for your own security, must have?"
     This was the blow-off. Kinnison still paced the room, but his pacings took him
nearer and ever nearer to a certain control panel. Behind his thought-screen, which he
could not now trust, he mustered every iota of his tremendous force of mind and of will.
Only seconds now. His left hand, thrust into his breeches pocket, grasped the cigarette
case within which reposed his Lens. His right arm and hand were tensely ready to draw
and to fire his weapon.
     "Die, then! I should have known from the sheer perfection of your work that you
were what you really are—Star A Star!"
     The mental blast came ahead even of the first word, but the Gray Lensman,
supremely ready, was already in action. One quick thrust of his chin flicked off the
thought-screen. The shielded cigarette-case flew open, his more-than-half-alive Lens
blazed again upon his massive wrist. His blaster leaped out of its scabbard, flaming
destruction as it came— a ravening tongue of incandescent fury which licked out of
existence in the twinking of an eye the Bergenholms' control panels and the operators
clustered before it. The vessel went inert—much work would have to be done before the
Boskonian flagship could again fly free!
     These matters required only a fraction of a second. Well indeed it was that they
did not take longer, for the ever-mounting fury of the prime minister's attack soon
necessitated more—much more—than an automatic block, however capable. But
Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, Lensman of Lensmen had more—ever so much
more—than that!
     He whirled, lips thinned over tight-set teeth in a savage fighting grin. Now he'd
see what this zwilnik was and what he had. No fear, no doubt of the outcome, entered
his mind. He had suffered such punishment as few minds have ever endured in learning
to ward off everything that Mentor, one of the mightiest intellects of this or of any other
universe, could send; but through that suffering he had learned. This unknown entity
was an able operator, of course, but he certainly had a thick, hard crust to think that he
could rub him out!
     So thinking, the Lensman hurled a bolt of his own, a blast of power sufficient to
have slain a dozen men—and, amazedly, saw it rebound harmlessly from the premier's
hard-held block.
     Which of the two combatants was the more surprised it would be hard to say;
each had considered his own mind impregnable and invincible. Now, as the prime
minister perceived how astoundingly capable a foe he faced, he drove a thought toward
Eddore and the All-Highest.
     Blocked!
     Star A Star and the Arisian, then, were not two, but one!
     He ordered the officers on duty to blast their Tyrant down. In vain. For, even so
early in that ultimately lethal struggle, he could not spare enough of his mind to control
effectively any outsider; and in a matter of seconds there were no minds left throughout
that entire room in any condition to be controlled.
     For the first reverberations, the ricochets, the spent forces of the monster's attack
against Kinnison's shield had wrought grievously among the mentalities of all
bystanders. Those forces were deadly—deadly beyond telling—so inimical to and
destructive of intelligence that even their transformation products affected tremendously
the nervous systems of all within range.
     Then, instants later, the spectacle of the detested and searingly feared Lens
scintillating balefully upon the wrist of their own ruler was an utterly inexpressible shock.
Some of the officers tried then to go for their blasters, but it was already too late; their
shaking, trembling, almost paralyzed muscles could not be forced to function.
     An even worse shock followed almost instantly, for the prime minister, under the
incredibly mounting intensity of the Lensman's poignant thrusts, found it necessary to
concentrate his every iota of power upon his opponent. Fossten's form of flesh
dissolved, revealing to all beholders except Kinnison what their prime minister actually
was—and he had not been very much wrong in saying that that sight would drive any
human being mad. Most of the Boskonians did go mad, then and there; but they did not
rush about nor scream. They could not move purposefully, but only twitched and writhed
horribly as they lay grotesquely a-sprawl. They could not scream or shriek, but only
mouthed and mumbled meaningless burblings.
     And ever higher, ever more brilliant flamed the Lens as Kinnison threw all of his
prodigious will-power, all of his tremendous, indomitable drive, through it and against
the incredibly resistant thing to which he was opposed. This was the supreme, the
climactic battle of his life thus far. Ether and sub-ether seethed and boiled invisibly
under the frightful violence of the forces there unleashed. The men in the control room
lay still; all life rived away. Now death spread throughout the confines of the vast space-
ship.
     Indomitably, relentlessly, the Gray Lensman held his offense upon that
unimaginably high level; his Lens flooding the room with intensely coruscant
polychromatic light. He did not know, then or ever, how he did it. He never did suspect
that he was not alone. It seemed as though his Lens, of its own volition in this time of
ultimate need, reached out into unguessable continua and drew therefrom an added, an
extra something. But, however it was done, Kinnison and his Lens managed to hold;
and under the appalling, the never-ceasing concentration of force the monster's
defenses began gradually to weaken and go down.
     Then sketchily, patchily, there was revealed to Kinnison's sight and sense of
perception—a—a—a BRAIN!
     There was a body, of sorts, of course—a peculiarly neckless body designed
solely to support that gigantic, thin-skulled head. There were certain appendages of
limbs, and such-like appurtenances and incidentalia to nourishment, locomotion, and
the like; but to all intents and purposes the thing was simply and solely a brain.
     Kinnison knew starkly that it was an Arisian—it looked enough like old Mentor to
be his twin brother. He would have been stunned, except for the fact that he was far too
intent upon victory to let any circumstance, however distracting, affect his purpose. His
concentration upon the task in hand was so complete that nothing—literally nothing
whatever—could sway him from it.
     Step by short, hard, jerky step, Kinnison advanced. Close enough, he selected
certain areas upon the sides of that enormous head and with big, hard, open hands he
went viciously to work. Right, left, right, left, he slapped those bulging temples brutally,
rocking monstrous head and repulsive body from side to side, pendulum-like, with every
stunning blow.
     His fist would have smashed that thin skull, would perhaps have buried itself
deep within the soft tissues of that tremendous brain; and Kinnison did not want to kill
his inexplicable opponent—yet. He had to find out first what this was all about.
     He knew that he was due to black out soon as he let go, and he intended to
addle the thing's senses so thoroughly that he would be completely out of action for
hours—long enough to give the Lensman plenty of time in which to recover his strength.
     He did so.
     Kinnison did not quite faint. He did, however, have to lie down flat upon the floor;
as limp, almost, as the dead men so thickly strewn about.
     And thus, while the two immense Grand Fleets met in battle, Boskonia's flagship
hung inert and silent in space afar; manned by fifteen hundred corpses, one
unconscious Brain, and one utterly exhausted Gray Lensman.

CHAPTER 21
The Battle of Klovia

     Boskonia's Grand Fleet was, as has been said, enormous. It was not as large as
that of the Patrol in total number of ships, since no ordinary brain nor any possible
combination of such brains could have coordinated and directed the activities of so vast
a number of units. Its center was, however, heavier; composed of a number and a
tonnage of super-maulers which made it self-evidently irresistible.
     In his training of his operations staff Kinnison had not overlooked a single bet,
had not made a single move which by its falsity might have excited Premier Fossten's
all-too-ready suspicions. They had handled Grand Fleet as a whole in vast, slow
maneuvers; plainly the only kind possible to so tremendous a force. Kinnison and his
officers had in turn harshly and thoroughly instructed the sub-fleet commanders in the
various arts and maneuvers of conquering units equal to or smaller than their own.
     That was all; and to the Boskonians, even to Fossten, that had been enough.
That was obviously all that was possible. Not one of them realized that Tyrant Gannel
very carefully avoided any suggestion that there might be any intermediate tactics, such
as that of three or four hundred sub-fleets, too widely spread in space and too
numerous to be handled by any ordinary mind or apparatus, to englobe and to wipe out
simultaneously perhaps fifty sub-fleets whose commanders were not even in
communication with each other. This technique was as yet the exclusive property of the
Patrol and the Z9M9Z.
     And in that exact operation, a closed book to the zwilniks, lay—supposedly and
tactically—the Patrol's overwhelming advantage. For Haynes, through his four highly-
specialized Rigellian Lensmen and thence through the two hundred Rigellian operator-
computers, could perform maneuvers upon any intermediate scale he pleased. He
could handle his whole vast Grand Fleet and its every component part—he supposed—
as effectively, as rapidly, and almost as easily as a skilled chess player handles his
pieces and his pawns. Neither Kinnison nor Haynes can be blamed, however, for the
fact that their suppositions were somewhat in error; it would have taken an Arisian to
deduce that this battle was not to be fought exactly as they had planned it.
     Haynes had another enormous advantage in knowing the exact number, rating,
disposition, course, and velocity of every main unit of the aggregation to which he was
opposed. And third, he had the sunbeam, concerning which the enemy knew nothing at
all and which was now in good working order.
     It is needless to say that the sunbeam generators were already set to hurl that
shaft of irresistible destruction along the precisely correct line, or that Haynes' Grand
Fleet formation had been made with that particular weapon in mind. It was not an
orthodox formation; in any ordinary space-battle it would have been sheerly suicidal. But
the Port Admiral, knowing for the first time in his career every pertinent fact concerning
his foe, knew exactly what he was doing.
     His fleet, instead of driving ahead to meet the enemy, remained inert and
practically motionless well within the limits of Klovia's solar system. His heavy stuff,
instead of being massed at the center, was arranged in a vast ring. There was no center
except for a concealing screen of heavy cruisers.
     When the far-flung screens of scout cruisers came into engagement, then, the
Patrol scouts near the central line did not fight, but sped lightly aside. So did the light
and heavy-cruisers and the battleships. The whole vast center of the Boskonians drove
onward, unopposed, into—nothing.
     Nevertheless they kept on driving. They could, without orders, do nothing else,
and no orders were forthcoming from the flagship. Commanders tried to get in touch
with Grand Fleet Operations, but could not; and, in failing, kept on under their original
instructions. They had, they could have, no suspicion that any minion of the Patrol was
back of what had happened to their top brass. The flagship had been in the safest
possible position and no attack had as yet been made. They probably wondered futilely
as to what kind of a mechanical breakdown could have immobilized and completely
silenced their High Command, but that was—strictly —none of their business. They had
had orders, very definite orders, that no matter what happened they were to go on to
Klovia and to destroy it. Thus, however wondering, they kept on. They were on the line.
They would hold it. They would blast out of existence anything and everything which
might attempt to bar their way. They would reach Klovia and they would reduce it to its
component atoms.
     Unresisted, then, the Boskonian center bored ahead into nothing, until Haynes,
through his Rigellians, perceived that it had come far enough. Then Klovia's brilliantly
shining sun darkened almost to the point of extinction. Along the line of centers, through
the space so peculiarly empty of Patrol ships, there came into being the sunbeam—a
bar of quasi-solid lightning into which there had been compressed all the energy of well
over four million tons per second of disintegrating matter.
     Scouts and cruisers caught in that ravening beam flashed briefly, like sparks
flying from a forge, and vanished. Battleships and super-dreadnoughts the same. Even
the solid warhead of fortresses and maulers was utterly helpless. No screen has ever
been designed capable of handling that hellish load; no possible or conceivable
substance can withstand save momentarily the ardor of a sunbeam. For the energy
liberated by the total annihilation of four million tons per second of matter is in fact as
irresistible as it is incomprehensible.
     The armed and armored planets did not disappear. They contained too much
sheer mass for even that inconceivably powerful beam to volitalize in any small number
of seconds. Their surfaces, however, melted and boiled. The controlling and powering
mechanisms fused into useless pools of molten metal. Inert, then, inactive and
powerless, they no longer constituted threats to Klovia's well-being.
     The negaspheres also were rendered ineffective by the beam. Their anti-masses
were not decreased, of course— in fact, they were probably increased a trifle by the
fervor of the treatment—but, with the controlling superstructures volatilized away, they
became more of menace to the Boskonian forces than to those of Civilization. Indeed,
several of the terrible things were drawn into contact with ruined planets. Then
negasphere and planet consumed each other, flooding all nearby space with intensely
hard and horribly lethal radiation.
     The beam winked out; Klovia's sun flashed on. The sunbeam was—and
is—clumsy, unwieldy, quite definitely not rapidly maneuverable. But it had done its work;
now the component parts of Civilization's Grand Fleet started in to do theirs.
     Since the Battle of Klovia—it was and still is called that, as though it were the
only battle which that warlike planet has ever seen—has been fought over in the
classrooms of practically every civilized planet of two galaxies, it would be redundant to
discuss it in detail here.
     It was, of course, unique. No other battle like it has ever been fought, either
before or since—and let us hope that no other ever will be. It is studied by strategists,
who have offered many thousands of widely variant profundities as to what Port Admiral
Haynes should have done. Its profound emotional appeal, however, lies only and
sheerly in its unorthodoxy. For in the technically proper space battle there is no hand-to-
hand fighting, no purely personal heroism, no individual deeds of valor. It is a thing of
logic and of mathematics and of science, the massing of superior fire-power against a
well-chosen succession of weaker opponents. When the screens of a space-ship go
down that ship is done, her personnel only memories.
     But here how different! With the supposed breakdown of the lines of
communication to the flagship, the sub-fleets carried on in formation. With the
destruction of the entire center, however, all semblance of organization or of
cooperation was lost. Every staff officer knew that no more orders would emanate from
the flagship. Each knew chillingly that there could be neither escape nor succor. The
captain of each vessel, thoroughly convinced that he knew vastly more than did his fleet
commander, proceeded to run the war to suit himself. The outcome was fantastic, so
utterly bizarre that the Z9M9Z and her trained coordinating officers were useless.
Science and tactics and the million lines of communication could do nothing against a
foe who insisted upon making it a ship-to-ship, yes, a man-to-man affair!
     The result was the most gigantic dog-fight in the annals of military science.
Ships—Civilization's perhaps as eagerly as Boskonia's—cut off their projectors, cut off
their screens, the better to ram, to board, to come to grips personally with the enemy.
Scout to scout, cruiser to cruiser, battleship to battleship, the insane contagion spread.
Haynes and his staff men swore fulminantly, the Rigellians hurled out orders, but those
orders simply could not be obeyed. The dog-fight spread until it filled a good sixth of
Klovia's entire solar system.
     Board and storm! Armor—DeLameters—axes! The mad blood-lust of hand-to-
hand combat, the insensately horrible savagery of our pirate forbears, multiplied by
millions and spread out to fill a million million cubic miles of space!
     Haynes and his fellows wept unashamed as they stood by helpless, unable to
avoid or to prevent the slaughter of so many splendid men, the gutting of so many
magnificent ships. It was ghastly—it was appalling—it was WAR!
     And far from this scene of turmoil and of butchery lay Boskonia's great flagship,
and in her control room Kinnison began to recover. He sat up groggily. He gave his
throbbing head a couple of tentative shakes. Nothing rattled. Good— he was QX, he
guessed, even if he did feel as limp as nine wet dishrags. Even his Lens felt weak; its
usually refulgent radiance was sluggish, wan, and dim. This had taken plenty out of
them, he reflected soberly; but he was mighty lucky to be alive. But he'd better get his
batteries charged. He couldn't drive a thought across the room, the shape he was in
now, and he knew of only one brain in the universe Capable of straightening out this
mess.
     After assuring himself that the highly inimical brain would not be able to function
normally for a long time to come, the Lensman made his way to the galley. He could
walk without staggering already—fine! There he fried himself a big, thick, rare
steak—his never-failing remedy for all the ills to which flesh is heir—and brewed a pot of
Thralian coffee; making it viciously, almost corrosively strong. And as he ate and drank
his head cleared magically. Strength flowed back into him in waves. His Lens flamed
into its normal splendor. He stretched prodigiously; inhaled gratefully a few deep
breaths. He was QX.
     Back in the control room, after again checking up on the still quiescent brain—he
wouldn't trust this Fossten as far as he could spit—he hurled a thought to far-distant
Arisia and to Mentor, its ancient sage.
     "What's an Arisian doing in this Second Galaxy, working against the Patrol? Just
what is somebody trying to pull off?" he demanded heatedly, and in a second of flashing
thought reported what had happened.
     'Truly, Kinnison of Tellus, my mind is not entirely capable," the deeply resonant,
slow simulacrum of a voice resounded within the Lensman's brain. The Arisian never
hurried; nothing whatever, apparently, not even such a cataclysmic upheaval as this,
could fluster or excite him. "It does not seem to be in accord with the visualization of the
Cosmic All which I hold at the moment that any one of my fellows is in fact either in the
Second Galaxy or acting antagonistically to the Galactic Patrol. It is, however, a truism
that hypotheses, theories, and visualizations must fit themselves to known or observed
facts, and even your immature mind is eminently able to report truly upon actualities.
But before I attempt to revise my visualization to conform to this admittedly peculiar
circumstance, we must be very sure indeed of our facts. Are you certain, youth, that the
being whom you have beaten into unconsciousness is actually an Arisian?"
     "Certainly I'm certain!" Kinnison snapped. "Why, he's enough like you to have
been hatched out of half of the same egg. Take a look!" and he knew that the Arisian
was studying every external and internal detail, part, and organ of the erstwhile Fossten
of Thrale.
     "Ah, it would appear to be an Arisian, at that, youth," Mentor finally agreed. "He
appears to be old, as you said— as old, perhaps, as I am. Since I have been of the
opinion that I am acquainted with every member of my race this will require some little
thought—allow me therefore, please, a moment of time." The Arisian fell silent,
presently to resume: "I have it now. Many millions of years ago—so long ago that it was
with some little difficulty that I recalled it to mind—when I was scarcely more than an
infant, a youth but little older than myself disappeared from Arisia. It was determined
then that he was aberrant—insane—and since only an unusually capable mind can
predict truly the illogical workings of a diseased and disordered mind for even one year
in advance, it is not surprising that in my visualization that unbalanced youth perished
long ago. Nor is it surprising that I do not recognize him in the creature before you."
     "Well, aren't you surprised that I could get the best of him?" Kinnison asked,
naively. He had really expected that Mentor would compliment him upon his prowess,
he figured that he had earned a few pats on the back; but here the old fellow was
mooning about his own mind and his own philosophy, and acting as though knocking off
an Arisian were something to be taken in stride. And it wasn't, by half!
     "No," came the flatly definite reply. "You have a force of will, a totalizable and
concentrable power, a mental and psychological drive whose capabilities you do not
and cannot fully appreciate. I perceived those latent capabilities when I assembled your
Lens, and developed them when I developed you. It was their presence which made it
certain that you would return here for that development; they made you what you
intrinsically are."
     "QX then—skip it. What shall I do with him? It's going to be a real job of work,
any way you figure it, for us to keep him alive and harmless until we get him back there
to Arisia."
     "We do not want him here," Mentor replied without emotion. "He has no present
or future place within our society. Nor, however I consider the matter, can I perceive that
he has any longer a permissible or condonable place in the all-inclusive Scheme of
Things. He has served his purpose. Destroy him, therefore, forthwith, before he
recovers consciousness; lest much and grievous harm befall you."
     "I believe you, Mentor. You said something then, if anybody ever did. Thanks,"
and communication ceased.
     The Lensman's ray-gun flamed briefly and whatever it was that lay there became
a smoking, shapeless heap.
     Kinnison noticed then that a call-light was shining brightly upon a communicator
panel. This thing must have taken longer than he had supposed. The battle must be
over, otherwise all space would still be filled with interference through which no long-
range communicator beam could have been driven. Or . . . could Boskonia have . . . no,
that was unthinkable. The Patrol must have won. This must be Haynes, calling him . . .
     It was. The frightful Battle of Klovia was over. While many of the Patrol ships had
yielded, either by choice or by necessity, to the Boskonians' challenge, most of them
had not. And the majority of those who did so yield, came out victorious.
     While fighting in any kind of recognized formation against such myriads of
independently-operating, widely-spaced individual ships was of course out of the
question, Haynes and his aides had been able to work out a technique of sorts. General
orders were sent out to sub-fleet commanders, who in turn relayed them to the
individual captains by means of visual beams. Single vessels, then, locked to equal or
inferior craft—avoiding carefully anything larger than themselves— with tractor zones
and held grimly on. If they could defeat the foe, QX. If not, they hung on; until shortly
one of the Patrol's maulers—who had no opposition of their own class to face—would
come lumbering up. And when the dreadful primary batteries of one of those things cut
loose that was, very conclusively, that.
     Thus Boskonia's mighty fleet vanished from the skies.
     The all-pervading interference was cut off and Port Admiral Haynes, not daring to
use his Lens in what might be a critical instant, sat down at his board and punched a
call. Time after time he punched it. Finally he shoved it in and left it in; and as he stared,
minute after minute, into the coldly unresponsive plate his face grew gray and old.
     Just before he decided to Lens Kinnison anyway, come what might, the plate
lighted up to show the smiling, deeply space-tanned face of the one for whom he had
just about given up hope.
     "Thank God!" Haynes' exclamation was wholly reverent; his strained old face lost
twenty years in half that many seconds. "Thank God you're safe. You did it, then?"
     "I managed it, but just by the skin of my teeth—I didn't have half a jet to spare. It
was Old Man Boskone himself, in person. And you?"
     "Clean-up—one hundred point zero zero zero percent."
     "Fine business!" Kinnison exulted. "Everything's on the exact center of the green,
then—come on!"
     And Civilization's Grand Fleet went.
     The Z9M9Z flashed up to visibility, inerted, and with furious driving blasts full
ablaze, matched her intrinsic velocity to that of the Boskonian flagship—the only
Boskonian vessel remaining in that whole vast volume of space. Tractors and pressors
were locked on and balanced. Flexible—or, more accurately, not ultimately
rigid—connecting tubes were pushed out and sealed. Hundreds, yes thousands, of
men— men in full Thralian uniform—strode through those tubes and into the Thralian
ship. The Z9M9Z unhooked and a battleship took her place. Time after time the
maneuver was repeated, until it seemed as though Kinnison's vessel, huge as she was,
could not possibly carry the numbers of men who marched aboard.
     Those men were all human or approximately so—nearly enough human, at least,
to pass as Thralians under a casual inspection. More peculiarly, that army contained an
astounding number of Lensmen. So many Lensmen, it is certain, had never before been
gathered together into so small a space.
     But the fact that they were Lensmen was not apparent; their Lenses were not
upon their wrists, but were high upon their arms, concealed from even the most prying
eyes within the sleeves of their tunics.
     Then the captured flagship, her Bergenholms again at work, the Z9M9Z, and the
battleships which had already assumed the intrinsic velocity possessed originally by the
Boskonians, spread out widely in space. Each surrounded itself with a globe of intensely
vivid red light. Orders as to course and power flashed out. The word was given and
spectacular fire flooded space as that vast host of ships, guided by those red beacons,
matched in one prodigious and beautiful maneuver its intrinsic velocity to theirs.
     Finally, all the intrinsics in exact agreement, Grand Fleet formation was remade.
The term "remade" is used advisedly, since this was not to be a battle formation. For
Traska Gannel had long since sent a message to his capital; a terse and truthful
message which was, nevertheless, utterly misleading. It was:
     "My forces have won, my enemy has been wiped out to the last man. Prepare for
a two-world broadcast, to cover both Thrale and Onlo, at hour ten today of my palace
time."
     The formation, then, was not one of warfare, but of boasting triumph. It was the
consciously proud formation of a Grand Fleet which, secure in the knowledge that it has
blasted out of - the ether everything which can threaten it, returns victoriously home to
receive as its just due the plaudits and the acclaim of the populace.
     Well in the van—alone in the van, in fact, and strutting —was the flagship. She,
having originated upon Thrale and having been built specifically for a flagship, would be
recognized at sight. Back of her came, in gigantic co-axial cones, the sub-fleets;
arranged now not class by class of ships, but world by world of origin. One mauler,
perhaps, or two; from four or five to a dozen or more battleships; an appropriate number
of cruisers and of scouts; all flying along together in a tight little group.
     But not all of the Patrol's armada was in that formation. It would have been very
poor technique indeed to have had Boskonia's Grand Fleet come back to home ether
forty percent larger than it had set out. Besides, the Z9M9Z simply could not be allowed
to come within detector range of any Boskonian look-out. She was utterly unlike any
other vessel ever to fly: she would not, perhaps, be recognized for what she really was,
but it would be evident to the most casual observer that she was not and could not be of
Thrale or Boskonia.
     The Z9M9Z, then, hung back—far back—escorted and enveloped by the great
number of warships which could not be made to fit into the roll-call of the Tyrant's
original Grand Fleet.
     The sub-fleet which was originally from Thrale could land without any trouble
without arousing any suspicion. Boskonian and Patrol designs were not identical, of
course: but the requirements of sound engineering dictated that externals should be
essentially the same. The individual ships now bore the correct identifying symbols and
insignia. The minor differences could not be perceived until after the vessels had
actually landed, and that would be—for the Thralians—entirely too late.
     Thralian hour ten arrived. Kinnison, after a long, minutely searching inspection of
the entire room, became again in every millimeter Traska Gannel, the Tyrant of Thrale.
He waved a hand. The scanner before him glowed: for a full minute he stared into it
haughtily, to give his teeming millions of minions ample opportunity to gaze upon the
inspiring countenance of His Supremacy the Feared.
     He knew that the scanner revealed clearly every detail of the control room behind
him, but everything there was QX. There wasn't a chance that some person would fail to
recognize a familiar face at any post, for not a single face except his own would be
visible. Not a head back of him would turn, not even a rear-quarter profile would show: it
would be lese majeste of the most intolerable for any face, however inconspicuous, to
share the lime-light with that of the Tyrant of Thrale while His Supremacy was
addressing his subjects. Serenely and assuredly enough, then, Tyrant Gannel spoke:
     "MY people! As you have already been told, my forces have won the complete
victory which my foresight and my leadership made inevitable. This milestone of
progress is merely a repetition upon a grander scale of those which I have already
accomplished upon a somewhat smaller; an extension and a continuation of the
carefully considered procedure by virtue of which I shall see to it that My Plan succeeds.
     "As one item in that scheduled procedure I removed the weakling Alcon, and in
the stead of his rule of oppression, short-sightedness, corruption, favoritism, and greed,
I substituted my beneficient regime of fair play, of mutual cooperation for the good of all.
     "I have now accomplished the next major step in my program; the complete
destruction of the armed forces which might be, which would be employed to hamper
and to nullify the development and the fruition of My Plan.
     "I shall take the next step immediately upon my return to my palace. There is no
need to inform you now as to the details of what I have in mind. In broad, however, it
pleases me to inform you that, having crushed all opposition, I am now able to institute
and shall proceed at once to institute certain changes in policy, in administration, and in
jurisdiction. I assure you that all of these changes will be for the best good of all save
the enemies of society.
     "I caution you therefore to cooperate fully and willingly with my officers who may
shortly come among you with instructions; some of these, perhaps, of a nature not
hitherto promulgated upon Thrale. Those of you who do so cooperate will live and will
prosper; those who do not will die in the slowest, most hideous fashions which all the
generations of Thralian torturers have been able to devise."

CHAPTER 22
The Taking of Thrale

     Up to the present, Kinnison's revolution, his self-advancement into the
dictatorship, had been perfectly normal; in perfect accordance with the best tenets of
Boskonian etiquette. While it would be idle to contend that any of the others of the High
Command really approved of it—each wanted intensely that high place for
himself—none of them had been strong enough at the moment to challenge the Tyrant
effectively and all of them knew that an ineffective challenge would mean certain death.
Wherefore each perforce bided his time; Gannel would slip, Gannel would become lax
or over-confident—and that would be the end of Gannel.
     They were, however, loyal to Boskonia. They were very much in favor of the rule
of the strong and the ruthless. They believed implicitly that might made right They
themselves bowed the knee to anyone strong enough to command such servility from
them; in turn they commanded brutally an even more abject servility from those over
whom they held in practice, if not at law, the power of life and death.
     Thus Kinnison knew that he could handle his cabinet easily enough as long as he
could make them believe that he was a Boskonian. There was, there could be, no real
unity among them under those conditions; each would be fighting his fellows as well as
working to overthrow His Supremacy the Tyrant. But they all hated the Patrol and all
that it stood for with a whole-hearted fervor which no one adherent to Civilization can
really appreciate. Hence at the first sign that Gannel might be in league with the Patrol
they would combine forces instantly -against him; automatically there would go into
effect a tacit agreement to kill him first and then, later, to fight it out among themselves
for the prize of the Tyrancy.
     And that combined opposition would be a formidable one indeed. Those men
were really able. They were as clever and as shrewd and as smart and as subtle as
they were hard. They were masters of intrigue; they simply could not be fooled. And if
their united word went down the line that Traska Gannel was in fact a traitor to
Boskonia, an upheaval would ensue which would throw into the shade the bloodiest
revolutions of all history. Everything would be destroyed.
     Nor could the Lensman hurl the metal of the Patrol against Thrale in direct frontal
attack. Not only was it immensely strong, but also there were those priceless records,
without which it might very well be the work of generations for the Patrol to secure the
information which it must, for its own security, have.
     No. Kinnison, having started near the bottom and worked up, must now begin all
over again at the top and work down; and he must be very, very sure that no alarm was
given until at too late a time for the alarmed ones to do anything of harm to the
Lensman's cause. He didn't know whether he had jets enough to swing the load or
not— a lot depended on whether or not he could civilize those twelve devils of his—but
the scheme that the psychologists had worked out was a honey and he would certainly
give it the good old college try.
     Thus Grand Fleet slowed down; and, with the flagship just out of range of the
capital's terrific offensive weapons, it stopped. Half a dozen maulers, towing a blackly
indetectable, imperceptible object, came up and stopped. The Tyrant called, from the
safety of his control room, a conference of his cabinet in the council chamber.
     "While I have not been gone very long in point of days," he addressed them
smoothly, via plate, "and while I of course trust each and every one of you, there are
certain matters which must be made clear before I land. None of you has, by any
possible chance, made any effort to lay a trap for me, or anything of the kind?" There
may have been a trace of irony in the speaker's voice.
     They assured him, one and all, that they had not had the slightest idea of even
considering such a thing.
     "It is well. None of you have discovered, then, that by changing locks and
combinations, and by destroying or removing certain inconspicuous but essential
mechanisms of an extremely complicated nature—and perhaps substituting others—I
made it quite definitely impossible for any one of all of you to render this planet
inertialess. I have brought back with me a negasphere of planetary anti-mass, which no
power at your disposal can effect. It is here beside me in space; please study it
attentively. It should not be necessary for me to inform you that there are countless
other planets from which I can rule Boskonia quite as effectively as from Thrale; or that,
while I do not relish the idea of destroying my home planet and everything upon it, I
would not hesitate to do so if it became a matter of choice between that action and the
loss of my life and my position."
     They believed the statement. That was the eminently sensible thing to do. Any
one of them would have done the same; hence they knew that Gannel would do exactly
what he threatened—if he could. And as they studied Gannel's abysmally black ace of
trumps they knew starkly that Gannel could. For they had found out, individually, that
the Tyrant had so effectively sabotaged Thrale's Bergenholms that they could not
possibly be made operative until after his return. Consequently repairs had not been
started—any such activity, they knew, would be a fatal mistake.
     By out-guessing and out-maneuvering the members of his cabinet Gannel had
once more shown his fitness to rule. They accepted that fact with a good enough grace;
indeed, they admired him all the more for the ability thus shown. No one of them had
given himself away by any overt moves; they could wait. Gannel would slip yet—quite
possibly even before he got back into his palace. So they thought, not knowing that the
Tyrant could read at will their most deeply-hidden plans; and, so thinking, each one
pledged anew in unreserved terms his fealty and his loyalty.
     "I thank you, gentlemen." The Tyrant did not, and the officers were pretty sure
that he did not, believe a word of their protestations. "As loyal cabinet members, I will
give you the honor of sitting in the front of those who welcome me home. You men and
your guards will occupy the front boxes in the Royal Stand. With you and around you
will be the entire palace personnel—I want no person except the, usual guards inside
the buildings or even within the grounds when I land. Back of these you will have
arranged the Personal Troops and the Royal Guards. The remaining stands and all of
the usual open grounds will be for the common people— first come, first served.
     "But one word of caution. You may wear your side-arms, as usual. Bear in mind,
however, that armor is neither usual nor a part of your full-dress uniform, and that any
armored man or men in or near the concourse will be blasted by a needle-ray before I
land. Be advised also that I myself shall be wearing full armor. Furthermore, no vessel
of the fleet will land until I, personally, from my private sanctum, order them to do so."
     This situation was another poser; but it, too, they had to take. There was no way
out of it, and it was still perfect Boskonian generalship. The welcoming arrangements
were therefore made precisely as Tyrant Gannel had directed.
     The flagship settled toward ground, her under-jets blasting unusually viciously
because of her tremendous load; and as she descended Kinnison glanced briefly down
at the familiar terrain. There was the immense space-field, a dock-studded expanse of
burned, scarred, pock-marked concrete and steel. Midway of its extreme northern end,
that nearest the palace, was the berth of the flagship, Dock No. I. An eighth of a mile
straight north from the dock—the minimum distance possible because of the terrific fury
of the under-jets —was the entrance to the palace grounds. At the northern end of the
western side of the field, a good three-quarters of a mile from Dock No. I and somewhat
more than that distance from the palace gates, were the Stands of Ceremony. That
made the Lensman completely the master of the situation.
     The flagship landed. Her madly blasting jets died out. A car of state rolled grandly
up. Airlocks opened. Kinnison and his bodyguards seated themselves in the car.
Helicopters appeared above the stands and above the massed crowds thronging the
western approaches to the field; hovering, flitting slowly and watchfully about.
     Then from the flagship there emerged an incredible number of armed and
armored soldiers. One small column of these marched behind the slowly-moving car of
state, but by far the greater number went directly to and through the imposing portals of
the palace grounds. The people in general, gathered there to see a major spectacle,
thought nothing of these circumstances—who were they to wonder at what the Tyrant of
Thrale might choose to do?—but to Gannel's Council of Advisers they were extremely
disquieting departures from the norm. There was, however, nothing they could do about
them, away out there in the grandstand; and they knew with a stark certainty what those
helicopters had orders to do in case of any uprising or commotion anywhere in the
crowd.
     The car rolled slowly along before the fenced-back, wildly-cheering multitudes,
with blaring bands and the columns of armored spacemen marching crisply, swingingly
behind it. There was nothing to indicate that those selected men were not Thralians;
nothing whatever to hint that over a thousand of them were in fact Lensmen of the
Galactic Patrol. And Kinnison, standing stiffly erect in his car, acknowledged gravely,
with upraised right arm, the plaudits of his subjects.
     The triumphal bus stopped in front of the most out-thrust, the most ornate stand,
and through loud-voiced amplifiers the Tyrant invited, as a signal honor, the twelve
members of his Advisory Cabinet to ride with him in state to the palace. There were
exactly twelve vacant seats in the great coach. The advisers would have to leave their
bodyguards and ride alone with the Tyrant: even had there been room, it was
unthinkable that any one else's personal killers could ride with the Presence. This was
no honor, they knew chillingly, no matter what the mob might think—it looked much
more like a death-sentence. But what could they do? They glanced at their unarmored
henchmen; then at the armor and the semi-portables of Gannel's own heelers; then at
the 'copters now clustering thickly overhead, with the narrow snouts of needle-ray
projectors very much in evidence.
     They accepted.
     It was in no quiet frame of mind, then, that they rode into the pretentious grounds
of the palace. They felt no better when, as they entered the council chamber, they were
seized and disarmed without a word having been spoken. And the world fairly dropped
out from beneath them when Tyrant Gannel emerged from his armor with a Lens
glowing upon his wrist.
     "Yes, I am a Lensman," he gravely informed the stupefied but unshrinking
Boskonians. "That is why I know that all twelve of you tried while I was gone to cut me
down, in spite of everything I told you and everything you have seen me do. If it were
still necessary for me to pose as Traska Gannel I would have to kill you here and now
for your treachery. That phase is, however, past.
     "1 am one of the Lensmen whose collective activities you have ascribed to 'the'
Lensman or to Star A Star. All those others who came with me into the palace are
Lensmen. All those outside are either Lensmen or tried and seasoned veterans of the
Galactic Patrol. The fleet surrounding this world is the Grand Fleet of that Patrol. The
Boskonian force was completely destroyed—every man and every ship except your
flagship—before it reached Klovia. In short, the power of Boskonia is broken forever;
Civilization is to rule henceforth throughout both galaxies.
     "You are the twelve strongest, the twelve ablest men of the planet, perhaps of
your whole dark culture. Will you help us to rule according to the principles of Civilization
that which has been the Boskonian Empire or will you die?"
     The Thralians stiffened themselves rigidly against the expected blasts of death,
but only one spoke. "We are fortunate at least, Lensman, in that you do not torture," he
said, coldly, his lips twisted into a hard, defiant sneer.
     "Good!" and the Lensman actually smiled. "I expected no less. With that solid
bottom, all that is necessary is to wipe away a few of your misconceptions and
misunderstandings, correct your viewpoints, and . . ."
     "Do you think for a second that your therapists can fit us into the pattern of your
Civilization?" the Boskonian spokesman demanded, bitingly.
     "I don't have to think, Lanion—I know," Kinnison assured him. "Take them away,
fellows, and lock them up— you know where. Everything will go ahead as scheduled."
     It did.
     And while the mighty vessels of war landed upon the space-field and while the
thronging Lensmen took over post after post in an ever-widening downward course,
Kinnison led Worsel and Tregonsee to the cell in which the outspoken Thralian chieftain
was confined.
     "I do not know whether I can prevent you from operating upon me or not," Lanion
of Thrale spoke harshly, "but I will try. I have seen the pitiful, distorted wrecks left after
such operations and I do not like them. Furthermore, I do not believe that any possible
science can eradicate from my subconscious the fixed determination to kill myself the
instant you release me. Therefore you had better kill me now, Lensman, and save your
time and trouble."
     "You are right, and wrong," Kinnison replied, quietly. "It may very well be
impossible to remove such a fixation." He knew that he could remove any such, but
Lanion must not know it. Civilization needed those twelve hard, shrewd minds and he
had no intention of allowing an inferiority complex to weaken their powers. "We do not,
however, intend to operate, but only and simply to educate. You will not be unconscious
at any time. You will be in full control of your own mind and you will know beyond
peradventure that you are so in control. We shall engrave, in parallel with your own
present knowledges of the culture of Boskonia, the equivalent or corresponding
knowledges of Civilization."
     They did so. It was not a short undertaking, nor an easy: but it was thorough and
it was finally done. Then Kinnison spoke.
     "You now have completely detailed knowledge both of Boskonia and of
Civilization, a combination possessed by but few intelligences indeed. You know that we
did not alter, did not even touch, any track of your original mind. Being fully en rapport
with us, you know that we gave you as unprejudiced a concept of Civilization as we
possibly could. Also, you have assimilated completely the new knowledge."
     "That is all true," Lanion conceded. "Remarkable, but true. I was, and remained
throughout, myself; I checked constantly to be sure of that. I can still kill myself at any
moment I choose."
     "Right." Kinnison did not smile, even mentally, at the unconscious alteration of
intent. "The whole proposition can now be boiled down into one clear-cut question, to
which you can formulate an equally clear-cut reply. Would you, Lanion, personally,
prefer to keep on as you have been, working for personal power, or would you rather
team up with others to work for the good of all?"
     The Thralian thought for moments, and as he pondered an expression of
consternation spread over his hard-hewn face. "You mean actually—personally—apart
from all consideration of your so-called altruism and your other infantile weaknesses?"
he demanded, resistantly.
     "Exactly," Kinnison assured him. "Which would you rather do? Which would you,
personally, get the most good—the most fun—out of?"
     The bitter conflict was plainly visible in Lanion's bronzed face; so was the
direction in which it was going.
     "Well . . . I'll . . . be . . . damned! You win, Lensman!" and the ex-Boskonian
executive held out his hand. Those were not his words, of course; but as nearly as
Tellurian English can come to it, that is the exact sense of his final decision.
     And the same, or approximately the same, was the decision of each of his eleven
fellows, each in his turn.
     Thus it was, then, that Civilization won over the twelve recruits who were so
potently instrumental in the bloodless conquest of Thrale, and who were later to be of
such signal service throughout the Second Galaxy. For they knew Boskonia with a sure
knowledge, from top to bottom and from side to side, in every aspect and ramification;
they knew precisely where and when and how to work to secure the desired ends. And
they worked—how they worked!—but space is lacking to go into any of their labors
here.
     Specialists gathered, of a hundred different sorts; and when, after peace and
security had been gained, they began to attack the stupendous files of the Hall of
Records, Kinnison finally yielded to Haynes' insistence and moved out to the Z9M9Z.
     "It's about time, young fellow!" the Port Admiral snapped. "I've gnawed my finger-
nails off just about to the elbow and I still haven't figured out how to crack Onlo. Have
you got any ideas?"
     "Thrale first," Kinnison suggested. "Everything QX here, you sure?"
     "Absolutely," Haynes grunted. 'A's strongly held as Tellus or Klovia. Primaries,
helices, super-tractors, Bergenholms, sunbeam—everything. They don't need us here
any longer, any more than a hen needs teeth. Grand Fleet is all set to go, but we
haven't been able to work out a feasible plan of campaign. The best way would be not
to use the fleet at all, but a sunbeam—but we can't move the sun and Thorndyke can't
hold the beam together that far. I don't suppose we could use a negasphere?"
     "I don't see how," Kinnison pondered. "Ever since we used it first they've been
ready for it. I'd be inclined to wait and see what Nadreck works out. He's a wise old owl,
that bird— what does he tell you?"
     "Nothing. Nothing flat." Haynes' smile was grimly amused. "The fact that he is still
'investigating'—whatever that means—is all he'll say. Why don't you try him? You know
him better than I do or ever will."
     "It wouldn't do any harm," Kinnison agreed. "Nor good, either, probably. Funny
egg, Nadreck. I'd tie fourteen of his arms into lover's knots if it'd make him give, but it
wouldn't—he's really tough." Nevertheless he sent out a call, which was acknowledged
instantly.
     "Ah, Kinnison, greetings. I am even now on my way to Thrale and the Directrix to
report."
     "You are? Fine!" Kinnison exclaimed. "How did you come out?"
     "I did not—exactly—fail, but the work was very incompletely and very poorly
done," Nadreck apologized, the while the Tellurian's mind felt very strongly the Palainian
equivalent of a painful blush of shame. "My report of the affair is going in under
Lensman's Seal."
     "But what did you do?" both Tellurians demanded as one.
     "I scarcely know how to confess to such blundering," and Nadreck actually
squirmed. "Will you not permit me to leave my shame to the spool of record?"
     They would not, they informed him.
     "If you must have it, then, I yield. The plan was to make all Onlonians destroy
themselves. In theory it 'was sound and simple, but my execution was pitifully imperfect.
My work was so poorly done that the commanding officer in each one of three of the
domes remained alive, making it necessary for me to slay those three commanders
personally, by the use of crude force. I regret exceedingly the lack of finish of this
undertaking, and I apologize profoundly for it. I trust that you will not allow this
information to become a matter of public knowledge," and the apologetic, mentally
sweating, really humiliated Palainian broke the connection.
     Haynes and Kinnison stared at each other, for moments completely at a loss for
words. The Port Admiral first broke the silence.
     "Hell's—jingling—bells!" he wrenched out, finally, and waved a hand at the points
of light crowding so thickly his tactical tank. 'A thing that the whole damned Grand Fleet
couldn't do, and he does it alone, and then he apologizes for it as though he ought to be
stood up in a corner or sent to bed without any supper!"
     "Uh-huh, that's the way he is," Kinnison breathed, in awe. "What a brain! . . .
what a man!"
     Nadreck's black speedster arrived and a three-way conference was held. Both
Haynes and Kinnison pressed him for the details of his really stupendous achievement,
but he refused positively even to mention any phase of it "The matter is
closed—finished," he declared, in a mood of anger and self-reproach which neither of
the Tellurians had ever supposed that the gently scientific monster could assume, "I
practically failed. It is the poorest piece of work of which I have been guilty since
cubhood, and I desire and I insist that it shall not be mentioned again. If you wish to4ay
plans for the future, I will be very glad indeed to place at your disposal my small ability--
which has now been shown to be even smaller than I had supposed—but if you insist
upon discussing my fiasco, 1 shall forthwith go home. I will not discuss it. The record of
it will remain permanently under Lensman's Seal. That is my last word."
     And it was. Neither of the two Tellurians mentioned the subject, of course, either
then or ever, but many other persons—including your historian—have done so, with no
trace whatever of success. It is a shame, it is positively outrageous, that no details are
available of the actual fall of Onlo. No human mind can understand why Nadreck will not
release his seal, but the bitter fact of his refusal to do so has been made all too plain.
     Thus, in all probability, it never will become publicly known how those monstrous
Onlonians destroyed each other, nor how Nadreck penetrated the defensive screens of
Onlo's embattled domes, nor in what fashions he warred upon the three surviving
commanders. These matters, and many others of perhaps equal interest and value,
must have been of such an epic nature that it is a cosmic crime that they cannot be
recorded here; that this, one of the most important incidents of the campaign, must be
mentioned merely and baldly as having happened. But, unless Nadreck relents—and he
apparently never does—that is the starkly tragic fact.
     Other Lensmen were called in then, and admirals and generals and other
personages. It was decided to man the fortifications of Onlo immediately, from the
several fleets of frigid-blooded poison-breathers which made up a certain percentage of
Civilization's forces. This decision was influenced markedly by Nadreck, who said in
part:
     "Onlo is a beautiful planet. Its atmosphere is perfect, its climate is ideal; not only
for us of Palain VII, but also for the inhabitants of many other planets, such as . . ." and
he mentioned some twenty names. "While I personally am not a fighter, there are some
who are; and while those of a more warlike disposition man Onlo's defenses and
weapons, my fellow researchers and I might very well be carrying on with the same type
of work which you fire-blooded oxygen-breathers are doing elsewhere."
     This eminently sensible suggestion was adopted at once. The conference broke
up. The selected sub-fleets sailed. Kinnison went to see Haynes.
     "Well, sir, that's it. . . I hope . . . what do you think? Am I, or am I not, due for a
spot of free time?" The Gray Lensman's face was drawn and grim.
     "I wish I knew, son . . . but I don't." Eyes and voice were deeply troubled. "You
ought to be . . . I hope you are . . . but you're the only judge of that, you know."
     "Uh-huh . . . that is, I know how to find out . . . but I'm afraid to—afraid he'll say
no. However, I'm going to see Cris first—talk it over with her. How about having a gig
drop me down to the hospital?"
     For he did not have to travel very far to find his fiancee. From the time of leaving
Lyrane until the taking over of Thrale she had as a matter of course been chief nurse of
the hospital ship Pasteur, and with the civilizing of that planet she had as automatically
become chief nurse of the Patrol's Base Hospital there.
     "Certainly, Kim—anything you want, whenever you please."
     "Thanks, chief . . . Now that this fracas is finally over— if it is—I suppose you'll
have to take over as president of the Galactic Council?"
     "I suppose so—after we clean up Lyrane VIII, that you've been holding me away
from so long—but I don't relish the thought. And you'll be Coordinator Kinnison."
     "Uh-huh," gloomily. "By Klono, I hate to put my Grays away! I'm not going to do it,
either, until after we're married and I'm really settled down onto the job."
     "Of course not. You'll be wearing them for some time yet, I'm thinking." Haynes'
tone was distinctly envious. "Getting your job reduced to routine will take a long, long
time . . . It'll probably take years even to find out what it's really going to be."
     "That's so, too," Kinnison brightened visibly. "Well, clear ether, President
Haynes!" and he turned away, whistling unmelodiously—in fact, somewhat
raucously—through his teeth.

CHAPTER 23
Attainment

     At base hospital it was midnight. the two largest of Thrale's four major moons
were visible, close together in the zenith, almost at the full: shining brilliantly from a
cloudless, star-besprinkled sky upon the magnificent grounds.
     Fountains splashed and tinkled musically. Masses of flowering shrubs, bordering
meandering walks, flooded the still air with a perfume almost cloying in its intensity. No
one who has once smelled the fragrance of Thralian thorn-flower at midnight will ever
forget it—it is as though the poignant sweetness of the mountain syringa has been
blended harmoniously with the heavy, entrancing scent of the jasmine and the
appealing pungency of the lily-of-the-valley. Statues of gleaming white stone and of
glinting metal were spaced infrequently over acres and acres of springy, close-clipped
turf. Trees, not over-high but massive of bole and of tremendous spread and thickness
of foliage, cast shadows of impenetrable black.
     "QX, Cris?" Kinnison Lensed the thought as he entered the grounds: she had
known that he was coming. "Kinda late, I know, but I wanted to s^e you, and you don't
have to punch the clock."
     "Surely, Kim," and her low, infectious chuckle welled out. "What's the use of
being a Red Lensman, else? This is just right—you couldn't make it any sooner and
tomorrow would have been too late—much too late."
     They met at the door and with arms around each other strolled wordless down a
walk. Across the resilient sward they made their way and to a bench beneath one of the
spreading trees.
     Kinnison swept her into both arms, hers went eagerly around his neck. How long,
how unutterably long it had been since they had stood thus, nurse's white crushed
against Lensman's Gray!
     They had no need, these Lensmen, of sight. Nor of language. Hence, since
words are so pitifully inadequate, no attempt will be made to chronicle the ecstasy of
that reunion. Finally, however:
     "Now that we're together again I'll never let you go," the man declared aloud.
     "If they separate us again it will simply break my heart," Clarrissa agreed. Then,
woman-like, she faced the facts and made the man face them, too. "Let's sit down, Kim,
and have this out. You know as well as I do that we can't go on if. . . if we can't. . . that's
all."
     "I do not," Kinnison said, flatly. "We've got a right to some happiness, you and I.
They, can't keep us apart forever, sweetheart—we're going straight through with it this
time."
     "Uh-uh, Kim," she denied gently, shaking her spectacular head. "What would
have happened if we'd have gone ahead before, leaving those horrible Thralians free to
ruin Civilization?"
     "But Mentor stopped us then," Kinnison argued. Deep down, he knew that if the
Arisian called he would have to answer, but he argued nevertheless. "If the job wasn't
done, he would have stopped us before we got this far—I think."
     "You hope, you mean," the girl contradicted. "What makes you think—if you
really do—that he might not wait until the ceremony has actually begun?"
     "Not a thing in the universe. He might, at that," Kinnison confessed, bleakly.
     "You've been afraid to ask him, haven't you?"
     "But the job must be done!" he insisted, avoiding the question. "The prime
minister—that Fossten—must have been the top; there couldn't possibly be anything
bigger than an Arisian to be back of Boskone. It's unthinkable! They've got no military
organization left—not a beam hot enough to light a cigarette or a screen that would stop
a firecracker. We have all their records—everything. Why, it's just a matter of routine
now for the boys to uproot them completely; system by system, planet by planet."
     "Uh-huh." She eyed him shrewdly, there in the dark. "Cogent. Really pellucid. As
clear as so much crystal—and twice as fragile. If you're so sure, why not call Mentor
and ask him, right now? You're not afraid of just the calling part, like I am; you're afraid
of what he'll say."
     "I'm going to marry you before I do another lick of work of any kind, anywhere,"
he insisted, doggedly.
     "I just love to hear you say that, even if I do know you're just popping off!" She
snuggled deeper into the curve of his arm. "I feel that way too, but both of us know very
well that if Mentor stops us . . . even at the altar . . ." her thought slowed, became tense,
solemn. "We're Lensmen, Kim, you and I. We both know exactly what that means. We'll
have to muster jets enough, some way or other, to swing the load. Let's call him now,
Kim, together. I just simply can't stand this not knowing . . . I can't, Kim . . . I can't!"
Tears come hard and seldom to such a woman as Clarrissa MacDougall; but they came
then—and they hurt.
     "QX, ace." Kinnison patted her back and her gorgeous head. "Let's go—but I tell
you now that if he says 'no' I'll tell him to go out to the Rim and take a swan-dive off into
inter-galactic space."
     She linked her mind with his, thinking in affectionate half-reproach, "I'd like to,
too, Kim, but that's pure balloon juice and you know it. You couldn't . . ." she broke off
as he hurled their joint thought to Arisia the Old, going on frantically:
     "You think at him, Kim, and I'll just listen. He scares me into a shrinking,
quivering pulp!"
     "QX, ace," he said again. Then: "Is it permissible that we do what we are about to
do?" he asked crisply of Arisia's ancient sage.
     "Ah, 'tis Kinnison and MacDougall; once of Tellus, henceforth of Klovia," the
calmly unsurprised thought rolled in. "I was expecting you at this time. Any mind,
however far from competent, could have visualized this event in its entirety. That which
you contemplate is not merely permissible; it has now become necessary," and as
usual, without tapering off or leave-taking, Mentor broke the line.
     The two clung together rapturously then for minutes, but something was
obtruding itself disquietingly upon the nurse's mind.
     "But his thought was 'necessary', Kim?" she asked, rather than said. "Isn't there a
sort of a sinister connotation in that, somewhere? What did he mean?"
     "Nothing—exactly nothing," Kinnison assured her, comfortably. "He's got a
complete picture of the macro-cosmic universe in his mind—his 'Visualization of the
Cosmic AH', he calls it—and in it we get married now, just as I've been telling you we
are going to. Since it gripes him no end to have even the tiniest thing not conform to his
visualization, our marriage is NECESSARY, in capital letters. See?"
     "Uh-huh . . . Oh, I'm glad!" she exclaimed. "That shows you how scared of him I
am," and thoughts and actions became such that, although they were no doubt of much
personal pleasure and satisfaction, they do not require detailed treatment here.
     Clarrissa MacDougall resigned the next day, without formality or fanfare. That is,
she thought that she did so then, and rather wondered at the frictionless ease with
which it went through: it had simply not occurred to her that in the instant of being made
an Unattached Lensman she had been freed automatically from every man-made
restraint. That was one of the few lessons hard for her to learn; it was the only one
which she refused consistently even to try to learn.
     Nothing was said or done about the ten thousand credits which had been
promised her upon the occasion of her fifteen-minutes-long separation from die Patrol
following the fall of Jarnevon. She thought about it briefly, but with no real sense of loss.
Some way or other, money did not seem important. Anyway, she had some—enough
for a fairly nice, if limited, trousseau—in a Tellurian bank. She could undoubtedly get it
through the Disbursing Office here.
     She took off her Lens and stuffed it into a pocket. That wasn't so good, she
reflected. It bulged, and besides, it might fall out; and anyone who touched it would die.
She didn't have a bag; in fact, she had with her no civilian clothes at all. Wherefore she
put it back on, pausing as she did so to admire the Manarkan star-drop flashing pale fire
from the third finger of her left hand. Of Cartiff's whole stock of fine gems, this was the
loveliest.
     It was not far to the Disbursing Office, so she walked; window-shopping as she
went. It was a peculiar sensation, this being out of harness—it felt good, though, at
that— and upon arriving at the bank she found to her surprise that she was both well
known and expected. An officer whom she had never seen before greeted her cordially
and led her into his private office.
     "We have been wondering why you didn't pick up your kit, Lensman
MacDougall," he went on, briskly. "Sign here, please, and press your right thumb in this
box here, after peeling off this plastic strip, so." She wrote in her boldly flowing script,
and peeled, and pressed; and watched fascinatedly as her thumb-print developed itself
sharply black against the bluish off-white of the Patrol's stationery. "That transfers your
balance upon Tellus to the Patrol's general fund. Now sign and print this, in
quadruplicate . . . Thank you. Here's your kit. When this book of slips is gone you can
get another one at any bank or Patrol station anywhere. It has been a real pleasure to
have met you, Lensman MacDougall; come in again whenever you happen to be upon
Thrale," and he escorted her to the street as briskly as he had ushered her in.
     Clarrissa felt slightly dazed. She had gone in there to get the couple of hundred
credits which represented her total wealth; but instead of getting it she had meekly
surrendered her savings to the Patrol and had been given—what? She leafed through
the little book. One hundred blue-white slips; small things, smaller than currency bills. A
little printing, two lines for description, a blank for figures, a space for signature, and a
plastic-covered oblong area for thumb-print. That was all—but what an all! Any one of
those slips, she knew, would be honored without hesitation or question for any amount
of cash money she pleased to draw; for any object or thing she chose to buy.
Anything—absolutely anything—from a pair of half-credit stockings up to and beyond a
hundred-million-credit space-ship. ANYTHING! The thought chilled her buoyant spirit,
took away her zest for shopping.
     "Kim, I can't!" she wailed through her Lens. "Why didn't they give me my own
money and let me spend it the way I please?"
     "Hold everything, ace—Til be with you in a sec." He wasn't—quite—but it was not
long. "You can get all the money you want, you know—just give them a chit."
     "I know, but all I wanted was my own money. I didn't ask for this stuff!"
     "None of that, Cris—when you get to be a Lensman you've got to take what goes
with it. Besides, if you spend money foolishly all the rest of your life, the Patrol knows
that it will still owe you plenty for what you did on Lyrane II. Where do you want to
begin?"
     "Brenleer's," she decided, after she had been partially convinced. "They aren't
the largest, but they give real quality at a fair price."
     At the shop the two Lensmen were recognized at sight and Brenleer himself did
the honors.
     "Clothes," the girl said succinctly, with an all-inclusive wave of her hand. "All
kinds of clothes, except white uniforms."
     They were ushered into a private room and Kinnison wriggled as mannequins
began to appear in various degrees of enclothement.
     "This is no place for me," he declared. "I'll see you later, ace. How long—half an
hour or so?"
     "Half an hour?" The nurse giggled, and:
     "She will be here all the rest of today, and most of the time for a week," the
merchant informed him severely—and she was.
     "Oh, Kim, I'm having the most marvelous time!" she told him excitedly, a few
days later. "But it makes me feel sick to think of how much of the Patrol's money I'm
spending."
     "That's what you think."
     "Huh? What do you mean?" she demanded, but he would not talk.
     She found out, however, after the long-drawn-out business of selecting and
matching and designing and fitting was over.
     "You've only seen me in real clothes once, and that time you hardly looked at
me. Besides, I got myself all prettied up in the beauty shop." She posed provocatively.
"Do you like me, Kim?"
     "Like you!" The man could scarcely speak. She had been a seven-sector call-out
in faded moleskin breeches and a patched shirt. She had been a thionite dream in
uniform. But now—radiantly, vibrantly beautiful, a symphony in her favorite dark green .
. . "Words fail. ace. Thoughts, too. They fold up and quit. The universe's best, is all I can
say . . ."
     And—later—they sought out Brenleer.
     "I would like to ask you to do me a tremendous favor," he said, hesitantly, without
filling in any of the blanks upon the blue-white slip the girl had proffered. "If, instead of
paying for these things, you would write upon this voucher the date and 'my fall outfit
and much of my trousseau were made by Brenleer of Thrale . . .'" His voice expired
upon a wistful note.
     "Why . . . I never even thought of such a thing . . . would it be quite ethical, do
you think, Kim?"
     "You said that he gives value for price, so I don't see why not . . . Lots of things
they never let any of us pay for . . ." Then, to Brenleer, "Never thought of that angle, of
what a terrific draw she'd be . . . you're figuring on displaying that chit unobtrusively in a
gold and platinum frame four feet square."
     Brenleer nodded. "Something like that. This will be the most fantastically lucky
break a man in my position ever had, if you approve of it."
     "I don't see why not," Kinnison said again. "You might as well give him a break,
Cris. What tore it was buying so much stuff here, not admitting the fact over your
signature and thumb-print.''
     She wrote and they went out.
     "You mean to tell me I'm so . . . so . . ."
     "Famous? Notorious?" he helped out.
     "Ufa-hull. Or words to that effect." A touch of fear darkened her glorious eyes.
     "All of that, and then some. I never thought of what your buying so much plunder
in one store would do, but it'd have the pulling power of a planetary tractor. It's bad
enough with us regulars—half the chits we issue are never cashed—but you are
absolutely unique. The first Lady Lensman—the only Red Lensman—and what a
Lensman! Wow! As I think it over one gets you a hundred if any chit you ever sign ever
will get cashed. There have been collectors, you know, ever since Civilization
began—maybe before."
     "But I don't like it!" she stormed.
     "That won't change the facts," he countered, philosophically. "Are you ready to
flit? The Dauntless is hot, they tell me."
     "Uh-huh, all my stuff is aboard," and soon they were en-route to Klovia.
     The trip was uneventful, and even before they reached that transformed planet it
became evident that it was theirs from pole to pole. Their cruiser was met by a horde of
spaceships of all types and sizes, which formed a turbulent and demonstrative escort of
honor. The seething crowd at the space-port could scarcely be kept out of range of the
dreadnought's searing landing-blasts. Half the brass bands of the world, it seemed,
burst into "Our Patrol" as the Lensmen disembarked, and their ground-car and the
street along which it slowly rolled were decorated lavishly with deep-blue flowers.
     "Thorn-flowers!" Clarrissa choked. "Thralian thorn-flowers, Kim—how could
they?"
     "They grow here as well as there, and when they found out that you liked them
so well they imported them by the shipload," and Kinnison himself swallowed a lump.
     Their brief stay upon Klovia was a hectic one indeed. Parties and balls, informal
and formal, and at least a dozen Telenews poses every day. Receptions, at which there
were presented the personages and the potentates of a thousand planets; at which the
uniforms and robes and gowns put the solar spectrum to shame.
     And from tens of thousands of planets came Lensmen, to make or to renew
acquaintance with the Galactic Co-ordinator and to welcome into their ranks the
Lensman-bride. From Tellus, of course, they came in greatest number and enthusiasm,
but other planets were not too far behind. They came from Manarka and Velantia and
Chickladoria and Alsakan and Vandemar, from the worlds of Canopus and Vega and
Antares, from all over the galaxy. Human, near-human, non-human, monstrous; there
even appeared briefly quite large numbers of frigid-blooded Lensmen, whose fiercely-
laboring refrigerators chilled the atmosphere for yards around their insulated and
impervious suits. All those various beings came with a united purpose, with a common
thought—to congratulate Kinnison of Tellus and to wish his Lensman-mate all the luck
and all the happiness of the universe.
     Kinnison was surprised at the sincerity with which they acclaimed him; he was
amazed at the genuineness and the tensity of their adoption of his Clarrissa as their
own. He had been afraid that some of them would think he was throwing his weight
around when he violated precedent by making her a Lensman. He had been afraid of
animosity and ill-will. He had been afraid that outraged masculine pride would set up a
sex antagonism. But if any of these things existed, the keenest use of his every
penetrant sense could not discover them.
     Instead, the human Lensmen literally mobbed her as they took her to their
collective bosom. No party, wherever or for what reason held, was complete without
her. If she ever had less than ten escorts at once, she was slighted. They ran her
ragged, they danced her slippers off, they stuffed her to repletion, they would not let her
sleep, they granted her the privacy of a gold-fish—and she loved every tumultuous
second of it.
     She had wanted, as she had told Haynes and Lacy so long ago, a big wedding;
but this one was already out of hand and was growing more so by the minute. The idea
of holding it in a church had been abandoned long since; now it became clear that the
biggest armory of Klovia would not hold even half of the Lensmen, to say nothing of the
notables and dignitaries who had come so far. It would simply have to be the Stadium.
     Even that tremendous structure could not hold enough people, hence speakers
and plates were run outside, clear up to the space-field fence. And, although neither of
the principals knew it, this marriage had so fired public interest that Universal Telenews
men had already arranged the hook-up which was to carry it to every planet of
Civilization. Thus the number of entities who saw and heard that wedding has been
estimated, but the figures are too fantastic to be repeated here.
     But it was in no sense a circus. No ceremony ever held, in home or in church or
in cathedral, was ever more solemn. For when half a million Lensmen concentrate upon
solemnity, it prevails.
     The whole vast bowl was gay with flowers—it seemed as though a state must
have been stripped of blooms to furnish so many—and ferns and white ribbons were
everywhere. There was a mighty organ, which pealed out triumphal melody as the bridal
parties marched down the aisles, subsiding into a lilting accompaniment as the betrothal
couple ascended the white-brocaded stairway and faced the Lensman-Chaplain in the
heavily-garlanded little open-air chapel. The minister raised both hands. The massed
Patrolmen and nurses stood at attention. A profound silence fell.
     "Dearly beloved . . ." The grand old service—short and simple, but utterly
impressive—was soon over. Then, as Kinnison kissed his wife, half a million Lensed
members were thrust upward in silent salute.
     Through a double lane of glowing Lenses the wedding party made its way up to
the locked and guarded gate of the space-field where lay the Dauntless—the super-
dreadnought "yacht" in which the Kinnisons were to take a honeymoon voyage to
distant Tellus. The gate opened. The couple, accompanied by the Port Admiral and the
Surgeon Marshal, stepped into the car, which sped out to the battleship; and as it did so
the crowd loosed its pent-up feelings in a prolonged outburst of cheering.
     And as the newlyweds walked up the gangplank Kinnison turned his head and
Lensed a thought to Haynes:
     "You've been griping so long about Lyrane VIII, chief —I forgot to tell you—you
can go mop up on it now!"
     
     Acknowledgment
     
     Your historian, not wishing to take credit which is not rightfully his, wishes to say
here that without the fine cooperation of many persons and entities this history must
have been of much less value and importance than it now is.
     First, of course, there were the Lensmen. It is unfortunate that Nadreck of Palain
VII could not be induced either to release his spool of the Fall of Onlo or to enlarge upon
his other undertakings.
     Coordinator Kinnison, Worsel of Velantia, and Tregonsee of Rigel IV, however,
were splendidly cooperative, giving in personal conversations much highly useful
material which is not heretofore of public record. The gracious and queenly Red
Lensman also was of great assistance.
     Dr. James R. Enright was both prolific and masterly in deducing that certain
otherwise necessarily obscure events and sequences must have in fact occurred, and it
is gratefully admitted here that the author has drawn heavily upon "Doctor Jim's"
profound knowledge of the mind.
     The Galactic Roamers, those intrepid spacemen, assisted no little: E. Everett
Evans, their Chief Communications Officer, F. Edwin Counts, Paul Leavy, Jr., Alfred
Ashley, to name only a few who aided in the selection, arrangement, and presentation
of material.
     Verna Trestrail, the exquisite connoisseurs, was of help, not only by virtue of her
knowledge of the jewels of Lonabar, but also in her interpretations of many things
concerning Illona Potter of which Illona Henderson—characteristically—will not speak.
     To all" these, and to many others whose help was only slightly less, the writer
extends his sincere thanks.
     
                        edward e. smith